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Several years ago I was studying Native American herbalism when I learned about Pennyroyal. As a member of the mint family, Pennyroyal got a bad rap because it has a history of being used to terminate pregnancies, and often had harsh side effects. It has even been known to kill when taken in large doses. But my herbalism teacher told me that Pennyroyal would repel fleas.

So I looked it up. The Latin name for American Pennyroyal is “Hedeoma pulegioides”. Pulegioides looked a lot like the Spanish word for flea - “pulga”. Upon further research I found that first century herbalists wrote of Pennyroyal’s action to repel fleas. They probably knew a little something about how plants worked, so I decided to give it a shot.

Due to its toxicity, I had a difficult time finding pennyroyal for sale. But I was lucky enough to find a patch of pennyroyal growing in a field behind my house (in San Francisco) so I helped myself to a nice-sized cutting.

At the time, I kept my two dogs in a fenced dog run in the back yard while I was at work. So I transplanted my newly discovered Pennyroyal along the edge of the dog’s fence. Within a month, the dogs didn’t seem to need a their regular dose of the chemical flea treatment, so I skipped it. I went another two years without having to give doses of the flea-killing compound.

When I moved to Atlanta, I brought my pennyroyal with me (as well as my echinacea and a few other prized plants). But I was sorely disappointed when I moved into a new house and my fresh pennyroyal plantings didn’t seem to keep away the fleas. I had to start using the chemical stuff again as the dogs were getting attacked. Apparently the plants have to be established and it takes time to drive the fleas away (it doesn’t actually kill the fleas, it just makes them want to leave.)

I made several cuttings last fall that over-wintered well and really took off this spring. Now I have several batches of pennyroyal growing in the yard, most notably in an area where my dogs like to hang out in the shade. There have been no signs of fleas. And I haven’t given my dogs chemical flea treatment in months and my house and yard remain flea-free.

When I was in Honduras in 1995-96, getting a parasite, amoeba, or other ‘bug’ was just a matter of time. It happened. And usually the remedy was a $1 trip to the doctor followed by a $3.00 trip to the pharmacy. Sometimes just a trip to the pharmacy was all that was needed.

However, when the pharmacy was closed or far away, we learned to “hold off” bugs by taking a shot or two of tequila. I believe it was a Peace Corps volunteer who gave out this recipe. Amazingly, it worked.

One of my friends just told me of the success of this insta-cure when he suddenly realized that he ate some spoiled turkey for lunch. With belly gurgling and nausea building, he made a mid-day, mid-week trip to the liquor store and got a pint of the golden wild potion. After one quick shot, he felt the gurgling subside. Then he was able to go back to work.

In theory, it makes sense. Alcohol kills the bacteria that causes the big problems. I certainly wouldn’t recommend this as a replacement for a doctor’s visit or doing just about anything other than taking mid-day shots of tequila. And I really don’t even remember telling him this story - I was probably drinking tequila at the time.

I have been using press releases over the past several months to highlight some major changes that are happening in my company. I have used PrWeb a couple of times as well as Transworldnews. I am also looking into using other services such as prlog.org, eworldwire.com and www.fprc.info.

PrWeb definitely positions itself as the premium service. They charge $200 per release, which is certainly premium and much more than the other services. They do offer a lot of features and have positioned themselves as the authority.

But when I used them to put out a press release regarding the launch of our new website, the release was immediately scraped by PR-USA, a service out of Bulgaria that specializes in scraping (stealing) content and attributing it to themselves. And they are good at scraping (effective, but they suck). Their scraped press release stole the show on Google and the PRweb release was nowhere to be found.

No one has control over Google and I didn’t expect PRweb to flick a switch and make the scraper site go away. But I did talk to their customer service team to raise the issue, especially since one of the main points of the release was “Made in the USA.” A press release from Bulgaria doesn’t exactly help.

PrWeb customer service was apologetic and very nice and suggested I put in a ticket with their product management team to elevate the concern. So I did. The response back was amazing. The product management team didn’t even acknowledge the problem and gave me a bit of a sarcastic reply. Hmmm…a defensive product management team that won’t admit mistakes…sounds familiar.

Here’s part of Chris’ reply from PrWeb:

Again, if your goal is to get your release far and wide on the Internet, then other organizations finding your press release and reposting it is a good practice for you. It just gives you more exposure. If for whatever reason that is not your goal, then perhaps you may want to reconsider posting them on the World Wide Web.

He said, “World Wide Web”.

Gee, thanks Chris. As a seasoned snarkmaster myself, I wasn’t amused. I ended up calling Chris “smarty pants” in my reply and that’s when the management stepped in and offered a sincere reply to my original concerns (i.e. - they’re getting scraped and they don’t like it). Perhaps I will use PRweb again in the future, but for now I can’t justify the expense. Just because something costs more doesn’t mean it comes with higher quality.

I knew there were smiley faced spiders in Hawaii and other exotic places, but I didn’t know we had them in Georgia. This little guy was about 3 mm wide. Just after I shot this picture he pounced on a flea beetle. I wish I had been shooting video.

I made a really long post about this last week and my Internets went down and my post was lost. Recreating that post is already making me ache so this will likely be considerably shorter.

Back in a previous post, I brought up the fact that Google was rewarding off-topic link bait as if it were legitimate content and that has caused poor, low quality websites to get a higher ranking. My argument was that being silly or provocative ALONE should not have a positive effect on search engines toward the ranking of your site. Apparently Google is going to take a deeper look at how they reward, or punish, ‘deceptive’ link bait.

Just to clarify, I really love the tools that Marketleap offers and it was easy for me to link to them because they add value. Rex Swain has an awesome http header reader that I use, so he deserves quality links. However, people who make fun of FT 2.0 clowns or make ingratiating, off-top videos that have nothing to do with their website, should not get a Google bump as a result.

Think about it, everyone has been to a garage and seen the calendars with the women in bikinis. Well, if you grew up in Tennessee you have. At any rate, a picture of Tricia Helfer sitting on a Chevy Nova will not make a better car, although it will look much nicer. If Consumer Reports were to give the Chevy Nova a higher performance rating based on the attractiveness of Ms. Helfer, then one would certainly question the quality of the Consumer Reports rating system. In the same respect, Google should not reward websites for off-topic gimmicks that merely make someone look.

Maybe they’re catching on.