UK Theme Park Cracks Down on B.O.

Thorpe Park bans rollercoaster fans from putting hands in air – due to body odour

Thorpe Park is banning visitors from putting their hands in the air while riding its rollercoasters following complaints about body odour….

Read more

---

My commentary:

This sort of thing would never fly in the United States, where we jealously guard our right to be smelly. I do believe I have a solution for the Brits, however, that will save them from having to post signs, codify the “no raised arms on the coaster” rule, and escort non-compliant individuals off the premises with all the attendant embarassment and hard feelings such militancy doubtless engenders. My solution is quite simple and inexpensive. It’s called:

Yes, indeed, quite a few years ago someone came up with an invention. An inexpensive preparation sold at most retail outlets, called “Underarm Antiperspirant/Deodorant.” I have found it to be most effective. For example, I am attending the county fair tomorrow. It will be a hot day, and like most of the men in my family, I tend to perspire heavily. However, I will shower in the morning before I leave, and after the shower, I will apply this miraculous preparation to my underarms, and I positively GUARANTEE, my furry pits will be a sweet as a spring meadow come nightfall.

Y’all across the pond need to get yer heads on straight. No wonder Noel Coward wrote the lines, “Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun….”

Zapping Tonsil-Stones with Lasers

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…”

Read more

Mr. Creosote

WARNING!

The following scene is not for those with weak constitutions.

Wikipedia has this to say about it:

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 Terry Jones.

The Quest for the Odorless Fart

There’s an episode of Family Guy where Peter has liposuction, which turns him into a beautiful person. In short order, he is invited to join an exclusive club for beautiful people, and on the inaugural tour of the facilities his host hands him a bottle of pills: “Here, take these – they’ll make your bowel movements smell like bakery fresh cinnamon rolls.”

Ben Franklin addressed this speculative idea over two centuries ago – that flatus (farts) might someday be rendered innocuous by taking some manner of drug or substance:

My prize question therefore should be, To discover some drug wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common food, or sauces, that shall render the natural discharges, of wind from our bodies, not only inoffensive, but agreeable as Perfumes.

That this is not a chimerical Project, and altogether impossible, may appear from these considerations. That we already have some knowledge of the means capable of varying that smell. He that dines on stale flesh, especially with much addition of onions, shall be able to afford a stink that no company can tolerate; while he that has lived for some time on vegetables only, shall have that breath so pure as to be insensible to the most delicate noses; and if he manage so as to avoid the report, he may any where give vent to his griefs unnoticed….

From Fart Proudly: Writings of Benjamin Franklin You Never Read in School, edited by Carl Japikse.

Well, such a product has arrived. Misanthrope and skeptic that I am, I am inclined to doubt its efficacy sight unseen waft unsmelled, but this new product called Whiff!, pushed (yes, that’s the right word) at a website with the evocative name takeawhiff.com claims that their product will render your poop and farts odorless (except in the case of avid meat-eaters, in which case the original essence of the miasma will remain, merely diminished in potency).

Stench figurative and literal: Naples’ garbage crisis deepens

Back in January, I made three separate posts about the mountains of garbage accumulating in the streets of Naples, Italy: “Naples Stinks,” “Followup: Sardinians Resent Naples’ Garbage,” and “Followup: Naples’ Garbage Crisis Laid Bare.” Now, here’s the latest–

(There are two kinds of human filth, here. One is obvious and may be cleaned up with garbage trucks and street cleaners. The other kind is harder to see and is notoriously hard to clean up.)

Camorra cause a stink in Naples

[via telegraph.co.uk]

The Mob has proved no better than Italy’s inept municipal authorities at running waste disposal business properly.

(Excerpt)

..the Mob has proved no better than Italy’s inept municipal authorities at running the service properly. Barely any new waste processing facilities have been built in Naples for decades, and since last December, the region’s dumps have been full to capacity and unable to take any more. Hence the refuse piles 20 feet high in Naples’ once-picturesque alleyways, and hence what Neapolitans call La Puzza, or The Stink.

With it has come another unpleasant smell – less easily detectable but just as familiar in Italian public life. It is the whiff of corruption, and the sneaking feeling that the situation got so out of hand because of murky links between the Comorra and the city’s administration, stymying modern refuse projects that might threaten their waste rackets.

“The fish starts to stink from the head, so we should blame the political class,” said Quarto Gennaro, 51, nursing an espresso in a cafe in Forcella, an old-time Camorra district packed with loafing, jowelly men resembling Sopranos extras. “They always act together with the criminals….”

Read the full article

Medicinal Butt Gas

Stink bomb gas to give stroke victims new hope

Scientists use hydrogen sulphide to put patients into ‘suspended animation’

The Guardian, UK–The gas that provides millions of schoolchildren with hours of fun and gives stink bombs their revolting smell could soon provide doctors with new treatments for conditions ranging from strokes to chronic arthritis.

Some researchers are even trying to use hydrogen sulphide – the source of rotten eggs’ [and, in part, farts’] unpleasant odour – to put patients with strokes or serious injuries into a form of suspended animation to help them survive severe traumas. This research is now being backed by the US military, who believe it could help their surgeons cope with injuries suffered by soldiers in battle.

