Now in the future, cloners won't make much money

This week I emailed an old friend the link to this article about a Japanese researcher's plan to clone a mammoth. They plan on using an elephant as a surrogate mother for an egg implanted with a nucleus from a mammoth cell taken from a specimen that was preserved in ice.

I wrote:

Remember when you used to say that some day they'd clone them successfully, and then they'd become pests and start knocking over your garbage cans in the middle of the night and you'd just shake your head and say, "Damn mammoths. Why'd they have to bring THOSE back?"

Well, looks like we're on our way.

He responded:

I only remember that because you brought it up and I thought, "yeah, that sounds like something dumb enough to come from my lips."

If you go to Eastern Europe though, you'll see some of the women and know that these Japanese researchers are wasting their time...Mammoths are alive and well.

In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Mine turned out to be much better than I expected. I got to talk to my kids while they opened presents, which wasn't quite the same as being there, but at least I got to hear some of the excitement. I also got to talk to most everyone else in my family, and had a good dinner at a friend's house, so I can't complain.

I am going to share part of one of the coolest presents I got. My mom put together a short family history with old family photos and the stories behind most of the major events in our lives. One thing you should know about my mother, and that is that she's a very talented woman artistically. She's also kept a journal her entire life (we're talking like 50 volumes here), and she always sets aside a few pages here and there to write down all the funny things that we said or did while we were growing up. She does this with her grandkids too. She calls them the "family funnies" and they're the only pages in her journals that she'll let other people read. I think everyone in our family loves reading those. I know I do.

Here's where the artistic part comes in. Another thing my mom does is draw cartoons. She's quite good at it, and this year she included a few pages worth of "family funnies" for each of her children that she drew up and included with the family story.

Here are a few of mine*:












Seriously, can anything beat my reasoning as a small child?



*I've cropped each one to be its own image, and in the process of doing so, took off her name and the date. Don't steal her stuff.

The price of gas keeps on rising, nothing comes for free

So, my back isn't feeling any better. In fact, if anything, it's feeling worse. Not only am I having difficulty walking around, but it's also hard for me to drive because it hurts to work the clutch. I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow, but until this gets taken care of, I'm minimizing the amount of driving I have to do, and am having friends drive me places whenever possible. Today, while my friend was being my personal chauffeur, he had to stop and put some gas in the tank.

Him: Remember when you used to be able to buy $20 worth of gas, and you actually got plenty of gas.
Me: Yeah.
Him: Now you only get like six gallons for that price.
Me: I know. It sucks. Especially when you consider that when I was in high school a gallon of gas cost less than a dollar.
Him: I remember that. It doesn't seem like it was that long ago.
Me: Then again, I remember when candy bars used to only cost a quarter.
Him: I don't remember that.
Me: When I was a kid, my mom would make us Valentine's Day cards and would tape a quarter to them so that we could buy a candy bar, but that probably just means I'm old. I even remember when it used to only cost $5 to buy a hooker.

Yup, those were the days.