The Awl

I Can Not Believe That Story About Pig Wings In Today's Dining Section

Dave Bry — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:40:06 +0000

"Appert’s gets the fibulas from a plant in Sioux City, Iowa, that separates them from the rest of the shank and cuts some of them into two-ounce portions, using a saw developed by Mr. File. Appert’s workers tumble 2,000-pound batches in a paddle mixer that helps force a marinade of water, salt and 'natural pork flavorings' into the meat."
—Articles about the production processes behind our proud nation's suicidal dietary habits are always fascinating and disgusting. And oftentimes, also, confusingly appetizing. Barbecued "pig wings" sound delicious to me. (Especially the kind with blue cheese in Chicago. Yum! Wait, no, yuck! No, yum!) But the most confounding thing about John T. Edge's reporting about them in today's Dining section is that he somehow got through it without making a "when pigs fly" joke.

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Sometimes German People Eat People, Too, Y'know

Dave Bry — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 16:00:40 +0000

"I think it would be mistaken to conclude from these bone finds that this was cannibalism or has some cultural background. In Germany too, corpses are dilettantishly discarded, that doesn't just happened in the Second or Third Worlds."
—Adolph Gallwitz, professor of police psychology at the police college in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany, makes a good point about a pile of human bones found on the South Pacific island of Huku Niva. Local police think the bones may be the remains of a German engineer, Stefan Ramin, who went exploring the island with a local hunter and has been missing since October 9th. Some say that the bones betray evidence of a ritual killing and perhaps even cannibalism—leading the German tabloid Bild to run the headline, "Do Cannibals Still Exist on the Death Island?" accompanied by a 19th-century etching of Polynesian natives flaying strips of flesh from a prisoner bound to a stake. Huka Niva authorities are concerned this could affect their tourism industry. But as we know, cannibalism is not strictly a South Pacific phenomenon. And there are other terrible things about this story.

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A Million Redondo Beach Sardines Are Gone Gone

Dave Bry — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:50:19 +0000

Late afternoon, what is that smell?
We just had the quarrel that sent you away.
I was looking for you, are you gone gone?
Check out all those seagulls, out over King Harbor.
What have they found there? Probably something to eat.
I went looking for you, are you gone, gone?

Down by the ocean it was so dismal,
Women all standing with a shock on their faces.
Sad description, oh I was looking for you.

Everyone said a million sardines had washed up
On Redondo Beach and everyone is so sad.
I was looking for you, are you gone gone?
"Remember all the birds?" Everyone cried.
But it's really quite normal, when lots of animals die.
I went looking for you, are you gone gone?

Down by the ocean it was so dismal,
Women all standing with shock on their faces.
Sad description, oh I was looking for you.

Desk clerk told me sardines washed up,
Packed into the harbor, like a giant tin can.
I went looking for you, are you gone gone?
Surrounding the sailboats, no oxygen left.
They float belly-up, like a carpet of death.
One day they're all there all here, but now they're gone gone.

Down by the ocean it was so dismal.
I was just standing with shock on my face.
Eighteen solid inches of rotting dead fish.
"We need to get rid of them," said sergeant Phil Keenan,
"This is going to create a terrible pollution and public health issue if we don't."

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Important Medical Advancement Also Totally Disgusting

Dave Bry — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 11:05:34 +0000

"There's little doubt this treatment has an image problem. Feces, including important bowel flora, is transferred from a volunteer donor—screened to limit possible other infections—into the colon of the infected patient. The treatment can be administered by a colonoscope or an enema, or by the mouth or the nose."
—A terrible disease, the Clostridium difficile bug, can cause severe diarrhea, blood poisoning and lead to death, and has proven highly resistant to anti-biotics. But Sydney-based gastroenterologist Thomas Borody has developed an amazingly successful cure. And given the choice, most patients say, "Yes, please, put someone else's poop inside me." So this is a very good, important thing. Now excuse me, I will go vomit. (Maybe I should save it? In case that can be used to somehow help someone in need.)

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Your Local Gym Is A Lot Like A Guano-Filled Batcave

Dave Bry — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:20:05 +0000

"White nose syndrome grows on bats' skin during the winter and irritates them, rousing them from hibernation. Not used to being awake when it is so cold, the bats burn so much energy trying to stay warm that they deplete their fat reserves, and eventually become too weak to fly or catch food."
-Discovery reports on the New York State Department of Health finding that fluconazole, a drug commonly used to cure athlete's foot in humans, is effective in fighting a fungal disease that has killed more than a million bats over the past four years. Now the challenge is to figure out how to apply the anti-fungal medicine to bats' noses. Bats eat mosquitos, so I fucking love bats. I really hope the scientists think of something quick.

