Sunday, February 24, 2013

Annual yuck fest

As regular as the Easter Bunny, there is the annual yuck fest.

Reports about bacteria on any surface humans use frequently are the fest's content.

If you can spell the word bacteria or fungus and can write a sentence of nine or ten words, you have most of the prerequisites. The only missing item is "the surface".

We regularly see reports on cell phones and computer keyboards, closely followed by money.  Bank notes have the additional advantage of traces of drugs.

Door handles, or knobs for those of you living in the land of knobs, are still great subjects and can be spiced up with the extra "hospital" or "convalescent home", so leave your home door knobs alone and go for "hospital door knobs".

Any public or semi-public building will do. You can easily write a lifetime's worth of "yuck" articles about these. They are perfect as spare articles because they don't have a sell by date -- any time of the year is suitable for publication.

Here are a couple of suggestions for devices we have not seen in "yikes, would you believe what grows on this" articles:

Tablet PC touchscreens (similar to cell phone, so use specific model and make, like iPad 5)
Computer mouse (hurry up while they are still around)
Memory sticks, USB sticks
Reusable shopping bags or baskets
Inside or underside of car door handles
Shell of decorated Easter eggs
Wrist watches, any kind of jewelry
Elevator buttons
Airplane or train toilet doors
Cigarette butts collected by the homeless 

Once you have done the articles themselves, do art with them. We just saw a Huffington Post article about someone doing very cute closeups of the lifeforms growing on a cell phone after dipping it in a Petri dish.

Except for the cell phone, most other yuck devices are probably still unclaimed for bacteria art.



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