Hot and Scaly

Every morning when I go for a walk all the people living here are bundled up in parkas and heavy jackets with knit wool caps on their heads and scarves over their noses, mouths and chins. Even dogs have big red-plaid, flannel jackets which the Soriana store down the street sells like hot cakes (Hot cakes are big here.) Brrrrrrr, the people say (in Spanish) as they walk to work.

So where am I? In southern Mexico and it is almost 60 degrees at 8AM. Then in the afternoon when it is pushing 85, the schoolgirls are down to wool sweaters, skirts and long knit socks guarding their heat supply.

What’s going on? The people here are plump, so it’s not skin and bones cold (like I saw in India) that they are suffering. I think these folks just learned that comfortable means pretty warm. Maybe sweaty. And anything less means cold.

They like it much above our hallowed 68 degrees that I learned about in grade school for the thermostat in the livingroom. And maybe I learned in my skin and bones that sweat is bad and cool is, well, cool.

But I have been happy a lot warmer. It was pretty hot back in the womb. My little cells learned to sweat just fine in there. And it was damp, actually it was downright wet. But then I chilled out in the northlands for 50 years and forgot how happy hot can be.

I have been trying to reset my inner thermostat to 85. That seems right for this part of Mexico, especially next month when it heats up a lot. But the old thermostat seems stuck. I still love those cool evening breezes and the local people marvel at my ability to wear only a t-shirt and shorts when it is 65 degrees out.

They tell us that hot is coming everywhere. We need to get ready for global warming, not just get ready for hiding out from winter in Mexico when we get old. If our inner thermostats get set when we are a couple years old, maybe we just need to wear snow suits until we start school. That’s what they do down here in Mexico. Maybe we could keep kids hot longer after they are born. Make our nurseries into damp, big wombplaces. I bet if my mama had used more blankets at nite then maybe I would be comfortable down south and even enjoy sweating a bunch, like the people here do.

Or maybe I need to call on our good old genetic engineers to work on the thermostat reset gene. So we all could be really comfortable at 85. Then we would be ready when the polar bears start shaving off all that heavy fur and the penguins lose all their cute, heat-holding, baby fat.

While you are at it, Mr. and Ms. Engineer, can you do something about this skin? Its red and burned every day and I have to grease up my face every night like Doris Day used to do in the 50’s, to keep that handsome womanizer (in the movies that is) Rock Hudson out of her bed. I know I have my gringo skin because my ancestors stayed in the hut all winter and there wasn’t much sun anyway up where they lived with the reindeer and moose. Thanks to their shady lives, my skin looks like those glassfishes who live in dark black caves and watch their stomachs digesting shrimp that glow in the dark.

But when things heat up (it’s that global warming again), this old white skin is about as useful as a bay window with a great big skylight over top for keeping out the sun. I feel more related to a shedding snake than my thermo-hero, a lion who just lays back and naps in the jungle heat.

What I need is something darker and oily. Maybe with more hair. Then when the seas rise and I am on very high ground where the sun really beats down, I can cool it all day long.

Insurance People

When I was ten, I went to the movies a lot. I saw horror movies and monsters and sometimes watched travel trips to the Congo and Egypt and even New York. Those far away people took up lots of space and ran around like crazy. I wondered why so many lived in the world. About a thousand people seemed right, I thought. Then I could get to know everyone and they could all get together and eat a big meal and play football and visit. Just like when I went to grandmom’s and met all those strangers who turned out to be uncles and aunts and gave me candy.

But my teacher asked me what if someone drops a big bomb on your head (This was the 50’s when we hid under our desks on Thursdays when the siren went off at exactly noon for air raid drills). So I got scared and figured we needed those people out in Missouri, Montana and some over in China, too They were our insurance people, just in case the siren goes off for real. Then at least someone gets to stay here and live on earth. After all, we do want some people left around even if they aren’t me.

Last night I turned on the TV and they were showing ten great new ways the world can end. This week’s show has meteors smashing us like they did the dinosaurs. Back when only the birds survived by flying over it all and escaping the meteor mess. But everyone else died. My teacher told me that.

The TV said a meteor, somewhere out there, has our name on it. That’s why we need to think about insurance people again.

They say the rich will hide in caves for hundreds of years and come out and still be in charge, but I bet that they keep on fighting just like the dead dinosaurs did, and no one will make it out alive. Then in a thousand years only the birds will be here. No one else. Not us people, that’s for sure.

We really need those insurance people to make sure somebody stays in charge here on good old earth. Just putting them in Montana and China won’t work this time.

So I say let’s freeze a thousand people clones and hide them way down under the South Pole. I say this because that’s where The Thing lived for a million years. (Remember The Thing monster movie—then you will understand). Even if the meteor smokes the earth like the TV said, it will stay cold down under the ice. The Thing proved that.

In the movie, explorers found The Thing and melted him out. (Then The Thing tried to eat them. He got a couple before they smoked him with atomic grenades.)

