You went to Chilis for the toilet sanitizer?
It's important to have a hand sanitizer dispenser over the toilet at your house if you're going to have out-of-town guests and pump them full of enough coffee to burst both bladder and bowel.
I don't know if you need to go as far as having a sanitizer, but many toilet seats in public restrooms need to be wiped.
I've seen variations on this at IKEA and at an airport. I think it's more of a paper-saver than a moral judgment.
4: The easy, healthier solution is to squat on the seat.
4 is a good point. But somehow I still categorize this in the same group as Glade Plug-ins and other products preying on our fear of being gross.
The thing that's always struck me as bizarre is O'Hare's plastic-covered seats, with the plastic coming from an unknown location behind the walls.
Glade Plug-ins are the only thing that has prevented global warming from taking catastrophic proportions.
7: oh yeah, those drive me nuts, too.
I guess I'm annoyed that there's so much fear around other people's bodies.
MRSA is only a problem if you get an open wound colonized or you're immuno-compromised, or something happens enough to need treatment which would normally be the staph-y drugs. Our bodies are great at having a bunch bacteria around and on us and doing just fine.
"mostly" not "only". Not that any outbreak has ever been tied to a toilet seat.
And a little bit of the floor in front of the toilet.
I got a flu shot the other day, and it hurt waaaay less than in previous years.
If you're five, you can snort the flu vaccine up your nose.
Staying with a host family in France, I found that I would get a rash where my legs touched the toilet seat if I didn't cover the seat with paper. The seat was never obviously dirty. This did not happen at the other host families' homes I stayed in in France.
I spent maybe five days in France and got the runs twice.
"mostly" not "only"
How can MRSA ever be a problem if what you've got wouldn't normally get treated by the -icillin type antibiotics that MRSA is resistant to?
|| Pretty much every night at this time, almost on the dot, I hear knocking sounds coming from an apartment on the floor above me that must be generated by people having sex. I've heard all sorts of sounds staying in apartments over the years, but never something so scheduled. |>
24: They might be trying; that's pretty much what I've been assuming. But I doubt they have kids now. The upper floor is all studios and while couples live here, this is not family housing (it's on a university campus).
21: I don't understand. MRSA is a thing you get and it is a type of infection that would normally be treated with those antibiotics except they don't work for it which is why MRSA is a problem.
That said, I wasn't very serious. It isn't easy for a healthy person to catch, but it can happen. The toilets in hospitals are a real concern. It can also be carried asymptotically by healthy people.
"The toilets in hospitals are a real concern."
For sure. And so is anything else one might touch in a hospital. I'm not usually paranoid about bugs but the warnings plastered all over Cedars, along with the wipes and gels installed everywhere make it impossible to ignore.
MRSA is a thing you get and it is a type of infection that would normally be treated with those antibiotics except they don't work for it which is why MRSA is a problem.
My point is just that most times you're around any bacteria, including MRSA, it doesn't result in an infection bad enough to be treated with antibiotics. It's only a problem if the situation calls for treatment, which is super rare unless there are existing medical issues.
So the "only" was: MRSA is only a problem in those cases calling for treatment.
I'm down with the paranoia within hospitals.
In fact, I want the paranoia saved for hospitals. I don't want stupid Chili's diluting the paranoia, or maybe fluffing it.
That said, I wasn't very serious.
Oh look, I got all humorless because I didn't read this part. I wasn't actually feeling humorless but the comment came out earnest.
What if the Chili's has a big party from a nursing home?
I spent the early part of the week watching horses vacate everywhere, and I'm really happy we humans have invented toilets. (Except at parties, where it's acceptable for humans to pee outside.)
It's the big fucking pet peeve, right?
Dragons crap gold; the ideal pet craps pot.
What if everyone else in the world is only like 6 inches tall and it is just that your eyes are fucked up and that time you were playing in the slush along Western Avenue with that kid whose name you could never remember from the next block and your one boot came off really didn't really happen the way you remember it even though you nearly froze your fucking foot off and then you thought of it years later when you were reading about Colonel Aurelia Buendia facing the firing squad and you thought it was all a dream but then the quiet girl who sat next to you in the 5th grade shows up and bites you in the shin and it really bleeds?
Oh right, "Cats" the musical, never mind.
"Memory, all alone in the moonlight."
Gender difference. In restrooms catering to male customers, not only do you really have to sanitise the toilet seat, but you also have to wade through the lake of piss to reach it and watch out for the inexplicable splatters of poo stuck to the walls of the cubicle, because some blokes just spatter everything around without ever hitting the bowl.
The sentence "scrape off the hard bits from the toilet seat" could've been used too.
