Category Archives: Wacky and Weird

Curiosity, not assumptions, makes life interesting

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I get lots of barfblog.com fan mail like the piece below.

Normally I just cc Chapman on my reply, so someone can take over when I die (me in the hospital last week with gall bladder issues, my partner and daughter bought me a nice light robe for the Australian summers, and I was with Larry, my portable IV unit I shared a shower and bed with), or get tired of doing this, or my brain sufficiently rots, but this was too ripe, so welcome to the daily insults of an unpaid blogger.

Hello Doug I trust all is well.
I have a question for you.
Do you (brilliant Scientist, food safety guru) really think the Fox host has not washed his hands in 10 years? 
Doug you used a pile of E.  dung to purposely smear the President of a country that you are not a citizen of. 
I ask you to please rebuke your political opinions and stick with what has and always will help advance food safety – you!

I am an American citizen. I worked long and hard for that distinction, given my Canadian prison record. I voted in the last election, and not for Mr. Trump. The Fox News dude is now saying his lack of handwashing was a joke, but given the discourse on Fox, I kinda doubt it. More like covering his ass (like a HACCP plan).

I am a citizen of three countries and have three passports – Canadian, American and Australian. So does Sorenne. Amy has two. It’s not a secret and could easily been discovered, but you chose to assume rather than ask. That’s a problem for science and journalism: People making up shit.

Others might call it fake news.

To paraphrase what I told sceptics in 1987 when I started the University of Guelph alternative newspaper, if you don’t like my blog, don’t read it, start your own, and stop wasting my time.

Peace.

And here’s a video from another citizen of Canada and America.

Everyone has a camera: Vancouver bakery edition

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The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has issued a recall for Betty brand and Nancy’s Fancy Yummy in the Tummy brand bakery products.

The agency says the products may be unsafe due to possible contamination from mice infestation at the manufacturing plant.

The affected products were sold in Ontario and Quebec up to and including Feb. 8, and may contain harmful bacteria.

CFIA says there have been no reports of illness linked to the products.

Evidence-based barf: Gwyneth Paltrow and Goop on new Netflix show

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My friend, Timothy Caufield, a prof at the University of Alberta and author of, Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong about Everything? will get loads of material from this after the Goopster confirmed with ABC News that she had signed a deal with Netflix that would see 30-minute episodes of a docuseries focused on physical and spiritual wellness.

CULVER CITY, CA – JUNE 09: Gwyneth Paltrow speaks onstage at the In goop Health Summit at 3Labs on June 9, 2018 in Culver City, California. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for goop)

Set to air later this year, Paltrow and Goop chief content officer Elise Loehnen will co-host the show and talk to experts, doctors and researchers. The pair already have a popular podcast series.

Paltrow started the company more than 10 years ago and has been criticised for promoting products like jade eggs, that Goop alleged improved vaginal muscle tone, hormonal balance and chi, but which health practitioners warned were dangerous.

Other health practices Paltrow and Goop have promoted include vaginal steaming, bee sting facials, bio frequency stickers (to “rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies”) and earthing.

She was married to that singer from Coldplay, and they suck.

Speaks volumes.

Columbian vet who smuggled heroin to U.S. in puppies sent to prison

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Jackie Botts of Reuters writes that a Colombian veterinarian who surgically implanted liquid heroin inside live puppies to smuggle the drug into the United States was sentenced to six years in prison on Thursday.

Andres Lopez Elorez, 39, admitted conspiring to import heroin and will be deported to Colombia after his sentence, according to federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York.

“Every dog has its day, and with today’s sentence, Elorez has been held responsible for the reprehensible use of his veterinary skills to conceal heroin inside puppies as part of a scheme to import dangerous narcotics into the United States,” Richard Donoghue, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.

According to prosecutors, between 2004 and 2005 Elorez leased a farm in Medellin, Colombia, where he reared dogs and sewed bags of liquid heroin into nine puppies for importation to the United States.

During a search of the farm in 2005, foreign law enforcement agents seized 17 bags of liquid heroin weighing nearly three kilograms (6.6 lb), including 10 bags extracted from the puppies. Three puppies died after contracting a virus following the surgeries, U.S. prosecutors said.

A mum’s hack for cleaning toilet brushes has divided the Internet

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Jessica Chambers of Mama Mia writes that cleaning the toilet is no one’s favourite chore.

However, one mum – who is tired of buying new toilet brushes every few months – has come up with a controversial idea to keep her toilet brush clean – and it’s certainly divided certain circles on the Internet.

Taking to UK site Mumsnet, the woman asks: “Would it be absolutely disgusting to… put loo brushes in the dishwasher on their own, on hot setting, followed by a hot wash on empty??!!!”

