Homeland Security:|
Preparing for this Summer's Mold Invasion!

Next Month: TMH ventures into the netherworld under
the kitchen sink, where streptococci lurk!

Mildew Menace: Black Mold Slimes a Shower Head

Downsizing My Worldview – How I learned to focus on the real threat to my homeland security.

By Barry Firbun

April 2003 — The weather grows ominously warmer and more humid. I brandish my Tilex spray – my weapon of choice. It's never far away.  And that's the way it should be. It wasn't always this way.  Only a few months ago I lived in the midst of a microbial cabal that planned my very destruction – and there I was wasting valuable time and energy worrying about far away things like war, famine, plague, or even that weird spot on my tongue and the cancellation of my favorite sitcoms.  

Words of warning
Normally any well-adjusted, worldly wise neurotic wouldn’t focus on such an apparently insignificant nuisance as common bathroom mold.  That was until my exterminator set me straight – and scared.  He warned me that my bathroom may hold a bioterror time bomb.

He pointed out a small pinkish spot, a tiny patch under my soap dish. "Think of it as a beach head," he said.  Soon, he warned, it would advance and spread throughout my bathroom. But here's the clincher – mold can cause not only allergic reactions like chronic wheezing, but also brain damage if  unstopped in its march to total bathroom domination. 

Come to think of it, I have had a hard time remembering things lately. I gasp – Could the evil agents dispatched by the innocuous florescent spore encampment on my drain have already launched its evil agenda?
So I lock and load my Tilex and fire without mercy – they'd do it to me. Die evil spores! You are the stuff of bio-terror, of extraterrestrial body snatchers and foreign invaders. Remember, homeland security begins in your bathtub.

Moldy Musings 

Slimy Survivalists

Exobiologists differ on the probability of animal or plant life, let alone intelligence, on other worlds, though most agree extraterrestrial life will be found. Sad to say, they also think that life will probably be microbial, and most likely, you guessed it – bacteria and slime mold.

To boldly sanitize
Considering this eventuality,  on Star Trek and other space-exploration shows, it would be more realistic to have the explorers carry bottles of bleach to defend themselves. “Set your Tilex on mist,” Captain Kirk might command his landing party.   

Scary Germ of the Month: Cryptosporidium 

Product of the Month:
The "Mite-B-Gone" Bed and Furniture Encapsulator 

An Editorial

Giving Comfort to the Enemy

The "experts" have spoken, and it looks like bad news for the human race and the war on microbial mess-makers. 

Though we humans are the most advanced creatures and have weapons to fight the moldy menace, some scientists consider slime mold, our number-one enemy, one of the most successful organisms on the planet. 

Says one mold apologist, Sidney Sporcase, a Johns Hopkins biologist, "Slime mold was here in the beginning and it will be here long after all that remains of humanity are just scattered shreds of amino acids." Other mold toadies have called this fungal vermin "the stuff of life itself; what the living organism should have remained, and what it will be again." (See their terrifying time line of the history of the universe below.)

Slime Time Line
{click to enlarge}

Obviously, these "expert" doomsayers not only demoralize those who fight for a tidy, germ-free world, but with such irresponsible theorizing they actually encourage and give succor to the invisible micro-minions who even now are massing for their next attack to advance their demonic strategy to eventually dominate our bathrooms, our kitchens our bodies.... 

To these nabobs of negativism, we say, get off your lazy intellectual duffs and start scrubbing down those ivy towers. Today, we have incredible anti-mold firepower at our fingertips – all we need is obsessive, overwhelming will and the backbone to venture forth into those musty, shadowy corners, nooks and crannies to relentlessly scrape, scrub and sterilize. As Americans, we don't have to live in a germ-infested world. The only reason they will win is if we make the mistake of heeding those who might even cheer for our stealthy enemy's slimy success, should it get the upper hand.

-- Edwina Whipporwhill, TMH Editor