IS TESCO, the UKâs most successful supermarket chain, encouraging its customers to buy snake oil? Well no, not exactly â just âsnake liquidâ.
When Jeff Brown was looking at Tescoâs 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 âessencesâ. But a visit to the manufacturerâs website at reassured him: âThese 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.â
Well, thatâs nice. But how, exactly, are these âvibrational imprintsâ obtained? If we told you, you probably wouldnât believe us, so we have to turn to the man responsible, Daniel Mapel, who explains all at : âI 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 â approximately 100 metres in diameter â 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.â
The water is then sold by Nutri Centre at ÂŁ7.50 for 30 millilitres, which works out at over ÂŁ250 a litre â 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: âI took and bathed with essence of Mountain Lion yesterday, and the huge cat appeared clearly in my dream last night! Amazing!!!â.
Amazing indeed.
DCMag, a guide to digital photography, is keen to recruit new subscribers. âJoin here for freeâ it exhorts at . In case youâre undecided, you can click on âWhy join?â to find out more. Except that all they offer you as a reason for joining is a completely blank page â and it has been so for the past six months.
IN THE Wairarapa region of New Zealand stands a âfull-scale working adaptationâ of Stonehenge. Intended âto inspire New Zealanders to explore and experience for themselves how technologies of ancient times were usedâ, Stonehenge Aotearoa is the same size as the original on Salisbury Plain in England, and is built out of âfabricated stonesâ 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 wasnât a shed or any other classifiable building, they decided to categorise it asâŚa garden ornament.
âFrom a BBC news report, 18 February: âA 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 carââ
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 âImproving the seismic performance of highway bridgesâ by Ian Buckle, and thanks to Rob Cook for informing us that his company accountant is called Mark Ledger, andâŚ
But thatâs it! No more!! Please!!!
FINALLY, Melissa Brown was disappointed by the instructions for the ICQ (instant messenger) that came with her new computer. âYou can change the details provided for your ICQ (for example, your first/last name, your age),â she was told. âYou must save the information to the server before other ICQ users can view your new detailsâŚNote 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.â