Urine a heap o' trouble

The nice thing about Frazz is that you don't have to wonder if Jef Mallett is passing on some silly rumor, especially when fitness is involved, given that he is a bit obsessive on the topic.

But triathlons aside, the strip is based on intelligent exchanges, and, if Caulfield says Michael Phelps pees in the pool, then Michael Phelps pees in the pool. And if Caulfield says scientists support Phelps' theory that it's harmless, you can take that to the bank.

We don't even need to get Kevin Costner involved.

As the experts noted, Phelps is only mistaken in saying that the chlorine kills anything in the urine. Urine is germ-and-microbe-free to begin, so there's nothing to kill, while, meanwhile, the relative pool/bladder volumes makes it inconsequential anyway.

Granted, there are a lot of things that probably won't kill you but that you still might not want to know about.

But, oh my, we've become a squeamish people.

Example: Back in June, 2011, Portland, Oregon, drained an 8 million gallon reservoir because surveillance cameras caught a guy peeing in the water, which means the taxpayers spent $36,000 to assuage the tender sensibilities of the head of the water bureau.

As this article on the event notes, a lot worse things happen in reservoirs, starting with the things that inspired W.C. Fields to drink gin.

Actually, I've heard two versions of the Fields quote about why he didn't drink water, but it really doesn't matter which he really said, except inasmuch as whichever one he actually said does reflect on his scientific knowledge.

He'd be correct to note that fish don't climb out of the water and run to a Port-O-San to relieve themselves, but they don't copulate at all, in or out of the water.

Now, before someone brings it up, let me note that reservoirs are very large and hotel water tanks are small, and it makes a difference. No dispute there.

But come on, man: I saw signs on the beach in Alameda a few years ago, noting that it was illegal for babies to paddle in the ocean without leakproof diapers.

You're telling me that the Pacific-freaking-Ocean, full of sea lions and whales, both of which do, bygawd, both pee and copulate, can be threatened by a dozen bare-assed babies on a sunny afternoon?

This kind of stupid goes back a ways: It's been nearly half a century since the Yippies panicked Mayor Daley into posting guards on Chicago's reservoirs to prevent demonstrators from spiking the water supply with LSD, which wouldn't have worked even if they'd had the amount of acid (theoretically) required.

And my grandfather came up with a clipping from the early 1900s about a scandal in which Italians were caught bathing in a New York City reservoir. He was tickled by the matter-of-fact racism of the piece: Clearly, the writer expected to turn on his tap and get water that tasted of garlic and cheap wine.

But we've entered a period of squeamishness that goes above and beyond mere silliness, and I think it's because we're not only urbanized but have totally and completely lost touch with nature.

It's not so long ago that even city people kept a few chickens, but it's long enough ago that I guess you probably have to be over 50 to remember it. Half the people in this country never see animals, aside from pigeons, squirrels and dressed-up pugs.

I was at the Lincoln Park Zoo one morning, following -- to provide a sense of how long ago this was -- a concert at the Electric Theater featuring Jefferson Airplane and Iron Butterfly, and my friend and I rounded a corner and saw that the next animal on display was a cow.

We were laughing about it, but then a field trip of seven and eight year olds came along and they weren't real clear on what that animal was. Once their teacher told them, they were incredulous, and it seemed unlikely that any of them were going to drink milk again for awhile.

This was understandable for poor kids from the inner city, but, 45 years later, it's spread. Just recently, people were gagging en masse over a Facebook posting about whether calamari in restaurants might actually be pig rectums.

The linked article admitted they hadn't actually found any examples of this, but never mind. You might as well tell a slumber party of 11-year-old girls that there's no such thing as ghosts.

And consider this: (A), aren't these delicate souls the same people who praise Indians for using every part of the buffalo? and (B) what have you got against chit'lins, there, white boy?

Not two weeks later, people were falling apart on-line over the revelation that gelatin is made from dead cows. Which I guess would explain the picture of the cow on the Knox Gelatin packet.

Look, I don't mind if you decide to avoid meat. It's a free country. You don't have to eat meat. Or fish. Or, for that matter, kale or quinoa or gluten-free medicinal hemp.

And I will readily concede that there are several good reasons to be vegetarian, from nutritional concerns to sustainability issues to conditions in factory farms.

But "ick" is not one of them. "Ick" simply shows that you don't know how the universe works.

And there may be a price to pay for growing up under that bell jar: Studies have shown that kids who grow up around animals are less prone to allergies and asthma than those who don't.

So come on. Get real. Embrace the circle of life: Everything that lives is gonna die sometime.

