September 25, 2008

"You are going to be working with an enzyme that bonds protein. You are made of protein."

"Unless you want to glue your lungs together or glue your eyelids to your eyeballs, you absolutely must follow these safety rules."

Art project you don't even want to think about doing. Or, really, the art project is not the final bacon tiara -- is it? -- but the deeply disturbing webpage showing the directions. Just thinking about this picture or even this makes me want to vomit.

7 comments:

RobertL said...

Remember "Icenine"?

rhhardin said...

Better than crazy glue. Just the thing for paper cuts.

Michiel de Mare said...

I thought the "vomit" tag was a joke, but you actually have dozens of posts tagged "vomit". Was "bodily fluids" too generic?

Palladian said...

Wow, don't ever cook Tripe à la Mode de Caen or make a lobster mousse if that makes you want to vomit!

""Activa", the trade name of this transglutaminase "meat glue" can be dangerous of course (as can anything if mishandled) but she's going a little overboard with the warnings. It is probably best if people stayed away from using "Activa" in their home kitchens, however.

The girl doing it certainly is a "pork princess" isn't she?

Ann Althouse said...

Michiel, glad you appreciated it! In fact, "vomit" is one of my best tags. The trouble with "bodily fluids" is that there are so many posts that they won't all be displayed on the page. I have a lot of tags that have gotten too big and need subdividing. Maybe I'll do that. Saliva.. blood.. sweat.. tears... urine... All could be separate tags and really, for fun, should be.

lurker2209 said...

Eh, Activa's not the sort of thing you want kids to play with, but it's not that dangerous.

It's a protein; proteins are complicated arrangements of long chains that are easily disrupted (e.g. by frying an egg). So if you swallow this stuff, it might give you a sore throat, but the acid in your stomach is going to denature it before it can do much damage. Getting it in your eyes or inhaling it might irritate, but the proteases in your body are going to chop it to bits pretty quickly.

Now if your craft project calls for hydrofluoric acid, that would be scary!

Ryan said...

The video at the link is precious:

"It looks like there's a chunk in the tip... Fatty pieces with long fibers."

You know, meat paste is supposed to be smooth, not chunky.