Digital Slobs long
for the Magic Pill

It's hard to find a group with a wider array of hopes and dreams pinned to the Magic Pill concept than Digital Slobs.

From losing weight to mastering ballroom dancing, many Slobs monitor CNN for word that our local pharmacy finally has an over-the-counter shortcut in both tablets and gel-caps.

The fact that many of us flunked chemistry doesn't keep some of us from making Pfizer.com our home page.

This doesn't mean Slobs are self-haters -- far from it. We know that, like charity, embracing flaws begins at home.

Still, most of us have a self-improvement to-do list tucked away somewhere, waiting for the day it can be checked off with nothing more than a swallow reflex.

If there was a pill that made us look thinner and younger, feel smarter and more energetic, and gave all our body odors the scent of Glade Potpourri, Slobs would quickly line up for it. Stragglers, if any, could be lured in by coating some capsules with a sour cream and onion flavor.

Of course, the oft-overlooked aspect of the Magic Pill concept is its Magic Price -- for a bottle of 100, it's somewhere between $4.99 and "free with a purchase of a two-liter bottle of Vanilla Coke."

Unfortunately, it'll be a while before indulging vanities drops to a price-point comfortable for Slobs. In February, I mentioned that Bosley International is about to clone hair, and will upholster chrome domes for anyone who has a Mastercard with a $10,000 limit. This is sure to create a dating-pool caste system that I plan to address in my future book, "Baldies: Hearts on our sleeves, credit scores on our heads."

The problem with engineering, genetic or otherwise, is that failure often overshadows success. Take the infamous newsreel footage of Galloping Gertie, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge built in 1940 that violently twisted in the wind before collapsing into the Puget Sound mere months after its completion. Before volunteering for a drug study, look at this footage again and imagine that's your DNA double-helix flapping in the same breeze.

Nevertheless, researchers tinker with the building blocks of life with all the fastidiousness of a 5-year-old trying to make breakfast for Dad on Father's Day.

Science felt the need to create green-glowing mice a couple of years ago, which only seems practical if you live in a condemned building but still want a clear path to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

But recent breakthroughs are even scarier, suggesting the scientific community wants to wipe Slobs off the face of the Earth. Last week, the National Institute of Mental Health announced researchers turned lazy monkeys into workaholics by blocking dopamine from the brain, a key compound we use to size up most tasks as thankless and, thus, procrastinate them into oblivion.

Without dopamine, the monkeys kept plugging away, with no payday, no shift change, no office birthday cake, no union contract -- nothing.

Genetically, Slobs are more closely related to monkeys than to most of our immediate family, so clearly, this means war.

It's been said that if you give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite amount of time, they will eventually type the complete works of Shakespeare. Perhaps scientists have a manuscript deadline with Simon & Schuster they're trying to meet.

Regardless, researchers should stop messing with Mother Nature's vital goof-off gene and get back to Project Magic Pill. My legs aren't going to learn the Mambo on their own.