Posts Tagged ‘hygiene’
Urine Connoisseurs Insulted at Comparison to American Beer
All it’s missing is a label with a cool font.
Washington, DC (AP) – People for the Imbibing of Strange Substances (PISS), a coalition of citizens devoted to the appreciation of drinking urine, expressed outrage today that the liquid they enjoy has been used to indicate inferior-tasting American beer.
At a rally on the Washington Mall this afternoon, several hundred PISS activists chanted slogans protesting the unflattering association and calling for greater awareness of how much better urine tastes than most American beer. “It’s just not right to compare it with Bud Light!” shouted the crowd, referring to a particularly low-quality product made by the Anheuser-Busch company.
“We understand that not everyone appreciates the taste of urine,” said PISS director Mick Turitian. “As with many of the finer things, it’s an acquired taste. But to go ahead and put urine in the same class as American beer, well, that’s just beyond the pale – and I don’t mean ale.”
Turitian said that in Europe, where quality beer is essentially a given, he would be disappointed, but not offended, to have an inferior grade be compared to his favorite beverage. In some cases he conceded it might even be a compliment. “But there’s no way to justify saying Miller Lite” – he paused to spit – “tastes like piss. Piss tastes a hundred times better than Miller Lite could ever hope to.”
Yuri Terr, 34, of Richmond, Virginia, also attending the rally, said the only way to get people to stop making such unfair analogies was to raise public awareness of the issue. “The beverage companies spend billions of dollars on marketing and advertising, to get people to buy their products based on image, and obviously not on taste,” he explained. “Once enough people are aware how unjust the association is, peer pressure can be brought to bear on those who, wittingly or not, put urine and American beer in the same sentence.”
The demonstrators brought samples of their favorite drink to offer passers by, but few, if any, of the onlookers accepted. A block away, a convenience store was doing a brisk business selling cases of Budweiser, Michelob and Coors.
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Lice: ‘Indiana Preschool Infested with Children’
Terre Haute, Indiana (AP) – Lice at the Kiddie Carousel Day Care are complaining that the facility, on South Seventh Street, is infested with human children. Children are a risk factor in the forcible uprooting and premature death of millions of lice every year.
The two-legged, immature humans provide an initially welcoming environment for lice. But often, once the insect population has been lulled into complacency, the surroundings suddenly become hostile. Baths of harsh chemicals often occur just when the lice population has begun to thrive, and sweeps of the child’s scalp area indiscriminately carry off young and old alike when the dreaded Comb passes through.
The International Taskforce on Cootie Hosting, or ITCH, has documented at least seven hundred thousand cases of child infestation in North America this year alone, representing an increase of eight percent over last year, which in turn grew from eight percent the year before. According to government statistics, although the number of human children has remained steady in North America during that time, an increase has been noted in the number of the hazardous human spawn inhabiting sites that lice once found more friendly.
ITCH has documented a general increase in dangerous conditions for lice. Famine and wars in Africa have reduced the number of available hosts in certain areas, although the most recent data point to stagnant growth in the African cephalic environment to begin with, as the hair of the African human tends to be less suitable to habitation by lice. But violent conflict in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan have wrought havoc with the consistency of available residences.
The situation is not nearly as dire as it was seven hundred years ago, when the Black Plague swept through Europe and severely reduced the human population. Rival arthropod species seemed poised to assert dominance over the parasitic world, but a steady rebound in the number of humans on the continent, coupled with the displacement of bubonic plague hosts, assured the ascendance of head lice for centuries after.
In fact the lice future has never looked rosier, according to a new report by SUCK, the Society of Users of Chitin Knees. The SUCK report notes an overall global increase in human population, which will provide many more heads for lice to inhabit, and global warming means more of the planet will be hospitable to the insects, which survive longer in warmer environments if they become detached from the scalps of their hosts.
But the lice at Kiddie Carousel are still worried, as the presence of the deadly combs and topical treatments have been detected, according to rampant rumors among the lice.
Can YOU think of a more hostile environment?
A vocal contingent denies the rumors, calling into question the evidence for the comb and shampoo phenomena, as well as any indication of silicone spray. The skeptics note that all the fear-mongering stifles the productivity and growth of the population, and deem the rumors “pediculous.” Moreover, they argue, any such threat, even if imminent, lies beyond the capability of the lice community to address.
At press time, a louse with dyed, otherworldly-shaped orange hair was seen departing the preschool in a tiny helicopter marked “Trump.”
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Domino’s Perplexed By Poor Sales of Pizza Suppositories
Ann Arbor, MI (AP) – Fast-food giant Domino’s Pizza, confronted with anemic sales of its new pizza suppositories, has put further marketing efforts for the product on hold, according to a statement from the company’s corporate headquarters.
Following a lengthy promotional campaign, the Italian food chain finally released its line of “Up Yours” pizza suppositories, hoping to tap into the growing need for ever-more-efficient food delivery in a busy era. With Up Yours, Domino’s hoped to appeal to rushed parents and hurried workers who lack the time to properly ingest and digest even typical fast food. Its “Taste is waste” slogan leveraged the company’s reputation for providing a less-than-stellar culinary experience; a 2009 survey of consumer taste preferences among national chains by Brand Keys, Domino’s tied with Chuck E. Cheese’s for last place.
