The Universe of Discourse

Slaughter electric needle injector

[ This article appeared yesterday on Content-type: text/shitpost but I decided later there was nothing wrong with it, so I have moved it here. Apologies if you are reading it twice. ]

At the end of the game Portal, one of the AI cores you must destroy starts reciting GLaDOS's cake recipe. Like GLaDOS herself, it starts reasonably enough, and then goes wildly off the rails. One of the more memorable ingredients from the end of the list is “slaughter electric needle injector”.

I looked into this a bit and I learned that there really is a slaughter electric needle injector. It is not nearly as ominous as it sounds. The needles themselves are not electric, and it has nothing to do with slaughter. Rather, it is a handheld electric-powered needle injector tool that happens to be manufactured by the Slaughter Instrument Company, Inc, founded more than a hundred years ago by Mr. George Slaughter.

Slaughter Co. manufactures tools for morticians and enbalmers preparing bodies for burial. The electric needle injector is one such tool; they also manufacture a cordless electric needle injector, mentioned later as part of the same cake recipe.

The needles themselves are quite benign. They are small, with delicate six-inch brass wires attached, and cost about twenty-five cents each. The needles and the injector are used for securing a corpse's mouth so that it doesn't yawn open during the funeral. One needle is injected into the upper jaw and one into the lower, and then the wires are twisted together, holding the mouth shut. The mortician clips off the excess wire and tucks the ends into the mouth. Only two needles are needed per mouth.

There are a number of explanatory videos on YouTube, but I was not able to find any actual demonstrations.

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