FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| MR. SMUTTY I'm hard-up for cash (for reasons best left vague/hazy) (drugs) but I've got a surefire quick-rich plan: okey-doke, it's a given that scientists can clone humans lickety-pronto. Sure they're playing all oh-gee-I-dunno and cowering behind a cloud of "ethics," but they know & you know & I know it's a done deal (cf. the electric car, perpet motion, Hollow Earth timeshare condos) (and if I were a carpenter & you were Dave Barry, I'd append this list of suppressed better-mousetraps w/ the likes of "pantyhose that don't run" & "childproof lids that adults can open" and then we'd laff like banshees 'cuz it's so damn true) (parenthetically speaking, natch). So yeah, I'm gonna get those slide-rule pocket-protectin' eggheads to clone me up some kinda purty, so'd there'd be 1! 2! 3! 4! 5! 6! of me running amuck in God'z green valley. Quantity over quality, that's the key to success. Nobody'd give a shaved rat-rump if there wuz just one of me (proofwise look no further than circa now), and if there were merely 2 of me the best I could hope for would be a sitcom where I'd play twins and we'd get into all sorts of double-mint shenanigans (e.g. in the first episode me & him would swap Senior Prom dates, and then as the series progressed we'd court/marry/repeatedly-impregnate the other brother's sweetheart, and then in the last episode after a successful 10 season run, as both us bros lay dying of TV-sped old age, we'd pool our last breaths to tell the wives about our li'l switcheroo, and then the wives would giggle, and me & him would rasp "So y'ain't mad?" and they'd say "Don't sweat it, we're lesbians" and bump-da-bump-dump The End) ('course, post-mod times call for post-mod measures, so in the final episode's closing credits it'd be revealed how the whole series wuz actually the feverish hallucination of a Megaloponera foetens [a.k.a. "stink ant"] as a naughty Tomentella spore slowly, fatally consumed its brain) - but if there were six of me, people would really sit up and take notice. I'm figuring interest in me & me & me & me & me (and me too!) would run so hot that the gov't would want to house the six of us in an escape-proof amusement park, tentatively called JimboLand. Millions of rubberneckers would pass thru the park's gates each year, intent on eyeballing us. They'd file one-by-one into a log cabin where in exchange for 5 coupons we'd stand up in unison, or eat crackers & whistle for 10. After the freakpeep, park patrons would be free to enjoy JimboLand's many rides (Bus Crash, Who Packed My 'Chute?, Train Track Chicken, Deadly Spinning TeaCups Of Death Featuring Patented Killing Action, etc.) and buy souvenir T-shirts (one size fits six) and bottle-openers. I'm no dumby; life in JimboLand would be a hellish inferno of Hades-like proportions, with fire. Me et mes many mes would weep into the night and maybe desperately turn to self-medication (booze, acupuncture) to salve our psychic skinned-knees. A coupla us might even flop into an early grave (too much bacon, or putting gun to mouth after a senseless killing spree - "going lotto," to dally in the parlance of the day), so I figger starting off w/ six of us is a good hedge against deflation. The money, you ask? (Ignoring for the moment the fact that "The money" isn't a question, let alone a sentence.) (You really are simple, ain'tcha?) OK: 40 years down the road, me & the remaining clones (unless the orig me is dead and only the clonely remain, which boggles my noggin something fierce - guess I gotta iron out the wrinkles re: that whole "unique soul" deal before things get a-rolling) are gonna sue the halfmast pants off the gov't for not giving us a merchandise cut. It may take years (decades?) of tears and public outrage ("They're not cute anymore! Let's assuage our conscience by buying 'em off w/ tax money! I like Sporty Sextuplet the best! No wait I mean Posh Sext!"), but I'm gonna die rich & bitter even if it kills me. Ashes to ashes, watch my dust. |