I’ve got a secret to disclose to the American public. I cloned myself a month ago.
Last week, some of my more primitive collegues in at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, Scotland, executed what many experts thought was a scientific impossibility. They cloned a lamb and named her Dolly.
Lamb shmamb. I cloned myself and named me Morgan II.
Those wacky scientists in Scotland, where I suppose it’s too cold and wet to do anything but tinker with ewe mammary glands, have got this cloning thing all wrong.
Cloning me was a piece of cake, some Pop-Tarts, and a couple of barbecue sandwiches. I mixed that stuff with a little primordial ooze and scientific fluids that bubble and fizz. Then I put it all in the microwave for seven-and-a-half-minutes on “HI,” and PRESTO! A carbon copy of Morgan Murphy.
Why did I do it? Well, I liked Mr. Wizard as a kid and was actually hoping to make one of those model volcanoes that spews fake lava, but instead I essentially ended up with embryonic twinning (literally splitting embryos in half), and coaxed the surrogate cells to accept foreign DNA matter. Whaddayaknow? I never did trust microwaves.
Anyway, like those sheep guys in Scotland, I didn’t have much time to give to the ethical stuff. You know, will humans raise clones to be Einsteins and Mozarts or will they create armies of Rambos? Will women end up giving birth to themselves? Since there is no need for a male anything when it comes to cloning, will men eventually be excess baggage here on planet earth? Will our entire species be all female? Or will women let men stick around to lift heavy things and unscrew the lids off pickle jars?
Unfortunately, I decided to ask Morgan II these questions and he was simply unable to figure them out. So I sent him to work while I sat around the apartment and ate Little Debbies and Moon Pies. This was great! Let Morgan II commute on the subway! Let Morgan II clean the bathroom! Let Morgan II eat my Aunt Pat’s potato salad!
Sadly, I’m afraid my clone wasn’t as swell as the original. I noticed that he wasn’t that good looking and that he had a little bald spot back where he couldn’t see it in the mirror. Poor guy. He also tended to make bad jokes and sometimes he sounded really stupid when he laughed. Boy was he lazy, too! All he wanted to do was sit around with me and eat my Ding Dongs and Ho-ho’s. Please. He even had the gaul to be smoother with my girlfriends than I am.
So I decided cloning wasn’t all that great. Boy did that jerk get on my nerves. So I told Morgan II to pack it up and get out. I suggested a quiet little sheep farm in lower Scotland where he might meet some kindred spirits . . . or at least the Roslin institute might figure out how to clone the fellow a sheep-toupé.
—Morgan Murphy