We've attracted another expert April 12, 2010 1:48 PM Subscribe
We have another case of the subject of a post turning up to comment. Carol from the Illinois Poison Center has turned up in this post and has answered some questions. (Maybe we need to show her Ask MetaFilter next.)
Nice pull quote.
All we do is poisonings! Poisonings! Poisonings! Gitcher Poisonings right here! Best Poisonings in town! Discreet! Direct! Effective! Poisonings!
posted by carsonb at 2:27 PM on April 12, 2010
All we do is poisonings! Poisonings! Poisonings! Gitcher Poisonings right here! Best Poisonings in town! Discreet! Direct! Effective! Poisonings!
posted by carsonb at 2:27 PM on April 12, 2010
She's going to regret this the moment she gets like 50 MeMails asking for advice about day-old tuna sandwiches left out on the counter overnight.
posted by chinston at 2:41 PM on April 12, 2010 [13 favorites]
posted by chinston at 2:41 PM on April 12, 2010 [13 favorites]
I wish I was an expert in something.
posted by TooFewShoes at 3:19 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by TooFewShoes at 3:19 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
"We've attracted another expert"
This cracks me up. It makes me picture MeFi as a giant blue strip of sticky flypaper, laced with shiny numbers, theorems and sesquipedalian technical terms to draw them in, take their $5, and trap their productivity forever in our hivey clenches.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:19 PM on April 12, 2010 [17 favorites]
This cracks me up. It makes me picture MeFi as a giant blue strip of sticky flypaper, laced with shiny numbers, theorems and sesquipedalian technical terms to draw them in, take their $5, and trap their productivity forever in our hivey clenches.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:19 PM on April 12, 2010 [17 favorites]
MeFi meetup at my house where we try random things under the sink!
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:34 PM on April 12, 2010 [3 favorites]
posted by mccarty.tim at 3:34 PM on April 12, 2010 [3 favorites]
and trap their productivity forever in our hivey clenches.
On the flipside of that imagery, we've definitely been an accidental honeypot a couple times for askme spammers. I recall both a WoW goldfarming question and a Cash4Gold-related question netting a string of signup-and-shill comments in particular; I think we may have even closed one of them a couple months early just to skip the trouble of deleting, banning, and arguing with spammers.
That's all aside from the ongoing background radiation spam on one random thread or another that we deal with more or less weekly.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:16 PM on April 12, 2010
On the flipside of that imagery, we've definitely been an accidental honeypot a couple times for askme spammers. I recall both a WoW goldfarming question and a Cash4Gold-related question netting a string of signup-and-shill comments in particular; I think we may have even closed one of them a couple months early just to skip the trouble of deleting, banning, and arguing with spammers.
That's all aside from the ongoing background radiation spam on one random thread or another that we deal with more or less weekly.
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:16 PM on April 12, 2010
Neat!
posted by turgid dahlia at 4:20 PM on April 12, 2010
posted by turgid dahlia at 4:20 PM on April 12, 2010
So... that's where my anonymous AskMe about how to enlarge my penis went...
posted by qvantamon at 4:27 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by qvantamon at 4:27 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
Why did you want to enlarge your friend's penis?
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:40 PM on April 12, 2010 [12 favorites]
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:40 PM on April 12, 2010 [12 favorites]
cortex: "Why did you want to enlarge your friend's penis"
Because it's the gift that keeps on giving.
posted by idiopath at 4:43 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
Because it's the gift that keeps on giving.
posted by idiopath at 4:43 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
I'm looking for the name of the 1990s hair metal band Bret Michaels was the vocalist for. I think they did Unskinny Bop and might have played with Aerosmith and such.
