h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

[GDZ]

Hypatia, okay, the woman's got good intentions, but has anyone explained to her that her fears are beyond silly? I shuddder to think what she would do over a school bake sale!

My least favorite ad for male virility is the one with the guy throwing the football through the tire swing...he keeps missing, and then they talk about the drug, and suddenly he keeps hitting it. The meaning is unmistakable...

My least favorite ad of all time is the one where a mother and daughter are walking down the beach, and the daughter turns to her mother and says "Mom, can I ask you a personal question?" and when her mother says "of course, dear," she asks "do you douche?"

Really, has any woman here asked her mother that question???

Advertising prescription only drugs in a way that's aimed at consumers is illegal here. I think that it's illegal for an advertiser to advise people to 'talk to your doctor' - the BMA wouldn't welcome that much extra work! I'd like to think it's about ethics, but I think it's because the government has a vested intrest in not encourgaing people to take medicinations for things that they don't really need, or to see doctors with trival conditons.

For this reason drug companies spend their adverstising budgets on giving pens to doctors, giving them buffets and sometimes taking them to conferences. Rather worryingly I've realised that I haven't purchasing a pen for two years, and all my pens have the names of drugs on them. I've always been spilt on the ethics of it, on one hand they should be subsidsing my studies, and I can't prescribe anyway. On the other hand I think it's morally wrong. So I've decided to give up drug company freebies and brought my first pen for years - it's got a picture of a sheep on it. Oddly enough this would be symbolic had I noticed the sheep before I purchased it. I haven't noticed any effect on my karma yet, but I'm sure it will happen.

Ben - that site is hilarious, I really should get hold of that song.

MR - what's a douche? I mean do people use that for reasons other than some strange sort of fetish activity?

My mother would have died on the spot if I had asked her a question like that. To this day she claims she found me in a cabbage patch.

MR, I imagine she has turned in her share of bake sales - or will soon. She is also always planning events then finding a reason to be out of town when they take place - which leaves everyone else with extra work. Or she will call the paper about an event - show up just long enough to get her picture taken, then leave. So when the story hits the paper everyone thinks she has done a lot of work. And she has a way of taking things over. If an organization has an event 99% planned and calls her and asks her to spend 15 minutes manning a booth, she will step in and change the whole project around so she can promote herself as the main person involved. It's maddening. She is so unpopular that she actually has received poison pen letters and death threats. But she doesn't care because she is so convinced of her own rightness. And people are so intimidated by her that she gets away with it.

Actually, I don't know who is more difficult - her or the smellfungus. They hate each other, of course.

Hypatia - can't you eat hot dogs raw anyway? I'm pretty sure you don't even need to cook them. Anyone else heard this?

MR - that reminds me. There was a Saturday Night Live skit, in which Michael Jordan (very famous basketball player) was hosting the show. In the skit, he's walking by a lake with a young woman. The young woman asks him, "Do you ever get that not-so-fresh feeling?" The skit then goes into Michael Jordan selling douching products...

Commerical's just crack me up. No matter how "bad" they are. If they're bad, I get a kick out of imagining the planning session. Or trying to come up with how Saturday night live would have spoofed it.

Z - Speaking of BMA: Is there an Arthur of the BMA?

My mom told me that hot dogs and bologna are the same product in two different shapes. I was allowed to eat cold hot dogs and lived to tell the tale.

What's Blongne?

(dave, not as far as I know.. )

Arthur of the BM
Arthur of the BM
Arthur of the BMA!!!

Wasn't there a monty python skit about Arthur of the BDA?

Bologna is a sliced deli meat. Contents can vary, but typically pork, beef, turkey or a combination of same.

This company makes both hot dogs and bologna.

http://www.kraftfoods.com/om/

Ahhh I'm afriad Monty Pylon is before my time

It was BDA--the British Dental Association. Graham Chapman played a organized crime-ring busting dentist who took on a shady operation run by Michael Palin out of a bookstore in London. I believe his character's name was Arthur Lemming.

