#392 – Monolith

It’s interesting what happens to food if you leave it out for awhile. In college there was a horrible smell coming out of our kitchen. We cleaned and cleaned but couldn’t find where it was coming from. I finally discovered that someone had decided to put a plastic bag full of potatoes on top of one of the wall cabinets. I don’t know how long they had been there but it had been long enough for the potatoes to liquefy.

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61 thoughts on “#392 – Monolith”

  1. Sleepingorange says:

    I used to secretly rot food samples in the microwave no-one used, just so I could culture the mold and bacteria that grew on them. I’ve been destined for microbiology forever.

  2. Trevor says:

    Liquefy?
    LIQUEFY?

  3. Bunnyman says:

    A few years back, we had some kind of teriyaki steak thing and put the leftovers in the fridge. After about a year we started smelling something really horrid whenever we opened the fridge. Another couple months passed before we finally cleaned it out. The Gladware did nothing. NOTHING!

  4. Heinrich says:

    A friend of mine at Mac & Cheese and left the plate out with the spoon he used sitting on top of it in the cheese residue that he never bothered to wash off. I forget how long it sat, but, by the time anyone picked it up, the cheese had hardened to the point where we could turn the plate upside down and the spoon wouldn’t move off of it.

  5. Matt says:

    Ha, then you guys would have had Vodka! I mean, it would have tasted horrible, and killed you a lot faster than regular Vodka, but still. I’m sure someone would have paid a pretty penny for it.

  6. David says:

    If you leave Twinkies unwrapped out in the air, they will get hard and stale. But they will still smell fresh even after several months. I had one in a glass on my shelf that I left alone for four months. Looked fresh, smelled fresh, not a speck of dust inside the glass despite the distinctive dust layer outside the glass. Creepy.

  7. My mom leaves potatoes out all the time, I’m always the one that has to clean it out. Liquid potatoes are gross…

  8. SEA says:

    Liquefied potatoes…eew
    nothing much in my home is left to rot, they just get thrown away =p

  9. aldaris says:

    do you WANT to make me throw up?

  10. RFPT says:

    nice belt. I remember that had happened to me once. just a bowl and a plate, but it had formed together.

  11. Elli says:

    We had potatoes rot on us once. I kept smelling something really vile I knew it wasn’t the trash. So after a few days, I sniffed around, and found the source; one of the potatoes on the counter had rotted and burst. I let Dad know, then cleaned up the mess and examined the surviving potatoes. We had to throw two others away and cut off parts of others that had been tainted by the rot-juice. It was yucky. 🙁

  12. Chuck says:

    No rotting food in my kitchen, but a rotting kitty in my yard once. O.O

  13. Imaginary says:

    You know, that takes a good six months minimum… My mom tried to make a compost heap when I was a kid, she would put whatever food bits we weren’t going to eat in a bucket and take it outside when it got full, but one day she got busy and just put a lid on it, then the bucket got shoved to the back of the counter and pretty much everyone forgot about it but me, and I was to scared that something living might try to attack me if I did anything about it… I watched it go from moldy, to rotty to liquid over a period of several months… Then I got to see my moms expression when she found it again.

  14. Ela says:

    Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww……….

  15. Heinrich says:

    I just showed my friend this comic, and his coment was “heeeeyyy… i did that…” we were both amused.

  16. LazerWulf says:

    I live in a house of 7 college guys, and, sadly, this is an all-too-familiar sight.

  17. Charlotte says:

    I remember I left a bag of potatoes in a cupoard in my common room kitchen over a 5 week holiday, they hadn’t turned to liquid but they were pretty slimy when I got back.

    I also once after my first Xmas away from uni I had the fun of clearing out the fridge after the girls sharing a kitchen with me left various perishables (Including yogurt and cheese which I hate) in the fridge before they left for th holidays, I always made sure to empty the fridge if I was the last person to leave college after that!

  18. Fred says:

    Hey Chuck! Something similar happened to me; when I came back from the holidays I found a rotting cat under the other car
    >.

  19. Lex says:

    *trying to get the spoon out of the 2 days old coffe cup… cup moves with the spoon* Hmmm. Somehow this comic is familiar… OMG… My life is similar to Biffs. And I’m not drawn. OMG OMG I’m going to die some terrible but funny death.

