So this woman carries a gene that’ll kill her through Alzeheimer by the time she’s 50. Any child of hers was going to stand a 50/50 chance of inheriting the gene. So she had her eggs screened until surgeons found one that was free of the early-onset Alzeheimer gene, then had it fertilized and implanted.
Of course, by the time her daughter is 10 years old, the mother’s senility will prevent her from recognizing her daughter…
Hunting Al Qaeda, apparently. Of course, Georgia’s unique position between the Black Sea, Russia, and Turkey and adjacant to the juicy oilfields there is also a factor. Routing through Georgia would allow the US to bypass Iran completely, and not have to rely on the increasingly shaky Afghan client government. Of course, this will piss off the Russians… but if they get to sell their oil through the pipeline they could be very happy.
So contrary to what they said earlier, now the WSJ says the Bush Gang is actively opposing universal broadband access. The head of the FCC, which used to regulate the airwaves “for the common good”, now sneers that creating an equal playing field is socialization. Ah Powell the Younger, such a disagreeable, bureaucratic apparatchik. Is his callousness just a developed, intellectualised form of black-on-black violence?
The fact that his Daddy, the Uranium Bomber and My Lai Apologist Colin Powell the Elder, a director of AOL who owns many millions of dollars of AOL stock, resigned the AOL board the day before the vote to merge with TimeWarner went through, didn’t stop Powell the Younger from voting to approve the merger, claiming there was no conflict of interest, shouldn’t surprise anybody.
So Spike Milligan finally died, possibly the funniest ersatz Irishman of the late 20th Century. I liked this interview with Van Morrison:
S: Are you a Proddy, Van? Don’t come near me, I don’t want to catch it.
V: Basically I’m not really anything.
S: Aren’t you? So when I introduce you to people I say, “Here is Not Anything. This is Van Not Anything Morrison. A singer and Not Anything.” You must be something.
V: Well theoretically I’m Church Of Ireland.
S: Proddy? Oh Jaysus I won’t mention this to my mother. “Dear Mother, I spoke to a Protestant today.” “Oh God forgive you, son. Go and confess it.” “Father I have sinned.” Amazing the power of the Catholic Church. My father went bald very early, and he was so incensed by it that he went to church and prayed for it to come back. I’m certain he went to a priest and confessed, “Dear Father forgive me, I have gone bald.” “Go away, my son, buy three wigs and say one Hail Mary.”
Without dear old Spike there would have been no Monty Python, or Father Ted, or League of Gentlemen, and the world would have been a meaner place.
I remember being a small child, in the 1970s, watching Spike’s TV shows in a bemused and baffled state, knowing there was something desperately funny and bizarre going on yet kind of wondering why it didn’t seem to make as much sense as Monty Python or Fawlty Towers or The Goodies. I thought at the time they were better. Now I know they were merely simpler, comedy-by-committee made to fit into neat TV genre slots, instead of the wild anarchic Dada genius of Spike.
A liking for Spike Milligan and crumbly old scifi magazines from the 1930s were probably the two best things me and my Grandad shared. We Gooned together.
He was knighted by the English Queen but, because of his acceptance of Irish citizenship (which forbids the use of English titles), he could not be known as Sir Spike. His vegetarianism and environmentalism inspired me as a callow teen to take that route.
On his 75th birthday, he had this to say:
When I look back, the fondest memory I have is not really of the Goons. It is of a girl called Julia with enormous breasts.
He once said he wanted the epitaph on his grave to read:
I told you I was ill.
