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COLLECTING THE EVIDENCE
In Edinburgh, Scotland, bus drivers are apparently subjected to so much abuse that transit officials recently gave all 1,800 operators DNA-collecting kits so that they can swab themselves when passengers spit on them. [The Scotsman, 4-20-04]
One in the eye for Bus Drivers
This is appalling. Bus drivers who get spat on?
What happens to Flemish bus drivers, then?
Mind you even if the next stop is only spitting distance, I have no sympathy for Scots who end up covered in dribble. They all speak with the tongue doing acrobatics its hardly surprised people will get the news with the weather, is it? Why do they have to talk like machinegun fire? Especially in Glasgow, where one person speaks like a roomful of crickets. The irony is, that can’t communicate without headbutting each other either. Does this mean that busdrivers should wear full faced crash helmets with very hard poly carbonate peaks that are fixed and pointing upside down to effect the best defence. Another favourite violent tactic for Glaswegian aggressors is to stub cigarettes out in your eye. Should coach companies supply goggles for their drivers too?
Another issue bubbles to the surface for vulnerable bus drivers. If they have to take a swab of saliva after such abuse, won’t they have to wait until they get back to the depot toilet? How can you do this forensic procedure while driving folk around? That means you may have only started your route and have to wear snot on your ‘dish’ for another thirty stops?
Society has become a very dangerous place for all of us but especially for those delivering public services. Have you noticed that whether you walk into a doctors surgery, post office, benefits department or the Citizens Advice Bureau they have posters outside warning customers that any abuse to staff will result in the perpetrators prosecution.
Bank staff have always been targets because they can’t be trusted with your money. How ridiculous to have bullet proof glass and chain the pens down when they leave the vault open all day? We are becoming a very hostile species. Not surprising when we all live on top of each other in highrises. Look at Glasgow and the Gerbils? These concrete obscenities still mar the Scottish horizon and contain all kinds of unsavoury people. Drug traffickers, car thieves vandals and C.S.A staff. These people eventually get their just desserts though. Often the elevator will be out of order and they forgot to bring the ‘Imodium’. Of course it is often the minority that spoil it for the rest of the residents and that’s why they hide behind the sofa when the rentman calls. But on the bright side it is often a warm place for prostitutes to welcome their ‘punters’ even if it is a bit of a climb.
The very last saliva.
Women who spit in the street are vile. Men sweat, and swear too, making spitting more acceptable. Spitting by seminar speakers with speech impediments are just as annoying when they haven’t already covered enough ground. Persons who spit while eating and show you the digestive process by regurgitation of the first course in full view is deplorable behaviour. Any mastication (spellchecker is fine) should be done in private. If they can’t eat with their mouth shut and blame it on the fact they have too many teeth, knock some out in the toilet for them.
Cocktail parties can leave you drenched if you happen to speak to the only person in the room with a lisp forcing you to discreetly place a napkin over your lonely vol au vent. If this does happen to you ask questions that don’t require an answer with too many ‘S’’s in it.
There are people who are disgusting without spitting. Instead, they blow bubbles when they speak. Or have that curious phenomena that leaves white froth in the corner of their mouth. Or, people that wipe their mouths with a handkerchief that they have just blown their nose on. People who wear the same hanky up their cardigan sleeves and expect to get a shag afterwards. What about those disgraceful individuals who scratch their bottoms and then smell their fingers?
Scottish people are known for their shrewdness with money and saliva. They automatically drool when they count their change in the toilet. It beggars belief how much moisture gets into their bagpipes. They have to empty them into the Loch after a tattoo and thats why they never get droughts North of Penrith.
We all have the discretionary shot of saliva leave our mouth when asking to kiss someone. It’s a natural body function. Being hungry for sex causes the saliva glands in our cheeks to produce overtime. As with if we were hungry for food and saw someone munching on our kebab. Don’t be put off by this. Cats spit all the time and nobody complains.
Uniformed religious persons who sell the ‘Warcry’ in pubs when you only have enough change for one more pint, start to salivate when you point out that begging in boozers by temporate people is the height of rudeness and the pinnacle of hypocrisy especially when they harp on about heaven and the evils of drinking. They soon become moist in the mouth when you give them money to piss off though. They should be called the Salivation Army.
Footballers spit to improve their game. Old people spit into a jar and are proud to show their GP when the occasion arises. Jamie Oliver likes a little sizzle of spit in his wok because his tongue is too big. Different recipe, same dressing. Bricklayers spit to get a better grip on their trowel hand. Hod carriers spit into the cement mixer as ‘good luck’ and pee into it when they haven’t got Fairy liquid. Think of it. Your house is held up with other people’s body fluids.
This brings to the subject of oral sex which may not be to your own taste but as I told a previous partner, ‘One swallow doesn’t make a Summer.”
Most people don’t know what ‘cunningulus’ is? Like lobster and tax rebates it is something couples rarely enjoy at home. If you ask a date out for the first time and you wonder if they ‘play the pink clarinet’ ask them straight out. “Are you acquainted with Fellatio?” If they answer that they may know the same Greek waiter while holidaying in Halkiediki, too? Be polite and pay for their taxi home.
When ‘people make you spit’ it has little to do with them thumping you on the back when you have a chest infection. It merely suggests they are twats.
When you tell somebody they are the ‘spitting image’ of somebody famous, it does not necessarily mean they look like a very ugly rubber puppet with the exaggerated features of a celebrity. It just means you want to get inside their underwear.
