I'll take the veggie pizza.

And I thought I could take everything but anchovies on my pizza.


Moms' bizarre ritual is hard to swallow
Some say cooking afterbirth or encapsulating it in pills averts baby blues
By Melissa Dahl
Health writer

In the first few days of her baby’s life, Devorah Shalev was weepy. Then giddy. Then stressed. Then hungry. But mostly, overwhelmed - the 31-year-old mom from Las Vegas was hit hard with a case of the baby blues.
When she became pregnant with her second child, she looked for ways to stave off those sad feelings - and ended up doing something surprising. She ingested her placenta.
Placentophagy, as it’s called, grabbed headlines this summer after a judge ordered a Las Vegas hospital to give a new mom her uterine lining, which the woman planned to dry, grind up and ingest. She, like Shalev, had heard that ingesting the placenta was a natural way to ward off the baby blues - those overwhelmed, weepy feelings that 80 percent of moms develop after giving birth.
New moms who swear by the benefits of consuming their placenta point out that it’s a common practice among mammals - and after all, women are mammals, too. But no studies have examined health benefits of human placentophagy, says Dr. Diana Dell, an assistant professor in ob-gyn and psychology at Duke University.
"There’s certainly no data," Dell says. "And, truthfully, the only place there may be data is in veterinary journals."
Because the placenta contains estrogen and progesterone, some women believe that the sudden withdrawal of those hormones after the delivery is what causes the baby blues, and that ingesting the afterbirth restores hormone levels.
"The placenta does produce estrogen and progesterone," says Mavis Schorn, the director of the nurse midwifery program at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. "So the theoretical idea is that it may help, but there's absolutely no research on it."
Schorn also points out that because no research exists for this practice among humans, it's not clear what the cooking or encapsulating does to the nutrients and hormones that are in the blood.
Still, placentophagy isn’t something recently dreamed up by crunchy granola types - it’s been going on in many parts of the world for centuries:
· In parts of Indonesia, the Czech Republic and Morocco, new mothers once believed eating the placenta guarantees future fertility.
· Chinese women thought a bite of dried placenta would speed up labor.
· Once women in Hungary had tired of the whole child-bearing business, they believed that by burning the placenta and placing the ashes in their husband’s drink, he’d soon be shooting blanks.
Today, Google helpfully points the curious toward guides to preparing and eating the placenta. "Use your favorite lasagna recipe and substitute this (placenta cocktail) for one layer of cheese," chirps one how-to Web site. Another suggests grinding it up as a pizza topping.
But for women not blessed with iron stomachs, Jodi Selander offers help. Ingesting placenta doesn’t have to be a stunt to put "Fear Factor" to shame, the Las Vegas mom promises.
Popping placenta pillsAfter giving birth to her first child, Selander was cursed with a tough bout of the baby blues. Searching for natural remedies to combat those sad feelings before she delivered her second child, Selander stumbled upon a way of eating placenta without actually eating it - instead, she popped a pill.
"Before, I’d only ever heard of eating it," Selander says. "Which, if a woman wants to do that, that's wonderful - but that was something I personally couldn't do."
Selander opted for a home birth with her second child, and after the delivery, her midwife placed the placenta in the refrigerator. In her own kitchen the next day, Selander used her food dehydrator to dry the placenta, baked it in her oven, ground it up and put it into capsules. There was enough of the stuff to create about 150 capsules, of which she took one a day for the next two to three weeks.
"I felt so much better; I just felt great," Selander remembers.
There may not be any concrete evidence for its benefits, but Schorn says that unless the placenta was kept improperly, there are no inherent dangers to ingesting placenta, whether through encapsulation or cooking and eating it.
"It's an organ. So, just like any organ meat, if it wasn't kept well - if it wasn't frozen or kept at a cool temperature - you have a danger of bacteria or something growing," Schorn says. "But there's nothing inherent about placenta that would make it more dangerous than any other meat."
After her positive experience with the practice, Selander now sells placenta encapsulation kits from her Web site, placentabenefits.info. Still, she's honest about the ick factor she’s up against. While she says her site gets about 70,000 hits a month, she's only sold a couple dozen kits in the past year and a half.
"The first time you hear about it, everybody thinks it's weird," Selander admits.
Weird, sure. But isn’t it also just a little … gross?
"I don't think so, but some people would think so," Selander says. It just calls for a change in your mind set, she says.
"We have a very sanitary society. Anything that is not cleaned up and pretty and made to be put on display, we do deem as gross," she says. "But the thing is, birth is a messy process and the whole act of bringing life into the world is a whole messy ordeal."
One of Selander’s clients is the once baby blues-plagued Shalev, who says the experience helped her enjoy - not just survive - the first few weeks of her second child’s life.
"After the first baby I was an emotional wreck," says Shalev, speaking on her cell phone. "I’m sure my husband here can verify that." (Hubby Amir Shalev grunts his agreement in the background.)
But she noticed a sharp contrast in the weeks after delivering her second baby.
"It occurred to me that after a week I hadn’t cried once," Shalev says. "I was definitely stressed, but not once did I feel completely overwhelmed."
'Not the most attractive organ'Even the most vocal placenta pushers don’t expect the practice to ever become a national trend. But Selander hopes that the process will keep slowly attracting attention as another option for women to consider. The placenta, in her opinion, has simply received a bad rap.
"It's not the most attractive organ," Selander says. "And it comes out and it's attached to your beautiful baby, so in comparison of course it's not going to get as much respect and affection as the baby - of course.
"But at the same time, it's what helped bring that baby into the world. Without that placenta, there would be no baby," she continues. "We create it, we give birth to it, and it has such a truly, truly sacred connection to the child and to life."

