Pass The Purell
February 28, 2013 I don't know about you guys, but it seems like everyone I know has gotten sick with something contagious this winter. Heck, I was sick the entire month of January. Because knowledge is power, I think you ought to know just what the nasties that are causing all this misery look like. We rented a powerful microscope -- hey, we spare no expense for you, our dear readers -- put samples of the germs under the microscope, and magnified them 5000 times. Here's what we found: Let's start with...
Flu
;)
...and landed very, very badly.
("Shhh! It's trying to communicate.")
("Yeah, and it's saying, 'OUCH.'")
You've probably heard of e-coli:
;)
Be careful around this one -- it makes you feel like crap.
I'll bet you think this is the common cold:
;)
Well, it's not.
Most of us are familiar with Strep:
;)
You know, the one that makes you a little hoarse?
And finally, there's Staphylococcus:
;)
Which is the disease that killed Sigmund Freud.
(Actually, it's not. But wouldn't that have been deliciously ironic?)
We hope you've managed to avoid getting sick this winter, because no one wants these in real life, or in cake form.
(If you were "lucky" enough to get one of these, feel free not to share, m'kay?)
Let's spread thanks to Kara W., Tiffany W., Jan Y., Kerrie C., and Katie P., for their infectious senses of humor.
Reader Comments (42)
Swab the cupcake cakes.
Culture in a Petri dish.
Multiplication.
On the common cold shouldn't that comment be "It's Snot?" LOL!!
Thanks for making me smile and hope you are feeling MUCH better! :)
Everyone needs to fall down and adore me now. "Why?" you ask. "Because you're so adorable?"
That would be reason number one.
But reason number two is because I've been feeling like that beautifully rendered nose cake for a week (minus the vivid coloring), and in that week, I've graded more than 80 major papers (40 of which get personalized typed "go this way, not that way" letters) AND I'm a quarter of the way done grading exams.
I'm riding a professor's high right now. It might be induced by fever, but I think it'ssnot.
Adoring throng (koff koff koff), assemble!
Staphylococcus... Snortle...
Is it just me, or does that little horse have six legs? And if that's the case, where's his Valkyrie rider? (Down with a cold, maybe?)
@Haiku Joy: I know you've got something nasty right now -- I hope this helps you visualize what you're fighting. Feel better soon!
It's possible that the nose one made me puke a little in my mouth. Thanks for a great start to the day. :-/
As one who has spent five days so far subsisting on cough medicine and tissue paper, I appreciate your spot-on post! I laughed until I coughed..... And, while I thought I might have strep, it was just a little colt....
@Haiku Joy: we've adored you since day one....
Um, yuck. Seriously though, what was that last 'Staph' cake SUPPOSED to actually be? I can't figure it out.
@mel: Aw, you, too? And you still managed to make a pun? Feel better soon, The comments aren't the same without you.
@SOman: It's a gavel -- the "Crystal Gavel Award 2009". Guaranteed to cause disorder in the courtroom.
Pinky-tan gavels
cause sensation in the court.
Cake Wrecks, I object!
Haiku Joy and Mel, I'm cooking up a pot of chicken soup. I've added matzoh balls that look like cakes that look like noses just for you guys. Just tell me where to send it.
Er that is odd, there was a previous version of this post up for a while right? And I think it had an extra cake, the first one. Or maybe I'm hallucinating. :)
[Editor's note- No, you're not hallucinating. It was a bit different but it made a couple of people sad so I adjusted it. Sorry for the confusion. -john (the hubby of Jen)]
Sometimes tummy gas
can be found in sweet desserts.
You're excused, pink cake.
That first cake reminds me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8UE8ADvF_s
SOman - The Staph cake is supposed to be a judge's gavel, done by someone who has clearly never seen one except on t.v.
Um...Staph is not an STD....
[Editor's note- True, though nobody ever said it was. On a related note, it is nearly impossible not to sound like a putz when you start a comment with "Um..." -john]
E-coli is the bacteria that damaged the girl child's kidney. :-( I'll have to ask if the slides looked like gummy worms.
Haiku Joy ~ We adore you because we just do. Your students are very lucky to have you and so are we!!! Feel better soon!
#4 is so not a horse. I have no idea what it is and if I continue to look at it I may just lose my lunch. But it's not a horse...
#5 A gavel??? Really??? So not what I saw o.O
AAIIGGHHH NOT THE NOSE!!!! YUCK!!!
Hmmm....looks like I need to send in my microbiology slide collection to Cake Wrecks so you guys know what the germs *really* look like... ;-) And I'll throw in my photo collection of ice cream cake microbe-look alikes for free... (For some reason, the local HEB has a ton of ice cream cakes all decorated with dots and squiggles resembling everything from Acanthamoeba astronyxis to Yersinia pestis to with some spirochetes and tapeworms thrown in for good measure...)
Love your haiku, Haiku Joy! I'll definitely kow-tow to you! No way I could manage to grade all that stuff & send out custom letters in the distant hope that said students might actually be interested in improving their writing and do exams too while being so near death with that gunk!
SuBee, step on it with that custom chicken soup - our friends need help STAT!!! ( Get better soon, mel & Haiku J!)
