These new ads for bleach are raw as hell and I’m honestly not ready to live and die in this world. I’m not strong enough. I’m soft and afraid and my bloodline is weak; I know this. Rome has lost its breed of noble bloods, and I’m the most lost out of anybody. Have you seen this? Are you prepared to meet God?
Nora Dunn – who survived SNL’s ’85 season and has nothing left to prove – strides down a grocery store aisle wearing a cardigan made of your ancestors’ bones and says, “Lots of marketing going on in this aisle.” It sounds like a compliment.
And wolf looks like a sheep if he wears a wool coat. Nora Dunn is not here to be your friend.
“Fancy labels, slick designs…this one’s got flowers on it. It’s pretty.” We are all Anne Hathaway smiling like a goddamn rube right before Meryl Streep tells us she picked out our shapeless turquoise sweater for us. Pretty isn’t good, you weaklings. Nora Dunn has seen some shit, and she’s here to save our live, not spare our feelings.
“When the stomach flu ravages my home, am I supposed to believe that an Ocean Breeze is going to wash it away?” You credulous, soft-titted children. You will not last the autumn; you lack even the vigor necessary to die in winter. What have you been cleaning your home with? Gossamer and optimism? You white-necked naif. You do not even deserve to have hands to clean with. Nora Dunn’s home has been ravaged by stomach flu. Ravaged. Black, poisonous, drippy stuff shooting out both ends. It got everywhere. Everywhere. And where were you, Ocean Breeze? Fucking nowhere to be found is where. She used BLEACH.
“I know what clean smells like,” Nora Dunn says. “Bleach.” Clean smells like bleach; bleach is what clean is. If A, then B. A always, therefore B always. A and B are indistinguishable. If you have clean, you have bleach. If you have no bleach, nothing is clean. Do you see now? She’s seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like drops of dog piss in a bleach puddle.
“The same bleach that knocks down dysentery.” WAIT, WHAT? NORA DUNN, IS IT 1700 WHERE YOU ARE? ARE YOU LIVING ON A SHIP IN HIS MAJESTY’S NAVY? ALSO YOU ARE KIND OF MAKING IT SOUND LIKE BLEACH CURES DYSENTERY WHICH IS NOT EXACTLY TRUE? BLEACH IS LIKE A BLOWTORCH INASMUCH AS IT WILL GET RID OF DYSENTERY FOR SURE BUT IT’LL ALSO BURN YOUR EYES CLEAN OUT IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY SPILL IT.
“And cleans up crime scenes.” WAIT
WAIT
“AND CLEANS UP CRIME SCENES” NORA DUNN ARE YOU ADVERTISING THE BENEFITS OF BLEACH TO SERIAL KILLERS
WHY WOULD YOU EVEN BRING THAT UP
MOST OF US ARE JUST LOOKING FOR SOME HOUSEHOLD DISINFECTANT NOT “WHAT CLEANS A BUCKET CONTAINING LITERALLY EVERY BODILY FLUID”
“If you want to spend three bucks on liquid doubt, be my guest.” Why is this commercial about ontology all of a sudden?? Nora Dunn, this commercial is for cleaning solvents and it’s 31 seconds long and you’re making me question my entire life!
“But if you want clean, get a cleaner with bleach in it.” JESUS. OKAY. I WILL BUY LITERALLY ANYTHING YOU TELL ME TO, THIS IS THE ONLY WOMAN WHO COULD HAVE MARRIED CURLY FROM CITY SLICKERS.
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only bleach will remain.
I am so excited for this commercial series to continue. Also I found this:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index…
“I’m interested in collecting skulls, skeletons, etc. from various species. What would be the easiest and quickest way to remove flesh from carcasses that I come across?”
Bleach.
I’m not saying I know someone who (for her livelihood) sells cleaned bones from found carcasses but I totally know someone who (for her livelihood) sells cleaned bones from found carcasses and dermestid beetles are the way to go. Bleach can make the bones brittle and crumbly.
+1 for dermestid beetles. Not only do they get the bones clean of ALL soft tissue, they don’t alter them chemically like bleach does.
Where on earth do you get these beatles?
