Miller Russell - The big book of gross stuff

The Big Book of Gross Stuff

Bart King

The Big Book of Gross Stuff

Digital Edition v1.0

Text 2010 Bart King

Illustrations 2010 Russell Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Gibbs Smith, Publisher

PO Box 667

Layton, UT 84041

Orders: 1.800.835.4993

www.gibbs-smith.com

Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publishing Data

ISBN-13:978-1-4236-0746-5

ISBN-10: 1-4236-0746-5

1. Curiosities and wondersHumor. 2. Human bodyMiscellaneaHumor. 3. HygieneHumor. 4. Conduct of lifeMiscellaneaHumor. I. Miller, Russell. II. Title.

PN6231.C85K56 2010

818.607dc22

2009035220

This book is dedicated to your digestive mucus. (After all, no one ever gives it a proper thank-you!)

The Big Book of Gross Stuff

Table of Contents

A Note on the Writing of this Book

This book really IS about gross stuff. And thats a tricky subject! Because when it comes to grossness, there is an invisible line between hilariously funny and going too far. And just to make things interesting, that invisible line is different from person to person.

This means that this book is almost guaranteed to make you laugh and to actually gross you out. But, hey, dont chicken out now! After all, I had to be brave just to write all this stuff. You see, as this books author, I face a unique danger. People might link ME with the disgusting things Im writing about!

Not wanting to be contaminated in this way, Ive taken special steps to ensure that I myself am in no way gross . So during the writing of this book, I stopped manufacturing:

• mucus

• dandruff

• tweets from my Twitter

Furthermore, I showered twice daily. This process included exfoliation, defoliation, and deforestation. (Plus, I scrubbed between my toes!)

Finally, before sitting down to write, I looked at pictures of kittens, flowers, and puppies. This helped purify and protect my mind from the horrible topics that my cruel editor forced me to research.

As you can see, I have sacrificed a lot for this book, but as long as you do not associate me with grossness, it will have been worth it. And please dont link the following people with gross stuff either, even though they did help with this book: Lynn King, Matt Grow, MD, Parker Swanson, Virginia and Dallas Wassink, Michael Milone, the Groh family, Jeff Holiman, Chuck Shepherd, Carolyn Wood, Nancy Tipton, MD, Taewon and Philip Laplante, Jennifer C. Felton, MD, Robert Rowzee, Andrew R. Brown, MD, Michelle Herrmann, Robert Wilkes, Mary McLean, Annemarie Plaizier, Destiny Covington-Zawasky, Jennifer Blair, Kathleen Twomey, Tama Filipas, Dean Hanson, Lorraine Roosevelt, Don Sisler, Katy Killilea, Robin Henderson Thomas, Katie Greenseth, Dee Roosevelt, Christine Mathews, Tiffany Denman, Dave Sohigian, Debbie Alvarez, Jared Smith, Madge Baird, and Suzanne Taylor.

Well, as youre about to find out, its a gross, gross world out there. Lets learn all about it!

What Makes It Gross?

Dude, thats gross.

I bet you have heard someone say this recently. No? Then read this! A man from Belgium named Wim Delvoye made a machine out of thirty-three feet of laboratory tubes, along with various containers and gauges. The machine has a hole at both ends. To activate it, a cook feeds a meal into one end, and the big machine starts grinding up the food and moving it along.

Spectators then watch as the food makes stops at six vats of acids and enzymes. Finally, it works its way to the end of the process, where it comes out in a brown log.

And thats when everyone starts taking lots of photos.

Yep, its a mechanical digestive system! But can you explain to me why people would stare in fascination at a machine that does the EXACT SAME THING that they can do?

Because its gross!

No one ever says so, but gross stuff is sort of magical. Nasty things are like magnets that repel and attract us at the same time. Once our disgust is activated, we get a strong feeling of revulsion; we might start breathing through our mouth or look away from the gross thing in question. But at the same time, we cant help sneaking a glance (or a sniff) to see if that nasty thing is still oozing, stinking, or pulsating. (Yeah, pulsating is good!)

Spot the Pattern!

Did you know that nastify (to make nasty) is an actual word? Neither did I! See if you can spot what all these words have in common! (Besides being gross, I mean.)

Do you see it? One way or another, all of these words are wet, or at least damp. And there are a lot of them. The only dry gross words I can think of are scabby and a few words that mean filthy (e.g., dirty, grimy, grubby). Then there are general-purpose gross words like vile, noxious, and abhorrent. But other than that, gross means wet!

Still dont believe it? A Web site called Visual Thesaurus asked its readers to rate how much they like or dislike certain words. And the second-most-hated word was moist. (A friend once said that she dislikes cake mixes that are advertised as being extra-moist because that basically means super-dank!) Oh, and the most-hated word of all was hate. So a lot of people hate hate. [ ]

Part of the appeal is that anything really gross is thought of as off-limits. And anything off-limits is immediately tantalizing. So it works like this: Dont look! Hey, I told you not to look!

Isnt that weird? No other animal is fascinated by gross stuff, because no other animal ever gets disgusted! If, for example, a dog wants to avoid something putrid, it just steps to the side and continues on with its life. What it wont do is start jumping around and shouting, Oh, my, that dead squirrel is loathsome!

So apparently only humans feel the emotion of disgust. And it really is an emotion , just like love or hate, or like that feeling you get when a person has a piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of his shoe and everyone is laughing, but the guy is totally cluelesswhats that emotion called? Oh yeah: relief that its not you.

Now, think about how powerfully your emotions can affect you. If youre really happy, you laugh. If youre really sad (did someone give you this book as a gift?), you cry.

Words That Sound Gross (But Arent!)

ambisinistrous: Clumsy; the opposite of ambidextrous.

anonymuncule: A generic little person.

bifurcate: To separate something into two parts.

coccyx: A tailbone. You have one.

corpuscle: A small cell, usually a blood cell.

debag: To remove someones pants as a joke. [ ]

eumorphous: Well formed, as in, Dad, this meat loaf is eumorphous.

fard: To cover ones face with makeup.

finagle: To get something by cheating.

flange: A thing that sticks out of something. (Yes, that is the worst definition of flange ever given.)