Food Service Employees Must Wash

Almost goes without saying, right?

Wrong.

Businesses beware of how you treat stink, stinkers

Beth Stephenson
The Edmond Sun

EDMOND, OKLAHOMA— We love our pretty town and cheer for local businesses to do well, but lately, I’ve had my loyalty a little bruised. It’s one issue if the product or service is not to my taste, but often the issue is customer service or something more subtle that can and ought to be corrected. Edmond businesses reflect on our whole city, so let’s shape up some of these little problems.

Your employees must wash. Not only their bodies and hair, but also their clothing. It’s one thing for a laborer to get a little ripe, but if that happens, they need to stay in the open air. It’s horrid if that stinker is handling your food….

Read the entire article

Steve Jobs and diaper-changing tables

Steve Jobs’ alleged reply to an e-mail inquiring why there are no diaper-changing tables in Apple’s NYC store:

From: Steve Jobs <sjobs@apple.com>
Date: January 3, 2008 10:33:14 PM EST
To: [redacted]
Subject: Re: apple retail store – soho nyc – baby diaper changing table???

There doesn’t seem to be a demand for it, and it usually is accompanied by rather pungent odors.

Steve

(Source)

Right on, Stevie boy. We all know your shit doesn’t stink.

As a quaint, if practically irrelevant aside, my mother’s pet-term for No. 2 when I was a kid was “Doing a job.”

Charmed, I’m Sure

Having watched a few episodes of Adult Swim’s Metalocalypse, I find the following quite amusing, in a lowbrow sort of way.

Oh – and I think it stinks, too. Putrid. Almost entirely without redeeming artistic or social merit. But, then, I’m a product of my generation, having been born at the tail-end of the baby boomers. I can’t quite get my head around the concept of “the worse it is, the better.” I’m just not “progressive” enough, I guess.

Mind you, grim things can be artistic. And there’s no questioning that the following is art. It’s just not good art. It has no nuance, no subtlety. It’s garish, gratuitous, and sophomoric. And that’s what makes it “good.” That’s the standard to which it aspires.

And to think that my parents thought that Alice Cooper was the Devil.

SPLATTERED MERMAIDS, the Swedish death/grind band featuring members of DERANGED and VISCERAL BLEEDING, has issued the following update:

“The new SPLATTERED MERMAIDS album, ‘Stench of Flesh’, is complete! Listen to one new song and view cover artwork exclusively on MySpace.

“The album was recorded in early January 2008 and has 10 songs (including one instrumental track and a re-recorded version of ‘By My Blade’). To be released via Czech label Bizarre Leprous Productions [on] March 15, 2008.”

According to a press release, the CD “[is] brutal as hell” featuring “straight-forward deathgrind combined with groovy breakdowns and guttural vocals… the band’s most brutal album to date!!” Other songtitles set to appear on the CD include “Gruesome”, “Circular Holes in the Cranial Structure”, “Corporal Manifestation”, “Spliced Spleen Spices”, “Throat Unsafe from a Pair of Scissors” and “Stench of Flesh”. (source)

Adding to my amusement is the hosting website’s administrative statement, immediately following the above: “to report any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, please send an e-mail to…”

Contributed: Literal and figurative stench from a bygone day

Thanks to Stinkbro for sending this along.

Stink Bombs: Non-Lethal Terrorism

“A person is smart. People are dumb,
panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

– Tommy Lee Jones (“K”) speaking to Will Smith (“J”)
in Men In Black.
—–
The general gist of the following article is (Stench + Fear = Mass Panic)–

Contagious Fear: Mass Sociogenic Smell Weapon

Fear really can be contagious. And while the human fear/alarm pheromone may have something to do with it, we may also be hard-wired to react to certain smells – which may have implications for a new style of nonlethal weapon….

Read the article

This is nothing new. Judging by the way a skunk cleans out an entire ocean liner in the following classic cartoon, the Looney Tunes creators were onto this phenomenon decades ago. Heh.

“Sootikins”

The following passage is excerpted from “The Role of Cats in Nursery Rhymes,” by Sarah Hartwell–

THE CAT AND THE QUEEN

Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat where have you been?
I’ve been to London to look at the Queen.
Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat, what did you there?
I frightened a little mouse under a [her] chair.

