Yeah, so I didn’t really spend the whole month (since halftime) camping. I was just goofing off. Procrastinating, as it were. I wanted to write something, but what to write? ????? ????? ?? ????????

Exhausted by the vagaries of the mediocre Nittany Lions’ season, but nevertheless somewhat buoyed by their performance in the Outback Bowl, I finally decided that enough was enough. No capstone, no report card, no great analysis—it’s just over, thankfully. Another soporific year like this and I’ll switch to watching knitting tournaments.

I suppose I’ll get back to football around NFL Draft Day, but for now, as is the case every year at this point, I turn my attention to other things—issues that are worthy of sophomoric, pseudo-intellectual banter or just plain bar room bullshit. Thus, I might completely avoid politics. The way things are going in Washington these days ain’t even worthy of bar room bullshit. However, another favorite topic of mine, the health care morass, is likely to get some play here. Furthermore, my worthy redheaded co-author might even finish a latent piece that has been festering for a while. (Note to Redhead: Hopefully, Larry won’t change too much in the interim).

Along the lines of health care, sort of, I attended the First Annual Holistic Health Fair up in Gainesville last Saturday. I’ll just state that it was chock full of nuts—and I don’t mean heavenly coffee. I eschewed having my aura photographed ($20) for fear that I wasn’t going to show up with the vaunted, yellow-orange, highly intelligent aura that I was told only appears on people with IQs over 160 and those who are reincarnated or sent here from other worlds with a mission. I did, however, get some instant, on the spot acupuncture for my cold. ????? ????? ?????? ?????? I bought a peppermint soy candle also in hopes of curing my upper respiratory distress. I drank some Vitamin C tea. I had a nice chat with the people at the Department of Peace table and vowed to send postcards to my two U.S. Senators and my U.S. Congressman (who they said they’d look up for me, but I said I already knew who he is and he’s a Republican so it might go for naught—but they said they actually totally wanted to get Republicans involved). Eschewing the offer of a cookie from the Department of Peace table, I also declined to drink the “raw milk” from the featured dairy, politely claiming to be lactose intolerant. (I think Louis Pasteur might have had some valid points to make about milk.) There was a guy beating on an Indian drum and lots of people improvising some kind of hoochie coochie dance to its beat. People selling crystals and beads abounded. ???? ???? ???????? I got lots of literature. Artists hocked their wares. One had a sign that said “If you’re middle class, thank FDR and the Democrats; if you’re very rich or very poor, thank the Republicans.” Oh, my, how that hit the spot! Right on, brother! Far out! There were all kinds of peace symbols and latter-day hippies. I could swear that some of those herbs smelled decidedly ganjaesque. It was groovy.

The best exhibitor, though, was BioPro. This is an outfit that makes round plastic discs that you glue to your cell phone to nullify radiation that would otherwise fry your brain. What fries my brain is that they get like $40 each for these things. They want you to use them on your TV, your video games, your vacuum cleaner, and your coffeemaker, too. BioPro makes another product called the Home Harmonizer. It is a sort of club shaped hunk of plastic with two prongs designed to plug into a household AC outlet. While this $200 gem purports to use no electricity, it is designed to help to relieve stress within a 60-foot radius. Here are the ad bullets:

• Dual Action Technology – designed to contribute to stress reduction and energy enhancement in your home and office
• Unique in the market
• Designed to help create an enhanced living and working environment for you, your children and pets
• Covers up to 60 foot radius
• Uses no electricity
• Easy and convenient – Plug into your wall outlet, done!

OK, so what does the plastic, plug-in shellelagh actually do? Even after reading the ad copy, I have no idea. You plug it into your wall outlet and it doesn’t use electricity. Hmmm. Do you think it might be channeling the harmful disharmonious waves back into the power grid? Maybe it sucks all the stressful radiation out of your house and sends it back to the evil, greedy utility company to blow up its nasty coal-fired, carbon-dioxide emitting—or dare I say nuclear?—generators. Not once in the product blurb does it say what the hell this thing actually does. Hmmm…stress reduction and energy enhancement. Plug it in and you’re done. That sounds like an ad for Madame Zora’s Massage Parlor. She’s unique in her market, too!

Check out the BioPro web site. There are lots of other, similar products that are designed to save your ass from all this electric crap in the air. There’s even a tonic you can drink, a quart of which, along with a couple of bottles of some kind of supplements, goes for $146.50. If you didn’t sleep through your college physics class, you’ll be amazed at the new knowledge of EMF (formerly electromotive force, but now, through this site, redefined as “electromagnetic frequency”) you’ll pick up. And the best part is that you don’t have to be Einstein to buy into the concept.

I had a great time at the Holistic Health Fair. My cold got worse, though.