Can anyone help me remember the name?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:22 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
Can anyone help me remember the name?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:22 PM on April 12, 2010 [1 favorite]
thank you guys for the awesome welcome. I'm thrilled I found this place. I'm still sniffing around, checking it out but it seems like you've got a great community going here. looking forward to reading (and writing) much more here
posted by Carol@ILPoisonCenter at 6:37 PM on April 12, 2010 [10 favorites]
posted by Carol@ILPoisonCenter at 6:37 PM on April 12, 2010 [10 favorites]
Duh, Vasco da Gama. You are thinking of Pantera. I can see why, as there has been a lot of discussion of panthers in this thread.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:50 PM on April 12, 2010
posted by Rock Steady at 6:50 PM on April 12, 2010
I'm looking for the name of the 1990s hair metal band Bret Michaels was the vocalist for. I think they did Unskinny Bop and might have played with Aerosmith and such.
Can anyone help me remember the name?
Sure! It was Bell Biv DeVoe. You are clearly misremembering
Also, yay Carol! Welcome!
posted by Balonious Assault at 6:50 PM on April 12, 2010
Why did you want to enlarge your friend's penis?
Just tryin' fix a flat.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:01 PM on April 12, 2010
Just tryin' fix a flat.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:01 PM on April 12, 2010
looking forward to reading (and writing) much more here
Just a quick note, because sometimes people miss this when they get drawn in to mefi because of something work-related.
Metafilter.com (The blue page) is kind of a general interest site where you are welcome to post about anything, except your job. No one is allowed to post links to their own work or anything that benefits them personally. Responding to someone else's post about your work is obviously okay and encouraged, though.
Ask Metafilter (the green page) is a site where people ask questions and seek advice. There, we LOVE to have actual experts participating and answering questions, and we do often get questions of the "Am I going to die if I eat this?" variety. AskMe is often the first result in google searches about problems, too.
posted by empath at 7:49 PM on April 12, 2010
Just a quick note, because sometimes people miss this when they get drawn in to mefi because of something work-related.
Metafilter.com (The blue page) is kind of a general interest site where you are welcome to post about anything, except your job. No one is allowed to post links to their own work or anything that benefits them personally. Responding to someone else's post about your work is obviously okay and encouraged, though.
Ask Metafilter (the green page) is a site where people ask questions and seek advice. There, we LOVE to have actual experts participating and answering questions, and we do often get questions of the "Am I going to die if I eat this?" variety. AskMe is often the first result in google searches about problems, too.
posted by empath at 7:49 PM on April 12, 2010
Careful with the sniffing. You never know what you might inhale.
posted by ODiV at 9:49 PM on April 12, 2010
posted by ODiV at 9:49 PM on April 12, 2010
Careful with the sniffing. You never know what you might inhale.
Waft! Never sniff!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:21 PM on April 12, 2010 [3 favorites]
Waft! Never sniff!
posted by The Light Fantastic at 10:21 PM on April 12, 2010 [3 favorites]
Carol, welcome! Please don't be put off by the penis jokes. Although we do have our share of penis jokes around here, we also talk about smart stuff like sesquapidawhateverwhatever. Actually, mostly it's penis jokes.
posted by serazin at 10:22 PM on April 12, 2010
posted by serazin at 10:22 PM on April 12, 2010
Seriously, it was great to see you show up and I look forward to hearing more from you in the future. It's a pretty cool community and I've learned a lot here - I hope you like it too!
posted by serazin at 10:23 PM on April 12, 2010
posted by serazin at 10:23 PM on April 12, 2010
No one is allowed to post links to their own work or anything that benefits them personally.
This may be a little confusing. You're basically allowed to link to stuff in your commetns just fine, you can't make a post to the front page about your own stuff but we do have a part of the site called Projects where you could link to a new project.
Anyhow, welcome to town. We're glad you came by.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:46 AM on April 13, 2010
This may be a little confusing. You're basically allowed to link to stuff in your commetns just fine, you can't make a post to the front page about your own stuff but we do have a part of the site called Projects where you could link to a new project.
Anyhow, welcome to town. We're glad you came by.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:46 AM on April 13, 2010
She seems to love her job, which is pretty refreshing considering that thread about the disgruntled ex-consultant and the (justified) cynicism therein. Welcome aboard, Carol.
posted by ersatz at 7:00 AM on April 13, 2010
posted by ersatz at 7:00 AM on April 13, 2010
"Poisoning and poison centers is my all time favorite subject..."