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Types Of Hummus Exist That You May Have Wished You Didn't Know About

Dave Bry — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 16:24:35 +0000

"In 2000, Holy Land introduced hummus flecked with jalapeÃ±o. More recently, the company, which makes about 100,000 plastic tubs of hummus each month for the Midwest market, rolled out guacamole-flavored hummus. By August, its blend of hummus and peanut butter will hit the shelves. 'That one is for my daughter, Noor,' Mr. Wadi said. 'She didn't think she liked hummus. Then we stirred in peanut butter.' Other companies are also taking liberties with hummus. In Somersworth, N.H., the Crazy Camel company makes six varieties of dessert hummus, including a blend of chickpeas and cocoa it calls chocolate mousse hummus. In North Carolina, Good Health Natural Foods of Greensboro makes Humbles baked hummus chips in four flavors, including one with feta."
-In case you missed it yesterday... (I didn't see it til last night), the story in the Times' Dining Section about Majdi Wadi's Holy Land hummus company changing the traditional Middle-Eastern staple into "an American product," is worth reading. Besides the entertaining disgustingness above, it offers a good look at the workings of an industry that has expanded 65-fold in the last fifteen years, and also, a refreshingly apolitical depiction of Arab-American family life. And if you'd like to watch the video cited at the end of the story, "Hummus: The Rap," by Youtube user GoRemy, here it is!

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This Newest Wrinkle In The Contaminated Tylenol Story Is Not Helping Me Feel Better

Maura Johnston — Wed, 05 May 2010 14:15:15 +0000

Here are a few things that the FDA found while checking out the Pennsylvania plant that produces the liquid versions of children's Tylenol, Benadryl, and Zyrtec — all of which were recalled last week by manufacturer McNeil Consumer Healthcare: "Thick dust and grime covering certain equipment"! "A hole in the ceiling"! "Duct tape-covered pipes"! Also, "raw ingredients contaminated by an unspecified bacteria" and, perhaps most importantly, corporate knowledge of many of these conditions. Yum. Production at the suburban Philadelphia plant has been suspended while the cleaning crews get called in, which is probably for the best since the facility also makes adult-appropriate products. But there's a bright side, at least: "The latest recalls of children's Tylenol probably means there's just less upside to J&J's earnings estimates," one financial analyst told Reuters, which helpfully noted that McNeil's parent Johnson & Johnson rakes in about $62 billion in sales a year. But wait, does less "upside" mean less money for fixing pipes? So many questions!

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Blackberry: Now Making Interpersonal Communication Even More Difficult

Maura Johnston — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:10:30 +0000

"I was with a bunch of hot girls and we would just walk into bars, whip out our BlackBerries and try to get guys to look at them by flirting... We'd say, â€˜Put your number in my phone and I'll totally call you. We'll go out on a date!' But we just wanted them to try the BlackBerry. I definitely didn't call anyone."
-Julia Royter, a "pretty 26-year-old actress" who claims she was paid by BlackBerry to stealth-market the Pearl via flirtation, a practice she calls "pretty evil... You never know who is trying to sell you something." Later on a president of something called "Street Guerilla Marketing" defends this particular practice with the old saw that "any buzz is good buzz," although something tells me that a person smarting from rejection will have 50 things on their mind before they fondly reflect on the make and model of whatever smartphone their non-conquest was brandishing.

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Dakota Fanning's Eyes Have Seen Many Things

Mary HK Choi — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:50:02 +0000

Man, I am so the embarrassed emoticon in the face right now because this Dakota Fanning Teen Vogue shoot makes me feel spectacularly gonzo in the crotch. I KNOOOOOW. I'm SORRY but I CAN'T HELP IT because I don't think it even matters if you're a dirty old man or not because her freakshow precocious eyes accuse you of thinking things and then forgives you and the whole thing makes me feel filthy.

ESPECIALLY because: animal print. I mean, can a cub be a cougar?!! IDK! So confused. She sort of looks like Madonna in those old Versace ads where she looks like she'd smell of ylang ylang and 982734982374983 kinds of semen. Oh man, now I'm picturing her swiveling around in a chair REALLY SLOWLY in a white sleeveless turtleneck mini dress and everyone knows I hate when turtlenecks have no sleeves. MAKE IT STOP.

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