LET'S HEAR IT FOR DUMB.
The world is getting soft. We are getting too soft. Most of us are starting to resemble the Pillsbury Dough-Boy. Things have gotten too damn easy for all of us. Where are the men and women who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps or pantyhose straps and accomplished things that no one thought they could?
You remember, the good old days when we had to put in an honest days work for the few shekels we were able to pry out of the pocket of our exploiters? Nothing was handed to us in those days. No, siree, we fought, clawed, raped and pillaged trying to get upwardly mobile. The Old Geezer remembers when he had to walk 12-miles just to get to the little, old red schoolhouse. Of course I never entered the bloody place – I just liked to walk there.
Everything is handed to us on a silver platter. With the advent of computers, I pods, cell phones and the like we’ve become spoiled and soft. Did I mention soft? No one wants to dirty their hands and do the heavy lifting. I would but my new truss hasn’t arrived yet. Today’s children are the worse for all this progress. They wouldn’t know about lifting that bale and toting that barge if it hit them between their head phones. I yearn to go back to the days of yesteryear when kids appreciated the little things in life. Even dwarfs appreciated that.
As an example of how far society has fallen in its quest for the easy way out – I have only to point to the students at the Singapore Polytechnic Institute. Now, I must confess to not having a green thumb. I envy people who have and tend to wonderful, plush and beautiful gardens. Being able to roll around in the grass and watch plants come to life when spring springs…is the stuff of songs. Unfortunately, I have a black thumb. My shoe trees die. As soon as I even look at a rose bush it feels my vibes and withers up and crashes like the stock market when George W. Bush assures us that our economy is doing ‘just great.’ I’m not happy about my inability to grow plants and flowers. It saddens me and has forced me to put down plastic astro-turf on my lawns. My house is filled with fake plants and I know I probably water them too much and they’re not long for this world.
Back to the students in Singapore. As a class project they decided not to go the tried and true way to deal with growing things – you know, talking to their plants, playing music so that the green stuff can bugaboo. What these rotten geniuses have created are plants that can communicate with people. They don’t speak Urdu or something weird like that – they - you ready - they, glow when they need water. You heard right, friends of River City, the plants glow when thirsty. The students have genetically modified plants using a green fluorescent marker gene from jellyfish, so that they ‘light up’ when they are stressed as a result of dehydration. Is it just me or is there something very freaky and scary about what they’ve done? Instead of wasting their time on stuff like watering dry leafy things they should waste their time on good, old, “reedin’/ritin’ & rithmatik.”
I don’t want plants lighting up when they’re parched. I don’t want plants or animals getting too smart because if they do they won’t need us to ruin their lives. If these kinds of experiments are allowed to continue, what’s next, envelopes that lick us? TV sets that will only play good shows no matter what we push with our remotes? What will the idiots that watch “Deal or No Deal” do for entertainment? This trend could make Howie Mandel grow back his hair.
I wish the Singapore students forgot all about this scientific crap and do what kids are supposed to do – gamble, use drugs, drink until they drop and diss their parents. It was good enough for us and should be good enough for them.
You remember, the good old days when we had to put in an honest days work for the few shekels we were able to pry out of the pocket of our exploiters? Nothing was handed to us in those days. No, siree, we fought, clawed, raped and pillaged trying to get upwardly mobile. The Old Geezer remembers when he had to walk 12-miles just to get to the little, old red schoolhouse. Of course I never entered the bloody place – I just liked to walk there.
Everything is handed to us on a silver platter. With the advent of computers, I pods, cell phones and the like we’ve become spoiled and soft. Did I mention soft? No one wants to dirty their hands and do the heavy lifting. I would but my new truss hasn’t arrived yet. Today’s children are the worse for all this progress. They wouldn’t know about lifting that bale and toting that barge if it hit them between their head phones. I yearn to go back to the days of yesteryear when kids appreciated the little things in life. Even dwarfs appreciated that.
As an example of how far society has fallen in its quest for the easy way out – I have only to point to the students at the Singapore Polytechnic Institute. Now, I must confess to not having a green thumb. I envy people who have and tend to wonderful, plush and beautiful gardens. Being able to roll around in the grass and watch plants come to life when spring springs…is the stuff of songs. Unfortunately, I have a black thumb. My shoe trees die. As soon as I even look at a rose bush it feels my vibes and withers up and crashes like the stock market when George W. Bush assures us that our economy is doing ‘just great.’ I’m not happy about my inability to grow plants and flowers. It saddens me and has forced me to put down plastic astro-turf on my lawns. My house is filled with fake plants and I know I probably water them too much and they’re not long for this world.
Back to the students in Singapore. As a class project they decided not to go the tried and true way to deal with growing things – you know, talking to their plants, playing music so that the green stuff can bugaboo. What these rotten geniuses have created are plants that can communicate with people. They don’t speak Urdu or something weird like that – they - you ready - they, glow when they need water. You heard right, friends of River City, the plants glow when thirsty. The students have genetically modified plants using a green fluorescent marker gene from jellyfish, so that they ‘light up’ when they are stressed as a result of dehydration. Is it just me or is there something very freaky and scary about what they’ve done? Instead of wasting their time on stuff like watering dry leafy things they should waste their time on good, old, “reedin’/ritin’ & rithmatik.”
I don’t want plants lighting up when they’re parched. I don’t want plants or animals getting too smart because if they do they won’t need us to ruin their lives. If these kinds of experiments are allowed to continue, what’s next, envelopes that lick us? TV sets that will only play good shows no matter what we push with our remotes? What will the idiots that watch “Deal or No Deal” do for entertainment? This trend could make Howie Mandel grow back his hair.
I wish the Singapore students forgot all about this scientific crap and do what kids are supposed to do – gamble, use drugs, drink until they drop and diss their parents. It was good enough for us and should be good enough for them.
posted by THE RANTING OLD GEEZER at 6:00 PM
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