Our insurance people clones will need thawing, too. Who will do it is the question? We will be gone—done in by the meteor. We need to find someone who will still be around after things smooth out. I’m betting birds make it thru the next extinction like they did the last one. They will sit it out on some pacific island doing bird things and having a good time.

So what we need is to add some good genetic memories to those birds for melting people out of ice; add some neuronal plans and put them in the bird genome. Neuronal plans like birds already have for bird things like going south in the winter or eating worms for breakfast.

OK, I know this is hard to do, but we pay you genetic engineers a lot of money; so start working on it.

And we don’t want you to fix up just any old birds. Some are pretty stupid and will be there beside us people getting extinct. We’ll need really smart birds to save our insurance clones. I am betting that crows make it thru extinction. We need to program some crow DNA to save us. Fix their little bird brains so whenever they see a frozen human in ice, they sit on it, like one of their little chickies, and thaw us out. That’s the plan. Pretty good, huh?

Then we do a little more genetic work to make crows taste good. I’ll tell you why later.

Now here is the insurance people clone plan in full: (You can make a movie out of it if you want.)

(Scene 1) We are all having fun and doing people things when (Scene 2) WHAAM a meteor smokes us all. But deep beneath Antarctica one thousand frozen insurance people clones are buried.

A couple thousand years later Antarctica warms up and a flock of crows sees our insurance clones thru the ice and BINGO that old genetic memory kicks in. They start sitting on the ice thawing out people and attracting more and more crows. Finally the ice melts, the people wake up and see a feast of good-tasting crows right in front of them. They chow down and the world is saved.

Genetic Engineering does it again.

(OK, you probably guessed. I had a big pizza and saw The Thing rerun last nite. I saw it first when I was 10 and didn’t sleep for months without having my mom lock the bedroom door. It was pretty scary. Like a meteor with my name on it. Or even those old atomic bombs. Actually any good size bombs will do.)

I won’t tell you to go shopping. They tried that before. You spent your little credit cards till the numbers wore off and then squeezed your house for money and spent, spent, spent. That worked real well. For a couple years.

Now we need to crank up the economy again. Our smart bank guys loaned you so much money that we all went broke spending it. We need a new crank to get things going so we can all be rich guys again.

Some people say the way to go is get a job and make something. But what kind of things do we make here in the old USA. We make music and movies. We make computer games. But you can only sell so many of those. We used to make loans and sell them to just about anyone. That one sure is gone. How about making something you can wear or turn on and watch or just pick up and carry around? We don’t know how to make that stuff anymore.

We do services, not stuff. We do wash-your-pooch, curl-your-hair, mow-your-grass, cook-your-Mac, rub-your-back, paint-your-nails services. Lots of doing. Lots of services. That’s OK, I guess. But we are pretty saturated with services. How much more can you do without getting illegal.

I wish we could still make great stuff like a good fast bicycle or a fancy new kiddee toy or a kitchen seven-in-one mixer or even an old fashioned broom. So I don’t have to always buy stuff from overthere. Overthere is nice, but overhere should be OK too. They say we cost too much to make stuff so we have to use robots or overthere people who work like crazy and don’t like money much. That’s what they say.

I read in the paper today that all the new money is in health! That’s what’s going to crank up the old economy.

So let’s start cranking. Everybody, get sick, right now!

Kickstart those doctors and nurses. Get that health money flowing by sharing some germs and bad habits.

I know we try. We eat fat. We drink our livers blue. We smoke our lungs black. We are not well. But not sick enough to ratchetup the economy. We need a good disease for every red-blooded American. Like a chicken in every pot we need a bunch of microbes in every belly. A virus in every cell. We need some good old fashioned low-grade sicknesses in every home.

We have some bad diseases that you could get. But they kill you quick. We want good diseases that just make you go to the hospital a lot, see a doctor every day, need a nurse, take a bunch of pills, but most of all, let you keep on working your health business job, helping those other sick people. That’s how to make the economy work. Everybody stays sick and goes to see each other for new treatments and meds, paying through the nose with good hard cash.

So where do we get these diseases we need? All the good diseases live down near the equator. Malaria and sleeping sickness keep you hanging on forever and taking pill after pill. They never get cured. They could be a goldmine.

I was going to call on our genetic engineers to fix up those down-south diseases to suit us up-north Americans, but why? We don’t need to do anything this time to be saved. Isn’t it funny how the world works?

Global warming is sending bunches of mosquitoes our way with lots of fancy new diseases in their pointy little snoots. I’m looking forward to that. You should too.

Now, everybody, roll up your sleeves, give them little bugs some blood and, hurray, catch something good for America.

It was a disaster.

I knew right away this morning, stumbling toward the kitchen, boiling water, measuring out beans. Going thru the seven steps, or was it six. Finally pouring as the steam rose up from the kettle. Then it hit me. The filter was still on the counter. Jumping back, I knocked over the filterholder and my cup and dropped boiling coffee grounds on my foot. Yep, disaster.

