didnt know where else to put this, but i got a good laugh out of this!!!!
Who Will Kill The Evil Germs? / Microwave your sponge, kill bacteria dead. Note: Does not yet work on people. Or life
Who Will Kill The Evil Germs?
Microwave your sponge, kill bacteria dead. Note: Does not yet work on people. Or life
Is it over yet? Is there some sort of end in sight? Can we all emerge from the dark cloud of sheer ongoing terror in this country regarding germs and bacteria and sundry microscopic things that seep into your toenails and eat away at your eyeballs and steal your basic cable?
No, no, we cannot.
Here is a new study, from the University of Florida. It proves that you can indeed kill almost every hint of bacteria on your average rancid germ-filled household sponge by simply nuking it for two full minutes -- which will, if you try it, turn your sponge into a smoking smoldering extraterrestrial WMD device you cannot touch for about an hour lest you scald your fingertips and wonder what the heck a basic household sponge is made of that it doesn't actually catch fire or liquefy after two minutes in a microwave. But hey, at least everything's dead.
This is, of course, good news indeed, given how sponges are apparently astonishing factories for bacteria and the kitchen sinks they often hang around in are reportedly the absolute best (read: warm and wet, and not in the good way) places for germs to fester and breed and given how lots of people get sick every year from (apparently) licking the sink and given how we have very much become, after all, a quivering, twitching, germ-obsessed nation.
Have you not felt the fear? Have you not seen the TV specials and witnessed the commercials and seen the astounding, silly array of terror-inducing products on the store shelves, all sorts of antibacterial soaps and sprays and mouthwashes and wipes, body cleansers and child-dousers and pet-suckers and foot-screamers? Of course you have.
This is the message: The world is a shockingly toxic place, you are not the slightest bit safe, you could get sick and die at any second from merely touching the wrong surface and then sucking your fingertips and this goes doubly true if that surface happens to be Lindsay Lohan or Bill O'Reilly or American foreign policy.
And therefore if you don't carry an emergency sanitation kit with you at all times and wipe everything down and wear flip-flops in the shower and wash your hands and your tongue and your genitals and your cat at least 15 times a day, you are: 1) utterly insane, 2) a poor excuse for an American, 3) a poor excuse for a parent, 4) probably drunk.
Is that an exaggeration? Not by much. Indeed, the fear is palpable, and real, and also terrifically stupid, given how it is at least partly created and fueled by giddy chemical corporations only too happy to supply you with all sorts of toxic substances with which to kill the evil germs of your life, most of which have existed since the dawn of time and which also includes all the good necessary bacteria that actually serve a positive function in the ecology of existence. But hey, balanced perspective has never exactly topped the list of American virtues, you know?
Here's another ad, just one of dozens. Clorox Disinfecting Wipes. Bleach-filled chemical things that you should use regularly on every surface of your home lest little Timmy grab an innocent American cookie from the exact same spot on the countertop where you happened to unload some raw drippy blood-drenched hamburger meat just minutes before. Oh my God. You're not using these wipes? Are you trying to kill your child?
Oh, there are plenty of studies to fan the fear. After all, it's absolutely true that there are more carcinogens and synthetic by-products and incomprehensible spores jumping up from, say, your average American shag carpet and into your lungs than from the entire R&D department of the Dow Chemical Co. Did you know? This is why you see dumpy perky blouse-clad housewives spraying gallons of that Febreze crap all over their drapes and carpets and husbands in some sort of orgasmic olfactory delight in those TV commercials -- to cover up the toxic swill of modern existence with synthetic lavender, that's why.
Hotel rooms? Oh my delirious germ-causing God, don't get me started. Did you not see that "Primetime" special last year, where they went into various nice, mid-range hotels across America wielding only a black light and an evil grin and found all sorts of residues of blood and urine and sperm and feces and Dick Cheney and other sundry bodily discharges spread around the carpet and bedspread and walls and even on the sad little unread Bible in the bedside drawer? I bet you did.
Wait, there's more. What's the most germ-clogged, festering item on your body right now (besides, of course, your body itself)? That would be your cell phone, silly. After all, it just sits there all day, simmering in the happy juices of your toasty pants pocket, churning out microbes of horror like Paris Hilton churns out intimations of death. And you put that thing up to your face without first disinfecting it with some ethyl alcohol and a flamethrower? What are you, high?
The end result is all so revealing of the icky-sticky underbelly of human existence that most terrified Americans will take one look and vow never ever to stay in a hotel room or talk on a cell phone again -- except, of course, that they will. (By the way, does it matter that the very same black light will find the exact same residues throughout your own home and car and Bible drawer? Or that life is pretty much made up of equal parts flowers and honey and blood, sunshine and semen? Verily, it appears not.)
It is an odd and telling conundrum, this germ thing, perhaps the perfect microcosm of the modern, Muslim-fearin', WMD-jumpin,' Bush-whacked American mind-set. On the one hand, it is very true that the world is indeed a far more toxic place than at any time in history, what with terrifying cancer rates, disease, depression, all manner of virus and sickness and Adam Sandler movies resulting directly or indirectly from the truly dazzling array of newborn chemicals and gases and germs and plastic residues surrounding our consumer-mad lifestyles. One tip: Breathe deep the frisky air of any modern American city and try not to imagine the astounding soup of industrial toxins you're actually inhaling, OK?
Then again, the human animal is, after all, one giant bacteria farm. It's what we do. It's who we are, ever since the first caveman scraped the greenish-brown gunk from a prehistoric pond and decided it would make a fabulous sauce for his wooly mammoth steak. To attempt to somehow remove ourselves from the germy/bacterial/viral miasma of existence is like trying to remove the white from death, the sigh from the orgasm, the sky from the color blue. Ain't gonna happen. What's more, it just makes God roll her eyes, and laugh.
How you balance this perspective is, as always, up to you. After all, as the saying goes, if all you have is a bleach wipe, everything looks like a germ.
