My trip to the doctor's office.

NURSE: Can you give me a blood sample?

ME: Sure.

NURSE: Just take this cup to the bathroom and fill it.

ME: ...

NURSE: I mean urine sample!

ME: That makes me feel better.

It's time to slowly back out the store...

Via.

An Important Mystery, Revealed!

There are no reports that poop tastes good. Pee? Forget it. Blood’s not bad, I guess, but still.

So I guess that’s why kids eat boogers.

I scream for bloody ice cream! (No, really.)

From here.

Hey, check out this Italian dessert called torta di sanguinaccio ("bleeding cake"): It’s made with fresh figs, crème anglaise, and a custard that’s made from a mix of dark chocolate and blood.

It is an example of a new trend in desserts: blood. This article from the Globe and Mail ("You eat meat, so why not blood?") gives the rundown on bloody meals. It points out that blood is a common ingredient outside of North America.

A chef named Brandon Olsen says, “I enjoy blood. I think blood is a great vessel for culinary expression. When I look at The Learning Channel, at all those surgery shows, that’s when I get squeamish. But working with animals, no.”

One chef even argues that if you’re going to kill an animal, using its blood is “the responsible thing to do.” Yeah! So for Halloween I might try some chocolate blood ice cream. One chef says that it’s “a rich, chocolate-tasting ice cream that is delicious and good for you.”

You suck!

Why let a big mosquito land on your arm and then film it in high definition? To gross us out, of course! (Man, that bug gets big!)

Old Bestseller, New Title!

Many decades ago, a guide for pregnant women called What to Expect When You're Expecting came out.

It's been a bestseller ever since!

But now, a wiseguy named Michael Molina has retitled it in what he thinks is a more realistic way: There Will Be Blood.

From here.

Mosquitoes SUCK (and here's how!)

Or at least this one does. For the first part, the mosquito just gets comfortable and shoves its nose into its victim's skin, looking for a good vein.

Then: SUCKAGE!

The Assassin Bug SUCKS!

From here.

I don’t think there’s an insect out there with a scarier name than the assassin bug (Triatoma Infestans). And trust me, they are GROSS.

These bugs are bloodsuckers, but that's NOT the gross part. Charles Darwin was once a victim of them: “At night I experienced an attack [of assassin bugs]. It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, about an inch long, crawling over one's body."

Assassin bugs can give people something called Chagas disease. It’s fatal. (See, the bugs really ARE assassins!) But that's NOT the gross part.

Wikipedia

Assassin bugs live in North and South America, where they suck on rodents and bats. But humans are perfectly tasty to them as well. Once the assassin bug bites, it might feed for up to 30 minutes, with its body swelling up as it drinks.

Ooh, this is nasty: The assassin bug likes to crawl onto the face of humans and then suck blood from around the person’s mouth. Ick! This explains the OTHER nickname for it: “the kissing bug.”

That’s STILL not the gross part!

"Noooooo!"

The way humans get disease from assassin bugs might happen this way. The bug crawls on the sleeping person’s face and drinks blood from near his mouth. While it’s drinking, the bug poops. The assassin bug poop is where the GERMS are!

After the bug waddles off, the person wakes up. The person might scratch the itch of the bugbite, smearing the poop into his own skin and bloodstream. Or he could even rub his mouth and accidentally push the bug poop INTO his mouth. Blech!

A South American nickname for the assassin bug is vinchuca:  "that which lets itself fall." The bug gets that name because it climbs up onto the ceiling above a sleeping person and then drops from the roof onto the bed. Ugh.
Yes, THAT'S the gross part! And BTW, NPR has a great story on bugs, which is based on a new book called Wicked Bugs by Amy Stewart. ("Nooo!" photo from here.)

Uh... why is that fungus bleeding?

Did you know there's a really gross mushroom-creature known as the Bleeding Tooth Fungus (Hydnellum peckii)? It has other fun names too, like the Devil’s tooth and … strawberries and cream? Oh-kay.

