Nimoy and Shatner: before they were icons

This is just what you think it is: a pre-Trek, pre-Captain Kirk William Shatner, he who appeared on various popular SF (or sci-fi or whatever they call it now) TV shows of the mid-'60s. I believe this one was The Outer Limits. He also did a couple of turns on The Twilight Zone, the monster-on-the-airplane-wing one and another one, much more low-key, in which he became addicted to a sort of Satanic coin bank that was foretelling his death. Jeffrey Hunter,the original Captain Kirk in the failed pilot, didn't seem to have this paranormal/space epic background, or if he did I don't remember it. He was in Biblical movies, I think, and didn't know how to do that infamous wrestling throw that bested Kirk's worst enemy, the Gorn. He was just too bland, and what they seemed to need on the show was the sort of histrionic performance that led to his deathless soliloquy: "No blah-blah-blah!"

Which see.

But wait, there's more! Leonard Nimoy also did at least one turn on The Outer Limits (that I know of - he may have done some Zone/One Step Beyond as well. He had a family to support.) It's eerie how similar this shot is: both of them looking at something disturbing on a screen, though Nimoy turns away with a mildly perplexed look on his face and Shatner looks as if he needs a Pepto-Bismol. Though these appearances weren't on the same episode, guess what! . . . 

They appeared together on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. in 1964. I probably watched this episode, since I was slavishly devoted to the show (and unlike all my friends, I liked Robert Vaughn rather than David McCallum). Like everyone else, I had no idea these two journeyman actors would become cultural icons, and neither did they. All in a day's work.

Stop Alien Abductions! (an excerpt)

ALIEN ABDUCTEE FROM KENTUCKY WEARING A THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET

"Since trying Michael Menkin's Helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control. Now my thoughts are my own. I have achieved meaningful work and am contributing to society.

"My life is better than ever before. Thank you Michael for the work you are doing to save all humanity."

SEE ABDUCTION FLOWCHARTS FOR INFORMATION LINKING ALIEN ABDUCTIONS WITH THE AUTISM EPIDEMIC

AMERICAN LOCATIONS

History

Mississippi 3 July, 2015

A man with a thought screen helmet stopped the aliens from taking him but he was still being harassed by alien-human hybrids outside his house. The alien-human hybrids banged on the wall of the house repeatedly in the night to harass him. The house was on the edge of a forest in central Mississippi. In the middle of the night the man wore the helmet and went outside with a loaded gun. He fired the gun where he heard the hybrids moving. The hybrids left after the gun was fired and never returned.

Texas 2  November, 1999

Woman who reported abduction experiences as the type described by David Jacobs and Bud Hopkins. She said the alien brought her to orgasm by mental suggestion. It looked like the type of insect like alien reported in The Threat. She reports complete success and has been wearing a helmet 24 hours a day for a year and a half. Her husband says she even bathes with it on. This woman was extremely traumatized by her abduction experience. Her husband had her hospitalized for several months when she insisted she was abducted. After wearing the helmet for several months she said she became much more stable and focused.

Possible alien weaknesses (grays only)

Reliance on telepathy

When the alien's telepathic powers are neutralized by the "thought screen helmet" they do not attempt to abduct their victims. Without their telepathic power they cannot render their victims passive.
    
Vitamin C to kill implanted alien-hybrid embryos

One woman who now wears a thought screen helmet along with her husband reports that she killed four alien-hybrid fetuses in a row by taking a gram of vitamin C every hour for weeks. She used her alarm clock at night to awaken her. She reported that she could no longer feel the fetuses moving and the aliens were very angry at the deaths of the alien-hybrids they implanted in her. The aliens did remove a dead alien-hybrid fetus before implanting a live one at another time. This was before she started wearing a thought screen helmet.

Nutrient absorbing skin of grays

It was reported in The Threat that the grays sit in a vat of nutrients and absorb it through their skin. They do not eat as humans do. The grays nutrient absorbing skin may be a weakness as substances of strong odors or material sprayed on their skin may be absorbed directly into their body.

Perfumes

Several abductees report that aliens do not like perfume.  One abductee claims that they stopped an abduction by exposing strong cheap perfume to aliens. 

