Om Mani Padme Yum
Mood:  bright

Remember back at Halloween, when we were scoffing at the kooky idea of candy that had been prayed over by witches?  Well, it turns out there's a company called "Intentional Chocolates", which sells chocolate that's been prayed over by Buddhist monks.  (Not directly - they use a special recorder to capture the brainwaves of meditating monks and then expose the chocolate to it for five days).  Eating the chocolate, you absorb the monks' peaceful meditational energy,  and experience a sense of enhanced well-being. 

I read about this in an airline magazine, along with an article about a wildlife biologist who spent years painstakingly learning to communicate with wolves by howling, and now spends a good deal of his time inadvertently howling back and forth in the woods with other wildlife biologists who have spent years painstakingly learning to communicate with wolves by howling.  Airline magazines have the rippingest yarns.  They're right up there with Virgin's legendary in-flight safety movie (a great favorite of Fake Sony Ericsson Android Phone David, as you'll recall).

So I decided to try and create my own intentional chocolate at home.  I bought a big bar of Belgian chocolate and left it on top of a copy of Molokai for several hours, to soak up Father Damien's gentle, heartfelt prayers and selfless nobility.

Unfortunately, the effect went in reverse:  the chocolate influenced the movie.  In my copy of Molokai, Father Damien is now assigned to an acne colony.