Fox crossover?

First I laughed.
Then I thought, “Nope. Don’t see it.”
Then I thought, “Ya know what? Maybe.”

The point is: I laughed.

As seen on Slog. 

“Have you ever seen that Blue Man Group? Total ripoff of the Smurfs. And the Smurfs, well, they SUCK.”

Okay, so the title of this post doesn’t really relate to this topic…I just can’t resist an opportunity to quote The Simpsons. And the fact that, this week on Oprah, I saw a man who could totally qualify as an actor if they ever decide – and seeing the state of the movie industry, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did – to film a live action version of The Smurfs. Or he could audition for the Blue Man Group. Okay, so then the title of this post does relate to this topic. It only causes me to make a series of bad jokes instead. And proves that merlot has pickled my brain cells.

Anyway.

Meet Paul. Paul is an idiot. Paul took a natural cure without consulting his doctor, and now his skin is permanently blue. Here is the story, according to Oprah’s website for those of you who work in the day and don’t have time to watch exploitative TV:

Paul’s blue skin is no trick of lighting or makeup—it’s really blue.

What caused it? Paul says it started when his friend who worked for years in a machine shop was diagnosed with petroleum poisoning. Paul says he saw an ad in a magazine for something called a colloidal silver generator that said colloidal silver was useful for treating conditions including petroleum poisoning. “So I ordered the generator and I’d go see [his friend] every day. We’d each make a glass of colloidal silver and we’d drink it,” he says.

Paul says the drinks he and his friend had weren’t particularly strong—a 10-ounce glass with no more than 10 parts per million of silver. Still, what made Paul—who didn’t have petroleum poisoning—take a drink? “I figured I might as well drink it, too, if it was such wonderful stuff,” he says. “I wasn’t going to say, ‘Here, take this.’ I thought the kindest thing to do would be to take it with him just to make him more comfortable with the idea.”

After he started his daily silver cocktail with his friend, Paul says his acid reflux disease disappeared. “In less than three days, that was just gone,” he says. “I thought, ‘That’s good.’ So I kept taking it.”

Paul says that he doesn’t believe his daily silver drink is what made him blue. “I didn’t turn blue until I started putting it on my face,” he says.

While Paul was taking care of his elderly parents and his father was nearing the end of his life, Paul says he was extremely stressed. “I developed the most unbelievable case of dermatitis you’ve probably ever seen. My skin was peeling off of my face in ribbons. I looked like a mummy coming unwrapped,” he says. “And where the skin pieces separated, I was developing fistula—the skin was cracking.”

Paul says he’d previously dabbed a little bit of colloidal silver on cat scratches and marveled at the effect. So he started applying silver all over his damaged skin.

From there, Paul says his skin began a gradual change over two to three months from fair white to blue. “It was so gradual, nobody noticed,” he says. “It wasn’t until a friend came by who hadn’t seen me in a while. … He said, ‘What have you got on your face?’ [I said,] ‘I don’t have anything on my face.’ And he said, ‘It looks like you’ve got camouflage makeup on or something. You better come here.’” Paul stood in front of the mirror with his friend and realized his unbelievable transformation.

Dr. Oz says drinking a silver solution is actually a very old therapy that dates back thousands of years. Though use of silver has largely fallen out of medical use since the introduction of antibiotics, Dr. Oz says silver is still regularly given to newborn babies to make sure they don’t develop a disease from their mothers during childbirth and is even used to treat some burns.

“It prevents the bacteria from making energy, but it does the same thing to our cells,” he says.

Paul has so much silver in his body that he has a condition called argyria. “You know how you get silver in a photographic plate, when it gets exposed to sun it turns a color? Well the same thing happened to you,” Dr. Oz says. “You basically tattooed your entire body with this silver.”

“It’s going to save me a lot of money at the tattoo parlor,” Paul jokes.

It’s good that he has a sense of humor about it. Even better that there is still a woman who wants to marry him. Papa Smurf fetish anyone?

Another reason to stop watching TV

Watching people marry their rapists on TV may turn out to be bad for your health – provided you’re eating while you’re watching. As seen on ScienceDaily a few days ago, new research suggests why Americans are so much fatter than the French:

Because they use internal cues — such as no longer feeling hungry — to stop eating, reports a new Cornell study. Americans, on the other hand, tend to use external cues — such as whether their plate is clean, they have run out of their beverage or the TV show they’re watching is over.

What. The. Hell?
You keep eating until Jerry gives you his parting thought? Or until you see the Harpo logo?  (Or, in my case, until the word LOST smacks up on the screen). It’s tragic, and yet kinda makes sense, because we’ve all eaten in front of the TV (or do it regularly), and you can kinda see what they’re talking about.

Science at work.

This is the end of the post. You can stop eating now.