The coffee conundrum: how to make coffee before having coffee.

Sort of like the chicken and the egg. But I always come first, groggy, bleary and trying to carry out those seven coffee-making steps in the right order without any neurons firing. I have the steps written out and nailed on the wall but forget to read them. Nothing works.. But after two sips my daytime starts. After a big cup with its iridescent greenish bubbles floating on the dark brown thick liquid that I love, I can think and read and even do math and all those normal brain things without much trouble. I just need a jump start to get going.

I tried other ways. Exercise. It doesn’t wake up the brain. It makes it happy, but still thoughtless, after a mile or two on the track. I tried smoking but was afraid I’d die, not in fifty years, but now when I nodded off back under covers with it dangling on my lip.

So it’s coffee for me. And face the conundrum daily. And fail once or twice a week.

This got me thinking. Can’t there be another way. Maybe a caffeine patch and a smart alarm clock that slaps it on my forehead five minutes before it goes off? Maybe an automatic injection of caffeine from a syringe hidden in my pillow? Way too tricky. It would miss me and get the dog and he would go even more psycho running around after his tail for an hour or two while I tried for a final few minutes of sleep. I need something simple for my daily brain fix.

Then I remembered those genetic engineers again. They are taking genes from plants and sticking them into rats to make them smell good. They are taking genes from fireflies to make goldfish glow at night. They are taking genes and moving them all around for silly reasons. But do they face the big problems? I want them to take that caffeine gene today and stick it in people. Stick it in me. Maybe wire it to the wakeup system in the bottom of my brain. Then every morning—my eyes open and Bang! The juices flow and they smell like coffee. I am my own coffeepot. No more beans. No more failure. No more disaster. Life is good.

Then I thought why stop there. I remembered my exercise. That happy feeling I got when I ran a lot. Instead of just being awake why not be happy too? We already have the gene for it. You just have to work too hard for it.

Remember those old smart guys in England who had a calculus of happiness. Mr. Bentham said the best plans lead to the most happiness for everyone. And he made a lot of sense. And the Declaration of Independence promises us that we all get to pursue happiness all we want. But why pursue it—just make some exercise happy juice in your brain and be happy.

Yes, we do have the gene for human happy-juice but let’s hook it to something besides exercise. Something easy. A little work would be fine for getting happy but not running all the way across town. Let’s get those scientists to hook up that gene to something like scratching real hard, for instance. Get a runner’s high when you scratch your back for a minute or so. Feel low, scratch your head. Feel blue, scratch anywhere and that gene kicks in and the happy juice squirts out in your brain and joints and you are happy as a snake on a warm road at sunset.

Why stop there? There are even bigger happinesses. Mr. Bentham probably wasn’t thinking of this but how about sex. Not the messy drippy, plug-it-in, every-once-and-a-while sex, but all-the-time, happy sex. Just move the wiring. Move those sex nerves from your privates to someplace else. Leave all the complicated plumbing and baby-growing parts where they are. Just move the wires. It’s like moving the phones or rewiring the house. We need those scientists to get to work on this right now. This is one hot plan, Mr. Bentham. You should have thought of it.

Your nerves creep along from your spine and grow towards their destination. They have some kind of map or they move along little valleys in your body and finally they hit the spot they are aiming for and you can feel stuff. So the problem, Mr. Scientist, is how to give nerves a new map. So they start out just like normal but grow and reach someplace that you can use more often. Not the place where your mother told you not to touch. Then we humans would have true happiness. Or something close, like feeling real good.

Where could those nerves grow so we could be really happy? Maybe someplace where we could do something public, something social so you don’t lock yourself in a room jiggling your nerve ending all day. How about growing sex nerves all the way down to your fingers.

Then you would really enjoy shaking hands. You would go looking for friends to say howdy to and then after a few firm, all-American, tight grip minutes of the old up and down--Blam. The neurons fire and you are one happy dog. Not to mention your friends.

OK, with the nerves moved, making babies would be more like going to work. Not much fun. No pleasure. Just follow those seven steps in the instruction manual and then—Bingo--conception.

But that’s OK. One of the big problems was that it used to be too much fun making babies. Now you have to go buy the book because you are no longer hard-wired to do it. Most people would be going around giving the howdy-do so often they wouldn’t have time for making babies. Just when they really wanted one.

The church would like it. Sex without fun and fun with proper handshakes. And to top it all off, when all those churchgoers shake hands before the sermon on Sunday, going to church would be fun too.

Finally, thanks to Conrado LaRiviere, a man with lots of pretty good ideas, and the conversation with him last Tuesday that led me here.

A Big One for Mankind

I am a pessimist. That’s all right with me.

