Plankton take one for the team

A friend of mine recently got a brochure in the mail for a fantastic new nutrient drink. It's called FrequenSea and comes complete with marine phytoplankton!

I kid you not, it contains single-celled plants from the ocean. Delicious, especially considering some marine phytoplankton can produce toxins that lead to lovely things like diarrhetic shellfish and ciguatera poisoning, not to mention potent neurotoxins. But anyway, there's lots of them and they're plants right? Gotta be good for you.

Not only does FrequenSea have microscopic organisms, it also contains frankincense. No gold or myrrh unfortunately. I wondered what on earth frankincense could possibly contribute towards the drink's nutritional value, so I looked it up. Turns out it was used a lot back in the days of King Tut as makeup and dye, and in later times in aromatherapy. Oooh, makes perfect sense then. Frankincense away.


Another interesting addition is that of RNA. As any high school biologist would know, RNA is basically half a DNA strand, and there are trillions floating around in your body right now because they are found in cells and used for protein synthesis in EVERY LIVING THING. Sounds to me like somebody added it to the list to make it look like there was more useful stuff in it than there really is. Might as well add "Flagella" to the list, phytoplankton have those too!

Really though, I should give them credit for their advertising technique. They've used convincing and highly scientific statistics:

And here they state the long lives of planktivores:

AND YOU CAN TOO IF YOU JUST BUY THIS DRINK!!!!

But wait for it, then they tell you all about their plankton farming:

Sooo... basically they have no idea what they're actually culturing, they just breed 'em, toxic species and all! What's worrying is that they haven't provided a recommended daily intake of marine phytoplankton. What if I exceed it? Will I start photosynthesising? TELL ME!

I don't know if I want to buy this anymore... weeny toxic plants (some with protective plates made of glass), makeup, Noni juice (I have a friend called Noni, this ingredient is particularly disturbing to me)... It just doesn't sit right. What do you think?

There were these two whales...

Anyone who knows me well will know my three favourite jokes, mostly because I tell them over and over again. The first two are short and sweet, but still manage to make me laugh:

#1 - A man went to a zoo, but there was only one dog. It was a Shih-Tzu.

#2 - Did you hear about the wooden car with the wooden engine that wooden start?

The third joke however is a constant source of entertainment, because the mere mention of two whales gets me into a giggly fit.

#3 - A male whale and a female whale were swimming off the coast of Japan when they noticed a whaling ship. The male whale recognized it as the same ship that had harpooned his father many years earlier. He said to the female whale ,"Let's both swim under the ship and blow out at the same time, and it should cause the ship to turn over and sink .
They tried it and sure enough, the ship turned over and quickly sank. Soon however, the whales realised the sailors had managed to escape in lifeboats. The male whale was enraged that they were going to get away and told the female, "Let's swim after them and eat them!"
"Look," she says. "I went along with the blow job, but I absolutely refuse to swallow the seamen."

Hee hee hee.... very juvenile, I know. So anyway, there I was up at Surfers with some friends in the holidays, when we came across this statue.

The prospect of two whales was too much for me and I fell about laughing, revealing my one weakness to the company I was in. I could have gotten away with it if it wasn't for that meddling council!