I think i just saw a red eyed dumpy wing drosophila melanogaster on the mirror in the bathroom.. i was going to crush it but noticed the red eye and then gave it a good examination. A few things came to me, the first being perhaps i look a little scruffy, the moustache is perhaps a little wild and unkempt, and my eyebrows are rather bushy, my eyes they are all squinty looking at a small fly that i observed and then identified. There was a time i did genetics experiments with D. Melanogaster, also know as the fruit fly. I had to get the magnifying glass out and i might be a bit wrong on the dumpy wing call, although it looked pretty dumpy to me... i could grab my fruit fly trap and do some wing comparisons, but these days I'm less in the business of breeding flies to express recessive alleles, and more in the business of fly extermination... so lets run with that on for a bit.
This is a fruit fly trap:
Mason jar, parchment paper and a chunk of over ripe banana (you can use a glass and an elastic if you don't have a mason jar). Take a pen and poke a few hols in the parchment paper and that will be full of fruit flies in no time... the old can find their way in but can't find there way out trick. i have seen a few escape but clearly it is an osmosis type of deal... not really but we have a low concentration of flies passing through a semipermeable membrane (a big fly couldn't get through there) to create a high concentration of flies.
Then you can roll the banana in the jar and take out the flies... or you can get water in there and give it a shake, or i guess you could go outside and let the flies go. i don't hate fruit flies, thy can be annoying when you are being swarmed by them, but that's why all smart people have fruit fly traps. And they are beneficial to humans believe it or not... they are "decomposers", breaking down organic matter to form useful soil. They also contain hundreds of genes that are homologous to human genes that can cause disease making them a fine study of what happens when these genes are defective and how the effects of these genes can be modified. It kind of opens the door for a sci-fi paranoia induced drug company conspiracy.
If a company could cause a disease that they could cure for a fee, and it could be spread with a fruit fly would they do it for 3 Billion dollars? Totally hypothetical that i just made that up, but kind of intriguing don't you think... Is there is a human out there who will put on a suit and sign the order to do just that if you pay him or her enough money? Of course, but I'm not sure fruit flies are a good vector to spread disease to humans, hence the sci-fi paranoia induced conspiracy label for this little absurd diversion. Mosquitoes would be much better suited seeing that they pierce the skin of humans making them a much more suitable vector. The real question is why bother infecting humans when you can just prey on their insecurities to separate them from their money. Create a bogus health pill and put your money into marketing and the suckers will line up and feel what the adds tell them they will feel.
I guess i started in the bathroom, or washroom as they say in America... have i come full circle in this bizarre and pointless exercise?
We all have our moments, some of them better than others. Maybe there is a song in there... actually i did write a song about the drosophila melanogaster some time ago, i don't even really remember it... i remember it was during the Vancouver Garbage strike that went on all summer, and lets just say it was a bumper year for the fruit fly. i think i was vacuuming the air in the kitchen just pulling them out of the air and perhaps i went over the edge... i have a feeling the song never really got finished as i probably got distracted... i think we had infant twins that year and a 3 year old. I know that because we had double diapers for the garbage strike, not that i am happy to announce i used disposable diapers in those years but the facts are the facts. Our first child we used cloth diapers... lets just say that disposable diapers are a better product in terms of diaper rash frequency, which relates to sleep ability and the whole avalanche that follows. That year i got into a debate with a "green blog" over diaper choices... the point i will concede is that i only tried one type of cloth diaper, perhaps there are others, but given the start up fees and the uncertainty i was in no mood to experiment. You are still washing the damn diaper which uses drinking water, and it you like to avoid dry heaving you sign up for a diaper service that burns fossil fuels as well. Power to the people who stay the course of the most environmentally responsible in the face of fecal matter. It is interesting however the stats on potty training, in countries where diapers are not very affordable children become potty trained at a much earlier age... when there is a will there is a way. If you can throw money at a problem you problem will stick around for longer, cause you are not working to solve it, you are just working to manage it.
Fecal matter is the main reason i will always be against pets... there are other reasons of course, but me dealing with fecal matter is the biggest one. i lived with a crazy loon one time who actually uttered the words "i like to clean a litter box", it was bullshit of course, the kind of thing said in the heat of an argument to counteract good logic. and in the end of course it was me who had to clean the litter box, because the person who loved to do it kept forgetting for some reason, and there is me dry heaving, suffering horribly, and then being mocked by the litter box loving loon for my weak stomach in dealing with this issue that i was very clear that i never under any circumstances wanted to deal with. It was a good lesson for me... don't give out trust easily and never agree to live in the same abode as cats. It is a lesson that has served me well to this day, in fact part of our wedding vows had the statement "and under no circumstances will i ever lose my fucking mind and think we need to get a pet". I mean i like to visit cats and dogs and if we can live on a farm one day i might reconsider my anti dog policy.. a good squirrel chasing dog could live the good life on my farm, but we shall cross that bridge when we get there. It would have to be a dog smart enough to go shit in the woods by the farm... we would need woods for spiritual clarity and to support an owl population to help pick off the rodents... but these are obvious points.