A museum that I worked at started their dermestid colony by asking for/getting some beetles from another museum’s colony. There are wild dermestids living in many places that will come to carrion left outside, so that can work, but you will also get flies (and their maggots) and, depending on how protected/wild your rendering spot is, you might also get foxes, coyotes, bears, stray dogs, wandering teenagers, the police etc. etc…. Small corpses can be dealt with discreetly, but big things stink and can draw a diverse crowd…
Things you never thought would come up in the life of a museum employee…
Also I wish I could give this more thumbs.
Ha, yeah, I saw that episode of Dirty Jobs, too.
“I know what clean smells like. Flesh-eating beetles.”
(picturing this as a real ad and dying right now)
Yep…was just here to say the same. Bleach is the go-to to remove bacteria from surfaces, but if you truly want clean bones that will stand the test of time, dermestids are indeed the way. Now, if you let your carcasses get a bit whiffy before things got good and dried out, you may want to wipe them down after the larvae are all done…and then a very dilute bleach solution or one featuring a bit of isopropanol could come in quite handy, but bleach, especially as a cleaning bath, is too much, really…
Dermestid beetles are great for fine bones like lizards, but larger bones are most effectively cleaned with a large tub of tap water kept warm for a couple weeks. So if you want to clean like a lot of skulls just drop them in a remote hot tub.
Huh! Good to know!
Oh man, showing up at the weekend cabin to find a fucking elk skull in the hot tub would be a major downer.
Right but would it be more or less of a downer than that last picture of a hot tub I sent you.
The one that is “not used so much anymore because people kept dying”.
My mom (who is totally not a serial killer) used to just boil the bones my dad (who is also not a serial killer) would bring home for a really long time to get them clean
Weirdly, this could also be a description of how I make soup. With chicken bones. With a caveat about matzoh balls.
I have done this.
Disclaimer: I am not a serial killer, or even a one-hit wonder murderer. I HAVE COMMITTED NO MURDERS OF ANY KIND. My kid (who might still turn out to be a serial killer) found a deer jawbone in the fenced-in yard (how did it get there?) with the teeth still in it (the teeth come out and fit back in like a satisfying little 3D puzzle; isn’t that horrifying for some reason?) and we soaked it in bleach for a LONG TIME before I assented to his keeping it in his room. On his windowsill. Where it remains to this day.
Life is a mystery, full of questions.
3D PUZZLE – I am dead now, too. Bleach me.
Nooo. Not bleach, like Clorox. The choice of fine museums everywhere (er, at least those I know of) is to use dermestids at first (but they don’t like all flesh–they’re not terribly fond of carnivores, especially greasy ones, as I recall) and then to really clean and dry the bones, boil them in Biz.
–current veterinarian, former museum specimen preparator, friend of dermestids, and skull collector
She bathes in bleach. Makeup = bleach. Everything is bleach now.
And yet she is never clean.
“CLEANS UP CRIME SCENES”
*adds to serial killer handbook*
don’t write things down. that’s how they catch you.
As someone who represents murderers for a living (including several serial killers), I can tell you that bleach does not destroy all traces. Many a would-be successful cleanup has failed in this way.
never have I wanted to know more about any comment. (literally anything you could tell us, I am all ears.)
Right? Linabobeena, you had us at “represents murderers for a living.”
Fuck. Yes. This is the world I was born to rule. Bring it.
I cannot clean with bleach! Years and years of scrubbing bird cages with soapy, bleachy water and getting said water in my face as I chiseled away at mountains of bird poo and then the smell that would linger in my hands for five days… only subsiding when it was once again my turn to clean the bird cages with bleach and the cycle started all over again…
So now when people recommend bleach as a cleaner I go “hmm, but windex is the same thing, right?” and it’s not but windex doesn’t give me bird flashbacks.
that sounds miserable and I wish I knew why you were forced to clean Mt. Bird Poo.
10 years of pet store employment! I still pull the occasional weekend there to help the owner out, but the birds get cleaned on weekdays so they are no longer my problem!
Sympathy. I used to work in wildlife rehab, and the place I worked for specialized in birds of prey. So there was Mt. Bird Poo plus whatever blood, guts and bits were leftover from their meals. The smell of bleach and rotting rat bits is something I will never forget. It was the coolest and grossest job I’ve ever had.
I’m that way but subsitute Resolve and cat vomit #PTSD #Thestruggleisreal
Hot vinegar and a flattop grill.