Optimists are wacko dreamers. I’m not. They plan for nirvana, a stateless workers’ paradise, heaven, lots of virgins, and global free markets. Everyone has their own idea of what it’s going to be like before long. I have news for them. This is it. Get used to getting up on the wrong side of the bed. News will be terrible and you’ll feel rotten and have to go do some dumb job for way too many hours. That’s it. Be happy, it could be worse.

OK, it’s not that way every day. But there are enough rotten days so you lose count.

I am a steady-state pessimist. I don’t think its going to get much worse either. Some pessimists see doom and fire and bad tattoo sores doing us in. But we get used to this life the way it is. People are about the same as they were way, way back when they climbed in trees and mostly ate bananas. We have mothers who hug us and brothers who beat on us. We grow up bad, but not that bad. Not bad enough for hell. Not good enough for heaven either. That’s for sure.

So why don’t I think things will get better? I look at what us most highly evolved Americans really think and do. We are not getting more peaceful. Almost half of us have guns in our house. Thirty thousand people a year get fatally shot, suicide included (that’s more than half the total). We make about five million guns a year. We make about four million babies in the same time. That’s one gun per baby with enough left over for every immigrant to have an automatic, even if they send a couple guns back home. How can it get better with odds like this?

But will it get much worse? Here is the good news: every year, for every killer with a gun there are 25 thousand non-killers. That’s a lot. That’s like one guy in a good-sized, sold-out baseball stadium shooting the person next to him every July 4th. All the other days of the year everybody just sits there and holds tight to their guns yelling and shouting and even winging a couple folks, but they don’t kill anyone. Only on July 4. That’s not too bad. Not great, but think how easy it is to shoot a gun. I used to do it. Pull the trigger. Bang. Some guy is dead. Western Civ really did well on this design--bullets work good! (Look at the shooting suicide success rate—92%--that was an A in my high school).

You want to hear about bad. What if every guy with a gun in the house just shot two people—not even a minutes work—then—zap—that’s it. We’re all gone. Even the babies. That’s bad. Real bad.

Optimists argue that things are different now in the post modern world. We have cheeseburgers, ipods and SUVs for everyone. Our monkey-ancestors living in the trees never had anything like that. Even those knights who bashed in heads and chopped off arms never got much past one-horsepower engines and battering rams. Now factories in China churn out enough stuff for everybody to have all new duds every July 4th and throw out their old clothes, shoes, refrigerators and, even, friends once a year. We live in a world of stuff and it’s almost free compared to a couple hundred years back when most people wore rags, ate potato skins and drank gin and opium. The optimists ask me, how can you say it’s the same when what people fought about is stuff. I want yours and you want mine kind of fights.

It’s true that we do have way too much stuff being built, but remember, we still fight over it. But now, guns make fights much messier. And A-bombs clean things out good but are very bad for us people. I watch the news and see the bodies lying around. Even the crowds at Wal-Mart Presidents’ Day sales give a punch or two. No one really has enough stuff. Who doesn’t want another hot cell phone or fancy droopy pants? Or maybe a big shiny gun to put in their new car next to their six-foot-wide speakers and wheel-lifting music amplifier machine. Even poor people want stuff--like food and maybe a doctor visit. So don’t give me the China argument that we reached our stuff capacity. We can pile it up a hundred feet high and still fight over new hi-tops and skull painted tee shirts. We are like those monkeys who had free bananas but still fought wars over their banana piles. We just exchanged bananas for hi-fashion poofy dogs and big-print hoodies.

And wars. Don’t forget those. Things get really bad when you give out a hunting license to bag a couple of your neighbors.

You optimists think things change when you got new ideas and religion. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition. God plays cheerleader too often for me to have much hope for him. And Napoleon and Hitler and Stalin and Mao and Bush twist ideas like wrestlers giving the famous pretzel death hold. Ideas don’t change people. Ideas just give us something besides stuff to fight for.

Is all hope really lost then? I hear there is one last chance that things may change. My friend, who helped invent computers, tells me that we are on the verge of something new. Those genetic engineers are messing with our brain cells, making us better. Things may be different but I am worried because this friend used to tell me about how computers would solve everything. Now I put up with spammy email, work all night from home after all day at the office, watch out for four jillion useless blogs, and run when house refinancing ads pop up in my online dictionary. My friend says gene therapy will fix us up, even if computers didn’t. Engineers are working right now on impulse control circuits in the cerebellum to slow them down with some hot-shot enzymes. It might work.

I am scared. I like my impulses.

In the morning impulses get me up, not my alarm clock. Impulses make me eat chocolate and crab legs. Impulses make me do all sorts of stuff. Put on the impulse brakes and who knows where that leads. We may just sit there and smile. Why shoot anyone if you don’t get an urge is what the scientists say, but I say why do anything at all. Hurray for urges. At least for mine.

And who’s to say they won’t just replace my old fashion impulses with ones like they show on TV, telling us to eat more cheeseburgers and wear more droopy clothes. Impulse control is way too big for big corporations to pass up.

