Admin Note: Time for Bed....

I believe it may be time to put this blog to bed.

For nearly the past four years, I have been finding and writing about a myriad of fake cures for HIV and AIDS. But a couple of situations have arisen that leads me to believe the time for this blog to go to bed is here.

Lately, the usual source for these bullshit cures, the HIV/AIDS chat room on Yahoo!, has been infested with spam-bots pretending to be horny young women looking to get laid. What this has done is driven away most of the usual members of the chat room (many of whom I like). As such, the room is hardly ever populated enough to (1) make me want to stay in and chat and (2) entice these assholes with "cures" to come in with any regularity.

Also, the "cures" these greedy bastards come up with are merely variations on a theme these days. Usually, it's Herbal or aryuvedic "Medicine" from the Middle East--Usually India--or some ridiculous belief that God (in any of its forms) will "cure" someone if they just have "faith". As such, it feels like I'm just rehashing old shit when and if I write about them.

As a result of the above situations the semi-regular updates haven't been coming nearly once a week as the blog title implies. And I believe it's bed time for this blog.

The blog will stay available--there has been far too many people helped by various posts, notably the Mark Anastasi posts (who, by the way, still hasn't sued me for "defamation of character".)

There may still be further updates as I come across something new, but it's not even going to be close to once a week.

Thanks for reading!

Drinking Ethiopian Holy Water

I know it's been a while since the last update. I got involved with other things such as the election and such. Besides, a lot of the same old bullshit is being passed off as new.

Regardless, butter_scotch_23_2009 popped into the usual chat room recently and displayed a complete lack of critical thinking skills because she wanted to help "you people". ("You people"!? How fucking rude and condescending!) She said that there's some holy water in Ethiopia that has cured all types of illnesses including blindness and HIV. Her proof? An Ethiopian magazine written in Ethiopian and a copy of a "certified" paper printed in said magazine. Oh, yeah, the paper was also embossed by the government.

So, she had a "new Ethiopian friend" get some and bring it to her. And she's going to drink it and believes that this water from an unknown source is going to cure her of HIV.

Let's take the points one at a time, shall we?

• Certified
  The certification means absolutely nothing without knowing who did the certifying and what exactly has been certified. I could certify that highly efficient solar photo-voltaic panels can be made from shredded bank statements steeped in dog-shit tea for three days but that doesn't mean it's actually true.
• Embossed
  Any idiot can buy an embossing device from most any craft store or buy one from any number of websites. Just because it looks official doesn't mean it is. Butter's reason why the embossing device couldn't have been bought from the internet: Ethiopia has no internet service; they live in huts.
  
  Besides, you don't think the Ethiopian government has a desire to increase the number of people visiting its country, do you? Butter's response: Ethiopia doesn't have a government; they have a ruler. Uh, sweety; a ruler IS government. Pay no attention to Ethiopia's government being a Federal Parliamentary Republic and ignore their current president, Girma Wolde-Giorgis.
  
• Drinking water from an unknown source
  This is where Butter is taking her life into her own hands. She says that a friend of a friend of an uncle of a dog of a monkey of her sister's boyfriend's long-lost cousin (or something like that) has brought (or is bringing) some of this alleged holy water from Ethiopia to Butter for Butter to drink. Yet, there is no guarantee that this water that she's given wasn't gathered from a garden hose next door; taken from the airport bathroom, or actually did come from this mythical magical holy water source in Ethiopia. And, if it really does come from Ethiopia, (would it pass customs??) where are the assurances that it's even safe to drink. (Oh, yeah, the water comes with "instructions". INSTRUCTIONS!? You gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me. (1) Open jar (2) Pour contents into mouth (3) Swallow (4) discard jar. Whatta fuckin' joke.)
  

Look, I understand the desire to want to believe there's a cure; I really, really do. But rather than believing any yahoo who comes by and says that, say, swallowing a goldfish that has spawned and lived in the pure spring waters from a mountaintop spring in Switzerland is going to cure any thing I would rather believe that an independently proven cure. Besides, as I told Butter here, a real cure doesn't require the person taking it to "believe" or "have faith" that it'll work; a real cure just works.