Recently I became immortal. It started a few months ago when I was doing some research on the Internet. And by research, I mean I clicked on a link that led me to another, then another, until I was reading something written by a stranger with no credibility. That’s how I learn.
Anyway, the stranger with no credibility was writing about some research done by another stranger with no credibility who was giving some chemicals to mice and dogs who themselves have no credibility. The chemical was resveratrol, an ingredient found in red wine. Apparently you don’t get enough of it by being a wino. You have to get it in concentrated form. I forget the details, but I think the first mouse that got the concentrated resveratrol lived 30% longer and started having an affair with Maria Shriver. One of the dogs with resveratrol got a bone and dug a hole so far into the earth he now lives with a family in Sumatra. And he’s so strong he can lick any balls he wants. No one dares stop him.
The reporter with no credibility asked the researcher who has no credibility if humans should take resveratrol. He said no. He wasn’t worried that it would cause harm, but there are no studies showing it would work in humans, and there was some doubt about delivering the chemical in pill form before it broke down and became ineffective. Then the reporter with no credibility asked the researcher with no credibility if he takes it himself. He said yes.
About thirty seconds later I found a web site that sells that shit and bought several pallets of it. I bought a brand called Longevinex because some other sources with no credibility said they might have solved the problem of keeping it from breaking down in pill form.
I’ve been taking the resveratrol for a few months. I don’t know if it’s working, but I got rid of my car. Now I go places by taking huge hops. And when people ask me questions I can’t answer, I kill them by squeezing their heads. Most important, I’ll add about thirty years to my life. Thirty years should bring me to the point where medical science can cure just about anything. If my arm falls off, I’ll inject some stem cells into the stump and grow a new one before dinner.
By then, there will be a lot of old people like me who refuse to die. They will also refuse to work. The immortal slackers will want to collect their pensions and Social Security until the sun turns into a cold dark thing about the size of a penny. No one foresaw immortality. Pension funds and Social Security are calculated on the hope that you will live an unhealthy lifestyle and take a dirt nap at 76. There simply won’t be enough money for all of the immortals.
So whose job will it be to kill all the senior citizens? Someone has to do it. You can bet that the people with jobs won’t want to hand over their paychecks to the lazy-ass immortals that do nothing but hop around town and talk about the squirrels on their lawn.
That’s why you should buy stock in life insurance companies. Those bastards will save a ton of money by never paying a claim. You can bet they’ll work some exclusion language into the policy that says something like “Does not include immortals that hop around town talking about squirrels until some guy working in a cubicle decides to take matters into his own hands.”
By the way, I remind you not to get your medical or financial advice from cartoonists.
I iz in your social security system....
....stealin' ur pensionz
Posted by: ICanHaveCheezburger? | June 22, 2007 at 08:37 AM
Old folk ghettos:
“Oldster rap- it’s all just noise, innit? All zimmer-by shootings, and dirty Flo’ this, dirty Flo’ that. Elderly-on-elderly crime, they’re their own worst enemies, right enough. They just don’t have no respect no more. Not like in our great great great GREAT grandparents’ day.”
Me? I shall get rich selling tartan blankets and Werther’s Originals
Posted by: ShaunL | June 22, 2007 at 08:31 AM
I often like to imagine what the world would look like if people had a several hundred year life expectancy. Would everyone work really hard for 200 years and save up money and then retire on interest for 400 years or so? Or would the economy even support much of an interest rate if death was relatively rare?
And how would a 20 something kid out of college ever find a job? If you're an employer and can hire a fresh faced kid, or a fresh faced, hale 250-year old with two centuries of experience, you're going for the experienced guy, right?
Posted by: Matt | June 22, 2007 at 08:30 AM
hey scott,
you worry me..
Im a doc and I shudder everytime I read about u taking 1000mg of magnesium or some other untested, unproven health supplement. Do you have any idea what you might be getting into? Ask any doctor and not one of them will support this sort of pill taking frenzy.