This frog is the shit!!

I can at least understand the last item they used to get high. I’ve gotten light headed changing diapers. Not sure I’d ever be that hard up for the buzz though.


Cops: More smoke toad venom to get high
Mon Dec 3, 6:18 PM ET
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Law enforcement authorities have discovered that people are willing to go to great lengths to get high, including a troubling new method that features a frightened toad.
"Toad smoking," which is a substitute for "toad licking," is done by extracting venom from the Sonoran Desert toad of the Colorado River. The toad's venom — which is secreted when the toad gets angry or scared — contains a hallucinogen called bufotenine that can be dried and smoked to produce a buzz.
In October, a Kansas City man was charged with possessing a controlled substance after Clay County authorities determined he possessed a toad with the intent to use its venom to get high.
Clay County Prosecutor Daniel White said possessing the toad is not illegal, but using it to get high off its venom is.
"It is easier to get it, and law enforcement might not immediately know you use it to get high," White said. "It's sort of a New Age way to get high. You convince yourself it is OK because it is something you get naturally from our environment.
"There are a lot of things that are created naturally but they are still not legal," he said.
White said that for years people experimented with "toad licking," and now toad smoking is considered a substitute. To do so, a person heats up the frog's venom to break down its toxins and preserve the hallucinogen, which is dried.
He said some Internet sites feature an instructional video on how to extract the toad's venom.
Police found the toad when they went to a northern Kansas City home to investigate a suspected meth lab. They later arrested David S. Theiss, 21, and charged him with three counts of possession of a controlled substance and one count of possessing drug paraphernalia — the toad.
Theiss also is accused of possessing mescaline, a controlled substance extracted from a cactus.
While smoking toad venom might sound extreme, an even more disturbing method to get high possibly includes sniffing fermented human waste. Vicky Ward, manager of prevention services at Tri-County Mental Health Services in Kansas City, said she has read e-mail warnings about a drug called jenkem.
The drug is made from fermented feces and urine.
"We work with a lot of youths and we ask them whether anyone has tried it and they said no," Ward said. "They (the youths) have heard about it because of the Internet."
But whether people actually use of jenkem has not been determined, Ward said, noting that a Web site that investigates urban legends isn't clear on the matter.
"Kids get ideas that later turn out to be unfounded, but you will get some idiots who will try anything," she said.

And this is why guys can't find dates

What is the world coming to when a girl tries to start a porn club and can't get 5 guys to sign up? Mental note don't go to UT for any cool parties.


Student Wants On-Campus Porn Club
Group Would Watch, Discuss Sexual Orientated Material

SAN ANTONIO -- A University of Texas at San Antonio student is in the planning stages of forming a pornography club on campus, station KSAT 12 reported.
The student, Riley Jackson Starr, is posting fliers on campus in hopes of recruiting at least five students to Club X, which would watch and discuss sexually oriented materials.
"We'll look to see if it violates any of our policies here at UTSA," said Vice-President David Gabler said.
He added that Starr has yet to submit the proper paperwork, which would need to be reviewed by attorneys.
Starr would also be required to get a professor to be an official adviser, which hasn't happened yet.
"You know, this is our school and we want to project a good image to other people and other schools," a male student said. "And so, to have kids in Club X would kind of give us that bad impression."
"I don't think sexual activity should be brought to our school other than for informational purposes," a female student said.
In her MySpace.com page, Starr claims to be strip club dancer.

