Fatbergs!

Last Monday we celebrated Labor Day, the one day a year on which we dignify the common worker in between trips to the mall. There are a lot of ways to make a living out there, running the gamut from comfortable office jobs to hot and miserable jobs people only take because nothing else is available. Of the miserable jobs one can have, one of the most miserable has to be that of sewer worker.

No, I'm not referring to the editorial staff and on-air announcers at Faux News, but to real sewer workers, like the ones at Thames Water in London who are waging an ongoing battle against ... fatbergs.

I call your attention to this article from Business Insider: Gross Photos Show Sewer Workers Battling A 'Fatberg' The Size Of A Boeing 747 Under London.

I will spare you the photos - you can look at them yourself if you go to the linked article. And incredibly enough, that "fatberg" the size of a Boeing 747 (it was 262 feet long, and a 747 is only 250 feet long, depending on the model) was not the largest ever recorded ... that honor* went to a 15-ton blob of congealed fat and sewer crud approximately the size of a double-decker bus that took ten days to break up and remove last August in London.

How on earth does such an enormous blob of congealed fat end up in the sewer? Largely because people pour used cooking oil down their drains, where it congeals around - among other things - discarded bathroom wipes, which are not as safely flushable as their advertisements would have you believe.

So ...

Enough of this disgusting topic. I just wanted to share with you the only thing I've found recently that's more disgusting than American political campaign financing. Well, except for ISIS, of course.

Have a good day. Don't pour your cooking oil and grease down the drain if you don't want your sewers to clog and bring back things you'd rather not have in your home.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* And I use the term loosely.