The advertising push followed an intensive program to get buy-in from the chain’s more than 5,000 franchise holders, but that stage of the program took several months longer than expected because headquarters found it difficult to convince the franchisees to get behind the initiative, according to Seymour Butz, an analyst at Sphincter Industries who studies the fast food industry.
“The franchisees were worried about bottlenecks in supply and production,” said Butz, who also noted that trial runs of that production exposed lax adherence to quality standards. Although the company addressed those concerns, problems continued to emerge even as the release date approached.
Any resemblance to the actual product is entirely, outrageously funny.
Domino’s was forced to push back the start of the promotional campaign to fix those emerging issues, and the executives were apparently satisfied that they had managed to wipe away the sticky problems by softening its position on franchisee contribution. Advertising began in January, and the first Up Yours suppositories were offered in Kansas, Texas and Arkansas. Hopeful initial data from the “In Testin’” phase prompted the further roll-out of the products up and down the eastern seaboard and Illinois.
But sales logs, initially positive, proved disappointing, and continued to contract through the spring and summer, skidding almost entirely to a halt by August. The board pinned its hopes on the September “Backside to School” advertising blitz, aiming to appeal to more regular customers, but decided that if October sales showed no major improvement they would be forced to cancel production. Despite an $18 million investment in equipment, materials and marketing, the company’s bottom line has suffered, limiting Domino’s to a second-quarter profit only slightly higher than the same period last year.
Hopes had been high until then, as a program in the same spirit by a different fast food player had shown its potential. In 2009 White Castle announced that it was “eliminating the middle man” by liquefying its burgers and spraying them directly on the insides of toilet bowls. White Castle sales figures had not appreciably suffered as a result, and Domino’s executives apparently felt that their marketing acumen could make such an approach profitable.
This is not the first abortive Domino’s marketing program. In 1992 and 1993, high-profile lawsuits charged the company with recklessness in guaranteeing home delivery within 30 minutes of an order’s placement; two fatalities had resulted from Domino’s delivery men’s driving. Of particular interest to the plaintiff was a provision calling for the public beheading of drivers who failed to reach their destinations within the allotted time. The company settled both cases, but agreed to eliminate the punitive measures for late deliveries, which had garnered initial popularity and a contract to televise the beheadings.
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Toilet Bowl Fed Up with All the Crap It Takes
Your toilet bowl held a rally today to air its objections to all the crap it takes from you.
Who needs to be told this, exactly?
Initial police estimates put the attendance at approximately two hundred, including the floor and wall tiles that frequently find themselves in the path of a misdirected stream of toxic substances. For about an hour and a half the rally attendees held signs and chanted slogans calling for more humane treatment, and were addressed by prominent residents of your bathroom.
Placards reading, “Cut the Crap!” and “No More Colons, Period!” festooned the facilities as the bathroom fixtures and ceramic cheered speeches by the toilet paper holder, the overstuffed trash bin and the toilet bowl itself.
The toilet bowl’s chief complaints included your complete lack of consideration for the fixture’s preferences in every arena: from the seat-left-down-or-up question to your clear fondness for Mexican cuisine. The latter might be bearable, said the toilet to a rousing response from the audience, if you had an acceptable scent of air freshener. “As it is,” lamented the toilet, “on top of the stench we then have to choke on the overpowering odor of lilac or jasmine or something.” A chorus of boos echoed through the chamber.
The bowl cited other indignities during the rally, notably your demonstrated disregard for stains on the inside of the bowl; it was apparently last brushed thoroughly sometime during the early months of the Obama administration, when your mom was coming to visit.
(Not the actual snake)
The bowl went on to accuse you of recklessness, if not outright malice, citing multiple instances of inappropriate materials getting flushed down. On one occasion, said the bowl, someone attempted to dispose of an entire deck of playing cards wadded up into a single mass. Inevitably, this led to use of a plunger, a humiliating experience for toilet bowls; to make matters worse, the plunger failed to dislodge the blockage, and a plumber was called in to subject the toilet to the further disgrace of having a plumbing snake shoved into it to remove the foreign matter.
The other speakers affirmed the toilet bowl’s litany of grievances, and added several more: the infrequency with which the trash can is emptied; the splatters on the mirror that never get wiped up; the dust bunnies and hairballs accumulating behind the door; and a hand towel that has not been changed in living memory.
The emerging movement to protest the conditions in your bathroom comes on the heels of a similar outpouring of complaints from other parts of your domicile. In May, your kitchen appliances went on strike to protest the fact that you never clean them. They were soon joined by the kitchen sink, which has not seen its own bottom through the accumulated dirty dishes since February.
Then, in July, your car windows wrote “Clean Me” on themselves in a growing layer of dust, and a pigeon-guano-covered shingle threw itself from the roof.
The bathroom fixtures are cautiously optimistic regarding improvement in their treatment. “After the kitchen protest a roommate moved in who does dishes more frequently, so we think there’s the possibility of our actions changing things,” the toilet bowl told a reporter after the rally. “In the end, we just hope somebody gives a crap about us. I mean, that’s all they give right now, but…you know what I mean.”
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