Why Don't We Just Eat the Zombies? They're Already Dead.

Today I came across a friend's talking about how she paid a visit to her local butcher. And I was thinking, "Butcher. What a truly bizarre profession. To slaughter animals all day long."

Now I am no vegetarian, although I eat very little meat just in passing. But to cut up and chop up and filet up and slice up and grind up animals all day long is just very...icky.

Not to mention the bum-bum germs. Someone has to yank out the poop chutes. And the grinding--think of all the airborne meat germs.

Although thank goodness somebody does it, because, steak.

In the event of Zombie Apocalypse, do you think you could slaughter your own food? Could you slit the throat of little Peter Cottontail? Does it matter what kind of animal? Maybe you could kill a chicken but not a goat? Do you think, if you had to, you could actually do it to keep your family alive?

The Bidet Is the Drinking Fountain of Bum-Bums.

Doesn't the concept of bidets gross you the fuck out?

I mean, think about water fountains. Kids slobbering all over the spout and then letting water pour from their mouth all over the spigot from which you will later drink from.

Bidets are the same nonsense. Water shoots up your bidness, then falls down, getting all over tarnation, and the next time you use it, water shoots up from the same spout that bum-bum juice has just leaked down upon.

Water fountains are one of the grossest things I know. But imagine someone hanging their ass over one to clean it, and then drinking from it reusing it on your own ass. I can't. I can't even.

Oh, and this guy? I really, really, REALLY can't.

PSA: Never use a bidet unless you don't mind someone else's bum-bum germs all up in your crack.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday.

"Science Is Fun and Useful"

by Jo

This is one of the most kickass videos I've ever seen. (1) Because this guy is awesome; (2) because the wisdom he imparts is true and important re: the viruses with the highest-known fatality rates; and (3) because this guy is awesome.

So let's do watch.

(Totally can't get it to embed AARRRRGGGHH)

Let's just start with his opening line, "There's a lot of stuff out there that's trying to kill us, right now, and today, I'm gonna talk about the ones that are the best at it. The Five Deadliest Infectious Diseases in the World."

The 10 minute 23 second video is worth your while; however, if you're all tl;dr? and you don't feel like watching the entire thing? Then let me just summarize, BumBumStyle:

• The Spanish Flu (1917-1918) was a notorious infectious disease, also known as...wait for it...H1N1. It killed more than 30 million people worldwide. ( Now you may recall that in 2009 there was also mass hysteria over a resurgence of the pandemic H1N1, a.k.a. Swine Flu to the point that you could not find face masks or hand sani in any drugstore anywhere.) Anyway, the first outbreak had a case fatality rate of 20%, and apparently, 20% (!!) is so minor in the grand scheme of things that it's not even worth talking about. Bygones. Let's move on, shall we?

• Let's take Nipah, which has an average case fatality rate of about 50% (other online sources claim up to 75%). It seems that around 1999, pig farmers started coming down with respiratory issues, and inflammation of the brain that caused hallucinations, along with seizures (and should you wonder, no, "not the good kind of seizures," according to SciShow). What.

Outbreaks continued in India and Bangladesh, the disease mainly spread by bats, at which point and in which place the death rate became around 100 mother fucking percent. Are you hearing me. 100%. 

And what's worse, you suddenly didn't need a got-damn bat or pig or a batpig or a pigbat to give you Nipah, you get could get it human-to-human. And then you'd fucking die. Dead. Deceased. Of a miserable death.

Pigbat!!

In 2001, in Siliguri, India, there were cases of Nipah where 75% of cases were traced back to people who had merely visited the local hospital. Just by being there. In that building. Just by, say, strolling in to give a loved one some pink carnations and a "Get Well Soon" Mylar balloon. Maybe a Peace Lily or two.

"Get well soon! I hope you recover from your Nipah! As if!"

Perhaps best of all, according to the WHO, there is no treatment or vaccine available for either humans or animals. Which might explain why up to 100% of the people infected die dead.

So that is of little interest to you. After all, you do not live in Siliguri, India. So let's talk about H5N1 (commonly known as Bird Flu). 

• H5N1 didn't used to be easily transmissible to humans, but then scientists went and got all 10-year-old-boy on us and asked, "What would happen if I did this? Let's see if I can do this!! Let me dick around with something! What would happen if I did that? Let's fukkin' blow shit up, man!111@@!"

