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.

Offsets

I started thinking about offsets yesterday. Why are they just for carbon? In case you don’t know, offsets are when you pay to plant a couple trees everytime you fly or drive to make up for messing up the air.

We could have water offsets—you drink a gallon or two and a clean bottle of water gets shipped to the very poor, who up to now only had river water to drink. Maybe a better offset is a deep well for every couple hundred long, hot showers.

Then there could be cow offsets. Cows waste corn (actually cows don’t waste—they clean their plates—but growing cows takes a lot of corn, so cows are wasting world agricultural production). If you eat couple cowburgers—then you pay for a bag of corn to go to the hungry. Or maybe a plow. You get the idea.

I could go on and on, but the idea of offsets is to have wasteful folks make up for their using too much stuff. Maybe these folks will slow down a little in their wasting, but even if they don’t, the world gets a little fairer.

Offsets can make a lot of business for poor places. After all, it’s no secret that the people who don’t have much stuff to waste are usually the poor ones. They could get paid for digging the wells and growing the corn. Paid with offset-bucks.

Some friends have suggested the population offset. I don’t agree with this one. (They call it the “pop-off”). Some relative (usually pretty distant) must be offed when you add to your family. That really would add to family tensions. And if you had to off someone outside the family then that leads to wars and similar badstuff. We off enough people around the world already.

But what really set me thinking about offsets—was getting up on the wrong side of the bed. I yelled at the kids and kicked the dog first thing this morning.

A cup of coffee later I realized what I had done. I could have appologized, but that’s too easy (that’s what the kids say and the dog still growls). But if I could explain that I bought a grump-offset to along with the apology then, I think, things would be better.

(I used to give presents with my apologies about yelling, but the kids have too much stuff already and the dog is too fat from the dogbiscuits,—I hope you see the problem with making things better with more stuff to the already stuffed. It just leads to the spoiled-baby syndrome) .

What would a grump-offset be? There are people who are always angry, sulky, testy, and generally ill-tempered that I could pay, sort of like planting trees, but planting smiles on their faces. They could be kinder, friendlier after being the recipient a reasonalby-priced grump-offset. Maybe 25 of their smiles would cost me a buck.

Since the poor tend to have more to be angry about, there could be a whole new line of work for the laid-off, the unemployed, and generally poor.

Of course this could leave the rich more ill-tempered than ever. But it’s worth a try.