Teddy Bears' Picnic

What's your cure for the common cold?

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a cure, but I've had good results with alcohol. When I first start to feel sick, I take one (maybe two) shots of hard liquor. My rationale is that alcohol kills germs, and if you catch it early enough, when their numbers are low, the alcohol keeps the germs at a level that your immune system can handle on its own. If you wait too long, it won't work, and you can't get sloshed, since that has negative effects of its own. But it does seem to work. I used to take the shots in hot tea with lemon and honey (which is a traditional home cure in its own right), but lately I just sip the shots themselves, the theory being that the alcohol will coat the throat and kill more germs on direct contact than it will in my bloodstream. In any case, it might be more placebo effect than anything else, but it usually works for me.

Except when it doesn't :)

Show us your secret ingredient.

Curry Powder

Curry powder. I put it in almost everything. It works with spicy, it works with savory, and it works with sweet. I've added it to the batter for French Toast, honey-mustard glaze for chicken or pork, marinades for beef, even oatmeal. It makes a great Chai. And it even plays well with other spices and spice blends. A little bit goes a long way :)

What fictional creature do you wish were real?

The Babel Fish from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The Babel fish is small, yellow and leechlike, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.

Can you imagine the effect that would have on the world? The disputes that could be avoided without linguistic roadbloacks? I mean, sure, we'd still have wars and horrific murders, but at least they wouldn't be because of misunderstandings :)

So CBS has this new show with -- stop me if you've heard this before -- a good vampire who fights crime. Not only has this concept been done to death, it's been done better, and not really all that long ago. But why? Special effects just get more and more advanced, and this show is on a major network that can afford "the good stuff". So why does this show suck (pun intended)? It's heavily derivative, not just of the general vampire mythos, but it parallels the storylines, themes, and characterizations of its predecessors almost to the point of plagiarism, without even an inkling of the humor or original thought that made them great.

Admittedly, it's just the first episode. Maybe it will improve. But I doubt it. What made these other shows work is the same thing that makes vampire stories in other media so successful: sex appeal and horror, not exactly strong points for CBS. The vampire effects were minimal, a blur here, some fangs & contacts there. The cast, while definitely attractive, have little chemistry with each other. Even the detective story was weak -- the obvious culprit was so obvious that it couldn't be him -- maybe the unassuming guy who was always nearby? Oh no, now I've ruined it for you.

Oh wait, it was ruined already....

Audio: Share what you're listening to right now.

The B-52's - Rock Lobster

Do professional athletes make too much money, or do they deserve every penny?  Why?

Every single cent :)

Kerney

What issues do you look forward to hearing about in the upcoming U.S. Presidential debates?

Issues? They talk about issues now? I thought the debates were to show who had the best hair :)

O.J. Simpson is back in the news again.  What are your thoughts on the release of "If I Did It" and his recent arrest?

They say justice delayed is justice denied. In this case, maybe not. I think he just got so used to getting away with, well, everything, that he never considered his actions could have consequences. I remember when he told David Letterman, years before his better known crimes, that he once got pulled over for speeding. He was going 125 mph. The cop, of course, recognized him and let him off with a warning. The story (greatly summarized here) was amusing and all, but to me, even then, it screamed celebrity justice. The fact that OJ proudly told this story on TV seemingly implied that it wasn't all that unusual for him to get away with murder, as would become apparent to all (OK, most) of us not long thereafter.

So the most recent arrest, which could finally get him put away for the remainder of his life, was a long time coming. It's ironic, of course, that he's accused of stealing his own property. His defense? The cops don't help him out anymore since, you know, the collosal travesty of injustice that was his trial, so he had to help himself. Frankly, I don't doubt that version of events at all. Even if everything he says in this case is true, it's still illegal. Lying won't help, telling the truth won't help. Maybe this won't be the justice that the Browns and Goldmans wanted -- nay, deserved -- but it's the best they might ever get.

Hey OJ! Don't drop the soap :)

Where is your favourite place to be on a sunny Sunday afternoon? 
Submitted by Rev Stan.

In a dark room.

Pretty much like any other day :)

Who was the first person to give you info -- correct or not -- on how to "make babies"? 
Submitted by Manon-It-All.

It wasn't a person. My parents, either by sheer negligence or brilliant childrearing, had a few books on a shelf low enough for me to reach. The classic Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask was, as you might imagine, brimming with all sorts of info about sex, mostly accurate but a lot very dated. More appealing to my sensibilities was an encyclopedia of sex (which may have been the title, but I don't really recall). It had brief articles on every possible topic, so I was well-versed on even the most obscure minutiae, which led to a few humorous events where I knew terms but pronounced them wrong because I'd only ever seen them in print and never heard them aloud. So, long story short (too late), no one ever gave me "the talk", although I'm sure it was covered in high school health classes. By the time I was curious about such things, the information was freely available to me.