The Secret of Beautiful Skin

Mable Sims of Twin Lakes, Florida, lives in the house of her late great-grandmother, Precious O'Neal St. Clair, from whom Mable took advice and beauty tips.

"Girl, even if you're going to a dog fight, look good," she told Mable. Miss Mable never attended a dog fight, but she tries to look her best even now. She credits the Precious treatment for her "baby-butt skin."

Each morning Miss Mable bathes her coffee-colored skin, flawless except for that ax scar, with fresh urine.

"That surprises people, Lord have mercy," she says with a delighted laugh. "But it's how I was brought up. My great-aunt Isabella had the most beautiful skin you ever saw because of that urine treatment. She lived to be 107 years old!" [Link]

Urine Trouble, Big Trouble

There are more developments in the disturbing story of a cemetery worker answering the call of nature, and then braining the guy who caught him in the act. The New York Post offered the Brooklyn graveyard a free Porta-Potty, but they turned it down.

Ungrateful employees of the Washington Cemetery in Bensonhurst cursed and angrily spurned the delivery of a blue portable toilet for groundskeeper James Scott, 80.

Scott denies the charges, and retains his position as groundskeeper and director of the cemetery's Public Urination Program. The injured man, Itomor Khaimov, simply wants justice for his grandmother.

"I pay them good money to take care of her grave, to come and see some schmuck peeing on it," he said. "All I want is that he should be fired. A guy like that should not be allowed to work there." [Link]

In related news, the cemetery is considering a new ad campaign: "When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go to Washington Cemetery in Bensonhurst." The same ad agency came up with a slogan for a cemetery in Queens a few years ago: "Your Loved One Would Want You to Try Flushing."

Flipping Burgers Ain't So Bad

Think your job is bad? The Worst Jobs in History from England's Channel 4 reveals how the unluckiest of our British ancestors paid their bills—and in some cases earned their surnames. I grew up just down the road from some Fullers.

As a fuller, you are expected to walk up and down all day in huge vats of stinking stale urine. The ammonia produced by the rotten wee may make your eyes water, but it creates the softest cloth by drawing out the grease (lanolin) from the wool. If you can dance up to your knees in urine for around two hours per length of cloth, you'll succeed in closing the fibres of the wool and interlocking them to produce cloth that is kind to the skin. You will be doing your part, along with the weavers, dyers and merchants, in making it a world-beating export.

You may stink and regularly have to fight back the urge to throw up, but you are guaranteed very clean toenails. [Link, via Neatorama]