Michael Menkin was a Lieutenant (junior grade) in the U. S. Coast Guard Reserve. He is a 43 year member of the U.S. Naval Institute and a 16 year member of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). He is also a 29 year member of Sons of the American Revolution.
http://www.stopabductions.com/

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Alien abduction: out there

 

This is an excerpt from one of the very first web sites I ever went on, Stop Alien Abductions. It's a step-by-step tutorial on how to make a helmet to keep aliens from invading your thoughts. As far as I can see, it is completely serious. The site hasn't changed since 1991 or whenever-it-was that I began to fumble around and try to figure out what an Internet was.  I had a Tandy 101 computer (which I fondly called Jessica) which used those rolls of paper with holes on the edges that you tore off along the perforations. Oh, and - I had a fax machine. Remember that thin, shiny, curly fax paper, and the way the ink faded away after a while so you couldn't read it?  And just faxing in general? That noise that it made? Screeeeeech! And dial-up, remember that? And having to wait for someone to get off the phone before you went on the computer. Makes my face want to fall off. Anyway, this is just Step A, and a link to the whole gorgeous mess.

http://www.stopabductions.com/

Make a pattern to cut the Velostat sheets Hold the hat open and push the paper into the hat. Push the paper against the inside and top of the hat. A newspaper will do. Take the hat with the paper in it and put it over your head. The paper should be just above your ears and flush with the front and the back of the helmet. Pull the hat and the paper down over your head. Make sure the paper and the hat are secure against your head. Remove the hat and the paper, taking care to keep the paper with the hat. Use a marking pen or grease pencil and draw a line on the paper where it meets the hat. Remove the paper from the hat and cut along the line you just made. The paper shape is the pattern from which you will cut the 8 pieces of Velostat. (12 pieces if you use 4 mils thick Velostat.)

X Files Football Delay: my sentiments exactly

Yes. Though the reboot of The X Files was about as disappointing as I expected (especially Gillian Anderson's House of Wax/embalmed Botox face), it pissed me off that all the blathering hoopla after the football game, whoever-the-hell-was-playing-or-won, delayed the start of the show by about 25 minutes. I say "about" because it was damn impossible to tell just when it would start, or if it would in fact be one of those "we-now-join-our-regularly-scheduled-program-which-is-already-in-progress" piles of bullshit. Meaning it wouldn't be worth watching at all.

And this after seemingly months of overinflated hype.

I planned to record it and watch it tomorrow or later tonight, but when I saw it wasn't going to start on time, at all, I mean AT ALL, and the screaming and mindless comments went on and on and on, I scrambled around to try to record the next ten hours after the game to try to catch it. I still don't think I watched all of it - it seemed to bleed over several time slots, messily, and kept ending in mid-sentence, so I had to try to find where the next part of it was.

Fox has messed up big-time, but will take no responsibility for this, in spite of a torrent of complaints on their Facebook page, on Twitter, Reddit, etc.(including mine). But it was almost worth going through all that trauma to listen to this guy, whoever he is. I've never seen his videos before, they were posted only tonight, and his accent for some reason makes me want to do backflips. I don't mean that unkindly, I am a connaisseur of accents and this one is a doozy, almost plummy, Elizabethan, like deep-deep-South accents can be. And I totally understand his rage.

BLOGGER'S P. S. : The truth is TOTALLY "out there". All trace of this guy has disappeared. No, I mean it! My repeated  viewings of his video have been wiped from my YouTube history, something which - as far as I know -  can't be done. 

So what is the deeper significance of the mysterious Southern Guy, whose name I now forget?

Damn if I know. But I sure did like his accent.

True love triumphs in a page and a half

Woman’s World: $800 for Very Short Romance Stories

Woman’s World magazine accepts submissions of 800 word romance stories for their magazine.

Submissions must be mailed with a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope.

Manuscripts should be double-spaced in legible size type.

Send them to:

Woman’s World, 270 Sylvan Ave., Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632. Indicate Romance on the envelope.

According to their guidelines:

“We buy contemporary romances of 800 words. Stories must revolve around a compelling, true-to-life relationship dilemma; may feature either a female or male protagonist; and may be written in either the first or third person. Characters may be married, single, divorced or widowed; should be down-to-earth (no yuppies or jet-setters); and their dilemma should be poignantly or humorously conveyed. Please think carefully about a story’s setting, mood and plot, and tell the story with interesting action and dialogue. (Every sentence, paragraph, and scene of the story should deliver more information about your characters and their situation and/or briskly advance the storyline).

We are not interested in stories involving life-or-death matters, nor are we interested in fluffy, flyaway-style romance. When we say romance, what we really mean is relationship–whether it’s just beginning or is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The emphasis in our stories is on real life-which is why we do not buy science fiction, fantasy or historical romance.”

