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"Dr. Wayne Dyer: How to Get What You Really, Really..."
2006-12-09 21:14:01
"... Real ly, Really Want" is the title of the DVD I saw today... and yes, all of those reallies (is that a word?) were part of the title. Dyer talks long enough to make even MY eyes glaze over, but he's worth it because everything he says makes so much sense... by which I of course mean that his analysis of how the universe works is very close to mine. His central theme is that you draw into your life what you focus your thoughts and feelings on-the most basic rule of karma, although he never uses that term. He gets bonus points for recognizing the little-mentioned "dark side" of that rule, that if you let the bad things in your life, or those bad things that you fear will enter your life, into your thoughts to any significant degree, that's what you'll end up with... I don't know why it's so hard for people to grasp that our thoughts and feelings creating reality means ALL the thoughts and feelings create it, not just those we'd choose to bring desirable results, but D...
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WalMart + husband = DISASTER...
2006-12-06 03:10:03
First, some good news; I passed *******150,000 hits******* today!! Thanks to all my readers for making it happen!! xoI'll preface this post by explaining something about my husband; he's legendary for losing receipts. He can go to ONE store, get in the car and drive straight home, and when he gets here the receipt is gone; we can search his pockets, the bag(s) and the car all we want, but we'll never find it. He even goes to the drive-up teller, or a drive-through fast food place, gets a receipt when he's IN the car, comes right home and the receipt is gone. It's not that he's not taking the receipts, or that he's absentmindedly tossing them, because I've SEEN him take receipts, put them in his pocket or a bag, and by the time we get home they're GONE, never to be seen again.As a result, I long since developed the habit of snatching receipts from him whenever we're shopping together; as is typical of habitual screw-ups, he tends to be petulant about it, as if his s...
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Husband humor
2006-12-05 15:09:04
Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!My husband and I have had the flu for the past week or so; can you believe we're both sick AGAIN? Between this flu, the prior one (see my post of 9-8-06), and the food poisoning (see my post of 11-11-06), we've been sick more in the last 3 months than in the last 5 YEARS... him especially, since it's usually just me who gets sick (he says that germs can't approach him because they don't have gas masks, lol). The really grim thing is that we'd just gotten back to normal eating and excretory functions a week before the flu hit (yes, the food poisoning knocked us out for 2 WEEKS), so it was with GREAT dismay that we faced having to switch back to "sick food" again. We didn't have much left, so we wearily started putting together a list of what we'd need from the grocery store before we got too sick to go out; this shouldn't have been a big deal, but my husband is legendary for slurping up most or all of a bunch ...
More About: Humor , Band , Usb , Humo , Husband

"What The Bleep Do We Know?"
2006-12-04 03:07:02
I'm periodically asked if I've seen this movie and/or been influenced by it, since my worldview blends physics with metaphysics; I've also been accused several times of having garnered/stolen my entire spiritual belief system from it, which, although a rude and ugly thing to suggest, always amused me because I'd never SEEN the movie... and enjoyed telling the accusers so. It's also amusing how people can be so eager to be insulting that they don't take the time to make SENSE; after all:(A) People don't get their spirituality from movies.(B) There's no actual belief system put forth in this movie.(C) My beliefs bear little resemblance to what's said in it. How do I know the last 2 things? Because I've finally seen it, thanks to Blockbuster... and am at a loss as to what the fuss is all about, either + or -, because there's not much to it. The movie is a bunch of disconnected quotes from scientists, vague mystical ideas, and a great deal of odd special effects; it...
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Did you know that you can vomit through your NOSE?!! :-O
2006-12-02 15:05:02
As you've probably guessed from the title, this post will contain references to unpleasant excretory functions; if that'll bother you, the short version is that my husband and I got the most hideous food poisoning in the history of Western civilization but are slowly getting better-you can skip the details included below.Still with me? Gotta hear the icky bits, huh? Don't say I didn't warn ya:Tuesday evening, in a rare attempt to eat healthy, my husband and I had takeout salads for dinner; afterwards, he went to his study to take a nap, and I... what, do you have to ask? I got back on the computer. Within an hour, I knew something wasn't sitting right; if I could have seen into the future (precognition never happens when you could really use it, does it?), I'd have been in the bathroom frantically sticking my fingers down my throat to try to avoid what followed with a preemptive barf, but all I anticipated at that point was a bout of the runs... whatever the bug was t...
