Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (16 page)

—Marcel Jouhandeau

“I talk to myself because I like dealing with a better class of people.”

—Jackie Mason

“If the devil does not exist, and man has therefore created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.”

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The human race is a virus with shoes.”

—Bill Hicks

“What is Man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”

—Andre Malraux

“It is no exaggeration to say that we misanthropes are among the nicest people you are likely to meet. Because good manners build sturdy walls, our distaste for intimacy makes us exceedingly cordial.”

—Florence King

“The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

“I wish I loved the human race, I wish I loved its silly face, and when I’m introduced to one, I wish I thought ‘What jolly fun!’”

—Sir Walter Raleigh

“No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it was human nature.”

—A. A. Milne

“I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”

—James Boswell

“We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.”

—Thomas Fuller

Meteor strikes that kill 100 or more people occur only once every 100,000 years.

185 USES FOR A PIG

Turns out that there’s a lot more to a pig than just meat. The reality is that almost
every
part of a livestock animal is put to commercial use—from the hair and the hide to the internal organs and the bones. Don’t be grossed out: This kind of recycling has been going on as long as humans have been domesticating animals. (Only now it’s a little more industrialized.)

B
ACKGROUND

In 2004 Dutch artist and author Christien Meindertsma began researching the fate of a single pig that was slaughtered on a commercial pig farm. She spent the next three years tracking down where every piece of that animal went and how it was used. It eventually went into 185 different products, which Meindertsma details in her book,
Pig 05049
. Here are just a few of the surprising places you might find a bit of a pig.

BEER:
One of the most widely used products from pigs (and other animals) is gelatin—a clear, flavorless substance made from hooves, bones, and connective tissues. In beermaking, a dry, powdered form of gelatin is mixed in near the end of the process. There it binds with and helps remove
tannins
—bitter substances found in the hulls of grains used to make beer. It does the same with agents that can make beer cloudy, such as yeast and proteins from malt.

SHAMPOO:
You know how some shampoos have a very shiny, pearly look? That’s often the result of adding fatty acids from pig bones. (It’s also used for this purpose in paint products.)

FABRIC SOFTENER:
Not only are pig by-products used in commercial fabric softeners, they’re actually one of the main ingredients. Static cling is caused when fabric fibers become negatively charged. Processed pig fats are positively charged, and therefore cling to fabric surfaces—effectively coating them in pig fat, making them feel soft and slippery, so your hand or your iron glides over the fabric easily. The process also makes it less prone to wrinkling.

BRUSHES:
Pig bristles are a huge business all over the world, especially in China. They’re used to make brushes of every kind imaginable, including hairbrushes, coat brushes, and paintbrushes. The bristles are gathered using special machines during the slaughtering process.

John Steinbeck’s
Of Mice and Men
was almost called
Something That Happened
.

BREAD:
L-cysteine
is a naturally occurring amino acid (or protein) found in meat and dairy products. It is beneficial to the human body in several ways, especially in keeping our stomach linings healthy. Bread manufacturers use it because it reacts with wheat proteins in such a way that results in softer dough. Sometimes L-cysteine is made synthetically, but it’s still most often made from pigs’ bristles.

HEPARIN:
This widely used anticoagulant drug (it stops blood clots from forming) is derived from the mucus lining of pigs’ small intestines.

CORK:
Corks for wine bottles are traditionally made out of whole pieces from cork trees. But the manufacturing process generates a lot of cork waste. Rather than let all that waste go to waste, it’s reprocessed and reformed into new corks using a binding agent, such as gelatin from pig bone. (Because wine is often clarified with gelatin just as beer is, there can actually be bits of pig in a wine bottle’s cork
—and
in the wine itself.)

CHEMICAL WEAPONS LABS:
Because of its similarity to human tissue, pig flesh—usually the ears—is commonly used to test the physiological effects of chemical weapons.

MATCHES:
“Bone glue” is a type of adhesive made from proteins found in pig bones. One of its many industrial uses is in matches: The strikable heads of friction matches are a combination of flammable chemicals (like phosphorus)—held together with bone glue.

CIGARETTES:
Meindertsma found that processed pig blood—yes, pig blood—is used in the manufacture of cigarette filters. In 2010 Dutch researchers confirmed this, saying, “The pig’s hemoglobin was found to be a fairly effective filter for cigarettes, but this information was not on cigarette labels because the tobacco industry was not required by law to disclose the ingredients of their products.” The news caused outrage, particularly among Muslim and Jewish smokers, who are proscribed from using pig products in any form.

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock gained nearly a pound per day while eating his McDonald’s-only diet for the movie
Super Size Me
.

