The Worst Things For Sale

This is one pound of squirrel feces, being sold as a “medicinal grade Chinese herb.” Obviously, squirrel poop doesn’t treat, prevent, or cure any known illness. But there’s a deeper truth in this. Traditional Chinese Medicine, a name meant to evoke the wisdom of the ancients, was popularized in the 1950s by Chairman Mao Zedong’s government. Although the government knew that it was ineffective, the citizens in post-war China generally couldn’t afford Western medicine, and so it was established as a way for the government to trick the people into believing they had access to medical care.

While it’s true that people have been sniffing squirrel shit and eating spiders in the name of “medicine” for centuries, it’s also worth noting that contemporaneous treatments included ingestion of mercury and arsenic, bloodletting, and trepanation. Since this medical hoax belongs to another culture, it’s easy to ignore it, and pretend that making tea out of a parasitic fungus that takes over the nervous system of insects is a legitimate medical treatment that we just don’t understand as Americans. But the guy selling squirrel shit is just as bad as Dr. Oz selling a bag of raspberry ketones: either way, you stay sick, and they get rich.

You might think I’m going to go in on the practice of washing your ass with hot water. I’m not. Having a pre-heated jet of body-temperature water spray your starfish from the BioBidet is one of life’s amazing luxuries. You go about the rest of your day cleaner than anyone who hasn’t bideted, and it’s like having a miniature spa for the hardest-working, least-appreciated hole on your body. (Watch the video if you don’t believe me.)

But that’s the problem, actually. You could go for the $26 cheapo bidet attachment instead of the several-hundred-dollar BioBidet. It’s hygenic, but instead of jacuzziïng your tunnel with warm water and gently drying it with a fan of warm air, you shock it with cold pipe water. A brutal wake-up call instead of a day at the ass-sauna.

And what of using the bathroom at work, or in public? It goes from a pleasant break in your day to a begrudging acceptance of the fact that you’re wasting a sit-down in a cold, shitty echo-chamber. Someone invariably wipes their boogers on the wall. No ass fan. All of your future shit sessions feel like a scene from Brazil, sharing part of a tiny room with another person who steals even your solitude. Life is shit.  

Although Lego has dropped the ball in recent years by creating the Friends series of “Legos For Girls,” they, at least, never armed their minifigures with modern murder tools. That’s where American companies come in, to “liberate” these happy, high-taxation-rate Danish minifigs from their progressive overlords. You can now arm your Lego men with Lego-scale M-16s, combat shotguns, dual-wield Uzis, rocket-propelled grenades,  or (above) buy a custom-outfitted modern murder-soldier, strapped with magazines and holsters.

And just like American soldiers, when they’re done with their tour of duty, there’s no psychiatric Lego hospital to help them work through the trauma.

“Simplify your life,” says the manufacturer of these buttons, apparently unaware that it’s easier to speak a single word than purchase and arrange a collection of sound-effects buttons on your desk. Besides, if you’re the button-pressing kind, your options are going to be sorely limited without the “Damn!” button.

Too socially-anxious or depressed to go to a barber shop or HairCutz chain-snippery? Throw on Easy To Make Haircut At Home! (yes, that’s the actual product name) and give yourself a haircut that matches your emotions. One man’s review explains that he cuts hair in his garage, and it’s cold out there, but it’s fine to wear a coat underneath Easy To Make Haircut At Home!.

(edit, 3/15/20: The manufacturer changed the name of this product after I made fun of it.)

Don’t let your wine habit get in the way of your self-branding as a cabin-dwelling countryperson. Get the Drunk Deer. Or, for those who hunt bigger game, there’s the similarly-shaped Partay Bear.

But after extensive research, I’ve determined that the very best Wine Animal On Its Back is Drunk Cowboy Armadillo.

How does an album of “urban angel rap beats” hypnotize you into losing weight? It doesn’t, I’m guessing, but I’m not willing to listen to 40 minutes of keyboard loops written by someone who’s never listened to rap to find out.