Welcome to Barvd.com

For the full backstory on Barvd.com, see this post. Bavrd.com is a simple redirect, showing the archives of posts containing nauseating tweets or otherwise disgusting things.

Submit others for consideration or just enjoy!

Bad Bedside Manner 

I’m pretty sure “remove it before you show them” is part of the Hippocratic Oath.

Earlier this year, a woman in Taiwan heard an unexplained rustling for several days. When she finally saw a doctor, he determined that there was a spider living in her ear. A spider. Living. In her ear.

Firstaball, Barvd! But secondaball, come on, doc! What is this?

The doctor took a photo of what he found and showed it to her.

“The patient screamed,” Tengchin Wang, director of the otolaryngology department at Show Chwan Memorial Hospital, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Wang then used a suction tube to remove the spider, which was about two millimeters wide. Once he did, the woman’s symptoms abated, and she went home.

So, the doctor:

  1. Looked inside the patient’s ear and discovered a spider (as well as the spider’s molted exoskeleton).

  2. Took a photo and video of same, to show the New England Journal of Medicine and also his friends, I’m sure.

  3. Showed these visuals to the patient, clearly causing her distress.

  4. And finally, after all that, removed the spider that was, again, living inside her ear.

Listen, while the sheer horror of the video is sure something to see, step two was probably not necessary. Step three certainly was not necessary! At a bare minimum, do step four before step three! Did this doctor think the patient was going to say “Oh, no, that’s just my pet arachnid, William Rustle. He’s not the issue, please keep looking, and be careful not to hurt Bill”? No! Remove the spider post-haste, then if you want, you can tell the patient about the disgusting thing that is now in the past.

When Pepto’s in a Chew

…you can have Pepto anytime

Pepto(-)Bismol is a medicine for indigestion and other gastrointestinal issues which may or may not have a hyphen in its name. Even its manufacturer, Procter & Gamble, seems unsure. While the product’s domain is pepto-bismol.com, but they also control peptobismol.com. But, they redirect the latter to the hyphened version, so, hyphen it is, right? Except current labels use no hyphen, though labels from an earlier era did. If you visit the FAQ in an attempt to settle the question as I did, you’ll find over a dozen questions of varying levels of ridiculousness, but absolutely no consistency:

Pepto Bismol liquid
I count 10 “Pepto-Bismols” and 6 “Pepto Bismols” in this image. What a mess.

For this article, I’ll do what P&G can’t seem to manage, and consistently use a hyphen. Anyhow, Pepto-Bismol’s most common form is a disturbingly bright pink liquid that is both chalky and displeasingly viscous. To paraphrase something my grandmother once said, “it oughta do something good for you, because it sure tastes bad”. Heck, just look at it:

Pepto Bismol liquid

It’s awful! Pepto-Bismol is also quite the paradox, because it professes to help with nausea while while it itself is simultaneously nauseating.

Recently, they’ve found a way to make it worse. Earlier this month, I saw an ad promoting Pepto-Bismol chews:

Pepto Bismol chews

As soon as I heard of them, my horrible brain immediately brought another chewable product to mind:

Fruit Gushers, the fruit snack with fruit juice in the middle

I categorically refuse to do any further research. I will instead spend the rest of my time on this earth believing that Procter & Gamble are selling Pepto-flavored Gushers that release chalky pink “juice” when you bite them. Barvd!

Imagine How Surprised That Worm Was 

Hey, look, ivermectin is good for something in humans!

The next time I’m having a bad day, I’m going to think to myself “At least there’s not a three-inch-long parasitic worm normally found in pythons in my brain”.1 Oh, my stars and garter snakes!

It was a fairly regular day on the ward for Canberra hospital infectious diseases physician Dr Sanjaya Senanayake, until a neurosurgeon colleague called him and said: “Oh my god, you wouldn’t believe what I just found in this lady’s brain – and it’s alive and wriggling.”

The neurosurgeon, Dr Hari Priya Bandi, had pulled an 8cm-long parasitic roundworm from her patient, prompting her to call on Senanayake and other hospital colleagues for advice about what to do next.

Thanks to friend of the site Jason S. who saw this and, quote, “thought of One Foot Tsunami”. It’s a proud legacy I’m building.


Footnotes:

  1. As far as I know, anyhow. Most likely. It’s difficult to be completely certain of something like this, right? I suppose it’s difficult to be certain of anything, really. Still, for my own sanity, I’m going to assume my lobes are parasite-free. I urge you to do the same. ↩︎

Going Viral by Being Vile 

I admit it, it worked.