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Underwear and other party topics
2006-12-02 15:05:02
I've got a Halloween party coming up; sounds like fun, doesn't it? The thing is, I'm not a party person; I've never cared much for any sort of group socialization, not even good friends under ideal circumstances, because it's not conducive to the sorts of conversations I prefer (eg intense), and with parties there's the whole merry-making thing that's utterly foreign to my Puritan nature. Even if there's no alcohol involved (I don't drink, and don't enjoy being surrounded by tipsy folks who think they're being amusing), there's an unwritten rule that party conversation should be festive, or at least very casual; it's not that I'm unwilling to be light-hearted or discuss frivolous things (if someone throws a party with the theme of men with hairy chests I'll be there with bells on), it's that there isn't really anything in that genre that I have in common with random strangers... and that's the real downer, that my husband and I won't know anyone at the party...
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Group vs one
2006-12-02 15:05:02
Click here to register for the top-secret new blog service!!I saw an episode of M*A*S*H recently in which a new nurse who'd decided to try to become a doctor had joined the staff, and the other nurses, far from being supportive and proud as they SHOULD have been, treated her like dirt for daring to try to better herself. Major Houlihan, who's as smart and tough as they come, analyzes the situation and tells the innocent nurse that, since the nursing staff had been running smoothly before SHE showed up, she must somehow be to blame, and she'd better find a way to magically make all the other nurses stop mistreating her or else... and at no point is there any indication that the Major said a single word to the actual wrongdoers about their catty, belligerent and therefore utterly unacceptable behavior, or even suggested that they should take any part in rectifying the situation (that THEY had created) as part of being "team players." Unfortunately, the way that problem was (MIS)h...
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Humans vs human nature
2006-12-02 15:05:02
Several years ago, I participated regularly in a chatroom, one of whose regulars was so well-known for snacking non-stop that when he logged in the 1st comment addressed to him after "hello" was usually "what are you eating?". The subject of dieting came up one day, and this man who probably hadn't gone more than half an hour without eating in 20 years broke into the discussion of how difficult it was to lose weight and keep it off to proclaim "Losing weight is easy-all you have to do is put down your fork." This man who had no idea what hunger was, much less the gut-twisting agony that accompanies prolonged restriction of caloric intake, honestly thought that you could just decide to stop eating and weight-loss would follow.You're probably puzzled, or even astounded, that anyone could be so stupid, not to mention insensitive... but wait, haven't you ever looked at an obese person and had vaguely disgusted thoughts about how they must lack any shred of self-control to have ove...
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The day I realized that my father was evil
2006-12-02 15:05:02
That sounds a little melodramatic, but I don't know of any better way to put it; he IS evil, a person for whom the focus of his life is to do harm, and I've known it since I was a little kid.I didn't see much of my father for the first few years of my life, as he was over in Vietnam; as a Navy man, he was of course on a boat, not in the jungle, but he nevertheless considers himself the equal of those vets who were actually in danger, and speaks of those who couldn't re-integrate into society upon their return with contempt, calling them cry-babies and liars who are too lazy to work and so playacting at being mentally ill... aren't people who served in the same war supposed to feel camaraderie? My father never did find it necessary to feel normal emotions about anyone, sigh. Anyways:Given where we lived when the event of this post occurred, I'd have been 4 or 5. There was a tiny Italian restaurant that we went to regularly, and every time we got close enough to be able to...
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Phone company idiots (isn't that redundant?)