This is the kind of thing that just makes me really happy to read. I love that the world works this way, that people just get fascinated by all sorts of random different stuff. And when they can focus on it and spend all their time on it and turn out to help other people at the same time - that's just really cool.
I don't just mean poison control, although that's an excellent example. Another is dentistry - I would never want to be a dentist and have no interest in it, and I know I'm not the only one - but there are other people who find teeth fascinating, and the rest of us benefit. I just think that's one of those really cool things about life.
posted by nickmark at 9:58 AM on April 13, 2010
This is the kind of thing that just makes me really happy to read. I love that the world works this way, that people just get fascinated by all sorts of random different stuff. And when they can focus on it and spend all their time on it and turn out to help other people at the same time - that's just really cool.
I don't just mean poison control, although that's an excellent example. Another is dentistry - I would never want to be a dentist and have no interest in it, and I know I'm not the only one - but there are other people who find teeth fascinating, and the rest of us benefit. I just think that's one of those really cool things about life.
posted by nickmark at 9:58 AM on April 13, 2010
nickmark: my interest in the idea of poisoning is what made me go into pharmacy school in the first place actually. I have always been fascinated that something the size of a few grains of salt can either cure or kill. how our bodies can handle grams of one chemical but barely a microgram of another. I consider myself lucky that I found such a great organization to work for and be part of; toxicology is a pretty small community. we're kind of like the black sheep of the medical community.... in a good way of course.
Say, someone mentioned that people often ask 'what do I do if I ate XYZ' type questions. In which askmefi section are those most in, the health section? I'm always looking for more good crazy ingestion stories. heh. (j/k.....well not really but of course, I'd love to help people out too)
posted by Carol@ILPoisonCenter at 10:59 AM on April 13, 2010
Say, someone mentioned that people often ask 'what do I do if I ate XYZ' type questions. In which askmefi section are those most in, the health section? I'm always looking for more good crazy ingestion stories. heh. (j/k.....well not really but of course, I'd love to help people out too)
posted by Carol@ILPoisonCenter at 10:59 AM on April 13, 2010
Oooh, Carol is about to get so happy! Better clear your calendar for the day, productivity is but a dream for you.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:01 AM on April 13, 2010
posted by iamkimiam at 11:01 AM on April 13, 2010
Are you ready? Are you ready? Ok, brace yourself... Should I Eat This?
Yes, we had to make a separate, off-site compendium on the topic.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:05 AM on April 13, 2010
Yes, we had to make a separate, off-site compendium on the topic.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:05 AM on April 13, 2010
wwwwooooooooowww! there really are tons! I love it!
these aren't even that weird though
just a couple then I really gotta do some work for a bit:
How do you tell if bread or cheese has gone bad when it's not obvious?
--if it's green/black. or you drop it on the floor and it's so hard it breaks into a bunch of pieces. still, I say go ahead and eat it, pick the mold off. a little bit of mold on bread will mostly be killed by your stomach acid. if you ate a lot of moldy bread you'd probably feel queasy and depending on how sensitive your stomach is, may or may not go any further than that. not that I'm suggesting eating decaying grain products but nobody is going to get raging salmonella or e coli after eating a piece of bread that you may have had to pick a lil green fluff off of. similar thing with cheese, but because it's dairy, I wouldn't eat it if you had to pick more than a few specks off. unless it's blue cheese, right, because that's half mold isn't it? same thing for fruit, you can just cut off the soft brown bits and eat the rest.
live wasp?
--oh for the love of pete, I really hope this person was kidding. I can just see the delicate pink oropharynx tissue swelling up right now....cutting off his air supply. I betcha he was dared. Oh the things people will eat if you say those 3 words: I dare you. I've had people eat roaches (and find them in their ear but that's another unhygienic story), lizards, worms, feces, a (live) kissing fish, a liter of vinegar, a gallon of orange juice (and in doing so, ingested a potentially lethal dose of potassium. that one was cool), water from a gas station toilet, etc..
okay, I'm not allowed back to read any more until I am home from work, otherwise I won't have a poison center to come back to work to...
posted by Carol@ILPoisonCenter at 11:31 AM on April 13, 2010 [16 favorites]
these aren't even that weird though
just a couple then I really gotta do some work for a bit:
How do you tell if bread or cheese has gone bad when it's not obvious?
