Thursday, November 04, 2004

Weird Science

Genes are silly things. This became clear to me while working on a slideshow for my grandmother’s big 80th birthday celebration, sorting through some photos that my dad sent me of her and my grandfather. I was shocked at how much I look like my grandfather when he was my age. So I took a photo of me, and one of him and fused them together. (See below). The bottom half of the third photo is his face, and the top half is mine. The scary part is, if I only saw the third photo, I would think it was me.

Don't you think that's a little lazy and uncreative? My genes are just recycled Grandpa. I'm a 1980 rehash of a 1920s creation. It's like fashion, how it spits out old styles with slightly new twists every few decades. Pretty soon our genes are going to completely run out of ideas and we'll all just look like Mariah Carey. Pray that day is long in coming.


(left to right) Jeremy, Orlin, "Jeorlin"

9 comments:

j.i.g. said...

Whoa. Everything but the eyes, eyebrows, and hair are identical...

grace said...

bwahahaha... jeorlin...

i found that most of my filipino friends had names that were the combination of the mom and dad names... like joely. for joel and lily. i think her mom's name was lily. something like that. anyway, so jeorlin make me think of that... and i giggled.

when i was 10 or so, i saw a pic of my dad and his family way back in the day... and i saw a picture of my aunt. she and i were IDENTICAL. it was scary. especially knowing what she looks like now!!!

Jer said...

I know, that's the worst part! KNOWING how we'll look when we're old...

grace said...

at least you're not going to look like yoda.

NARDAC said...

Hey, I'm not sure if you look that much like your grandfather, from that photo, but you misspelled Mariah Carey's name. Please, be nice to her. She's having a rough enough time already.

Jer said...

If Mariah Carey (thanks, it's been corrected) becomes so depressed by her lack of success that she aimlessly surfs the internet and somehow stumbles upon my blog and is insulted by my comments, then perhaps I will feel bad for her. Until then, I see no harm in sending a few electronic elbow jabs her way. My only hope is that one day she will learn that sometimes it's better to let one note remain only one note, and not feel compelled to stretch it into 38.

NARDAC said...

I don't think Mariah is going about reading our blogs, which is her big loss(!), but I'm not allergic to her vocal acrobatics. Vision of Love is a great song, as is Fantasy... but I know I'm opening myself up for some serious smacking with those comments. She's just so uncool.

But enough about such superficial matters.

If our genes are running out of ideas for our faces, what are they doing with our heads? What if that's our real Mariah future?

Anonymous said...

Jeremy-friend,
No. Just no. We'll start with the fact that his face and your face are two different shapes and that you have a bigger head. We'll conclude with the fact that the third picture would be a shoo-in to play Dr. Einstein in Arsenic and Old Lace. (Or any other creepy character with an untraceable accent.) That being said, you're brilliant. From, your editor-friend

Jer said...

Well, of course it's not dead on. It would help if our faces were turned in exactly the same direction (which they aren't) and our heads scaled down to the same size so as not to cause freak-like proportions. It's really the bottom half of his face that looks like mine; the third photo was an attempt to demonstrate this. Now, if I was to fuse in the squinty eyes of my father and the blonde hair of my grandmother, fix the proportions and tone down the ears, then it would be dead on. It's also entirely possible that I really just have fun-house mirrors in my house and don't see what everyone else sees. One never knows.