2/5: Scorpion wine
 

http://cellar.org/2002/scorpwine.jpg

Of all the dopey...! This is in northern Thailand, where they believe that rice wine fermented with scorpions in it can cure disease, increase sexual potency, and remove the thatch out of your lawn, make all the kids grow up to be above average, etc.

But then again, there are too many quack devices and products here in the US too. If you watch a lot of cable TV as I do, and listen to mainstream radio, you are just as likely to see and hear about hundreds of bogus medical things. Especially fitness-related, weight-loss, and herbal products. Half of what is advertised is lightly-concealed fraud. It really ticks me off, personally, but... what're yuh gonna do?

Drink some scorpion wine to help grow the muscles and then go beat some ass!

I used to watch a lot of TV and I'd see the most ridiculous products advertised. One has to wonder how they could possibly do what they say they're going to when they're selling SuperGizmo Plus Gold Edition for "ONLY NINETEEN NINETY FIVE!" I just don't see how they could possibly recoup any development costs on this amazing product if they're selling it for less than it should cost to put together anyway. Oh well. I don't buy junk off TV :)

The thing that most of these sales pitch is that they emphasize the "19.95", but quietly say things like "5 EASY payments of *ONLY 19.95!!!*". Anyone that bites on that deserve it.

On a side note, for those of you in the US who may have seen those "Abtronic" commericals or something similar, I've often thought that these devices only emphasize the laziness of American Culture through TV. It irks me so much that I've started writing a short story about a fat guy who watches 8 hours of TV a day (he has a full time job) and gets hooked on Abtronic. Pretty soon, this guy is watching TV while multiple abtronic devices are running on his body. Thighs, abs, calfs, biceps, shoulders, face, you name it.

<Sarcasm>
**LEGAL DISCLAIMER**: The idea contained in the preceding paragraph is copyright, trademark, patent pending, all rights reserved 2002 to me. Use it at your leisure. =)
</Sarcasm>

-Cyc

And they say we Americans have too much free time! :)

The question is - do you write it while using an Abtronic? :whofarted

LMAO!!!! :)

Ah, dham, I laughed so much at that I probably dont' need one! :D

-Cyc

drink enough scorpion wine and you won't need one either

Scorpion Wine....arent they that 70s band out of Thunder Bay? Yeah, I remember they had that album "Muscle Boned" with the chart topping hit "Fragrant Lies.."

I thought it was "Flagrant Lies", but maybe my memory escapes me... :)

Vagrant Flies? Variant Cries? Vibrant Thai-s?

mmm Thai
 

That dish, served with live scorpions, is known as <b>Pad Ballsy</b>.

Oh, my bad, I thought this had something to do with King Scorpion, the ancient pre-dynastic Egyptian ruler.

http://www.crystalinks.com/scorpionking.gif

With a new movie starring The Rock, coming to theaters near you!!

Just wait for the Stone Cold Steve Austin run-in about 12 minutes in. :D

/me rolls her eyes.

:3eye:

Actually, this is similar to something that was in "The Diamond Age," by Neal Stephenson. One of the characters had nanotech implants in his body that constantly stimulated his muscles to build up more strength. (This was Nell & Harv's dad, who gets killed near the beginning of the book.)

Interesting. I'm going to run over to Amazon and buy this book. I finished reading "Snow Crash" a couple of months ago, and I thought it was a *great* book. I have a paperback copy of "Cryptonomicon", but I haven't gotten around to reading it (full time college student).

Oh man, I tickle at the thought of a movie version of "Snow Crash". The Metaverse in glorious hollywood-strength CGI. :eek:

-Cyc

You wanna talk about crap that sells? http://www.alexchiu.com/eternallife/index.html I don't know anyone that has paid money, but many people were advertising for him a while back. He had (may still have) a program that would earn you a free Immortality Ring if you did some advertising. Every 3rd geek had a .sig that said, "LIVE FOREVER!"
On a similar note, I think Marylin vos Savant had a pretty good answer this past Sunday (she has a column in the Sunday "Parade Magazine" insert in many national papers) to the question of immortality. She weighed the possibility of famine, disease, war, starvation, and most anything else unpleasant against living forever. I think her answer was that she would not enjoy immortality because there's always the possibility of living forever in complete unhappines. That goes double for me.

Plus, you would miss out on pie heaven!

i agree with that. and there would be technological advances and whatnot, but i'd be too afraid of getting bored.

Mmmm, pie heaven... pumpkin... boston cream... key lime... apple...

Getting bored: omg, good point. Never thought of that.

Although maybe in another five lifetimes, one could work out what people are really all about. Understanding women, huh, there's a five-lifetime project.

Ha! Tony is funny :)

Personally, I wouldn't mind being immortal, so long as I wasn't in jail or something. It'd be kinda neat, I think. Play with all the toys, do all sorts of fun things. I don't think I'd get bored. Besides, your love interests would constantly be getting old and dying, so you could just find another cute girl every couple decades and, uh, "have fun" that way :)

D - That's immor<b>T</b>al. You might be getting them confused. :)

Nah. Immortality == new woman at least every 60-70 years. :)

Being immortal?

I'm afraid of how "out of date" I'd become. Imagine spending eternity watching a world totally different from the one you were raised in. Imagine a world that becomes more alien to you with every passing day.

Imagine being relegated to sitting on a bench on a busy street, sighing wistfully about how spoiled the children are now, about how things were when you were a child and having the youth of the day listen to you with cute faces showing distaste and lacking comprehension of your words. How would you describe our lives to them?

That's how I sometimes think our human relics must feel, brought up in their times, what I might even consider a primitive world, living in our modern world.

I just keep envisioning tattered old bones resting on a bench by a dusty street. Immortality would be horrible.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/cha.../movie2_sm.jpg

Yoda, the ancient and revered Jedi Master. Nine hundred years old,
Yoda had trained Jedi for eight centuries, and was very powerful in the Force.