You have to wipe the seat because some people hover and piss all over it. I always sit, but I often wipe. I don't teach my children to wipe, I'm not that paranoid. My cousin in law makes her daughter hover, and checks her feet under the door or divider because apparently she can tell by her feet whether she's hovering or has sat down and relaxed!
the hovering/squatting bitches are the reason there's any fucking pee on the toilet seat in the first place. it's like a prisoner's dilemma problem: if we all sit down, the toilets will always be fine.
are men's toilets really as bad as all that? I've used them a few times because I couldn't deal with the line or just by mistake, they seemed ok?
39.1: I am kind of glad that this is approaching common-knowledge status.
gah, I knelt down today and the thing happened where my femur touched my patella again because the cartilage is all eaten up by my stupid immune system, and I kind of collapse. I was just kneeling down to pick up the tape after wrapping something. holy fucking shit that hurts SO BAD. I already take lots of painkillers for other things, the next thing would be to go to the pain specialist and get fentanyl patches and morphine and stuff. somehow I feel this might be problematic. if it's brief I can handle it but if it keeps hurting this bad even though I've taken more than the maximum dose of my other painkillers I don't really know what to do.
45: Men's toilets tend to be either reasonably civilized, or to resemble the attempts of fifty drunken performance artists to replicate the Augean Stables.
(Nothing useful to offer on the pain thing, I'm afraid. That sounds shitty.)
Going to Chilis is gross.
Sucks about the pain, alameida. Hope it is short-lasting.
Is this a good place to bitch about family bathroom users?
Stay out of them unless you have an opposite sex child with you, you a-holes!
Horny people: I am pro-you having sex, but not when my daughter is pulling down her pants bc she has to go.
There is little that gets me angry, but this does.
bleah. stupid immune system always attacking me. just like my brain. what, it's the war of all against all in here? jesus. thanks for the good wishes, all.
47: Buck has similar knee issues -- he had some surgery to clean up messed up cartilage ages and ages ago, and it did no good. The only things that help him are ibuprofen and lots of time on a stationary bike -- building up the quads in a non-impact way to cushion the joint. Obviously you're past the ibuprofen stage, but I offer the stationary bike for what it's worth.
yeah, that's what they suggested, strengthening my quads. I was very good about running in the pool for 30 minutes a day at first but since I basically have two full-time jobs this month I've been slacking on the exercise. I can also do leg lifts with weights. I guess I'll get on that. I hate exercising though. it's boooooooring.
I wouldn't have brought it up just as generic good advice, but he says it's noticeable on a scale of weeks -- that it really works for him as pain management. And the bone scraping on bone description of what's going wrong is the same words he uses.
inexplicable splatters of poo stuck to the walls
Yes. What is it with these people?
Sometimes I wake with violent suddenness because the pain of accidentally sleeping on one shoulder at just the wrong angle is slightly worse than being stabbed. It's very unpleasant.
I really hate the overly germaphobic approach to the world. It's all well and good to practice general sanitation and hygiene, but really, it gets taken too far nowadays. I still remember when, on a school camping trip, I was stared at with horror when I didn't use the nasty alcohol smelling hand sanitizer (which I do use, when it's necessary) before tucking into my sandwich (since I felt simply holding onto it through the wrapping was a good enough barrier).
59: Me too--I really hate that they have a fucking purell dispenser by the shopping carts at the supermarket, so that your hands will not be contaminated by touching what other hands have touched. Dream on, little dreamers: the germs are already on you!
Stationary bikes hurt my knees, but I did find (when I was more strict about doing them) that doing simple isometric contraction stuff for the quads and regularly stretching quads and hip-flexors helped my knees. Squats, wall-sits, and one-legged partial squats all helped, too. My knees aren't clinically bolloxed -- pain and crepitus but no real degeneration of the joint -- but give me pain from a lifestyle that alternates between sitting on my arse working, and then getting kicked by people almost as fat as me.
re: toilets
I'm not germphobic at all, but men's public toilets often are utterly disgusting. I was shocked the first few times I ended up in women's.
"Wtf? There's a carpet. And plants. And a mirror. Next door the guys' is 2 inches deep in shit and piss, and everything is smashed."
"Wtf? There's a carpet. And plants. And a mirror. Next door the guys' is 2 inches deep in shit and piss, and everything is smashed."
Carpet? Plants? Well, la di freakin' da. Next they'll be wantin' ta vote.
And the bone scraping on bone description of what's going wrong is the same words he uses.
Bone-on-bone contact is the less formal but still clinical term for it.
If women are going to hover, shouldn't they put the seat up? My experience in bars is that women's rooms are often worse on account of the hovering. (My standard bar in Berkeley had three single person bathrooms of which two were ostensibly gendered, but depending on the state of the line would often switch to de facto nongendered.)
I was in a bar once where I used the women's restroom. The door to the men's room was open and covered the 'wo' part of 'women' on the women's restroom.