Is it weird that i went to the washroom, saw a fruit fly and now we are fantasising about a farm? Not in my world... why do this? it's a good question and I'm glad i asked it for you.. not quite sure what the answer is yet but let me wrap the right side of my moustache around my index finger and ponder that point for a while. I'm going to go with "weird is in the eye of the beholder", i think a lot of things that many people think are normal are weird, but i live in a town now who's motto is "keep Portland weird", and by chance i arrived here, but maybe it wasn't chance... perhaps it was destiny. In reality I'm not sure i could be in a better spot right now... so many thoughts coming, and i keep checking them. In some ways i am afraid to tweak and OMEN that is shining brightly upon me, never worry about what people think of you, just continue... Moo say's the cow, in the cow's world.
This is a fruit fly trap:
Mason jar, parchment paper and a chunk of over ripe banana (you can use a glass and an elastic if you don't have a mason jar). Take a pen and poke a few hols in the parchment paper and that will be full of fruit flies in no time... the old can find their way in but can't find there way out trick. i have seen a few escape but clearly it is an osmosis type of deal... not really but we have a low concentration of flies passing through a semipermeable membrane (a big fly couldn't get through there) to create a high concentration of flies.
Then you can roll the banana in the jar and take out the flies... or you can get water in there and give it a shake, or i guess you could go outside and let the flies go. i don't hate fruit flies, thy can be annoying when you are being swarmed by them, but that's why all smart people have fruit fly traps. And they are beneficial to humans believe it or not... they are "decomposers", breaking down organic matter to form useful soil. They also contain hundreds of genes that are homologous to human genes that can cause disease making them a fine study of what happens when these genes are defective and how the effects of these genes can be modified. It kind of opens the door for a sci-fi paranoia induced drug company conspiracy.
If a company could cause a disease that they could cure for a fee, and it could be spread with a fruit fly would they do it for 3 Billion dollars? Totally hypothetical that i just made that up, but kind of intriguing don't you think... Is there is a human out there who will put on a suit and sign the order to do just that if you pay him or her enough money? Of course, but I'm not sure fruit flies are a good vector to spread disease to humans, hence the sci-fi paranoia induced conspiracy label for this little absurd diversion. Mosquitoes would be much better suited seeing that they pierce the skin of humans making them a much more suitable vector. The real question is why bother infecting humans when you can just prey on their insecurities to separate them from their money. Create a bogus health pill and put your money into marketing and the suckers will line up and feel what the adds tell them they will feel.
I guess i started in the bathroom, or washroom as they say in America... have i come full circle in this bizarre and pointless exercise?
We all have our moments, some of them better than others. Maybe there is a song in there... actually i did write a song about the drosophila melanogaster some time ago, i don't even really remember it... i remember it was during the Vancouver Garbage strike that went on all summer, and lets just say it was a bumper year for the fruit fly. i think i was vacuuming the air in the kitchen just pulling them out of the air and perhaps i went over the edge... i have a feeling the song never really got finished as i probably got distracted... i think we had infant twins that year and a 3 year old. I know that because we had double diapers for the garbage strike, not that i am happy to announce i used disposable diapers in those years but the facts are the facts. Our first child we used cloth diapers... lets just say that disposable diapers are a better product in terms of diaper rash frequency, which relates to sleep ability and the whole avalanche that follows. That year i got into a debate with a "green blog" over diaper choices... the point i will concede is that i only tried one type of cloth diaper, perhaps there are others, but given the start up fees and the uncertainty i was in no mood to experiment. You are still washing the damn diaper which uses drinking water, and it you like to avoid dry heaving you sign up for a diaper service that burns fossil fuels as well. Power to the people who stay the course of the most environmentally responsible in the face of fecal matter. It is interesting however the stats on potty training, in countries where diapers are not very affordable children become potty trained at a much earlier age... when there is a will there is a way. If you can throw money at a problem you problem will stick around for longer, cause you are not working to solve it, you are just working to manage it.
Fecal matter is the main reason i will always be against pets... there are other reasons of course, but me dealing with fecal matter is the biggest one. i lived with a crazy loon one time who actually uttered the words "i like to clean a litter box", it was bullshit of course, the kind of thing said in the heat of an argument to counteract good logic. and in the end of course it was me who had to clean the litter box, because the person who loved to do it kept forgetting for some reason, and there is me dry heaving, suffering horribly, and then being mocked by the litter box loving loon for my weak stomach in dealing with this issue that i was very clear that i never under any circumstances wanted to deal with. It was a good lesson for me... don't give out trust easily and never agree to live in the same abode as cats. It is a lesson that has served me well to this day, in fact part of our wedding vows had the statement "and under no circumstances will i ever lose my fucking mind and think we need to get a pet". I mean i like to visit cats and dogs and if we can live on a farm one day i might reconsider my anti dog policy.. a good squirrel chasing dog could live the good life on my farm, but we shall cross that bridge when we get there. It would have to be a dog smart enough to go shit in the woods by the farm... we would need woods for spiritual clarity and to support an owl population to help pick off the rodents... but these are obvious points.
Is it weird that i went to the washroom, saw a fruit fly and now we are fantasising about a farm? Not in my world... why do this? it's a good question and I'm glad i asked it for you.. not quite sure what the answer is yet but let me wrap the right side of my moustache around my index finger and ponder that point for a while. I'm going to go with "weird is in the eye of the beholder", i think a lot of things that many people think are normal are weird, but i live in a town now who's motto is "keep Portland weird", and by chance i arrived here, but maybe it wasn't chance... perhaps it was destiny. In reality I'm not sure i could be in a better spot right now... so many thoughts coming, and i keep checking them. In some ways i am afraid to tweak and OMEN that is shining brightly upon me, never worry about what people think of you, just continue... Moo say's the cow, in the cow's world.
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