One day they ran out of white and made me use apple cider. The smell of hot apple cider vinegar plus grease is what hell smells like.
That cat would throw up 11 times a day until I figured out, I kid you not, he was gluten intolerant. Once I switched his cat food to a premium all meat kind, no more barf, and no more Resolve!
I went to the Windex site to find their slogan so I could make some bird-based joke, and the first thing I see is a photo of a woman sitting behind a desk, with the caption, ‘Don’t believe the birds and their false claims.’ I swear this is true.
It eventually links back to some complaint letter they allege to have received from an anonymous bird, complaining that Windex-cleaned glass is so clear that it’s a problem for Our Feathered Friends. Whatever the case, Windex might not be so PB[ird]SD-safe anymore.
Wait…so are they arguing that Windex DOESN’T get the glass that clear? Are they defending the streaks left behind as a bird safety feature? I’m confused about their message.
The super windex they sell at Home Depot is better
Bleach dissolves everything but fat if you let it sit long enough.
Welp, there go my summer beach bod plans.
Ammonia dissolves fat like whoa.
Clean your range hood with it.
Daily reminder not to mix bleach and ammonia or the fumes might actually kill you.
I know this and I still thought “huh, bleach = everything but fat, and ammonia = fat so bleach +ammonia must be a great cleaner!” Wrong!
it’ll kill you, then completely dissolve your body!
One of the few times I have legit yelled at my boyfriend, was because a garbage bin in the apartment had become really gross, and he took it into the bathroom to clean it, and after a minute I noticed that I could smell both Pine-Sol and Comet, and FLIPPED MY SHIT at him, because hi, you could have killed us.
I think he has finally gotten the message of “OH MY GOD ALWAYS READ THE LABELS OF THINGS ALWAYS ALWAYS” between that and the time he became woozy because he took both Nyquil and cough syrup.
My MIL wholeheartedly believes that it’s not clean unless it smells like bleach (or in the case of clothes, you must smell the dryer sheet even after you’ve washed it three more times). I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to see this idea skewered!!
I grew up in LA and surroundings, and the smell of clean is actually ammonia, babies!
Reminds me of the time at my high school job in this tiny, dusty karate studio in an industrial park when I had to go upstairs and clean the loft practice area which hadn’t been cleaned in years, in 45 minutes, before the second session of the Mommy & Me toddler karate group met, because the mothers complained after the first session because it was oh god revolting up there. (And rightly so.)
I did not have time, in 45 minutes and with only a swiffer duster, half a roll of paper towels, and copious amounts of stinky green solvent, to clean the mats AND floors AND walls AND equipment, so I prioritized – push the dust bunnies under the mats, swiffer the floor between the stairs and the mats where bare feet would walk, push the dusty equipment toddlers couldn’t use off the mat on the back end of the room, wipe down and position the kiddie-sized stuff on the mat ahead of time so no moms would have a reason to step off the mat onto the dirty parts of the floor, completely ignore the walls, and wrap the remaining paper towels around the swiffer, get them sopping wet with this nameless green solvent, and scrub the ever-loving life out of those mats.
It was the most depressingly half-assed job I’ve ever done at cleaning, and I wasn’t quite done when the mommy & me group traipsed up the stairs, but I swear, the first thing they said when they got there was, “Wow! It smells so clean up here! Thank you so much!”
I am pretty sure I was just scrubbing the mats with a mixture of dish soap and ammonia, judging by the smell. It was so nasty. But hey, they liked it.
I used to manage a pool, and my boss told us that when we didn’t have time to clean the bathrooms we should just pour some cleaning fluid in the corners because people confuse smelling clean with actually being clean. It kinda worked, but the sand from the volleyball pit caught up with us in the end.
Once when I was home on disability, they sent a cleaning person out to to my house, who believed that the stronger something smelled, the better it cleaned. I found her using tile mildew remover on the hardwood floors. Avaunt!
Oh, goodness…that’s like people who believe that the more a skin product stings, the better it must be working…and not that it’s just irritating their skin.
And here i was springing for the less-stinky eco-cleaning like a chump.
Is Nora Dunn…my Dad? He uses so much bleach on everything that there’s no more enamel on the bottom of the tub (only agreeably rough cast iron, like a built-in loofah) and we all have little white spots on our clothes where it caught us by surprise. He can’t stand scented cleansers, either (and passed that along to us.) He tried to bleach the side of the house and only stopped when my Mom pointed out how much it would cost to get that much bleach.