So I say leave my impulses alone. I am making a list of everything I had an urge to do last year, before those engineers got working on my enzymes. I will be sticking to my old urge list, keeping my true, original impulses, no matter what those engineers do with my cerebellum. To make sure, I am writing my Impulse Popper© computer program that jumps up on my screen (like those Viagra ads do now) and tells me to do something right now that I had an urge to do last year. Not weird new corporate-driven impulses. Real Chuck Kerns impulses that I know are my own. That’s how I fight back.

Now the real news. I am going to sell my Impulse Popper © program to Google and save us all from all those false-implanted cheeseburger, Jack LaLane Juicer and hair restorer urges that we know will get implanted in our enzymes soon. With my Impulse Popper © you can stay pure and live according to your true self. Your cerebellum may change but your impulse list won’t. You can pass it on like an heirloom to your kiddies and human nature will always be the same.

Well that’s not quite true. Don’t tell anyone but if you do have an urge to shoot someone on your impulse list, Google is going to erase that item. Their lawyers advised them about this. So maybe some things will change after all.

True Love

Something is happening.

Dogs are everywhere. Yap dogs lie in fat driver laps, big labs lick children like ice cream cones, fat-headed bull-toad terriers strut beside their fat-jowled owners and, worst of all, Chihuahuas in pink dog coats and, sometimes, little tutus tip-tip-tip across the living room of otherwise reasonable people.

The days of the free-range, doofus dog are over. Pluto doesn’t stumble into Mickey’s room and tangle in the electric cord any more. Goofy doesn’t yee-haw like an off-the-farm yokel. Dogs are the new fluffy handbag, the complement to strappy heels, the companion to a big guy’s bad-ass belt buckle. Accessories are everywhere and they breath and bark, or at least yip-yip-yip.

What happened? We are urbans. We don’t range the woods with shotguns and covered wagons any more. We don’t need a dog to fight off coyotes and rattlesnakes. We don’t need a ratty, burr-covered, mangy outdoors assistant. But we do need to look good as we walk down the hot city streets and, most important, bright-lit mall hangouts for teens and other layabouts. What could be better than a sharp-looking dog to highlight your new pink hair or that nasty tattoo!

But why dogs? They need care. They are messy. They chew expensive shoes and sofas. They plop droppings everywhere that we dutifully bag as we never would for humans. Dogs are kind of stupid—OK, they are stupid. And you are stuck with the same dog-look for a long time. You can’t get a new model each season without dealing with big disposal problems. The business opportunity looks like Rent-a-Dog, but people don’t change dogs. They love their dogs forever and I know why. Their dogs love them. Pure sloppy, undeserved, unconditional, lip-kissing love. You know your dog would die for you. Your dog lives for you to come home. Your dog wants to be part of you. True love.

We want an accessory that loves. That’s it. Love-doggies are what's happening.

This makes me wonder. Why can’t everything love me, not just my clothing accessories. I want my car to at least like me, to be happy when I sit in it, to feel the glee when I go fast around those hairpin turns. To hug me hard when I have to leave her in a parking lot and fly away for the week.

Or why not my house? It just sits there now and doesn’t say a word. It isn’t happy when I come home. I don’t want house slobber on me, but a smile would be nice.

The good news is love-stuff is just around the corner. I am calling on those genetic engineers to work hard on this one. A couple million neurons is all it takes. And there is lots of room in the attic or glove compartment for lots of love in all my stuff.

Some people say we don’t care about people anymore because we get our love from our pets. That’s hogwash. I love people. They just don’t love me as much as my new TV that knows my channels and plays them for me whenever I want. Or my new bed that has my number. Love stuff is the future. Get ready.

Wetdog Chews the Fat

(ok-this is a story but it is full of ideas)

Wetdog Chews the Fat

I was chewing fat, way back in old, old days, before the first calamity.

All people chewed the fat back then, chewed fat four-leggers, fatty birds, and fat, fat plants.

We all grew round and fat and soft back then. Farms plumped up pigs and ducks and you could squeeze the wet-fat out of corn and other oily plants, all for us to eat.

Then calamity came. Gene engineers melted all our fat with their creeping virus genes. The twisting virus strangled and rebuilt our genes to stop the fat from growing in us living things. All because the engineers sold gene treatments to the rich to make them slim and sleek and to the starlets to let them eat and eat. Their virus genes escaped and stopped all internal living fat-making machines. No more fat in all us living things.

Gene engineers lost control. The virus crossed the planet. Then people, cats, dogs, mice, all creatures, plants, and even labs not specially contained, could never create the fat we loved. No more precious calories bulging under well-sized arms or in bouncing, happy thighs or in our belly rolls. That was the big calamity. All people were doomed evermore to eat and eat and eat.

“Oh rue the day of calamity the angels say.”

Now all must nibble constantly or drain their fuel—like humming birds have always done. These little birds fell down hard when their inner food ran low. Now people do that everyday. Just drop when calories are gone and internal carb accounts are drained.

