Dumb quote of the day--the blood is the life edition
I told him that I didn't think that was something that I was going to consider, since I had served under Pres. Reagan when he was my Commander in Chief when I was in the ARMY from '87-'91 and that I was a real fan of Reaganomics and felt that Pres. Reagan himself would rather see me sell it rather than donating it.- the putative owner of a sample vial containing
Reagan's dried blood,
as quoted in an auction listing for said vial.
I'm not a fan of Ronald Reagan. I thought he was a pretty awful President when I was growing up, and the only thing that's really had an impact on my opinion is just how awful one of his recent successors was. George W. Bush lowered the bar so low, you can find yourself in a meaningful debate with someone over whether he was a worse President than James Buchanan (personally, I think "don't destroy the country" ought to be on a Presidential shortlist of things to do/not do, so I'm firmly in the Buchanan-Was-The-Worst-President-Ever camp; I'm also prone to think Nixon was worse than G.W. Bush, though I have to concede Nixon's foreign policy achievements might nearly cancel the whole "had to resign in disgrace to avoid being impeached and indicted" misunderstanding that so-very-slightly tarnished his legacy--then again, there's Cambodia).
But whether Reagan was a shitty President, like I think, or rode unicorns and shat kittens while fighting Sauron like Grover Norquist thinks, I think one thing we might all agree on is: if you had a thirty-one-year-old vial of Ronald Reagan's dried blood, he'd probably want you to dispose of it in an appropriate and sanitary manner.
Okay, granted: we all know that Reagan was not a fan of government regulations. So, perhaps, he would have deemed OSHA's advisories for phlebotomists and others handling blood a waste of taxpayer money. I guess we'll never really know if he would have vetoed The Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000 (PDF link). Could be he would have seen these kinds of measures as interfering with an employer's right to throw used vials of blood into dumpsters to be found by little kids and hobo vampires. So I'm speculating, actually. Maybe we can't all agree that the 40th President Of The United States would have preferred it if some guy's dead mom who worked at Bio Science Laboratories in Maryland in 1981 had, instead of asking if she could keep a used vial with traces of blood residue, put the blood in with the medical waste to be burned in the incinerator. Maybe he wouldn't say today, "Sonny, thank you for serving your country when I was in the White House, but would you mind burning that for me?"
Given the impact of Reaganomics on the poor, maybe he favored people selling blood. Just seems a little weird, is all.
The Atlantic says the auction isn't surprising, and I guess that's true enough, but it isn't what I mean by weird. At this point in my life, I've about decided my fellow Americans are mostly dumb enough to buy anything, and the way some people revere Reagan (and the way a lot of the ones who don't tiptoe around his name), there's nothing "surprising" about some yutz being willing to pay $14,404.99 (as of this writing) for a holy-of-holies, like some mediaeval twit paying out the nose for one of Jesus' several thousand knucklebones (at least the blood vial has some semblance of authentication).
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, though, if the top bidder ended up being Mr. Norquist, and if his plan was to open the vial under the white-cold light of the moon on the next February 6 and lick the vial clean of whatever it contains. In doing so he might consume the spirit of the Reagan and take on the properties of the Reagan's soul. If it were somehow to work--Grover Norquist with charisma, can you imagine? And of course he'd have to become a Democrat, is the weirdest part of it, seeing as how that's the party most closely-aligned with Reagan's policies and rhetoric these days. (Yes, that would be weirder than Norquist eating dried blood, which is something I wouldn't put past him now. The blood of puppies and whatever adorable babies of illegal immigrants Karl Rove has passed over in his prowlings, I'd expect.)
Speaking of Rove, of course we have to imagine the possibility he and Norquist could get into a bidding war over the relic, which they'd need to settle in the traditional Republican fashion: a fight to the death with a Third World country with no air defense to speak of. That's right, "with", not "in"; they fight each other, somebody might get his suit wrinkled. Plus, these days (and as a believer in non-violence I'm loathe to be the one to point this out), if they fight each other, the fact neither one probably knows how to throw a punch would make it on YouTube in hours. Four broken thumbs and they won't be able to play golf with anyone from Lockheed Martin for months and where will our national defense be then?
As to anyone who's worried the usual suspects will be outbid by a Republican mad scientist intent on cloning Ronald Reagan, I think there's little to be worried about, there: it would involve stem cell research, so the whole concept is DOA. This is why we'll see a clone of JFK well before anyone clones a Republican: Democrats don't believe in the sanctity of life and Kennedy left genetic material everywhere. You can write Clinton into that joke if you think it'd be funnier that way. Also Your Mom, if she's old enough: that John Kennedy rambled far and wide.
But whether Reagan was a shitty President, like I think, or rode unicorns and shat kittens while fighting Sauron like Grover Norquist thinks, I think one thing we might all agree on is: if you had a thirty-one-year-old vial of Ronald Reagan's dried blood, he'd probably want you to dispose of it in an appropriate and sanitary manner.
Okay, granted: we all know that Reagan was not a fan of government regulations. So, perhaps, he would have deemed OSHA's advisories for phlebotomists and others handling blood a waste of taxpayer money. I guess we'll never really know if he would have vetoed The Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000 (PDF link). Could be he would have seen these kinds of measures as interfering with an employer's right to throw used vials of blood into dumpsters to be found by little kids and hobo vampires. So I'm speculating, actually. Maybe we can't all agree that the 40th President Of The United States would have preferred it if some guy's dead mom who worked at Bio Science Laboratories in Maryland in 1981 had, instead of asking if she could keep a used vial with traces of blood residue, put the blood in with the medical waste to be burned in the incinerator. Maybe he wouldn't say today, "Sonny, thank you for serving your country when I was in the White House, but would you mind burning that for me?"
Given the impact of Reaganomics on the poor, maybe he favored people selling blood. Just seems a little weird, is all.
The Atlantic says the auction isn't surprising, and I guess that's true enough, but it isn't what I mean by weird. At this point in my life, I've about decided my fellow Americans are mostly dumb enough to buy anything, and the way some people revere Reagan (and the way a lot of the ones who don't tiptoe around his name), there's nothing "surprising" about some yutz being willing to pay $14,404.99 (as of this writing) for a holy-of-holies, like some mediaeval twit paying out the nose for one of Jesus' several thousand knucklebones (at least the blood vial has some semblance of authentication).
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, though, if the top bidder ended up being Mr. Norquist, and if his plan was to open the vial under the white-cold light of the moon on the next February 6 and lick the vial clean of whatever it contains. In doing so he might consume the spirit of the Reagan and take on the properties of the Reagan's soul. If it were somehow to work--Grover Norquist with charisma, can you imagine? And of course he'd have to become a Democrat, is the weirdest part of it, seeing as how that's the party most closely-aligned with Reagan's policies and rhetoric these days. (Yes, that would be weirder than Norquist eating dried blood, which is something I wouldn't put past him now. The blood of puppies and whatever adorable babies of illegal immigrants Karl Rove has passed over in his prowlings, I'd expect.)
Speaking of Rove, of course we have to imagine the possibility he and Norquist could get into a bidding war over the relic, which they'd need to settle in the traditional Republican fashion: a fight to the death with a Third World country with no air defense to speak of. That's right, "with", not "in"; they fight each other, somebody might get his suit wrinkled. Plus, these days (and as a believer in non-violence I'm loathe to be the one to point this out), if they fight each other, the fact neither one probably knows how to throw a punch would make it on YouTube in hours. Four broken thumbs and they won't be able to play golf with anyone from Lockheed Martin for months and where will our national defense be then?
As to anyone who's worried the usual suspects will be outbid by a Republican mad scientist intent on cloning Ronald Reagan, I think there's little to be worried about, there: it would involve stem cell research, so the whole concept is DOA. This is why we'll see a clone of JFK well before anyone clones a Republican: Democrats don't believe in the sanctity of life and Kennedy left genetic material everywhere. You can write Clinton into that joke if you think it'd be funnier that way. Also Your Mom, if she's old enough: that John Kennedy rambled far and wide.
UPDATE, May 25th, 2012: The takers and parasites win! The blood is going to be donated to the Reagan Library after all, instead of being sold as originally planned.
Comments
re: hobo vampires
Are these:
1.) Vampires who can't make it in normal vampire society or simply heeded the call of the road and became hobos?
2.) a) Hobos who became vampires and are simply following their pre-vampire careers? b) If this is the case, wouldn't they be called "vampire hobos"?
3.) Both 1 & 2.
4.) Something else. If so what?
It seems to me that vampire hobos would be pretty good at spreading vampirism since they are already used to the rigors of life on the road. Any good vampire reduction plan will have to take them into account.
Hobo vampires are vampires who ride boxcars, carry bindles, communicate with each other through chalk symbols, and are often jailed for vagrancy. They often go door-to-door, offering to do some kind of yardwork or painting in exchange for blood.
Vampire hobos, on the other hand, are hobos who are suffering from the curse of vampirism, whether acquired before or after they became hobos. Vampire hobos hop trains, carry their possessions in a makeshift sack made from a bandana or similar cloth tied round the end of a stick, scribble graffiti on things, and will frequently panhandle for blood (sometimes going up to people's houses and saying they'll repair a fence or something for a few drops of blood).
The crucial thing is that you must not ever confuse a hobo vampire and a vampire hobo. Such a fatal mistake could well be fatal, and might even result in death. Or worse: you might find yourself inflicted with hoboism, your soulless, undead corpse consigned to roam the Earth seeking park benches to sleep on and singing fell songs about the reputed existence of an enormous geographic feature consisting of a vast quantity of "confectionery mineral composed of relatively large sugar crystals... formed by allowing a supersaturated solution of sugar and water to crystallize onto a surface suitable for crystal nucleation" where the first job-making entrepreneur was subjected to capital punishment.
I hope that clears some things up! Learning is half the battle!
Did you mean to link to this?