Read more

Note: The Hong Kong Customs & Excise Dept. has deemed the above pictured prank toy, still on sale through various outlets, to be unsafe, giving off a quantity of Hydrogen Sulfide that may pose a health risk to young children. Which brings us back to the old adage that every potential medicine is also a potential poison, when used improperly.

A Surfeit of Malodorous Vapors

---

putrefaction noun

pu·tre·fac·tion \pyü-trə-ˈfak-shən\

Etymology:
Middle English putrefaccion, from Late Latin putrefaction-, putrefactio, from Latin putrefacere 14th century

1. the decomposition of organic matter; especially : the typically anaerobic splitting of proteins by bacteria and fungi with the formation of foul-smelling incompletely oxidized products
2. the state of being putrefied : corruption

---

Corpse stench drives Russian doomsday cult from cave

May 15, 2008

MOSCOW (AFP) — Toxic fumes from rotting corpses drove the final members of a Russian doomsday cult from the cave where they had been waiting six months for the end of the world, officials said Friday.

Eight women and one man emerged from the muddy bunker outside a village in the region of Penza, 560 kilometres (350 miles) southeast of Moscow, said Tatyana Ostrovskaya, a spokeswoman for the local prosecutor’s office.

“The last nine people came to the surface after the bodies of two women were found,” Ostrovskaya told AFP.

Interfax news agency quoted local official Vladimir Provotorov as saying that everyone left because there was “a real threat of poisoning from toxic corpse fumes” from two deceased cult members rotting in the cave.

“We could smell it through the ventilation shaft,” he was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying. “When the specialists took out the dead hermits, we asked the others if they would like to leave, and they agreed.”

The cultists were part of an ultra-Orthodox Christian splinter group, led by bearded guru Pyotr Kuznetsov, who reject the modern world and believe that bar codes on food products are a symbol of the devil.

Read more

“Caveman” Must Wash

Oslo, Norway (Aftenposten)–A city magistrate has ruled that Oslo’s so-called “cave man,” who once lived in a pile of garbage near the city’s university campus, must agree to wash himself since he’s now living in a publicly funded nursing home. He objects, and vows to take his case to Norway’s supreme court.

The “cave man’s” case has been brewing in the courts for months, and was sent back to the magistrate’s level because of some judicial errors.

He’s still insisting that he can’t be forced to wash, and will only do so if he so chooses. His lawyer called forced washings “an extremely serious assault on the private sphere.”

The 54-year-old man is a former physics student who’s lack of personal hygiene led to his expulsion from student housing back in the late 1970s. He then started living in a pile of garbage adjacent to the campus, and public authorities let him be.

Health problems led to his admission to the nursing home two years ago, but once there he caused a stink, quite literally. Staff insisted he follow the rules of the institution out of consideration for his fellow residents and infection control.

City officials were pleased with the magistrate’s decision. The “cave man” was not, and he also has reported his forced washings to the police.

Chronic Flatulence? Get the GasBGon® Seat Cushion

Whether you’re on the sending or the receiving end of the “pause that refreshes/repulses,” Dairiair LLC makes a line of products that dampen the smell, or both the sound and the smell. One of their products which seems particularly useful in this respect – and which I think may catch on – is the “GasBGon Seat Cushion.” Retailing at $24.95 U.S., and offered in a variety of designs subsumed under the themes of sport (“Tush Down Sport Series”), gambling, (“Holdem Big Slick Chillin’ Series”) and the swanky, upscale (“Black Cushion Signature Series”), one of these is a gift that is sure to please not only the recipient, but all those who have to be around him/her.

The GasBGon® flatulence odor control seat cushion is a high performance air filter designed to look and feel like a conventional seat cushion incorporating a sound dampening filter and a proprietary activated carbon odor filter. The seat cushion functions as a powerful passive control device to effectively muffle the sound and adsorb the odor associated with flatulence. Each cushion is complete with a washable zippered cover for filter insertion/replacement, they are lightweight (less than 1 lb) and are nominally 15 inches square and 1 inch thick. Each cushion comes complete with a sound and odor filter and a Tally-Toot card. A downloadable wind instrument award can be provided for those gift giving occasions. Each cushion can accept a second odor filter for those heavy end users and should be purchased separately. Installation by purchaser.

Men: Do not staple your scrotum

I begin by noting that this is a true story, as Snopes.com details.

Scrotum Self-Repair

From the Unusual Case column of the July 1991 issue of “Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality,”

by William A. Morton, Jr.

One morning I was called to the emergency room by the head ER nurse. She directed me to a patient who had refused to describe his problem other than to say that he “needed a doctor who took care of men’s troubles.”

The patient, about 40, was pale, febrile, and obviously uncomfortable, and had little to say as he gingerly opened his trousers to expose a bit of angry red and black-and-blue scrotal skin.

After I asked the nurse to leave us, the patient permitted me to remove
his trousers, shorts, and two or three yards of foul-smelling stained
gauze wrapped about his scrotum, which was swollen to twice the size of
a grapefruit and extremely tender. A jagged zig-zag laceration, oozing
pus and blood, extended down the left scrotum.

Amid the matted hair, edematous skin, and various exudates, I saw some
half-buried dark linear objects and asked the patient what they were.
Several days earlier, he replied, he had injured himself in the machine
shop where he worked, and had closed the laceration himself with a
heavy-duty stapling gun. The dark objects were one-inch staples of the
type used in putting up wallboard.