Replies to post #124807 on Rants and Raves

[teapeebubbles]

she shoulda used some alum

Gags in which someone ingests alum, either accidentally self-administered or surreptitiously administered by another, resulting in exaggerated effects, are a traditional staple of comedy. In live-action comedies, effects on the victim usually include extreme puckering of the mouth and lips and tightening of the throat. An example of this is in the Three Stooges short "No Census, No Feeling" when Curly is making a fruit punch and thinking it was sugar, puts alum in the fruit punch.

In animated cartoons, the effects are normally expanded to include extreme shrinking of the head. One example would be in the Merrie Melodies cartoon Long-Haired Hare featuring Bugs Bunny in which he plays a prank on a pompus opera singer named Giovanni Jones by lacing his atomizer with liquid alum. This causes Jones' head to shrink and his voice to squeak. (Please see the link to the cartoon for a more complete synopsis.) Another such use is Back Alley Op-Roar (Freleng, 1945), in which Elmer feeds Sylvester Pussycat alum-laced milk, shrinking his head and driving his voice up several octaves while singing Figaro. In Birds Anonymous, Sylvester attends a therapy session where cats try to break their addiction to birds. The host follows Sylvester around in order to prevent him from eating Tweety. One instance found the cat pouring a box of alum down Sylvester's throat as he was about to eat Tweety.

Also, Thomas Pynchon borrows the joke in chapter 16 of his 1963 novel V., in a scene where alum is slipped into the beer of a jazz trumpet player.