Mark Spitz was a onetime Olympic champion winning eight medals. He was named Spitz and probably did at the last hurdle or the long jump. His success was never more than a ‘Hop, Skip, and a Spit’ away.
‘Spit the dog’ was the puppet of a rather poor comedian in the seventies and eighties who looked a bit like Mark Spitz in crap[shape.
Babies dribble and spit before they bother to talk. Well, “Out of the mouths of babes.” As the Good book tells us.
This brings me to relevant observations of a Biblical nature. Jesus was spat upon when he dragged his cross through Jerusalem to the hill of Golgotha where he was to be crucified. Roman Centurians took his clothes and exchanged them for ‘lots’. I could never understand how Jesus clothes were swapped for the wardrobe of a guy that had lived a 1000 years before. Not much of a deal. Lot of course, as history relates to us, fled from Gomorrah and that other place. (Yes, I agree). His wife turned to a ‘pillar of salt’ because she dared to look back at the decadent city burning with fire and sulphur. Think how dry her mouth was. I bet she could ‘hoik’ nothing back from her blocked sinusses.
Now, cockneys in shell suits and those pathetic sovereign rings they wear, will spit in their hands and then want to shake your hand. A hard bargain wouldn’t you say? Being robbed blind with pirate DVD’s or a being flogged a dodgy car, is two things, but another person, particularly one, from Leightonstone ‘gobbing’ in their mitt and wanting to touch you is quite another. No wonder they have those plastic covers on their mobile phones. After three weeks they could be making calls literally ‘cackhandedly’.
It is supposed to be good luck to spit into your hand if you see a brace of Magpies. “One for sorrow, two, for Joy” as the song goes. I knew somebody who did just that when driving around a bend and his hands slipped of the wheel and he ended up in a ditch.
Was spitting always antisocial in this country? Not so. A writer in Notes and Queries in 1868 says:-
"I was, a few years ago, a clergyman of a parish within ten miles of Birmingham, much frequented on holidays by a low class of mechanics; and I invariably noticed that, whenever I passed some one or more of them spit aside; giving one the idea that they belonged to some sect, or society, which enjoined the rule to spit whenever a clergyman passed, or perhaps any known churchman."
The boys in the North of England have a custom amongst themselves of spitting their faith (or, as they call it in the northern dialect, "their Saul," i.e. Soul), when required to make asseverations in matters which they think of consequence or that may influence a positive outcome for them.
In combinations of the colliers etc., about Newcastle-upon-Tyne, for the purpose of raising their wages, they are said to spit upon a stone together, by way of cementing their confederacy. Hence the popular saying, when persons are of the same party, or agree in sentiments, that ‘they spit upon the same stone.’
Spitting after passing a man of the cloth doesn’t stop priests having dirty habits either.
Not so close to home, is the Tibetan Monk who would lose his soul if he were ever seen spitting. This would also happen if he harmed a Yak, used a camera in his own monastery or wore shorts. (verifiable)
Spitting on people in medieval times was said to ward off evil spirits. If you spat on someone’s breast it was likely to avert any witchcraft.
I have often used saliva on the breast of a witch but they always came back for more.
‘Spittle’ is what you spit with and not a small village somewhere in Dorset.
I hope that all your concerns about spit have already been cleared up by me. Well, it’s a dirty job but someone has to do it. If you want to know more about spit, we can have a mutual exchange later as long as you promise to brush your teeth first.
Further information below.
What then are the important functions of saliva ?
Actually, saliva serves many roles, some of which are important to all species, and others to only a few: ·Lubrication and binding: the mucus in saliva is extremely effective in binding masticated food into a slippery bolus that (usually) slides easily through the esophagus without inflicting damage to the mucosa.
Saliva also coats the oral cavity and esophagus, and food basically never directly touches the epithelial cells of those tissues or if you happen to run out of KY jelly.·Solubilizes dry food: in order to be tasted, the molecules in food must be solubilized. This is now legal in some public toilets.·Oral hygiene: The oral cavity is almost constantly flushed with saliva, which floats away food debris and keeps the mouth relatively clean. Flow of saliva diminishes considerably during sleep, allow populations of bacteria to build up in the mouth -- the result is dragon breath in the morning.
Saliva also contains lysozyme, an enzyme that lyses many bacteria and prevents overgrowth of oral microbial populations. Bad breath can be prevented by not burping when French kissing.·Initiates starch digestion: in most species, the serous acinar cells secrete an alpha-amylase which can begin to digest dietary starch into maltose. Amylase is not present, or present only in very small quantities, in the saliva of carnivores or cattle. C.J.D is the human strain of ‘Mad cow disease’ or what already afflicts women like Joan Rivers or Germaine Greer. They are the first human beings to show signs of the disease without any trace of it but still they froth at the mouth.
Provides alkaline buffering and fluid: this is of great importance in ruminants, which have non-secretory forestomachs. Or grazing animals that is. So don’t give horses a Big mac.
Evaporative cooling: clearly of importance in dogs, which have very poorly developed sweat glands - look at a dog panting after a long run and this function will be clear. Unless some dogs are already gagging for it, just buy them chips.
Diseases of the salivary glands and ducts are not uncommon in animals and man, and excessive salivation is a symptom of almost any lesion in the oral cavity. The dripping of saliva seen in rabid animals is not actually a result of excessive salivation, but due to pharyngeal paralysis, which prevents saliva from being swallowed. That’s what makes David Beckham an effective dribbler.
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