I am as big a skeptic as u are, and think the FDA may be filled with corrupt, jobless old guys, but I do think they do a pretty decent job in saying whats good and whats bad for you. None of this stuff has been put through clinical trials and you have no idea what bad effects they have in the long run. Do you know magnesium is something you give to pregnant women with seizures? So imagine what effects it can cause on someone who's normal..
You seem to be in pretty good health, you seem to play a lot of tennis, you seem fit. So why do u need all these stuff? I sincerely recommend that you consult a doc before you take any more pills like these.
Posted by: The Doc | June 22, 2007 at 08:28 AM
Yea, funny thing about ole Mother Nature... she DID think about immortality. If you want to live a long life, you have to breed slowly - like tortoises - otherwise she'll unleash a pandemic disease to thin the herd.
Want to be a smartass and start finding cures to those diseases? No problem, there's always drought and starvation. Think you've got her trumped with Agricultural Technology? She just whips out her trump card...War. You think you're sitting in the cat-bird seat and then your neighbors come over and start hacking you to pieces because your smarmy attitude pisses them off. Our own inability to to just "get along" is there for a reason.
Overcrowding = less resources
War = less competition = more resources
And should we ultimately find a way to settle our differences I can only suspect that Mom Nature has another giant Asteroid up her sleeve.
Do you really think that the Dinosaurs died because a random hunk of rock just happened to be in the right place at the right time? Noooooo! Mom caught them holding hands in a circle and singing "Kumbaya" around a giant vegan meal.
Posted by: basselope | June 22, 2007 at 08:23 AM
Do you get heat vision from Longevinex? Then you can also get rid of your microwave oven.
Destoroyah is the only one that can kill Godzilla.
Posted by: adora | June 22, 2007 at 08:20 AM
Senior camps,which they can build themselves,thus remaining productive - they can also learn farming and be self sufficient. Of course there will be those who can not,or will not,apply themselves to the rigors of this new lifestyle so it will be necessary to have camp supervisors perform periodic inspections in order to identify persons belonging to this group so that they may be removed from the main camp and resettled in special Convalescent Camps where medical personnel will be on hand to provide the appropriate special treatment.
Posted by: Arthur Liebehenschel | June 22, 2007 at 08:20 AM
What?
You need medical science to be immortal?
Pffft... amature.
Posted by: malignor | June 22, 2007 at 08:18 AM
Hmm. http://quackwatch.com/search/webglimpse.cgi?ID=1&query=resveratrol
I think I'll hold off for a little while on giving what little of my salary is left over after social security to the sleazeballs in the supplement industry. I bet that researcher was giving himself shots, not taking pills, given the study methods so far. Count me in the "rational" crowd that will wait for a moderately credible stranger to say it works. I reserve the right to decide which non-credible stranger I use as a reference to decide whether the other stranger has any credibility.
Posted by: Oncoming Storm | June 22, 2007 at 08:18 AM
In Canada we still put our elderly on ice flows every spring and send them into the Arctic Ocean. It began centuries ago, mainly during times of great famine, but the practice has become much more widespread in modern times. With people living longer these days however, we don’t send them out until the spring of their 80th year.
Posted by: David | June 22, 2007 at 08:17 AM
Who will kill all the senior citizens? Check out the movie "Death Race 2000".
signed,
the real Zardoz
Posted by: zardoz | June 22, 2007 at 08:15 AM
That's great, we can have thirty more years...but they get tacked on to the end of our lives. Who wants 30 extra years of living in a nursing home on a diet of Jello and pureed beans?
I think most people would agree that, physically, the best time of our lives is between 16 and 30. If they can manage to get us 30 more of THOSE years, and do it retroactively for those of us already on the north side of 30, then you've really got something.
Posted by: RPK | June 22, 2007 at 08:10 AM
Three words (beyond the thirteen words of the introduction of the three words):
Death Race 2037
Posted by: Spartan 117 | June 22, 2007 at 08:04 AM
You'll also want to take alpha-Lipoic acid (100mg) and Vitamin D (2000IU) per day, if you want to live long and *healthy*.
I'm not exactly sure what the alpha-Lipoic acid is supposed to do, but Linus Pauling was right about everything else, so I'm taking it.