Their official guidelines are not available on their website. Submissions should be sent to the address above.

Say. . . what??

I knew I had put on a few pounds over the holidays, but. . . 

Convenant. Does that mean. . . convenient?

Outrageous tourist complaints (maybe).

Thomas Cook claims these are actual customer complaints, and maybe that is so. But I do find the egg-slicer thing a bit far-fetched.

1. "On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food."

2. "My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

3. "We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish."

4. "We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price."

5. "The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room."

6. "We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow."

7. "It's lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time -- this should be banned."

8. "No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared."

9. "Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers."

10. "I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

11. "The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun."

12. "It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair."

13. "I compared the size of our one-bedroom suite to our friends' three-bedroom and ours was significantly smaller."

14. "The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the resort.' We're trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service."

15. "When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners."

16. "We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning."

17. "It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

18. "I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes."

19. "They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax."

This brought to mind the ULTIMATE tourist rant from a long-ago but still classic Monty Python sketch (and by the way, I don't post a lot of photos just to be idiotic. I cannot take in huge blocks of text myself - my eyes need a break - and besides, many newspapers and internet sites now put a paragraph break after every sentence. Yet I am sometimes dissed for illustrating my stuff. It's not faaaaiiirrrrr. The worst thing my blog was ever called was "embarrassing", but I was back at it the next day, which speaks louder than any insults. And you can always take the option of not reading it. By the way, go ahead: DO cut and paste my stuff, so long as my name is on it, and a link to my blog. I want that.

Just one more point. Why do various people snipe at bloggers for posting photos and stuff, when Pinterest pirates absolutely everything with NO restrictions?

On with our story. (By the way. I've decided to quote the Monty Python "tourist sketch" verbatim, with no commercial interruption. It's better that way, but can you read it? I'm having some trouble.)

Tourist: Yes I quite agree I mean what's the point of being treated like sheep. What's the point of going abroad if you're just another tourist carted around in buses surrounded by sweaty mindless oafs from Kettering and Coventry in their cloth caps and their cardigans and their transistor radios and their Sunday Mirrors, complaining about the tea - "Oh they don't make it properly here, do they, not like at home" - and stopping at Majorcan bodegas selling fish and chips and Watney's Red Barrel and calamari's and two veg and sitting in their cotton frocks squirting Timothy White's sun cream all over their puffy raw swollen purulent flesh 'cos they "overdid it on the first day."

Bounder: (agreeing patiently) Yes absolutely, yes I quite agree...

Tourist: And being herded into endless Hotel Miramars and Bellvueses and Continentales with their modern international luxury roomettes and draught Red Barrel and swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending they're acrobats forming pyramids and frightening the children and barging into queues and if you're not at your table spot on seven you miss the bowl of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first item on the menu of International Cuisine, and every Thursday night the hotel has a bloody cabaret in the bar, featuring a tiny emaciated dago with nine-inch hips and some bloated fat tart with her hair brylcreemed down and a big arse presenting Flamenco for Foreigners.

Bounder: (beginning to get fed up) Yes, yes now......

Tourist: And then some adenoidal typists from Birmingham with flabby white legs and diarrhea trying to pick up hairy bandy-legged wop waiters called Manuel and once a week there's an excursion to the local Roman Remains to buy cherryade and melted ice cream and bleeding Watney's Red Barrel and one evening you visit the so called typical restaurant with local color and atmosphere and you sit next to a party from Rhyl who keep singing "Torremolinos, torremolinos" and complaining about the food - "It's so greasy isn't it?" - and you get cornered by some drunken greengrocer from Luton with an Instamatic camera and Dr. Scholl sandals and last Tuesday's Daily Express and he drones on and on about how Mr. Smith should be running this country and how many languages Enoch Powell can speak and then he throws up over the Cuba Libres.

Bounder: Will you be quiet please

Tourist: And sending tinted postcards of places they don't realize they haven't even visited to "All at number 22, weather wonderful, our room is marked with an 'X'.

Bounder: Shut up

Tourist: Food very greasy but we've found a charming little local place hidden away in the back streets

Bounder: Shut up!

Tourist: where they serve Watney's Red Barrel and cheese and onion.......

Bounder: Shut up your bloody gob....

