If you thought your grocery bill was high already, take a look at this: A Japanese dairy announced this week the launch of a super-premium milk for over-anxious adults — at the price of $43 a quart.
According to Australia's Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper, Tokyo-based Nakazawa Foods will start selling the Adult Milk line of products next month, aimed at "adults who live in a stressful society," quoting the company's press release.
The price is nearly 30 times as expensive as ordinary milk even in Tokyo, which is known for having the highest cost of living on the planet.
The milk is taken from cows once a week at the break of dawn as they produce higher levels of the hormone melatonin during the night, the company said. The hormone is reported to have ability to lower anxiety and even some forms of depression in people.
Bottled within six hours of milking at a farm north of Tokyo, Adult Milk is said to contain three to four times as much melatonin as the standard stuff.
We think this actually may calm your nerves, as long as you're not worrying about going broke.
Posh nosh
This dessert may be a little too rich for you, but you're probably not rich enough for it.
A Sri Lankan resort is charging $14,500 for what it calls the world's most expensive dessert, a fruit-infused confection complete with a chocolate sculpture and a gigantic gemstone.
"The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence" was created to give visitors at The Fortress resort in the coastal city of Galle a one-of-a-kind experience, said the hotel's public relations manager, Shalini Perera.
The dessert is a gold leaf Italian cheesecake flavored with Irish cream, served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a foamy champagne sauce. It's also decorated with a chocolate carving of a fisherman clinging to a stilt — an age-old local fishing practice — and an 80-carat aquamarine stone.
The dessert has to be specially ordered, Perera said. Though the hotel has received calls about it from as far away as Japan, she said, no one has yet forked over the money to try it.
Maybe it's because the bill is probably guaranteed to give you indigestion.
This nerd's for you
Looking to recruit more women, and perhaps date some sorority girls, the largest computer club at Washington State University hopes to hold a "nerd auction." The idea is to trade their computer skills to sorority girls in exchange for a makeover and, possibly, a date.
"You can buy a nerd and he'll fix your computer, help you with stats homework, or if you're really adventurous, take you to dinner!" Ben Ford, president of the Linux Users Group, said on its Web site recently.
Ford acknowledged that some of the group's 213 registered members may not be ready for the auction block.
"The problem is that we're all still nerds. Let's face it, guys. If anyone's going to bid on us, we'll need some spicing up," he wrote. "And who better to help with that than sorority girls who like nothing better than a makeover?"
This all began as an effort to recruit more women into computer science programs, the Moscow-Pullman Daily News reported this week. A public relations class decided to help by studying the social dynamics of the Linux group, which focuses on the use of the computer operating system. The students interviewed Ford and some others and created an online survey of LUG members, evaluating how they heard about the club, how they perceived the group and their reasons for being active or inactive.
"Our conclusion was that they need to promote themselves better, then specific ideas were presented to them," said professor Moon Lee, who taught the public relations class. "They made suggestions to work with specific groups such as sororities. Sorority groups tend to have a very good social network."
Ford initially was skeptical.
"When they said we should have a social with a sorority," he said. "I thought that was a joke."
Ford, who has an undergraduate degree in computer science and is pursuing a master's in business management, said the idea for the nerd auction came to him in the shower.
"Here's the current plan: We'll choose a handful of brave nerds to take one for the team," Ford wrote. "The girls get to have their way with them and we'll document each makeover.
"We'll make a snazzy video and show it over dinner. After the dinner, we'll auction off the now studly nerds," a hopeful Ford wrote.
The plan is to have the auction open to the general student population and co-sponsored by a sorority.
Ford has spoken to several sororities, but so far none has committed to the project, which he wants to do in October or November. A call to the Center for Fraternity and Sorority Life at WSU by The Associated Press was not immediately returned.
They probably couldn't come to the phone because they were laughing hysterically.