2006-12-02 15:05:02
My husband's bunglings (see my previous post) might have seemed bad, but not even he can compete with the degree of fouled-up-ness that a major corporation can create; I try not to do consecutive rants about this sort of thing so that new readers don't think my life is a non-stop mess, but this one was too good not to share:I live in one of America's biggest cities, and am thus provided with phone service by a huge corporation; today, one of our phone lines died, and my husband called them to arrange for a technician to come and fix the problem. The 1st inkling of trouble was when the woman he talked to insisted that she could give NO clue as to when the tech would be here, not even the DAY... but that of course someone had to be home when he arrived in order for him to handle the problem if it turned out to be an inside wiring issue. That seemed insane, but these big corporations are getting more and more arrogant and contemptuous of customers so I didn't doubt it was true...
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They shoot blogs, don't they?
2006-12-02 15:05:02
When you click on the link to a blog you a like, to a BLOGGER you like, and you get a blank page, or are forwarded to a generic search or marketing site, or suddenly it's a different person's blog (usually spam and/or porn), or the top post looks familiar and you realize there hasn't been a new one in weeks, or MONTHS, do you feel like you've been kicked in the stomach? This has happened to me so many times recently that I had to write about it:One of the dichotomies of the online world is that on the one hand a website can literally outlive its owner, as shown herehttp://mydeathspace.com/while on the other hand even the best-established and longest-running site can vanish in an instant, with a single click. Despite being aware of the latter, it's always a shock to me when a blog disappears; why is it even NECESSARY for blogs to be deleted? Sure, there are times when a blogger's family, co-workers, school officials or whatever find their site and they have to bail out to a...
More About: Blogs , Blog , They , Logs , Shoot

The things I'm thankful for
2006-12-02 15:05:02
Like everyone else, I'm thankful for the basics: life, health, a solid marriage, loved and liked ones, freedom, the military that keeps us free, a beautiful home in a safe neighborhood, living in a wealthy country, having sufficient $ to never have to worry about missing a meal (or even a new figurine), and those things that we take for granted but that most people in the world don't have; computers, internet access and DSL. I wanted to share some more personal things that I was grateful for this year, especially since it's been a bumpy road dealing with my mother's cancer, so here's a selection of odds and ends that have been giving me happy moments:My grandmother, who's in her 90's, has regained some of her lost mental functioning: It turns out that elderly people can often get bladder infections that go undetected (because they don't have pain or discomfort from them like younger folks do), and this can cause cognitive deterioration that gets brushed off as age-relate...
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Vampires
2006-12-02 15:05:02
If you've been watching "Mad Mad House" on the Scifi Channel, you've seen "Don the vampire"; if your tastes are as warped as mine, you've also seen that he's a BABE. In any case, he got me thinking about, er, things that I won't post in a public place, lol, and also about the origins of the vampire myth.Don refers to the drinking of blood as a way to "feed" on people's life force; I don't know if it's POSSIBLE to do that, via blood or any other way, but it's an interesting, science-fictiony concept, this idea of one being being able to drain energy directly from another... if it's actually possible, let's hope Bill Gates never learns how to do it. In any case, Don ties all this up with exploring, reaching higher levels of consciousness and so forth, which could be all BS, or could be the whole point of it for him, and the gothic trappings just put it in a framework that makes it easier for his mind to open; we'll never know, that much I AM sure of.The modern, New A...
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The Beware List, Part 5
2006-12-02 15:05:02
The Beware List is a compilation of my lifetime of observations of how people behave when they're screwing you, about to screw you, or are evil, sociopathic, manipulators, or just clueless depressives and social misfits who'll eventually screw everyone within reach including you, whether because they don't know any better or for the sheer joy of it; to read entries 1-40, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06, 8-31-06 and 10-6-06. It's a very rare person who can stick it to you without giving ample warning; all you have to do is pay attention and stop brushing off evidence of questionable behavior, and you can thwart them. Therefore, beware of anyone who:41) Says that no one has the ?right? to judge anyone else (unless it?s DEFINITELY a religious belief).Only people who regularly behave badly and/or are friends with others who do so feel this way; decent people accept that negative judgment SHOULD BE the result if they misbehave, and that in general misbehavers should have judgme...