Um… yes, yes it would be absolutely disgusting. But maybe that’s just us because the most mind-blowing revelation to come out of the thread was that this woman was not alone.

“Of course it’s fine! Dishwashers temperature is set to kill all bugs. I wouldn’t and don’t even do a hot wash afterwards,” one replied.

“I do my four loo brushes, pots they go in, pots they stand on (it’s a whole contraption) every month in the dishwasher. It’s a full load, wouldn’t put anything else in with them,” another added.

There’s a yuck factor involved, so I reached out to my microbiological friends who agreed, yes there is a yuck factor, but it’s a fine procedure.

The bigger risk may be the drip drip carrying the brush to the dishwasher, so carry it in the holder, and put it in the dishwasher as well.

14 kids sick: Mom arrested after boy, 9, brings marijuana gummies to school

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I’m all for legalization of marijuana and may have to move back to Canada because it’s legal for recreational use in the entire country.

Just kidding, I’m spoiled and couldn’t stand the snow; I like going to the ice hockey arena in flip-flops and shorts, like they do in Tampa.

But there are downsides to legalization.

Parents wouldn’t pack their kids’ lunches with whiskey and smokes, so why would a mom send pot-laced gummies in her’ kid’s lunch?

Probably forgot. I hear weed does that.

Jeff Truesdell of People reports an Ohio mom was arrested on child endangerment charges after her 9-year-old son brought marijuana-laced gummy bears from home to his elementary school, prompting alarm after 14 students who ate them became sick.

Cleveland police confirmed the arrest of the 27-year-old woman, whose name is being withheld by PEOPLE due to the nature of the charge against her.

The report of ill children brought officers and EMS workers to Anton Grdina School about 1:45 p.m. Monday. “Some of the students were complaining of upset stomachs but had no other signs of impairment,” a police report states.

“As a precaution today, we called EMS to examine several students to determine whether gummy bears shared with them by other students during lunch may have been marijuana-laced,” the school’s principal, Latosha Glass, said in a statement, reports News 5 Cleveland. “This precaution was taken because the packaging of the candy was not recognizable to us and appeared suspicious.”

The 9-year-old said his mom and aunt had thrown a party at their apartment on Sunday, where he said the gummies were given to him and other children by his aunt, who “had gotten drunk” and “was not in her right mind,” according to the police report.

After the boy was told to go to bed, his mother allegedly put the gummies on a table and told him not to touch them. But another child urged the boy to follow his mother into the kitchen and say he loved her, so the second child could take them, according to the report.

The children carried the gummies in their book bags to school on Monday. A school staff member cleaning up a room later found a zip-lock bag printed with wording that indicated the contents contained drugs. An EMS worker reported recovering the bag still containing three gummy bears and a plastic bottle containing several gummy worms and gummy bears.

Staff members at the school reviewed video footage to identify kids who were present when the gummies allegedly were handed out.

Those taken by EMS workers to a hospital for evaluation included four 5-year-olds, three 6-year-olds, one 8-year-old and the 9-year-old. The parents of five other students declined the EMS transport.

Everyone has a camera, licking fetish edition: Meat in Ohio, doorknob in California

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A video has surfaced showing a worker at “La Plaza Tapatia” international market in Columbus licking meat that was meant for customers.

Customers are outraged after the video was posted to social media. Now, the incident has gotten the attention of Franklin County Public Health.

“We do take that very seriously,” said Garrett Guillozet supervisor of the food safety program.

Guillozet, told ABC6/FOX28 that the images are disturbing.

“I was definitely surprised,” said Guillozet.

A tipster sent the clip to ABC6/FOX28 after it was posted to Snapchat. ABC6/FOX28 discovered the incident is just the latest in a string of potential customer health dangers at the west Columbus market. For a time in 2018, the grocery was placed on the Enforcement Program due to violations.

One the store’s Facebook page, the workers involved posted an apology video. They claim the meat had been dropped on the floor and after recording the video they threw it away.

For their part, administrators at Franklin County Public Health told ABC6/FOX28 that the market owners had been working to clean up issues.

“To see this happen after that was kind of disheartening and frustrating,” said Guillozet.

The owner of the store released the following statement to ABC6/FOX28. The below statement may be attributed to Gustavo Salazar, owner, La Plaza Tapatia:

La Plaza Tapatia is committed to the highest standards for the safety and quality of the foods we sell. We are extremely disappointed in the behavior of two of our employees, who posted a video of inappropriate actions in our meat handling area.

The video only involved the single piece of meat shown in the video, and it was immediately discarded (below, not exactly as shown, because I couldn’t find the real one). None of the meat we have for sale was affected.

