Failed Experiment Produces Hideous Miniature Clone

enetic science took a step backward last week when the creation of a bald, chubby failed clone was revealed by members of the Raelian sect.

"They have attempted to play god, and they have failed," said someone in our newsroom.

The cloning was carried out by Clonaid, a terribly on-the-nose named company founded by members of the Raelian sect, who believe human beings were created by alien scientists years ago. In case you're wondering, yes, they are being completely sincere when they say that. Members of the socially unapproved religion announced their disappointment when the experiment yielded a clone one-eighth the size of the original, hairless, fatty, and with inhibited intelligence and language skills.

"Imagine our dismay when our optimistic attempts resulted in a hideous, miniature version of the DNA donor," said Clonaid spokesperson Brigitte Boisselier. "Perhaps we have exceeded the limits of human capability, but our intentions were good. And we are not giving up yet. The next clones we are producing are due for next week, and we are waiting to see if they are successful."

Though Clonaid revealed little of its methodology, they did speculate the process of incubating the clone in the DNA donor's body for nine months may have been a misstep in the procedure. According to outside calculations, simple physics dictate an exact duplicate could not be produced within the original since the amount of space needed to house a duplicate of equal size would have to be bigger than the original.

Clonaid scientists considered the possibility of the clone outgrowing the host and bursting right through the body, like that scene in Alien or Pras in that "Ghetto Supastar" video, and the scientists considered it had begun to happen, but instead the failed experiment escaped through an existing orifice after hours of laborious effort. It was then they realized the experiment had failed, producing a smallish, demonesque humanoid of sub-human intelligence.

"We have not given up hope that the creature may offer us some insight as to what went wrong, and we have continued attempts to communicate with it," said Boisselier at a press conference. "So far the monstrosity only emits ear-piercing screaming and claws at any who approach it. Our scientists are working to decode its screams and construct a common language, but the sounds are animalistic and will likely be a dead avenue. It is probably just crying out in pain, begging to be put out of its misery."

When asked if there were a chance the creature was unrelated to the clone experiment, Boisselier said the possibility was considered and rejected.

"It is quite clearly a clone of some form, though definitely not what we intended. We brought in the DNA donor for identification, and the creature definitely has the donor's eyes, as well as her cute little nose and dimples. We were going to risk contact between the donor and the creature, but then the small one made a boom boom."

The experiment may have other results as well, pushing lawmakers to create legislation in response to the first human clone, besides possible Tom Cruise clone Peter Facinelli, and evoking edicts from the world's religious leaders.

"Life is sacred, and it is not man's place to play God," said the Pope, mumbling in Latin. "I'm not one to say I told you so, but…"

002 was a banner year for news. As long as the banner said, “BO-RING!�

Yes, as we reach the beginning of a brand new news year, we look back on 2002 with more than a slight Elvis sneer of derision, like a party guest finally leaving with a heavy hangover and leaving our sofa and rug stained with vomit. 2002 may go down in the history books as, “The Year of ‘…Anyway…’�

Like a half-assed sitcom following Friends and preceding ER, much of 2002 felt squashed in-between two major news periods. Following hot on the heels of the events of Sept. 11^th and the bombing of Afghanistan that heralded the War on Terror, things settled down into a dreary boredom in 2002 as Americans waited for big news events that still have yet to come—the bombing of Iraq, a resolution to the North Korea situation, and any evidence Osama bin Laden is alive or dead. All original and fascinating news is being greedily reserved by the newsmakers, as if they’re holding out for a news sweeps week.

Early 2002 was host to the Winter Olympics, the globally-conceded most boring of all Olympics, in the globally-conceded most boring state in the union, Utah. Thank whatever you call a God for the much-covered flap when ice-skating Canadians David Pelletier and Jamie Salé were robbed of their rightful gold medal by a sly-footed French judge, or your only memories of it would be a gaggle of fruitcakes slapping a puck with a stick in the atrocity called “curling.�

Much of the early news year was limited to the images of Enron’s senior staff shrugging before a Senate sub-committee with a less-than-convincing “I dunno,� followed by footage of a shrapnel-filled site in downtown Israel as the violence that made the Middle East famous escalated to ludicrous heights, until an all-out assault on Yassir Arafat’s bunker broke the boredom very briefly. There was also Ray Brent Marsh, the Georgia crematorium owner who tossed the bodies in the lake and passed the savings on to you. Thanks to Marsh, along with multiple kidslaughter defendant Andrea Yates and the hockey dad who loved local sports a bit too much, the first few months of 2002 news were occasionally livened up by local heroes.

An historical Oscar win for Best Actor and Best Actress by African-Americans Denzel Washington and Halle Berry helped draw attention away from the fact the Hollywood community now considers Opie the Best Director in its midst. Even the biggest celebrity murderer of the year was only former Little Rascal Robert Blake, leaving Court-TV to wait patiently for the shoplifting trial of Winona Ryder.

Summer gave everyone a little hope for a brighter news year when nine miners faced certain doom, trapped in a mine shaft, and no one was happier when they were retrieved alive and healthy. Then the week ended and everyone went back to bitching about terrorism and the tumbling stock market.