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How to get more comments on your blog
2006-12-02 15:05:02
It seems like every blogging-related forum and chat is full of people begging others to come post comments on their blogs; in their honor, here are a few ideas about how to get more folks to click your "comment links":1) Eliminate anything about your site that might cause new arrivals to instantly dismiss it, such as:a) Music or video that starts playing automatically: It's not work safe, and is the #1 complaint I've seen about blogs.b) ANY sort of automatic file download: People will assume it's a virus, but no matter what it actually is it's NEVER ok.c) Requiring a special plugin to play your files: There are endless ways to play music or video that don't require weird plugins, so there's no reason to make people deal with a popup telling them to download one.d) No content at the top of your main page: Even someone on a small laptop with the screen minimized somewhat (which people who surf via Blog Mad and such often do) should see something other than your header, ...
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The world's most disgusting person
2006-12-02 15:05:02
Ask any married woman who the most disgusting person in the world is, and she'll almost certainly nominate her husband; although we all received the same childhood training as to how to deal with our excretory functions, and the parts of the body they emerge from, when we're not somewhere totally private, for some reason it's mainly women who continue to follow those guidelines in adulthood... if a friend tells you that they witnessed someone farting, picking their nose or scratching their armpit in public, you don't need to ask their gender. Even so, most men have SOME restraint outside of the home; once that front door closes behind them, though, they often reveal behaviors worthy of the poo-flinging gorillas at the zoo (and then they wonder why they get laid progressively less the longer they're married). I assert that MY husband is the most revolting of all; I intend to prove it, so if you're squeamish you might wanna skip this post (there won't be anything graphic,...
More About: World , The World , Most , Sting , Person

The Beware List, Part 4
2006-12-02 15:05:02
The purpose of the Beware List is to warn you if someone in your life is evil, sociopathic, a manipulator, out to get you (or some other innocent party), or so messed up that they could cause problems at any moment; to read entries 1-30, see my posts of 5-31-06, 7-6-06 and 8-31-06. Beware of anyone who:31) Has inconsistencies in their stories (no matter HOW tired, sick, stressed or upset they are).This is an easy one; if they can't keep their stories straight, they're LYING. When you call them on it, they'll try to claim that it's because they're tired (etc), but, while mental or emotional duress might cause you to have to struggle to remember things clearly, it WON'T cause you to rattle off a different version of a story every time you tell it... and, an HONEST person will be apologetic if you point out that they got it wrong; only a DIShonest person reacts to being caught out by arguing.32) Describes an event in their lives with a weird and excessive degree of detail ...
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A friend's birthday
2006-12-02 15:05:02
A friend of mine has a birthday coming up soon, and, with the preparations starting to be made, it prompted me to take look at her and her life... and it sorta scares me.When I met her about 15 years ago, she was fairly slim; then, she married a moron, decided that she had to eat as much as he did even though he was a big man (don't ask me why, she just came up with that out of the blue), and, as you might expect, ballooned up to VERY overweight in the year they were together. She exercised and lost a decent amount of weight after he left her, and maintained that long enough to get a new man; then, she started gaining it back, in large part because she stopped exercising... and then they got married, and she started gaining faster... and then she started taking some of those diet pills that eventually got pulled for causing heart attacks, on which she lost weight only to regain it once she was off the pills because she wasn't exercising or eating right. THEN, she had a kid,...
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The dark side of Blockbuster online
2006-12-02 15:05:02
I wasn't excited, at first, about these programs that allow you to maintain a list of DVD's you want to see at the company's website and let you have 3 at a time, sending you new ones as the old ones get mailed back; unless availability and mailing times worked in your favor, it'd be cheaper to just rent locally, and I'm too Puritan at heart to be willing to pay extra just not to have to go to a store to get DVD's... even my husband, as lazy as he is, thought the whole idea was silly. We converted in a hurry when we discovered that the only place we could rent season 3 of "Queer as Folk" was online, but the intention was to only be members for 1 month, during which we'd see all the episodes... or, rather, that was MY intention; my husband, once he experienced getting DVD's through the mail, got hooked, and so outright LIED when asked whether the month was almost up, and didn't reveal that he'd be billed automatically once it was so that I wouldn't demand the exact bill...
