Hello again, Dear Reader, I return after an extended absence. Some of this absence I spent on the Upper Amazon (I’m not kidding), but I return refreshed and ready once again to bring you tidings of Doom. The latest sign of the apocalypse is being brought to us by the legislatures of New York and Virginia, both of which have either passed (New York) or recently considered (Virginia) abortion statutes which contemplate abortions performed so late that the kid is already born, if its existence threatens the mental health of the mother. (I must admit that New York has an ant-partial birth abortion law, but how long do you think that will hold up in the current climate?)

Now this brings up an interesting question: how old does the little monster have to be before you are no longer permitted to croak it?

Let’s face it; at some point, everybody wants to kill one or more of their children. How many times have you yourself said to one of your little darlings “I’m going to kill you if you ever do that again!” By the time the kid is two years old, it has figured out that this is not true, which explains the Terrible Twos. The fact that you also know that this is untrue is based on two fundamental facts. One, you of course love your progeny, who represent both your genetic immortality and your future bragging rights. But two, you are fully aware that bumping the kid off will earn you either the right to room with Bubba the Sex Maniac for the next forty-five years or, in more progressive states, the right to an unpleasant electrocution.

Now, let us assume for the moment that fact two is eliminated. What possible ages might one select for the cutoff of infanticide rights?

Kids tend to poop in their pants until they are about three, which is revolting, so we have potential cutoff number one.

Kids often pee in their beds until they are about eight, which is also revolting, so we have potential cutoff number two.

Kids hit puberty at around thirteen, which makes them ricochet off the walls, so we have potential cutoff number three.

Kids get driver’s licenses at around sixteen, so we have potential cutoff number four (no explanation needed).

Finally, kids head off to college at around eighteen, which is insanely expensive even if they go to Okefenokee County Institute for Medieval Gender Studies, so we have potential cutoff number five.

I could go on, but you get my drift.

But why should your rights be restricted to your children. Aren’t there lots of other relatives who drive you nuts? For example, your wife and your brother-in-law? Kill ‘em both!

And how about folks who are not related to you, but also drive you up the wall? How about your boss (that jerk)? How about the guy in the next cubicle whose cell phone uses the Song of the Volga Boatmen as its ringtone?

And why restrict things to people you actually know? That great philosopher Ogden Nash once created the deathless poem “I think, therefore I am. But what bothers me are all the people who don’t think, but are anyway.” What about rap musicians (sic), heavy metal practitioners, artists who draw with dilute solutions of excrement? As the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland would say, “off with their heads!”

Cutoffs? We don’t need no stinking cutoffs. We just need to issue completely unrestricted hunting licenses which permit us to shoot whomever we want to, at any time, in any place, for any damn reason we please. To prevent mass shootings, we must impose a bag limit, say one per day. Vast fun. But if I were you, I’d stay out of New York and Virginia.

It used to be that calling someone “SWINE!” was a term of opprobrium. But, Dear Reader, those times are rapidly passing. The savants of the Salk Institute (named after the late, great Jonas Salk, who created the polio vaccine) have now given us entry to a brave new world, described in unpleasant detail in “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and “The Fly.”

You no doubt recall that Dr. Moreau, working in isolation on a hidden tropical island, created animal-people hybrids. They looked like people, but were likely to bite you in the ass. Similarly, the mad physicist in “The Fly” managed to intercalate his molecules with those of a fly which wandered into his teleportation apparatus, producing a creature with a fly’s head and one fly arm, and a little tiny fly with a human head and one human arm. (Query: why are physicists always portrayed as mad? I’m a physicist, and I’m not mad. Ask my psychiatrist. But I digress.)

In a recent issue of the journal “Cell”, an article by a team of authors (including some from the aptly named Kinki University) announced that they had successfully created an embryo made up of a mixture of human and pig cells, which is currently growing happily inside a lady pig.

Now, the little beastie is mostly pig; in fact, it is only 0.001% human. But you don’t think that things are going to stop there, do you? What happens when they get up to 50/50?

I can see it now. The little bastard will snuffle off for his first day of school. In the middle of recess, the teachers will find him rooting about in the dumpster. Meat prices being what they are, the local butcher will chase him about the schoolyard, knife at the ready. And when he is kicked out of school, his parents will accuse the school district of porcophobia, provoking mass marches, and lawsuits. And what the hell is he supposed to put down when the Feds demand that he list his ethnicity on the census?

CRISPR has its downside.

We can all agree that firearms ownership by most private citizens is completely unnecessary in the light of the lightning response times to 911 calls. Accordingly, we should pass legislation outlawing private firearm ownership except for Certified Terrorists. In order to achieve a Certified Terrorist designation, the applicant must complete an approved Terrorist Training Course, which will ensure that no more than 15% of the shots fired by the Certified Terrorist will strike persons whom the Certified Terrorist does not intend to kill during a Terrorism Event. In addition to completing the Terrorist Training Course, the applicant must provide evidence of affiliation with a Generally Recognized Terrorist Group, such as ISIS (ISIL), Al Qaeda, the Earth Liberation Front, the Ku Klux Klan, or any other organization recognized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Terrorist Group. Upon completion of these requirements, the applicant will be issued an LTK (License to Kill) which will have an initial term of seven years, but may be renewed.

