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“Cowshed” and Cow Sheds
Have you noticed the new brand of toiletries called “Cowshed?” I saw it advertised in one magazine or another a few days ago, and then, in the little lavatory on an airplane just, I came across the item itself: next to the sink stood two bottles, one of soap and the other of cream, both labeled “Cowshed.”
As it happens, I have some experience of cow sheds — or, rather, of one particular cow shed, which stood a few paces from the tiny cottage I rented for a year on the outskirts of Oxford. That cow shed housed an enormous bull and a couple of cows, who every day produced gallons of manure and urine from one end and, from the other, of mucous, which streamed from their noses unendingly.
It was, as I say, just a single cow shed; but, cows being cows, I believe it displayed sights and odors that all cow sheds must share. And here is my point. No one who had ever encountered a real cow shed, or who had ever even heard a just description of a cow shed, would ever, ever have given the name of “Cowshed” to a line of toiletries.
First people moved off the farm—whereas a century ago, a majority of workers in the United States was employed in agriculture, now agricultural labor accounts for only two or three percent of the workforce. And then people forgot farm life so completely that they could be persuaded to suppose that the words “cow shed” ought to conjure up notions of fragrance, not feces.
Progress. I’ll take it, I suppose, but it can be very odd.
Published in General
Gary Larson apparently thinks so.
Haha! I keep remembering an old SNL skit ridiculing “With a name like Smucker’s, it has to be good” – With a name like Monkey Vomit, it has to be good!
Lol. Not necessarily.
I think SNL missed the point of the ad. I think the ad meant to say that “Smucker’s” is such a down-home name that anything they make must be good. But apparently the writers just thought the name was disgusting haha
Hahaha
Like armchair generals romance war, people who have never shoveled manure romanticize rural life. It would make great television to drop off a bunch of city folk on a farm in March and tell them they can’t leave until the crops are in.
Then there’s kopi luwak:
My idea of a great reality show would be to take a bunch of pampered college students to a small town in Iowa, Kansas, or Nebraska to work in a packing plant for a summer. Whichever team misses the least work, and has the most fingers left, wins.
Bunny poop is the absolute best. It’s digested twice (no need to go into how that happens/is possible), and it can be used straight from the rabbit, although some people do compost it first (I do not).
The Dutch usually have more sense than that.
If they’d picked that one, Tom Cruise would’ve been a customer.
There was a show along those lines once, with the added stricture that the families had to live as people did back in the 1880s. I caught an episode or two back when it was on.
It was pretty funny when one family’s milk cow ran off.
No joke, @peterrobinson – these excreta shed by cows could be the raw ingredients for beauty products.
Urea from the urine is the easy one. It’s a cosmetic skin treatment all by itself. It’s also possible to process other cosmetic chemicals from manure, not that Cowshed (or anyone else) actually does.
Mucus?… Snail mucus is a high-end beauty product. As are nightingale droppings. (Just ask @rightangles – I’m sure she’s heard of such weird concoctions.) So why not cow mucus?
I hear they’re working on a new cosmetic line to be introduced next year — Dysentery, by E. Coli. It doubles as a weight loss product.
My mom was a customer of Hask Placenta for years. I don’t know why.
I almost died of dysentery once in the 80s. I’d just returned from overseas, and it was determined that at least one other person on my flight also had it, and that probably a food worker at DeGaulle airport had been the source. The reason I almost died is that it’s a third-world disease that nobody was looking for. The day I was hospitalized, I weighed 109 pounds at 5’8″ tall.
That’s frightening.
Gah I have not! But there’s a woman in California who swears by semen as a face treatment (I was going to say “as a facial” but decided against it) . One trick I do know, used by models and beauty pageant contestants, is Preparation H for under-eye bags. (Shrinks swollen tissue!) Just go to a drugstore in another county and say “It’s not for me, it’s for my sister.”
Just ask Her to run to the store with You and when You get to the counter, point and say,”It’s for Her.”
Hahaha! It’s like you know me.
Then there’s Premarin.
Those lovely images will be with me for days. Thanks a lot, Peter.
hahahaha!
Makes me think of marketing hay loft mattresses. Sales pitch: Not at all comfortable but will scratch and poke you in all of the wrong places.
*Copperheads and rattlesnakes sold separately.
Reminds me of what our linemen used to say, “I may be slow, but I’m dumb.”
Poison Ivy included at no extra charge.
You guys are bringing back all the fond memories of baling hay with my cousins. The only thing left to mention is unstable haywagons.
I once saw a small boy (he was about eight at the time, and built like a fireplug), who was on top of the hay on the wagon stacking up the last few bales as they were chucked up to him, thrown off the wagon as his mother, who was driving the tractor, zigged when she should have zagged, and next thing you knew, he was on the ground.
Fortunately, he just rolled down the hill a bit, and then got up, unhurt.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a stream of cursing and invective as he directed at his mother in my life. None of it was terribly “bad” words, but boy, was he fluent.
No way dude, there is much more to remind you of. And speaking of bovine mucous, remember the green and black matter that you would hack up for days after stacking in the hay loft.
Oo-ooah grampa, tell me bout the good ol’ days.
My memories of hay lofts are of dehydration by perspiration