Build Date: Sat Feb 15 17:00:46 2025 UTC
When your opponent's sittin' there holdin' all the aces, there's only one thing to do. Kick over the table.
-- Dean Martin
Bruce Banner Beans
2002-04-03 11:10:14
This whole genetically-modified food debate has been very difficult for me. On the one hand you have reactionary hippies pitching a fit, and I'm pretty used to agreeing with those people. But on the other hand you have mad wild-haired scientists violating the very laws of God and Earth, and I love those guys too! It's like if Gabrielle got into a fight with Agent Scully. How could I choose?
Well, I finally decided to stop waffling on the issue, because genetically modified food has restored my sense of wonder and delight in the future. It was the beans that did it. Apparently the mad wild-haired scientists in India are spending their research budgets figuring out how to make beans less farty. I guess in India they eat a lot of beans, and the farts really add up. It's a big social problem, right up there with the nuclear tensions and the Thuggees. In fact, I think it might contribute to the nuclear tensions.
Anyway, in my reconstruction of events, these mad wild-haired scientists were sitting around watching the fluids gurgling in the Erlenmeyer flasks and playing poker for brains, and one of them lets a big smelly fart rip, and as the others jump up and start opening windows the first one gets kind of shamefaced and he says "Hey, let's see what GAMMA RAYS will do to the beans!"
As everyone knows, gamma rays are what transformed mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner into The Incredible Hulk. This is the issue that hangs in the air unspoken as the crazy scientists blather on about their radioactive fartless beans. Apparently the gamma rays do make the beans less farty but who cares! These goddamn single-minded scientists are going to loose some green behemoth upon the world and they're going to go, "Look! He doesn't fart!" And we'll all say, "What the hell do you mean he doesn't fart! He's leaping across oceans and smashing tanks! How are we supposed to notice whether or not he's farting!" And then the hippies will write angry letters to the editor saying that the cumulative effects of fartless invincible giants on the global ecosystem are unknown and perilous and there ought to be warning labels.
"Flatulence is an important indicator of a healthy gut system," said lone-microbiologist-in-the-wilderness Glenn Gibson. "Moreover, the abrupt transformation into a massive being of superhuman strength and endurance could have a traumatic effect on the digestive system, long-term."
But I just can't go with the hippies on this one. I can't wait to have all these Incredible Hulks jumping around India. Because how cool is that?
There probably should be warning labels though.
Editor's Note 4/15/02: Ethnobotanist Gayle Fritz would like to point out that radioactive fartless beans are not actually genetically modified foods, unless the fartlessness is heritable by future generations of beans. It is similarly unclear whether Bruce Banner's transformation into The Incredible Hulk should be technically considered a "mutation," or merely an example of "whack-ass freaky shit." Scientific accuracy is of the utmost importance here at Pigdog Journal, and this editor regrets the error.
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
This was an old standby back in my poor college days. Back then the goal was to get butt fucking wasted for as little money as possible. The problem was we hated dirt cheap beer - and some weekends, even Henry's was far more lucre then we could scratch together. So we invented Red. (More...)
Still Up For the Party? America's Dance Floors Are Graying
Raving over 30 doesn't have to be embarassing anymore. (More...)
High Availability Guinness Stress Test
All too often we forget the incredible depth of technology behind the weekly ritual of TNiPN@*. We tend to only become aware of the strategy of High Available Guinness (HAG) when it rises to the forefront during a complete and utter venue failure. Yet we should all be super grateful that this system exists. (More...)
The Peppermill Is Not Good For You
Paradise lounge on the strip. Expense it, bad boy! (More...)
Patient Joab's scientifick editorial discusses aspect of the space-time-beer continuum never before processed by sub-bush-robot minds!!! Too fabulantastic to contempulate! (More...)