But not because somebody peed in the pool.

Comments

[phred]

Semi-interestingly enough, people in my neighborhood (Silver Spring, just over the Washington, DC, line, inside the Beltway) keep chickens. A few days after I moved into my house in 1999, I found a fully-feathered headless chicken on my front lawn. I still don't know how it got there, or whether it was part of a religious ceremony or being kept for food and had an altercation with a dog.

And in nearby Takoma Park, there's a statue to Roscoe, a rooster who used to roam the streets there. See http://ww2.gazette.net/gazette_archive/2002/200244/takoma/news/128090-1.html. I think the drains in Takoma Park feed into the Potomac, where DC gets its water supply, but I'm sure Roscoe used his own toilet.

[WVFran]

Perhaps that was the 'welcome to the neighborhood' cake, phred. They just didn't want to go to the trouble of plucking.

If you haven't seen it, Mike, here is some dirt for thought: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/16/dirt-diner_n_2666592.html

[Mike Peterson]

We had two chicken houses on the block when we lived in Pennsylvania, before we went hard core rural, where, oddly enough, none of the neighbors had livestock except one, who kept (and subsequently ate) a pig one year, and they were a good mile away.

But my five-year-old self's recollection is that, as the expression indicates, a rooster can still put on some pretty good final mileage after his head has been chopped off. I've never heard of an actual escape, but phred may have encountered the Olympic champion of post-mortem chicken marathoners.

As for that link, good for him! Each time somebody pays him $110 for a plate of dirt, his entrepreneurial instincts have been proven. I wonder if his restaurant has a sign directing people to the Egress?

Of course, you have to read this quote from the article with the odd, slightly tone-deaf inflection of an Iron Chef translator:

"It was my first time to have soup made from soil," said Hiromi Fujie, a nearby resident. "It was a bit gritty but not at all unpleasant, a little like vegetable soup. I liked it."

[Jim]

My old hometown just had some brief trouble with their water treatment plant; the media pointed out that one of the options for purification was putting 8 drops of bleach in a gallon of water, shaking, and letting it sit. One of my friends from high school, who still lives there, quoted that advice and said something to the effect of "Yuck! I can't imagine drinking anything with bleach in it, no matter how small the amount!"

I couldn't resist replying to tell him just what goes on at the water treatment plant -- specifically, the part where they add chlorine to the water...

[Mary in Ohio]

When Green Tea first became healthful, friends insisted I try some. I told them that, since I don't have a lawn service, I'd be better off steeping fresh clippings when I mowed again. And cheaper.

[Dann]

*chuckle*, +1, and similar such comments.

These are the fruits of 40+ years of hypersensitivity. Always good for a chuckle, but not exactly a surprise ending.

Regards,
Dann

[Mat]

I do want to point out that "ick" does have a place in food, but not insofar as someone's realization that animals are slaughtered and their base components are used in component foods that are regularly consumed.

Rather, the ick factor should be extended to disgusting, deplorable conditions in industrial farms that lead to cross-contamination and bacterial outbreaks that get people sick.

It's also disgusting to think about how mistreated many animals are in industrial farms. I'm sure at this point in time, it's common knowledge that chickens on industrial farms are regularly kept in tiny cages, abused, sometimes with their beaks burned off, etc. It's as repulsive as it sounds. For this reason, I try to find humane meats and I buy only free-range eggs. I can accept that an animal will die to feed me and other humans, but I refuse to accept that we must be barbaric to animals when they are slaughtered and kept.

As an aside, I find the Lincoln Park Zoo incredibly depressing (I assume this is the Zoo in Chicago). Everything in the zoo is far too small for the animals. The Brookfield Zoo is far superior in that regard, given the large areas that the animals are given to live in.

[Mike Peterson]

Absolutely -- humane conditions being listed as a valid reason, though, in that case, it's more in the nature of a boycott than a commitment to vegetarianism.

As for zoos, a director once told me that it's always a compromise, that the move to "natural" enclosures are only marginally more comfortable for the animals and that, if they really had "natural" environments, you'd never see them. And the "natural" space granted a Siberian tiger would be the size of a county. He admitted the shortcomings and said that they figure, if the animals are comfortable enough to reproduce, that's about as close as they're going to come to an ideal situation. But for many species, the alternative is extinction, which is a conversation for another day.

Except that I see the meatballs at Ikea contain horsemeat. This is to create a parallel with the mahogany bookcases. The meatballs are actually just horsemeat with beef veneer. Not so good for horses, but a positive for mahogany trees.