--if it's green/black. or you drop it on the floor and it's so hard it breaks into a bunch of pieces. still, I say go ahead and eat it, pick the mold off. a little bit of mold on bread will mostly be killed by your stomach acid. if you ate a lot of moldy bread you'd probably feel queasy and depending on how sensitive your stomach is, may or may not go any further than that. not that I'm suggesting eating decaying grain products but nobody is going to get raging salmonella or e coli after eating a piece of bread that you may have had to pick a lil green fluff off of. similar thing with cheese, but because it's dairy, I wouldn't eat it if you had to pick more than a few specks off. unless it's blue cheese, right, because that's half mold isn't it? same thing for fruit, you can just cut off the soft brown bits and eat the rest.
live wasp?
--oh for the love of pete, I really hope this person was kidding. I can just see the delicate pink oropharynx tissue swelling up right now....cutting off his air supply. I betcha he was dared. Oh the things people will eat if you say those 3 words: I dare you. I've had people eat roaches (and find them in their ear but that's another unhygienic story), lizards, worms, feces, a (live) kissing fish, a liter of vinegar, a gallon of orange juice (and in doing so, ingested a potentially lethal dose of potassium. that one was cool), water from a gas station toilet, etc..
okay, I'm not allowed back to read any more until I am home from work, otherwise I won't have a poison center to come back to work to...
posted by Carol@ILPoisonCenter at 11:31 AM on April 13, 2010 [16 favorites]
a gallon of orange juice (and in doing so, ingested a potentially lethal dose of potassium. that one was cool)
Good heavens... I love a beverage made of bananas and orange juice run through the blender. I've guzzled some pretty large quantities of it, and now I wonder how close I've come to killling myself. Hmm.
posted by Balonious Assault at 12:10 PM on April 13, 2010
Good heavens... I love a beverage made of bananas and orange juice run through the blender. I've guzzled some pretty large quantities of it, and now I wonder how close I've come to killling myself. Hmm.
posted by Balonious Assault at 12:10 PM on April 13, 2010
Googling for health advice can be dangerous to your mental state. My eyelids were a bit swollen and itchy so I looked up my symptoms and the first thing that came up was ocular herpes. Awesome!
I called the 24 hour nurse hotline (Free! Yay, Canada!) to see if it sounded like allergies or something because I've never had them and she said to make an appointment with my GP, but don't sweat it. Saw the doctor (Again, free!) who told me that my eyes were dry. Oh.
posted by ODiV at 12:24 PM on April 13, 2010
I called the 24 hour nurse hotline (Free! Yay, Canada!) to see if it sounded like allergies or something because I've never had them and she said to make an appointment with my GP, but don't sweat it. Saw the doctor (Again, free!) who told me that my eyes were dry. Oh.
posted by ODiV at 12:24 PM on April 13, 2010
live wasp?
--oh for the love of pete, I really hope this person was kidding.
Swallow it with a large spider. Then swallow a bird to catch the spider, then swallow a cat to catch the bird. Let us know if you need help after that point.
Warning: Perhaps you'll die.
:D
posted by zarq at 12:29 PM on April 13, 2010 [2 favorites]
--oh for the love of pete, I really hope this person was kidding.
Swallow it with a large spider. Then swallow a bird to catch the spider, then swallow a cat to catch the bird. Let us know if you need help after that point.
Warning: Perhaps you'll die.
:D
posted by zarq at 12:29 PM on April 13, 2010 [2 favorites]
Welcome Carol. All I have to say is thank god boogers aren't poisonous because my 15 month old son is eating enough of them.
posted by stormpooper at 11:59 AM on April 15, 2010
posted by stormpooper at 11:59 AM on April 15, 2010
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posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:51 PM on April 12, 2010