Spread the word

I had a day off today and this morning my parents and my siblings took me, the last to "convert" in my family, to Ceragem. My godparents had raved about it to my parents, who in turn went to check it out with baby sis in tow. The next day the three of them brought Weird Kid and my grandma with them, and now I was the last to experience this wonder machine.

The deal is, you sit and listen to them psyche you up for your Ceragem experience for about 10 minutes or so and then off you scurry to your respective Ceragem beds. (As the whole spiel was going on I watched an older man as he lay on his Ceragem, the heating console on his crotch the entire time. I prayed that I didn't have to use his bed next. My wish was granted.) As my brother pointed out to me beforehand, it kind of feels like a cult: all these Ceragem fanatics full of enthusiasm and craving their time with the Ceragem Master. But I suppose it's a small price to pay to get to lie down on the contraption. I was in bad need of a massage.

At first it hurt like nobody's business, but as the guy said (and had us repeat, like some sort of battle cry) "no pain, no gain." The heat was really nice, and once my body got used to those unforgiving jade rollers I was starting to feel quite good about the whole experience. It would have been better if the lights were dimmed, but a free "massage" is a free massage. After a while they shut off the CD playing the Ceragem jingle/theme song (in various languages, no less!) and you get to hear them psyching up the next batch of people who are ready to leap into your Ceragem bed as soon as your time is up.

My mom gets fanatical about health crazes fairly easily. I remember a few years back she had my grandma and others all wild about Sunrider. Although they never pressure you to buy (although you can purchase your own set of Ceragem sheets to use whenever you visit...which I am ALL for since otherwise it kind of feels like an emergency shelter/homeless shelter) I figured it couldn't hurt to see exactly what my family was getting themselves into healthwise. So I Googled it, naturally. I can't really find any complaints about it, but my brother's "cult" analogy is pretty much dead-on. (They mentioned that 288 people used the beds yesterday, compared to 219 before the holidays, so they were thrilled that people were coming back.) It's like Sunrider all over again.

No pressure-sales but their success depends on word of mouth. I'm sure my brother's and my friends are not Ceragem's target market. While it feels pretty good I can't imagine my peers going all ga-ga over it. But I guess I'm going back with the family tomorrow before I head to work, haha.

And now I have a funny story to share with you all. It's one of those "it happened to a friend of a friend of mine" type deals. So there was this guy, 25 years old, bored and alone in his house since his parents were out of town. Him and his friend are apparently so bored that picking up a couple of prostitutes and bringing them back to his place sounds like a really good idea.

So they go and do what you do when in the company of prostitutes...and, dare I say, predictably fall asleep shortly thereafter.

When they wake up they find their wallets and keys missing. The two of them figure they'll go find those girls and give them heck. They find one of the girls (if you ask me, that was a miracle) and start questioning her about where their wallets are and what the girls have done with their keys blah blah blah. Hooker no. 1 (yeah, I got tired of typing out "prostitute") pleaded innocent, saying the other girl took them and it wasn't little old her. Meanwhile, as they're talking to this hooker and then searching the city for the other hooker (hooker no. 2) hooker no. 2 and their pimp go back over to the house and completely clean them out. From what I have been told they took everything from the house. Even the coffee maker! All the cars, gone. Jewellery and electronics, obviously poof.

Imagine the embarassment the young man must have felt, having to call up his parents to tell them to come home because the hookers took everything. To add insult to injury, the police couldn't do anything to help him (although I'm sure he wasn't innocent in the eyes of the law, either, for what he had done) since the pimp and his girl didn't break into the house because they had a key.

Anyway, that's just the side of the story I've been told.