Archive for June 28th, 2009

Today on weird news: crop circles have been found in Tasmania.  The phenomenon didn’t prove the existence of advanced alien life-forms sending a message of universal peace, or the Tazmanian Devil.  Lara Giddings, deputy premier of Tasmania, was quoted by Reuters in saying that the  mysterious crop circles were caused by a bunch of wallabies who have been eating poppy seeds and hopping around in circles.  In case you don’t know, chemicals from poppy are used to make opium and morphine.

I’d do anything to see a stoned wallaby, or a drugged animal for that matter.  I’ve seen people do very weird things after consuming one too many space brownies or galaxy spaghetti.  The most I got to see of drugged animals was years ago, when I saw two neighborhood dogs run around in circles chasing each other after eating angel’s trumpet flowers (or some patch of hallucinogenic flowering plants of some sort).  It’s a rather amusing sight, although I turned away when they both grew erections and attempted to hump each other.

(Was Rocko ever drugged in “Rocko’s Modern Life?”  Rocko is a wallaby.)

It makes me remember that chapter in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth, where Wang Lung bought the land of the House of Hwang for the price of opium.  It’s a very poignant reminder of the dangers of drug addiction – more than the confessional non-fiction misery literature books I’ve been collecting these days – but there’s nothing like the thought of a bunch of cute little marsupials running and jumping about fields of poppy seeds getting high.  Caught beneath a landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky, or something like that.

This is why I think the global war on drugs is an epic fail: the wallabies are on to us.  While we’ve been focusing on cocaine smuggling in Colombia and crystal meth “supermarkets” somewhere in Pasig, the wallabies have been gorging themselves on the very same seeds we use to decorate and flavor cupcakes with.  The marsupials have been robbing us blind, getting stoned, and running the largest poppy seed cartel in the animal kingdom.  Wallabies are more progressive than us, in terms of decriminalizing organic drug sources for recreational or medical purposes.  There they are getting whack, and here we are sponsoring basketball pa-liga with at least one team of neighborhood junkies doing it to pay for marijuana.  There they are hopping around in circles enjoying the freedom of Nature’s bounty, and here we are blaming Ecstasy for sex videos.

Yup, here’s an entire human population thinking that the crop circles in the poppy fields of Tasmania are caused by aliens.  Between happy wallabies running around in circles and people panicking about alien invasions, I could use some of those poppy seeds to make up my mind.

I’ve always had this theory that when you open up a hydrogen tank and an oxygen tank and have the chemicals mix together in a vat, you’ll have pure water.  It doesn’t work that way, I know.  You know?  Great!

The key to clean and healthy living is eight full glasses of water, but most people aren’t content with “just water.”  There’s ionized water, alkaline water, water sourced from the natural springs of Heaven-Knows-Where.  I wouldn’t be surprised about one day seeing water extracted from the blossoms of the jacaranda tree.  They found bubbly water somewhere in Italy, labeled it “San Pellegrino,” and it tastes no different from pitcher-water you get “free” from Starbucks.  Or bottled piss, for that matter; the next big wave in health-conscious products may involve urine therapy.

Enter Vitwater.  It’s not the first fortified water product on the market, and it’s definitely not the first product endorsed by Manny Pacquiao.  ”Vitamin-enhanced flavored water” makes me think of buying juice, if not for the fact that it is juice.  It detoxifies… just like water.  It quenches your thirst… just like water.  It’s liquid and based on two important chemical elements that make the world go round… just like water.  I could just as easily make painkiller water by crushing ibuprofen and acetaminophen and dissolving it in tap water and market it to children.  I’ll make millions out of wrist-slashing emo kids.

Nah, I wouldn’t make a blog post detailing the facts of water and the foibles of vitamin-enhanced products with no therapeutic claims.  The champions of Vitwater will probably find this post and give me grammatically-inconsistent e-mails and comments telling me that they’ll make it their life’s mission to out me and make me famous.

Everytime I buy Vitwater, I fight a battle that I cannot win.  Lots of people already have problems opening a bottle of Vitwater as it stands, but I can never open the damn thing.  I’ve tried it all: wrapping the cap with a handkerchief, slicing the seal-tabs (whatever they’re called) with the thinnest parts of my keys, banging the cap on a wall… but it never opens.  There was a time I was screaming and wincing in pain just opening the bottle, as the spurs in my wrists just grated together.  All I ever wanted was a damn drink, and the damn bottle had to subject me to torture.

So I go back to the 7-Eleven, ask the attendants to open the bottle for me, and they start using the shop’s knife.  I wonder how many people had to go back to the store to have their Vitwater bottles opened.

Heto na po bote nyo Ma’am… ay Sir, este, sorry po.  Ah, the travails of being a carpal tunnel syndrome-afflicted wimp, and being mistaken for a woman on top of that.

In the grand scheme of things, Vitwater is just juice.  For all that effort, I start guzzling it.  One, two, four, six gulps…

Bleh, I didn’t feel any better.  I think I’ll buy them hydrogen and oxygen tanks and make millions.  I’ll champion it.  Then I’ll go all over the Interwebs looking for bloggers who have a problem with my overpriced water, post grammatically-inconsistent comments on their blogs, and make it my life’s mission to out them and make them famous.

Until then, I think I’ll stick with the water dispenser.

* – Image from Jayvee Fernandez at abuggedlife.com