And yet it’s still not as bad for coral reefs as sunscreen!
He tried to bleach the side of the house strong contender for Peak Dad right here
My partner and his dad literally did bleach our house last year. His dad wants us to believe that regular siding bleaches are necessary home maintenance for vinyl siding.
Let’s have more commercials like this, I say! I’m done with mothers rolling their eyes while smiling as their toddler and dog splash spaghetti sauce all over the kitchen. Fuck that! Who do those broads think they’re fooling? Life is a horrid hellscape and we need products that are meant to wipe out ALL life, not just make it smell better.
Don’t forget the doofy husbands tracking in mud while also breaking things before bumbling away to watch the football or whatever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-FqEaU5Qg
WITNESS ME!
Or the grass-stained children who run into the house in cleats and throw their helmet-racket-duffel bag-gloves on the couch as they spill Kool-aid down the fronts of their jerseys.
Bleach smells like childhood to me. Thanks to years on the swim team, I should add, not because my family is a roving band of serial killers.
Thanks to a childhood on a swim team, I totally do not understand why other people do not appreciate the smell of chlorine.
Me: “But it’s so comforting!”
Them: *looks askance* *backs away slowly*
Ahh, you might need to explain to them about your family not being a roving band of serial killers? In my experience that always makes people more comfortable.
Me too, but only because all of Los Angeles smells like Chlorine in the summer. I land at LAX, take a big whiff, and think, “ah home!’
I was also on the swim team as a kid! 1991-9 to be exact. The weekend didn’t really start for me if I wasn’t smelling chlorine in the morning. ^_^
Ah yes. Spending your entire Saturday milling around a pool with your race numbers written on your hand, waiting for your turn, bored to tears, chewing on your goggle strap while playing cards. It’s almost time for your relay! Where’s your team? Go find your backstroker!
Trading Pokemon with kids from the other team! Buying the weird junk food you could only find at pool stands! Traveling to another meet and playing tag in the impromptu tent city you made!
Swimming was so much fun when you were too little to care if you won.
I had a shirt that said exactly that, as a matter of fact!
Hah. I spent my childhood on a synchro team and was later a lifeguard/swim instructor. When I was a child/teenager my sweat smelled of chlorine, that’s how much time I spent in the pool.
tl;dr Chlorine is a comforting smell to me too.
Are you me? Swim team, synchro, lifeguard/swim instructor – you just described my life up to age 18.
Ditto with it being a comforting smell.
Yessss the swimmer’s love for chlorine/bleach is real.
When I stopped getting chlorine-y sweat, I knew I’d actually retired.
Anyone else have to wash their hair with coffee grounds?
What does that do? I am intensely interested
Not a swimmer, but presumably it gets the chlorine stink out of it. I’ve heard it recommended as an odor absorber for cat pee smell.
I love the smell of bleach too! That commercial is bullshit, but there’s nothing better than getting off the filthy subway every morning and realizing that today is the day they’re attempting to clean Grand Central armed solely with a bucket of bleach.
One of the recurring world building details in Seanan Mcguire’s Incryptid, about a family of rogue cryptozoologists, is that they have to buy so much bleach, ammonia and other cleansers that they go to the flea market so they don’t end up on a list anywhere as suspected serial killers.
I must get this book!
Book 1 of the series is Discount Armageddon. Enjoy, they’re awesome. Free stories in the same universe on her website, with handy notes as to whether they’re spoiler-y.
My childhood! All my summers from 3rd grade on, and my autumns all through high school, too. Man, now I’m feeling nostalgic and wondering if I have a swim suit I can fit into anymore so I can go swim laps at the gym for which I have an almost totally unutiized membership.
Relatedly; why is it every swimsuit on the rack for those who, you know, have a rack has a plunging scoop neckline? You know what happens with DDs and a plunging neckline when I try to do laps? 57 pounds of drag weight because the whole top of my suit fills with water, that’s what.
I’m sure it helps the workout, but only until I gasp and pass out, draped in the gutter.
Junonia.com sells plus-size swimsuits with high necklines made to actually swim in, fyi.
OMG Bless you for this link. I’m so tired of looking for swimsuits that I can actually swim in.
