Archive for July, 2003

I had my second appointment today at the newly opened Chinese Herbalist in Otley (my local town). I wanted to treat my skin problems and tiredness with more of a holistic approach and hopefully heal myself permanently rather than getting some steroid cream to rub on my eczema patches.

The herbalist is run by two Chinese women. In the shop there must be about 100 jars full or strange looking herbs (including items that look like turds and wood shavings) all labeled in Chinese. I had my consultation in a private room where one of the ladies asked me all sorts of questions like, how my bowel movements and periods are, how I sleep and so on. She also looked at my tongue to see what colour it was and checked my pulse. After a time and alot of questions she told me (though I’m not exactly sure what she said as she had a thick Chinese accent) that I have too much heat in my body and she could prescribe me some herbs to reduce the heat (hence all the spots and itching) and restore good qi. Well I’m getting pretty desperate anyways so I thought I’d give it a go. So the two ladies prepared the herbs for me which involved placing piles of herbs on 7 different paper plates. When I say piles I mean a virtual mountain of bizarre looking herbs. They must have picked out at least 10 different kinds of herbs including “wood shavings” and “tar”. The put all the herbs into paper bags and gave me instructions as to what to do with them.

I trotted off home and started my brewing. You have to bring a pan full of the herbs plus a pint of water to the boil and then let it simmer for 20 minutes. After which you are left with soggy herbs and a mug of the most disgusting liquid I have ever tasted. It looks like thick soy sauce and tastes like Satan’s bath water after a particularly sweaty game of rugby. To drink it I have to hold my nose and take quick gulps because it’s very bitter tasting. Unfortunately I’m supposed to do this twice a day! Well I’ve managed a week so far and the eczema has calmed down but I still have acne (much to my embarrassment being 24 and still having it hence I’m desperate!).

For some reason my friend Dave wanted to share this with you, I’m loving the glasses!

the shit list find out which companies are evil

* Nestle aggressively promotes bottle feeding which is responsible for 1.5 million infant deaths a year.
* McDonald’s chicken supplier kills 200-300 unwanted chicks each day, by gassing them with carbon dioxide.
* McDonald’s pays teenage girls, working 70 hour weeks, in Vietnam and China, 6 cents an hour to produce toys.
* Nike provides some factory workers with housing, placing 12 people to a room and the company has admitted it cannot guarantee that its products will not be made using child labour.
* Russians make 11 cents an hour sewing for the Gap and in Central Mexico, factory workers make Gap jeans for $0.28 an hour.

I’ve just come back from a car boot sale where a woman was trying to flog her Anusol suppositories.

‘Fly boy’ continues to suffer as doctors struggle

Kolkata, June 24 (IANS) A 13-year-old boy whose bizarre ailment has a fly-like insect emerging out of him is far from being cured as doctors struggle to detect the source of the parasite.

The fully-grown flies, as doctors described the parasites, have been emerging out of Chandan Goswami’s genitals and flying off for more than two weeks now.

I love collecting food products from around the world that have seem rudely named because of language differences. Imagine my delight when I found the Rude Food website which features such delights as jussi pussi, knob biscuits and Happy Crack. I personally own a Bimbo bread bag and a packet of Bonka coffee

Went down to visit C, the boyfriend, for a long weekend and while I was there we visited Stratford-upon-Avon for the day. Shakespeare was born in this town and we saw a big Shakespearean bear outside a teddy shop! Woo. Only went past William’s house. We were more interested shopping and lazing in the sun in the park with the swans and ducks.

Also went to an excellent productions of “Much Ado About Nothing” which was performed in the grounds of Canons Ashby, an Elizabethan Manor House. We had a picnic before the performance and sat basking in the sun. The play was funny and amazingly I understood what was going on. The cows in the next turned up for a free performance and did a bit of mooing.

The trains travelling both ways were all terribly delayed. Virgin (the train company!) blamed it on the heat! I missed all my connections and Virgin had to taxi me home, free of charge, from Leeds. The taxi fare cost more than my train ticket so haahaa@Virgin

Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Am I a sick puppy because I want this book? I have a strange fascination with dead bodies and pathology. Not in a morbid or peverted way, just curiosity.

This is a kids book that i spotted when I was doing an unrelated search on google image search.
read it without the M & Ms