  20. Reg says:

    Hmmm, according to everyone else’s commments, Biff is starting to get more realistic!
    But “liquid potatos”? It sounds like another lethal item McDonald’s would sell.

  21. Yohimba says:

    *shudder* When I was young for some reason I bought into the notion it is better to keep potatos in a dark cupboard than in the fridge. I was sitting on the kitchen stool preparing dinner and reached down into the cabinet to heft the 10 pund bag of spuds onto my lap. I was wearing cut-offs… The bag had holes in it apparently… Liquid potato juice ozzed down my leg… *shudder*

    Trust me, keep the spuds in the fridge. They will last far longer, sprout less often, and when they die they dessicate kinda, not turn liquid. *shudder*

  22. Tyler says:

    I agree, Reg.

  23. Paul says:

    It IS hard. And this comic just reminded me to wash my growing pile later today. Thanks, Biff!

  24. Mithras says:

    I used to have a plastic juice bottle for school, and every day it was supposed to be washed out to be used the next day. On the last day of school, and the first day of summer vacation, I completely forgot to even empty my lunch box all together and I didn’t remember until two months later when I actually needed the lunch box again. The juice box, which had had a fair amount of orange juice left in it, was set to burst. The juicebox, which normally had straight parallel sides, had swollen to look like a balloon and was actually round.

    At least I got to have some fun opening it outside and sending the lid flying across the yard.

  25. A Captain says:

    Hahaha! The Google ads underneath this comment section are for an Odor Removal Guide and an Odor Remover Spray. So, thanks to you guys commenting about stinky potatoes for the entire page, Google now thinks my apartment needs one helluva scrubbing.

    How embarrassing!

    GOOGLE: I AM NOT A DUDE WHO LIVES IN A SMELLY APARTMENT. GIVE ME ADS ON… MINIATURE DOMESTICATED DINOSAUR CLONES. PREFERABLY ONES THAT I CAN RIDE LIKE A HORSE. (PLEASE.)

  26. Gobbledegook says:

    In college, my best friend was a camaraman for our local news station. He shot a piece on shark fishermen and came home with about 4-5 pounds of freshly-caught shark meat, which he brought to my place and we cooked up a big dinner for us and our girlfriends.
    Unfortunately, a piece of shark spine slipped, into my drainpipe while I was doing dishes later and I didn’t see it. After four days, I had to routinely flee my apartment to escape the stench, and I didn’t find the source until the sixth day.

  27. Daniel says:

    I dont post much but I had to share this one. So, one time a few years back I was moving into a new house. Everything was cool until the third day when I went to use the kitchen for the the first time. There was a horrible smell that I couldn’t track down. The only things in the fridge were the new groceries and the trash was empty. So, I got to cleaning. I cleaned the whole kitchen top to bottom and afterwards the smell remained. So I started looking through cupboards. When I got to the bottom cupboard next to the stove I discovered my culprit. An opened ziploc bag filled with ground beef, dripping with juices and bugs. Seems the previous tenant didnt know how to properly store meat. The home owners association sent someone to clean up the mess (cus I wasnt touching it) and they replaced all the wood in the cupboard. I dont how long it was there for but the HOA lady said no one was in the house for four months O_o

  28. Seraphine says:

    It’s hard to wash dishes anyway.

  29. Parker says:

    Oh man, this comic hits home.

    Lol I was cleaning my room a few days ago and noticed that there was a random styrofoam take-out box sitting on my entertainment center, and I had no recollection of putting it there.

    So I open it up, and my potato wedges from 3 or 4 months ago are in there, and had developed what I’m absolutely certain was a sentient form of mold.

    Seriously, I think it growled at me.

    And it made me sick because I’m pretty sure the gasp when I opened the box was enough to suck a good amount of it into my lungs.

    *cough*

  30. Megan says:

    I sometimes leave watermelon on top of my TV and I’m usually to lazy to throw it away until it starts turning black.

  31. Kanki-chan says:

    Also, don’t leave potatoes near the furnace or water heater. The potatoes we kept there actually grew HUGE roots.

    Biff should try adding on to that tower, tho.