“Oh, sweet, sweet fatty angels help us through the hour when no sugarbars or chiplets come. “ We pray that prayer ten times a day. “Oh, fatty angels guide us on.“

Now, the calamity has long past. Nothing ever bulges fat. All people are just molded tissues under tight-stretched skin. Lean and mean they used to say when I was young, but that was wrong. Now all are lean—the mean and good ones, too.

Some still want the fat, fat look. They bulge themselves with insert bags surgically slipped underneath their skin. These are the RoundOnes. They look like fatty angels, all round in their bellies and their puffy cheeks. But RoundOnes are not the angels of the earth, as they often claim. They are only stringy lizard folk like me. Eating stringy meals, but singing fat-filled eating songs together every night. Songs about the round way people ought to look. They act like there are no stringy selves inside their puffed out skin.

Everyone knows this noisy, cultish group because most RoundOnes with the insert bags choose Transparency. Their bones and liver, heart and spleen all show through their color-missing skin, show through their insert bags hidden deep in belly spaces. Their organs and a map of arteries and veins are bared. Transparent RoundOnes are not the fatty angels that they try to be. No fatty angel would expose her gassy bubbles, squirting tubes and organs pumping slimy juices.

Some Transparents slip bright glitter chips in the round insert bags that paunch out their shining belly rolls. Some keep swimming fishes in round-the-waist bags dodging intestines and other squirmy body things. I never care to see the golden fish beneath their see-through belly skin.

The true fatty angels float above us, full-covered with their robes and feathered wings. We should do as they would have us do.

“Be round but be covered,” I always say when I see transparancy. “See it and be it,” the Transparents yell back to me. I tell them, “cover up and keep your organs to yourself.”

True fatty angels never would display their inner stuff. We should all be like the angels in their covered state. I follow fat angels’ one true way. I cover all with all the fur I grow myself, thanks to the Furry Way

Fur priests say that our Furry sex is no better than the others. “The Furry sex is not above the Feathers, Scalebacks, and the Crawlers. Furs are not above Transparents and the minor sexes, too. No better in the fatty angels’ eyes. But all Furs know, “Outside is what does matter.” The Fury Oath I took back on my sexing day says so.

The Furry Way called me at my sexing time. That day I took the fur-virus dose. Then during my Adulting Year Away, I grew hair out soft and smooth. I came back brown furred and took my place in my new sexed role.

I am Wetdog. I am fur. I sing each day before I pray:

Fur fends off rays,

wraps bodys warm,

and keeps the nose glare free

and skin from harm.

fur forever and brush my face.

(clap clap clap)

But this story is not about the Furs or insert bags. This story is of LaDu, one of the true fatty angels and how she grew and sprouted wings and flew away.

Yes, I was chewing fat that day back then when we conceived LaDu. That day, my family feasted in the center of the grassy, rolling townyard green on long communal tables fitted out for family days. We feasted on this conception day for the One-Who-Is-to-Be, and that would be my sister, the soon-to-be-conceived, LaDu. She would be conceived as soon as the lambduck leg was carved down to the bone. Townspeople watched from the edges of the yard, remembering their family conception days when they sat and prayed to the angels for their One-to-be.

The calamity would come within the year (of course we did not know it then). That was the last time my family had communal fat to chew. In love and happiness we chomped down to the bone that day. The angels smiled, blessed us all, and wiped their rounded, greasy chins.

I sat on the far side, on the children’s side, with child Lulu and Lulene. We children sang conception songs as parents reached for the center cooking pot for meaty, dripping chunks:

Angels, angels come today

And bring our new baby, baby

We make our baby with this song

Baby, baby come along

Suck the sauce and chew the bone

Feast today for baby comes

Dance the dance and carry on

Make the baby, sing the song

MamaLa and MamaTrogh were furs like me. They sat to my side. These two mamas were my favorite mamapair. MamaLentroline and MamaJenelate sat across from them. They were of the feather sex and had their plumage spread and covered the full tableside. MamaMako was the ScaleBack of the family. She sat with MamaLen from the minor sex of Crawlers. MamaPapa, our Transparent, sat on the far side from me. She wore a feather robe that day and covered well. She had the place of honor. She handed out the meat and did the carving work. The lambduck meat was sliced away. The family laughed as they held the greasy food and let it slide down inside as they swallowed whole their greasy bites.

Time finally came when all were all filled and food was done. The Conception Song had all twenty verses sung, so MamaLa, who led the party day, pulled up the BabyView upon the table. All watched as the projected image of the One-to-Be danced undefined, ghostlike, in the center of the yard. The BabyView had been used for years to conceive by all town families. The engineers built them way back when the sexes were more constrained. Some said the innies and outies existed then and those two sexes were all there were.

