I saw a Facebook post from one of my friends enjoying himself in Seattle last week.
I thought, 'that's a really great photo of Hitesh,' then I did a double take. What was I looking at?
I studied it for a moment and thought, 'omg, gross,' then commented on the post.
"Hey, looking good, Hitesh, but please tell me that is not a wall of chewed gum you're standing in front of," I wrote.
I immediately Googled it and got back the headline: "Seattle's gum wall - the second germiest tourist attraction in the world."
My first reaction was 'if that's the second, what could the first possibly be?
Turns out, at least according to CNN and dozens of other spin-off articles in the internet echo chamber, number one is the Blarney Stone.
Kissing the stone, it is believed, will give the kisser the gift of eloquent speech (if they don't die of some communicable disease).
I'll admit that seems pretty unsanitary, but access to a romantic encounter with this stone that makes up part of the battlements of Blarney Castle in County Cork, Ireland, is pretty well controlled and the stone is now sanitized between make-out sessions.
Still, I wouldn't do it, but apparently hundreds of thousands of others do each year.
Yuck.
Another contender is Irish dramatist Oscar Wilde's tomb in Paris, which was also a kiss magnet, but a glass partition installed to protect the stone kind of takes that out of the running in my mind.
There's also Graumann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood where you can shake hands with the stars, or at least with the impressions of the stars' hands in the sidewalk outside. A bit cringeworthy, but nothing on the level of the gum wall.
Let's face it, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of pieces of chewed gum on a wall, is just nasty. Of course, it's not like you have to touch, lick or eat one of these previously-chewed offerings (although I'm sure many a drunk has done it on a dare).
Still, it's hard pass for me. The Pike Place Market where the gum wall is situated is enough of an attraction without that ooey gooey mess.
There is an attraction in India, that should really be at the top of the list, though. The Karni Mata Temple in India is infested with reincarnated Indian storytellers and descendants of the Karni Mata, an incarnation of the god Durga.
But what are they reincarnated as? Wait for it ... yes, rats, 20,000 vermin doing all the verminey things they do.
It gets worse. You can't wear shoes in the temple.
But that's not even the worst of it. Some people actually drink from the same water as the rats and eat their leftover food because it's supposed to bring good luck.
All I can say is eeeewwww, we have a new winner, you heard it here first.
Now I know somebody out there is just itching to set me straight as in 'rats are cleaner than humans' or some such, maybe even write a letter to the editor.
Don't bother. I don't care. It's just downright disgusting.
