Fun with the structure of Google+ July 22, 2011

Note: Like many of you, I’m enjoying the pleasant waters of Google+, and basking in the NOT-FUCKING-FACEBOOK of it all. And like many others, I’ve found that being added to circles by people we have either no connection with, or only the most tenuous of links to, is… well, kind of like someone talking on a cell phone on a bus or train. It’s annoying out of all proportion to what it really should be, and seems rude, to boot. So, like others I made a public post asking people to introduce themselves if they fell into this category, and got no response other than more adds from more strangers and pseudo-strangers. So taking a different tact, I decided that I would call these people out by writing public comments to my stream about them, based purely upon made up-information gleaned from their user icon. This is the first of these responses. Read on:

In the 50's and 60's, the US Military found itself propelled into potential new and unconventional arenas for combat as part of the evolving fronts of the cold war. During this period, we've come to know of projects such as MK Ultra. In the unsurprising absence of any records surrounding so many of these unorthodox projects, paranoid rumors have found fertile ground, in turn seeding the imagination of so many crackpots and lunatics who have shared theories. Finding the narrative of truth amongst the dross of this oftentimes hilarious and unbelievable paranoia is a job so herculean that the full truth will never be known - we can only marvel as the occasional nugget of golden truth is revealed, making us wonder about what tomorrow will bring, and another fascinating window into military and government paranoia.

Tonight, we may all sleep slightly easier as another facet is revealed by the light of truth.

In 1969, Operation Lubricus found its genesis in the closeted imagination of Army General Thaddeus Gross. Gross was so secretly infatuated with the rugged, steely-eyed good looks of a certain hollywood actor, his tortured psyche reconciled his attraction in the only way he could:

He weaponized Rip Torn.

The idea was that faced with an endless vista of craggly faced, flint-eyed, and determined visages of this actor, any ground war would immediately tip in the favor of the United States. With pilfered samples of his DNA (stolen off of hairbrushes that were in turn thieved from Rip's dressing rooms on various sets), cloning began immediately.

It was a disaster. While the 60’s and 70’s were truly the golden age for pentagon-fueled mad-science, our understanding even today of the process of cloning is imperfect (although breakthroughs have been made in understanding the critical role MSG plays, we are many years off), and in the age of David Cassidy and the Osmonds, that understanding was positively medieval. Dozens of batches were failures – sometimes an extra eye or cleft chin, or a beard growing on the back of the skull. Still others were perfect, yet brain-dead (unconfirmed reports and rumors swirl around another Hollywood actor, Steven Segal, that this is where he truly originated from).

In 1977, with public scrutiny around projects such as MK Ultra reaching unacceptable levels, Operation Lubricus was deemed a failure, despite its single success of one lone clone. General Gross, for his own personal reasons that would not see the light of day for many decades, could not see this one living, breathing facsimile of his secret lust carelessly rendered into its base organic components. So, after replacing it with a mannequin made of pomade and rogue samples of Burt Reynold’s chest hair, he spirited him out under cover of night to his home, claiming to his wife that their new arrival was their new poolboy – who would also be breaking ground in the back yard to build said pool.

Unfortunately, upon waking the next morning, Thaddeus Gross found this clone vigorously copulating with his wife’s bed of prized petunias – and worse, the screams from the second floor bedroom window indicated that his wife was also well aware that the chastity of the rest of the garden had been, if you will excuse the pun, also deflowered. With a heavy heart, Gross drove most of the day to Kankakee Illinois, and after applying a rag soaked in chloroform, abandoned his love-child in a dumpster behind a Piggly Wiggly.

To this day, you can still find this clone scraping our a feral existence from the cast-offs of the pig’s customers. He’ll tell you, in science’s best approximation of a whiskey-and-cigar-soaked voice, about waking up in a secret lab… being mercilessly drilled on the mannerisms of Rip Torn by the Army’s best drama coach… the first stirrings of secret lust in the dewy morning while gazing upon the prize topiary of Mrs Gross… and of the name bestowed upon him by proud, yet uncaring scientists…

… John Gathly.