The fungus's "blood" comes from a red juice that bleeds out on younger mushroom's. Hey, maybe that part tastes like strawberries! Oh, rats. According to Wikipedia, this fungus is inedible! But what would happen if someone ate the Bleeding Tooth Fungus anyway? Would their teeth start bleeding? Only one way to find out—

Nope, my teeth are fine. (But I sure hope that’s strawberry jam coming out of my ears!)

Gross Link Mania!

The hard-working staff at Ultra-Gross has been diving for disgusting links...and we found some!

—Why do people faint at the sight of blood and not barf? The Body Odd explains. (Sort of.)

—I've been meaning to tell you about this dead guy on a motorcycle for a while. Story here.

—And in Italy, police suspect pizza-makers of cooking their pies with wood stolen from coffins. In graveyards!

—National Public Radio had a story about turning chicken poop into power.

—Over here is an article about extreme potty training: These tots are pooping on toilets at the age of SIX MONTHS? (Dang, I was six YEARS old before I got the concept!)

—Awesome photographer flydime has a great set of photos of this years Festival of Tomatoes in Spain. You know, the one where people throw hundreds of thousands of tomatoes at each other?

—And finally, there's a the World Bog Snorkeling Championship is a race where swimmers race in a swamp. Why would they voluntarily immerse themselves in muck, mire, and mud? Because it's fun!

Nothing Gets You Cleaner Than...Blood?

Bathing with fake blood? At first I thought this was dumb. Two seconds later, I changed my mind! From the seller:

Now you can bathe yourself in true horror movie style, and recreate your favorite scenes from Dracula, Psycho, and Twilight with our ultra-realistic bag of blood shower gel.
 Forget about Cocoa Butter and Honey Jojoba…what better way to freshen up before nipping out for a bite to eat down your local morgue, than a hot shower and a good scrub down with our cherry scented Blood Bath Shower Gel.

Hurray! The World's First Synthetic Blood Beverage Is Here!

From its website:

Blood Energy Potion [is] the world's first synthetic blood beverage. The fruit punch flavor packs 4 hours of energy along with iron, protein, and electrolytes. Not only does Blood Energy Potion have a similar nutritional makeup to real blood, but it has the same color, look, and consistency of blood. Get real blood nutrients without that real blood taste! The re-sealable transfusion bag style pouch provides the convenient delivery of fluids for vampires and humans alike! Contains no real blood, just synthetic!

Wait, so it looks like blood and has the same nutrition as blood, but it doesn’t even TASTE like blood? What a rip-off! I’ll stick with the real thing, thanks.

Eyeball-Sucking Monsters

Some people think that earthworms are gross, but that’s silly. They’re harmless! However, a relative of the earthworm is definitely bad news. Yep, I’m talking about the leech. While earthworms don’t bite, a leech can bite you twice at the same time!

That’s because the leech has two mouths. Leeches find this handy, in that all they want to do is to suck your blood. But despite the two mouths, leech bites are painless. so you probably don’t notice if a leech has attached itself to you.

Leeches range in size from tiny to over two feet long. (Ulp!) Leeches may clamp onto your legs, but they also like to swim to a dark crevice where you won’t find them, like your armpit, your butt, or worse! (No, I did not make that up. Luckily, these types of leeches are usually found in Africa, Asia, and islands in the Pacific and Indian oceans.)

If you find a leech on you, don’t cut it off of you. You could cut it in half, and it would keep sucking! In the movies, adventurers often put the lit end of a cigarette on the leech to make it let go, but since you don’t smoke, this won’t work.

The worst leech story I’ve heard is this one: An Australian woman was gardening in Sydney when she accidentally got some soil in her eye… and a small leech was in there, too. The leech started feasting on the blood from her eyeball! Even though the gardener got medical attention, the leech quickly tripled in size. Nasty!

So how did they get rid of this eyeball-sucking monster? By giving her some eyedrops of saline solution! As the doctor reported, “The leech rolled straight off, it just fell on to her cheek so we put it in a pot and gave it to her.”

Thanks, doc! (Link to the full story here.)