One explanation of the origins of this rhyme goes back to 16th century England. One of the staff of Queen Elizabeth I (Good Queen Bess) was said to have had an old cat which tended to roam throughout one of the royal residences. On one occasion the cat apparently went underneath the throne (the “chair”) and its tail brushed against the Queen’s foot, startling her. Luckily Queen Elizabeth was amused and declared that the cat could wander through the throne room as long as it kept it free of mice!

Another suggested meaning of this relates to the poor hygiene of a different queen and is perhaps a cautionary tale about hygiene in general. Undergarments were uncommon among poorer women before the nineteenth century and dust, ash and general grime accumulated on the genitalia just as it did elsewhere on the body….

The Freshening Power of Mint, Part 2

Now you, too, can have a minty fresh arse, with Sphincterine.™

http://www.mintyass.com

The Freshening Power of Mint, Part 1

Mint shoes spare Japanese the shame of smelly feet

TOKYO: Worried your feet smell? In Japan, where people take off their shoes inside homes and many bars and restaurants, a shoe maker has created an insole with a mint aroma that covers up the odour of socks and feet.

The insole is fitted inside the shoe, allowing the wearer to pump mint fumes with every step. It has been a hit with businesspeople, said Yukio Aoyama, president of its maker, Tokyo-based S.A.I. International. “Businessmen here tend to wear leather shoes and I think many are bothered by their foot odour,” he said.

Japanese-style restaurants, where customers leave their shoes in lockers by the door, say minty shoes could help business.

“Many female customers wearing boots seem to worry about their foot smell and refuse to take them off,” said Hisako Washio, 59, who runs a restaurant in central Tokyo. “So even when we have empty seats they don’t want to sit.”

A pair of insoles costs about 3,000 yen ($28), and the mint aroma lasts for about six months, Aoyama said. (source)

Remember – the shame of stinky feet can lead to Sepaku!

“Noni,” the “Vomit Fruit”

“Health! The key to the sucker’s purse!” – Goodlow Bender in The Road To Wellville

Wikipedia describes “Noni”–

“Noni grows in shady forests as well as on open rocky or sandy shores….The plant flowers and fruits all year round and produces a small white flower. The fruit is a multiple fruit that has a pungent odor when ripening, and is hence also known as cheese fruit or even vomit fruit. It is oval and reaches 4-7 cm in size. At first green, the fruit turns yellow then almost white as it ripens. It contains many seeds. It is sometimes called starvation fruit. Despite its strong smell and bitter taste, the fruit is nevertheless eaten as a famine food and, in some Pacific islands, even a staple food, either raw or cooked. Southeast Asians and Australian Aborigines consume the fruit raw with salt or cook it with curry. The seeds are edible when roasted….” (source)

Doesn’t sound very appetizing, does it? No matter, for the enterprising individual. Package something attractively, and make a host of vauge, inflated claims incorporating buzzwords like “health,” or “natural” or “environment,” and you can sell damned near anything. Particularly in America.*

Which is exactly what the Noni-fruit millionaires did, creating a stench above and beyond the smell of the Noni fruit itself. The stench of “snake-oil cures” and those who promote them for vulgar profit.

The same exaggerated health claims which made the Noni millionaires were made about sarsaparilla in the late 19th century, but sarsparilla’s chief application at present is as the flavoring agent for sarsaparilla soda and, of course, root beer, which is made (the real stuff) from the roots of the sarsaparilla plant.

Panacea turned pop. That’s funny.

Toxic Eau de Cow Arse?

A group of Nebraskans, concerned about “the byproducts of livestock operations intruding into their lives,” opposes the idea that hydrogen sulfide (fart gas) and ammonia (piss) emissions from stockyard operations be labeled “non-emergency” and made exempt from EPA reporting requirements. (read the article)

There’s no love lost between myself and the EPA, but I know the stench of fanatical activism (as opposed to activism) when I smell it. What these individuals are objecting to is the smell of the barnyard – something I grew up with, being raised in rural Washington state. What they are asking comes more clearly into focus when we take note of the two “offending” substances: