The Love Guru (brought to us by Mike Myers) is either one of those love it or hate it films...but I thought it was pretty funny despite an over-reliance on penis jokes. Maybe you need to have lived in Southern California and joined the new age community to get it.

What made this film for me was the spot on parody of the yoga gurus who cropped up in America in the 1960s. The first part of the film really hits the satire hard, starting with a sea of starry-eyed followers at the Love Guru's ashram. Everyone greets each other with "Mariska Hargitay," which, despite being the name of an actress, actually does sound like some sort of funny Sanskrit mantra.

At the ashram, "Guru Pitka" (the Love Guru) gives a hilarious yogic talk complete with silly acronyms and words turned into other words. For example:

Intimacy = "Into-me-I-see"

by Kathleen McGowan
Author of The Source of Miracles: 7 Steps to Transforming Your Life through the Lord's Prayer

Instant Manifestation. Unlimited Abundance. Ask, Believe, Receive!

So many books, DVDs and other programs have promised all of these things over the last few years. Millions of people have flocked to the teachings of "The Law of Attraction" in hopes of transforming their lives and attracting love, money and fulfillment.

And millions of people are also finding that these programs don't work. And if they do work, the effects are temporary. Why? Because the lessons of these programs are incomplete and totally out of order. They skip the important steps, the elements of personal and spiritual transformation which are necessary to provide a solid foundation to build upon.

Most "Law of Attraction" techniques do not require any kind of accountability and therefore they do not work.

I have just started offering healing, hypnosis and coaching sessions at RakSa, a beautiful new space in Culver City (West Los Angeles). I am offering free 1/2 introductory Reiki or Angel Healing sessions Tuesdays and Thursdays between 10 am and 3 pm until February 4, 2010.

To schedule, call 310.559.7200

http://raksasala.com

Is there some agency that is charged with reviewing all the foods we've been eating for centuries, for the purpose of driving us insane about what we can and cannot eat? Seems hardly a month goes by without some food being declared unfit for consumption. It started with coffee than went to milk and I've lost track of how many foods have been deemed unfit for consumption. Is this an industry? What's next apples?

Such is the lament of one commenter on Jill Richardson's article "Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare."

And yes. Now the big bad food is shrimp. Shrimp!

Given all the scare and horror stories around about various types of food, you think something as seemingly benign as shrimp would be OK. Ooops. No, it's not.

I hate to sound like a stereotype, but ramen noodles were one of my staple foods in college. I also remember eating a lot of waffles and popcorn. Sometimes for lunch and dinner. That, and Hamburger Helper. It's a wonder I survived at all, now that I think about it.

My friends recently gave me some packaged food they didn't want, and it included one lone packet of ramen noodles. It was chicken "flavor," which really doesn't mean there's any actual chicken in it (though there is plenty of MSG).

Once I cooked the ramen, I noticed how lonely they looked sitting there in the bowl. Nothing green or colorful, just a bland mix of cloudy yellow water and yellow noodles. Kind of sad looking.

I remember I had some roasted seaweed in my cabinet, and when I put some strips into the soup bowl, voila, I suddenly had something that looked like actual soup!

I see a lot of well-meaning people saying "Health care is a right!!" as their rallying cry. Yet, I don't think they've stopped to really think about what they are saying. Health care can't actually be a right, because forcing someone else to give you a service against their will is called slavery, and you'd be taking someone else's rights away in the process.

Consider. I know how to do Reiki healing. It can help a lot of people. You could say "Reiki healing is a right!" and then try to force me to Reiki everyone I possibly could, non-stop, 24-hours per day. Perhaps I do help people in that fashion...but is that right, to lock up Reiki healers in a room and force them to heal until they are exhausted?

I hope Andy Swan doesn't mind that I am copying his entire blog post on the subject verbatim, because he explains it very logically:

Mike Adams over at Natural News just published an article claiming that swine flu (H1N1) was a hoax. He writes:

The great swine flu hoax of 2009 is now falling apart at the seams as one country after another unloads hundreds of millions of doses of unused swine flu vaccines. No informed person wants the injection anymore, and the entire fear-based campaign to promote the vaccines has now been exposed as outright quackery and propaganda.

You can read the rest of Mike's rant over at Natural News.

Now...I like Mike Adams and love his site (I even contribute to it occasionally). But sometimes Mike gets caught up in either/or thinking. In this case, it's either that swine flu is a real threat, or it must be a hyped, made-up threat to profit Big Pharma.

I just picked up some wheat bran from the grocery store. I'm on a whole grain kick and looking to add more unprocessed grains to my diet. Wheat bran is chock full of vitamins as well as phytonutrients that you can't really get from a pill.

What do you do with wheat bran? Well, you can make muffins with it, for one thing. But I plan on putting some wheat bran on my whole grain cereal every morning.

Wheat bran is not the same thing as wheat germ, by the way. Wheat bran is what's on the outside of the wheat berry; wheat germ is what's on the inside. Both are very good for you. I've heard wheat become a bogeyman in some alternative health circles...but that's only if you are allergic to it. Whole wheat is an excellent source of nutrition otherwise.

Women in particular can benefit from adding more whole grains such as wheat bran to the diet. For one, whole wheat can help you lose weight:

Here in Los Angeles, "raw food" has become a big trend. Several raw food restaurants have opened up in recent years, where nothing you eat is cooked. It can be ground up, sliced, diced, and put in a blender, but never cooked.

Even the soups are cold. (I'll never forget my friend ordering a soup at a local raw food restaurant, only to realize that it - duh! - wasn't hot!)

I enjoy eating raw food, but I find myself only being able to stomach so much of it at a time. I suppose some raw food purists will accuse me of being too tainted by my Western diet...but personally, I need more carbs to survive.

So I like raw food as an addition to my regular diet, but not a lifestyle. I think it's always a good idea to add more raw fruits and veggies to a diet. I'd actually love to take a class in raw food "cooking" (an oxymoron!). But doing it 100% isn't my thing.

I stumbled across this article from the UK about some new wonder diet pills being tried over there. One of the drugs is so extreme that it causes some interesting side effects:

The drug, which is a £1.60-a-day diluted version of the prescription-only drug Xenical, works by reducing the body's ability to process fat by about 25 per cent.

The undigested fat passes straight through the body, creating what is described as "an urgent need to go to the bathroom".

Yikes! Well, I suppose that's one way to lose some weight.

What I found interesting about the article is how doctors were saying these pills were no replacement for lifestyle changes. You don't seem to hear that too much here in the U.S., except on the Biggest Loser.

Here is some sage advice from one of the doctors: