So, knowing that he is on his way out, I recently purchased a new puppy – a pure breed chocolate lab named Bosco – both as a replacement, and also to help keep Wasabi young. I figured that having an energetic puppy around would encourage Wasabi to play, and that he would get more exercise. I hoped that Bosco would keep Wasabi healthier and happier for longer than he would be without such an energetic young companion.

Sadly however, it turns out that Bosco is an asshole…

I mean, he is cute and lovable, but he is not easy for Wasabi to live with.

Bosco likes to play fetch, but he apparently does not understand that while we are happy to throw a toy for him, Wasabi does not have the necessary physical equipment, or understanding, to perform this task. Bosco will regularly bring a toy over to wherever Wasabi is trying to take a nap, and drop it next to him. He will then start whining and barking incessantly at Wasabi, even after Wasabi starts to growl and even sometimes snaps at him. If Wasabi gets up and leaves to find someplace more peaceful to nap, Bosco will soon find him again. When I try to separate them, Bosco will climb over any barricade I errect or seriously scratch up any door I close.

I have been feeling kind of bad that instead of making Wasabi healthier and happier, Bosco may just be turning Wasabi’s final years of life into an annoying ordeal. I have been trying to make it up to him in any way I can, but until recently I have had no really good ideas abut how to make things right.

But that changed recently, when I found out that Dog Cloning has now finally been perfected, and is being offered to the general public. It seems that despite the ongoing resistance to cloning technology by various religious types, it continues to improve. The price is still well out of my range, as the first auction for one of the first 5 commercial canine clonings, starting on July 5th at 11:00 AM PST, has a minimum bid of $100,000. However, it occurred to me that I can have Wasabi’s genetic material frozen and stored indefinitely at very low cost, so it is actually very likely that I will be able to bring him back when the prices come down in a decade or so.

So that is what I can do for Wasabi – I can have him resurrected.

Now, a clone of myself would not really be Sean Hastings in a meaningful sense, but rather, would be a separate individual much like an identical twin. However, unlike a human being, a dog does not have very much memetic content, and what it does have could be more easily recreated, so a clone of Wasabi would almost certainly behave very much the same as Wasabi does.

It would be far more (even if not entirely) accurate to consider Wasabi’s clone to be the same dog than it would be to consider my clone to be the same person.

And it would certainly be poetic justice if the dog cloning process becomes affordable for me in say, 10+ years, and I can bring Wasabi back as a puppy when Bosco is then approximately the same age that Wasabi is now. Then Wasabi can have his revenge by being the rambunctious puppy that harasses the poor tired old Bosco.

Now If that’s not karma, I don’t know what is.

However, in this particular case, there were no blows exchanged.

Although this particular conversation wasn’t very interesting or productive, it did cause me to remember a more amusing conversation, in a different bar, a few years ago, that I thought would be worth posting here. It happened something like this:

In 2003, after having had to evict a problem tenant, my wife Jo and I decided that being absentee landlords was just too much for us, and we decided to sell our house in New Orleans. Having had some very fun times when we lived down there, and having some very good friends in the area, I decided to make one last trip down to the house before putting it on the market. This would give me a chance to clean the place up, fix a few things, and to spend some time with old friends. I also invited my best friend Alex, from my home town in Michigan, to come down and hang out with me for a week.

On maybe the second night we were there, Alex and I were hanging out at The Erin Rose, on Toulouse just off Bourbon, one of my old haunts in the French Quarter. We were at the rear bar, and were having one of our typical discussions about governments, personal liberty, and the virtues of capitalism, when the guy next to us announced that he was a socialist.

I turned to him and said, “Really? Like a card carrying socialist?”

“Yes”, he replied, “want to see?”

I nodded and said “Absolutely, I have never seen an actual socialist card before.”

He pulled out his wallet, and produced a white card with red lettering that proclaimed “The person named below is a member in good standing of the Socialist party USA” and named him as Eric G. Witte.

“That’s really cool!” I said, and then had an evil thought (not unusual for me). I said “Can I buy that from you? How about for 50 dollars?” And I pulled out my own wallet and produced a fifty.

I expected this to lead to some sort of awkwardness or an argument about the evils of capitalism, and was instead surprised when he said, “Sure thing!”, and the exchange took place immediately.

Disappointed that I was out $50 with no fun, I then turned to Alex and jokingly said something like “I’ve always wanted one of these!”

Eric G. Witte then said “You could get one a lot cheaper than $50 – I only had to send $10 to the Socialist party to join.” Whereupon he got this faraway look in his eyes, and started doing the math and said “Wow! It was actually easy to get that card. If I could sell more of these for $50 a piece, I could get almost five times my money back!”

“Aha!” said I, seeing a chance to get my money’s worth of argument, “You are actually a capitalist!”

His eyes refocused and he said “Oops.” Then, thinking quickly, he turned to the bartender and handed her the $50 bill he was still holding in his hands.

“Drinks for everyone!” he announced loudly.

* * *

Moral of the story?

“Everyone is a capitalist – at least until you remind them that they are not supposed to be.”