Now I understand Benny Hill on a deeper level than most.
I don't know about the US, but over here the whole hand sanitiser (outside of obvious places like toilets and hospitals) thing is very recent and as far as I can tell directly attributable to the bird/swine flu scare.
If you don't want to get sick, build a strong immune system. If you want to infest yourself and everyone around you with pestilence, avoid all germs until inevitably one gets through and your body serves as a perfect petri dish for the generation of copious microscopic vermin in quantities sufficient to overwhelm even the most perfectly toned immune system. Every time* I get sick I blame assholes who sanitize the fucking toilet seat. Wipe, sit, get a small dose of whatever it is, and rise a stronger person. Do it for yourself, for your family, and for your country.
The only bright spot in all this is that the combination of germaphobia and anti-vaccine hysteria leaves the spawn of wackadoodles especially vulnerable to disease, so within a few generations the hysterical idiot genes will be gone from the population.
* Ok, not really.
I agree with all of this EXCEPT in Hospitals. Doctors: use the hand sanitizer!
A doctor friend was complaining about how they have people in the hospital monitoring it, so she just fakes it. Argg!!!!! It is a important in a hospital!!!
FWIW, I've had a hospital-generated infection after surgery, and it fucking sucked. So I'm all for sanitisers in hospitals, and electrocution for people who don't use 'em.*
* that means doctors, mostly. In my enforced sojourn on IV antibiotics, the nurses and cleaning staff were scrupulous about hygiene. Doctors and surgeons were not.
Partly pwned by 68. Doctors == bastards.
I endorse 69!
I was pissed at her. Fucking A! They monitor it bc it is a big freakin deal.
At home, my daughter always has her hands down the front or back of her pants so we get plenty of germ exposure.
purell dispenser by the shopping carts at the supermarket
Yeah, this in particular strikes me as bonkers.
I heard a rumor that people who poop might have stocked some of the items in the grocery store!
The one that cracks me up is the story about the individually sealed single-serving packs of communion wine, so you don't all have to drink from the same goblet. MISSING THE POINT.
I saw Contagion last weekend and am now in favor of wiping down all surfaces, always.
I think they should post a little sign reminding you to sing the entire ABC song while you wash your hands so that you know you have washed them thoroughly enough.
This may be pure slander, but when I worked in a doctors office, the nurses who worked there informed me that it was customary in the hospitals where they'd worked to segregate any freely available food, like donuts in a break room, into doctors and non-doctors, so that no non-doctors would ever have to eat something a doctor might have touched.
rob needs a pair of these in adult sizes.
I confess to having left a few public toilets somewhat worse than I found them, on occasions when I have been stricken with illness and terrible runs while out in public or at the office. I felt very bad about it, but I was also in no shape to clean them up.
This probably doesn't explain all the nasty toilets in the world (my particular ire is aimed at people who fill up the toilet and don't flush), but it might explain some of them.
I definitely feel like it's pretty impolite to mess up a public toilet that somebody's going to have to use after you, so I always shit on the floor.
I am always conscious that the last person using the grocery cart might have arrived yesterday from rural bangladesh.
We had a good reason to eat at Chili's recently.
C'mon have the courage in your choices, Heebie; you ate a Chili's, full stop. If you try to qualify things in this way (which I can only guess is an acknowledgment of what you perceive as the prevailing range of acceptable food-getting places for most folks in this forum) the food-getting judgment terrorists have won. At least you were succinct about it, as I recall Neb used up several meandering sentences a few years back in a futile attempt to explain how his eyes had come to view an article in a magazine that was not otherwise in accord with his self-image.
78: Yes, I was thinking along those lines of Chester--everyone should think of their three worst visits to a public restroom and then do the math.
The one that cracks me up is the story about the individually sealed single-serving packs of communion wine, so you don't all have to drink from the same goblet. MISSING THE POINT.
Depends on your denomination.
Good reasons to eat at Chili's include: (a) reconnaissance for a forthcoming mission to find and neutralize the author of that blasted "Chili's babyback ribs" song.
The piss-lake is as often as not a consequence of badly plumbed and leaky urinals, isn't it? I once peed in one that -- I only saw too late -- hadn't been plumbed in at all: the pipe from it just ended in mid-air about four feet away. I DON'T ENTIRELY FEEL THE LAKE WAS MY FAULT; there was no warning notice or anything. It was quite a fancy place, I think it had only just opened.
We did have a good reason! Friends' kid had a class mascot (stuffed animal) that goes home with a different kid each weekend. That kid writes up its adventures in the group journal. This kid wanted it to go to Chili's. (Because last weekend the thing had gone to Chili's, and she was totally copying.)
I assume you always have a good reason for whatever you do, so it can go unstated (and usually does).
