Ahh those wacky Germans and their wacky cannibals. They haven’t got anything on the latest in beauty treatments. Vampire Facelifts!

The latest fad in the extreme cosmetic beauty segment appears to not require that much slicing and dicing, but it does need a stronger stomach than most of the procedures thus far… It’s pretty safe to assume that regular readers (such as they are as this is the first new post in months) are probably young enough to not have ever had to bother with cosmetic surgery. So just to fill people in, generally speaking, a chemical (as opposed to surgical) facelift is usually done by pumping your face full of a “filler” compound that is basically a specifically rendered and patented set of fats, proteins and some amino-acids. These are usually derived from livestock offal and lards (mostly pig as they’re genetically similar to us) although there are a few operators out there that have used liposucked fat in the past.

And this is where the vampire facelift differs.

Hold up a second.  I should probably point out that “Vampire Facelift” is actually a specifically trademarked name for a platelet rich plasma matrix infusion, a technique that was originally developed to help burn victims recover their own skin. Rather than using a cow or even your own fat arse to plump up your face, it basically takes the platelets from your own blood to hijack your system into creating more regenerative cytokines (they’re basically the proteins that tell cells and microfauna in your body what to do)… It’s all rather scientific, but not in a way that common people shouldn’t be able to understand. If you paid attention in highscool biology, most of this should be known to you. It’s really basic life science.

Here is a doctor explaining why science is actually magic. Possibly a magic potion even!

 

Perhaps the most insulting thing about this entire fad, epitomised by this video “explanation”, is how pseudoscience is being used to sell people’s own fat arses right back to them. It’s exactly what Tyler Durden was going on about with his Paper Street Soap. There are three reasons why shit like this pisses me off.

1. This is an expensive process. A process that only people in upper classes can actually afford to get done on the kind of regular basis required for “rejuvenating” cosmetic surgery. Developing this process was expensive and time consuming. And the manufacture lab time required is being soaked up by people that don’t actually have anything wrong with them, while other people have to wait for skin to be grafted to their legs.
2. I truly wish to believe in a meritocracy, even though I know it’s bullshit.people with money can afford a decent education, so there’s no excuse for falling for this kind of pseudoscientific bullshit… Then again, a lot of highly intelligent people believe n the most ludicrous crap because they’ve used their own intellect to build rock solid arguments for whatever it is they’re wrong about. Intelligent people have a hard time admitting they’re wrong, after all.
3. Precisely what is vampiric about this process? Cannibalistic would be much more apt, but I get the feeling that the guys in marketing just went with the fact that vampires are as hot as Hansel right now. Either way, this kind of gives rise to the whole vampire poser image whole heartedly, which is possibly worse than my previous beefs.

At the end of the day, things like this shouldn’t bother me. But when you (over)hear people talking about it and how amazing they look and how expensive it was as they walk past beggars it kind of gets your goat. Especially when they wonder out loud precisely why people in London are rioting right now.

Been a while since I’ve posted a new drink… or anything really.

A lot’s been going on with me, and I’ve been feeling a tad locked down. So I decided to drink it profusely!

(more…)

In the far flung future, it looks like we get our own planet, but the lack of vitamin D has led to drastic mutations!

Still, not as bad as what happens to Emos…

 

Someone, some where, in TV land, has actually been paying attetnion to what people want instead of of the bottom line and how amazingly cheap it is to make more shitty “reality” (read: unscripted and plotless) TV. It seems that Todd & The Book of Pure Evil has just gotten a second run on life, with the (theoretically promised) second season just having been green lit.
More news over at http://www.bellmediapr.ca/space/releases/release.asp?id=13657&yyyy=2011

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