I also have a degree in political science, so I'm at least somewhat qualified to assess and ruminate on the great issues of our day: Should we have invaded Iraq? Is there a fix to the health insurance problems? Is a bicameral legislature still an effective way to govern in modern times?
And, I've got kids including two currently in high school, one of whom is studying cell reproduction, DNA, meiosis, and other such weighty topics.
With that kind of background, it will not surprise you that The Boy and I spent over a half-hour pondering this exact question the other night:
What would happen if you cut Wolverine exactly in half?
Those of you who don't know Wolverine are, of course, saying "huh? It would die." Those of you who do know Wolverine are saying "Hmmm... what would happen?"
Wolverine:
Is -- more or less, I'm working off memories of comics from 20 or more years ago, since I tried on several occasions to watch the X-Men movie but I can't, I fall asleep every time (I'm serious; if I put it in my computer right now to watch I'd be dozing before I could get through the opening credits) a mutant who was modified to become a weapon by the military. Wolverine has those claws that shoot out of his knuckles, and his bones have been coated with (as I recall) adamantine (?) to make them more or less indestructible. Those are not his mutant powers, though. His powers are to heal himself instantly (The Cheerleader copies him) or close to instantly. That's why he was chosen for the experiment, since as you can imagine, coating someone's bones with metal would do a not inconsiderable amount of damage to them.
So Wolverine can heal up, and I was helping The Boy with his homework as we were both cooling down from our weekly basketball game (he regularly beats me, but yesterday had worked out after school and so was tired, making the game a little more even. More even in that neither he nor I could shoot, so he won 14-4. But I did pull off the most incredible juke/fake in the history of basketball. Driving for the basket, from the right like always (I can't really dribble with my left hand very well), I faked left to pull him that way to give me the open look, and faked him out so well that he went that way. The fake was so successful, in fact, that it fooled me, as I never made it back right. Unfortunately, the fake did not fool the ball, which continued back to the right and out of bounds.)(Some of you, like the Middle Daughter did, might question how taht is the best fake ever, so I'll explain: Have you ever seen a fake so good that it juked out even the player doing the fake? I didn't think so. I'm like the Michael Jordan of one-on-one basketball.)(Although to be fair, Michael Jordan was probably the Michael Jordan of one-on-one basketball.)
If there were an award for most consecutive parenthetical expressions, I've just done it. Let me use that as a little plug here -- a word from our sponsor, if you will-- as my You've Been Punctuated t-shirts have begun taking off, so as you read this entry (or any of my entries) you could also be wearing The Parentheses:
Back to my thought. There we were, hard at work on Biology, when it occurred to me: What if you cut Wolverine in half?
Starfish, you know, can grow a whole new starfish from just a small part of the original. They have the ability to heal themselves, so to speak. And I assumed that if Wolverine were to lose a finger, he'd regrow it. Lose an arm, same thing. But what about 1/2 of his body, exactly? Could he regrow the 1/2 he'd lost? And if it was exactly down the middle, which half would regrow?
Think about that: He'd grow two Wolverines, wouldn't he? He'd have to.
Just to break the monotony of text, here's a great Wolverine video:
So we talked about that, for a while, debated it, and eventually I won The Boy over to my side. He agrees with me. And he followed with me to my logical conclusion: Why not just keep cutting Wolverine in half until you have a whole army of Wolverines? Am I not smarter than the military geniuses who first created Wolverine when he was called Weapon X? (Something I learned about reading Alpha Flight comics? I loved Alpha Flight. They were around for too short of a time. Or maybe I quit reading comics too soon. )
(Another comic I liked, that was well done and I enjoyed despite being far too old for it? Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. Here's a sample page:
And one nice thing, one GREAT thing about the Internet? Instant nostalgia fix. I thought about Captain Carrot and was able to go instantly and read about it and remember the good old days.
Time for another plug:
You know, I'm putting these images and plugs and videos in here but I probably could have had your attention better if I'd just started the blog with this,
Who after all plays The Cheerleader and has the same powers, as I understand them, as the Wolverine, but who obviously ^^^ has better cleavage.
On a side note, which is more or less how I write all the time, The Cheerleader's character name is Claire Bennett and like everyone including me she has a Myspace page. I found that out because in searching for a picture of the Cheerleader I found an article that identified her as "Claire Bennett" and thought at first that was the actress' name, not the character's name.
Which is understandable; I'm not as up on pop culture as I should be, maybe, what with all the important questions I've got to deal with, right?
There are, among you, responsible parents out there who are throughout this entire post saying to yourself "What about the biology homework? What about the test? Did you ever get back to meiosis and mitosis? And for God's sake, did you make a stupid joke about those two words?"
Rest assured, I continued my good, good parenting. We did study, we did make sure that he understood how to do a Punnet square, and I did say this exact quote to him:
"Meiosis is cell division for sexual reproduction in which the cells reduce the number of chromosomes during division. Mitosis is what I put into my socksis."
The song this week? Rehab, by Amy Winehouse. No connection to the post, just a song cool enough that while I was playing it, the Middle Daughter asked that I add it to her playlist, too. Enjoy!
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