I ate at Subway yesterday, because I didn't think about lunch until it was very much time to eat lest I become cranktastic. And then I found (a) $5 (footlong).
I ate nothing yesterday other than nine nestle candy bars (2 100 grand, 1 baby ruth, 1 nestle crunch, 5 butterfinger). I still feel ashamed.
Faulty plumbing doesn't explain the literally shitty hand prints i've encountered in a toilet more than once...
Course, I've spent a couple of summers cleaning camping site toilets, using a high pressure hose to remove blockages, so I do know at least one way to get shit stains on the ceiling...
At least you were succinct about it, as I recall Neb used up several meandering sentences a few years back in a futile attempt to explain how his eyes had come to view an article in a magazine that was not otherwise in accord with his self-image.
They weren't meandering!
86: Do they soak whatever it is in bleach after every switch to a new kid? That's a clever way to build immunity.
I ate nothing yesterday other than nine nestle candy bars (2 100 grand, 1 baby ruth, 1 nestle crunch, 5 butterfinger). I still feel ashamed.
You know what's delicious? Crumbling up candy bars into a bowl of milk and eating it with a spoon.
I assume you always have a good reason for whatever you do, so it can go unstated (and usually does).
Thank you! I assume you have a good reason about 75% of the time.
everyone should think of their three worst visits to a public restroom and then do the math.
I very much doubt that defenestration is that common.
95: The rest of the time you know it.
67: Is that actually true for intestinal disorders? I have no idea, but I'd thought the reason you didn't worry so much about germs from the toilet seat is that it was a very ineffective vector for spreading germs excepting if there is actual shit on the seat.
93: Thanks for finding that. Exactly the post I was remembering, and I stand corrected--not meandering. Nor was my comment at the time: I find no need to forgive the reading of Paper; it is the sheer pathetic asshattery of starting a blog post with such a paragraph that is unforgivable.
The rest of the time I know you think it's a good reason.
If women are going to hover, shouldn't they put the seat up?
Except they're hovering out of fear of the unnamed ick, and that would require touching the ick with your porcelain paws.
I mean, you really do avoid a great deal of sickness-spreading by washing your hands after going to the toilet. It's just the toilet isn't the spreading source because your ass doesn't come in contact with your mouth outside of advanced yoga and bad car accidents.
But washing with plain old soap is plenty sufficient.
Can't women catch certain minor STDs (which one(s) exactly I'm not remembering at the moment) from toilet seats? Or is that an urban legend?
103: Yes. I'm arguing that maybe the "toughening up the immune system" really isn't applicable for intestinal disorders. I don't really know for sure, but it seems unlikely.
My unsourced memory is that the only possibility is crabs. Anything else might be a technical possibility, but not a real one.
After I shit in a public bathroom, I like to floss my teeth before washing my hands. I feel like it helps strengthen the immune system, plus it keeps my gums healthy.
105: This is anecdotal, and I'm probably just being annoyingly urban chauvinist. But in Samoa, most PCVs got all sorts of intestinal ick; parasites, giardia, amoebas. The New Yorkers (three out of about thirty that I'm thinking of) didn't. I theorized that we had higher background exposure to global horrors from riding the subway, and so tougher immune systems, but I'm probably just being silly.
I'm operating under the belief that anything crabs or std-ish is an urban legend. There are no cloth fibers or anything.
107: I don't think you can catch anything you don't already have from your own shit, it's other people's you need to worry about. So it's the trip to the public bathroom at all, not whether you voided your bowels there.
Let me rephrase the question: a girlfriend once told me she caught a certain minor STD (which one exactly I'm not remembering at the moment, but it wasn't crabs) from a toilet seat. Was she lying?
I theorized that we had higher background exposure to global horrors from riding the subway, and so tougher immune systems,
I've heard people complain about assholes on the subway, but I really didn't understand until now.
111: You just didn't let her finish talking.
"No, really Urple. I caught it from the toilet..."
(hours later)
"...or the other set of genitals that were smushed against mine. One or the other, hard to say."
Has anyone seen any e.coli culturing results from belts, waistbands, zippers, etc.? The sinks and soap are never inside the stalls.
108: I recall the French army having all these healthy peasant boys come in and die of disease while the sickly looking Paris recruits did well. And you certainly do adapt to local bacterial culture if you travel.
That said, nobody really gets immune to diarrhea and you can infect other parts of your body with germs from your own ass.
So you're saying the New York PCVs look sickly?
If you had to put a probability on your answer in 112, what would it be? Just more likely than not, or beyond a reasonable doubt?
114: You should hear what she told the other guy.
nobody really gets immune to diarrhea
Sure you do, or to specific organisms that cause diarrhea. That's why you get it traveling, because you're exposed to new stuff. You can't get immune to everything that causes diarrhea (like, I have no explanation for how I avoided giardia other than following directions for water safety), but some stuff you can.
re: 108
A friend of mine went on a charity work programme thing in west Africa, when we were teenagers. Everyone except him was super-careful, ate only boiled things, and dried foods they'd brought themselves. My friend just ate and drank what the locals drank. He was one of only a few people who didn't get sick. I don't know what general conclusions to draw. But yeah, hard people, represent.
If you had to put a probability on your answer in 112, what would it be?
100% not from a toilet. Better odds that she had it for a while and didn't know it. Not necessarily that she cheated.
I find it impossibly confusing to remember which side of Africa is West and which side is East. I have to derive it from scratch every single time.
I think, to my gut intuition, "west" means "the far side" and "east" means "the close side".
West Africa - slave trade
East Africa - archaeological digs
I know that, map-wise. I just can't figure out which side of the map we're talking about right off the bat.
119: Think about it -- how could she know how she caught whatever it was? It's not like a bell goes off when the infective agent leaps from the toilet seat to your body.
If she truthfully told you she was a virgin, then she truthfully told you that she didn't catch whatever it was from having sex with another person. If she truthfully told you that she'd been tested for whatever it was since she'd last had sex with another person (allowing for enough of an incubation period for the test to work), then she could have truthfully told you that she didn't catch whatever it was from having sex with another person. But she couldn't possibly know it was a toilet seat, and it seems unlikely that the circumstances were such as I've described above so that she knew it wasn't sexually transmitted.
123: that makes sense. So she was definitely mistaken but not necessarily lying. That makes me feel better.
Or what heebie said more concisely in 123.
121: There's viral and bacterial causes. The viral ones are either the kind kids get (because these are the ones you can get immune to) or the kind adults get (because no immunity lasts long enough to provide much protection).
107: I don't think you can catch anything you don't already have from your own shit,
Not my understanding whatsoever. Although I'm not sure this Yahoo Answers thread is authoritative ("Is it okay to eat your own poo?").
There are lower intestinal fauna that will make you extremely sick if they get into other parts of your body.
I don't think I follow 129. It wasn't that she said "I'm 100% sure it was a toilet seat." It was "No idea; I think it must have been a toilet seat."
135 before seeing 131. If 129 was just agreeing with Heebie (confusingly), then okay.
No, people often agree with me.
135: Oh, if that's it, then I wouldn't swear that there are no diseases describable as STIs that aren't transmissible through nonsexual means as well; no sense of the odds without knowing the medical details. Wrestlers get back-herpes from getting smushed into sweaty wrestling mats, and if that happens, then anything gross that could happen does.
But she couldn't know it wasn't sexually transmitted without either virginity or post-testing celibacy, or some other equivalent.
Wrestlers get back-herpes from getting smushed into sweaty wrestling mats
They should dip wrestlers in hand sanitizer.
And what if the wrestlers all go to the bathroom at Chili's?
Wrestlers get back-herpes from getting smushed into sweaty wrestling mats, and if that happens, then anything gross that could happen does.
But this isn't a stretch, medically. It's only surprising because of our mental categories of what healthy things to do, are. Toilet seats almost never come into contact with broken skin, even if there's nearby broken skin on one's genitals. And it's porcelain, and not covered in sweaty petri-like conditions.
117: I recall the French army having all these healthy peasant boys come in and die of disease while the sickly looking Paris recruits did well.
Good Lord, Moby, you were in the Escadre Lafayette? You're still moving about very briskly for a man of your age.
Are you sure JRoth didn't rip you off? Did you negotiate with him while stoned on a plane?
133: Dan Savage is firmly against poo eating. You can taste and play with it, but no swallowing. It's not so much the bugs and things as the waste products from the various glands and gizzards that make it mildly poisonous, if I recall correctly. I didn't pay as close attention as I do to other Savage Love items since poo eating is not something I'm willing to do, no matter how into it my partner is. Because I'm just that square.
Sure, the literal toilet seat is way implausible, but now that Urple's made it clear that the claim wasn't 'toilet seat' but 'I dunno, but it wasn't sex', then depending on the STI I can't guess what the odds are.
142: No. Unless you sit on the rim of the bowl.
143: s/b "I recall reading about the French army...." Also, I don't move at all. I have a monkey to type for me.
145: as long as you're okay with your partner eating other people's poo, or eating his own poo while in the company of others, I think Dan's okay with your squeamishness.
Dan Savage is firmly against poo eating.
His brave stand inspires us all.
If not porcelain, then you're claiming there is some other slick white material? Whatever, spaceman.
What are toilet seats made of? My new toilet has a plastic seat, but the old ones were too heavy for that.
Snips and snails and puppy dog tails.
Probably wood with a very thick layer of paint. Except for the ones that were padded.
I pee into a condom, and then dump the condom into the toilet. To be safe.
Wrestling mats are porous, so they protect the germs much better than toilet seats. Wrestlers should really consider switching locales. Brawl in the Stall!
I thought that was the reason why MMA and wrestling types wore rash guards? To prevent nasty skin diseases.
The wikipedia page on the toilet seat is a thing to behold. It cites William Safire, is alarmingly long, and argues that keeping the both the seat and lid lowered promotes harmony between the sexes. However, it does not say what toilet seats are made of.
That's also the reason mats are supposed to be regularly washed down with bleach, and noöne is supposed to practice when they have something growing on them.
I guess it says, "Some are made of various types of fancy wooden materials, like oak or walnut, and others are made soft for added comfort." But that really doesn't answer my question about what a regular toilet seat is made of.
Why would anyone need to use an irregular toilet seat?
re: 159
I've never seen one that wasn't plastic or wood. Some very solid plastic, some formed so that they are concave on the underside, some probably hollow [I'm fairly sure the cross section isn't solid all the way through on some]. But I don't think anything other than plastic or wood.
re: 158
If someone could find an easy solution for boxing glove stink, I'd be very happy.
Our fancy-pants JRoth toilet has the hydraulic mechanism that prevents slamming the lid or seat down. It's nifty.
Also it's mounted directly to the wall, and the tank is inside the wall, and Jammies is (rightly) paranoid that this is a terrible idea, access-wise, but supposedly you have plenty of access. It does make a teeny bathroom more spacious.
[I'm fairly sure the cross section isn't solid all the way through on some]
Because that would mean you've been peeing on the lid.
161.1: Probably. The new ones are so much lighter, but probably just less plastic. You should find a reference and update Wikipedia.
A possible solution for Chili's to consider would be the FUD.
(Safe for work, I guess, but I really wouldn't want to have anybody come by and see it on my screen.)
There are also some infections where the most common cause is an STI, but to be sure you'd have to culture and it's easier to just give antibiotics and not worry about which bacteria it is. E.g. prostatitis is most commonly caused by STIs, but can also be caused by gut bacteria making their way through the body (since the gut is very near the prostate).
162: I was about to be jealous when I realized that our new toilet in our tiny bathroom is backed against a wall that's plaster on brick, so that wouldn't have been an option anyway.
And oh do I not want to talk about diarrhea right now. How the fuck do you get kids who don't want to wipe or wash their hands to do it every time, especially if there are two bathrooms in a house and you can only supervise one at a time? Fuck! My goal is to track the main offender as my highest priority, but the kid has all day at school to pick up nasty germs to pass on to the rest of us, which she's done.
161: Do boxing gloves turn inside out? If they do, I'd try hanging them inside out in the sun -- it's a surprisingly effective bleach/anti-stink treatment.
Re 168
No. Unfortunately. I've tried wiping the inside with alcohol wipes, and using medicated powders. No joy. You usually wear washable hand wraps or inners but after a while the gloves develop a truly minging smell that lingers on your hands even after repeated washing.
after a while the gloves develop a truly minging smell that lingers on your hands even after repeated washing.
Isn't it eventually time to buy new gloves?
Time to update the "things which ming" list, I guess.
Can you shine UV light in them? Would that work?
C'mon have the courage in your choices, Heebie; you ate a Chili's, full stop. If you try to qualify things in this way (which I can only guess is an acknowledgment of what you perceive as the prevailing range of acceptable food-getting places for most folks in this forum) the food-getting judgment terrorists have won. At least you were succinct about it, as I recall Neb used up several meandering sentences a few years back in a futile attempt to explain how his eyes had come to view an article in a magazine that was not otherwise in accord with his self-image.
Going to Chilis makes you a bad person. I am not a terrorist for pointing that out.
Thorn: I am with you! My daughter's hands often stink. She has gotten better, but it is an issue. My solution is to have little hand sprays located everywhere in the house for the frequent times when no hand washing has taken place after her hands have been down below.
Re 170
Yes, but good ones are expensive and the smell can develop well before they get badly worn. I don't wear my favourite pair anymore even though they are functionally still as new. It'd be worse if I had proper French ones as they are hard to get in the Uk.
If you air them properly and wear inners it does help a bit. Maybe try UV. Wonder what microwaving would do?
will, several times I've thought of you and how glad I am that this is a learned behavior that I think these kids can unlearn. (I suspect they may have not had running water at some point, given the whole dropping-used-toilet-paper-in-the-garbage thing I've seen, plus the not flushing, but who knows? They're not from a culture where that would be the norm.)
Wonder what microwaving would do?
I have tried this for other damp things, and it has always been a bad idea. Smouldering happens before dryness.
Re 175
Not to dry. More to kill/nuke the bacteria/spores.