Tourist: crisps and the accordionist plays 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'." And spending four days on the tarmac at Luton airport on a five-day package tour with nothing to eat but dried BEA-type sandwiches and you can't even get a drink of Watney's Red Barrel because you're still in England and the bloody bar closes every time you're thirsty and there's nowhere to sleep and the kids are crying and vomiting and breaking the plastic ash-trays and they keep telling you it'll only be another hour although your plane is still in Iceland and has to take some Swedes to Yugoslavia before it can load you up at 3 a.m. in the bloody morning and you sit on the tarmac till six because of "unforeseen difficulties", i.e. the permanent strike of Air Traffic Control in Paris - and nobody can go to the lavatory until you take off at 8, and when you get to Malaga airport everybody's swallowing "enterovioform" and queuing for the toilets and queuing for the armed customs officers, and queuing for the bloody bus that isn't there to take you to the hotel that hasn't yet been finished. And when you finally get to the half-built Algerian ruin called the Hotel del Sol by paying half your holiday money to a licensed bandit in a taxi you find there's no water in the pool, there's no water in the taps, there's no water in the bog and there's only a bleeding lizard in the bidet. And half the rooms are double booked and you can't sleep anyway because of the permanent twenty-four-hour drilling of the foundations of the hotel next door - and you're plagued by appalling apprentice chemists from Ealing pretending to be hippies, and middle-class stockbrokers' wives busily buying identical holiday villas in suburban development plots just like Esher, in case the Labour government gets in again, and fat American matrons with sloppy-buttocks and Hawaiian-patterned ski pants looking for any mulatto male who can keep it up long enough when they finally let it all flop out. And the Spanish Tourist Board promises you that the raging cholera epidemic is merely a case of mild Spanish tummy, like the previous outbreak of Spanish tummy in 1660 which killed half London and decimated Europe - and meanwhile the bloody Guardia are busy arresting sixteen-year-olds for kissing in the streets and shooting anyone under nineteen who doesn't like Franco. And then on the last day in the airport lounge everyone's comparing sunburns, drinking Nasty Spumante, buying cartons of duty free "cigarillos" and using up their last pesetas on horrid dolls in Spanish National costume and awful straw donkeys and bullfight posters with your name on "Ordoney, El Cordobes and Brian Pules of Norwich" and 3-D pictures of the Pope and Kennedy and Franco, and everybody's talking about coming again next year and you swear you never will although there you are tumbling bleary-eyed out of a tourist-tight antique Iberian airplane...

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Future past

 

Why do I think I'm the only one?

This was one of those rare things I shared on Facebook, mainly because it rang all my bells at once. These are "issues" that come up again and again, and not just when I'm trying to sleep.

But my second reaction was: wait a minute. You mean other people go through this? This must be a mistake. But why are so many people clicking "like"?

Don't tell me other people go through these things. No. It's not possible.

Could it be that MOST people keep up a good face, a brave face, even when (especially when) they are going through absolute, utter shit? Could it be that most people, if they are facing any kind of adversity, even the niggling stuff, answer the question "how are you doing?" with "oh, I'm fine"? Might this absolute imperative to present a strong front backfire when they're lying down with their eyes closed in the dark, rigid with anxiety and utterly vulnerable?

I talked to someone I'm very close to recently, and she told me about the trite things people sometimes say to her when they're trying to be helpful. "Oh, don't worry, I'm sure it will all work out for the best." "Something will come along." "Just be positive!" "Maybe it wasn't meant to be." "What's the worst that can happen?" - and, my all-time least-favorite: "Everything happens for a reason".

That's only a notch away from "it's all part of God's plan" on the suicidal scale. Perhaps followed by (and I actually heard this one once), "There but for the grace of God go I".

People say these things because they don't know what else to say. They're afraid they will say the wrong thing. Even if they truly do want to offer reassurance, it stops the conversation cold. It'll get better! Case closed. It also sends the message: I don't want to hear this. 

Deeper than that is a certain abhorrence, a dread that this adversity is somehow contagious and will rub off on them. So they have to quickly dispel it with bland-isms that don't help at all and even make the loneliness, isolation and shame (for facing problems/failure is innately shameful) more painful.

There's a creeping suspicion these days that when things go wrong, it's because of something you did or didn't do, thought or didn't think. This is all linked to that cheery, chirpy philosophy that "we can do anything we want and have everything we desire if we just try hard enough". If you have the right attitude or send out the right energy, the Universe will respond and shower wonderful things on you.