MamaLa took the GeneSpin from the BabyView to architect new baby genes for our One-to-Be. The first gene choice went to our MamaPapa. All beamed wide, wide happy smiles. She had the carry for nine months now with the big insertion bag inside that plugged into her bloodtap to carry new baby LaDu. MamaPapa should be first to choose, because she had the babycarry chore. Of course, the family helped and plugged in when they could, but the bag was hers. MamaPapa smiled and picked the eyegene: Orangy-Red. We cheered and clapped and yelled for her.

MamaLu spun again and we called out genes as the choice turn went round the table. Each Mama chose new genes for the One-to-Be. The genes filled in and the projected image ghost grew to fully colored flesh dancing in the townyard air. Of course, the baby was not sexed, not until adulting day, so the baby had that boring look that children have—that’s what the Mama’s said to us—boring red-black-brown-foam-and even blue, but always with that undercoat of red. Not like adults with their fur, scales, and feather rainbow looks.

After an hour of spins, the One-to-Be was fully formed. The genemap blazed in lights above the townyard glen. Then all the Mamas came to MamaPapa’s chair and picked her up. They chanted as they carried the family bagholder over the field to the baby cleanroom for Mamapapa to receive the new one in the angel-blessed bag. The children carried baby presents on their heads and danced around the babycarry’s chair. Fatty angels danced above the townyard square.

The townsfolk who had watched the family party with only sly side looks now dropped their feigned distance to parade across the yard, to sing and to pop bags with loud bangs, as we always do on conception days. The children ran through the line, but the Mamas walked straight to the babyroom. Mamapapa smiled and all children knew it would be their job to wait on her until the day was due when the bag was broken and the One-to-Be would join us and get her baby name. That was the start of our LaDu.

We conceived LaDu the month before calamity. It came like fever through the town and all were changed. Sex did not matter--all sexes: furs, feathers, tranparents, even the antennae folks, too, whom noone ever sees. All caught the virus, young, mid, and old-withered too. Even those conceived but not yet burst to life, like LaDu.

All seemed wrong when the virus came. We were all hungry all the time. We started melting like old lardcakes frying in the pan. In only weeks we looked so lean and many of us danced like rich starlets after their fancy no-fat creams. We would all be fit and lean and become starlets on townyard screens, that’s what the children thought.

MamaPapa stayed big, round in the middle, the bag held her very tight. She slimmed down everwhere but there, in her arms and legs and even in her neck.

In the next months, other babies burst out skin and bone. Lizard babies we called them then. No fat was showing anywhere. Families cried when a bag was popped. Only lizard babies were carried out of for family children to view.

So everyone was crying when Baby LaDu’s day came. MamaPapa flipped the flap and pulled the bag. She popped the plugs and other tube things from the side. The bag was opened and baby given the twelve volt jump from the start machine. We sang the baby welcome song:

Unzip the bag and pull her plug

Let the baby breath in air

Give her room to stretch and move

Then hold her snug with Mama care

But we sang with little heart, for fear of what LaDu would be. A lizard baby scared us all.

But all inside the bursting room were laughing like before Calamity. Then I saw LaDu, fat as any baby ever was. I was down to boney legs and arms but LaDu had fat rings round her arms and legs, and a chin that puckered seven times. She smiled at me and I smiled back and gave her a furry Wetdog cry.

We sang to Baby LaDu that night. Everyone in town put her down to sleep. The next town heard the songs and then the next town too. All knew we slept happy in our family.

Soon engineers came to see Ladu. In white coats they scoped her belly cells. We told them, “see, calamity is done; the virus is not strong. LaDu can beat it. Engineers like you could fix us all. We will plump out again.”

LaDu was hope. LaDu was joy. We sang to her each day and squeezed her tight each night as we lay her in her nesting room.

The engineers came back again. They shook their heads and said we were wrong, “wait, LaDu will be a lizard baby too.” For three months they came but our LaDu got rounder everyday. She bounced her head up and down and we squeezed and squeezed the soft baby fat legs and toes.

Finally the engineers took LaDu away and told us that she was a fatty angel, not of the Wetdog family. She was not a baby but belonged above. They took her to fly above the town, dropping sugarballs and chiplets down.

The family cried but could not save LaDu from her angel fate to save us all and drop us daily sugarballs. MamaPapa, we could not console. She dripped tears like fatty droplets used to fall. She had watched the baby grow inside her see-through bag. Now she watched LaDu dance in the sky each night. She cried for her angel child.

MamaPapa knew what to do. She reinserted the bag from her LaDu and filled it full of chiplets and other LaDu sugar things floating around to remind us all. The RoundOne cult started on that day. Now they bulge around us all.

That was the end of baby LaDu. She was not a baby child at all. She was an angel called to fly, by engineers who knew her fate. She hovers nightly in each townfield sky, projected over clouds and stars. She sings praises to the engineers who found her grounded on the earth. We Wetdogs pray to our LaDu to save us every, every day.

