Snopes, good for exposing hoaxes and urban legends, debunks gerbil stuffing (although, if anything is possible to happen, it will):
The link to Cecil’s 1986 column is Is it true what they say about gerbils?.
Cecil concluded in that column that it was an urban legend.
Good column, but Slug’s picture made me do a double take. While the over the top items in the gentlemen’s pants in the picture are amusing, and illustrate the point well, did he really have to depict the gentlemen with full lips (I assume they were wearing lipstick) and limp wrists? Even if it was 1986??
I know what you mean, but how else do you indicate in a single, uncaptioned cartoon that the figures in it are supposed to be gay? (The column goes on to add that that lots of straights put strange things in the place where Huckabee puts his brains, but the question was about gays.)
And the limp-wristed thing is real, as far as it goes. I’m straight, but I’ve spent decades in a couple of subcultures where there are a lot of “out” gays, and a noticeable number of gay men do stand with their hands like that; I don’t pretend to know why. Although, now that I think of it, it may be an older-generation thing, since I don’t see it as much as I used to.
Slug had the opportunity to be offensive in his illustration. This is Slug we’re talking about. So yes, he did have to draw them that way.
What Chronos said.
Hmm, I’ve heard of oyster stuffing, but not gerbil stuffing. How does it taste?
like shit.
The one thing that never fails to amaze me about the entire Richard Gere incident is rate at which the rumor spread. My wife worked the early morning shift in the ER at Cedars-Sinai just a few hours after Gere was admitted. By then it was all over the hospital. My wife heard it from the cafeteria employee who rang up her breakfast. I had a hell of a time convincing her that it never really happened. She kept countering me with “but, but…I heard it from everybody—the doctors, all the ER nurses, the entire respiratory department—everybody!”
There was a nurse in Texas who said the strangest thing she ever personally saw stuck up there was a clock radio. The mind boggles.
That was a cause for alarm.
Always, always remember: Internet - Rule 34.
Anyhow, sure, every hospital in the world has excellent records of incredible things that people have had problems getting out again that have been inserted in every orifice imaginable, and a few mind boggling. The rodent question though is reasonably not as common as carrots, eggs, toy cars e.t.c., but if we go to our dear friend Pornography it is not that hard to find next to anything. Without looking for it I have at least stumbled across Mice. White classic science lab dance mice. Where they should not be… With a clear plastic tube, one can do stupid wonders.
It would surprise me if there are not quite a few hospitals with rodent records around the planet, even though not many of these records end up in published medical literature. So, you who dare, go to any of the mayor pornographic torrent sites, or a well sorted store, and search/ask for gerbil (or similar words).