Monday, October 23, 2017

REALLY?

Spotted on a short walk near my house.


What, one wonders, IS a sanitary sewer?

I wouldn't think any sewer is really sanitary.

Maybe those big ones in the movie "The Third Man" which starred Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles among others.

Welles played a mysterious post-World War Two crook (Harry Lime) in Vienna and sneaked around the city using the big underground sewers.

But I digress.

Checking with the All-Knowing Google I learn that a sanitary sewer is a system of underground pipes that takes kitchen and bathroom waste from homes and businesses to a wastewater treatment plant where it is filtered, treated and released.

Apparently it is so-named to distinguish it from a storm sewer, which carries rainfall and other drainage.

So there you are.

Now you (and I) know probably all we ever wanted to know about sewer systems.

And now, to lighten the mood a bit, here's the theme music from that movie, played on the zither by Anton Karas.

Some other time I'll explain what a zither is.

13 comments:

  1. Good post, good movie.

    Steve

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  2. One doesn't want to fall into either of them, but that would be significantly more irritating.

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  3. We had a zither when I was a kid. Probably shows how old I am!

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    1. We had one as well. Actually it belonged to SWMBO but we gave it to one of the kids when we moved to Mexico.

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  4. Zithers....had one too. We have lavender colored storm drains sings on some saying caution, that they drain directly to the ocean. I.e., don't drop crap in there. Literally...

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  5. I think I'd rather spend time in a storm sewer as opposed to the "sanitary" variety.
    Loved the Third Man--the book and the film, but the theme music was an irritant. Never got how it "spoke" to the story.

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  6. I guess the sanitary sewer keeps the surroundings sanitary, so there are no oozing pits of raw sewage to stumble into. Can't explain the storm sewer that way, though.

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  7. Film noir, one of my favorite categories. Nobody looked spookier than the good Orson.

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  8. I just recently watched that movie on Netflix. When it comes to suspense, those old movie makers knew how to do it without any explosions or mass shootings.

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  9. In Vienna you can book an entire tour devoted to Third Man locations. No doubt the tour bus has the theme song on a loop

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  10. I saw "The Third Man" YEARS ago, and I don't remember a single thing about it. But I know it's a classic. Maybe I should watch it again.

    I always just assumed that a sanitary sewer wasn't sanitary ITSELF, but contributed to sanitary conditions overall!

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  11. We actually own a really nice zither. It's....somewhere...in our house :)

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