Sunday 12 February 2012

Fuck you, Shannon Lush.

First before we get too far into anything, as usual it has been a while since I have frequented here and to those people that have been harassing me about when this post was going to appear...stop and think. You are following The CRAP Housewife. Not The Organised Housewife, Not The Gives a Fuck Housewife, Do you not think the answer to your question might be in the title? To me crap is not just a word it is a way of life.

So what prompts me to be airing my unwashed smalls on the internet today? Simply, housework. I hate it, I avoid it, I suck at it but sometimes, goddamn it, even I have to do it. Or more accurately, start to do it, then go on-line where I just look at a screen and not the chaos surrounding me. I would have quite happily avoided domestic drudgery for another season or two but fate has a funny way of kicking you in the ovaries, chiefly in the form of an 8 year old boy with absolutely no drive to aim his stream of urine...well anywhere really.

Now several years ago I actually purchased Shannon Lush's ode to vinegar and bicarb soda "Speed Cleaning", unfortunately I misunderstood the title and it is NOT a tome on the use of narcotics to aid in household tasks and I am now stuck with a book whose core philosophy makes a mockery of me and all I stand for. Let me tell you there is not one single chapter, paragraph or line in this book that advises one on what to do when you are sitting innocently on the toilet, hiding from your spouse and off-spring, only to be overcome with the smell of rancid piss. Not one mention of this phenomenon that numerous women across the country face every day of their lives. Do you know why? Because fucking vinegar and bicarb has absolutely no effect on fermenting human urine. Insert surprised face here.

Last night I would have much rather been laying on the couch shouting random insults at my first husband (I believe I told him he was like if Hitler and Captain Caveman had a love-child) but instead I was bleaching the area around the toilet which was covered in a layer of radioactive looking kid whizz. After which I felt akin to having spent all night in an inner-city nightclub in 1996 and felt sure that I would no longer be stalked around the house by a thick yellow cloud of stench. Imagine my dismay this morning when I enter the bathroom and become immersed in what can only be described as olfactory hell. Upon further investigation it turned out the smell of rancid piss was, in fact rancid piss that had become trapped under the toilet seat during one of Rainman's water-passing frenzies. Now did I run to the pantry like Saint Shannon and reach for the fish and chip dressing? No because only a moron would think of such a ludicrious response to such an extreme bodily fluid related event. Actually I retched for a while and then was determined to respond to this situation Crap Housewife Style, and got every cleaning product that had a skull and cross bones on it, and nuked the living fuck out of that bacteria ridden toilet all the while swearing profusely and inventively.

Now this is not an isolated event. Rainman pisses around and on the toilet much more frequently than he ever pees into it. I have seen him on many occasions standing in front of the toilet, willy popped out of the top of his pants, tooth brush hanging out of his mouth, with his hands on his hips as he stares at the ceiling and kind of sways thus drenching a 1.5 metre radius in liquid human waste. In the same vein, he can regularly be seen spraying the bathroom in pee as he reads a comic/book and then will flatly deny that he is in anyway responsible for the yellow rain running down the walls. Please see the below illustration and note the lovely white shine and it's contrast with the uric acid stains, I really believe it adds to the general ambiance of the space:



N.B: This is the AFTER shot, it had been soaking a solution of bleach and toxic chemicals for 4+ hrs when this shot was taken.

Now Shannon, on the whole, seems reasonably harmless for a cult leader but sadly, she is not alone in the tour of maddness gripping the world...stay tuned for a further rant on the destroyers of society and my private battle with a escaping body fluids.

P.S. My view on editing and grammar is also expressing in the blog's title, so you know, fucking shutup about it nit-pickers.

8 comments:

  1. Bahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you Lauren... xox

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  2. I cant believe you are so spiteful about Shannon. Shannon is a goddess. I love her. Maybe bicarb and vinegar only works on girl wee?

    I have to say though, you use profanity with an ease, style and grace that Kevin Rudd can only dream of, and I'm very impressed.

    I still want to be Shannon Lush when I grow up even if it means you hate me. Its all a fantasy, that my house would look like hers, because I hate housework at least as much as you do, but its a fantasy that I cling to no less because it makes me happy.

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    1. You realise that if you mix bicarb and vinegar all they do is neutralise each other. And bicarb has no cleaning properties whatsoever.


      Shannon Lush Gets it Wrong #1
      Posted on October 3, 2014

      A substantial amount of what Shannon Lush says about the chemistry of cleaning is wrong. This shouldn’t surprise us, as she is not a chemist.

      Paramount among these is the oft-given advice of mixing bicarb with vinegar. I have heard her say on air that this “makes hydrogen peroxide” and that’s what does the cleaning.

      This is quite incorrect, and I and several of my colleagues have sent her emails in this regard down through the years. She apparently now realises this, as on Tony Delroy’s show on nightlife this evening she said that it “forces oxygen into things”

      I was unable to get an explanation of this, however. For her benefit, when you mix bicarb soda and vinegar together, the reaction products are sodium acetate, water and carbon dioxide, not oxygen, and none of these compounds have any cleaning properties whatever.

      The balanced equation is:

      NaHCO3 + CH3COOH = NaCH3COO + H2O + CO2

      But let it never said I wasn’t open-minded. I now invite Shannon Lush to answer this question, and I’ll print her answer in full on this site.

      Other things that she said that were wrong (off the top of my head) were

      1. You cannot remove silicone (from Mr Sheen) from a plasma TV. I’m not sure why you’d want to remove Mr Sheen, as it is a terrific general purpose cleaner, but it can be removed with Shellite (from a hardware store) – that’s what painters use to pretreat automotive surfaces that have often been polished with silicone polishes.

      2. You cannot use an acidic cleaner to clean marble. In fact marble is incredibly chemically resilient, which is why we still have marble structures going back to Roman times, and you can use hydrochloric acid on it if you want. But if the problem was mould and mildew, you’d use caustic soda on it.

      3. You can mostly replace your laundry powder with bicarb soda. This advice displays an utter ignorance of both the chemistry of bicarb soda and washing powders. Washing powders are highly sophisticated formulas that contain up to 9 or 10 different components (surfactants, enzymes, oxidizers, builders, alkaline salts, fluorescing agents, antiredeposition agents, free-flow agents, fragrance, softeners), and you simply cannot replace these with any one chemical – particularly bicarb soda, which has almost no cleaning properties whatever.

      http://drchemical.com.au/shannon-lush-is-wrong-1

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  3. PS. There is a handbook for ESL grammar that you may find helpful. My friend Stephanie can direct you to it...

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  4. Classic post! Happy cleaning!

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  5. Lol
    You're a funny woman!!! Glad you didn't think to do a before & after shot of the toilet. You've totally inspired me to clean my house!

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  6. Wonderful wonderful blog....something I can relate to....Ann

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  7. I can't stop laughing.
    I feel your pain.😂

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