Utah Lad Wins 36th National Odor-Eaters Rotten Sneaker Contest

Excerpt from full article in the Deseret Times:

They rated the shoes for condition and smell, eventually settling on [Sterling] Brinkerhoff’s torn, once-white low cuts as the worst of the worst.

“They were foul,” said Fraser, a 17-time judge. “There were two or three (entries) that were the kind you smell from a distance.”

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

Top Ten Posts @ Things That Stink

Just to give you an idea of what sort of stinky things interest the unwashed masses, here are the top ten posts, as measured in pageviews, for the last four months. In countdown style, a la Letterman–

10.) 1000-year-old eggs

9.) The Stink List (page)

8.) Andouillette: French Pig-Colon Sausage

7.) Michelle Obama on Barack: “snore-y and stinky guy”

6.) “NodorO” Eliminates MGO (Male Genital Odor)

5.) Eva Mendes-Cameron Diaz Fart/Belch-Off

4.) Ask Uncle Stinky (page)

3.) Tonsilloliths

2.) Classifying Crap: The Bristol Stool Scale

*Drum roll* And the number one post for the last four months is…

1.) From The Best of Craigslist: “Don’t Shave Your Ass-Hair!”

Toxic Whale Spill

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

Published nearly simultaneously at Fist Of Blog.

Another raunchy cat-house

This is third story I’ve run on a home overrun with cats and feces. I’ve decided to establish a separate category for this topic.

This time the house is in Villa Park, Orange County, CA. Kind of a sad story, actually. And the old lady’s son is a sorry-assed excuse for that title. Dude, she changed your shitty drawers and kept you warm and fed when you were young and helpless.

More evidence that this society marginalizes the old. But I’ve got news for you, in that case. Prepare to be marginalized, because you’re going there. All of you.

Elder abuse suspected at putrid Villa Park house

The 53-year-old son of an elderly woman whose filthy Villa Park home was overrun with cats — both living and dead — is under investigation for elder abuse, Orange County sheriff’s officials said Thursday.

Paramedics called to the home this month found Mary Maloney, 76, lying outside on a blanket; she was covered with sores and skin rashes, authorities said. When deputies investigated, they found cat feces 2 feet high in places, urine-soaked walls and carpets, and trash everywhere.

A dead cat was found in a piano.

A cat’s skull was on a kitchen counter.

In all, 16 cats were found alive and four dead….

Read the entire story

Putrified, Rancid Skate: An Icelandic Delicacy

 

Speaking of putrified skate, I had an opportunity to smell one, many years ago. I was on vacation in Long Beach, Washington, and while beachcombing one day, encountered a dead skate upon the beach. It was the worst goddamned thing I ever smelled. In fact, it became the standard to which I likened the smell of fresh-cooked lutefisk (which I haven’t written about here, yet).

Having had this experience, I shuddered involuntarily when I happened upon an article extolling the gustatory virtues of Skata, a “timeless” Icelandic standard, which falls under the loose and ill-defined category of “fermented animal products.” Quite simply, before cooking and consumption, the skate must be prepared by being “kept for weeks under stones and turf and then being hung out for drying in the cold climate.”

Sounds like rotten fish, to me. However, the author of the article “Strange Smelling Delicacy” at The Iceland Review online insists that “…it is by no means rotten or damaged. It is only fermented like cheese, and is very healthy…”

I would like to take a moment here to correct a misconception that this author is promoting, as countless others have done before him–

There are a number of animal-based foods from different parts of the world that are described as being “fermented.” However, the term is erroneous when applied to such foods because fermentation properly means the decomposition of carbohydrates, and since animal tissues are composed of proteins and lipids, and contain at most only traces of carbohydrates, the operative processes in the transformation undergone by these foods are actually putrefaction and rancidification. (source)

So, Skata, its “health benefits” and “gustatory delights” notwithstanding, is a putrified, rancid skate. Which is exactly what I would expect to result from burying a dead fish, and then hanging it out to dry. That’s why it’s “strong smelling.” Because it’s freakin’ rotten.

Me – I’ll opt for a nice fresh piece of halibut grilled in butter, any day.

Surströmming: “Sour Herring”

Surströmming is an ostensible “delicacy” common to northern Sweden. Referred to as “fermented* or “soured” herring, it is made by putting fresh caught fish in barrels to sit for a couple months, with just enough salt added to suppress the more nasty varieties of bacteria that would propagate in the slurry, otherwise. After two months, the fish is transferred to cans where the “fermentation” process continues, often causing the can to swell (which we in the U.S. would equate with the presence of botulism).

The swelling results from the production of carbon dioxide gas through the action of Haloanaerobium , a species of bacterium which feeds upon the fish.

The fish has such a foul odor that it is often opened and consumed out-of-doors. The smell results from the following compounds, produced during the “fermentation” period, which also add to the “complex” flavor of the product:

• propionic acid: pungent/acrid quality
• butyric acid: rancid-butter
• hydrogen sulfide: rotten-eggs
• acetic acid: vinegar-like

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*Not accurate. The process of fermentation refers specifically to the biological action of organisms breaking down carbohydrates (as in grains, fruits, etc.). The processes which occur in animal products (which contain almost no carbohydrate) are properly called “putrefaction” and “rancidification.” It may be that purveyors of putrid, rancid flesh products adopted the term “fermentation” because 1.) The process superficially resembles the process of fermenting carbohydrates 2.) Because “fermented” sounds less noxious than “putrid” and “rancid.”

Stinky Tofu: Beancurd or BeanTURD?

Restaurant owner fined for bad smell of his bean curd

Odor costs him about $3,100

[Excerpts]

For Peng Tian-rong, business stinks, and he hopes it stays this way.

The chodoufu — a rancid fermented bean curd — Peng sells at his eatery in Shinzhuang, Taipei Prefecture, also has brought the sweet smell of success.

However, the distinctive odor of his chodoufu has seen him fall afoul of the authorities, who have ordered him to pay a fine of 100,000 New Taiwan dollars (about $3,100) for polluting the air. The fine, equivalent to two months’ wages for an ordinary worker, is the first ever imposed on chodoufu deemed too stinky….

…The fine has become a badge of honor that is drawing more customers, some of them traveling from afar to sample his wares.

Some businessmen have sensed an opportunity to cash in on the stink by selling air freshener to chodoufu vendors, saying authorities might crack down on restaurants selling the curd.

But not everything has come up smelling like roses for Peng.

Strangers, he said, often ask him if he has stepped in some dog droppings because of the way he smells.

(Read the entire article)

The Durian Fruit

Not widely known to Americans, the Durian fruit is a South Asian “delicacy,” which, like so many “gourmet” foods, is either loved or despised. But regardless of whether one likes it or hates it, it seems that all agree its odor is pungent – so pungent, in fact, that in Singapore, signs prohibiting carrying Durian on public transportation are posted–

Lord Alfred Russell Wallace wrote, in “On the Bamboo and Durian of Borneo” (1856), that:

Dead Mouse

I suppose it’s passé, but if this is to be a compendium of the stinky, we cannot omit the dead mouse. There is scarce an odor on planet Earth like eau de dead rodent. Once you have smelled it, you can neither forget it, nor fail to recognize it when you smell it again.