Fine Print 24-01-2004

Bleed for bucks

Los Angeles, Jan. 23 (Reuters): Selling yourself might be second nature for wannabe movie stars or aspiring screenwriters looking for a lucky break in California.

But now anyone can get lessons in how to, literally, sell their bodies and make big bucks. “Body Bucks: How to Sell Your Body to Science While You’re Still Alive,” is the latest and weirdest course offered by the year-old online New Canoe University, based in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco.

“By selling bodily fluids and participating in medical experiments, a human being can earn $20,000 or more per year,” said course instructor Bob Heyman on Thursday. “This is literally the only business out there where you can always carry your assets with you and they’re renewable to boot.”

Using Internet-based learning modules with titles like “Bleeding for Bucks”, the course teaches students how to make money by legally selling their blood, sperm, eggs, hair and bone marrow, and by taking part in paid medical trials and research. The sale of vital organs is illegal in the US.

Sweet side

Oslo (Reuters): Norway’s finance minister showed a sweeter side on Thursday by penning a poem to calm chocolate factory workers’ protests against high taxes. In a novel form of fiscal argument, Per-Kristian Foss presented a debut poem on the government’s website along with a tempting introduction saying it could “freely be enjoyed, sucked, swallowed or copied.” In the poem, in Norwegian, Foss laments his duty to balance the budget but gives no hope of lower taxes on chocolate and candy production. He concludes: “Live sweet in the hope of a fee-less fest/ Tax-free chocolate probably tastes the best.” Everyone from producers to sweet-toothed children complain that Norwegian candy prices are higher than elsewhere in Europe. Foss entitled his 32-line poem Per-Kristian and the Chocolate Factory, a play on Roald Dahl’s children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Sick scent

Jerusalem (Reuters): Israeli police had to close an entire floor of their station because the pungent scent of tonnes of confiscated marijuana was making them high, an Israeli newspaper said on Friday. The drugs, smuggled from Egypt, are kept in a storeroom of a police station in the southern town of Dimona. Police have confiscated so much, that the room is filled up almost immediately after its contents are sent to be incinerated. “Every time I came to work I felt... like I was high,” the Maariv newspaper quoted one officer as saying. “The smell of marijuana was killing us — it was impossible to work.”