Thursday, September 28, 2006

Tuna Time

I don't know whether Dick McPherson had weekly press conferences when he was head coach of the Patriots. I do know when Bill Parcells succeeded McPherson in 1993, his sessions with the press immediately became appointment radio. Each week we wondered how long the Boston Globe's Ron Borges could poke The Tuna with a stick before the coach lashed back with "That's a STUPID question!"

Thirteen years later, Parcells is still battling it out with the press, and the reporters do their part by continuing to poke him with sticks. Yesterday's scheduled press conference with the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys happened to come the day after the most bizarre incident yet involving The Player, and The Tuna responded with a slightly subpar performance capped off with a flashy dismount. He tried to get though the media frenzy by giving evasive non-answers, but after nine minutes of inane, repetitive questions he finally ending it the way he should have ended it much earlier.

"When I find out what the hell is going on, you will know," The Tuna snapped as he set sail for the exit. "Until then, I am not getting interrogated for no reason."

While I was driving home last night, one of the update guys on ESPN Radio came up with the following: "TO's status for this weekend's game at Tennessee has been updated from 'Suicidal' to 'Probable.'" I started laughing so hard that I nearly drove off the road.

I felt a twinge of shame for laughing at such a tasteless and gratuitous remark, and my sense of revulsion apparently is quite a bit higher than all the folks who helped Jackass II top the box office charts last week. But I'm not going to apologize for celebrating a good Tuna Tirade. Tuna, please never change.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Frankencats

"Allerca has produced the world's first scientifically-proven hypoallergenic cats," the company has announced. "The cat allergen is a potent protein secreted by the cat’s skin and salivary glands. Allerca has focused on naturally occurring genetic divergences (GD) already present in cats that do no harm to the cats in any way."

In other words they use selective breeding to eliminate the undesireable trait. This brings to mind so-called Frankenfood such as genetically-engineered corn which liberal weenies think will lead to the end of civilization. (I belong to several liberal weenie organizations. It's a term of endearment.) Of course Allerca claims that selective breeding is different from genetic engineering, so is perfectly natural and safe.

What about thoroughbred horses? 95% of all thoroughbreds can be traced back to one stallion born in 1700. In New Scientist, Matthew Binns of the Royal Veterinary College in London says many negative traits are associated with inbreeding in the diminutive gene pool. "The selections we've made for fantastic beasts have had some detrimental consequences."

One tenth of thoroughbreds suffer orthopaedic problems and fractures, 10% have low fertility, 5% have abnormally small hearts and the majority suffer bleeding in the lungs, says Binns. His solution? Even more selective breeding to get rid of the negative traits. Even if it's not considered to be genetic engineering, I think it is alarming.

Ask yourself a simple question: What if we were talking about selectively breening humans instead of cats or horses? I'm sure the name of Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele would come up during that discussion. Let's just say NO to creey GE Frankencats!

Actually, the truth is I don't care about how cats and horses are bred. I just don't like irresponsible cat owners. Every once in a while I see one of their little killers lurking under my bird feeder. I read something in the Milwaukee newspaper a few years ago that supposedly-domesticated cats kill millions of birds each year – just in the state of Wisconsin. In my opinion, all domestic cats that kill wild birds are Frankencats, and anything that encourages more people to own cats is bad, in my opinion.