Blagojevich

I wonder who's governor in between the impeachment of an Illinois Governor and the swearing in of an Illinois Lt. Governor? Probably Mayor Daley.

Obama prefix is the new Gate suffix

The only other time I’ve ever seen a prefix take off like this was amongst the Smurfs. And like the smurfs, there don’t seem to be negative Obama prefixes, unlike the use of the popular gate suffix in conjunction with a scandal. And they are almost all nicknames for inspired individuals rather than negative events like gate is. The one negative Obama based word that comes to mind is the suffix blend use in NObama. But at least once people start using his name in a negative suffix or prefix way, we’ll get to cut down on the use of gate. I’m sure I’ve missed a bunch but below are Obama inspired word combinations and Watergate inspired uses of the word gate. One day, FOX News created or not, there will be an Obamagate and the prefix and suffix will collide.


Smurftastic Obamacombos (I don’t know if there’s a term for these things but I’m coining it):

Obamastration = Obama Administration

Obamabration = Obama Celebration

Obamamama = Michelle Obama or Mothers who support Obama

Obamanation = People who support Obama

Obamariffic = Describing something as terrific

Obamanominator = Superdelegate who nominated Obama

Obamacan = Republican who crossed over party lines to vote for Obama

Obamacrat = Democrats who support Obama

Obamafication = Being excited for change due to Obama

Obamafied = Adopting a Yes We Can attitude

Obama’d = Being effected by Obama

Obamabration = To party in the name of Obama

Obamatarian = Avid Obama supporter

Obamatized = Being moved by Obama’s speeches

Obamatopia = The White House with Obama in it, play on Camelot term for Kennedy
White House

Obamauguration = Obama inauguration

Obamazon = Female Obama supporter

Obamerica = US under Obama’s leadership

Obamicon = Making yourself into an Obama marketing poster http://obamicon.me

Obaminator = Hard working Obama campaigner

Obaminatrix = Hard working female Obama campaigner

Obamaniac = Person obsessed with Obama


GATE SUFFIX USAGE

Simpson’s Weightgate = Is the laziest use I’ve ever seen. Jessica Simpson gained weight = scandal

Monicagate = Monica Lewinsky and President Bill Clinton sex scandal

Nannygate = Government officials not paying taxes on their nannies

Troopergate = Arkansas state troopers sex scandal involving Bill Clinton or Sarah Palin’s firing of the Alaskan state public safety commissioner for not firing her former brother-in-law state trooper

Whitewatergate = Clinton investment scandal

Travelgate = Firings of White House Travel Office employees

Hookergate = Defense contractors bribed congressman for political favors – I’m not sure why it’s called Hookergate, and I really don’t care to investigate.

Rathergate = The memo shown on 60 Minutes that took down Dan Rather

Nipplegate = Justin Timberlake exposing Janet Jackson’s nipple at the Superbowl halftime show

Fox News

I wonder if Hannity's "liberal translation treatment" is good for your pores.

THE END OF THE CIVIL WAR

Barack’s final rally before election day was in Manassas, VA. The site of the first major battle of the Civil War. A battle which the residents of DC traveled out to Bull Run to watch while picnicking. The beginning of the Civil War and the end of the Civil War, all in one location.

Of course, during the Battle of Bull Run the picnickers ran off in fear when the cannon balls started flying. This time, when Obama finished speaking, the voters triumphantly, enthusiastically… slowly, trudged home in bumper to bumper traffic.

Fun Fact: Manassas, VA, is the same town where Lorena Bobbit, in honor of the Civil War surgeons who came before her, amputated her husband's penis and threw it out the window. The same surgeon who reattached Mr. Bobbit’s penis, by the way, was unable to reattach the riding-lawn-mower-severed fingers of my grandfather some years earlier.

And now, Barack Obama, this man from Illinois, the land of Lincoln, the Civil War president who freed the slaves, is about to become the first black President. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream will now be realized so close to where he said those words, on the opposite end of the mall from where he stood and gave the greatest speech ever given.

On the topic of iconic images. I’d like to point out how the 1988 movie “They Live”, starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, influenced Barack Obama’s election.

The artist who designed the wildly popular Barack Obama Hope poster is the same one who designed the Andre the Giant Obey stickers that you see everywhere, wonder what the fuck they are in the moment, and then promptly forget about.

An artist named Shepard Fairey took the word Obey from the film “They Live.” A film about aliens disguised as humans who take over the world through subliminal messages in our surroundings.

The Hope message was far from subliminal. They were quite in your face and you were very aware of them. But that is the market of today. We don’t want to be marketed to surreptitiously. We want to be aware of it.

So future Presidential candidates listen up – make sure you have a TRENDY poster. But don’t forget to have a sincere message to go with it.

Yes, the Civil War is over. Will the re-enactors please SURRENDER their iconic rebel flag?

