On Transgenesis

I didn't particularly enjoy last Tuesday's Fringe (I thoroughly enjoyed this week's ep, though). Fringe, like all Jaybrams shows, requires a lot of suspension of disbelief. (Yes, even Felicity; they had that fucking Time Warp thing in the last season.) But there are some things that are just too goddamn out there to take. On this list you'll find transgenesis.

Transgenesis in and of itself isn't unbelievable--researchers have been doing it for a while now. Take a gene out, put one in from a different source, blah blah DNA-cakes. But actually making some sort of chimera? No. No, no, no. There is a reason these beings are mythical, people. But if you're going to go all mythical, don't just go for broke. What's wrong with starting with, like, a unicorn? That's more realistic. ("More" being a relative term, here.)

Of course, now that I've roundly dismissed the possibility of a "frankenrhino" (as Pacey called the creature in the show), I find out they're making fluorescent puppies.

I'm not really a militant animal rights activist. I eat meat. I eat meat from fast-food restaurants that probably treat their cows horribly before slaughtering them in an inhumane fashion. This is because, when you have no money, you cannot afford to buy free-range bison steaks from those guys in Union Square. You can afford one McChicken sandwich off the Dollar Value Menu.

But this just doesn't sit well with me. I know, I know, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette (or cure cancer), but...Puppies. Cloning. Can't we stick to cloning rats?