Apparently, this tinkering made flu transmissible to ferrets, which have (for some reason) the same immune system as humans. Which sucks because this newly and easily transmissible Bird Flu kills at least 54% of people who get it. For fuck's SAKE, ferrets?? Good times. 

There is a government vaccine available for H5N1, but it has apparently been stockpiled and is not available to the public. Good times.

---

And I quote: "Now Hank, you're saying I'm not a Malaysian bat-handler and I've already stocked my pantry with enough Skittles and Diet Sierra Mist to get me through the Bird Flu pandemic."

So in other words, I'm golden, right? Read on, friends, read on.

• In 1967, Germany started testing polio vaccines on monkeys from Uganda. Suddenly the scientists came down with wicked fevers, vomiting, diarrhea, massive internal bleeding, and circulatory failure. Good times.

Corellation: Messing with monkey parts = contracting killer diseases. Quit poking around monkey parts, you zoophile.

After further investifuckingation, they eventually isolated the virus known as Marburg Hemorrhagic Fever.

In one year alone, 23% of the scientists exposed died. It shows up everywhere from Africa to the United States, where it kills more than 80%. EIGHTY. PER. CENT. Scientists say that Marburg Hemmorhagic Fever is "the #1 virus you most want to mother fucking got damn avoid," if I may paraphrase. Let's try to do that, people. Start by washing your damn dirty hands and then not messing with monkey parts. But I mean, there is more than one good reason never to mess with monkey parts. For one, that's a hell of a lot of bum-bum germs.

So even if you live in the USA, never handle bats, and have thousands of Snickers and gallons of Orange Crush available in your storm shelter, you are not safe from terrifying diseases.

• A cousin of Marburg Fever is the Zaire Ebola virus (a.k.a. ZEBOV). It is the second most deadly disease in the world and causes everything from vomiting to fever to failure of blood vessels, which causes bleeding under the skin (groce).  ZEBOV has a mortality rate of 83%, and in the early 2000s, it killed more than 90% of the people infected. That's a shit of a lot, people.

• As a sidenote, what do these all viruses (virii?) have in common?

All of these viruses are Zoonotic ("transmitted to humans from animals"). Especially from bats. Fuck you, bats. I hate you in the face.

For these and other reasons, let's just avoid adopting your local neighborhood Battus Vampirus, even though it may be precious and have a cute little snout and you want to name it Edward.

Back to our regularly scheduled program about shit what will kill you.

So, after reading about ZEBOV, you're probably wondering, what disease is deadlier than 90% fatal?? This may surprise you, my peeps.

The deadliest disease in the world is not influenza, is not typhoid, is not dysentery,

...but is rabies, with case fatality rate of, oh, you know, whatever, about 100%. Bygones.

What? Like, Spiffy my sweet little Labradoodle can kill my ass? Or rather, what: like, sweet little Cujo can go from this

to this

and I won't have a chance in heaven once symptoms present?

You're saying that man's best friend can harbor the greatest plague known to humanity? Even though there's a vaccine and shit?

Yes, there is a vaccine, but once you've been diagnosed with the symptoms of the disease, you face almost certain death. There is a case fatality rate of p. much 100%.

According to Science Guy, there have been fewer than 10 recorded cases EVER IN THE HISTORY EVER OF THE ENTIRE WORLD EVER of people who have EVER been diagnosed with rabies and who have EVER lived to tell about it. Ever.

Apparently it's a terrible way to go: Early flu-like symptoms, then it targets your central nervous system, and you become agitated, delirious, and have seizures. Then you will experience paralysis, especially of the throat and jaw, making it difficult to swallow liquids (which is why patients avoid water and which is why rabies is known as hydrophobia). Ma! He's got The Hydrophobe!!

Old Yeller,

Come back Yeller,

Best doggone dog in the West.

With rabies, your pulse and blood pressure will vary wildly, and along with other v. unpleasant symptoms like acute pain and mania, then you will experience coma and heart failure respiratory failure and death. 100% of the time.

And although bats have caused all kinds of other really, really bad shit (see above), they usually get a bad rap when it comes to rabies.  Everyone is all, "OMG OMG IT'S A BAT it's going to get stuck in my hair and bite me and I will get the rabies! OMG BATS!" But actually, about 97% of cases in humans come from dog bites. Out, out damn Spot!

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This ends your science lesson for the day and your very extensive Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday.

Love,
Jo

Peace, Love, and Bum-Bum Germs.

Why is it that my hands feel exponentially more filthy after shopping at Trader Joe's than after I grocery shop at any other place?