174: Also possible that they had a septic tank, as that's what my parents do in order to avoid stressing it. (Um, I mean, the toilet paper in the trash, not the no-washing-hands thing.)
Have you tried sprinkling some antifungal/antiobiotic poweders down in there? The same sort of athletes foot stuff you'd can sprinkle inside athletic shoes.
Googling, vinegar and water comes up. Also UV and storing with something scented and absorbent in them. Not tried vinegar.
I still don't think so. Microwaves have hotspots and less hot spots. Even with a rotating tray, something like a glove that doesn't conduct heat well will be hot enough somewhere to smoulder before it's hot enough everywhere to sanitize. Boiling would probably ruin the gloves, but that's what you'd have to do to get them uniformly hot.
Re 178
Yeah. That was the first thing I tried. Possibly tried it too late, as cure rather than prevention.
Google suggests stuffing the gloves with socks full of baking soda or maybe even cedar chips between uses. And using rubbing alcohol (which you said you have).
Can you get yourself some Cobalt-60 or Caesium-137?
Ooh, baking soda -- that'd soak up moisture and kill the smell. I'd skip the socks and just pack them for a bit.
Thorn: You get used to it! And I've become VERY fast at the quick hand wash or hand spray.
I am also VERY good at quickly reaching up and pulling her bra back down in place. I havent figured out how it gets so jumbled, but this skill is important.
Isnt it a known fact that hockey gloves (and boxing gloves) have an impossible-to-remove funk after one wear?
The socks might be a nice touch when it comes to getting the soda out, though.
ttaM: have you considered covering your entire body in plastic wrap, such that no sweat can enter the gloves?
Yeah, i've tried various alcohol wash/gels. Will try wood chips and the vinegar thing.
Will makes a good point. It must be a common thing in other sports like hockey. Maybe there's an Acme MingFunkBeGone (tm).
186: I think that's the idea, but it's misguided. Better the soda should remain wedged in the crevices while you wear them, soaking up sweat, after you've shaken the bulk of it out into the sink.
Why are you using gloves anyway? Sissy.
Yesterday, my daughter decided she likes head butting. I properly instructed my son to clinch (?) her. Dont move away. Move in close so she cant do it as well.
Unfortunately, that move allows for the Tyson move known as "The Bite."
Bad dad.
It must be a common thing in other sports like hockey.
Oh man, is it ever. Jammies plays hockey and his gloves and stuff stink to high heaven. It doesn't seem to be a solved problem though.
LB: It is futile. I am no expert, but I suspect that every hockey mom in the world has said "There HAS to be a way to get rid of this funk."
I think the accepted method is to leave the gloves outside.
Chili's is infinitely -- infinitely!! -- superior to Applebee's. It's not that bad.
I am kinda with Stormcrow on the general sentiment, but everyone knows that he's a bougie snob because he likes soccer.
Cavemen were known to frequent Chili's after a long day of hunting the now-extinct wooly jalapeño popper.
It was this past visit that I decided I hated Chili's because it was so chaotic in there. Tables packed, and just every sort of possible sensory overload, including waitstaff forced to perform dopey birthday chants above the din.
Cavement would dress their antelope livers with a powder made from crushed sandstone. That horrible spice mix that chili's douses everything with is made in much the same way, except the sandstone is replaced with MSG.
Halford: Dont you live in a place with every type of food imaginable? Given all of the choices you have, why go to Chilis, except for self-loathing and/or a desire to teach your children bad things?
Cavement of course is that seminal '90s indie band that got bought out by GEICO.
Only recently have archaeologists unearthed Stephen Malkmus' earliest recordings, tracks laid down under the name Cavement.
why go to Chilis, except for self-loathing
Why do I do anything?
Anyhow, I'm not exactly a regular Chili's customer, but in past expeditions out of my starlet-filled home/grassfed meat locker into real America I've had occasion to visit a few. Not terrible! You can get a sort of semi OK steak. Mostly, though, I want to slag on Applebee's, which is truly vile even for its category.
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The stats class has hit a new low. I'm sitting here in class 10 minutes after it was supposed to end. The professor began covering practical use of the material that is going to be on the midterm (which is on monday), with 10 minutes left in class. Now, people are trying to get her to completely rewrite the midterm so it doesn't cover any of the material it previously covered. Which is not going to work. So we will be tested on our one midterm on material that has been covered (at least in a practical sense) for approximately five minutes of class time.
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Now they're trying to reschedule the midterm. Oh yay!
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Just think of it as the "Spartan Death Race" of academia. Man up to the challenge!
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Sure, let's put the date of the midterm (scheduled, again, for monday) up to a vote! What a great way to do it. That won't cause any problems at all.
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But no problem, we can just meet for several extra hours between now and then!
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I'm just a paveman. Your world frightens and confuses me. What are these "cobblestones" and "gravel"?
