A weird day

Today started with, of all things, a RL pikachu lookalike (and I am not talking about my gf) on some German T-shirts. It turns out that this pikachu is an actual weirdo deep-sea octopus from genus Grimpotheutis, and not just another Elbonian politician in superhero disguise. Life seems to be stranger then fiction...and sometimes it just looks like something out of Call of Cthulhu.
The actual weirdness of the day started earlier in the morning, when my cousin and me (driving in his red Clitmobi...er, Batmobile) almost run over a middle aged hippie bicyclist who spontaneously (and suddenly) decided to use all 4 lanes of a rather busy crossroads to drive in circles, while listening to ipod thingie. The incident reinforced my belief that ipod thingies are devilish devices designed to weed out certain strains of genes from humanity's gene pool.
Which brings me to bacterial sex, a subject of some interest, which unfortunately, I never have time for. It seems to be *the* process for an entrepreneurial gene hacker/nanotech gadgeteer, especially when it is combined with the ultimate in geek niftiness, the portable DNA copier. According to wonderfully named Mr. Ugaz ("Stepped in" in Elbonian language), this truly revolutionary device (for dictators of small countries with no oil, for example) seems to work on principles akin to lava lamp - a device that enthralled and still enthralls hundreds of thousands of students who love nature.
Seriously, though, a cheap and portable DNA copier is just one step away from making a cheap and reliable Von Neumann machine factory. Since the best machines on nano-scales seem to be biological molecules (usually encoded by RNA or DNA), we only need to find a cheap and reliable device that creates cell-like environment, and bingo! we have our own nanotech factories. In a few years, we might end up exchanging DNA and RNA strands for cool new designer bacteria and cellular factory products ;)
This would be hot, if it weren't for the fact that other people wrote about it many years ago. It was also probably done in Simpsons, since it seems that every other good idea was done in Simpsons, too.
In the meantime, I was hijacked from my work by a friend who came nearby to plunder the military library-they were about to burn some old books (because that is what military libraries do - why sell or recycle when you can have a big bonfire?) and he wanted to take interesting tidbits for himself. While talking to him and his colleagues, I heard the most wonderful story about the men who managed to break his own leg while sleeping in his bed. This same person is (in)famous in Elbonian military for his enigmatic cloud of extreme clumsiness - he managed to fall under our Navy flagship while carrying extremely expensive video equipment (they dragged him out with a pole), he routinely manages to find uncovered manholes to fall into, etc. Of course, if there is a female of the species present anywhere on the scene, the results are even worse - another poor geek who probably won't breed. Because I am a small hearted person, I laughed very hard and secretly felt relieved in knowledge that there is someone clumsier then me.
Which brings me to duck genitalia. Which are weird and disturbing in too many ways.