You are a true friend. I’ve been looking for these for years.
If I learned *anything* from Jolie Kerr, it is that bleach is not effective on bodily fluids.
At least if they’re giving advice to serial killers it is bad and unhelpful advice.
Them, and every forensics show known to teeveeland.
Yes! Something about protein stains not reacting well to bleach? (Or maybe it was ammonia and bleach mixing into a toxic compound?)
Basically, team vinegar 4eva!
vinegar or baking soda. It’s the New Clean!
Also: Pet urine cleaner. It’s awesome at getting out even old blood stains.
*makes mental note re: my period* #bloodflood
It may not get the stains out, but it will definitely degrade the DNA so you couldn’t ID the source.
I know this because I work in a lab, not because I am a serial killer (I am not a serial killer).
I know this because I [was made] in a lab, not because I am a serial killer (I am not a serial killer). Please don’t plagiarise Ted Cruz’s stump speech.
what you wanna do is spot-treat your murder-frock with OxyClean, then do a warm wash with bleach.
Never mix Oxy clean and bleach! It will dissolve your grandmother’s cute vintage kitchen tablecloths!
Actually if that combination dissolves fabric it sounds like the perfect treatment for your murder-frock
OMG NOT AT THE SAME TIME. two seperate washes.
Oh shit, y’all, I let a lace top sit in a combo of hot water, a HUGE scoop of OxyClean, and a HUGE splash of bleach for like, 18 hours the other day. I had no idea! (It survived just fine, although it STILL has the stubborn black stains around the armpits where a black blazer rubbed off on them, wtf.) And yes, I have tried vinegar as well! (But not with bleach, at least I know THAT much.)
murder-frock
I was just recently on a jury for a murder trial that involved the defendant pouring bleach on the victim’s body. It most definitely did degrade any DNA!
Yeah bleach isn’t the best for protein stains but it does WONDERS for mold.
It’s probably a trick that all teevee criminals use bleach. I mean, they don’t want to give away the real methods, right?
Catfish. People say pigs because they’ve read too much Thomas Harris, but catfish will even eat teeth. No, I’m not a serial killer, just tres Southern Gothic.
If you must use bleach on bloodstained evidence, use oxygenated bleach. http://www.exploreforensics.co.uk/detecting-evide…
She dissolved my ancestors in a tub of bleach in order to make that jacket, didn’t she
My boyfriend likes to tease me when I buy environmentally friendly cleaning products because he thinks they are useless. Unsurprisingly, he found this commercial delightful when it appeared on our television a few weeks ago.
Most of my cleaning supplies are pretty innocuous, if not marketed as “green,” but I always have a bottle of bleach around.
Bleach: for when you absolutely, positively need everything dead. *
*except prions.
I lived in London in the 90’s. Mooooooo.
Yeah, I don’t have a choice. Bleach makes me seriously ill. Also, the basis for most of the environmentally-friendly products (vinegar, baking soda, ammonia, lemon, etc.) is pretty much exactly what cleaning have been for forever, so.
I LOVE this commercial so much. I think I identify with it because for the past three years, I have had to share a bathroom with a grubby PhD candidate who has never once picked up a damned sponge, so I bleach the life out of that bathroom. I’m moving out in three weeks and I cannot WAIT.
Don’t clean your dog piss puddle with bleach though, unless you like the smell of chlorine gas (you won’t).
Or cat piss. Or any piss, probably?
Yeah any piss is bad 🙂
Yeah, no piss.
Source: Once peed in a freshly bleached toilet.
Yeah, my sister gassed herself once trying to clean an unfortunate accident out of her washing machine. The entire family learned a valuable lesson about when not to use bleach that day.
Wow okay so I used to work at this doggie daycare that cleaned EVERYTHING with bleach (unless there was an animal actively occupying the space to be cleaned). This, uh, really helps explain why I hated that job so much.
Did this today, can confirm that the aroma is vile in the extreme
Ii will love you forever because you said “chlorine gas” instead of “mustard gas”, which is apparently such a pervasive myth that my freaking *mortuary chemistry teacher* stated it as fact in class :/
all commercials are about ontology though tbh
Wish I could thumbs up multiple times…
I like how Clorox’s marketing strategy is to make fun of the entire idea of marketing
My grandparents sometimes bleach their teapot and all their teacups. Sometimes I’m concerned about drinking tea at their house.
