Friday, July 27, 2012

My heart is black and my lips are cold

Ah, this takes me back to those days at Heidelberg all those years ago... the classes... drinking Welde N° 1 vom faß at Großer Mohr... the duelling fraternities... You probably do not want to know about the location of my secret duelling scar.

Heart in saline solution

Also against the rules:
Securing heart with anchor
Spurtling around in their tank of Ringer's solution, these hearts are slippery little buggers, not at all easy to catch. Especially when there is a "no-hands" rule during the initiation ritual for joining the Anti-Hippocratic Society. The surgeons don't mind a few little toothmarks when the transplant finally arrives in-theatre, but they are less forgiving if entire bites are missing, so you have to take care.

A couple of less successful experiments
Inspired by the fact that squid and cuttlefish have the same fluid-squirty mode of locomotion used by hearts, here at Riddled Research Laboratory we have been exposing cephalopods to the Evolvamat in an attempt at mutating them into prosthetic blood-pump implants.* Any fule kno that the demand for donor hearts outstrips the supply.

Riddled Evolvamat at work
There were a couple of less successful experiments but we now have a version that's good enough for clinical trials. Our pioneering transplant recipient has been grumbling about certain cosmetic aspects of the prosthetic, but what can one say? Anyway, this is why we were not not able to lend the Riddled Evolvamat to that team of scientists who wanted to use it for the opposite transformation, of rat hearts into cephalopods.

Squid cannot resist allure of invisible Speedos
They had to content themselves with creating an artificial jellyfish powered by rat heart muscles.

* UPDATED with Bonus Steiner Unmedicated Lunacy:

"The Heart is Not a Pump". I am not making this up.

It took Rudolf Steiner, with his special kind of contrarian thinking that crossed the line into Oppositional Defiant Disorder ("Consensus reality is NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!) to look at the human circulatory system and decide that the "the blood moves autonomously", "propelled with its own biological momentum", with the heart simply regulating its flow, like biological traffic-lights. The descriptions leave it unclear how the "autonomous movement" works, but much like a Dyson vacuum cleaner, it has something to do with spirals and vortices. This is now dogma among his intellectual descendents, for whom Steiner was "a man not given to unscien­tific or slipshod thinking".

We have been sadly amiss at Riddled, neglecting part of our sekrit Steiner-Ridiculing Agenda, i.e. the part that says "ridicule Rudolf Steiner and his sectarian believers". I can only hope that this Update makes amends for the lapse.

16 comments:

wiley said...

...an animate womb perpetually searching for an occupant.

One man's nightmare is another man's most ardent drea--- wait. Does it come with a vagina or is that sold separately? That could make the difference between answered prayers and anatomical weapons for psyops.

Substance McGravitas said...

Any fule know that the demand for donor hearts outstrips the supply.

Canny buyers will stockpile them and implant 6 or 7 at once, internal-human-centipede style. They won't all fit in the ribcage, but then you get a secondary advantage in a set of permanently jiggling boobs.

Smut Clyde said...

6 or 7 at once, internal-human-centipede style

Shirley more of a human-lamprey arrangement.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Heart in saline solution

Dinner is served!

They had to content themselves with creating an artificial jellyfish powered by rat heart muscles.

Coelenterattus norvegicus?

"Cnidarattus" just didn't scan as well, and my snarky streak can often override my pedantic streak.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

WHERE did you get that sign pic???
~

Substance McGravitas said...

The poor US of A is in such bad shape their Google is busted.

tigris said...

Bad R'lyeheim.

Rachel said...

Guess I'm the only one who noticed that rocky promontory beside the anchored heart... why it's a huge, flaccid phallus! So picture reads, "his heart says GO, equipment says NO."

Rachel said...

Strange to think of im-pittance as a kind of anchor.

Smut Clyde said...

WHERE did you get that sign pic???
Image-search "queensland warning sign jellyfish".

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

meanwhile, research into farm-cultivation of brain languishes, remaining in the hands of lonely researchers depicted in a spattering of documentaries.

Vincent Price has also depicted some of the research in this field in a few biopics.

Hearts. Hmph. Is it any wonder that my mind's on fire?

tigris said...

Zombies like smoked food, too?

Hamish Mack said...

How blood works:
1. Blood is thinker than water. Proof: we all know this
2.Water finds it's own level.
Proof: well duh!
3. Blood's level will therefore be lower.
Proof: see 2.
Conclusion: Blood needs crawling abilities to get up out of your feet.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

Ah, Chironex fleckeri, he nodded.
~

alison said...

eeewwww. I wish I had not been eating breakfast when I started reading this post. It has quite put me off my allbran :-(

Smut Clyde said...

HA! Should know better by now.

I thought you'd like the Rudolf Steiner "self-moving blood" pastryflake stuff. Despite their views about the secondary role of the heart in circulation, none of his followers seem willing to donate theirs to other people who find them more important.

Steiner himself -- not a guy to let foolish consistency stand in the way of his reasoning -- also dreamed up a homeopathic concoction for strengthening this unnecessary heart:

Cardiodoron is a mixture of three plants, cowslip (Primula veris), Scotch thistle (Onopodon acanthium), and henbane (Hyoscayamus). Steiner viewed these three plants as representative of the three parts of the plant (root, leaf and flower) corresponding to the three parts of the human being (head, heart and abdomen — also the three main energy centers of our bodies). They also represent three of the four seasons that plants normally grow (excluding winter). Thus the function of this medicine is simply to encourage a healthier rhythm.