After blowing a cool hundred U.S. American dollars at TJ's, I got in my car and could not use enough hand sani. And then I raced home, not to dive into the new channa masala I bought, but to vigorously wash my hands thrice.

OK just kidding--I raced home to dive into the channa masala.

And the spicy spinach pizza. And the fresh strawberries and blackberries. And the veggie chips. And the lime chili cashews. And the watermelon FruityFlakes. And the sushi rolls. And the Purple Moon Shiraz.

But ALSO to wash my hands. Because seriously, my hands felt hot and squirmy with the bum-bum germs of 10 million hippies.

Fair-trade dark chocolate on a hot tin slide.

Good thing I also bought delicious lemon hand-soap at Trader Joe's. I went through about 1/4 of it.

Before diving into my channa masala. Braaaaaap.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday! Shitpaws Edition.

Do you ever think how germy the toilet paper holder is?

A lot of the time, the toilet paper roll gets changed while you are actually in the process of doing your dirty bidness. That is, you have a duke, use some toilet paper, run out of toilet paper, reach for new toilet paper, then put it on the toilet paper holder. With grody grody germy hands.

Then sometimes, while strolling casually through the ancestral manse, maybe you notice that the roll is empty, so while doing other chores or just brushing your teeth, you take a minute to put a new toilet paper roll on. And you touch the grody grody germy toilet paper holder that someone else touched with shitpaws.

For the love of God Almighty, people, please wash your hands after touching the toilet paper holder for ANY reason.

Love,
Jo

Oh Adam.

So I was watching Man vs. Food Amazing Eats, Adam Richman's newest show. I was amazed and impressed when I saw the restaurant owner preparing food with latex gloves.

And then...THEN, Adam stepped in to help.

Sans gloves.

Who knows what's on that fucker's hands?

Oh Adam, you handsome, disgusting bastard.

But then, I even lost respect for the glove-clad restaurant owner, when he was preparing the world's largest pizza dough by tossing it. Because that shit touched his arms and elbows, yo. And you KNOW he didn't surgeon-scrub his arms and elbows first.

GROCE.

Does it bother you when pizza dough touches the chef's arms, or worse yet, when they prepare it with no gloves? 

I know that shit is baked, but srsly, who wants baked E. coli and baked staph and baked nail grime and baked bum-bum germs?

---

ED. NOTE: In another show, I beheld this:

IS THAT HAND SANI I SPY??

Adam, you may have redeemed yourself.

....On second thought, no. But it's a nice effort.

Wife Swap: Jo Edition.

(Or is that Wifes Wap?)

I've always wondered what it would be like if I went on Wife Swap. Scratch that, I KNOW what it would be like. You know how they always pair totally opposite women/families? A rich bitch goes to live in a hovel, and the other wife lives in a mansion; an unschooler goes to live in a house where the children have every single minute of their day scheduled, planned, and busy; a mother who lives to serve her husband goes to live in a house where the wife doesn't lift a finger; etc.

 

Yeah. So here's what that would mean for me.

They'd give my household a wife who:

• OMG wears shoes in my pristine house
• Does not wash her hands or the kids' hands upon first coming home
• Takes my children to the McDonald's McPlaguePlace
• Uses the bathroom without washing
• Changes Naomi's diapers without washing
• Brings the shared bum-bum sponge back into fashion
• Gives Maya all the soda pop--scratch that, all  the Red Bull--she wants
• Lets the kids watch horror movies
• Fills the baby's bed with a plush baby bumper, five pillows, eighteen stuffed animals, and four blankets
• Lets Maya play in the street or totally out of sight at the park
• Teaches Maya to flick her boogers

• Cuts the mold off cheese and keeps using it
• Leaves bean soup out overnight and serves it the next day
• Lounges around bare-ass nekked with her bum-bum right on my couch
• Brings in three cats and a dog who scootches

• Sneezes and coughs with wild abandon
• Lets the baby chew on the restaurant table
• Lets the baby play with and gnaw on her cell phone and keys
• Lets our new scootching dog lick the baby's face and mouth
• Shares a bath with my kids
• Goes lake swimming and doesn't shower after
• Lets Maya mix up her Play-Doh colors (HORROR!)
• Mixes up a nice batch of raw meatloaf with her bare hands and then merely wipes them on a kitchen towel
• Throws away all my Clorox wipes and hand sani

• Lets my kids eat carrots freshly plucked out of the soil
• Makes mud-pies with the kids and looks away when Naomi actually takes a bite
• And likes her chicken pink in the middle.

