Want to make 38 million gallons of "waste water"? Pee for 40 days!

So here in Portland, we've got these big water reservoirs in a park to the city's east. They're on Mt. Tabor, which is the only volcano within the city limits of a major U.S. metro region.

Why am I boring you with this? Because Portland's going to flush 38 million gallons of water from one of these reservoirs after a dude peed in it.

But how much water can a person pee? A quart? Mix that in with 38 million gallons and... it's gone, right. Plus, pee is sterile—no germs! So why waste all that water?

"It's the conservative but correct decision," said Nick Fish the guy in charge of the Water Bureau. Yes, a guy named Fish is in charge of water.

Smart person Laura Helmuth looked at the Environment Protection Agency’s rules about clean water. She wanted to know how “poisoned” the pee actually made the reservoir. Her finding:

How many times would that teenager have to pee in a Portland reservoir to produce a [dangerous] urine concentration? About 3,333 times. 

But of course urine is 95% water… That means he’d have to urinate 166,666 times ... to approach that of the EPA’s limit for nitrates in drinking water. Since most animals, including idiot teenaged show-offs, take about 21 seconds to urinate, that means he’d have to urinate constantly for 3,500,000 seconds, or about 40 days.

This is a very fine story.

From KMOX, a CBS radio station in St. Louis:

Flamin’ Hot Cheetos Leading To 

Odd Emergency Room Visits

While school administrators across the nation try to remove Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from their lunchrooms, emergency room physicians are fighting a different battle.

St. Louis Children’s Hospital pediatrician Dr. Kathleen Berchelmann says Flamin’ Hot Cheetos contain a lot of red food dye and when kids eat large amounts of them, eventually it turns their stool bright red or orange.

Parents, she says, falsely believe they’re seeing blood in the stool and take the kids to the ER to find out nothing is wrong.

“So even though we might eat some foods with red food dye in them regularly, our stool doesn’t usually become discolored unless you eat huge amounts of it,” Berchelmann said. “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos is one food that people will eat enormous amounts of and will see a change in their stool.”

This miracle cure gives me great diarrhea!

From China:

Thousands of Chinese disciples seeking a cure from a so called holy spring said to cure any illness got to the bottom of its miraculous powers—when it gave them all diarrhea.

The spring, in eastern China, is famed locally for washing away skin blemishes.



But thousands of visitors during China's Moon Festival decided to drink the healing waters instead, only to find themselves stricken with upset stomachs.



"People were lining all through the night to get to the water but then they started to form another line—for the public toilets," said one local.

 "We warned them not to drink it but they thought we were trying to keep it to ourselves.

 When we drink it we boil it first."

This is why spelling is important.

Colon? No, that'd be "cologne".

A friend writes: Are you sure they are referring to the body part? I for one believe all forms of punctuation have very distinct and pleasing smells, the colon ranking at the top.

How small is my bathroom?

I never have to take a yoga class, because my bathroom is so small, I have to be limber just to use it. Which is why it has a hidden, sliding door, as opposed to one that swings IN.

Via.

Crystal Toilets Have Magical Powers

For some reason, a company named Lixil made a toilet “decorated with 72,000 Swarovski crystals.” I just love the onlooker's expression. In fact, I think I can read her mind:

“If I bust a grumpy on this, 

maybe IT will be encrusted with Swarovski crystals!”

Burping is a Criminal Offense!

Sometimes a news story comes along that is so perfect, it needs to be read in its original form. This is one of those stories.

By acheron0

(CBS/AP)  ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A 13-year-old was handcuffed and hauled off to a juvenile detention for burping in class, according to a civil rights lawsuit filed against an Albuquerque public school principal, a teacher and a city police officer . . . 

 The Albuquerque Journal reports the unnamed seventh grader was arrested last May 11 at Cleveland Middle School after he "burped audibly" in his P.E. class. "Criminalizing of the burping of a thirteen-year-old boy serves no governmental purpose," the lawsuit said. "Burping is not a serious disruption, a threat of danger was never an issue." 

