The consensus among those who endeavor to treat the problem of chronic halitosis is that bread breath can in different cases be attributed to different causes. One that is particularly intractable without medical intervention, however, is the phenomenon of tonsil tones – smelly nodules which form on the tonsils.
I have written about tonsil stones, or tonsilloliths here previously, and those posts remain in the “top ten most-hit” category (post1, post2) up to the present. Therefore, I thought this article timely and pertinent:
A New York doctor pioneers a remedy to zap bad breath with a laser
Sadeta Velovic’s breath stunk.
It was so bad, people moved away from her when she spoke. Her own mother complained about the rotten stench. Even Velovic, herself, could smell the foul odor upon waking in the morning.
“Nobody wanted to be near that smell,” recalls the 40-year-old Ridgewood, Queens, resident, who works in building maintenance. “I felt so bad, but I didn’t know what to do. I kept going to doctors, but they didn’t help…”
As Sporting News notes today, Manny Ramirez has just reached a deal with the Dodgers: $45 million for two years.
Now consider this: in Trenton, New Jersey, a different Manny – Manny Rivera, the firefighter – was fighting for his life a month ago after sustaining a critical injury while saving the life of a teenager:
So $22.5 million for knocking a piece of cowhide around; $62,888 for saving lives and risking one’s own life doing so, on a regular basis. The latter amount is not even 0.5% of the former.
DAVIDSON, N.C. (AP) —A North Carolina woman who was recalled to the Army four years after being honorably discharged drove nearly 400 miles and braved a Southeastern winter storm to report for duty Sunday, with her children by her side….
…Pagan is among thousands of former service members who have left active duty since the Sept. 11 attacks, only to be recalled to service. They’re not in training, they’re not getting a Defense Department salary, but as long as they have time left on their original enlistment contracts, they’re on “individual ready reserve” status — eligible to be recalled at any time.
Pagan filed several appeals, arguing that because her husband travels for business, no one else can take care of her kids. All were rejected, leaving Pagan to choose between deploying to Iraq and abandoning her family, or refusing her orders and potentially facing charges….
…”The Army tries to look at the whole picture and they definitely don’t want to do anything that jeopardizes the family or jeopardizes the children,” O’Donnell [Army spokesman in St. Louis] said. “At the same time, these are individuals who made obligations and commitments to the country….”
Chill out, you hard-assed groundpounders, says I. You’re making her go through all this shit without any deference to the venerable tradition of motherhood, and even if you should let her off the hook, the fact remains that you screwed with her and her kids, big time. What the fuck is wrong with you? Y’all must have shit for brains. In this case, you and your red tape stink.
Karl Marx, when elucidating his theory of communism, wrote that “All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy; avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.” While I would take issue with the absolute quality of this statement, there is absolutely no doubt that money – or the lack thereof – often makes people do strange and seemingly unconsciable things.
The following is a perfect example of this: lacking payment for his services, what did this funeral director do with the body?
Funeral director allegedly leaves corpse in hearse
GADSDEN, Ala. (AP) — A funeral director faces a felony charge after police found a woman’s decomposing body in the back of a hearse. Police said the 76-year-old funeral home owner was charged Tuesday with abusing a corpse. Police said the woman died of natural causes in November 2007 at the age of 52. Relatives said they wanted her remains cremated.
But police said the family never signed papers for a cremation or paid the funeral home. So the owner allegedly put the body in the back of a hearse and parked it on a lot with other old vehicles.
Someone complained about a foul odor, leading officers to discover the decomposing remains.
Long-time readers may recall my Poo Flags idea for dissing people who don’t clean up their dog’s excrement. Since that time, it seems that someone in New York City has come up with an innovative idea for highlighting the pet poopie problem. Dubbed “The Phantom Poop Painter of NYC,” this person hits turds with a splash of fluorescent color where he finds them–
Some have speculated that the “Mr. Creosote Scene” from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (see below) is the most revolting in 20th century cinema. Having recently seen Trainspotting (1996) for the first time, I have to say it’s a serious contender; I find it far, far more revolting than Mr. Creosote.
Cautions:
If you haven’t seen the movie and you’re a fan of Ewan McGregor, you might want to skip this clip.
If you’re incapable of clinical detachment, and tend to retch when seeing revolting things, you should probably skip it.
If you watch it, and it severely grosses you out or ruins your dinner…well, I warned you.
It has been suggested that the scene is one of the most repulsive in twentieth-century cinema. Director Quentin Tarantino has confessed to being nauseated by this scene, but critics with stronger stomachs have praised its dark humour. (Leonard Maltin noted it as “an unforgettable scene, like it or not.”) It was filmed in the Porchester Centre, a public building owned by the City of Westminster on Porchester Road, London.
FYI, Mr. Creosote is played by none other than Terry Gilliam.
"The moment every traveller lives for is the native dinner where, throwing caution to the wind and plunging into a local delicacy which ought by rights to be disgusting, one discovers that it is not only delicious but that it also contradicts a previously held prejudice about food, that it expands ones culinary horizons to include surprising new smells, tastes, and textures.
Lutefisk is not such a dish.
Lutefisk is instead pretty much what you'd expect of jellied cod; it is a foul and odiferous goo, whose gelatinous texture and rancid oily taste are locked in spirited competition to see which can be the more responsible for rendering the whole completely inedble."
Note: Some of the links above are to sites that are offering products or services related to "stinky problems." These are not posted as an inducement for you to buy anything, but because I find them humorous. Think of them as "anthropological curiosities" relating to the naked apes' (us) love/hate relationship with the stinky.
The consensus among those who endeavor to treat the problem of chronic halitosis is that bread breath can in different cases be attributed to different causes. One that is particularly intractable without medical intervention, however, is the phenomenon of tonsil tones – smelly nodules which form on the tonsils.
discharged drove nearly 400 miles and braved a Southeastern winter storm to report for duty Sunday, with her children by her side….
