5 Degrees Of...

From cancer to where the Matrix sequels went wrong in 5 moves, are you ready?

So I saw this commercial for a Seattle area hospital that is specializing in brand new cancer research. And I got to thinking that nature throws out diseases as a way to keep our human population in check (as we don't seem responsible enough to do it ourselves), and the better we get at fighting these diseases, the more horrendous things start coming our way: flesh eating bacteria, zombie plagues... Just the science of organ transplant is pretty amazing when you think about it.

I met a guy who had a kidney transplant. It had been nearly a year to the day since the operation when I had met him. He had some mixed feelings about being alive, but having a part from someone inside him that had died a year ago. At least he said he had mixed feelings. He said that the discussion of cloning for the harvesting of organs was a big one in transplant circles, he said this in the middle of a discussion about that movie, The Island (which deals with this idea). I wanted to ask if most people in transplant circles were high.

I never saw The Island (well, I saw the pirate movie The Island back in the day - it was the first rated R movie that I ever saw. Thanks Drunk Uncle Paul), nor did I see Multiplicity with Michael Keaton, but I have seen Star Wars Episode II-Attack of the Clones. So I know a thing or two about cloning.

When I first heard of the "clone wars" back with that very first Star Wars movie when I was a kid, my mind spun trying to imagine what that must have been like. I imagined clones as the bad guys. I also imagined clones as these thin, pale-faced guys who all looked exactly like. For some reason I always saw them charging on our heroes by the thousands, over dusty and arid plains.

I think I was a little disappointed with the clone wars as they were finally realized in subsequent films because I liked what I had imagined better. This, for me, is much like the city of Zion in the Matrix sequels. Zion was the last stronghold of humans, a city buried far beneath the earth. When they mentioned it in the first Matrix, again my mind reeled in attempts to imagine this. There was no way that any footage they produced was going to match what was in the movie-goers minds...


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: Where Is My Mind? by The Pixies