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Bloggers, eBay sellers... mother
2006-08-13 04:09:01
First and foremost, I want to thank 2 extraordinary blog buddies, Deborah http://www.sugarfused.net/ and Todd ("Pterodactyl") http://misterpterodactyl.blogspot.com/ for taking the time to put messages on their blogs about me and the situation with my mother; she sends her thanks also, along with her amazement that total strangers would be interested in her illness, much less post about it.
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Enough already with the heavy posts
2006-08-13 04:09:01
Since my recent posts have all been on the serious and intense side (not to mention longer than usual, which means alot on THIS blog), I figured it was time to share some more light-hearted stuff with you: I saw the wildest thing on Showtime, called "Mail Order Wife," the blurb for which was "A filmmaker documents the lives of a chubby doorman and his mail-order bride from Burma"; my advice is
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Empowering realizations
2006-06-28 11:11:00
It's unbelievably difficult for me to post this essay. I've spent my entire adult life trying to improve the way people view depressives and the like, making it clear that their illnesses are PHYSICAL, that their suffering is REAL, and that they deserve the same sympathy and support as those with ailments of any other sort; over and over I've hammered home the points that they didn't ask for it, don't want it, would do anything to be rid of it, and are NOT "just trying to get attention" by talking about it any more than a cancer patient is "just trying to get attention" when THEY talk about what they're going through.Human nature is diverse, though, and it's silly to think that EVERY member of as gigantic a group as the mental health community would act the same way, or be perfectly virtuous and noble, or have the same deep needs. I've been doing peer counseling online for people with depression and other so-called "mental illnesses" for years, but I've just now grasped ...
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Placebos and the truth about time
2006-06-04 12:15:00
I'm finally starting to catch up with my backlog of Discover magazines; I was REALLY behind... my husband keeps asking me if I've gotten to the articles about fire and the wheel yet. In the April issue I've found a couple of fascinating things; the 1st one is about just how powerfully the mind affects the body:"Placebo vs Placebo""Medical researcher Ted Kaptchuk pitted two types of fake medicine--sugar pills and pretend acupuncture--against each other to see which one worked better. He recruited 266 volunteers suffering from chronic arm pain, which they rated at least a 3 on a 10-point scale.133 subjects received acupuncture with trick needles whose tips retract so they don't penetrate the skin. The other 133 subjects were prescribed blue cornstarch pills that resembled amitriptyline, an antidepressant often prescribed for repetitive strain injury.25 percent of the acupuncture group experienced side effects from the nonexistent needle pricks, including 19 people who felt pai...
More About: Truth , Time , Lace , Ruth , The Truth

Some comments on control freaks
2006-02-04 09:36:00
"Control freak" is one of those terms for which the meaning is starting to get distorted; its actual meaning is"One who has an obsessive need to exert control over people and situations"http://dictionary.reference.co m/search?q=control%20freakbut too many people use it to refer to when someone tries to control their OWN life... especially when the name-caller themselves is trying to control that person and failing. Let me be perfectly clear; someone trying to have control of their OWN life is being an ADULT, not a control freak... and if anyone tries to insist otherwise, it's probably because they're a manipulator who's trying to gain control of you, so run, run, RUN.Another misuse of the term "control freak" is with the intention for it to be a more extreme version of "anal" (aka "anal retentive," NOT the other meaning, this isn't a porn blog); the sort of person who uses it this way will always be the less powerful member of the relationship they have with the alleged fre...