So if the Universe isn't showering (and why should it, when it is totally oblivious of your existence?), it must be you. If your dreams aren't falling into your lap, if you get sick or lose your job and can't find another one in the shark-infested waters of today's economy - well then, why? 

It can't be the fact that life can be excruciatingly tough, unfair, even destroying certain people who have every right to thrive.

I think in this slick sugar-coated age of social media and its narcissistic posturing, this kind of crap is getting worse. That's why it is so rare to see something like this, an admission of vulnerability, of fear, of irrational yet gnawing worry. It's rare to see such humanness, because no one seems to want to admit to it. If you can't sleep because your gut is in a roil, well, what are you doing wrong?

Which is why I had that knee-jerk response. Everyone else has got it together, don't they? Deluxe vacations, glorious birthday parties, reunions of families that are loving and always get along. Perfect-looking selfies with perfect teeth and hair gently stirred by the (electric fan?) wind. And in my case, because most of my Facebook "friends" are writers, fabulous book launches attended by hundreds of people, TV interviews, prestigious awards, etc. etc. And big fat contracts with huge publishers, not to mention very cushy advances. And let us not forget the most important thing of all: sales.

The middle two are my biggest concern, though.  Am I sick, or what? Why did I lose 35 pounds in 5 months, without dieting, when all my life I've had a weight problem? (And I could have done without the TWO phone calls I had this week about my abnormal kidney function.) Will we have enough to live on in retirement, when neither of us has an income? Maybe this affects "everyone" (and that's another thing that bugs me, the "everybody thinks/feels/does/has" syndrome that is supposed to stretch to include pimps, drug dealers, members of Isis, and people in a coma). But not likely. The "everybody thinks/feels", etc., thing is a way to make ourselves feel better because we suspect we ARE the only one, and that we're losers because of it.

After centuries of contemptous silence and raw fear, people are just beginning to talk about "mental illness", specifically depression (because terrifying things like bipolar and schizophrenia are still the province of horror movies and those celebrity "memoirs of madness" that everyone sucks up so eagerly), but most people have no idea how it annihilates self-esteem and destroys hope. You just have a negative attitude, that's all, and if you'd be more positive you'd feel better and wouldn't have to just languish at home on drugs, and could go back to work and be productive like everybody else. Everything happens for a reason, so for God's sake stop taking those pills and get back to work! Self-pity never got you anywhere.

Then again, maybe it's far more therapeutic to read something like this. It might make some people laugh, but it didn't make me laugh. It made me wonder how anyone else could be that vulnerable without being destroyed. 

Puss-puss n' Bun-bun: best friends!

A knot in my stomach: the story of Slimband

Tonight while watching some inane thing on TV, I saw a chirpy, cheerful, upbeat ad for a wonderful new weight loss program that promised you could lose "up to half your excess weight within a year!" There was no mention of exactly HOW you would do this, though the product, called Slimband (reminding me of "slime" for some reason) was pictured on their logo as a whiplike thing shaped like a sperm. So I had to deduce (because they didn't spell it out at all) that this was in fact a surgical procedure, not a diet plan.

I had to do some digging, and before long I found out about the dark side of Slimband. Basically they implant a band that squeezes your stomach so you can't eat normally. It's about as healthy-sounding as tying your throat shut so you can't swallow. 

People have suffered all sorts of complications like perforation and internal bleeding when the thing "slips" (see cautionery article, below)as well as a complete inability to digest food, and in many cases there is little or no weight loss. The cost of the procedure is $16,000.00. I don't think this company does much if any real research on results, or if it does they don't publish it. But people seem to be so desperate, and obesity is getting so bad. Why are people so addicted to food? Does no one ask this? No, just tie a knot in your stomach and hope for the best.

Ray Baker, a doctor in the addictions field, once said to me, "An addiction is an addiction is an addiction." Food, sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling: all have the same root. If you don't start off with trauma, you end up with it through the repercussions of your seemingly-unbreakable habit. It's not uncommon for the addict to leave one pattern behind, then turn to another: switch from alcohol to gambling, or drugs, or sex, or even food. Ray called this "changing seats on the Titanic".

I know all about this stuff, having experienced it through my own body and soul, and I have touched on it before on this blog. Turning off the tap in your stomach won't do it, nor will wiring your jaw shut or taking aversive therapy to tell yourself you really don't want to eat. If the underlying crap isn't addressed, you won't have any lasting success. But we're a drive-through culture of instant gratification, which is a huge part of the problem to begin with. Conventional weight loss through dieting and exercise is too slow, too messy, and too likely to unmask the hellish conditions which caused the overeating in the first place.