As the rate of insane presidential utterances concerning Iraq increased, Americans hit the peak of the news year when a series of sniper attacks across America finally put an end to superfluous Elvis coverage. However, it wasn’t enough to save a pisser as a news year, and after the sniper suspects were arrested America quieted once again. Republicans received a boost from a record low-voter turnout off-year election and Trent Lott’s ill-conceived pro-segregationist remarks embarrassed the Bush administration, something that is truly hard to do.

News pundits have a great case for 21^st century to be the most boring yet, but the commune news is quick to remind everyone 1901-1910 was a pretty crappy decade for news and the 20^th century didn’t heat up until the sinking of the Titanic and World War I. We can make this one even better, just keep working at it.

The original fast food was the apple, but nobody has ever liked apples so it just became the punchline to a joke all the time. Some self-important ass would run in and shout "I'm in a hurry, I need some fast food!" and somebody would toss him an apple, like "I got yer fast food right here" and everyone would laugh because it's not like he was going to actually eat the apple.

Back in those days nobody did anything fast. Water even took two days to boil. And you had to schedule vacation time to get your hair cut, because the barbers only cut hair when they felt like it. So you had to sit there for hours or days while they took breaks to read the paper and kept stopping to go take a shit or whatever they were doing. The newspaper came out once a year and was filled with news the writers hoped would happen, since if they covered actual events it would be hopelessly outdated by the time it came out.

In a word, back then everybody was fuckin' lazy. People had been fuckin' lazy all throughout history, and it had worked out fine for them so they had little incentive to change. Things stayed this way until the Industrial Revolution, when manufacturers wooed workers with tall tales of the vast riches they could earn through honest, hard work. This didn't fool people at all, but when the government started putting cocaine in the water supply production increased tenfold, and being an asshole became fashionable. Little has changed in the last 100 years.

America became a hard-working, industrious nation, while the rest of the world laughed at us behind our backs and took their six-week vacations and afternoon naps. Except for the Japanese, who started working 168 hour weeks and sleeping in desk drawers because they really wanted little telephones that took pictures and played video poker.

The last vestige of the lazy, half-assed spirit of previous generations had always been the restaurant industry, whose motto was "You'll get your food when we're done jerking off in it." This all changed in 1954, when Ray Kroc and his eight-glass-a-day water habit blew into San Bernardino, where he threw a colossally violent tantrum over not being able to find any decent French fries. After biting the head off a live parrot, he loudly declared ownership of the entire restaurant he happened to be standing in and proceeded to turn it into a hamburger factory, churning out burgers and fries by the hundreds around the clock, and convincing his employees that they didn't need sleep because if they did he'd kill them, electroshock them back to life and then kill them again just to make his point. People from miles around who'd heard the commotion hung around to buy hamburgers, which was lucky for the town since the burgers were starting to pile up and would have surely created a staggering beef stink within a few days.

Kroc employed production techniques he'd learned after violently overtaking a rubber nipple factory in Bakersfield, and his unpredictable coked-up pirate persona kept staff mutiny to record-low levels, leading to a revolution in the food service industry. Over the next ten years Kroc created a chain of these burger stands across the country by barging into existing restaurants and challenging their current owners to a face-biting contest, which he usually won. He called the restaurants McDonalds, because it kept people guessing as to whether he had an even tougher Scottish business partner behind the scenes or if he was just that crazy.

Kroc eventually became known as much for his exacting quality-control standards as he was for his berserk fits of rage. He was particularly anal about his French fries, and if he could cram an entire order of fries in his mouth at once it was sent back for being too small. Eventually he grew dissatisfied with traditional French fry technology, since it left the fries tasting too much like potatoes, and the last time he'd checked, nobody was beating their grandmother to death with a shoe to get their hands on some potatoes. After extensive experimentation, he devised a process that involved cooking the fries four different times and infusing each one with enough oil to kill a cocker spaniel. Nobody ever confused Kroc's fries with a potato product ever again, and the modern French fry was born.

Over the last 40 years fast food hasn't changed much, though after Kroc's death from a projectile stroke in 1988, his employees have become noticeably more lackadaisical. Trends have come and gone, like the "bun made of meat" and the "vegetable". But the meat and potatoes of the industry have remained meat and potatoes, though in unrecognizable heart-attack forms. Over time other types of restaurants caught on to the concept, and eventually we had fast Mexican food and, regrettably, fast Italian, which was a phrase that hadn't been heard since the 1916 summer Olympics. Other foods, such as stew and bologna loaf, failed in the fast-food format, but may still catch on in the South given time.

Today the popular trend is to decry fast foodery for the epidemic of heart disease it has spawned, but what special interest groups fail to mention is that all such deaths still add up to less than half the number of people who used to die every year while waiting for their appetizers in traditional restaurants. Modern Americans simply choose to go out with a coffee-table-collapsing bang rather than a whimper.

º Last Column: The History of Christmas
º more columns