Lemming of the BD
Lemming of the BD
Lemming of the BDA!

[fg, raised on Monty Python and Fawlty Towers]

No, no! Eric Idle was Lemming, Graham Chapman was the arch-villain-dentist in black scrubs.

Hot dogs are fully cooked. It says so right on the package. We ate them raw when I was a kid all the time. And the ring balona with the garlic and the red casings. We always ate that raw on crackers. Packed it into a lunch box and took it to the river and let it set out all day while we fished. No one ever got sick.

Who the heck cooks their lunch meat before they make a sandwich? It's insane. And when was the last itme someone got sick from cupcakes or cookies at a party or event? Or from popcorn? Has anyone ever gotten food poisoning from popcorn?

We used to do food crafts for the kids all the time. I suppose those are all scotched now. Remember last summer we did the silly food combinations? The kids had a great time. They liked Marv's mustard and Oreos. Which I suppose would be ok since the oreos are prepackaged and the mustard is in a squeeze bottle.

Arrrrrrrraaaaaagggggghhhh!

[B]

Z, a douche is a v*ginal washout. It took me years to discover what it was, unitl I was about 15 and saw a programme on it. I asked my Mum if it was necessary and she said no it was a load of old rubbish that could lead to infections by upsetting the body's natural balance. I will always miss her, if you ask a straight question she never gave any bullsh*t. I invariably had to ask her stuff that my friend's couldn't ask their mums. Goodness knows ~what~ she thought I was getting up to!

I think that there was a USian approach to contraception which involved douches.

B

Hypatia, I'm not religious, but g*d bless you for surviving that. I would have throttled someone.

It's not a contraceptive, but the US takes bodily cleanliness to absurd lengths...basically, a douche is supposed to get rid of any, ah, natural odors from certain areas of the body. A whole lot of hooie, frankly.

Anyway...I just remembered another of my favorite commericals. PETA objected, so it didn't last long, but it was a great big black fluffy sitting at the bottom of a long flight of white carpet stairs. The cat sneezes, and suddenly the white carpet is coated with black fur, with a small white circle where the cat used to be. It was for Bissell vacuums. It made me snort soda out my nose the first time I saw it.

I think you're right about that Ben, but it didn't work. Anyway, they are not advertised anymore. US prescription drugs are definitely the strangest ads. They were not allowed in advertisements at all until a few years back, then the government put so many restrictions on them that it had a strange result. They cannot say what the drug is for unless they list *all* the possible side effects including those that have the same frequency as a placebo, etc. So they either remain incredibly vague ("The Purple Pill, ask your doctor if it's right for you!") or horrifyingly frightening ("While no drug can be said to completely cure toenail fungus, this product may cause vomiting, nausea, liver failure and in rare cases death. Consult with your doctor if your immune system is compromised if you have been exposed to HIV/AIDS before taking...")

The commercial that bothers me most is the one for Herpes medication. It almost makes you want to go out and get Herpes so you too can be one of those beautiful, attractive, happy, romantic people taking the medication -- somehow I think promoting safe sex would be a better approach.

And they really should not make someone who is phobic about germs in food into a health inspector. That's downright odd. Back a few years ago someone similar tried to enforce a law in NJ that prohibited the selling of cooked eggs unless they met certain conditions that were far beyond your typical poached, fried, or scrambled cooking method. The governor at the time reacted by going to a diner with a camera crew, ordered fried eggs on the runny side, and ate them. The statement was clear enough and no one dared enforce the law to that level. It was clearly ridiculous, and sense won out in this case.

I never thought about the herpes commercial in that light, but you're right--those people *are* awfully attractive and having a lot of fun! Is life really better with herpes?

A long, long time ago when I was a kid I found my mom's douche (it was the old fashioned type with the plastic nozzle and the red rubber bag thinger) under the bathroom sink. When I asked her what it was she said, and I quote: "Honey, you'll find out what that is when you get married." I think the notion was that if you douched right after intercourse, you got rid of the little swimmers. Not to mention the other strange notion that I would do that, let alone wait until I was married to try it.