The Brokeback Women

I made the The Brokeback Women Trailer when Brokeback Mountain was out but now that the original movie has been remade I think it's time that this trailer sees the light of day. Plus, people will actually know what movie I'm talking about: The Women (1939). Or at least they should

NEMESIS – THE HUMAN GENOME MAPPING RACE

While attending George Mason University I made a living as a lab tech at Genetics & IVF Institute (the McDonald’s of Genetics). It’s the place to go if you want to get artificially pregnant, check to see if your baby’s gonna be Downs or find out “who’s your daddy?” While I was there we lost a few techs to the Human Genome rivalry. The Celera lab paid more and you got your own Perkin-Elmer Applied Biosystems 3700. Science geek heaven. But I prefer to analyze the DNA of the promiscuous. So I stuck with Paternity testing.

At the center of the Human Genome mapping race are Francis Collins and Craig Venter. Both were working on the Human Genome project at NIH. But since NIH was taking so long to map out the genome, Craig Venter left NIH to form Celera and use his controversial “shotgun” technique in order to speed up the process and profit off of the Human Genome. The term “shotgun” may bring to mind southern accents and neon orange hunting vests but it’s just another example of scientists trying to make themselves sound sexy. Like Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism. I don’t have to tell you what Fragment Length is alluding to.

But seriously, folks, the shotgun technique allows you to skip “junk DNA” in order to get to the DNA that we know the function of. It is more profitable to supply the sequence of a location that we know to cause cancer than one we don’t know the use of. And in February 2001, when Venter announced that the Human Genome was complete, it was NOT complete. The “junk DNA” had not been mapped. But the papers carried the headline “Human Genome Complete.” If a scientist tells you it’s so, it must be true. It was not actually completed until over two years later in April of 2003. Francis Collins and his team at NIH finished the job and the headlines said the same thing and the general public still didn’t notice.

Prior to this James Watson left NIH. Yes, that’s the double helix Watson of Watson and Crick fame. I know we all remember where we were when we read “The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA.” It’s a landmark event in every child’s young life. But Watson’s reason for leaving was the opposite of Venter's. Watson objected to the director of NIH, Bernadine Healy, attempting to do the same thing as Venter – sell genes by granting patents and ownership rights on gene sequences.

Bernadine Healy was appointed to the position by George H.W. Bush “after a long search in which Bush insisted that the N.I.H. director be opposed to abortion.” Incidentally, she previously served under Reagan and now advises George W. Bush.

Bernadine Healy has a selective anti-science stance in opposition to stem cell research and evolution. From a recent article by Healy: “The United States is in the midst of a gold rush over human-embryo research.” But she and the Republicans supported the one scientific venture that they could really profit off of, selling genetic sequences to the researchers of cancer and other medical disorders. They would have thus delayed the finding of cures as the scientists would have had to do more fund raising in order to afford the sequences.

Gene patents stop innovation and quite frankly, they kill. It’s like having a monopoly. It’s like owning land because you drew a map of it first. You should own the map not the land. And therein lies the complication. Genes on paper are like maps. But if you use the same techniques, obviously techniques should be patented, you will come up with the same map. But the cost of a map should be negligible. Like the cost of the magazine it’s published in. And discovering heart disease shouldn’t allow you to have a patent on coronaries. If I have a heart attack do I have to pay residuals? You should just get credit for the work and a patent if you developed a technique. So here is the complication that logic brings us.

In March 2000, President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair announced that they were opposed to patenting genome sequences and that they should be swiftly published so that they would be available to all researchers. Celera's stock immediately took a dive as did the biotech reliant NASDAQ. An estimated $50 billion in biotech market capitalization was lost in two days.

This has happened in other areas of biotech. Such as the journey of Taq Polymerase or Thermus Aquaticus. You might remember it from its reign as Molecule of the year in 1989. It is the enzyme used in PCR which is a form of DNA analysis. This enzyme is necessary as it can survive in extremely high temperatures which allows for amplification. This basically means it allows us to get results from smaller amounts of blood or semen or whatever sample you’ve brought in to test. And, no, you can’t identify someone’s ashes. Please stop asking. The temperature that Taq Polymerase naturally resides in is so high that it was found in the geysers of Yellowstone National Park. The discoverer has profited off of it but it was found on public park land. So can someone own all of something because they found one of something? No. The courts decided that you cannot own all of something because you found one of something, thus making DNA extraction that much cheaper. The 818 is out – besides being the area code to Burbank it is the number of the Taq Patent. Either way Taq Polymerase is my favorite enzyme/porn name.

In conjunction with Healy’s “gold rush” quote and the NYTimes use of the term “bio-prospecting” I consider genetics labs across the country to be the Deadwood of our time. So let’s all set up camp and get us some whores. “If that’s what you fuckin’ do.” - Calamity Jane

P.S. Healy retired from the American Red Cross on December 31, 2001, amidst controversy over the handling of funds for victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

P.P.S. As of 2004 “Junk DNA” is no longer junk. "Ironically, what was damned as junk might turn out to be the secret of human complexity." Like you didn’t see that coming.

Low Gas Prices? Really?

On a walk the other day I passed a Santa Monica gas station which claims "Low Gas Prices" above a regular gas price of $4.35