I think, to my gut intuition, "west" means "the far side" and "east" means "the close side".
Why‽‽
Oh well. I got up and left. Hopefully somebody will tell me when the midterm is and what it's going to cover, so I can figure out some way to learn whatever that is.
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This (NSFW) fancy condom applicator dealy seems to me like a great leap forward in prevention of both babies and cooties.
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Won't help with toilet seat cooties or Sifu's midterm, though.
210: Or maybe my gut thinks "Atlantic Ocean = East". I assume from growing up on the east coast.
Also there's something going on where, for a split second, I try to identify east/west of, say, China by drawing parallel mental lines through the earth to line up with the US, and of course get them backwards.
Or! Maybe it's that if you're travelling east, you get to the west side first. So East is a direction, and simultaneously the far side of Africa.
Lots of ways to tangle my gut intuition!
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Okay! I went and talked to some people, and have started to figure out what's going on. Turns out we covered all the material that the department intended for the class to cover in the first two and a half weeks of class (because, for some reason, the instructor thought everybody knew it). She's now very close to being doing with covering all the material we'll be covering in our statistics class next semester, and moving into uncharted territory. As best I can tell, she somehow got the idea that her job was to teach all of modern statistics -- without using any math -- in one semester. I think there are other problems, but even just given that no wonder it's not going well.
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Returning to urple's issue, this seems to imply that you can get herpes from a monkey.
On cursory googling it doesn't seem like you can get herpes from a meteor.
169: I'm thinking the sweat and the padding deep inside make a well protected and good culture medium. How about gas sterilization, like with ethylene oxide?
I'd prefer to believe she wasn't cheating on me with a monkey.
she somehow got the idea that her job was to teach all of modern statistics -- without using any math -- in one semester
I am at a loss for words.
218: My prime-time TV viewing was disturbed by this story. They broke into NCIS Los Angeles to show the sheriff's press conference. I first thought it was a big prank ("Lions and tigers and bears! Oh, my!), and my next thought was that it was an Animal Liberation Front action.
When you say 'without using any math', what exactly do you mean? Just no advanced math? Algebra and under? Or really, no math at all?
I can see how you'd teach an introductory stats class without any calculus or probability theory, but I'm not sure how you'd go beyond the introductory stuff.
I'm not sure how you could even get through day 1 literally without any math at all.
I'm telling you guy, 183 is the answer. There are very few problems ionizing radiation can't solve.
I'd prefer to believe she wasn't cheating on me with a monkey.
Us too. You're supposed to be the weird food guy. Weird sexual behavior is SEK's turf.
227: I'm not a doctor, but I'm thinking she could have gotten infected by eating the monkey.
225: essentially no math beyond regression equations (and even those only in a very limited way). And it's not an introductory stats class. It's an introductory graduate stats class; there was a placement test to get in, and the name is something like "Intermediate Statistical Analysis in [ field ]".
If anybody's curious, the subject on which we will be tested on Monday (and which was covered in about five thoroughly non-mathematical minutes) is multilevel modeling. Not really something you can blow through in five minutes, in my personal opinion.
Returning to urple's issue, this seems to imply that you can get herpes from a monkey.
The use of the phrase "the herpes virus" in that article makes no sense. Herpes B is a particular herpesvirus that is common and mild in monkeys but very, very dangerous to humans. It could be transmitted from this escaped monkey to a person via biting. Other herpesviruses include HSV-1, aka "oral herpes"; HSV-2, aka "genital herpes"; VZV, aka "chicken pox" aka "shingles"; and Epstein-Barr virus.
230: As near as I can tell, most of that article did not make sense.
hanging them inside out in the sun -- it's a surprisingly effective bleach/anti-stink treatment.
Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.
Our fancy-pants JRoth toilet has the hydraulic mechanism that prevents slamming the lid or seat down. It's nifty.
We have one of those. The trouble is that you get used to it, and then you go to someone else's house and forget that if you just drop the seat, it will make a loud crashing sound.
Just for general info, alcohol-based hand sanitizer does nothing to kill the rhinovirus. In fact, it may even like alcohol. So manual scrubbing with soap and water is still the best protection against colds.
You mean that's the 0.01% of germs it doesn't kill?
195.2: I am kinda with Stormcrow on the general sentiment, but everyone knows that he's a bougie snob because he likes soccer.
Indeed. I went to half a soccer game last night, bumped into a CEO of my acquaintance and sat on a bench outside of the stadium with him while he smoked a cigar and we watched two UMC high school teams play.
In fact, it may even like alcohol.
I feel a strange kinship with the rhinovirus.
Because you like alcohol but are rarely found on the toilet at Chili's.
Psst, LB hovers to pee, pass it on.
German has "sitzpinkler" for guys who pee sitting down. What's the German word for women who hover while peeing?