Speaking of things you wouldn’t want to eat, there’s now a French’s mustard-flavored Skittle. 🙊

Money Can’t Buy Taste

Be sure to get the optional death and dismemberment plan.

Late last year, I bemoaned the relentless encroachment of advertising into every single facet of our lives. At the time, the ads in question were on the uniforms of the Boston Red Sox. Now, the arch-rival Yankees have made their own sacrifice at the altar of capitalism. It, too, is a vile sight:

New York Yankee uniforms with an ugly patch advertising an insurance company on the sleeve
[Link]

🙊 Barvd. I do hope they shot these photos in the bathroom, where there were at least convenient places in which the photographer could get sick.

To my ear, “Starr Insurance” sounds like the small-town shop that might have employed Ned Ryerson, but they’re apparently a massive multi-national firm.1 Now, they’re also the “Signature Partner” of the New York Yankees, with an ugly sleeve patch to prove it. Baseball fans likely know that the Yankees are unique among Major League teams in never putting player names on their jerseys. Later this month, however, there will be one name visible: that of Cornelius Vander Starr.

For nearly half a century, the Yankees have famously had a written “personal appearance policy”. They also seem to have an unwritten “no fun” policy. Here’s a quick recap of what the Yankees do and do not allow:

  • ❌: Beards

  • ❌: Long hair

  • ❌: Alternate “City Connect” jerseys

  • ✅: Advertisements plastered right on the uniform

The team is reportedly receiving $25 million a year from this sponsorship, which is certainly a nice chunk of change. Still, for a franchise valued at over $7 billion (with a “B”), it feels like a decidedly low-rent move.


Footnotes:

  1. While writing this post, I came across a theory about “Groundhog Day” that is just great. ↩︎

The Perfect Valentine’s Day Gift

Did the world really need another place to buy trash?

During the Super Bowl on Sunday, an ad for “Temu” played several times.1 In it, a woman buys a flurry of products at what I can only describe as disturbingly low prices.

A dress for sale on the Temu app, for $8.99
In 2023, a dress should really cost more than $9.

But what exactly is Temu? The ad was not clear. Is it a fast fashion site? Do they sell used items? I couldn’t figure it out, so I visited the Temu website. In a word, that was a mistake. Though the company had spent millions of dollars on advertising during America’s single biggest night of television, their site was the worst kind of spammy garbage. It had pop-up offers, flashing messages, countdown clocks, and a wide variety of very cheap and very crappy products. Once I ascertained that the company was a reseller of all manner of disposable crap, I quickly left, expecting never to return.

The next day, I found myself inundated with their web ads, likely a result of that initial visit to their site. One particular item being advertised really caught my eye, and led me to open Temu site once again. This is the “Creative Silicone Bicycle Tail Lights, Waterproof Bicycle Accessories Suitable For Night Riding”:

A glowing light which resembles human testicles, hanging from a bike seat
🙊 Barvd

Now you might be thinking “Are those…bike nuts?! Truck nuts…but for a bike?”. I urge you to get your mind out of the gutter. No. Of course they are not glowing bike nuts. Perish the thought!

No, that is clearly a lovely upside-down glowing heart, and it’s just in time for Valentine’s Day. For the low, low price of $3.59, you can show your cycling sweetie how much you care, all while helping them stay safe. I can’t think of anything more romantical.


Footnotes:

  1. The ad is archived here. ↩︎

Boston Uniforms, Gross and Fly

It would be nice to have more cool designs and fewer ads.

In the continued quest to put advertising in every conceivable place, Major League Baseball teams are now permitted to sell placement on their actual uniforms. Back in April, the Padres were the first team to announce a partnership, one which will feature hilariously large Motorola patches. Sadly, my hometown Red Sox have now joined this vulgar parade.

A Red Sox uniform with an unseemly ad patch on one sleeve.

In a word: Yuck. In an emoji: 🙊. Though MassMutual is a Massachusetts-based insurance company with 170+ years of history in the Bay State, they simply don’t belong on the team’s uniform. No one does. Alas, I have little doubt that this scourge is coming for the rest of the league as well.

In better uniform news, friend-of-the-site Casey L. and I were recently discussing mock-ups for alternate jersey for the Boston Celtics. He had found a fun jersey design created by a fan:

A Celtics jersey mockup, showing the colored lines of Boston’s subway system, as well as the system’s “T” logo.
[Image via @petemrogers]

This design plays off of Boston‘s public transit system (known as “The T”), including our four colored subway lines, two of which (Orange and Green) meet at North Station where the Celtics play. It’s a very nice idea. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an original one. I had actually seen and enjoyed this same image a day or two earlier, before learning that it was actually a fairly obvious knock-off of another artist’s better design:

A better Celtics jersey mockup, also showing the colored lines of Boston’s subway system, as well as the system’s “T” logo.
[Image via Reddit]

Happily, when “timbo_sport” came to defend their honor, it led me to check out more of their work. That brought me to my favorite design yet, their “Cutting Edge”:

A wonderful Celtics jersey mockup, showing the lines and towers of the Zakim Bridge.

