The most frequent last words I have heard on cockpit voice-recorder tapes are, ‘Oh Sh*t,’ said with about that much emotion. There’s no panic, no scream, it’s a sort of resignation: we’ve done everything we can, I can’t think of anything else to do and this is it. — Frank McDermott, partner in McDermott Associates, specialists in cockpit voice recorders.
When Washoe soiled, particularly clothing or furniture, she was taught the sign “dirty,” which she then extrapolated as a general term of abuse. A rhesus monkey that evoked her displeasure was repeatedly signed at: “Dirty monkey, dirty monkey, dirty monkey.”
Occasionally Washoe would say things like “Dirty Jack, gimme drink.” Lana, in a moment of creative annoyance, called her trainer “You green sh*t.” Chimpanzees have invented swear words. — Carl Sagan “The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence”
Urohydrosis -the act of some animals, especially storks and vultures, of defecating on their own feet/legs for evaporative cooling (my own definition as I couldn’t find a good one I wanted to use, so it is probably not a very good definition.) For evidence this is true (or at least believed to be) check out Desert Animal Survival and Cloacal Cooling. Arguments against –Keeping It Cool
At mentalfloss.com, there is a list of seven creative uses for poop including paper, dysentery cure, and cleaning water.
At liveleak.com there is a video purporting that a sceintist in Japan is making edible meat products from human sewage. ‘Turd Burgers’ is the one of the nicer terms being used by the people who claim this is a hoax. Personally, I think it could go either way, but I don’t think I could eat it unless you slipped it in my burger without telling me. ( I feel ill now. Please don’t ever threaten to do that to me, or I might offer up any previous food I had in exchange for your generosity.)
For further reading about the interesting side of sh…uh, poop, you might want to consider Susan Goodman’s Truth About Poop.
At a recent convention, I , along with a number of other people in the room, were startled by the microphone/speaker system being turned on at full blast while troubleshooting problems. The ensuing sound shook the windows and vibrated the floor. In all honestly, I was surprised people didn’t come running from the other side of the hotel to investigate (although in hindsight, I wouldn’t go investigate that kind of noise in this era of terrorist warnings either…). The end result of this was I think I know what my final words would be in the event of death during a catastrophe. The words came flying out of my mouth, and I never once thought of them. Looking back, I realized these were the same words I remember saying in other moments of abject fear (such as car accidents, etc.). I am pretty sure my last words would be ‘holy sh*t’. Maybe I watched too much Batman when I was a kid.
What would yours be?