My mom and I are both laptopping on the coffee table. Wahoo, that's an intergenerational geek-out! (No, we're not swapping off on typing on the same laptop; that'd be a little strange.)
Did you know that at GNC, they sell shark cartilage pills? Apparently you eat these supplements and take on the power and wisdom of 1,000 sharks (this is what Google tells me). I doubt all of that though, because the shark cartilage pills were 80% off. Either they're using bad sharks (or worse, manatees) or consuming shark cartilage is as weird and ineffective as one might think.
I tend to notice stuff like this because I am on the precipice of becoming one of those weird people with lots of dietary quirks. I work with a couple of people like this, and they've got me started on fish oil and green tea. They take a lot more than that (wheatgrass, micronutrient mixes, vampire blood), but I haven't fallen for that trap. Nevertheless, I like to look at the supplements whenever I'm at a place that has a lot of them.
One of these strange supplements that never fails to amuse is emu oil. I don't know if they get this oil by sponging off the emus or by passing dead emus through a strainer, and I do not care to know. All I know is, the stuff is expensive. I don't even know what it does, and I've looked on wikipedia many, many times.
I've often thought what a great line of work it must be to sell these supplements. The crazier it sounds, the more you charge. What does it do? It's a mystery... an ASIAN mystery (and then you can charge even more). When the FDA disproves it, you chalk it up to a conspiracy, and then charge even more to combat that conspiracy. Based only on the medicine cabinets of the people reading this post, we could make enough unicorn cream to drink fruity drinks forever. Think big, people.
Posted by Cody at September 10, 2007 8:59 PM