pile up

It is amazing that when one is disposing of a large amount of loose doodie in a toilet bowl, the doodie never piles up in such a way that it comes into contact with one's butt.

I shouldn't say never, but it's never happened to me, and I'm very thankful for that.

Just imagine how much it would have to be! Unless of course it was just a consistency thing, or what have you.

stercus ursinus

Today, two of my poops looked like bears. Not like bear poop, but actually kind of like a bear. There was a real shagginess to these turds, and they were just such a color, if you know what I mean.

Doo Doo Bloggin - building a new iconography of poops, for you & yours

Safety Always

Last night, I took a poop with a bike helmet on my head.

My poop was perfectly turmeric-colored.

ps - I don't know how to ride a bike.

Mantle, Jones, Berkman, Murray... not me

Turns out I can't really wipe left-handed.

But I tried.

distinctions are important

It is not so rare for a person to, by accident, pee on his belt.

It is substantially rarer, in my observation, for a person to poop on his belt.

And that, my dear reader, is the difference between peeing and pooping.

le doo doo

So I've been to continental Europe twice now. I think it's a fine place. They've got some nice things going there, including bidets, which unfortunately I was not really in a position to try out this go round. I owe it to you all to try in the future, it's on my list. But that's not what this is about.

Whenever I'm traveling, I tend to have lower standards of personal cleanliness. Swimming is a sufficient stand in for bathing (be it in a pool, salt water, or fresh water), deodorant is rarely packed, and clothes can sustain myriad wearings before the notion of washing comes to mind. But my butt cleanliness is usually not a flexible thing - regardless of what I'm doing, I'd like for my ass to be clean after I poo. I imagine most people agree with me one this, although I may differ on allowable amounts of urine to intersect with the pants area from most men.

What I'm trying to say is that in Europe, perhaps because of their kind of papier hygiénique, that's my best guess, I wasn't always feeling as fresh as I would hope to feel. Maybe my angles were off.

Now, as was the case with me in middle school, it was often an illusion. Maybe I was just sweat from my butt and misunderstanding. But a number of bathroom repeat visits in which a cautionary wipe was ventured took place, and most of them, almost all of them, came back negative. So I was kind of basket case over nothing, you see.

This is very personal information, as you can clearly see. Now you know more of my secrets.

I will also add that Europe is way ahead of the States in terms of the variable flush toilets. Good on them. Let's see more chatter on that one, huh? I will close by saying that this blogger's significant other, who would be horrified to be identified by name here, noted that Spanish airport/train station bathrooms had very low standards of cleanliness compared to American terminals of transit. Thanks for that report.

Drop them like turds,

Doo Doo Blogger Dave

two more quick (s)hits

1.) Just had a poop that looked like a blackish-green head of broccoli. I've pooped many shapes, but never this cruciferous.

2.) You never hear much chatter about pooping in the days immediately after you give birth. I'd like to hear more about that, I think. I imagine the experience of passing things out of your body must be very different right then.

materials

I pooped in a room yesterday that smelled just like mothballs.

...

It was a bathroom.

At a reputable arts venue.

Mothballs?

I mean, the clientele there are primarily old, but heck. Mothballs? In the bathroom?

One at once wonders what mothballs are made out of and what it would be like to poop in a non-bath room that smelled of mothballs.

For another day.

another try, another stab?

This was really hot off the presses about 20 hours ago, but it's still relevant:

How's this for a day in the pooping life:

Monday night, a really abrupt, messy shite with a lot of constituent pieces, each having the red patina of beet greens, and coming in all shapes and sizes.

Tuesday morning, one of the most solid stools I can imagine. Like a diamond; condensed, focused.

Tuesday evening, loose, very loose, but in a completely different way from the previous day. The red was gone for one thing, and the constituent pieces idea was more goopy. Less fidelity in the islands, more like marsh land.

That's what up with me these days.

poo poo oops

Naw, really nothing bad happened. But if I had more control over, you know, everythings, then it would have looked different.

I once again to the city that is the capital of my nation, and some of the surrounding cities, large and small. When in a home a close friend, I was finding it difficult to satisfactorily get everything out in the manner that I usually prefer. There was more waiting, more gas, more liquid than I am accustomed to.

There was also an amusing moment involving me squatting in a bathroom at the Smithsonian... but for a child's water fountain. With a large backpack on. Blocking some patrons from getting in. Making a child look kind of sad. Et cetera.

doo doo curls

My mind turns of late to the doo doo curls.

Like, your stool is not the healthiest it could be, but neither is it so bad. And you produce, in one sitting, a lot of discrete bundles of doo doo. And these bundles are of just such a shape; they kind of curl back on themselves. Maybe they're .5 to 1.5 inches long.

These are the doo doo curls.

Probably they float.

My, do I eat a lot of cabbage.

Also cheese, a lot of cheese.

retelling, whom?

Why is the direct transition from a shit to the shower SO satisfying?

Who can explain these things? Not analytically, I could go into that, but actually? Why bother? Everything's amazing.

what to do with your hands?

