IS TESCO, the UKās most successful supermarket chain, encouraging its customers to buy snake oil? Well no, not exactly ā just āsnake liquidā.
When Jeff Brown was looking at Tescoās online shopping page at tesco.com, he noticed a section entitled Healthy Living, which directed him to the Nutri Centre. Here, he found a US company called Wild Earth Animal Essences that produces not only snake liquid, but also bear liquid, beaver liquid, butterfly liquid, cheetah liquid and so on.
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Brown was quite worried, summoning up a picture of all these animals being slaughtered and boiled up in some way to obtain their āessencesā. But a visit to the manufacturerās website at reassured him: āThese vibrational essences are natural, energetic remedies that are made during a ceremonial process in the Virginia wilderness of the USA. This ceremonial process includes attuning with and invoking the spirit of the animal involved. The resulting liquid contains the vibrational imprint and energy of the animal but does not contain any animal parts.ā
Well, thatās nice. But how, exactly, are these āvibrational imprintsā obtained? If we told you, you probably wouldnāt believe us, so we have to turn to the man responsible, Daniel Mapel, who explains all at : āI first collect a small bowl of water from the stream nearby and place it at the centre of the clearing. I then step beyond the edge of the clearing, and I begin the ceremony by walking in a large circle ā approximately 100 metres in diameter ā around the clearing. I meditate as I walk in a series of ever smaller circles, until after about 15 minutes I find myself at the centre of the clearing beside the bowl of water. Throughout the meditation, I connect and pray to the animal I am invoking, telling it that I am here to serve in this way if it wishes to share its gifts with humankind. By the time I reach the centre of the circle I have touched a place inside me where the animal and I are one. At this time I experience the energy of the animal finding its newest abode in the bowl of water at the centre of the circle.ā
The water is then sold by Nutri Centre at Ā£7.50 for 30 millilitres, which works out at over Ā£250 a litre ā considerably more, Brown points out, than a bottle of 1976 Dom Perignon, though if you buy it in quantity you can get a discount with a Tesco clubcard. But do not mock. As one satisfied customer tells us: āI took and bathed with essence of Mountain Lion yesterday, and the huge cat appeared clearly in my dream last night! Amazing!!!ā.
Amazing indeed.
DCMag, a guide to digital photography, is keen to recruit new subscribers. āJoin here for freeā it exhorts at . In case youāre undecided, you can click on āWhy join?ā to find out more. Except that all they offer you as a reason for joining is a completely blank page ā and it has been so for the past six months.
IN THE Wairarapa region of New Zealand stands a āfull-scale working adaptationā of Stonehenge. Intended āto inspire New Zealanders to explore and experience for themselves how technologies of ancient times were usedā, Stonehenge Aotearoa is the same size as the original on Salisbury Plain in England, and is built out of āfabricated stonesā weighing up to 2 tonnes.
But how was such a structureto be classified when consents were sought to build it? Lance Andrewes writes to tell us that Carterton District Council was stumped at first because its books contained no category for life-size fake Stonehenges. But on the grounds that the lack of a roof meant it wasnāt a shed or any other classifiable building, they decided to categorise it asā¦a garden ornament.
āFrom a BBC news report, 18 February: āA police officer told a Dublin court he believed the notes were part of an IRA money-laundering operation. The cash was in a box of washing powder in a Northern Ireland-registered carāā
WE KEEP trying to get away from nominative determinism, but the world seems determined not to let us. Why else would the Bush administration appoint Margaret Spellings as the US Secretary of Education?
Thanks to Clare Baker for pointing that out, and thanks to Mark Andrews for telling us he has just been invited to a seminar entitled āImproving the seismic performance of highway bridgesā by Ian Buckle, and thanks to Rob Cook for informing us that his company accountant is called Mark Ledger, andā¦
But thatās it! No more!! Please!!!
FINALLY, Melissa Brown was disappointed by the instructions for the ICQ (instant messenger) that came with her new computer. āYou can change the details provided for your ICQ (for example, your first/last name, your age),ā she was told. āYou must save the information to the server before other ICQ users can view your new detailsā¦Note that changing your details in ICQ does not affect the corresponding details in real life. For example, you cannot become younger by entering new age parameters in your ICQ information.ā
