Roach Shots For All

The Sci-Fi Channel had one of their ‘homemade’ movies on Saturday night. It was called “Larva”. The plot was basically the same as always, the super rich business guy messes with something he shouldn’t have in order to make a bunch more money and people get killed. This time the rich guy messed with the genetics of feed for cows that made the cows grow quicker and better. Problem was the parasites in the meat grew up genetically altered too. They became big people eating monsters. (I love those cheapo Sci-Fi movies.)

This started me thinking about how we live constantly with stuff like bacteria and parasites. We have lots of different kinds in our homes, where we work, everywhere we go and even inside us. There are even some called ‘good bacteria’ inside us that we need to live healthy. Doesn’t that sound gross? It weirds me out sometimes thinking about it.

We live with this stuff, never thinking much about it until we get sick. Getting sick usually comes from coming into contact with some bug we haven’t met yet. I remember going to this kids play-place with a friend once. It was one of those places that was filled to the brim with activities and games and a munchie place. It was great. Problem was that I forgot about ‘the strange germ’ thing. There were obviously a ton of bugs in that joint that my body hadn’t met up with before. Before we left, I started feeling tired. I thought it was just from running around like a crazy person with a bunch of 5 years olds. The next morning, I found out differently. I was sick for a week. All kinds of sick. You name it, I had it. Lesson learned, going to places with lots of strange germs crawling around, you get sick.

I’ve also had the occasion to be so tired that the ‘normal’ amount of bio-burden in my system has been able to take over and I’ve gotten sick from that. Running yourself down can weaken the immune system to the point that the bugs take over. That sucks too.

I was thinking how weird it would be if some of the genetically engineered stuff really did get into our food. I wonder if giant parasites would come after us? Or maybe we would end up being altered in some way. Like being big giant fat slobs with tentacles growing from our armpits.

Some of the changes could be cool though. Maybe some people would grow wings like a fly. Hopefully they would learn to fly in a straight line. It would be weird to be able to fly but mostly in circles. Or maybe someone would be able to live under water as well as above. That would be really cool. That could hurt the scuba business though.

I’d like to be able to stick to walls and stuff like Spiderman. That would be a fun genetic alteration. Of course, it would come from a genetically altered bacteria, so it might also mean leaving a trail of slime behind me everywhere I went. I wonder if it would be worth that?

What we need is some kind of bacteria shot that makes us immune to all the other bacteria out there. Like maybe a cockroach shot. Those roaches live through everything. They’ve been around through every age of the world, ice age, stone age, flood age (?) all of them. They’ve got something going on that keeps them healthy, or at least surviving. If we could figure out what makes them so tough, we might be better off. Of course, getting past the fact that it’s a roach shot would be hard.

Now I’m freaking myself out. Maybe I see too many of these Sci-Fi movies?