When I was growing up, there was a woman down the street who was completely stigmatized and had no friends because she was a "fat lady" who weighed something like 250 pounds. Now that seems almost svelte. What happened? What we used to condemn as gluttony (one of the Seven Deadly Sins) has become a relatively cheap, semi-acceptable drug, and no one is asking why so many people have to resort to it to make life bearable.

I was shocked to discover that Slimband (and I keep seeing it as Slimb - and . . . and WHAT?) is considered a remedial process,"an option for failed gastric bypass procedure in obese patients". Nowhere in that glossy, upbeat ad is botched/remedial surgery mentioned. A great many of these "patients" are refugees from the bariatric surgery industry, a fad fostered by such wildly popular TV series as TLC's My 600-lb Life and presented as a nearly-always-successful quick fix. The couple of cases per season where it fails are presented as the fault of the patient and their rotten, uncooperative attitude. One wonders if they have been coached to fail so the show won't seem too unrealistically positive. Nowhere is reality more distorted and manipulated than in "reality TV".

But the remedial surgery aspect of Slimband which is even spelled out in some of their ads (though perhaps only in medical publications) frightens me. If it was such a failed mess the first time, how is Slimband going to help?

One of the most bizarre things I found in my poking around on the internet was a blog recounting a woman's disastrous experience with Slimband, in which she told us she had lost barely any weight, had no support and was constantly uncomfortable. Then she pulled the biggest switcheroo I've ever seen:

The folks at Slimband are trying to help me, as a patient but are doing a very poor job of it so far which is why I’m so darn upset. I got my band de-filled, but now I’m not getting enough follow up or any of the other fancy post op support options they were promising me when we still thought I would be helping the company. I feel totally abandoned again and have no idea what to do or who to talk with to get this band shit figured out! So frustrating! My dietician is trying her best, but she seems limited in her abilities to assist me in my journey. And I’m gaining weight. This make me PISSED TO THE EXTREME.

Despite the vitriol and frustration I have just unloaded, I think that if they just brought me on board, let me figure out where they’re going wrong, how to fix it, and then DO IT they could be a great company and be able to help so many people, past, present and future. A company with a good reputation is going to do very, very well in today’s social media world and bring in the big bucks. I’m trying to balance my desire to fix something broken and make it succeed with my desire to help all those past patients like me that don’t realize that THEY DESERVE BETTER.

I've seen it before: first, bust down the product and get everyone onside with complaints of their own, then subtly (or not-so-subtly) turn the ship around and get it sailing in the opposite direction, specifically for personal profit. The post was actually a bizarre sort of job application, offering Slimband her resume as a possible new pitch-person who would counter all the negative press (some of which she wrote herself). If Slimband was the problem, she was the solution. If cash registers still rang, I'd be hearing: ka-ching.

http://www.plexuspoint.com/plexus-slim-reviews/

I would have been shocked, except it's a ploy I've seen before with Plexus Worldwide, a supplement company that promises weight-loss miracles and is good for man or beast. The blogger ranted and railed against it, saying it had utterly failed her, along with every other weight loss scheme she had ever tried. Nothing worked, they were all useless, and most especially Plexus which also cost her an arm and a leg. It was weird, though. Throughout the rant there were these statements that almost seemed to be defending Plexus. In fact, they couldn't be anything else.

Update: June 22 !

You can now find out if Plexus Slim is specifically right for you.

Just choose the right answers for the 6 questions below & find out if Plexus is right for YOU...

The questionnaire, when filled out, takes you to the Plexus site. Then, even more strangely, she began to hint subtly that there WAS a way out of the weight loss dilemma, and that she had the answer. All you had to do was click on a link taking you to a site which also went on for pages and pages. 

https://www.fitfinally.com/truth/

I'll relieve the suspense right now, folks. It's an ad for her book. A book which purports to provide that one true miracle that will help you beat this problem once and for all. Never mind that every week, if not every day, we see another example of the One True Religion, that awesome Secret that will make us all look slim, youthful and desirable, not the quivering piles of fat we are today.