Vitamin D has been shown, consistently, to prevent all sorts of different kinds of cancers. This isn't health-food-store-hippie-talk, it comes from mainline medical researchers, guys with PhDs and lab jackets.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4563336.stm
I tend to trust guys with lab jackets, and BBC, too, moreso than hippies that work at health food stores.
I also take Resveratrol, 325mg/day. Look around for a source of *just* Resveratrol and not a mixture or proprietary blend of that and something a lot cheaper, that's a common scam. Something in the 500mg range for less than a buck is about the best you can expect, so far. I'm hoping it gets cheaper eventually as production ramps up.
Posted by: WCE | June 22, 2007 at 08:01 AM
Best...sci-fi movie...ever!
Posted by: Josh | June 22, 2007 at 08:01 AM
Maybe we could train squirrels to attack senior citizens who hop around town and talk about them.
Posted by: Scott Pakudaitis | June 22, 2007 at 07:59 AM
So you've found the answer to the search for singularity. Did you click on the Praetorian symbol at the bottom of that last web page you clicked on to find this magical product? (Excuse the bad movie reference)
Hopping around town huh? This reminds me of this guy I saw jump a Taxi cab on a "Power Pogo" stick on David Letterman the other night. Maybe you were watching?
As for killing the senior citizens, it's nothing an army of trained rabid squirrels can't handle.
Posted by: Wilson Patton | June 22, 2007 at 07:57 AM
I'm pretty sure Angelina Jolie is working on the Social Security problem. The issue is that there won't be enough young people working to support all the retired immortals. Solution - import a bunch of kids to populate the workforce! They get to live in a county with clean water and penicillin, and we get contributors to help support us into our old, old age. It's win, win!
Posted by: Diana W | June 22, 2007 at 07:56 AM
Great now that you have awoken the young to the master plan, no one is safe. Instead of hopping around you may want to start digging an underground den and hide your supply of the "fountain of youth". On the other hand, resveratrol could that be another master plan to cut the number of potential seniors like culling the herd but it works slower so you do not realize where you are headed? In that case you would really do all a favor by digging your underground den which would serve another purpose as in "dirt nap"!
Posted by: steve | June 22, 2007 at 07:52 AM
Oh no, I get my medical and finanical advice from webcartoonists.
The governemnt will secretly develop bio-weapons to turn old senior citizens into zombies and vampires, and lie about it: Every patriotic American's duty is to destroy these filthy zombies. Police officers will be armed with special anti-undead blaster zookas. Civilians will be able to sign up for special classes taught by the army (if they don't enlist, that is) for self-defense, vampire-hunting and ballet.
(It makes you more nimble on your feet!)
Posted by: a person | June 22, 2007 at 07:48 AM
You HAVE to check this guy out!
http://www.alexchiu.com/eternallife/index.html
Posted by: LA Clay | June 22, 2007 at 07:45 AM
Today (and today alone) I offer my services as the person who will kill the old frumpy immortals for money. It is 17:00 on a Friday afternoon in sunny South Africa and I am still at the office (and will be for a while). Killing grannies has to be better than this.
Posted by: Angel | June 22, 2007 at 07:44 AM
Dude,
I think what this guy actually sold you is acid.
Posted by: DanW | June 22, 2007 at 07:43 AM
Uh, oh, i am changing my mind from "how funny is Scott talking like that" to "uhmm ... maybe it is true, after all,that he has a 'fountain of youth' syndrome". Well, i can wait some years to know how it works for you ... if you are really eating that stuff.
Of course i want to live forever, or at least, be me who decide when to stop, hehe, but we know, at some point, there must be the species thing prevailing upon the pity individual thing, however, i won't mind at all chaging mine to a sequoia scale ... but, after 1000 years, it would be me? or i need a better brain?
Posted by: T.G. | June 22, 2007 at 07:43 AM
Every Life insurance Policy I've read expires when you turn 100 years old. You have to die before that to collect.
I recommend you read your own policy to find out at what age it expires.
Posted by: Jorrath Zek | June 22, 2007 at 07:39 AM