What is the point of an investigations (sic) like this?
Indeed. That is the question asked at the end of this piece of investigative journalism by SayUncle’s old friend Tearsa Smith. Tearsa and the WATE news team went to some local hotels on a search for bootie juice (a la an Oprah episode my wife made me watch once). They went to three hotels and, using a black light, identified stains on sheets, blankets and pillows. They then took swabs and sent them to a lab to check for semen, vaginal fluids, saliva, and urine (aka, bootie juice – and I guess no searching for, uhm, streaks).
Apparently, when the local media go out to do some hard-hitting investigative journalism, spend the money, hire a lab, pay reporters and get nothing of substance, they run the story anyway. The conclusion:
The good news is the stains we swabbed in all three hotel did not prove to be bodily fluids. Of course, that just raises other questions about what the mystery spots and smudges really were.
Even though our results proved inconclusive, the fact remains that the areas we swabbed were not wiped clean, disinfected or sanitized.
Maybe the stains you found were the residue left over from cleaning products used to clean up all the semen, vaginal fluids, saliva, and urine you were looking for. I mean, hotels have laundry facilities for a reason. Or maybe the stains were from someone spilling their complimentary coffee or $2 soft drinks from the lobby, which are notoriously hard to get out of fabric. Who’s going to throw away sheets just because someone spilled coffee on them? Or, since they used a black light, it could be the residue left over from an old Led Zeppelin poster I had back in the seventh grade.
The piece concludes with:
What is the point of an investigations like this? To make sure you are more aware when you take your next trip. Ask questions and be your own investigator for the safety of your family
Yes, citizen, take your own black light and mobile CSI lab kit when you travel. Your safety depends on it. Test your sheets for Led Zeppelin residue or coffee. Or better yet, ask your hotel clerk if they’re aware of any bootie juice on the bed. Or take your own bedding.
Update: Turns out that laundry detergent glows in black light:
Some of the whiteners in detergent work by making your clothing a bit fluorescent. Even though clothing is rinsed after washing, residues on white clothing cause it to glow bluish-white under a black light. Blueing agents and softening agents often contain fluorescent dyes, too. The presence of these molecules sometimes causes white clothing to appear blue in photographs.
(thanks to CounterTop and Google)
May 20th, 2005 at 10:52 am
Laundry detergent is notorious for glowing under a black light. I think it is the phosphurous in it, but next time you have access to a black light and are wearing, say, blue jeans go into a dark room and shine the black light on them and see all the weird streaks glowing. Now, it is true that some of those streaks could be bootie juice, but assuming the jeans are otherwise clean chances are its simply laundry detergent.
Of course, that response would pretty much doom the entertainment value of the dumb MTV show and might be a bit inconvenient in Ms. Smith’s continuing efforts to be a real reporter.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:02 am
So I guess this means the local hotels are “getting the Led out?”
Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Drake, you should be smacked for that one.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:07 am
I think the CSI comment nailed it.
After scientifically putting the bootie juice under the big glowing scientific freak light, they displayed the results on the scientific gigantic big screen TV, and the pasty lab scientist guy said he’d run an FBI search to see if he could scientifically do a match for cooter prints.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:44 am
Thanks for some welcome comic relief.
May 20th, 2005 at 11:58 am
Now I understand what they meant by “whiter than white.” Phosporescent laundry detergent. (And countertop is correct; most laundry detergents contain phosporus, and there’s a reason that element shares a root word with “phosporescent”.)
May 20th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
It’s usually the Titanium Dioxide (what makes the whites white and brights bright) that REALLY shows up under a black light. Which is in almost all the normal laundry detergents.
Charlie’s Soap, Sport Wash don’t – which is why things look “dingy” when you wash with them for a while. They’re not really, but you’re not getting that edge-of-the-UV that Ti02 gives you.
http://www.atsko.com/dontstandoutinthewoods.html
May 20th, 2005 at 11:24 pm
I hope Atsko puts more care into its products than it does into its advertising.
I’ve never seen so many typos in advertising copy before. Sure, I am as bad as they get when it comes to typos on my blog, but then, I ain’t trying to sell anything and no one knows who I really am. Everything that goes out at work is perfect.
Atko’s copy was painful to read there were so many typos and misspellings.
May 21st, 2005 at 10:22 am
White fabrics mostly turn dingy yellow with age; it’s not dirt on them, it’s that the fibers actually change color as they get old. Combining the yellow fabric with a florescent blue dye (which absorbs UV and reemits it as blue light) makes it look white under normal light. That’s why they put the dye in.
With bright UV and dim visible light, you can’t see the yellow so it just looks blue.
March 2nd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
[…] It’s always funny to peruse 6 Investigates section of WATE to see what they’re trying to scare people with these days. You may recall the time when their crack team of investigative journalists went to hotels in Knoxville and used a black light look for streaks and booty juice on the sheets. And, shock, the black light showed some substances. None of which were actually booty juice and the results were declared to be inconclusive. We here at SayUncle discovered that detergent shows up quite well under a black light and the only thing local hotels were likely guilty of was washing bedding. […]
June 4th, 2006 at 10:39 am
[…] Good, I hope so. Because last year’s sweeps month contained some hard-hitting investigation of bootie juice. […]
June 18th, 2006 at 9:38 pm
[…] […]