(For more ranting on this subject, I covered it thoroughly here. But I guess not thoroughly enough.) 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2015/11/in-pain-any-kind-of-pain-shut-fxxx-up.html

Conclusions. If a new miracle is coming out every day, if not every hour, then obviously somebody is not getting the message. Slimfast is a huge, impersonal corporation that uses a surgical chain-saw to fix people's profound emotional pain. They're selling hope, a fragile commodity that slips away in the face of hard reality. If you stuff your face to the point that you can barely walk, you are an addict. Addiction is a minefield, and there is no easy way out. No way out AT ALL, in fact, but there is a way through. Each bomb has to be defused as you come to it. If you don't, sooner or later it will all blow up in your face. 


Chief surgeon at Slimband weight-loss clinics resigns after probe reveals ‘significant history of complaints’

National Post/Files   Dr. Patrick Yau helping to perform a surgery in 2001. Yau has resigned as chief surgeon at Slimband weight-loss clinics after Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons ruled his care of a patient was below standards.

The chief surgeon at Canada’s most prominent weight-loss surgery clinic has resigned from the company after Ontario’s medical regulator received what it called a “very troubling” succession of patient complaints about him.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons concluded in one recent ruling that Dr. Patrick Yau of Toronto-based Slimband waited unduly long to operate on a patient suffering acute pain from the “gastric band” installed around her stomach. His response to the excruciating complications failed to meet the profession’s standard of care, the agency’s complaints committee said.

The eroded band was eventually removed by another surgeon.

The decision, not released publicly but obtained by the National Post, also cited a “significant history of complaints” alleging the surgeon had acted unprofessionally, including three others being considered at the same time as the delayed-treatment case. It said the college had also conducted a broader “registrar’s investigation” of his practice.

Related
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Thick to thin: Gastric-band weight-loss clinic denies allegations of putting patients at risk

“In light of the college’s decision, Dr. Patrick Yau has stepped down from his role at our clinic,” Lisa Borg, Slimband’s chief operating officer, said in an emailed response to queries about the physician.

Ms. Borg declined to elaborate. Neither Dr. Yau nor a lawyer who has acted on his behalf could be reached for comment.

With extensive advertising on TV and the Internet, Slimband is the most visible of a string of private clinics across the country that offer weight-loss operations, and has described itself as the busiest. Dr. Yau says he has performed over 6,000 gastric-band surgeries, more than any other physician in the country, usually with “excellent results.”

A 2012 National Post report, however, quoted malpractice lawsuits and former Slimband employees who raised questions about whether patients signed on following a persistent sales effort were adequately screened, sufficiently warned about possible complications or provided sufficient post-operative care.

The company said at the time that patients are fully informed of the risks and receive post-op service that is the best in the industry. It also cited customer surveys that showed the vast majority of patients were satisfied with the results, their lives changed “in ways they never dreamed possible.”

‘Am I going to have to live the rest of my life this way, or am I going to die because of this?’

Like most of the other private clinics, Slimband implants a liquid-filled band around the stomach, creating a small pocket and a narrow opening to the rest of the organ. The pocket fills with food quickly, making the patient feel full much sooner than normal.

In the case recently decided by the college, the patient had the operation in 2008 and did “very well” initially. But on July 10, 2012, she complained to Slimband about sharp pain and difficulty eating that seemed related to the implant.

Dr. Yau saw her a week later and did a “de-fill” of the liquid in the band to make it looser, but the pain continued, according to an independent expert’s report to the regulator. In the ensuing two weeks, she repeatedly went to hospital, with scans eventually showing the band had started to erode, a problem that can lead to dangerous internal infection.

On Aug. 4, Dr. Yau and a colleague tried to remove the band, but were unable to do so, and said they would wait a month for it to migrate to another position where it could be more easily taken out, the college ruling said. As the pain and discomfort continued, though, the patient found another weight-loss surgeon, Dr. Chris Cobourn of Mississauga, Ont., who removed the band on Aug. 10.

Dr. Yau told the regulator he treated the patient conservatively because she was not in acute danger and he wanted to avoid the potential of unnecessary complications. When her problems persisted, he acted expediently, the physician argued.

Aaron Lynett/National Post/Files   A Slimband clinic in Toronto. The company has described itself as the busiest weight-loss clinics in Canada.

The independent expert, though, said the patient’s problems demanded “a precise and quick” intervention, while Dr. Yau exhibited “no feeling of urgency.” His “surprising” approach failed to meet the profession’s standard of practice, said the expert, a conclusion the complaints committee adopted.

The patient said in an interview she felt abandoned by the health-care system as she struggled with “incredible” discomfort for a month in 2012.