The lawsuit alleges the boy was transported to the juvenile center without his parents being notified. It also says he was denied his due process rights because he was suspended for the rest of that school year without "providing him an explanation of the evidence the school claimed to have against him." He was not allowed to call witnesses or defend himself against the burping allegation. The boy was never charged. He scored a -2 on a scale of 1 to 10 according to a risk assessment given by the jail staff, 10 being extremely dangerous . . . 

 A spokeswoman for Albuquerque Public Schools said she had not seen the lawsuit and could not comment.

That's not how you do it.

Who wants to dive in buffalo poop? Step right up!

A radio station held a contest last week where folks could win free Buffalo Bills tickets. The catch was the tickets were in canisters that were buried underneath buffalo poop. So people wearing gloves, goggles, and surgical masks dug through the buffalo poop to get it.
Bonus: the announcer blew chunks!

Warning: This is gross.

Toilet Seat Emergencies

A UK man got stuck a toilet seat stuck around his body and had to go to a fire station to get it taken off. (He did it as a prank.) But the best part of this story was the quote from a fireman named Michael Burden said:

“He looked rather flushed when he arrived but [was] relieved when we managed to get the toilet seat off him.”

Good one!

Paula Deen sells butter-flavored lip balm.

That is all. (Photo from here.)

Here’s what I want my toilet to have:

A foot warmer, heated seat, bidet, and music system, all controlled by a touchscreen remote. Hey, what’s this? Something called a Kohler Numi Bidet Toilet…

Actually, I do want ONE more thing: How about a toilet that’s not in the middle of a glass room? Hel-LO? Privacy much? (I don’t want anyone to see me warming my feet!)

Mitt Romney and the Diarrhea of Seamus

From the Boston Globe

Politico has an article about Mitt Romney and his dog, Seamus. It goes like this:

In 1983, Romney packed up his family into a station wagon for a 12-hour trip from Boston to Ontario. Before starting, Romney put Seamus, the family’s Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. 
Was this cruel? The Boston Globe says Romney built a special windshield for the carrier, “to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.”



By Natasha d.H.

But poor Seamus must NOT have been comfortable, because he began to have horrible diarrhea. From the Boston Globe: 

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon . . . he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. 

 ‘Dad!’ he yelled. ‘Gross!’   

A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

 As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway.

What's unsaid is that Romney apparently put the dog back in the carrier, where it rode for the rest of whatever was left of their 12-hour trip. Yeesh.

Genius in a storm drain!

In the California town of Ceres, a man got stuck in a storm drain.

For my own peace of mind, I'm going to assume that's mud on his leg, not . . . butt-mud.

Anyway, the man was rescued. But why would he pull the storm drain cover off and then climb into the grimy hole? Read the story at the Modesto Bee, but you can already guess the reason!

"Blimey! He blew a snot bubble!"

"Welcome home, Comrade!"

"Well, THAT'S not good."

In 1967, a Russian named Vladimir Komarov dropped in from outer space and crash-landed into Earth. The above photo shows what was left of him afterwards.

Komarov was a Russian astronaut (or “cosmonaut”). And as his spaceship fell, U.S. listeners could hear him "cursing the people who had put him inside a botched spaceship."

The complete story from Robert Krulwich is fascinating and quite sad. Check it out over at NPR.

Photo by RIA Novosti/Photo Researchers Inc.

How Whales DON'T Pass Gas!

I just read a funny story that a guy wrote about his co-worker. Here it is, slightly edited:

Barney was a decent but dim
 sort of guy. One afternoon, we were talking about 
whales and he seemed quite suspicious when I
 told him that whales weren’t fish and that they breathed air.


From here.

“Okay then, so how do they breathe underwater?”
 Barney asked.

“You know when they come up to the surface and
 squirt water in the air? Well that’s them 
breathing,” I said.

He looked at me like I was an idiot. “That’s not
 breathing!” he laughed. “That’s them FARTING.
 Their bums are on the top and they come up to
 fart! Didn’t you even know that?”

“Um... I’m
 pretty sure they’re breathing,” I replied, 
slightly stunned by this new information.


“Think about it,” he added slowly, so I’d 
understand, “if they didn’t come to the top
 when they farted, their butts would fill
 up with water and they’d sink.”

Pygmy right whale photo 

by Hadoram Shirihai and Brett Jarrett 

for Whales, Dolphins, and Other Marine Mammals of the World.