Turn on your television any time in the past six months and the bad news reminds you of California. First it’s the forest fires, then come the mudslides. If Donald Trump hasn’t sold the Grand Canyon to the Acme Uranium Company, the Covid pandemic just wiped out Pittsburgh. If Rudy Giuliani hasn’t sold all our military secrets to Vladimir Putin, the Ku Klux Klan has ordered a record number of sheets from Bed, Bath and Beyond. The Antifa has taken over Burbank, the Proud Boys are running wild in Dubuque and Lindsay Graham has been elected Queen of the May in Happy Bottom, South Carolina. Can it get any worse? No. The bad news stops here.
Godzilla has finally been run out of town by the Lilliputians. Pfizer is burning the midnight oil in Kalamazoo, churning out virus vaccines. Rudy has been pantsed by lesbians in New Jersey and forced into retirement. And the United Elephant League has sued in a Massachusetts court and won a judgment restricting further use of its images by the Republican Party. The pendulum is finally swinging back in a propitious direction. Happy days are here again!
Cancer Kicking In Israel
Researchers at Tel Aviv University have good news for you. They have demonstrated that the CRISPR genome editing system is very effective in treating metastatic cancers, a major step in finding a cure for cancer. In a paper published last month, the researchers demonstrated a novel lipid nanoparticle-based delivery system which specifically targets cancer cells. Professor Dan Peer claims it’s the first study in the world to prove the CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to treat cancer effectively in a living animal.
“This is NOT chemotherapy,” said Peer, the VP for R&D and Head of the Laboratory of Precision Nanomedicine at the Shmunis School of Biomedicine and Cancer Research. “There are NO side effects, and a cancer cell treated in this way will NEVER become active again. The CRISPR genome editing technology is capable of identifying and altering any genetic segment. It has revolutionized our ability to disrupt, repair and even replace genes in a personalized manner.”
Ovarian cancer is a major cause of death among women and the most lethal cancer of the female reproductive system. Despite some progress in recent years, only a third of those who contract the disease will survive it. Recently, however, treatment with CRISPR-LNPs in mice with metastatic ovarian cancer boosted the survival rate by a colossal 80%. They’re dancing in the streets of Mouseland and with any luck we’ll someday be joining the conga line.
The Return Of Pretty Boy
Charles Arthur (Pretty Boy) Floyd was an American bank robber who operated in the West and Central United States in the 1930s, but nonetheless a very popular guy due to his habit of burning the banks’ mortgage documents and freeing many common folk from paying these debts. Songwriter Woody Guthrie used a little poetic license writing about his own version of the bank robber in his 1939 song, Pretty Boy Floyd:
“Others tell you ‘bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill.”
Maybe Pretty Boy is back. As the Night Town restaurant in Cleveland was closing for an unspecified length of time due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a customer walked in and asked for a single beer. The owner, Brendan Ring, promptly brought it out, said a few words to the man and went about his business. The customer savored his beer, raised up and told Ring to share the tip with his four employees, then walked off.
Ring moseyed over, looked down at the tip and momentarily froze when he saw it was $3000. He ran after the man, who assured him it was no mistake. “See you at the reopening,” he shouted as he walked out of sight.
“I think it might have been The Lone Ranger,” said Ring. It’s almost impossible to get silver bullets these days.”
Tonto Would Be Proud
2020 was a very good year for American Indians. First, the Washington Redskins ditched their moniker (and didn’t even replace it. We suggest the “Washington Nothingberts”). Then the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation got together with their pals at the Mikisew Cree First Nation and the Fort Chipewyan Metis Association to form Three Nations Energy and put together the largest indigenous-owned solar farm in Canada in chilly Alberta. O Canada, we stand on solar panels for thee!
Supplying 2.2 megawatts of solar electricity for three First Nation tribes, the farm will decrease the reliance of the community on the nasty diesel-fired plant that has supplied them for decades.
"We worked together and we made it happen,” declared Chief Allan Adam of the Athabascans. “We work with the sun, we work with the wind, we work with Mother Nature and we work with the water for the children of the future to give them a better life, a cleaner life.”
A community of just 1000 people until now, Fort Chipewyan previously got three million liters of diesel a year from fuel truckers crazy enough to challenge the ice roads which melt away in summer, or by river barge. “This is a very proud moment for all of us as a community….we’ve worked very hard for the past several years,” said Fort Chipewyan Metis Association VP Blue Eyes Simpson. “Now we rest and drink firewater.”
Blue Eyes Simpson, indeed. Mom, can I please, PLEASE have a cool Indian name?