“Because I was in so much pain, and not able to get treatment, it felt extremely scary, it felt hopeless,” said the Toronto-area woman, who asked not to be named. “You begin to think, ‘Am I going to have to live the rest of my life this way, or am I going to die because of this?’ … It was horrible.”

The college’s complaints committee issued a written caution against Dr. Yau, and said he had been ordered to undergo a remediation program.

The committee said it could not rule on the patient’s allegation that he had behaved in an uncaring and unprofessional manner, but added that the surgeon “has a significant history of complaints” before the college regarding his professional communication.

“In short, the committee is very troubled by Dr. Yau’s communication and what appears to be a sustained pattern of issues related to unprofessional behavior.”

The decision also said his practice had been subjected to a “registrar’s investigation,” a broader review that can sometimes look at a doctor’s treatment of several patients. That probe led to the order that he undergo remediation and continuing education.

National Post
tblackwell@nationalpost.com

And as the kicker, a tiny excerpt from the many, many post-surgery blogs I found.

Welcome to the wonderful world of lapband life.

I had weight loss surgery, and having had the lapband 2 1/2 years I am very familiar with being “stuck”. It can happen at any time, for any reason. I have eaten dense protein like chicken or steak and it went down just fine. then later that day I have attempted to eat Greek yogurt and it doesn’t want to go down. With the Lap-Band, restriction can vary from day to day, moment to moment. That is why I call my band a psycho band, lol.

What I usually do when I am stuck is to take some Papaya Extract. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

Coke is another option. Although carbonated beverages are generally frowned upon with most weight loss surgeries, this is an exception. The acid in it can break down the protein. It’s usually going to go down…….or come back up. Either way, it’s a plus. Staying stuck is not a good thing!

Fluids in general can sometimes dilute it and push it on down. Since I am now used to following the “band rules” and not drinking with meals or for 30 minutes after, I wouldn’t do this initially because I thought I needed to wait 30 minutes after it finally went down to drink. Don’t hesitate though, if you’ve been stuck for more than a few minutes, take a drink. It may help.

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

I just think this looks really cool.

SOME OF THE MOST POPULAR FAIRY TALES HAVE BEEN RETOLD IN MANY WAYS, ACROSS DIFFERENT CULTURES, OVER THOUSANDS OF YEARS

+5

Little Red Riding Hood descended from the ancestral story known as The Wolf and The Kids in the first century

Dr Jamie Tehrani led a research team which studied 58 different versions of the Little Red Riding Hood story which found that the original story could date back to 600BC.

Each version varied by number and gender of the main characters, the ending and the type of animal or monster which became the villain. 

Some stories suggested the young girl outwitted the wolf and escaped.

Other were entitled differently depending on what part of the world the version was from.

The Wolf and the Kids has been frequently told throughout Europe and the Middle East, while another, The Tiger Grandmother is popular in East Asia. 

Little Red Riding Hood descended from the ancestral story known as The Wolf and The Kids in the first century. 

It branched off in the early 1000s to become more similar to the storyline which we all know.

However, an African version also originated from the same story and then independently evolved to become similar to Little Red Riding Hood. In Japan, China and South Korea, it became known as The Tiger Grandmother

It evolved as a spoken story in France, Austria and Northern Italy before being written down by French author Charles Perrault in the 1600s and was later retold in its most familiar form by the Brothers Grimm, 200 years ago. 

Dr Tehrani said: 'This is rather like a biologist showing that humans and other apes share a common ancestor but have evolved into distinct species, 

'This exemplifies a process biologists call convergent evolution, in which species independently evolve similar adaptations.

'The fact that Little Red Riding Hood 'evolved twice' from the same starting point suggests it holds a powerful appeal that attracts our imaginations.'

Despite being passed down the generations orally, Beauty And The Beast was first written in 1740 by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Her version was chopped and rewritten by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, who published it in Magasin Des Enfants.

The story has been retold, with the very changes few changes to the plot, all over the world.

In 1992 Disney released the film in the UK and it remains one of the most popular fairy tale cartoons to this date. It has also been produced as a show in theatres up and down the country.

The German Rumpelstiltskin story has had many variants even within the United Kingdom. 

In England the protagonist was known as Tom Tit Tot, written by Joseph Jacobs in English Tales. North of the border, in Scotland, Rumpelstiltskin was known as Whuppity Stoorie and was published in Rhymes of Scotland by Robert Chalmers. 

The tale was collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales. 

Source: Ancient Origins