Weird chinese herbal medicine stuff

Annie Charmaine is at it again. Anne always has a way of stirring up the Asian side of my brain and I think she does it on purpose.

In my lifetime, I have been exposed to weird chinese herbal medicine stuff, four times.

The first was at my Karate dojo, in El Paso, Texas. I was studying judo at the time and my friend Oren, was sick, sitting on the couch in the dojo, watching us work out. My instructor Ty Hayashi (yeah, I know....he was Japanese) pulled Oren aside, telling him to go upstairs and he would mix him a concoction that would cure him. Ty told us all to take a break and I followed Oren upstairs to watch.

Ty mixed Oren the most GOD AWFUL looking mess in a drinking glass that I had ever seen. It smelled like a cross between rancid potatoes and a wet ashtray. Oren had to hold his nose to drink the mess. An hour later Oren swore he not only felt better, he felt the best he'd felt in years. You would have had to catch me first.

The second time was when I was married and lived in Virginia. My wife worked for a Chinese restaurant and had been feeling ill one day. The owners took her out back and poured her a cup full of a noxious mixture from a large container they had pulled out from behind a table. She never drank it, refusing politely, but later telling me what it looked and smelled like. I didn't blame her. You would have had to catch me first.

The third time was when I was in China. I had been eating at a favorite little Chinese dive on a side street near my hotel in Beijing and while eating, I eyed the huge, glass bottles that contained the nastiest looking crap I'd ever seen, wondering what the hell it was and who would be crazy enough to consume it. I never saw them delve into one of those containers while I was there.

Now I'm hearing about it from Annie.

Mouse fetus drowned in Brandy, with ginseng and herbs. Oh yum.

You would have had to catch me first.

-Jeeem-

Do you realize that on any given day...

of any given week...

of any given month.....

in your regular dealings with the general public.....

You are dealing with at least one...

CERTIFIABLY deranged, mentally unstable, undiagnosed, mentally disordered individual?

Oh yeah.

They could be your cash register lady, your grocery store clerk, your meter reader, the school bus driver, a cop, the local florist, the UPS guy in those funny looking shorts, your neighbor, the dog grooming attendant, your AVON lady, the waitress at the corner deli, your karate instructor, your kids teacher, the town dump operator, a crossing guard, the gas station attendant, the guy mopping the floor at Kentucky Fried Chicken, the meter maid or any number of folks.

"So Jeeem," you say.....

"How is it you know this?" you ask.....

Cause I know.

I can't tell you WHY I know. You'll just have to take my word on this one.....

I want to stress the term, "UNDIAGNOSED," which means, quite simply, they haven't been found out yet and are NOT on any medication. Hell, some of these people have been diagnosed but aren't taking their medication. Some of them are....ANGRY. Not at anything in particular, just ANGRY.

In the past, their behavior has cost them their jobs, a marriage or two, some brushes with the law, an eyebrow raised here and there and other troubles, both more and less severe. Eventually, something will happen calling attention to them and the system will then find them and lock them up or hospitalize them.

Meanwhile, they are out there.....

Waiting to serve you.

No, I ain't talking DEPRESSION. I ain't talking ANXIETY. I'm talking weird stuff.

PSYCHOSIS.

Grassy Knoll stuff.

GOIN' POSTAL....

A quick Google Search turns up: "Individuals who have an untreated, severe mental illness commit more than 1,000 homicides a year in the United States."

wonderful.

Have a nice day!

-Jeeem-

Thanks Keeley for the kudo's and compliments!

You rock.

-Jeeemeister-

Just chatted with Chris of Blacktelescope - a self-centered web about the finer habits of drug use, attainable product and the subject of women.

I love this guy.

Chris has a way with metaphor that grabs you right in the crotch. His quote today, regarding the ruts we get ourselves into sometimes was....

"Those ruts are sold to us every fucking day. We're taught to buy into them and sold the shovels we use to dig ourselves deeper."

Chris states, "I had a theory that people are split up into three different groupings. 5% of people are innately able to see what's going on. 40% of people will never be able to conceive of a world outside of their TVs, but the other 45% just need to be shown, they just need a trigger, a phrase, a photograph, a book..."

Brilliant Chris.....just brilliant. I would have worded it a little differently, but basically would have said the same....

