Sunday, September 6, 2015

Spitback

Mrs ERJ has been combing through the pantry, pulling expired canned goods.  My job is to hump them up the stairs and dispose of them.  This is a job she has been doing a bit at a time.  The company that collects our trash has a limit on how many pounds we can put in the receptacle.  Mrs ERJ knocks off after pulling about fifty pounds of cans and such.

I figured out that we could dispose of much more if I emptied out the cans.  Emptying out the cans involves poking a hole in them.  Bullets make holes!  I have a gun with a new spring kit that needs shooting.  What do you think happened next?

Spitback


I thought I had the spitback problem solved.  Cans of baked beans seemed to be the worst actor.  But I found out that they do not spit back if you shot them end-to-end rather than in the side.

I was having a blast.

And then.....

I shot one of those squeeze bottles of mayonnaise.  I positioned it just like I positioned the cans...so I can hit it in the end.  I hit it right in the cap.  The 124 grain hollowpoint transferred some kinetic energy to the mayo, which in turn inflated the flexible polyester bottle.

Empirically, it can be proven that one needs only half of a converging-diverging nozzle when dealing with incompressible fluids.  This "nozzle" was pointed slightly upward and straight back at me.  Mrs ERJ, ever quick to put a positive spin on events, quipped "Well, at least you smell nice."  Between the chortles, that is.

She volunteered to take a picture for the blog.  And I might have let her if not for the fact that the ejectia had remained in one blob until it painted a bold, white stripe the length of my scalp.  The stripe was one-and-a-half inches wide and ran front-to-rear.

In retrospect, that may have been what prompted the chortles and comment about smell.

Kids: Its all fun and games until the mayo bottle spits back.

4 comments:

  1. Heh, that would have been laugh worthy... :-) And strange things DO happen...

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  2. Heh, that would have been laugh worthy... :-) And strange things DO happen...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Joe, Joe, Joe...
    While I can understand the fun factor...
    That's not an expiration date... that's a 'best if used by' date.
    Granted, some stuff will go bad...may still be edible/nutritious, though less than palatable (yeah, I'll throw it out then)... but most canned goods are 'good' long past that BIUB date...low-acid stuff like beans... probably for 5 years or more, provided they've been stored under appropriate conditions (dry, cool/moderate temps).

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    Replies
    1. I believe you.

      Food processors have to make some assumptions about worst, likely storage conditions. 120 degrees F on a top shelf in a shed or warehouse would cause the contents to become soft/off-flavored more quickly than a sixty-five degree cellar.

      The problem is that Kubota already thinks I am trying to poison him. Too many experimental garden vegetables, exotic fruits, foraged foods and stories about road-kill. Or it could just be an old bull/young bull thing.

      Thanks for writing. Great insights.

      Delete

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