Radio Infomercials I hate

The so called "Hart to Heart Nutrition Hour" hawks Mother Nature's Miracle - with host, Melinda Hart.

Has it gone off the air? Read on, because if it has, you will see, it doesn't matter.

Michael Brookes is Melinda's "expert" and he is perhaps the worst guy on the radio for using misleading statements about his so called "mineral formula".

My favorite is his citing Doctor Linus Pauling about taking vitamin C and then later talking about ALL diseases being a result of a a mineral or vitamin deficiency and citing someone called Doctor Paul Linus. Well who the **** is he?

My second favorite is when he says, "drop a penny in a glass of water and the next morning it's still there!" Like a pill in your stomach? Right?

Heck no. Drop a penny in dilute hydrochloric acid and look how shiney it is in the morning.That would be BECAUSE THE ACID IS DISSOLVING IT you idiot.

But wait now we have a new infomercial....or do we?

"The Life Long Wells Nutrition Hour" with host Sheryl Wells is hawking Bio-Vaccine. Her expert is Mr Ted Lemus.

At many points, this is almost WORD FOR WORD the same infomercial, up to and including an additional ad within the infomercial itself for a "bone supplement" containing MSM, glucosamine and condroitin and guess what? You can take this with their main miracle product with no interaction. Imagine that! Wow! And they also repeat the lines like "if you take X, you have to take Y for Z and then you must take P for Q and don't forget R for your S, otherwise all your are taking is useless" rant. So you have to take their formula which is "balanced".

What a bunch of freaking charalatans. What's happened? Has the FDA closed down Melinda's "show" and it's all now morphed into these monsters?

The big question we have to ask is.......

Are Melinda [Hart] and Sheryl [Wells] THE SAME PERSON? They certainly have the same irritating habit of mindlessly interjecting stuff like "I see" and "amazing" and "[he] is a highly intelligent man", but they also pitch the same softball questions to their respective "expert" who sadly, though he could not save his loved ones when he was younger, he hopes his total absence of medical qualifications will allow him to "help other people" because he has "read over 700 books" and has done a lot of private "research"..

Mr Lemus also has a great story about giving Bio-Vaccine to a man called Harry who THE VERY NEXT DAY after miraculous results said "this must be a placebo". Why would he say that ? Why would he think that something that does nothing ( which is what a placebo is ) had somehow "cured his symptoms"?

Oh. Right. Mr Lemus ( "a highly intelligent man" ) doesn't know what a placebo is.

God save us from these bastards.

Some things are just not right

Just saw the lovely Anne Hathaway in "Becoming Jane". Not a bad flick, but the husband and wife next to me were yakking all the time. ALL the time.

The classic was when LeFoy hands Jane the novel that will "open her eyes to the world" and the idiot husband next to me leaned over and said conspiratorially to his equally fatuous wife, "Lady Chatterley's Lover".

Rare to see that level of ignorance so proudly trumpeted in public.

Must Do More For 2007

So 2007 is off to a whimpering start, with the Damoclesian Sword of Potential Layoffs still hanging over my future. By the end of February I may know more.

So far my resolutions are holding up pretty well, no fast food, no chocolate, no Diet Pepsi, no unnecessary DVD or book purchases, no HUGE bacon and sausage-filled breakfasts.....

If only I didn't have this "Plantar Fasciitis" thing going on, I could get in a few games of tennis. I reckon I'm looking at the very least, six months before I can even think about a game. Of course, as weight is also a factor in this thing, I now have some incentive to come down from 240+ to something "more reasonable". I am not going to define that here because if I do, I'll be disappointed when I fail to achieve it.

So right now, my target for my birthday in August is.........a secret.

I've already seen a few movies, Pan's Labyrinth, Children Of Men, Little Children, The Curse Of The Golden Flower...
Nothing stood out except the shear ineptness of "Little Children". All it had going for it was Kate Winslet, but even her obvious draw was lessened by the stupid script and mindless narration. Jings and it got some Golden Globe nominations too! Hopefully the Oscars won't be so stupid and do the same.

What else? More resolutions I guess. I have to read some of the many mnay books purchased in 2006. I have started on the first Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes novel by Laurie King, "The Beekeeper's Apprentice". It's not bad, I am a big fan of Holmes stories written by other authors. I do have one quibble though. Would a 15-year old girl ( albeit with an American upbringing ) say in 1915, "I am a feminist"?

I venture to say "no". Wow! That's really what I call "venturing".

To date, that has been the one jarring idiom that crashed against my ear and made me go "Oh no, I don't think so".

I'm still playing my PSP, still never getting remotely near the scores posted by little kids on websites - 900,000+ playing "Luminies" - sorry Timmy, I ain't buying that one today.

Definition Of Pretentious

I swear today I read a review of the movie "Little Children" that began with this sentence of TOWERING insight.....

[The movie Little] Children, above all things, explores the psychosis of the adult mind either when it finds itself in the grips of a socio-economic inequity or under the terrible flaggelations of emotional apathy.

What does that mean? Apart from the obvious, "I am a pretentious git".