They're giving us fake sheep and monkeys?

Well, it seems that some really brainy-type scientists have been banging their head together and concluded that what this messed-up world really needs is some fake sheep and fake monkeys.

Now, if these fake sheep and fake monkeys are the precursors to some drooling pod people that you silly scientists have simmering on some back Bunsen burners, don't you think this is an expensive lesson in futility?

Climb out of those dungeons, kids, and take a real good look around! This sorry Earth and her sorrier inhabitants are living on borrowed time.

You crazed exterminators have been saturating our Earth with your deadly concoctions for decades, and we'll be picking the DDT out of our teeth until hell freezes over. Of course, with your help, this could happen any time now.

We have cried out to you in helpless desperation for cures for innumerable diseases and abominations that continually assault us. We reach out to you for answers, and you hand us fake sheep!

Your noxious gases and vials of venom have turned our worst futuristic nightmares into monstrous realities and yet, like evil wizards on a rampage, you huddle tirelessly over your bubbling cauldrons and unashamedly dish out a cornucopia of chemically produced doomsday plagues. Apocalyptic cooks in kitchens from hell!

We scream at you to stop the madness, and you toss a couple of fake monkeys at us!

You have made it possible for us to annihilate this entire planet in a matter of hours by inventing a potpourri of hellish weapons. Has it never occurred to you snake-oil peddlers that you are all going to dissolve in that creeping cloud of radioactive hooch right along with the rest of us poor slobs? Your designer clones can't die for you when Armageddon hits.

Haven't you white-coated cut-ups seen photos of starving and diseased children dying in the dirt of some ravaged third-world country? It seems to me that anyone smart enough to figure out how to smoke an entire planet in a matter of hours could certainly shake up a few test tubes and invent some souped-up crops that can be grown in dirt and sand without water. Hell, by now you brains should be MAKING water!

The Great Sperm Wars and the Uterus Rental Agreement Debates have lawyers and judges and clergy at each others' throats in bogged-down courtrooms, and now some Frankensteinian, glassy-eyed goons are going to be stirred into this genetic jambalaya. I can hardly wait to see what's being served for dessert!

Of course, you sci-fi fiends tell us that you will be cloning certain animals, like pigs, in order to harvest organs for humans. Well, by now we should be internally reproducing our own organs. There are creatures that can already do this without your help. Your pork substitute should already be passé! By now we should be growing new limbs, too. Creatures like starfish do it regularly, also without your help.

It seems you genetic geniuses can't even do what comes naturally to some of your lesser colleagues.

Listen up, you Dr. Moreau wannabes! Get that cart BEHIND the horse. Mix up a big, foaming batch of old-fashioned common sense, drink every last drop, and figure out how to turn this Earth right-side-out again.

THEN march those kooky clones past the bandstand, and maybe we'll throw a few streamers your way!

With only one column to my credit, someone has already taken potshots at my can! Not to worry, shooter. We installed a trash compactor and as yet have not lost a single pet or teen-ager. Now, about those doughnuts!