Don't pick a fight when you're out classed

Not sure how much more of a handicap the guy needed to win the fight. I guess it started out as just a tongue lashing and escalated from there. Though the other guy did win the fight with nothing tied behind his back.

SNELLVILLE, Ga. -- Police questioned an armless man Monday about the death of his neighbor.
Relatives of Charles Keith Teer, 47, claim he died after the armless man head-butted and kicked Teer during a fight.
The two men lived across the street from each other on Pine Street in the Atlanta suburb.
Teer's relatives told police the men were arguing over a woman.
"He's dating my brother's ex-girlfriend," said Teer's sister Lynn Elliot. "My neighbor left my brother for this guy, so it's a verbal argument between them the whole time."
Elliot said the armless man attacked her brother.
"They got into a big confrontation, a verbal confrontation and a fist fight and he came after my brother, he came with full force, and head butted him as hard as he could," said Elliot.
She said Teer collapsed and died a short time after the fight.
"There's an ongoing investigation but he died within five minutes," said Elliot. "They took off running right after he got hit. He (my brother) was still standing when they left, but my daughter was here, and he leaned against the truck and said, 'I'm about to faint,' and he hit the my driveway before anything could be done."
Police questioned the armless neighbor, and will decide by Tuesday afternoon if any charges will be filed, according to Lt. Robert Stevens of the Snellville Police Department.
"I hope the guy pays for what he's done to my brother because my brother had a kind heart," said Elliot.

Who Thought of this Business Plan

Someone seriously didn't think this through. How good is business if the gravediggers are trying to keep people alive?

Australia cemetery trains lifeguard gravediggers

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian cemetery is training gravediggers as lifesavers and has installed a defibrillator to jumpstart the hearts of grief-stricken mourners who regularly collapse at funerals.
"A lot of people who die are old, so the people who come to the services are frail and they are vulnerable anyway, and the additional stress of a funeral tips them over the edge," Vicki Pridmore, chief executive of Melbourne's Cheltenham cemeteries, told local newspapers on Friday.
Pridmore said a family or friend collapsed at a funeral every two months on average, so now gravediggers were being trained to use the new defibrillator.
"We have had a couple recently with strokes and we call the ambulance four or five times a year. Everybody is doing their training," she said.
An ambulance spokesman said defibrillators, which deliver an electric pulse to an affected heart to restore regular rhythm, not only treated heart attacks, but could also help assess illness for arriving paramedics.

Taking things in hand.

I don't know what his problem is. Didn't he print out the website? I've done home dentistry from instructions off the internet. I know, it must have cut off the last instruction about cauterizing the wound with a hot poker. I don't know why but that part of the instructions usually gets dropped but at least it was successful. Author note: I've done three stories on this topic and with generally similar results for the patient. I got to wonder if they all went the same website. This site seems promising with bloodless castration. http://www.castrator.com/

Man castrates self to lower libido

RENO, Nev. - A 50-year-old Reno man who was hospitalized after he castrated himself told police he learned of the procedure on the Internet and did so to lower his libido.The man, whose name was not released, called 911 at about 1:30 a.m. Monday and asked for help because he could not stop the bleeding from a self-castration operation, police said. Reno police and medics responded to the man's home and he was taken by ambulance to the hospital. Washoe Medical Center officials cited privacy issues on why they could not release any information on the man, including his condition. But police said hospital officials confirmed Wednesday the man successfully castrated himself. "The man obviously needs some sort of counseling," Reno police Lt. Ron Donnelly told the Reno Gazette-Journal.

Free jerky.

Man finds human leg in smoker purchased at auction
Associated PressSept. 26, 2007 09:08 AM
MAIDEN, N.C. - A man who bought a smoker Tuesday at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first.Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the mother and son who had rented the space where the smoker was found.

The mother, Peg Steele, explained her son had his leg amputated after a plane crash and kept the leg following the surgery "for religious reasons" she doesn't know much about."The rest of the family was very much against it," Steele said.Steele said her son, John Wood, plans to drive to Maiden, about 35 miles northwest of Charlotte, to reclaim his amputated leg, police said.