Lately, I've been doing crossword puzzles (Sunday Times with the occasional Saturday Times) while pooping at home. This is a change. I'd mostly been reading before that (I've got a lot of reading to do these days). It's nice to have something to do with your hands, I think. Book reading is not ideally suited to the toilet, article reading is much more appropriate. The gradual brain work necessary for crossword puzzle completion is perfect if repeat visits are going to be part of the scheme. Having a conversation is a personal favorite, but that happens very rarely. I'm a social pooper.

an exercise in endurance

Enter the bathroom, bringing with you a nice, large meal. Begin to defecate. As you defecate, begin eating the meal. Continue defecating until the meal has passed through you completely.

exceptions

When this blog started, I was fixated a lot on where I was pooping. I was transitioning from an old workplace to a new school and assuming that the pooping there would be like the pooping at workplaces and schools from my past, which I have mostly loved and cherished. Things have not played out this way. Mostly I poop at home (I try to eat at home as much as possible these days, the other end of the equation just works out that way).

Significantly, in re: the school plot line, the building where most of my classes happen switched this semester. Thing went from one brutalist 60s-high-school-looking building to a slightly less falling apart building of the same type. I'll call it the "new" building, but understand it's 40+ years old as well; it's merely new to me. This new one has basketball courts. The only bathroom I had been using in the new building has only 1 of 4 spigots that work and a stall for pooping that seems physically improbable. Pooping just hasn't come up this semester, or if it did, I don't remember the specifics, but I must have found another building.

THE REAL STORY HERE: Yesterday I played the first piece on the first concert in the new concert venue of this new building. I have very little in the way of nerves before performing these days, but sometimes a good poop really clears the mind/heart/soul and makes for a nice relaxed performance (conversely, having to pee really badly during a show can be a great spur of quality or at least intensity).

ANOTHER DETAIL YOU'LL NEED FOR THIS ALL TO MAKE SENSE: On Wednesday, I made a really nice dinner with fennel, carrots, cabbage, ginger, tofu, and some black beans, which might have been sitting in the fridge a little too long. I was concerned, but I felt fine Wednesday, and so I took this as leftovers for my dinner on Thursday night before the concert. This entailed leaving home (and refrigeration of said leftovers) around 1 PM. The concert was at 7 PM. I ate at 6 PM.

THE CRUX: It's 6:30. There's some milling around. I suddenly get the doo-doo urges. Something's coming. Figuring nothing's happening in this building on the other floors at this time of day and there's a concert on this floor, I went looking around for the most relatively clean & quiet place to sit for a while, since I could tell something significant was on its way. 1st floor bathroom is the previously mentioned one, the 2nd floor was being cleaned. 3rd floor (floor of the performance) was gonna have to do. Walking back up & entering the bathroom, I found it surprisingly clean & well maintained. I'm not super picky, but it's nice to find a great place, and generally my school's facilities run towards the grosser end. Upon reaching my doo-doo location, using my butt, I emitted a stream of poop with a very high water content into the toilet bowl. It was gross, occasionally loud, cathartic, and a little exhausting. But it worked out. I thought maybe something was bad in the beans. I thought I was nervous. I thought a lot of things.

Sometimes you just get a doo doo out of the blue like this. Everything since has been normal. My stomach is fine. This was just a rumbly storm that manifested itself. I think. But it really made me think. And now, I hope I've made you think. Careful with the beans, careful in new buildings. Poop away, poopers.

from the cat world

Often, when I'm scooping cat poop, I can't ignore the power embedded deep within the phrase "doo doo fried doo doo balls".

That's all for now. What's up? Poop?

mega-library doo doo

Recently, I visited our nation's top hat: Washington, District of Columbia.

I pooped while I was there.

But there's more:

I pooped in the National Archives [it's free admission there]. It was a Sunday. I had just seen the Constitution, the Declaration, the B. of R.s, etc. There were a lot of school groups floating around the building. I had several layers on and a heavy backpack, so it took me some time to set up for my work once I got into the stall. Thereupon, I realized I was one of two people in the bathroom. The other person, probably derived from one of the school groups, said, presumably to himself, that this must be the quietest bathroom in the world. After he left, I felt like his assessment was pretty good. It was a quiet building on a quiet winter Sunday, and there was just me, having a quiet poop.

Pooping in a library bathroom is one of the distinct pleasures in life. Pooping in one of the nation's ur-libraries is thus a sweet thing indeed.

PS - anyone ever call that NFL QB the mocking name of Bathromo?

stercus legis

I had jury duty three of the past seven days. The case was settled after I had already been empaneled, which is a little bit of a let down, honestly. Frankly, I can't imagine a less inconvenient time to serve on a civil case jury. Just a few days in between my semesters, no worries, a coupla bucks via check at the end. A chance for an intimate look at the world of the NY Court System. But no, eight more years before I get to try again...

Anyway, on the first day, before and during voir dire, I was in the process of holding it. I didn't want to be caught pants-around-the-ankles when my number was up. So until 1 in the afternoon, I was audibly not at ease. The med student patiently waiting next to me got an earful of something I'm not certain she could diagnose (she was just starting out in med school). Sometimes my belly does this when I don't permit it full access to pooping facilities - it starts to sing a little bit. A nice feature for me, but probably disconcerting to those around me, imagining smells that might not be there.

On the lunch hour, I got things done at a vegetarian Chinese restaurant. Ate some soy protein then made a deposit. No more howling in the afternoon. Never did get a chance to try out the crapper in the courthouse... hope I don't have to until 2019.

Happy Craps in 2011,

Dave