Buggin’
Posted on October 17, 2005 Posted by John Scalzi 18 Comments
Athena’s new plush toys: Giant Microbes! Obsessive that I am, I got the whole set: Shigella dysenteriae, Strptococcus pyogenes, Bordetella pertussis, Rhinovirus, Orthomyxoviridus and Streptococcus pneumoniae, all one million times size, plush, and with totally non-accurate eyes. As you can see, Athena is entirely thrilled. I do sometimes wonder if 20 years from now my daughter will presenting me with very expensive therapy bills. Hopefully she’ll have her own insurance by then. Until then, pure comedy gold!
Athena says: "My bugs are sleeping right now, until the evening when they’ll wake up and find people to infect!" That’s the spirit.
PZ Myers will be so proud of you.
Well, and you know that’s what I live for!
If you’re the type who wears ties there’s always:
http://www.iawareables.com/
Some of the designs are quite nice. Then again I have a pair of cufflinks from my father that are essentially a positive dark field test for syphillis. :-)
(and thanks, now I have more toys to buy for my two daughters…)
I like the cilia on the yellow one. Nice touch.
Of course, if you really wanted all those germs, you could have just gotten her a pillow.
They say that pillows are one of the most germ-infected things in the world. Woot.
very cute!
No Rotavirus?
If you don’t know what it is, be glad. YIKES!
I’ve been coveting those for some time now, but no one wants to give them to me.
…The plushie versions, that is.
I love my cute little Ebola.
My only disappointment is that the (small) labels identify the diseases, not the organisms themselves.
Oh, but there are more! So very many more! Don’t stop until she has them all!
Disturbing is that my mononucleosis (“kissing disease”) bug has very long, lovely, flirty eyebrows. This was the illness I never got even though my poor baby sister caught it taking swimming at the high school pool and had to spend an 8-year-old summer being kept inside on just more than bed-rest for four long months (they were afraid that if she fell her spleen, which apparently got really enlarged, would fracture) and I was her entertainment (we played scored rummy to about 20,000 points, I think). The couple of times I got ill in collage, student health aways tested me and thought it was wierd that I never got it…
They’ve got eyes?
Takes “cute as a bug” to a whole new level. I’d buy some of these babies for my dad (who is a doctor) if he was into novetly stuffed animals.
Athena’s expression is priceless. Kid is such a cute little ham for the camera.
My wife has just informed me that the set I gave her two years years ago are a little worse for ware. She left them in the window of her classroom over the summer. Sun seems to be a wonderful dipilitory and bleaching agent :)
Who would of thought that?
No more Helicobacter pylori or Saccharomyces cerevisiae? I didn’t realize my little ulcer bug was a collectors’ item. Shiny.
Though, as a molecular biologist, I’m coveting plush biomolecules…
Giant Microbes and Rory Blyth
Giant Microbes and Rory Blyth
Giant Microbes and Rory Blyth