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Duluth
Got cabin fever in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic? Tired of being cooped up in your tiny apartment? Bored with the stale sameness of the day-to-day? Ever wished you could be a goat?
Or should we ask, ever wished you could be Frankie, the Adventure Goat? Frankie just notched her 60,000th mile traveling across the USA with her homies Cate and Chad Battles in the family Airstream. “She’s an awesome travel companion,” says Cate, a 34-year-old artist and travel writer from Grants Pass, Oregon. "She’s been everywhere with us….lakes, mountains, caves in dozens of states. All the way from the East Coast to the West Coast. Frankie just loves being on the road. She finds joy any place she goes. In the mountains, she climbs the rocks; at the beach, she licks the salt off the stones. She’s a great hiker---she’s even been to the Grand Canyon.”
The Battles family is unafraid of the Plague, sticking mostly to places well off the beaten track. “We don’t go to campgrounds, we’re always out in the middle of nowhere,” says Cate. “This year, we’ve been to northeastern Nevada and to Idaho. Next, we’re doing a whole loop around the southwest.”
Frankie, a 6-year-old Nigerian dwarf/pygmy goat, is ready for whatever is next. “She’s so much fun,” Cate laughs. “She looks tiny but she actually weighs about 80 pounds and she’s very well-fed. She loves southwestern food, especially chimichangas. No barbecue, though. I asked her about it one day and she told me she didn’t want to slip up and eat any relatives.”
Frankie has a message for fellow travelers. She smiles and says, “Just direct your bleat to the sunny side of the street.”
Did someone let Will Thacker in here?
Paper Or Plastic?
“I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own,
A doll that other fellows cannot steal.”---Hank Thompson
With people of every imaginable sexual persuasion getting into the act these days, it was only a matter of time for the much-maligned plastic companion dolls, inflatable or otherwise, to obtain equal rights. And now one of them has. The beautiful and talented Margo (further names unnecessary) has been married in Kazakhstan to local bodybuilder Yuri Tolochko after a year and eight months of steady courtship. Yuri was a sight in black tux and bow tie, while Margo drew gasps in a revealing white gown. The couple will honeymoon in Saks Fifth Avenue’s famous display windows in New York City.
Tolochko claimed the pair has no communication problems. “Couples need to talk less and connect more,” he said. “With time and experience, Margo and I have realized that it takes more than words to have a conversation.” He revealed that the couple works out together, enjoys dual bubble baths and delights in bondage and discipline, domination and submission and sadism and masochism.
“I love being tortured,” claims Tolochko. “I can endure a lot of pain. I love to dominate, as well. Margo is capable of things that few other people can do.” Yuri claims to be a pansexual with a rabid appetite which made other partners uncomfortable. “Not Margo, though. She’s always available.”
The wedding was planned for an earlier date but was delayed by Covid scares and an unpleasant incident in which Tolochko was attacked and injured at a transgender rally in the Kazach city of Almaty. He suffered a concussion and a broken nose after dressing as a woman for the event. He has since promised Margo to stay out of her drawers.
In London, a spokesman for the United Plastic Mannequin & Sex Doll League could barely contain himself at a union rally. “Today, Kazakhstan,” he bellowed, “tomorrow the world!” In the futures market, plastics rose to unheard-of heights. Margo, meanwhile, has been tapped for Deborah Kerr’s role of Anna in a Broadway revival of The King And I. She refused comment but winked suggestively.
I Got You, Babe!
It helps to have friends in high places, as Kaavan the elephant just discovered after 35 years in a slum zoo in Pakistan. Gifted to that country by the Sri Lankan government when he was 1 in 1985, the sad pachyderm lost his sole elephant companion in 2012 and now suffers multiple physical and psychological problems. Fortunately for him, one day somebody told Cher about it.
“My friends on Twitter told me about Kaavan,” she said, “but what could I do about it? How can I save an elephant who’s been shackled to a shed for 17 years and who is a thousand miles away?” Well, plenty, as it turns out. After a Pakistani High Court decision to relocate Kaavan to a different sanctuary, Cher and her charity, Free the Wild, stepped in. They’re flying the 5 1/2-ton elephant to Cambodia, safe and secure in a hand-painted custom crate, according to the Smithsonian Channel.
“Kaavan is flying there and Cher, a mere 74, will accompany him,” the channel said. “His vets will be close at hand to insure his vitals are strong His trainers contend that singing calms Kaavan so Cher has two songs ready” And we know what one of them will be.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