5% - People who are stupid and don't have a fucking clue....
40% - People who are hypnotized by the fucking media.....
45% - People who have a fucking chance but are too scared and too set in their own miserable ways to wake up and smell the coffee....

Perhaps I suck as much as I think I suck at math and figures, but are we not leaving out another ten percent or so? Must be the percentage of people that have a clue and are doing something about it.....I'm not so sure about the percentages either Chris! Of course Chris's perspective is from Belfast, Northern Ireland and his outside world of travel, no doubt.

Anybody want a kitten?

-Jeeem-

Jessie's working on her "Stupid People" dissertation for her PhD again.....

I just love this chick.

I'd never want to meet her in a dark alley, but I love her......from afar.

Have you taken your medication today?

-Jeeem-

A heartfelt Welcome and salutations to Adrian of MALCONTENT weblogger fame. He thinks you should just....

Shut up and reboot!

A Malaysian transplant into the capital city of Australia via the University of Canberra, Adrian leaps full bottles of Jack Daniels in a single bound, speeds along the cheras kajang highway at 140kp/h in a crappy iswara (when home), avoids broken ribs from wild kangaroos roaming around the new ressies area and misses his homeland of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which he describes as....

"Land of 24-hour access to cheap exotic foods, overpriced cars, pirated CD's and DVD's, multitudes of tollbooths, bad public transportation service, traffic jams and good ole pollution."

Wow, thanks Adrian....we'll all be booking our vacation flights soon!

Wild, roaming kangaroos....now ain't life a bitch?

On the home front, ZIPPY HAD HER KITTENS!

Dad awoke early this morning, at around 3 a.m. to loud mewing. A white one had been born. I watched as she had her other three, encased in transparent parachutes connected to rouge colored backpacks and went back to bed grossed out after watching the Zipster eat this mess and free the struggling kittens. Yuck, my stomach isn't in it's prime at three in the morning.

So, today we have two white / creme ones and two dark tigers. Anybody want a kitty?

-Jeeem-

I Can Add Inches To My Penis NOW!

You ask me, "How Jeeem? How can you do that?"

Well believe it or not, there is some chick out there in cyberland, name of Heather, who for whatever reason has taken it upon herself to see that I get my penis enlarged. Yes, I'm serious! I got an e-mail from her today.

What a gal.

The only problem is in the e-mail she asks me, "Do you want your PENIS to be HARD as a ROCK all the time?"

Well NO Heather, I don't. That would be a bit embarrassing don't you think?

As nice as Heather seems, I think I'm going to pass on this DHG stuff. After all, what if I overdosed? I mean....I'm a drug addict and I might take the whole bottle in a day or something. Can you imagine?

It could happen....

-Jeeem-

My good friend Mark, a.k.a. Pokey eater, of Potkettleblog fame, has decided to move on to bigger and better things and shut down his site. A pity as he will be sorely missed. I remember an e-mail Mark sent me in January of this year....

He was responding to my blog quote regarding my new resolve to write anything and everything this year, but mostly to just write....

"Some of it will suck. Some of it will shine." I said.

"Bingo," Mark said, adding, "and there's no need to keep your musings quiet. You can make 'em EXPLODE, too."

So true. In retrospect, he was right. There was no need to keep my musings quiet and I didn't. I thank him for his helpful comments and constructive criticism over the last few months. I'll miss his wit and his humor and I learned a lot from his writings. Hopefully we will hear from him again.

Well, God is at it again. This time (as my finger is healing) he drained my well dry. That God....he's such a practical joker. Okay God. Enough already, you've made your point. My life is at another juncture, a new woman and an old friend in my life, a dry well, a smashed finger, tons of homework and winter is coming....

I'm taking it a day at a time.

Went to the laundromat this morning, grouchy as hell, as I didn't have water to make coffee this morning. Joyce took my laundry and we chatted....no real news on the Bristol front today so I picked up a couple of local papers and headed out to the local spring with my plastic containers.

Sometimes I have to force myself to be nice and I hate doing that. The spring was jammed up this morning with flatlanders. Can't they get water in their own damn state? Why do they have to come up here and make me, a New Hampshire resident, wait at the damn spring?