Looking Good

Those genetic engineers are really working hard, fighting disease, killing insects and making money. But do they deal with what people worry about most? Not much, I say. I am talking about Looking Good.

Why do I say Looking Good is the number one concern? Three arguments:

1. The only real growth industry in America is a “Looking Good” business. Can you go a block in any city without seeing the “Nails and Waxing” sign? If a Starbucks or a Microsoft of Manicures had started up 20 years back, another Bill Gates would be giving away all his money because he had way too much.
2. We put up with the whinyest, do-nothing-good stars just because they have nice hair, a nice shape, no hair in the wrong place and nice nails.
3. We not only put up with, but watch, as bouncy young things flaunt their Looking Good in ads for everything from bandaids to botulism.

Case closed. Looking Good is number one.

Why don’t our genetic engineers tackle this problem? Lots of money is just around the corner. Is it really a hard problem to make people look good? Here’s a little help to get you engineers started.

First, think about why people don’t look good. Looking Good doesn’t start with the parts, the nails, the lips and the legs; it starts with smooth lines. Think about racing cars and jet airplanes. They look good.

People are not designed that way. Planes hold their shape with stiff, smartly-designed skins. Skin for us humans is just a bag to hold a bunch of soggy, mushy parts. Worse yet, the parts are stuck to stick-figure bones that poke out in pointy elbows and knees. How can this design ever look good without serious food deprivation, muscle management, or even surgery?

What about using fat to smooth it all out into nice aerodynamic lines? It works for whales. No way for us humans. Our fat bunches up in strange places—It turns to low-slung, bulges on our bellies and hips.

Worst of all, skin sags with time. Thank God for clothes.

Are we alone in the animal world with this problem? Think about sleek jaguars, tigers and fast looking pussy cats. They have smooooth lines. They are Looking Good!

But just dunk one in a bucket of water (if you are brave). They look just as bumpy and baggy as us humans do. But they have FUR to cover them up.

Yes, you engineers out there--Fur smoothes out boney, bulgy, bumpy lines and makes those cats sleek. We humans could be sleek too. So just get to work and give us Fur.

That’s not all. Think of the savings on clothes. Who needs clothes when you have a deep, dark sable back and a mink-underbelly. Or a fuzzy sheep-wool chest and alpaca legs. You’re warm too. Way too many advantages to pass up.

O.K., Some of you might miss skin, but how much of it shows anyway. Even when we are naked, the lights are usually out. But with Fur lots of new Looking Good possibilities are available: stripes, spots, pintos, braids, bangs, and real pony-tails. A whole new growth industry in brushes and dyes is waiting for those Nail shops on every corner.

And best of all, everyone looks good.

Little Green Men (and Women)

I have been thinking about genetic engineering. A lot of those engineers just work on one problem—All our foods are weeds. At least to their weed-killer sprays. So the engineers are taking the weediness out of our beans and corn and other veggies. That sounds like a good idea. Don’t kill our food along with the dandylions and crabgrass.

Some people call these engineered plants-- Frank’n beans. Named after an early scientist who also rearranged parts of one species. We should remember that this guy Frankenstein was a big success in his science; he just failed in human resource management. He hired poor help. It was the help who stuffed in the bad parts (stolen from the criminally insane).

I hear the engineers today are pretty successful with their weed work. But I have news for them. They are working on the wrong side of the problem: working on supply and we need to work on demand. You can only grow so much and then that’s it. But you can always shrink demand. That’s a green solution.

Some people tell me that there are too many people and we need to cut some out. But that leads to the “who gets to stay” question and then wars and concentration camps and other bad things. So forget the whole idea of cutting out anyone! Everyone gets to stay and make all the babies they want.

The solution to really shrink demand is to let the engineers make people smaller.

What is with bigness anyway? I bumped my head again this morning; I don’t fit in airplanes; and I have to shop in expensive big and tall stores (I am both). Bigger is not better. Remember that.

I have watched my wife many years now. She is only 10 percent shorter. But she eats about half of what I do. If we made everybody ten percent shorter every generation, then we halve the demand every 30 years. Voilà.

There are other good side effects. Like taking up less space. Every car is a limo. Every airplane seat is first-class. Every Macdonald burger really is a meal. And your little house is really your castle, or maybe, with a few modifications, an apartment block.

And you are always bigger than your kids. Every parent knows that this is a good idea. They get bigger than you when they are teenagers and this leads to all kinds of problems. Enough said there.

There are some things to work out. Like pets. We could just only have Chihuahuas, but they are nasty, little creatures. We need a new, foot-long dog, maybe an irish setter or a golden retriever. And those genetic engineers could make them vegetarians while they are at it.

The only question is: how small can you make people until they start getting stupid? We know that amoebas are dumb, but little cats are pretty smart. And I know lots of really smart short people so I am not worried for four or five generations.

The big problem is PR. We need to change the image of the small. The new message is: they are cuddly, they don’t cost much, and they are really green.