  32. MaskedMan says:

    Liquid potatoes are bad.

    Liquid onions are much worse. Trust me; don’t try it for yourself.

  33. Melindotty says:

    Rotten potatoes are the WORST smell on earth. I… I can’t even explain the horror to those who haven’t smelled it…

  34. Hanii Puppy says:

    “Biff makes a note to not mix Superglue and Paint with the Fairy Washing Up Liquid.”

    i occasionally leave my coffee for long enough for it to be completely replaced by greenish-grey mould if i take a drink from it in the morning then am still to tired or too in-a-rush to drink it all.

  35. PlutoBum says:

    that is awful….when i first saw the comic, i thought he was stacking stuff on an invisible something….i don’t even know! that is super nasty, though

  36. steam punk says:

    Did you know that if you leave a bowl of Ramen under the guest bed for about a year or so, it doesn’t create a smell, but it does get all gross and moldy? And now you know!

    Usually I read the comments from others after reading the comic, but todays comic just made me really anxious to go do the dishes. I hate when things get all sticky, so the whole time I was reading the comics, I was thinking “I should go do the dishes after this”

    When I was younger, I never ate my sandwich because I was too busy playing at recess (I’d just drink my juice box and eat the cupcake), so my sandwich would stay at the bottom of my bag for a week until my mom would find it in there and get disgusted and throw it out. This was pretty much every week that it happened. She should have just stopped packing me sandwiches and the problem would have been solved.

  37. the Scarf says:

    Things that cement really badly are oatmeal, cream of rice, and macaroni. If those get left out, you have to soak them for days before anything comes off…

    I had a really bad smell in the kitchen, once. It was actually the mini water heater under the sink. It smelled like burnt rubber….we had to get it replaced.

  38. Noland says:

    I once had a bag of carrot sticks partially ferment in my backpack. I forgot about them for a week and even left my backpack in a hot, sunny place for a while. I first noticed when I touched a wet spot on my backpack and discovered the sickly juices were escaping. Even after thouroughly cleaning it out, my wallet still carries that horrid smell.

  39. Blah says:

    We had one of those going a while back…

  40. nikie says:

    i got a box of potatoes for christmas one year to disguise the large amount of money on the bottom of the box. since i had nothing to do with the potatoes, they sort of found themselves under my bed and stayed down there for a while. one day i was locked in my room to clean my room and pulled out this box of vines from under my bed. i decided to keep my potatoes and name them. i remember one was shirley. i think.

    … i could be wrong.

  41. nikie says:

    i got a box of potatoes for christmas one year to disguise the large amount of money on the bottom of the box. since i had nothing to do with the potatoes, they sort of found themselves under my bed and stayed down there for a while. one day i was locked in my room to clean my room and pulled out this box of vines from under my bed. i decided to keep my potatoes and name them. i remember one was shirley. i think.

  42. Z says:

    Ewww. I once left a bag of potatoes in a box when I moved from one apt. to another, and I totally forgot they were there until one day I needed something from that box…that’s how I found out that rotting potatoes smell a lot like human excrement 😛

  43. Helen says:

    My freshman year in college my roommate came with her own rather unpleasant scent. About halfway through the first semester, the general bad smell of the room got significantly worse, and when it failed to go away after two days, I dug through everything I owned, and finally confronted my roommate when I couldn’t find the culprit. She dug through her massive food stash on top of the wardrobe, finally producing the liquified remnants of a shrink-wrapped potato…

    Repeat the same process two months later, this time with little oranges.

  44. Bubble says:

    That’ll teach him to leave them too late! Gosh

  45. jess says:

    once i had some cut up chicken for dinner, and i left it on my counter for a while, then one day i needed the tupperware container it was in, and once i found it, i was like “what is that fluffy stuff in it?”

    the mould on top was actually fluffy and white. and when i poked it with a fork, it turned green where i poked it. it was cool haha.

  46. Frank says:

    The same thing happened to me a few years ago, except that you should substitute ‘rabbits’ for ‘potatoes’. I’m still not sure why he had rabbits. I think it was for his Hawk.