(Mental note to always have water available for coffee)

Got my water and now I'm home, nursing a whopper of a headache from lack of caffeine. I've got to grab some more containers and head out to the river to pick up some flushing, washing and general cleaning water. Lack of water makes life so interesting.

Lack of HOT water makes life.....SUCK.

This ought to be an interesting weekend.

-Jeeem-

The MAD Pot-Bellied Indian Man

What Anne Charmaine has to contend with in her neck of the woods! You gotta read the Mad Pot Bellied Indian Man with the messed up hair and full grown beard story! Annie, if you ever write a novel, I'll be the first to purchase it!

Annie speaks of "Betel nut red" goo [saliva] and that's what prompted my post. I never knew what a betel nut was until I traveled to Mindanao, the southern most island of the Philippine archipelago. There, in the dense jungle of Surigao and Agusan del Sur, the Filipino people chew this nut for the effect it gives.

Betel nuts contain an alkaloid called arecoline. This alkaloid produces a stimulating effect and increases salivation [lucky for Annie]. In the Philippines it is said that Betel nuts are a common substitute for cigarettes and are often rolled in a quid, containing tobacco and other flavorings.

While strolling down a well-worn path through the jungle, one bright, sunny, excruciatingly humid day in the southern Philippines, I noticed some smoke rising from deep within the jungle. Together with a friend, I ventured down a narrow footpath, eventually coming to a very old woman tending a smoldering fire. The woman was making charcoal from coconut shell husks, silently poking at the charred chunks laying in a shallow hole in the ground. Her face was a leather mask of deep furrows interrupted only by the hollow pits that held her eyes and her mouth, a shriveled opening screwed into a smile....

It was then that I saw, in horror, the blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. After my friend and I had exhausted our welcome and it was apparent to my friend that her dialect did not correspond with this old woman's language, we left. Once a good distance away, I expressed my horror at her obvious internal bleeding.

"She's not bleeding Jeeem! She's chewing betel nuts!"

Not quite a Mad Pot-Bellied Indian Man Story, but not bad eh?

-Jeeem-

Howdy Sports Fans

Just when life was sailing along peacefully.......

WHAM!

God was bored, spotted me through the opening in a cloud, figured my life was going a LEEEEEETLE Bit too smoothly and ZAPPED me.

Damn. Just my luck.

First he slammed my little finger in the door of my truck.

That was just a warm-up exercise though....he (she?) didn't stop there. By now I'm looking over my shoulder when I walk out the door in the morning. What the hell is God's problem anyway? Maybe he (she?) needs to get a job or something. Oh jeez....I'll probably really get it for that statement....oh well.

So anyway.....

I thought my schedule sucked.....have you seen Jessie's (of, "Just Bite Me!" fame) schedule?

Yeah, I can remember when I was thirty....

-Jeeem-

AMAZON's at it again

This time the gimmick is THE GOLD BOX.

Not just any GOLD BOX, but YOUR VERY OWN GOLD BOX.

"Jim's Gold Box" they call it. Of course I realize that at this very moment, there are about 568,000 or more Gold Boxes out there on the Amazon site, all with the name of their coveted owner on them but that doesn't matter.

This is MY Gold Box. It sparkles. It has STUFF inside it that is reserved.....JUST FOR ME! Hand picked, specially for me, by my special store...

But wait! Hold on there.

Have you checked out your Gold Box yet?

What the hell is Amazon thinking? Where the hell do they get this stuff?

I can't use this shit!

Here's the latest......















This is the Rugrats Radio Controlled Angelica.

Just what I was hoping I'd be able to purchase one day.

List Price: $39.99
Amazon's Price: $14.98
You Normally Save: $25.01
+ Gold Box Coupon: $3.00

Act Now and Save: $28.01 (70%)
Special Gold Box Price: $11.98

Shit, I'd better hurry......only 48 minutes left to buy. Looks like Amazon is taking it's marketing research to new and exciting levels....they really know their customers!

-Jeeem-

Jeeem's Short Stories Are UP!

I've finally posted a few of my favorite Short Stories to my Website and you can go there and read them if you like, by going.......

HERE

Hope you enjoy them!

ARE YOU A PROFESSIONAL?

Well, if you THINK you are, then why don't you take my quiz to determine whether or not you qualify as a professional?

It only takes a couple minutes.

Wanna?

Good....then click.........HERE.

-Jeeem-