This gorgeous design subtly references the cables and towers of the Zakim Bridge, which sits directly next to TD Garden, the Celtics’ home arena. Living just down the street, I’ve captured a number of decent pictures of this bridge. However, this (slightly cropped) 2013 shot from Eric Kilby does a superior job of showing both the bridge and the Garden:


[Photo credit: Eric Kilby]

Built as part of Boston’s infamous Big Dig, the Zakim was at one time the world’s widest cable-stayed bridge, and it remains an icon for the city. Paying homage to it on the Celtics uniform would be delightful. Maybe some day.

From an ad-marred shame, to a decent image that turned out to be a knock-off, to the original creator’s better execution, to the above masterpiece, it was quite a uniform roller coaster. Of course, I’ll be forced to see the livery I most disliked all season next year, while the looks I enjoyed most don’t actually exist. A man can dream, though. A man can dream.

Unxpevted Awfulness

It’s just awful.

Though Halloween has passed, today still feels like a good time to post something scary. It comes courtesy of friend-of-the-site Colin T, who encountered the picture that follows in his hotel room at a Marriott. In Colin’s own words:

  • I don’t say this lightly, but I’d like someone at Marriott to be fired over this. Or at least have a formal reprimand placed in their HR file. This makes me want to never stay at another Marriott for fear they’ll come up with something worse.

With all that as preface, let’s have a look!

This was the “art” found in Colin’s room at the Auburn, Alabama Marriott TownePlace (sic) Suites, and “art” is an extremely generous word. Who would do this? Why would they do this? Just…well, what in the unholy name of wretched word clouds is that?!

It took me several minutes of staring at it to find the basic idea of it, which seems to be the phrase “Life is to be lived”. Alright…fine. But even if we accept that as a reasonable message for hotel art (and we really shouldn’t), what’s going on with the rest of it?

You can find three other full words, “it”, “terrific”, and “everything”. But beyond that, there’s an assortment of partial words, some of which I’ve made guesses at below:

  • fantastic

  • intrinsic

  • -astic

  • mag-

  • excessive

  • expressive

  • expevted (?!)

  • neglecting

  • explorative

  • everywhere

Most of those are positive words, but “excessive” and “neglecting” certainly aren’t, and “expevted” isn’t a word at all.

In addition to the poor content, the execution is also bad. Zooming in shows how sharp the letters in “life” are. Compare that against the falling “it” up top:

Those are compression artifacts on the “i” and the “t”, and they’re on the original poster itself, not caused by the photograph. You can spot plenty more on the letter jumble at the bottom:

If this is art at all, it’s bad art, poorly done. The worst of both worlds!

Finally, let us not overlook the location of this piece. As you can perhaps tell from the reflection, yes, this pile of crap is in the bathroom. In fact, it’s directly across from the location where it actually belongs, the toilet. As a result, hotel guests are forced to contemplate it while using the facilities. That’s just no way to start your day.

A Replacement Seems Like a Bare Minimum 

But hey, here's to no more shitty robot vacuums

For many people, robot vacuums like the Roomba have solved a minor nuisance by taking over a mundane household cleaning task. However, for a small number of people, those same robot vacuums have created a much, much larger problem.

If you’ve never heard of this “poop+Roomba” phenomenon, you definitely shouldn’t ever Google it and click on the results that pop up…robo vacs have a lot of moving parts, like wheels and spinning brushes. This is great if you’re driving over and picking up dry dirt, but if the robot encounters a soft mass of something that it can grind up, those spinning brushes quickly become paint rollers. Then the robot drives all over the house. It’s bad.

Roomba has apparently been working hard to avoid this horrible problem. Their newest vacuum offers a Pet Owner Official Promise (POOP), where they’ll “replace any Roomba j7+ that doesn’t avoid solid pet waste”. That’s a pretty solid offer, but if the machine fails, I think they ought to throw in a deep cleaning of your house as well.

The Nauseating Politics of the World’s Most Dangerous Cheese 

Also? Barvd! 🙊

If the way to advance one’s political agenda is to ingest illegal maggoty cheese, well, I’m not at all sure that’s worth it.