TRAIN BRAKES:
Like those of other livestock animals, such as cattle and sheep, pigs’ bones are useful, too, often in the form of
bone ash:
The bones are incinerated and processed to form a very fine powder of uniformly sized particles. Bone ash can be added to a vast number of products, including fine china, artists’ paints, polishing compounds, and fertilizers. Meindertsma even tracked Pig 05049’s bone ash to a factory in Germany that makes parts for train brakes.

MISCELLANEOUS:
Here are some other products in which you might find gelatin, bone ash, or other parts of a pig.

safety gloves

beauty masks

energy bars

licorice

chewing gum

breath mints

lollipops

marshmallows

nougat

cupcakes

vanilla pudding

chocolate mousse

ice cream

pet food

surgical sponge

paintballs

inkjet paper

X-ray film

jigsaw puzzles

book covers

wallpaper

sandpaper

shoe leather

china figurines

chondroitin tablets

insulin

heart valves

cadmium batteries

injectable collagen

bullets

MYTH-CONCEPTION:
PIGS ARE FILTHY ANIMALS

Pigs are exceptionally clean animals. Yes, you might see them rolling around in the mud, but they do that only to cool themselves off because they have no sweat glands. Here’s an example of pig hygiene: They typically designate one area of their pen or yard for defecation and urination—away from the area where they eat and sleep. Even piglets just a few days old will leave the nursing nest to relieve themselves.

MISSED IT BY
THAT
MUCH

You work so hard, you dedicate yourself with long hours, year after year, you get right up to the very end…and boom, you miss it
.

P
HILLIP K. DICK

Almost there…
This American science-fiction writer published more than 120 short stories and 44 novels. He had a small following around the world, but lived most of his life in near-poverty. His later years were marred by poor health, both physical and mental, and, five days after suffering a stroke in February 1982, he died at the age of 53.

Denied:
Less than three months after his death, Dick’s 1968 novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
was adapted for the screen—becoming
Blade Runner,
starring Harrison Ford. The film was nominated for two Oscars, and it introduced the world to Dick’s largely unknown work. Since then, eight films based on Dick’s work, including
Total Recall
(1990),
Minority Report
(2002), and
A Scanner Darkly
(2006), have grossed more than $700 million.

ROMAN EMPEROR VESPASIAN

Almost there…
Shortly after Vespasian came to power in A.D. 69, he ordered the construction of the Flavian Amphitheater (after the imperial family name). It took almost nine years to build.

Denied:
In June of A.D. 79, Vespasian dropped dead after a brief illness at the age of 70. He missed the completion of his theater and its 100-day grand opening. Every day during that period, the massive arena, which was more than 150 feet high and covered six acres, was filled with more than 50,000 spectators who turned out to see boat battles (they could fill the amphitheater with several feet of water), horse races, gladiator battles, sideshows of every sort, and the slaughter of more than 9,000 animals. Vespasian’s Flavian Amphitheater became the most important symbol of the power of the Roman Empire, and its ruins still stand today, better known by the name it got during the Middle Ages: the Roman Colosseum.

MADELYN LEE PAYNE DUNHAM

Almost there…
Madelyn Lee Payne was born in Kansas in 1922. In 1940 she married Stanley Dunham, in 1942 they had a daughter named Ann, and in the 1950s they moved to Hawaii. There, in 1961, Ann met and married Barack Obama; Barack Jr. was born later that year. Madelyn played a big role in the boy’s upbringing, even raising him for several years while his mother lived in Indonesia. In 2008 Madelyn, then 86, watched from her home in Honolulu as her grandson ran for president as the Democratic nominee. She even had a corneal transplant just so she could see the TV better.

One of Isaac Newton’s teeth was auctioned in 1816 for $3,633. ($35,700 today.)

Denied:
Dunham died on November 2, 2008—just two days before Barack Obama won the historic election. Fortunately, he had visited her in late October (with only days remaining in the campaign) and was able to talk to her one last time.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

Almost there…
Nazi Germany’s 1939 invasion of Poland marked the beginning of World War II. At first, President Roosevelt kept the United States out of it, but he was anything but uninvolved. He persuaded Congress to repeal a 1935 arms embargo, allowing the U.S. to export weapons to its European allies; he instigated a major arms buildup that helped keep England from being taken by the Nazis; and he pushed for (and got) the first peacetime draft in American history. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered what had become a true “world war.” For the next three-and-a-half years Roosevelt led the country through history’s most devastating conflict to date.

Denied:
Roosevelt was at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat on April 12, 1945, when he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died within minutes. Less than a month later, Germany surrendered. On August 14, after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan surrendered, and President Harry Truman announced to the American people that the war was over.