**Ugly House UPDATE**

Apparently the poo swatch house is so ugly, someone is calling the owner out on it. Also, this house has been like this for years (yes, plural, years). I will do my neighborly duty, and post the notice he left on the front of said poo house:

It Says Non-Toxic

I came across this article from the Illinois Poison Control Center Blog that listed all the calls they got from that day. Some were trivial and made me weep for humanity, while others were far more serious.  I've listed my favorites, set to a delightful array of Simpson's references:

It Says Non-Toxic

A 3 year old ingested a piece of Play Doh®.

An adult female called worried because she took 2 Aleve® for her headache and then noticed that the pills expired 5 years ago.

A 28 year old female used hand sanitizer after changing her baby’s diaper.  As she pumped the hand sanitizer, a blob of sanitizer squirted into her eye.

A toddler ingested a fingerful of Vaseline.

A 1 year old child scraped some soap off a bar of soap with her teeth.

A 5 year old licked his hands after mom squirted melon scented hand sanitizer on his hands before lunch.

A mom called, she is visiting her boyfriend’s parents (who are smokers) and found her 2 year old with a cigarette but in his mouth.

A frantic mother brought her child to ER because she had eaten both her and her sister’s chewable vitamin.

How Could I Stay Mad at You

A caller ate a sandwich with lunchmeat and only after eating it, realized the meat expired 7 months ago.

Caller has one squirt bottle with bleach/water to disinfect her kitchen, and another with just water that she uses to spray the dog.  She was going to spray the dog, but had mixed up the two bottles.  She wanted to make sure she didn’t spray her dog with bleach, so she had squirted some in her mouth to check.  It was the bleach.

An adult female patient presented to the emergency room with severely blistered hands.  The patient recently purchased some ‘all natural’ household cleaner, and she assumed since all the ingredients were all-natural it would be safe to use to disinfect her hands.  The product’s ingredients, while perfectly natural, were caustic and caused chemical burns.

An adult caller was using a Brillo pad to clean a stain on his underwear.  As a result of vigorously scrubbing, some of the Brillo cleanser flew into his eye.

An adult male has a car for sale; he decided to siphon out some gas to save money and swallowed a mouthful.

A woman called concerned because her cleaning lady used a ‘strong’ product in her microwave.  She could still smell the cleaner and asked if it is safe to cook food in there and eat it.

An adult was camping and used newspaper in lieu of toilet paper; called to see if newsprint is toxic rectally.

A 24 year old woman called about her boyfriend.  The woman had a Brazilian wax at a salon where they had used a numbing cream on the area and now her boyfriend is complaining numb lips, mouth and tongue.  He was concerned that he may have ingested some of this numbing cream.

It BURNS

A 68 year old man accidentally used capsaicin cream instead of hemorrhoid cream.

A 38 year old woman got out of the shower and did not have her glasses on.  She reached for her aerosol spray deodorant but instead used Scrubbing Bubbles.

Caller was working on her computer and had dry eyes; she reached for her eye drops she always keeps on her desk and instilled a few drops into her right eye.  Unfortunately, she had instead grabbed a tube of super glue she had used the day before to repair a chip on the desk. 

Kids Love That Water

While crawling around at home, an 11 month old got into the cat litter box and may have ingested litter and/or cat feces.

I Can See the Music

A 24 year old male called with concerns on how much cough syrup he had taken.  He bought a 4 ounce bottle and had a ‘swig’ every few hours due to intractable coughing.  He has ingested the entire 4 ounce bottle during the past 12 hours and now feels ‘woozy’.

Tylenol, the Gateway Drug

A mom called after she heard her 12 year old son vomiting in the bathroom.  He and two friends were playing together after school, and dared each other to see who could eat the most acetaminophen tablets.  

Why You Should Always Take a Whiff First

After playing basketball, an 18 year old male took two large swigs from a Gatorade® bottle that he found in his friend’s Jeep.  Turns out it was windshield wiper fluid the friend had transferred to the smaller bottle to make it more portable.

Caller took a beer out of the minbar in a hotel and quickly realized after one swig that it was urine.  Someone had drunk the beer, then filled it with urine and put it back to avoid being charged.

A woman called because her whole family was inadvertently served pine sol.  While making brownies, she reached into the cabinet to get vegetable oil and instead grabbed the pine sol because the bottles look so similar.  She made the brownies and served them for dessert, and did not realize her error until tasting them.

Caller was at a new neighbor’s house, where he drank part of a bottled juice drink that he had gotten from the neighbor’s refrigerator.  He noticed 2 coffee filters in it, and was told by someone at the residence (after he drank it) that the coffee filters were used in the making of crystal meth and they were in the drink to give it an extra “kick”.

Lastly, I've included the most terrifying incidents of accidental poisoning that I found. Not surprisingly, all of these incidents involve children.

An adolescent patient presented to an emergency room after taking a large swallow from a Snapple® Iced Tea bottle that turned out to be concentrated pesticide.  A family member had borrowed the concentrate from a friend and had put it in the tea bottle to transport.

A 3 year old child was found eating rat poison pellets.  (They are a bright teal color) He told his mom, ‘candy!’

A grandmother mixed diphacinone rat poison into the jar of peanut butter.  She spread the mixture on some crackers and set them on the counter.  While she made a few trips to distribute them to other parts of the house, her 13 year old grandson came into kitchen and thought the snack was made for him. 

 None of the descriptions included outcomes. 

Why This Woman's Art Pissed Me Off Today

Artist Alexa Meade. Is this innovative?

It's not that I think this concept isn't cool. It's very cool. So cool, in fact, someone already thought of it over 70 years ago. The Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach has a show every year where they display "living art." They paint real live people into famous paintings, display each "painting," then at the end, show the audience the technique they used to achieve the effect. The idea has been parodied on episodes of Gilmore Girls and Arrested Development.

 Rory painting.

Lots of people are blown away by Ms. Meade's art. Sure, her composition is original but the basic idea is not, and it's seriously pissing me off that everyone thinks it is. What's more, she says on her site that she "invented a technique" to make real 3 dimensional people and objects appear flat. Invented?

Let's say, Ms. Meade had never heard of The Pageant of the Masters. Is it ethical to take credit for an idea if someone else thought of it before you, even if you weren't aware of the original idea beforehand? It's like if someone says "I invented a new drink. It's made of Vodka, Kahlua and half & half. I call it a 'Hard Latte.'" No dude, that's a White Russian. Once you become aware of it, it's not longer yours.

Really, how often are there new ideas in art that aren't simply a regurgitation of older ideas? Look at Hollywood. We've got movies based on books, movies based on graphic novels, movies based on plays, movies based on video games, movies based on other movies, American movies that were foreign films first, sequels, reboots, Avatar. Don't get me wrong, I love movies. I love art. There's nothing wrong with being inspired by older ideas. But please don't call something original and innovative, when clearly it's not.

Who Would Give a Child Gunpowder?

Jonathan Safran Foer is a young author known for his books "Everything is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Both are awesome books, and he apparently has one more that came out last year, but that's not my topic here.

I just read an abridged article in "The Week" that JSF wrote about an accident he was in when he was 8 years old. I was intrigued, so I looked up the original article with the Washington Post from 2 years ago. The accident was in the news in 1985, and I realized some of the original reports are likely lurking around on the internet somewhere, so I found this. Because of my morbid curiosity with things of this nature (like the TruTV Crime Library), I probed further and found this.

I suppose that once I find something that is interesting to me, I binge on all the related information that I can find. It's interesting for me to read different accounts of the same event written from very different perspectives and for very different reasons... The Original Washington Post article is definitely worth a read, at the very least.