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The Wonders of Science
18 years ago
Some people ask me, in between screams usually, as I'm carving off their eyelids, what I do for inspiration. It tends to sound like this: "Herr Doctor, what do AAARARRRARAGGHDH you do for RRRAAAAGGGHHH inspir-", well they are generally unconscious by then, but you get the idea. I'm always especially wistful whenever I receive this question, so much so that I'll even lay down the electric drill probe for a moment, and that never leaves my hands while I'm working.
"Dinosaurs in top hats," I always try and be honest with my earnest questioners, I often find having a man's blood on my hands (and clothes and shoes and ceiling) does that to me. "I find the auxiliary oscillation of those gyrating scaly tails and gleeful tapping canes shall put me in rickets evermore, gentle sir!" The screams are my only affirmation, but I know full well they represent a great and hearty amount of approval.
During my afternoon work I often like to turn on the television just to have other sounds besides the yowling and drilling in the lab. While watching an absolutely fascinating documentary on parasites an advertisement for a new weight-loss product caught my attention. Now I'm a rather thin man, personally, and have been all my life (except for that bit part in Caligula back in the 70's when I had to gain a few hundred pounds), but none-the-less I still find the American fascination with crazy contraptions to solve what is essentially "cake-in-mouth" disease.
Most of the commercials are dull, only involving some pill or another, which only has potential if some clever scientist slipped in a retroactive mutagen. But this device, this Lap-Band, this has potential! The surgical procedure consists of attaching a silicon band filled with saline around the upper entry tube into the stomach, constricting the flow of food into the digestive track and creating a smaller "secondary" stomach above the first one, much like a cow! Brilliant! This secondary stomach will, of course, hold much less food which will slowly pass into the original stomach where digestion will continue. And that's not all! The device is connected to a sub-dermal port where saline can either be injected or removed, just in case you have a pesky social gathering like Thanksgiving/Roman Orgy to attend and don't want to seem rude by not eating five times your body weight in Cheesy Things and Fried Chicken. This is truly better living through science! In fact, I was so engrossed in the advertisement that I completely forgot what I was doing at the time, which happened to involve the installation of a tertiary bile gland into a mermaark (cross between a mermaid and an aardvark, scary creatures, all tits, scales, and hair) which would allow it to vomit corrosive liquid at distances exceeding twenty yards. Long story short I had to get another mermaark and a new tie, but it was well worth it! I immediately phoned the company and requested a box of the Bands, my mind is practically boiling over with all the wacky things I'll get up to with them! I haven't been this excited since absinthe was made legal again back in '86.
I'm actually thinking that instead of ratcheting the band around the esophagus I will, instead, place it <i>inside</i>, thus using it to expand the tube leading into the stomach, creating a vastly <i>larger[/i] secondary stomach! What a wonder that would be! Finally humans can experience the intense joy of what it feels like to have multiple stomachs, just like a bovine! Never fear for longing a mid-afternoon snack, just regurgitate a bit of breakfast and chomp on that for a while! Humanity's eventually evolution is finally upon us, my friends, and we all have the Lap-Band to thank for it!
Now that I mull it over I might use a few on some of the less complex experiments - the Bangerghast comes to mind first and foremost. I've been itching to see what prolonged oxygen deprivation does to that variety of critter, and I think this device provides the perfect means to that end. I'll have to expand it a bit; Bangerghasts have extremely thick necks.
Now you must simply pardon me for a bit, I need to go find where Hobbes has crawled off to. His venom is well-suited towards the paralyzation and capture of villages. Ta ta for now.
"Dinosaurs in top hats," I always try and be honest with my earnest questioners, I often find having a man's blood on my hands (and clothes and shoes and ceiling) does that to me. "I find the auxiliary oscillation of those gyrating scaly tails and gleeful tapping canes shall put me in rickets evermore, gentle sir!" The screams are my only affirmation, but I know full well they represent a great and hearty amount of approval.
During my afternoon work I often like to turn on the television just to have other sounds besides the yowling and drilling in the lab. While watching an absolutely fascinating documentary on parasites an advertisement for a new weight-loss product caught my attention. Now I'm a rather thin man, personally, and have been all my life (except for that bit part in Caligula back in the 70's when I had to gain a few hundred pounds), but none-the-less I still find the American fascination with crazy contraptions to solve what is essentially "cake-in-mouth" disease.
Most of the commercials are dull, only involving some pill or another, which only has potential if some clever scientist slipped in a retroactive mutagen. But this device, this Lap-Band, this has potential! The surgical procedure consists of attaching a silicon band filled with saline around the upper entry tube into the stomach, constricting the flow of food into the digestive track and creating a smaller "secondary" stomach above the first one, much like a cow! Brilliant! This secondary stomach will, of course, hold much less food which will slowly pass into the original stomach where digestion will continue. And that's not all! The device is connected to a sub-dermal port where saline can either be injected or removed, just in case you have a pesky social gathering like Thanksgiving/Roman Orgy to attend and don't want to seem rude by not eating five times your body weight in Cheesy Things and Fried Chicken. This is truly better living through science! In fact, I was so engrossed in the advertisement that I completely forgot what I was doing at the time, which happened to involve the installation of a tertiary bile gland into a mermaark (cross between a mermaid and an aardvark, scary creatures, all tits, scales, and hair) which would allow it to vomit corrosive liquid at distances exceeding twenty yards. Long story short I had to get another mermaark and a new tie, but it was well worth it! I immediately phoned the company and requested a box of the Bands, my mind is practically boiling over with all the wacky things I'll get up to with them! I haven't been this excited since absinthe was made legal again back in '86.
I'm actually thinking that instead of ratcheting the band around the esophagus I will, instead, place it <i>inside</i>, thus using it to expand the tube leading into the stomach, creating a vastly <i>larger[/i] secondary stomach! What a wonder that would be! Finally humans can experience the intense joy of what it feels like to have multiple stomachs, just like a bovine! Never fear for longing a mid-afternoon snack, just regurgitate a bit of breakfast and chomp on that for a while! Humanity's eventually evolution is finally upon us, my friends, and we all have the Lap-Band to thank for it!
Now that I mull it over I might use a few on some of the less complex experiments - the Bangerghast comes to mind first and foremost. I've been itching to see what prolonged oxygen deprivation does to that variety of critter, and I think this device provides the perfect means to that end. I'll have to expand it a bit; Bangerghasts have extremely thick necks.
Now you must simply pardon me for a bit, I need to go find where Hobbes has crawled off to. His venom is well-suited towards the paralyzation and capture of villages. Ta ta for now.