This legislation will achieve several objectives. It will greatly reduce the number of firearms in general circulation, thereby reducing the number of nine-year olds playing unsupervised in playgrounds at three o’clock in the morning who will be injured by stray rounds. It will cause cessation in the primitive practice of mammal hunting, which will enable rural populations to change their diet from one that is meat-based to a far more healthy one based on fish, leaves, and twigs.

As of this writing, I have not yet found a legislator with sufficient courage to introduce such legislation, but I am confident that, after the Coronation, this difficulty can be easily surmounted.

The great mystery of carrier pigeon navigation was solved a few years ago by  ornithologists, who discovered that the birds have iron filings in their heads, and use them to sense the earth’s magnetic field. OK. But a new biological application for magnetic field sensitivity among the lower animals has now been recognized.

The journal Frontiers in Zoology (2013, 10:80) has published a study which demonstrates conclusively that dogs are also magnetic field direction sensitive.

Dogs, it turns out, poop and pee parallel to the Earth’s magnetic field.

The study was carried out over two years, and covered 70 dogs, 37 breeds, 1,893 poops, and 5,582 pees. This exactitude gives new meaning to the term OCD.

You may well ask: who the hell would spend his time sniffing around dog poop and pee for two years? Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek,Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, that’s who. These worthies work at the Czech University of Life Sciences and the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. (This suggests that, for a change, your tax dollars were not expended on this particular bit of shitty (literally) research.)

I am willing to bet the farm that a large fraction of these authors are grad students. I can see it now: full professors swinging whips, driving the students to keep their noses to the ground and plot those piles of festering excreta on polar graph paper.

We must ask: what is the application of this research? Is it pure science, or can it bring greater happiness to mankind? I vote for the latter.

Enlightened by this research, hunters with hunting dogs need no longer carry compasses.

Hello once again, Dear Reader!  I apologize for my long absence, but I was drawn again into the ignoble pursuit of coin, viz., I had to make a living. But a recent event has drawn me back to the more valuable work of chronicling our civilization’s (sic) demise.

I am sure that you recall from your distant youth the famous novel by Anthony Burgess entitled “The Wanting Seed,” one of whose premises was that the governments of the planet continually engaged in warfare in order to generate bodies that could be chopped up, packaged, and sold to the masses as canned meat. (Appropriately enough, the canning was performed in China, and the cans were labeled with the ideograph for “man.” Sort of like today.) Similarly, you also recall the film “Soylent Green,” starring Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson, in which the eponymous substance, supposedly a soy product, was actually composed of the remains of the dear departed, since the planet had become polluted and was now incapable of producing any other crop than us.

Well, that was bad enough. But now life is imitating art in an even more revolting fashion. New Scientist, a respectable rag, has informed me (23 May 2014 edition) that an edible insect farm has opened for business in the well-known third world country of Youngstown, Ohio. The operating entity, Big Cricket Farms, has filled a warehouse with what the publication describes as “a twitching mass of European house crickets.” I love that “twitching mass.” It conjures up fond memories of low budget horror flicks in which teenagers are devoured. Unfortunately, in this instance, the teenagers will be the ones doing the devouring. The firm plans to execute the crickets, grind them up into “flour,” and use the cricket stuff to bake cookies and dipping chips (called “chirps.”)

This insidious plot is being carried out jointly with a firm called Six Foods which is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts (where else?). The Six Foods folks believe that they can use their overwhelming intellectual powers (no doubt honed to a heretofore unheard of degree of sharpness by Harvard, MIT, and other hotbeds of learned insanity) to overcome what they describe as the “yuck” factor, by using green marketing. Cricket farming uses very little water; emits a very small amount of greenhouse gases when compared to those belching, farting ruminants that produce porterhouse steaks and lamb chops; and crickets are fantastically efficient in converting fodder into protein: 1.7 kilograms of feed per kilogram of cricket protein, compared to 10 kg of fodder per kg of steak or its gustatory equivalent.

And this unholy cabal is not alone. Tiny Farms in Austin, Texas is producing “gut loaded” crickets which taste like apples or honey. Tony chefs from expensive eateries are adding insects to their concoctions (like the prices alone weren’t enough to make you throw up!)

The end is near. If they can con us into eating bugs, what’s next? I think that the next step is selling us bacterial sludge. We can  pump out the septic tank, mix the contents with sugar, and sell it as a dessert topping or frosting mix. In the alternative, we can mix it with spices and sell it as a chopped meat extender. Sort of like Hamburger Helper.

Uh oh.