Does it work? There’s tea residue inside the spout of my teapot, and I can’t really scrub there, so.
I wouldn’t worry about drinking tea. As long as the teapot and teacups have air dried, all the bleach will have evaporated. We used to rinse dishes in water with a splash of bleach at Girl Guide camp and then let them air dry without rinsing the bleach off, and they were fine as long as they finished drying.
(The reason for the bleach rinse is that, as an organization, we had to follow some kind of health department rules or something, and the only ones anyone actually knew were that dishes have to be disinfected as the last step in washing them, and then not dried with a towel. Obviously we weren’t going to do the disinfecting with a commercial dishwasher like most of the people who have to follow said rules. So you disinfected your dishes in a bleach rinse and then hung them to dry in a mesh bag that had been packed with your socks, on a clothesline where tree leaves would probably drop onto them.)
I’m thinking of buying some pipe cleaners to address this teapot-spout problem. Real pipe cleaners, not the craft-supply kind.
You can totally just scrub with some damp salt to get the tea residue off, no need for bleach. The salt reacts with the tea and magically removes it.
But the bit with the remaining residue is difficult to reach for scrubbing. There’s a sort of ceramic sieve arrangement at the teapot end of the spout, and the pouring end is very narrow.
I’ve already removed the tea residue from the reachable bits, a soapy dish cloth and a tiny bit of pressure was sufficient.
Aw, this brings back memories I had forgotten! I loved girl scout camp.
Bleach degrades into water and salt. I’m not sure how long it takes but after a rinse and a proper amount of drying it ought to be just fine.
Look! Bleach facts!: http://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20060213/bl…
Ahhhh, that explains why bleach is used so often in kitchens. We had a butcher block counter in the industrial kitchen at this one dorm I lived in, and we did not follow industrial kitchen cleaning procedures in any way, shape, or form, but we did push all the rotting vegetable peels off the counter three times a week and scrub the unsealed wood with a dilution of bleach in water. It always vaguely bothered me that that bleach just soaked into the wood and stayed there, but if it kills bacteria and then becomes harmless, that’s actually a decent system…
I found out when I moved into a house with a pool that bleach is the easiest, cheapest way to keep my pool chlorinated all summer (and the best way to REALLY clean it after sitting closed all winter in Ohio). I am sure the people at the discount store where I buy bleach by the dozen probably do think I’m a serial killer.
Ahhhhh short term fine but long term you are really messing up your pool water! (Worked in a pool supply store for years, saw lots of water that was prematurely ‘old’ and couldn’t hold chlorine as a result of bleach use.)
I do the DTP? (can’t remember, need to order more) test from the super-extensive testing kit. Our water sucks so badly in other ways anyway (it’s a well) it’s not an issue. And we only have it for 4 months, if we make it that long. It’s Ohio. But bleach was the only thing that would shock it enough to actually balance it out after the winter yuk/refill. I tried all the other solutions first, for weeks and weeks. Bleach and boom, it was good the rest of the summer.
I swim 3-5 times a week. Therefore I pretty much always smell like bleach. …therefore I am always clean?
*giant heart eyes* bleach on warm skin is my favorite smell.
(WARM skin)
As a lover of other chemical smells (diesel, fresh paint, heating oil, formaldehyde) I understand.
Martha Stewart says the smell of clean is actually the smell of nothing, so I heartily disagree with Big Bleach.
That’s very zen-master-ish. I like it.
I think Martha actually dissolves in bleach, like most pesky molds.
“If you want to spend three bucks on liquid doubt, be my guest.”
I thought she said “liquid dowd,” like the noun for “dowdy.”
Go ahead and tell me my lavender scented dowd isn’t cleaning my floor well enough, go ahead, and I will tell you how evolution by natural selection works..
Now I’m picturing liquid Maureen Dowd, which I guess smells like bigotry and Reagan.
BRB, picturing Nora Dunn in literally every 80’s sci-fi epic from my formative years now.
So what you’re saying is the spice melange was bleach!?
Oh man, Mallory, please keep yelling at commercials for us forever (or, y’know until you lose interest).
Thanks, Nora Dunn. I’ll buy bleach the very next time I’m concerned about dysentery.
