Sonic Youth – "Dirty Boots" (1990)

Dirty boots are on

Hi di ho

Incendiary bombs – bombs designed to start fires rather than do damage by exploding – were used extensively by both the German and Allied air forces in World War II.

In April 1941, one such bomb fell through the roof of the home of the home of a London shoemaker and his family.  Fortunately for that family, they owned a Great Dane named Juliana, who saved the day by promptly urinating on the smoldering bomb. 

Juliana the Great Dane

Great Dane bladders can easily hold a quart or more of urine.  Juliana’s owners were fortunate that they hadn’t chosen to go with a Yorkie or a Pomeranian instead.

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The bladder capacity of a Great Dane is impressive, but pales in comparison to that of an elephant – whose bladders can hold an amazing 40 gallons of urine.  (Elephants can weigh 100 times more than a Great Dane, so it’s not surprising their bladders can hold 100 times more urine.)

Would you believe that it takes fully-loaded Great Danes and elephants the same amount of time to pee?  In fact, all mammals (except very small ones) take about the same amount of time to empty their bladders – roughly 20 seconds.  (We know this because a Georgia Tech engineer and his students filmed a number of Atlanta zoo animals urinating and timed how long it took them to finish.)

That’s because urination speed comes down to urethra width.  The larger the animal, the larger the urethra.  That’s how an elephant can expel two gallons of urine a second and empty his bladder in the same amount of time as a dog.

Nature is awesome, isn’t it?

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When I was in college, I and my friends spent all our summer evenings drinking beer in Galena, Kansas.  (I lived in Missouri, where you had to be 21 to buy beer.  But Kansas allowed 18-year-olds to drink 3.2% beer, which was legally considered to be non-intoxicating.)

I was young and stupid back then.  So I would occasionally hold off as long as I could before heading to the men’s room, and then time how long it took me to empty my bladder.  

Hitting the 30-second mark was easy, and I think I exceeded 45 seconds a few times.  I don’t recall ever going longer than one minute, but my memory’s not what it used to be.

Of course, those days are a distant memory now . . .

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My older son gave me a year-long subscription to Spotify for Christmas.  

Once I figured it out – which took some time, I admit – I created a playlist with all the tracks from a dozen or so Sonic Youth albums.  For the last week or so, I’ve been up to my neck in Sonic Youth music.

Today’s featured record is the first track on the group’s 1990 album, Goo – the first Sonic Youth album I owned.  If you’re wondering what it has to do with Juliana the Great Dane or anything else in this post, you can stop – there’s no connection.

“Dirty Boots” is the first Sonic Youth song I’ve featured in years.  It won’t be the last.

Click here to watch the official music video for “Dirty Boots.”

Click here to buy “Dirty Boots” from Amazon.