This is unacceptable behavior, and the two employees have been terminated from their positions. We also will retrain all our employees in our firm expectations for food safety. Further, the Franklin County Health Department inspected our store on January 30 and found our operations to be both well maintained and with good food handling practices.

The trust and confidence of our customers and the Hispanic community is of great importance to us, and we apologize for any concern this situation has caused.

In weirdly related news, a California man was caught on surveillance video licking a doorbell for quite a while in a California neighborhood.

The suspect, whom police identified as 33-year-old Roberto Arroyo, spent about three hours licking the doorbell and milling around the Salinas, California yard of Sylvia and Dave Dungan.

The incident happened around 5:00 am. The homeowners were not home at the time, but they told news station KION that their children were.

They were alerted to the incident when their surveillance system notified them of movement by the front door.

The man was also caught relieving himself in the front yard, and reportedly also approached a neighbor’s house.

“You kind of laugh about it afterwards because technically he didn’t do anything,” said Sylvia Dungan, who owns the house shown in the video, told KION.

Police are searching for the suspect and say that he could face two misdemeanor charges for petty theft and prowling.

Careful with that toothpick, Eugene

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A young man nearly lost his life to a toothpick he didn’t even know he had swallowed, according to a report published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Denise Grady of The New York Times reports a three-inch wood pick, from a sandwich, traveled through most of his digestive tract without doing any harm. But then it poked through the intestinal wall and pierced an artery, creating a conduit for bacteria to invade his bloodstream and damaging the artery enough to cause serious bleeding.

For nearly three weeks, his symptoms — abdominal pain, fever, distressing gut trouble — mystified doctors. By the time they figured out what was wrong, he had a potentially fatal infection. It took extensive surgery to save him.

Injuries like this are not common, but cases have been reported in medical journals over the years.

Toothpicks are everywhere, jabbed into sliders, wraps, club sandwiches and cocktail garnishes. Often, people have no idea they swallowed one, maybe because they were distracted or eating in a hurry.

The picks — unscathed by stomach acid or digestive enzymes — have been found in the stomach and both small and large intestines. In a few cases they have worked their way into other organs, including the liver, pancreas, lung, kidney and even a coronary artery. They can be difficult or impossible to see on scans.

An analysis of 136 cases that were serious enough to be reported in medical journals found that nearly 10 percent were fatal.

North Koreans ordered to produce impossible amount of human manure every day to help save agriculture

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Fox News is not the, uh, most reliable source, but they report North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has commanded every citizen to turn over an impossible 200 pounds of human manure a day for fertilizer in an effort to revitalize the communist country’s struggling agriculture.

The country’s leader first made agriculture the forefront of the economic recovery during the New Year’s address.

This led to the mass mobilization of the population to fulfill the government’s wishes and ensure the human manure quotas are met. If the people don’t meet their daily quota, they have to supply over 600 pounds of compost or livestock manure, according to Radio Free Asia.

“The entire population has been mobilized to produce manure as the first major task of the year,” a source told the outlet. “The authorities in each local region task factories, institutions and citizens groups with assigning production quotas to each individual.”

“They are demanding that each person produce 100kg of human feces per day, or about 3 tons per month,” the person added. “But how on earth can it be possible for one person to make 3 tons of human feces and deliver it?”

The absurdly-high quotas are forcing the people to either collect the human manure in cold or pay cash to others for the manure.

“Most people can’t [make or collect] 100kg per day, so they end up giving what they think is sufficient. The quota is therefore meaningless,” the source told the outlet.

Machines are difficult to clean yet poop emoji soft-serve is all the rage in Tokyo

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It was our most popular blog post for years.

Baskin Robbins decided to offer free soft serve ice cream to expectant mothers on May 21, 2008, in California, Chicago, New York, Nashville, and El Paso, Texas. It was apparently the beginning of a national roll-out of soft serve ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

I have no idea why they targeted expectant moms, or why they recruited a pregnant D-list celebrity like Tori Spelling as spokesthingy.

Problem is, soft serve ice cream is on the Australian list of foods pregnant women should avoid. Sanitation with the equipment appears to be an on-going problem.

In 2015, a year after a giant recall of Snoqualmie ice cream tied to Listeria, a third illness was blamed on the bug after it apparently lingered in a machine used to make milkshakes for hospital patients.

Yet in Japan, Poop emoji soft-serve is here to haunt your dreams.

A cafe in Tokyo’s fashionable Harajuku neighborhood is hawking soft-serve that looks like the poop emoji, complete with googly eyes and a toilet-shaped bowl.

Yummy.