I had it, in LA in the 1970s, it scarred me forever.
It’s actually more common than you think. Scurvy’s making a comeback too, thanks to people ignoring fresh fruits cuz they expect everything to last long in the fridge and can’t (or can’t be bothered to) go to the store every three days or whatever for new, fresh produce.
As for dysentery – I had dysentery while working as a sampler at Costco. Got a lot of terrible diseases during the 6 months I worked there. I, at least, refused to go to work with it, and had a doctor’s note (conveniently lost by them). After like 3 months of dysentery and Hand Foot & Mouth disease they finally fired me (no sick days/sick days judged on case-by-case basis via demanding to know what you have and your medical history, which is illegal, btw). I’m pretty sure I got this stuff from my coworkers. They came in to work sick constantly. There was a guy with a huge Mono sore on his mouth who worked there who reassured every customer that it wasn’t communicable (a blatant lie) b/c it was on his lip and he was wearing gloves (like that would matter). One of the managers had a bad flu for a whole month that she passed on to everyone else.
So don’t eat the samples at Costco. Moral of the story. If the company doesn’t even give it’s employees sick days, yet expects them to serve food, don’t eat there.
A few weeks ago, some ANT COLONY found it’s way to my apartment, and there would be lines of them crawling up my computer charger wire and to my coffee table and just existing. I would stomp them and wipe them away, but then more would come the next day. I panicked and didn’t know what to do, and so shook out bleach all over my living room.
They did not come back.
Ants hate cinnamon, and it smells a lot better than bleach, lol.
The following tips brought to you by Science*:
– ground cinnamon is the only thing they will REFUSE to crawl across, although it may stain grouting and painted wood brown if left there long enough
– cloves and cinnamon sticks can be used to ward them off, but if, say, they are trapped in a circle of cinnamon sticks they will reluctantly crawl across it to escape
– if you’re worried about them climbing up walls to circumnavigate the cinnamon lines, a line of double-sided tape worked well for me
* I came home at 10pm to find ants had invaded, and had to run a series of experiments to determine the most effective ’emergency home remedies’ for ants. Lemon juice and vinegar are a lie. FWIW, there is something strangely satisfying about dropping an ant into a circle of ground cinnamon and watching it run around in circles IN VAIN, AHAHAHAHA
I like the cut of your jib.
That’s pretty metal, as uses for kitchen spices go.
Bleach destroys the scent trails ants use to make those neat (actually: terrifying) lines everywhere. For future reference you can also mix borax and sugar and water to make traps that’ll kill em.
Borax traps at the lintels + then wipe out the trails with bleach so they can’t find their way back to whatever they were seeking in your house. I used to feel like I was using some Old Magic shit warding my lintels like this. I called myself “Slayer of Thousands (of Ants)”
But seriously fuck ants, there’s a tipping point where a certain number become visceral, abject horror even if you’re not normally squeamish/bug-averse.
I call it “summer”
For me it’s “oh yeah, I did put that apple core in the waste basket last week and then forget to empty it, didn’t I? I’m glad the ants are here to remind me to do the little things that really make a house feel homey.”
Borax! Or Terro ant baits, which are pre-packaged borax.
Bleach would be really useful for cleaning up the crime scene after murdering “Jack” and “Steve” from that horrible Dear Prudence question from last week where the writer’s friend told her that she should have considered being raped as “taking one for the team”.
Set that “friendship” on fire, and then clean up the evidence with bleach! Wonderful bleach!
Still surprised that the Toastariat didn’t get all up in arms about that letter.
I’ve been traveling the last few days and just assumed I must have missed the thread when I was catching up on posts.
Holy crap. I hadn’t even read last week’s questions. I have a burning desire to pour some bleach in Jack and Steve’s eyes–and the eyes of that friggin’ girlfriend who was seemingly complicit in the whole scheme.
Well, the young woman took care of it, as I recall. She declined to put herself in danger and just wanted some reassurance that it was fine to end the “friendship.”
I can’t find this. Anyone have a link? I need primal scream therapy.
It’s the last question. Naturally, Mallory’s advice is excellent.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/dear_prudence/…
Oh my sweet butter stealing God. I bet five dollars those two have set up more than one rape. Crosses and knees.
I know, right? The casualness of his irritation when she refused to do it made me concerned for the girlfriend, too. I’m willing to bet she’s much more of a victim than an accomplice in all that.