  47. Skull says:

    been there, done that, but with plastic dishes, they are harer to separate because plastic bends a lot…

    Finally, my book of biff arrived today, the extra comics are really funny 🙂

  48. colin says:

    ever notice how non-produce decays?
    hard stuff gets soft and (most) soft thinds get hard.
    chips & bread?
    also i left a plate full of food out in my snow fort, came back at least a year later, food was gone, and the plate turned opposite colors almost.
    O_o

  49. Terashell says:

    I remember I used to share an apartment with 4 guys, all of us in college and we would regularly leave the house empty for long periods. Usually we were good about either taking perishables home with us, or not buying any for a few weeks ahead of time, and/or freezing those we could.

    One time, I returned to the house after a few weeks and found that the mass of dishes that were the last guy to leave’s responsibility had fused into a solid mass in the sink, something had gained sentience in the fridge, and there was a large puddle where there used to be a bag of potatoes and garlic.

    I immediately left the house and returned back home to my parent’s for a few days until the other guys got there and cleaned it because I would have just made the mess worse.

    I think the guy-who-left-last got kicked out shortly thereafter… justice!

  50. Nikanaiko says:

    UGH, that happened to me too. D: And it was my mother’s fault. Why is it always potatoes?!

  51. napalm says:

    yup…
    you made some cheap-ass vodka with the liquid potatoes.
    I wonder if you ran it through a britta filter pitcher a bunch would it be drinkable

  52. Psymon says:

    So far nothing has gotten anywhere near “liquefied”, but carrots and spinach get slimey, then we throw them out. Also, once a sweet potato sprouted, and it got big enough that I didn’t want to just throw it away, so I planted it. Sweet potato plants make for a nice groundcover.

  53. Kittyn says:

    *shudders* cucumbers at the bottom of the produce drawer in the fridge……….after about 6 months.

  54. biggo says:

    Oh, the fridge’s bottom drawer is a weekly problem 8-(

    A few years ago we had a disgusting reek coming out from somewhere at the ground floor. There was a room the home owner hadn’t yet given us access to, and after a few days of the terrible smell we started to fear that somebody was dead in the room. We had the room opened and – luckily- nothing. We washed the floors and stairs an the smell didn’t go away. Long story short, it turned out that someone had emptied the big freezer in the basement, thrown some 20kg of frozen meat in a trash bag and forgotten the bag in a corner. The day I went to inspect the basement I almost threw up at the view of the hugestestest worms ever to crawl the planet. You could hunt whales with that guys. Sci-fi-horror stuff! 😀

  55. Amake says:

    Looks like Biff has discovered that bacterial glue that sticks things together down at the molecular level and makes them inseparable until the bacteria die.

  56. Cari says:

    My husband doesn’t throw anything away. Whenever I try to discard rotten food or mystery containers, he gets mad or tells me not to throw them out now and to put them back. So I discard things on garbage day after he’s left for work.

  57. Psymon says:

    There’s something weird in the fridge today
    I don’t know what it is.
    Food I can’t recognize.

    My roommate won’t throw a thing away
    I guess it’s probably his.
    It looks like it’s alive

    And living in the fridge!
    –Weird Al “Living in the Fridge”

  58. mrmeval says:

    Dear Bachelor: Bacterial, mold, wild animals or insects will not clean the dishes either.

  59. Tech says:

    who knows what secrets lurk in your crisper drawer? What malevolence hides behind the ketchup? It’s
    The Lemon That Time Forgot!

  60. Jenny Creed says:

    One time I forgot a dirty plate that had had fried chicken on it for an entire summer. (I rarely use my dining room.) By the time I found it the fat had formed a rubber-like adhesive that was literally indestructible. It stuck to my dishwashing brush and ruined it; it stuck to the plate after I boiled and froze it and threw every chemical I could get my hands on at it. After a month of unsuccessfully trying to get rid of the stuff, I threw out the plate instead.

  61. EricK says:

    I had friends that got ticked off at the landlord for screwing them over. So, the night before they moved out, they removed the covers from the wall sockets, gentlely took out the electrical box, filled the wall behind it with ground beef and liver, and then put box back in, and the cover back on so no one would be the wiser. As I understand it, about a month later, there were so many rats, they had to tear out all of the walls inside and rebuild.

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