Atomictumor

This is kind of a disgusting post, with links to really gross stuff. If you don’t like gross stuff, go here!

I have two classes with a very funny girl named Kathy. Kathy is Polish, but grew up in Germany, so to the untrained ear, she sounds Russian. Exactly like Molotov Cocktease, actually. One day I will get her to say “Brock Sampson”.

But I digress.

Kathy came into class a few weeks ago talking about a nasty-as-fuck problem her husband was having. He woke up one morning with a large bump on his arm. It was bright red, with a good-sized hole in the center. So they did what any of us would do: they squeezed the crap out of it.

Pus seeped out and something could be seen behind the hole. So she broke out the tweezers. After what I can only assume was copius amounts of husbandly cussing, she pulled out a yellow sack-like thing. They threw the sack-like thing away, but took pictures of it for posterity’s sake.

Because it’s always good to know what you pull out of your body, her husband went to see his doc. After looking at the pictures, she admitted she didn’t know what it was. So she took the pictures to a colleague.

The colleague knew. It was a dermatobia hominis, aka human botfly.

Human botflies are typically found in Central & South America. The female botfly catches a mosquito and lays her eggs on it. When the mosquito lands on its victim, the egg(s) fall off onto the host and hatches. The maggot burrows under the skin where it lives and feasts on flesh. After about 8 weeks, it squirms out and goes off in search of a mate.

They grow up so fast!

The doctors said it’s not unheard of for someone to be a botfly host so far north, but it is extremely unusual. I guess he was just one lucky s.o.b.

Kathy got a kick out of telling this story to absolutely everyone at school. Kind of like how I’m enjoying grossing you all out now. :)

This is the first installment (hopefully) of a series. This is by no means the first unintended scientific experiment we have undertaken, merely the first one documented.

While putting a box of Capri Suns in the refrigerator, I came across a faux-tupperware’d box of left-overs. Unable to recall the last time we had a meal that warranted saving for future supping, I took it out to have a look-see.

Upon initial examination, I noted that the box appeared to contain rice and was sealed. Its contents rattled when shaken.

Previous experience has taught me not to inhale when opening mysterious containers, so I’m afraid I am unable to share with you any olfactory data.

The specimen was found to indeed contain rice (reverted back to its uncooked texture, devoid of moisture), but there was also an unknown quantity present.

The unknown quantity appeared to be small 1″ cubes of an uniform grey color, with small black spots on its exterior. There appeared to be a thin coating of milky-white slime on the cubes.

I did not attempt to identify the unknown quantity via taste test. I am not paid nearly enough.

Searching through my mental index of side dishes, I have come to the conclusion that the unknown quantity must be hashed potatoes.

Door opens and closes… thump thump thump… door opens and closes… assorted and various muffled noises… door opens and closes… thump thump thump… door opens and closes… assorted and various muffled noises…

I ignored this ruckus for as long as I could (about 45 seconds) and then arose to see what was the matter.  When I opened the door, I noticed two things immediately:  the foulest smelt anyone has ever dealt, and Pigpen.

“Hey, buddy, whatcha doing?”

“Getting dressed.”

“Did you have a poop?”

“Yes.”

“I probably ought to help you wipe then, huh?”

“Yes.”

I open the bathroom door and OH SWEET BABY JESUS WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!?

Every. Single. Surface. Is. Covered. With. Poo.

It’s on two(!?) pairs of underware, two towels, the pjs he went to bed in, the floor, the door, the toilet (inside and out (mostly out)), and the walls (higher than he can reach?!).

AT gets up and volunteers to do the cleaning since scenes of gratuitous violence make me queasy.  It takes him a full half-hour to make the brown room white again.

When AT came back to bed, we tried to speculate as to exactly how Pigpen had managed to create such catastrophy.

Some things are best left unknown.

Squirrels don’t like me.

Back in the day, I’d hang out at my buddies house in Chattanooga being generally thuggish and troublesome, but I stayed away from one particular tree in a neighboring house, because The Squirrel lived there.

Now, I don’t know what I did to the squirrel to piss it off, but lemme tell you, it was pissed. Maybe it was some kind of reincarnation thing, where I smote it in a past life or something, or maybe it just didn’t like the cut of my gib, but that bastard would shoot to kill whenever I approached. My little brother, my friends, anybody else were OK, but if I got within 20 or so feet of the mother tree, I’d get a warning chirp, then an attack cry (like a squirrelly ululation), then a high velocity walnut to the temple.

That bastard had some accuracy and range to go with that super-throwing-death arm that it possessed. Once I heard the cry, I’d know I came too close. There’d be no outrunning The Squirrel, because it’d clip you with at least two nuts before you got out of range. You never quite knew where they were coming from either, on account of the uncanny camouflage of The Squirrel.

Since then, squirrel activity seems to have become more and more aggressive. The hickory nut tree in my back yard only seems to drop nuts when I’m outside, leaving me to think they’re dropbombing me. I’m now almost certain they were responsible for the crack in the windshield that the poor Volvo received last year.

To that end, I was dismayed by two events.

First, I found this report from Mountain View, CA, indicating that guerilla squirrels are aggressively attacking 4 year olds and others this summer, indicating that the philosophy of The Squirrel has moved westward, as all philosophies inevitably do, in preparation of worldwide adoption. This is a problem, because while the government has been sure to work up laws authorizing torture and wiretapping, this is only effective against human opponents. In fact, as the American intelligence organizations are loathe to admit, the squirrels series of chirps, in the .01 and 10 KHZ range, has been found to be uncrackable thus far.

Theres no way to know what they’re planning in our back yards, but you can bet its going to be ugly, and probably nutty, as well.

Second, and more importantly, is that I crushed one of the bastards to death on Laboratory Road while driving to pick up the paycheck yesterday. Of course it was accidental, one of those moments when the beast is in the median of the road, not sure whether to zig or zag, and darts out. It cleared 3 of the wheels, but that rear passenger wheel came out of nowhere and nailed the poor bastard.

I can say its accidental all day long, but it won’t make a difference. They’re going to want vengeance.

The assignment: To change something’s texture; to make it out of something it shouldn’t be made out of.

The finished product:

A gingerbread house made out of cardboard, extra coarse sandpaper, caulk (for icing), wire caps for gumdrops, a hinge for a door, biscuit shims for shingles and vent filters for snow. If there had been more than two (event-filled) days to work on it, the craftsmanship would have been better.
Yum!