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A grim case of life imitating art
2005-12-05 11:01:00
In the movie "50 First Dates"http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/ DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?cha nnel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=108337 2&displayBoxArt=true#Casta young woman was in an auto accident that caused brain damage such that her memory "resets" itself every night while she sleeps, so she wakes up the next morning remembering nothing of what's happened since the crash. In 2 scenes at the medical facility for people with brain injuries, we're treated to a patient called "10 Second Tom," so called because that's how long his memory lasts... and it's portrayed as a joke, because who ever heard of such a thing?Tonight, on TLC, I saw "The Man with the Seven Second Memory"http://tlc.discovery.com/tvlisting s/episode.jsp?episode=0&cpi=55264&gid=0&c hannel=TLC"Once a renowned conductor and musician, Clive Wearing was struck down by a virus that caused massive damage to his brain. Against the odds, doctors managed to save his life but he was left with a memory that span...
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A sad story on eBay
2005-11-11 10:54:00
I've spent a great deal of time (and of course $) on eBay over the past few years, mostly building up my collections; my husband, to his everlasting credit, doesn't complain about the $ or that the house is blanketed by my stuffies and figurines and such... unlike most men, he's neither repelled nor emasculated by these sorts of things, and even likes many of them. I'm obsessive about my collections, and my husband, although not a collector per se (he's a packrat, which is different), is also an obsessive type and understands my desire to have everything in existence that fits my criteria; and, although he was spoiled rotten as a kid, he also understands that, because I had so little during my own childhood, I REALLY enjoy having stuff now.Not every couple deals with one of them being a collector so smoothly, of course, but, as long as the amount of $ involved isn't excessive (which is a problem far more often since eBay was created, making it possible for collectors to ac...
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What makes a person "good"?
2005-10-19 11:46:00
Three days ago, I posted the following:"how can we truly have 'good' if we don't have 'evil' against which it battles? And if there's no actual good and evil... then what?"Since then, I've mulled it over alot, and part of what I've come up with is that it's HARD to give a definition of a "good" person that stands up to merciless argument.Let's start out with the idea, held by pretty much everyone, that an animal can't be morally good or bad/evil because it's not making choices as to its actions with an awareness of right and wrong; it seems reasonable to me to get from this concept that whatever animals DO can't be morally good or bad, and thus that anything that could be seen as a natural animal behavior couldn't be counted for or against the most advanced animal, US, from a moral standpoint. I know, we supposedly civilized people have decided that many natural behaviors are immoral and bad, but I'll save that for a post on what's wrong/bad; figuring out what's ...
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An interesting realization
2005-09-14 14:51:00
If you've been reading here for a while, you've grasped that my father was a sick, evil person, which makes him fairly unusual. There's another, even more unusual thing about him, though; he's been impotent his entire life. Today, for the 1st time, I started wondering if there's a connection between those 2 things.If you're wondering how I know about him being impotent, it's because my mother inexplicably felt it necessary to tell me; he'd just turned 22 when they got married, and should have been bursting with hormones like every other man of that age, but instead... my mother's line is that she was a virgin on her wedding night, and for several nights thereafter. He never improved his level of performance, and in fact it declined steadily; in the latter years with my mother, he never managed to complete the act at all. His lack of male functionality extended all the way down to the cellular level; he had such low sperm count and poor sperm motility that it's ama...
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Medical surprises from Discover
2005-06-14 11:59:00
You've probably read many times that there's no such thing as an aphrodisiac, that people who think that consuming a given thing boosts their libidos are just experiencing the placebo effect or wishful thinking, that all the things that people have believed for centuries were having an effect were just the result of thousands of people fooling themselves... and now, from the June 2005 issue of Disco ver, page 11, comes the following:"Oysters do boost the libido, say U.S. and Italian chemists. They find the shellfish are rich in rare amino acids that, especially when eaten raw, trigger an increase in sex hormones."Just watch, it's only a matter of time before other supposed aphrodisiacs are also found to contain something that boosts libido; this is yet another case of the arrogance of scientists who figure that if they haven't found proof that something works yet, it in fact doesn't work, no matter how many people say otherwise from personal experience.The BIG surprise in this...
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