The Voodoo Lily: “Dead mice in a plastic bag.”

Via msnbc.com

Voodoo lily blooms — and the stench is unreal
Odor of Minnesota Zoo flower just as advertised: ‘Dead mice in a plastic bag’

By Andrea Mustain
Our Amazing Planet

A voodoo lily at the Minnesota Zoo has finally begun to flower, and the rare, oversized bloom, with its signature scent of death and decay, is bringing in a cloud of intrigued admirers….

Read more
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Image credit: U.S. Botanic Garden/Wikimedia Commons

$22.5 million/year for knocking a piece of cowhide around?

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:

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2009/02/firefighter_battles_lifethreat.html

Now, consider that the median salary of a firefighter with 20 years or more experience, in the U.S., is $62,888:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Fire_Fighter/Salary

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.

That stinks.

Trainspotting Toilet Scene (Caution!)

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.

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.

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

A Surfeit of Malodorous Vapors

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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

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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

What the Sons of Norway Lutefisk dinner was like

When I was still married, my wife accepted an invitation to a pre-Christimas lutefisk dinner for us, from a lady of Norwegian extraction with whom she worked. At the time, I had heard of lutefisk, but knew little about it.

“It’s cod,” my wife told me, “prepared a special way.”

I like fish. I like cod. But when I think “cod,” in my mind’s eye I see English style beer-battered cod-filets on a plate, golden brown, with a lot of steak fries. Tartar sauce and coleslaw on the side.

Therefore I, in my naiveté, was looking forward to the lutefisk dinner….

Nothing but the bald truth could have prepared me for the reality. When I walked into the Sons of Norway hall, I was hit in the face by a wall of smell, which was suitable for an invocation of Shakespeare:

“The rankest compounds of villainous smell that ever offended nostril.”

The Ultimate Psycho-Dog-People House

I would like to say that it’s a virtual certainty that this story, which I’m posting in the “Putrid Dog Houses” category, among others, will become the eternal standard against which all other putrid dog houses will forever be judged. However, America has become the land of “outlandish excess” on practically every front, so I can offer no such certainty.

As in the other cases of psycho-pet-people houses, that said abodes stink to high heaven almost goes with saying.

800 Small Dogs Seized From Ariz. Home

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN – 20 hours ago

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — About 800 small dogs, including Chihuahuas, terriers and Pomeranians, were seized from a triple-wide mobile home whose occupants were overwhelmed trying to care for the animals, authorities said Wednesday.

Pima County sheriff’s deputies and animal welfare officials who removed the dogs also found 82 caged parrots in the home in a rural area northwest of Tucson.

Read more

Toxic Whale Spill

Couple more pics and an explanation over at truckspills.com.

Published nearly simultaneously at Fist Of Blog.

Comcast: Stinky Tactics

I got an e-mail with a video link from Tim Carr, campaign director at savetheinternet.com this morning.

We just caught Comcast Corp. stacking an FCC hearing with paid (and apparently sleepy) seat-fillers.

The hearing was set up to investigate Comcast’s recent blocking of the Internet. But Comcast packed the room so that the public couldn’t get in to voice their support for Net Neutrality.

We took pictures and recorded an interview that proves Comcast was taking seats from concerned citizens. Now, we need you to make sure that the company doesn’t get away with this ever again.