Psychotic Mice Demand Cheese Boots

ice genetically engineered to be psychotic by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have refused to go on with testing this week, threatening to bring the program to a halt until they are given the “cheese boots� they so desire. The mice, bred to be insane by the mutation of two genes, have been used in a series of experiments over the last two months researchers hoped would shed new light on schizophrenia and its genetic components, information that could one day aid in treatment and prevention of the debilitating mental illness.

Researchers are uncertain where the mice got the idea about cheese boots, but insist that the mice are “fucking nuts� if they think the UT team is going to devote hours to carving tiny mouse boots out of cheddar cheese.

Since the mice made their original demand they have become belligerent and uncooperative, refusing to take part in various insanity-measuring trials. The mice’s normal routine involve tests of “crazy-maze� navigation, spatial perception in relation to tiny carnival funhouse mirrors, and proper differentiation between funny mouse movies, like Mouse Hunt, and serious mouse movies, like Stuart Little or The Mouse and the Motorcycle.

When asked how one can tell a psychotic mouse from a normal, sane mouse, project head Dean Sarcanon explained that the sane mice are the ones that don’t have “that crazy look in their eyes.� Additionally, researchers have observed the psychotic mice acting erratically, avoiding social situations, and combing their hair with their testicles.

The mice, which communicate with researchers through a series of small metal levers that correspond to musical tones, repeated their demands for cheese boots Monday, and then spent the rest of the day playing “Hot Cross Buns� on the musical levers.

Researchers hope the mice will eventually soften their demands and settle for more realistic and less difficult to produce items, such as cheese hats, instead.

“Oh yeah, we can make cheese hats,� explained lab technician Arthur Keys. “No problem. I’ve already made a few to show the mice how nice they are.�

Keys demonstrated for the commune a series of fashionable cheese hat prototypes he had created in his spare time, each of which was lovely.

“It’s really pretty simple,� explained Keys. “You take a cheesy cracker, like a Cheez-It or even better, a Ched-Unk, and attach a little wedge of brie on top here with a hot glue gun.�

“The hardest part is making the tiny chin strap,� Keys solemnly intoned, with an entirely straight face. “That’s where I really earn my $17,000 a year.�

As the story has gained national attention, UT researchers have come under pressure to concede to the cheese boot demands, a move that project head Sarcanon believes would be a grave mistake.

“Once you bend over backwards to make these mice cheese boots, then were does it end?� Sarcanon asked, shrugging his shoulders. “You have to remember, these are crazy mice we’re talking about here. What are they going to ask for next? Little biker jackets made out of provolone? A Minnie Mouse blow-up doll? What if they want a tiny piñata party, how do we pull that off?�

According to other researchers on the team, the mice don’t like Sarcanon, and regularly play the notes F-A-G on their musical levers when he enters the room. Although Sarcanon claims to be a good sport about this, he did seem strangely pissy when this reporter joined in on kazoo.

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"I've got the keys to the kingdom, if the kingdom is a '73 Dodge Dart."

I'd like to get a motorcycle but I'm just not the "motorcycle type." At least that's what the guy at the motorcycle shop told me. He said if he saw me riding around on a motorcycle him and his friends would personally see to it I got my ass kicked. So that was enough to put me off motorcycles. Maybe if I hear he's moved or something I'll look at getting one again. One of those ninja motorcycles, but I can't remember what they're called.

I've been a proud Dodge Dart owner since 1995. I've owned the car 25 years, but I just figured it was time to be proud of it around '95. It wasn't going to change anything to pretend I didn't own it when it was parked out front and all the yelling and shouting of obscenities toward it only worked in reverse and people were sure it was mine.

It's cool, though, because sometimes I find things in between the seats when I go looking. I found a Playboy issue with a Jimmy Carter interview with all the good parts edited out. There was a pro-union button which means maybe that guy who sold it to me was telling me the truth about Jimmy Hoffa owning the car before. Or maybe the guy said the car was so dirty Jimmy Hoffa was probably inside somewhere. It was something to do with Jimmy Hoffa, or Jimmy Walker. Whichever was on Good Times.

Have you ever gotten your dick stuck in a car's exhaust pipe? Me neither, of course, but it would be funny to see. I don't think it will ever happen, not as long as they keep making these modern cars with huge exhaust pipes.

If I were to ever sell the Dart, I don't know what I'd like to get. Everybody's getting these SUVs, but I don't want to get a car I have to spell out everytime I'm telling the guy at the impound lot which one I came to pick up. It sounds dumb, but at first I thought they were Spanish cars by the way they're pronounced. I wonder if there is a word in Spanish that sounds like SUV. It would be funny if the Mexicans thought all these yuppies were talking about driving douches to work or something.

