Category:
Hygiene
Hygiene
Sewer Dwellers
One month ago I posted a list of "things that have been found in sewers." To that list I now have to add 100 immigrants, including 24 Afghan children. They've been found living in the sewers beneath Rome. Seems they got down there by removing some manhole covers. I've watched enough horror films to know it's only a matter of time before they become cannibalistic and start pulling victims down into the sewers with them. (Thanks, Sandy!)
Posted By: Alex - Mon Apr 06, 2009 -
Comments (3)
Category: Hygiene
Follies of the Mad Men #60
Okay, we get it. Your product has an odd name that might lend itself to a double entendre. Such a campaign worked for Smucker's Jelly & Jams, of course. But the problem lies with the verb "sniff." If the ad had read "May I hold your Klompen Kloggen," all would have been good smutty fun. But although you can indeed hold the unlit tobacco, you can't "hold" the delightfully aromatic pipe smoke (the selling point). So the copywriter is forced to use "sniff."
But sniffing some private portion of another individual (the inescapable connotations of "May I sniff your BLANK...) conjures up all sorts of canine or rutting behavior, not sexy but animalistic. One pictures this pretty woman burying her nose in some guy's armpit--or elsewhere.
Posted By: Paul - Tue Mar 24, 2009 -
Comments (22)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Hygiene, Tobacco and Smoking, 1960s
Burp Gas Filterer
The Burp Gas Filtering Device: Patent No. 7070638, issued July 4, 2006. It serves two functions in one. You can deodorize your burp, and if your dinner companion needs a pen to sign the check, you'll have one to offer. Burp or eructation odors have been a source of annoyance or concern in polite society for hundreds of years. Far too often, the foods that we love most cause us to belch. To the person who is belching, the odor may be a trifling annoyance, especially if the burp was the result of an enjoyable meal. However, for persons in the close vicinity of the burp, the burp is simply an unpleasant odor of someone else's partially digested food. Many people wish to eliminate the burp odor so as to avoid offending others...
The burp filtering device has the body of a writing pen, with an intake port at the upper end of the body, a plurality of exhaust ports adjacent the writing tip and a filter disposed within the body. The filter may be made of activated charcoal or other media for filtering and adsorbing or absorbing eructation odors. In use, the user holds the upper end of the pny body to his lips, releases the suppressed burp and the filtered, deodorized gas is exhausted through the ports at the writing tip...
Still another object of the invention is to provide a device for eliminating burp odors that also serves as a writing instrument.
The burp filtering device has the body of a writing pen, with an intake port at the upper end of the body, a plurality of exhaust ports adjacent the writing tip and a filter disposed within the body. The filter may be made of activated charcoal or other media for filtering and adsorbing or absorbing eructation odors. In use, the user holds the upper end of the pny body to his lips, releases the suppressed burp and the filtered, deodorized gas is exhausted through the ports at the writing tip...
Still another object of the invention is to provide a device for eliminating burp odors that also serves as a writing instrument.
Posted By: Alex - Mon Mar 09, 2009 -
Comments (11)
Category: Hygiene, Inventions, Patents
Wallypop Toilet Wipes
This must have been what people used back in the days before the invention of toilet paper. You just wipe and then throw the soiled cloth into a bag, ready to be taken out to the laundry. One benefit is that it allows you to wipe with a wet cloth, which gets you a lot cleaner. However, it would seem to me that it's going to substantially increase the amount of laundry you've got to do (since you want to keep the soiled wipes separate from the rest of your laundry). So would they really save you money, or be any better for the environment?Thanks to Prof. Music for the contribution.
Posted By: Alex - Sat Feb 28, 2009 -
Comments (5)
Category: Bathrooms, Hygiene, Excrement
Sludge Management
Posted By: Paul - Thu Feb 12, 2009 -
Comments (1)
Category: Education, Hygiene, Body Fluids, Excrement, Documentaries
Follies of the Mad Men #51
Not even the super-science of Captain Video can make your breath tolerable!
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jan 07, 2009 -
Comments (5)
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Hygiene, Science Fiction, 1950s
Who Fools the Foolkiller?
For instance, Spider-Man operates in New York City, not some imaginary "Metropolis."
And when the President of the USA is depicted, it's not Lex Luthor, but the real office-holder of the moment.
But the recent issue number four of the miniseries Foolkiller reveals a startling incongruity between the Marvelverse and ours.
Either that, or scripter Gregg Hurwitz and editor Axel Alonso have never ridden in an actual airplane before.
You see in this page the fat victim of the trained assassin enter a lavatory on a commercial flight. We'll give Hurwitz and Alonso props for mentioning that it's a tight fit. Nonetheless, enormous victim and killer somehow squeeze in together, whereupon the lav suddenly enlarges like a Tardis.
And then the killer drowns his victim in the potty.
Airline toilets simply do not feature basins of standing water. They operate with the push of a button and a sparse rinse of famous blue chemicals.
This killing, then, requires a larger suspension of disbelief than the existence of the entire Avengers, and will surely jolt any half-awake reader completely out of the attempt at realism.
That's just weird.
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jan 02, 2009 -
Comments (7)
Category: Hygiene, Stupidity, Comics
Nose Bidets
A "nose bidet" (also known as a neti pot) is a device used for nasal irrigation. I'm not really sure how it works, but I think it involves pouring water into one nostril so that it comes out the other. Wikipedia reports that in some parts of India, this practice is as common as brushing one's teeth.But even better is the yogic nasal cleansing practice of Sutra Neti:
One end of a cord, or rubber catheter, is passed from the nose into the back of the throat where it is grabbed by the fingers and pulled out of the mouth. Holding the nose end of the cord with one hand and the mouth end with the other, the cord is gently pulled to and fro.
I already floss my teeth once a day. I don't think I need to floss my nose.
(The picture is from yoga-age.com)
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jan 02, 2009 -
Comments (1)
Category: Body, Hygiene
Jesus Freak Documentary
A fascinating time capsule from 1971. Thirty minutes long, but watch at least the first five or so.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Dec 27, 2008 -
Comments (1)
Category: Bums, Hobos, Tramps, Beggars, Panhandlers and Other Streetpeople, Drugs, Eccentrics, Family, Children, Parents, Hygiene, Nature, New Age, Pop Culture, Religion, 1970s, Facial Hair, Yesterday’s Tomorrows
Shampoo allows deaf girl to play violin
This video raises two interesting questions:a) What in the world does it have to do with shampoo?
b) How can a deaf person learn to play a musical instrument?
Some answers to the second question can be found at physorg.com, which notes that deaf people can feel the vibration of sound. Therefore, percussion instruments that make a lot of vibrations are the easiest for them to learn. But what highly accomplished deaf musicians (such as Beethoven and Evelyn Glennie) share is "musical training, perfect pitch and excellent hearing before they suffered its loss."
Posted By: Alex - Sun Dec 21, 2008 -
Comments (1)
Category: Hygiene, Music, Video, Advertising
| Who We Are |
|---|
| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction, science-themed books such as Elephants on Acid and Psychedelic Apes. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Contact Us |