I’m glad the letter writer made it out alright, and if she ever feels like pushing those guys into a volcano along with the “friendship”, I’m volunteering right now to help her out.
I’ll do you one better. There’s a row of human size spite crosses (ikr) around the corner from me no one’s using. Let’s make the decorative functional!
Oh God I’m so glad she stood up for herself and was not, in fact, raped. This is awful enough, but I was expecting worse.
I want to set both of those men on fire.
Somewhere this woman has met my Dad who has been convinced that cleaning means one is to leave puddles of bleach – and Pine-Sol – on bathroom surfaces. Clearly, it’s not clean unless you lose the ability to smell anything else.
This is a good time to mention that I once wrote a cute song about how much I love bleach and emailed to to Jolie Kerr, right? (And she wrote back to express that she was DELIGHTED by it!)
I also have a song for Scrubbing Bubbles.
I would be interested in learning both of these songs.
She fails to mention the best thing about bleach. It makes cat crazy. It’s hilarious.
ALSO YOU ARE KIND OF MAKING IT SOUND LIKE BLEACH CURES DYSENTERY WHICH IS NOT EXACTLY TRUE?
Do you really think so? Then you know nothing, Mallory Snow.
One of my cats does that too! I thought he was uniquely bizarre but maybe it’s a thing?
This commercial quite clearly sums up my feelings about stomach flu, which swept through my children’s elementary school at Halloween last year, to the extent that the state health department was called in and the CDC was put on notice.
I just don’t think I had any cardigans that clean after the whole experience.
The only argument you need for bleach, right there! Nothing makes you a clean freak more than the kid throwing up onto the lego table from the top bunk.
(Forgive me for what I am about to do.)
Oh, you precious child.
Nothing makes you a clean freak like *scabies*.
Bleach is great for vomit. But vomit is not the cause of my maternal OCD, or my phobia about shared dress-up clothes. Thank god the worst thing we’ve had to deal with in the last twelve months is head lice.
Dearest Toast, I see your terrifying bleach ads and accompanying primal dread, and raise you my Olde Tymey Vintage Hygiene Ads Pinterest board. When men were men, and women Lysol’d – let’s not dwell.
https://uk.pinterest.com/estherfischlein/olde-tym…
JILTED AGAIN!
olde tymey hygiene ads are so great.
I just came here to say that i love the smell of bleach.
Oh god no, I hate bleach. I hate it’s tangy odor that lingers for daaaaaaaays, stealing my hope and my dreams. My mom used to clean the kitchen with bleach and I’d rather starve than go into that chemical fog. I don’t trust anything that’s been bleached. It’s useless to me, covered in poison. I’d rather have dysentery. I’D RATHER BE CAUGHT FOR MY CRIMES. I’D RATHER ROT IN A CESSPOOL OF HUMAN FILTH.
I am really comfortable with dirt.
BLEACH IS WONDERFUL ALLISON (but not good for cleaning up after crimes anyway)
And when you leave bleach-water sitting out for a few days . . . ew.
There are an AWFUL LOT OF PEOPLE in this thread avowing they are not serial killers, is all I’m saying
Wait! What? Blade Runner and the Bene Gesserit in one post! You have absolutely made my day. I swear I once knew that litany by heart. Sad but true. 🙂
Marvelous Dune reference; I nearly had to use bleach on my keyboard, but I managed to NOT spit the coffee.
a city slickers reference? bless your heart. Curly is my standard for the type of man i want and deserve and every other man has been found to be a ball-capped billy crystal shaped space of lacking. i fear i will die alone with my cats and no calves named norman in sight.
OMG Bless you for this link. I'm so tired of looking for swimsuits that I can actually swim in.
True crime garage fan?
Chlorine is the devil. Most of what I have to seriously disinfect is stainless or surgical steel, and expensive. If I caught someone cleaning my instruments with bleach I would smack them, seriously.
I like the phenolics, myself (Lysol Concentrate is the most commonly-available), and quarternary amines rock pretty hard when they’re combined with high concentrations of alcohol. Bonus—neither of these will ruin your clothes (although the quats will turn your palms orange if you use latex gloves and don’t change them really often).
Fucking nowhere Nora Dunn has to be found. She used BLEACH I like your videos