I suppose I don't care what kind of car I got as long it had power steering and doors. The doors especially would be a necessary 'cause I hate the way I keep flying out of the Dodge whenever I make sharp turns. The cops tell me I should wear my seatbelt and I tell them I don't live in Afghanistan, Joe Friday.

Did you know there's a homepage for Dodge Darts? It's at www.dodgedart.org. This is why it's so hard to find porn on the internet—the place is glutted with useless crap.

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Throughout all of history, human beings have gone to excessive lengths in an effort to not be so damned ugly. Few have succeeded, but we humans have kept bravely banging our ugly heads against that wall in vain hopes of fooling others into letting us be near them for purposes of a brief, sweaty sexual encounter. Has it all been worth it? The human race has survived, sure, but at what cost to our personal dignity?

Early prehistoric attempts at plastic surgery involved smashing in an ugly person's face with a rock, in the hopes that they would either stop being so ugly, or else go die somewhere. Problem solved either way. Modern plastic surgery involves the same basic principals, only due to inflation, the face-bashing is no longer provided free of charge to the afflicted.

Uglies unwilling to go to such radical extremes for the sake of modest downgrades in their retch factor have faced any number of bizarre alternatives throughout history, depending on what part of the world they'd been uglying up.

In Borneo, unattractive natives would stretch their earlobes down to shoulder level in an attempt to draw attention away from their unfortunate natural physiologies, preferring a lifetime of hearing "Holy shit! Look at them earlobes!" to cries of "I'm gonna sick up my monkey meat!" As an added benefit, the elongated earlobes could be tied behind the head for carry extra food, or let loose to give the impression that the wearer was running really, really fast.

Anyone who has ever scanned though a National Geographic magazine in search of library-sanctioned pornography is likely familiar with the Padaung of Burma, a small tribe that spices up the rather lackluster appearance of their women though the application of brass neck-rings, which elongate the neck dramatically and give the impression that the women are actually very expensive giraffes. Though the Padaung insist that the neck rings are used to prevent tiger bites, a quick blow to the throat of a Padaung woman proves that the brass rings provide little in the way of protective function. Politically-correct anthropologists have suggested that the rings were originally instituted to make the women less likely to be taken by slave traders, but any honest appraisal of the Padaung has to conclude that these uglies would have been flattered by the attention.

In Vietnam, the practice of teeth-blackening has fascinated anthropologists for years, or at least those anthropologists too dim to recognize this as the Vietnamese equivalent of the pre-emptive baldness technique of head-shaving popular among Western males. If your teeth are ugly and fucked up, you might as well make it look like you did that on purpose, right? Accordingly, the practice of chewing Betel nuts and brushing with off-brand convenience store toothpaste has provided the Vietnamese with beautiful black smiles for generations.

The same strategy has applied to cultures around the world that value fatness as a beauty ideal, perhaps wisely deciding that keeping thin was just a whole lot of work. Experts have argued that obesity was valued in 17th century Europe and China because it proved the person in question could afford plenty of food, but these are just the kind of experts with too much educational prestige on the line to call a lard-ass a lard-ass. Similar is the western reaction to the Tibetan tradition of considering excessive flatulence to be beautiful, which was supposed to prove that the flatulator could afford rich, gassy foods. Not true. Unfortunately for the revisionist historians, the Tibetans are just a naturally farty people.

The ancient Mayans and Egyptians both practiced the strange art form of binding infants' skulls to produce elongated, pointy-headed babies. Though many explanations for this odd practice have been offered, most available evidence suggests that the Maya and Egyptians just thought it was funny. And after all, what's a helpless little infant going to do to you? If the pointy-headed freak ever makes it to adulthood, providing the entire village with years of entertainment along the way, they're still not going to remember what you did to them when they were just a baby. It's a little surprising this practice ever died out in the first place.

Likewise with the tradition of foot-binding in China, where women's feet were kept unnaturally small by restricting their growth throughout childhood. While women were convinced the tiny feet would land them the most desirable husband, men just enjoyed getting drunk and watching their wives totter around and fall down like stilt-walkers on their useless, tiny little toy feet.

Modern attempts at marginal beauty have proved no less desperate, only more expensive. The plastic surgery industry has made millions off the idea that moving fat around to different parts of the body will somehow confuse the viewer into finding someone beautiful, like a mesmerizing shell game.

But the true benefactor of our collective ugliness has been the cosmetics industry. The idea that blondes have more fun, or at the very least get laid more in the back of convertibles, has fueled the sale of millions of bottles of hair coloring in the West, enriching the cosmetics corporations and fooling countless men into thinking their dates were going to end better than they actually would. Thanks to the blush and lipstick used to simulate sexual arousal in females wearing them, the cosmetics industry has made a fortune landing women dates and confusing Western males into a state of perpetual blueballs from which they may never emerge.

But hey, have you seen the alternative? Yeech.

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