And last but not least, excellent as always, Sharyn, though I missed hearing it in the form of a song...Perhaps Monty Python's Medical Love song would be appropriate here? No?
I've been feeling like that nose cake for over a week now and it's really draining... but my blogs get me through! thanks jen and john, i'd be really grumpy without my daily wreckage!
Crystal <I>gavel</I>? I swear, I thought it said the Crystal <I>Gayle</I> award, and I was trying to figure out how it was shaped like a woman with hair down to her ankles! (Wondering how many here are even old enough to know who Crystal Gayle is...)
Haiku Joy, you are amazing!
Dear John (hubby of Jen,)
All of these cakes make me sad. Maybe not as sad as yesterday's cakes, but sad nonetheless.
Please don't make them go away.
Thank you.
I hope you're all feeling better, and that Haiku Joy doesn't get any papers worthy of spreading the germs on.
And thanks for the explanation about why, when I checked at 11am EST, there wasn't a new entry. That'll teach me not to check at 9:30am like I usually do (and I usually do so that I'm sure to see the spaceship earth cakes before they become spaceship earth pics instead).
That first cake reminded me of Audre II in Little Shop Of Horrors.
FEED me, Seymour!
Wow! What a day at the CW HQ! A stellar post by Sharyn (wash your hands, people! Get some rest! And for all of you with that last disease...stop sleeping around with the alley cats! oy! :D haha jk), positively moving comment by Haiku Joy (now I will be super conscious about what I post knowing an ENGLISH Professor? is reading the comments...yikes! How does it surprise me that the someone with the name Haiku Joy is an English Professor of sorts? haha), and some mysterious "previous" post that had to be taken down.
The last point is the most intriguing. Anything that can make PEOPLE SAD WITH CAKE (besides wedding cake wrecks, which are too tragic to even joke about!) would've been worth seeing. Drat. I guess the early bird gets the worm.
Aww we all love you haikujoy-you always make us smile :D
I think I saw the e.coli cake during microbiology rotation O_o
BTW, did you upgrade the website or something, I can only get you on some work computers and not all of them :(
The Nose cake reminds me of one of the songs my husband's Madrigal group sings:
Weep, oh my eyes,
And cease not.
Current #1: This one makes me sad -- for the customer. It has SL-style giant candles, but they aren't drooping, so this can't be due to heat. It took me a few minutes to link "flu" with "landed very badly." I hope that doesn't mean I'm coming down with something...
#2: Isn't e-coli a brand of cough drops? I never could figure out how showing people smoking really long pipes could be useful in pitching cough drops. (I kid. Those 'pipes' are really a clever communication system used in mountainous countries. On the other side of the valley, people hold their ear to the instrument to listen.) (Ok, not really.)
#3 [Intercom] Theardare, bring me the Unsee Machine. STAT!
#4 I still don't see a horse here. What I see isn't horse-like in any respect. Oy.
#5 Sometimes, a crystal gavel is just a... Who are we kidding, here. I have to admit that I thought the official commentary on this wreck implied that staph is an STD. Not.
cake #1 should have the jaws theme playing.
@Craig ~ You just made me snort in the most unladylike fashion... Thanks for that
If it makes you less nervous, Stoich91, I have the entire anatomy and physiology department reading CW comments, too.
Aww, thanks guys! You've all given me a very deep to the soul information.
#4 A coiled crap horse?
how can such horror and weak puns induce such deep belly laughs? I dunno. I'm grateful, you understand, but I don't know why I love you all so very much...
@Haiku Joy -- I am quite sure you are adorable in every sense, but I won't fall down. I WILL give you a virtual hug ((((Haiku Joy)))) and best wishes for a speedy recovery. You are aMAZing getting all those papers done!!!
Great wrecks - great captions, as always. Keep it up, Jen and John!
@ Sharyn: thanks for the sympathy and the kind words...
@SuBee: thanks for the offer of soup...if we lived closer, I'd come and get it...I'd just love to pick at my nose....
@KarateLady:thank you for your good wishes...my sisters have threatened that if I don't go to the doc tomorrow they'll come over and drag me there....
Also, in reviewing my own post...not tissue paper...tissues....I have not been wrapping gifts...it is very hard to see what you've written when the screen is splotched with mucus...I thought it was sputum, but it'snot....
I've been reading you guys for a while, but this is my first post.
Wow. that nose cake did me in. I'm not sure what kind of infection you have once your snot is neon green, but I think once your boogers get that color, you need to give up and just go to the doctor's for some antibiotics.
And the horse cake, I'm both horrified and feel sad for the genetic monstrosity created by a horse, a pile of poo, and some sort of demonic force of evil.
Thanks for all of the laughs and keep them coming!
Oh man.. and yes I did manage to get sick this lovely winter..and I felt like that first cake too lol. Only instead of pink I looked very green. Appropriate for St. Patrick's Day. How on earth can they sell these things with a straight face? I would be dying of laughter lol.
I'm going to need a unicorn chaser after this... especially after that last one. Gross.
Maureen, probably wise, given the gravel around us - looks uncomfortable to fall on.:-)
One week later, I realized that my last comment here makes no sense at all.
Is that last one a plane or a pole with underwear?