Maybe they'd even bring in the lady from the infamous "High Meat" household. (Hilarious sidenote: My husband names his character "High Meat" when he plays MMORPGs.)

"It's got a wang to it."

"Do you believe that God would put anything on this earth to hurt us?"

Yeah, I don't know, how about motherfucking sharks?

...Or listeria, or E. Coli, or rabid bats, or salmonella, or lice, or yellowjackets, or jerkoffs in grade school who throw encyclopedias at your head, or crocodiles, or campylobacter, or bears, or or strep, or staph, or legionella, or leprosy, or cholera, or hungry lions, or Lady Gaga??

Just to name a few.

But I digress.

Anyway, I think the wife they paired my husband with would do all these things and more.



...Or else she'd just be really fun and outgoing and actually take the kids places and get her butt off the internet. You know, whatever.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday! or, You Have Died of Dysentery.

Lake swimming. 

We've all done it as kids. I used to love nothing more than to ease, eeeease myself into the frigid waters of Lake Retreat when we went there for family camp. I used to swim, cannonball, and dive gleefully into those waters, yea though the surface was positively replete with duck shit. And in the outer areas, there were lily pads so dense that it's a wonder I never drowned. (I did get badly caught in them one time, and my wee short life flashed before mine eyes.)

I don't remember always showering after a visit to the lake. Sometimes I did, but surely, sometimes I did not. I do remember showering after an ill-fated, attempted canoe ride, in which I asked a morose, lonely, v. large girl to come boating with me, and I got in first, then she tried to, but she tipped us over. I in my favorite sweater and jeans and shoes was not pleased. Plus, I was 13, and it was very important to look good, so back to the cabin I went and showered that shit off me and washed my hair a dozen times.

But I digress.

Even though we all technically survived lake-swimming, is it safe?

Not always.

First of all, there are beasts. You may encounter snakes (including venomous ones), snapping turtles, alligators, leeches, Asian carp, etc. Or pissed-off geese.

Second, you may contract nasty bugs, such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Picking up a case of Giardiasis is a not-uncommon threat. You contract it by swallowing even small amounts of tainted lakewater. Also frequently present are Shigella, Campylobacter jejuni, Leptospirosis, Helicobacter pylori, Legionella, Mycobacterium avium complex, Salmonella, and Typhoid fever (yes, Typhoid fever--not just what you die of in Oregon Trail).

Amoebas are another concern: 

Lakes and rivers are a popular place for those hoping for relief from the summertime heat. However, water-borne bacteria called amoeba could ruin your plans. It's a tiny parasite that breeds in water. It enters through the nose and attacks the brain. Symptoms are flu-like and can come on rapidly, and, if it enters your body, attacks the brain.

Lakes also often contain fecal coliform and Chromobacterium Violaceum, which has made people severely sick:

HOPE MILLS (WTVD) -- Doctors at UNC Hospitals are fighting to stop an infection caused by a common bacteria found in lakes before it spreads through the body of a 14-year-old Cumberland County boy. 

Matthew McKinney was taken to UNC Children's Hospital to be treated for the bacterial infection that he picked up while swimming in Hope Mills Lake on June 14. 

"It's not every day a doctor says, 'your son's dying, we're going to try to save his life,'" Matthew's father, Brian McKinney, said in an interview with Eyewitness News Wednesday. 

McKinney said doctors had to remove part of his son's nose, half of the palette in his mouth and five teeth.

"I just can't imagine. It's like something in the movies. It's a nightmare," he said. "I just can't imagine not having a roof to your mouth and bless his heart, he doesn't know this is happening." 

The teen is still in critical condition, but his father said he is doing a little bit better. Tests have showed the bacteria may be making its way out of his bloodstream. However, he's not yet out in the clear. 

The bacteria called Chromobacterium Violaceum that Matthew contracted is common in the sand and mud at the bottom of lakes, ponds and rivers across the state.  

"It's everywhere. It's natural. It's in the environment," McKinney said.  

McKinney said his son and his friends were diving under water, rooting up rocks lodged in the lake floor where the bacteria lives. 

"The biggest thing the doctor said was don't go digging in the mud," McKinney said.
Health officials have not closed Hope Mills Lake - nor issued a health warning - but they are advising swimmers not to drink the water. They also say it's a good idea to use soap and shower off after swimming, immediately clean and treat any cut or wound, and seek a doctor's care if a cut or scratch gets infected.

