Gross Jar 2012 - Dead Rat

We’ve been sticking abominable substances inside the Gross Jar for roughly the duration of a school summer holiday now (six weeks). Along the way, the following have entered the glassy receptacle of desperate foulness:

-    Piss
-    Human shit
-    Vomit
-    Phlegm
-    Rotten vegetables
-    Drain hair
-    Santorum
-    Mouldy doner kebab
-    Fish heads
-    Lamb intestines
-    A chicken's foot
-    Durian (Asian “stink fruit”)
-    Human teeth
-    An apple
-    A Biro (scientific control)

After a month and a half of festering, the smell produced by the jar's sinful contents is now worse than hell. There’s no point lying, this is starting to become tiresome. Those of us who deal with the Gross Jar have developed a claustrophobic relationship with the jar similar to that of Michael Corleone and his petrified wife, Kay, in The Godfather II. The jar is the Don and we are all his battered wives. Our noses are sore, our hands dry from being washed so many times and our self-esteem below zero. But, like dying soldiers who’ve become numb to pain, on we march. This is week six. This is a dead rat:

If you use a bicycle in London, the chances are you will have at some point swerved to avoid running over a pile of hairy flesh which looks like it may once have been one of God’s creations. Perhaps in doing so, you almost killed yourself and a nearby pedestrian. Which is a dangerous run-in with irony. Rats are part of city life. But no one has the courtesy to teach them the Green Cross Code, so a lot of them get run over. Then they’re cleaned up by the council and put in a mass rat grave or something, IDK the details. So, when a colleague mentioned nonchalantly over lunch that: “There’s a dead rat outside for you,” not only did no one bother to look up or spit the food out of their mouths, but my editor glanced at me across the table with a menacing look as if to say: “You know what you have to do because you signed up for this. Don't complain, don't even say anything. Go fetch me that dead fucking vermin or don’t bother coming in tomorrow.” Within five minutes, we were staring nervously at this: My favorite part is the bit I think might be its face. We opened the jar, which seemed to be livelier than ever, perhaps due to her encounter last week with political loser and ex-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone. Maybe she was excited by the prospect of freedom. Bubbles rose to the top and expelled repellent odors at our faces. The routine had begun, no more breathing till that dead animal was inside the jar and the lid was shut tight. All sense of morality, sound judgement and respect for the dead was bypassed by the God-awful, eye-stinging stench gathering around us. And so, the rat was collected… And deposited. Conclusion: A jar full of nature’s rejected offal now has a deformed mish-mash of body parts half-resembling a small mammal sat in the top of it. Great.

Optional Reading: The Author’s Personal Disclosure

GROSS JAR REVEALED: THE HUMAN COST For fuck’s sake, this is getting ridiculous. Just typing the list at the beginning of this post was like a dog whistle for my stomach to convulse and spasm. The taste of bile echoes in my throat like the bitter memory of a playground bully.

This is definitely the worst part of the author’s week. The essence of the Gross Jar has begun to soak into the rest of my life. For example, standing in the street waving traffic while you put a dead rat in a jar full of shit is a moment likely to get edited out of the Power Point obituary at the crematorium. But I will remember it forever.

One thing that you, the reader, probably can’t quite construct accurately in your mind is the smell of the jar. It truly is terrible. As mentioned before, a colleague described it as “worse than the burning flesh of suicide bombers.” No amount of florid language in these posts can fully do justice to the stink that's emitted by the Gross Jar, each and every week. You’ve never held your nostrils over it long enough to focus a camera lens accurately on the disgusting contents that lies within it. There’s no way you can ever understand. Do you appreciate this? Do you even care what we’ve been through for you? Do you even care any more? Did you ever? Is the Gross Jar the highlight of your week, or do you simply not give a fuck? Have we satisfied your brutal carnal desires? Can we end this suffering now?

Please let me know. I'd like to stop hurting now. Previously: 

Gross Jar 2012 – Swapping Jars and Adding Animals

Gross Jar 2012 – Santorum

Gross Jar 2012 – It's Alive!