Corona | Coming Attractions

I suggested this a few years back. I only half meant it, of course. Like most people, I'm a woefully uninformed and unqualified backseat driver when it comes to scientific breakthroughs.

Sometimes we laypeople will say dumb shit like "Now that we have a better handle on AIDS, why can't we figure out how to use it to kill cancer?" Usually, it's because we're stoned. In my case, I'm dumb enough to ask these sorts of questions without even being stoned.

Anyway, I think the "Let's use AIDS to kill cancer!" suggestion is one of the oldies, at this point. I'm pretty sure I was one of many idiots who suggested it. Another one of the oldies is the ol' "Why don't we just manufacture some ozone and pipe it up to the ozone layer?" question. (A more violent variation involves setting off an "ozone bomb." Seems kinda crazy.) I don't know how many stoners I've heard ask this question. More than two, probably.

I wasn't one of the people who suggested the ozone thing. That one seemed too stupid even for me, and I'm pretty stupid!

Ah, but can we give give people cancer to fight their AIDS?

We don't need to.

Didn't they call AIDS "the gay cancer" during the early years?

It was the happiest cancer in town.

Using HIV to kill cancer.  Well now I've seen everything!

That previous sentence would be a good name for a thread.

Is not snake anti-venom made from the venom of a snake?

They tried making cancer antivenin from the venom of a cancer, but it just made the cancer more cancery.

Obviously the mix-up there occurred because they were supposed to be treating the cancer, not the venom of a cancer. Whoever came up with that idea was probably stoned.

They did it so they would not feel so all alone.

Everybody must get stoned.

 I read a really interesting book, "The Emperor of Maladies," about the history of what we know about cancer. There are so many ways for cells to mutate and cancers to develop that there will never be a single effective treatment for all cancers.

Squadron Supreme suggests otherwise.

They're on another earth, though. They may have different scientific principals there.

Our own Morpheus interviews Neil Gaiman:

 Bullshit.  Looks nothing like Laurence Fishburne.

Poor Morpheus. He names himself after a Gaiman character, and everybody always assumes he named himself that because he's a fan of the Matrix movies.

From reading the lyrics online, I knew that the line in "On a Plain" was supposed to be "I love myself better than you," but in the actual song I always thought it sounded like "by myself - better than you." It's clearer in the vocals-only version.

Looks like the Beatles medley has already been taken down. Bummer. It was good stuff.

I've had trouble making out my share of Nirvana lyrics, but I never had a problem with that one.

 Little Richard is not qualified.

Damn it, all I could think about when he started singing "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" was this:
http://youtu.be/FQ5I8wIy-H8

That's probably because you didn't grow up with the song.

I've almost certainly mentioned this before, but my read of "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" is that he's sitting there contemplating suicide. I also like to pretend that Gladys Knight and the Pips' "Midnight Train to Georgia" is a sequel to the song. If it is a sequel, it means he didn't kill himself. That said, going back to Georgia is sadder than suicide.

Knowing that Jim Weatherly's original title for the song was "Midnight Train to Houston" and that it was changed to "Georgia" after the fact only helps sell the illusion for me. Sure, the change was made by Cissy Houston (Whitney's mom) before it ever even got to the Pips, but that doesn't mean that maybe Cissy didn't have "(Sittin' On) the Dock of the Bay" in mind when she made the change. 

Of course, she probably made the change because her last name is Houston. But still!