YIKE.

And for the love of God, please avoid these three areas:

Lake Karachay, Russia

According to a report by the Worldwatch Institute on nuclear waste, Karachay is the most polluted spot on Earth. It was used by the Soviet Union as a nuclear dumping site, and now the radiation level here is so high that it's sufficient to give a lethal dose after just an hour of exposure. 

Onondaga Lake, NY

Onondaga Lake is arguably the most polluted lake in the United States. No other lake in the United States receives as much of its inflow as wastewater. It is also severely polluted with various forms of nitrogen. Concentrations of total ammonia and nitrate in the upper productive layers (near the lake's surface) remain well above levels considered limiting to plant growth (phosphorus is the limiting nutrient). Concentrations of total ammonia and nitrite exceed standards, often by a wide margin, intended to protect aquatic life against the toxic effects of these forms of nitrogen.

The Berkeley Pit, MT

New fungal and bacterial species call this deadly lake home. The pit is one mile long by half a mile wide, and over 1780 feet deep, 1000 of which are filled with acidic water with high concentrations of heavy metals and toxic chemicals, including copper, iron, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid. The iron-rich water near the surface is reddish, yielding to a vibrant lime-green hue not far below the surface, where copper concentrations are higher. If you were to drink large amounts of this lovely concoction it would kill you by corroding through your digestive system.

And please, please, if you must swim in a bum-bum-germ-infested lake? Godsakes man, please shower afterward. 

They Shared a BUM-BUM SPONGE. O. M. G.

So I was reading one of my favorite blogs the other day (Sherilin's Laughing My Abs Off), and not only did it make me shriek in horror, but it was so, so appropriate for my own Bum-Bum Germs blog that I asked if I could repost it. She graciously agreed, and now you get to experience the horror too:

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never take for granted...

i bet from the title, you were thinking i was going to go deep on this post. talk about never taking our loved ones or our health for granted. you thought wrong, my friend. my last post had some depth, so i couldn't go there again so soon.

no, what i'm talking about today is toilet paper. i got a book out of the kids science section about the history and workings of toilets (i love the library and the gems i find there).

here's a picture i took of a page in the book that left me with my mouth in a cringe and my eyebrows in a pinch.



in case you can't read it clearly, let me point out a few pertinent bits. "Ancient Romans used a sponge on the end of a stick to clean up after using the toilet." this seemed all right to me initially. a sponge is soft and wet. okay, the romans had a good idea there other than the fact that they had a room filled with toilet holes all in a U shape so several people could go at once while looking at each other.

but the next line stopped me in my sponge-happy tracks. "When finished, they put the sponge in a pail full of water so that the next person could use it."

great googly moogly..... this is NOT okay! they shared a poop sponge?!! not so bad if you're the first guy with a fresh sponge, but something tells me it didn't get changed too often. and i know how gross a kitchen sponge gets after a few days, so i can only imagine how vile a community hiney sponge would be after a few days on booty duty!

the next line that had me making faces was, "Some used stones, sand, or seashells to scrape themselves clean."

a rock? did they hunt about for the perfect butt scraping rock and then keep it for using over and over? or did they just grab up any ole rock they could reach while squatting and just jam it back there and try to knock off the big bits? would a rounded or jagged rock work more effectively?

and i don't know about you, but when i'm at the beach and get sand in my suit, i pretty much just rip my suit to the side and try to shake, swipe or rinse it out with little regard for who's about because i cannot STAND how it feels! imagine using sand as a wipe! i've heard of using sand to wash dishes in a pinch, but never your crack. Ick!

the worst part in that sentence might be the seashell. i was just at the beach a couple months ago and i collected and examined a lot of different types of shells, so when i read this, i did a mental inventory of the shapes, sizes and textures of various shells, trying to figure out which seemed the most wipe-like for bum scrape-age.

this one seems somewhat manageable, i guess. you could use one side for scooping and the other side for buffing after the scrape was completed.



and i would definitely avoid this next shell, even if it was the only thing readily at hand. because, wowie zowie, i don't think anyone's rump could handle that.



this book made me very grateful for the lovely and delicate luxury that i've always taken for granted. oh blessed, glorious toilet paper, you are so precious to me. and your cousin, the moist, flushable wipe, is a gift to the behinds of this century. i will never take either of you for granted again. amen.

---

Jo's Note:

May I suggest this toilet paper?