The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Just finished a pretty excellent book:

Totally comes out of left field, I had no idea about any of it.  It talks about a cell line called HeLa that is essentially immortal, it will keep dividing so long as it has materials to build with.  This was essential to a lot of advances in medicine, like the development of a polio vaccine and a number of cancer treatments. (HeLa is cancer cells, btw).

But it's not just a dry science textbook, it's written by a scientist-turned-artist, so it's very novelistic in the approach.  The first half of the book switches between the history of Henrietta Lacks, the person from which HeLa comes from, the history of HeLa and the author's own struggles attempting to research for her book.  There's enough story so you don't get bored with all that sciencey shit, but there's enough science so you don't feel like you're reading an account of the horrible travails of some shmucky woman living on student loans.

Definitely worth a look.  Or just a brief skim of the wikipedia article.

The benefits of being negligable.

It went like this:

Verizon Guy: Well, ya'll bought one o' dem fancy phones.  Ya gotta pay for a data plan, kno-wut-I-mean? (Yes, he did talk like a cowboy.)

Me: Well, no one told me about that. (I'm lying, they told me about that.)

Verizon Guy: There ain't nothin' I can do, boy, time's are rough down here on the prarie.

Me: But I've been a customer for years and blah blah bitch moan complain.

Verizon Guy: Okay, okay! I hollered for a manager and he got 'er done! (No joke, the guy actually said "got 'er done")

Me: Thank you, you're the best, god bless the Confederacy.

{fin}

This is what I love about dealing with big corporations.  At a certain point, you become not worth the time arguing with and you get exactly what you want.  Given my tendency towards being a spoiled brat, it's great to have an interaction that's just super responsive to me being obnoxious.  It's like having a bad parent you can go to when the other one turns you down.

It's always my advise that if a company ever charges you or does something you don't like, just complain.  Go higher and higher up the chain until you reach a manager that is either A) afraid of human interaction or B) is worth more money per hour than your complaint.  Of course, there's an equivalency to these things:

$10 = 30 minutes complaining (or m/c)

$100 = 60 m/c

$1000 = 120 m/c

And so on.

Of course, everything's against you on this.  Articles tell you why it's not healthy.  Doctors prescribe medicines to make the bile go down easier.  God hates complaining.  But it's a lot like an oil company saying global warming doesn't exist.  Think about how much easier it would be for companies if their employees never complained for fear of getting sick and missing work.  Or how much more money doctors would make if people just shut up and took their pills.  Or how much more churches could get away with if their congregation stopped going to the police.

I'm being half-serious here.  Complaining shouldn't be a way of life, but it certainly isn't going to make you die and go to Hell.  That's why I've decided to show some whiny asshole pride.  Behold:

Wear it with pride.

Ain't no art like COMPETITIVE art.

I feel like slams should have t-shirts and foam gloves.  Maybe even vuvuzelas.  Yeah, that's right, that was a World Cup joke.  I'm retro like that.

So I've decided to compete in the Beltway Poetry Slam this month. (Assuming, of course, I get there in time to sign up.  If I don't, I'll probably have the poet's equivalent of blue balls.)

This means I can't do any of the four poems I have memorized and prepared.  Which means I need two poems edited, memorized and ready to perform by Tuesday.  I've picked the two and essentially done the edits I wanted to do.  Now it's memorization and performance.  They're two different things, as I'm sure anyone who's done performance poetry knows.  Just reciting it in monotone isn't enough.  You have to have the right emphasis and movements and all that shit.  Kinda like your body is reciting it.

The first I'm planning on doing is going to be about how much I hate rhubarb pie.  The second is basically an adaptation for DC of a poem I wrote about the PATH in Jersey City.  I know that seems like cheating, but you'd be surprised how much all late-night public transit has in common.

Instead of posting the poems, here's a picture of a super cat.

"Shows off Chest, Boyfriend"

There's an art to headlines, there really is.  Getting someone interested in what might involve a full 5 minutes of reading (god forbid) is no easy task in the age of twitter and facebook.  You really have to pick the most important details of a story and summarize them in just a couple of words.  Find the parts the reader really wants to get to and put them out there.  It's like a journalistic wonderbra.  You know what the people want, and you're gonna prop those saggy suckers up like a double-dip recession.

Huffington post has a tendency to have this shit down.

"Hayden Panettiere Shows off Chest, Boyfriend"

Way. To. Go.

And here's some cute headlines.  And here's some misleading headlines.

One particularly bad one was when Bill Clinton, the first black president of the US, went over to Korea to pick up some journalists and the Huffington Post proclaimed "Bill Upstages Hillary...Once Again".  This is what a journalism degree gets you.  The ability to take interesting, engaging events and turn them into something trashy.

No wonder these news outlets are crashing and burning.

Happy birthday, fatties!

Yes.

A groupon for liposuction.

Only $2,500 and we can suck your fat ass away!

This is all kinds of hilarious to me.  "Buy as a gift".  Honestly, it wouldn't be a terrible gift.  They could go out and eat chili cheese fries and bacon for like days.

"But you'll gain weight!"
"Doesn't matter, I have a liposuction groupon, bitches!"

It makes me hungry just thinking about it.

"Bad News for Good Families"

Tentative title.  Working on it.  Suggestions? (This question posed to the zero people that currently follow my blog)

Snippet:

My family treats bad news like cat litter.  It will be wrapped up and dumped discreetly in the back.  It is accepted as a consequence of ownership of life, like ownership of a cat.  Shit happens.  No need to leave it stinking.

...

                No one ever discussed it.  The next morning, Jason was next to me at breakfast, looking at his cereal with the same forlorn look he had had since Amber broke up with him.  The incident would pass without mention and Jason would find a new girl and everything would go back to normal.  I was thirteen and hadn’t quite outgrown the awe-struck respect for my parents.  Seeing this return to regularity from the brink of chaos made me view them as guardians of order.  No matter what the forces of chaos might lay on our doorstep, they were eternally disinterested.

Awkward family moments? Traumatic memories? Racist grandmothers? You want it, we got it!

Now if only this shit wasn't 5,000 words...

More guns!

Stop the clocks, ladies and gentlemen.  If you, like me, were timing how long it took for someone to co-opt the Arizona situation for a statement in favor of gun rights, you got it.  Representative Trent Franks, better known for saying Planned Parenthood was more corrupt than ACORN, has made record time turning the Arizona massacre into a lobby for more guns!

His statement:

I wish there had been one more gun there that day in the hands of a responsible person, that's all I have to say

You're right, Rep. Franks.  More guns has ALWAYS meant less crime.  You know what, I'd even take it one step further.  I think everyone in the crowd should have had guns!

Even better! What if Representative Giffords had a gun!

Wait, wait! What if Representative Giffords WAS a gun?!

And how much better would Obama's statement have been if he was a sawed-off shotgun?

And how awesome would our country be if it were an M27 Automatic Rifle!

Amazing.  Look how much more wonderful things are with guns in them! Violence isn't the answer, violence is the question! What's the answer?

HELL YES!