Our Great Nation

Now I lived in Southern New England for four years of my life.  Its ways are not unfamiliar to me.  But having lived mid-Atlantic style for the past 7.5 years, sometimes I need a reminder as to the charms of one of the cradles of our fine nation.

This past weekend brought a kind of vacation to nowhere in particular, and the home base, in Northern Connecticut, was chosen for a supposedly haunted but generally fine (ie unremarkable) hotel.  The building was a classic one, and that means the HVAC system - things were very hot or very cold - and especially the plumbing.

Now this is not unique to New England, I've certainly seen it upstate New York and I imagine from New Mexico to Tennessee to Idaho you could encounter this, but being a city boy, there's a kind of old, taking-its-time, slow-flushing toilet that I both dread and admire.  Not that I personally clog these suckers much, I'm an easy flushing sort of fellow, I try to keep things trim and passable.  But that first time you flush such a toilet and perceive its slowness, there's kind of a oh here we are feeling that washes over you.

And it's good to be reminded where you come from, so it's not a bad thing that a person shits into one of these fine specimens some times, but it's more of a vacation thing than anything I'd want all the time.  And surely, things get more complicated when you go to other continents.

Pooish Guilt

Sometimes I eat so that I poop rather than the other way around.  Maybe that's perverse.  Maybe that sentence needs a because.

But then when you take a sizeable smash and are just incredulous that that thing came out of you, it's all worthwhile.

There's a been a general quality of sludginess recently.  Big, small, loose, firm.  It's just kind of sludge and more difficult to clean up after.

tremendousness

I was traveling this weekend.  Always an interesting time for crapping - not cooking in the way you would at home, new places to poo, perhaps fewer poos if you're busy and/or staying in a crowded place.  These things were all in effect.

However, I did leave in the city of Providence one tremendous crap.  In size, in relief it induced, in smell, in location.  Just all around.  Taken under the stairs (in a bathroom of course) of a historic building which was largely deserted, a very small room with old plumbing and a toilet bowl that amplified both sound & smell in a less than flattering way.  Felt right as rain thereafter.

And I became wistful for the parts of my life, mostly college and shortly thereafter, wherein I could be alone in a remarkable place, crapping the night away in a compelling fashion.  But these days I sure appreciate it every time I do.

brief tour

For those of you who missed the Doo Doo Bloggin 2012 Annual Report in July at Grace Space, I wanted to bring you all a little deeper into the fold.  These are a snapshots of my recent activities.  Nothing graphic, just some clearer perspectives on where I'm coming from.

There was a nice poo in the Park Avenue Armory.  The sign under the pipe said something curious but I can't read it here.

This one actually belongs on the pee pee bloggin site...

A very elegant bathroom for a post-performance doo doo.  In Park Slope.

In a very old building in Flatbush (note the nice crack in the door frame).  I had a nervous bowel thing happening before a performance.  This bathroom was a comforting space.

metrics

I have recently been sharing a bathroom with no one.  This is a new situation for me in my lifetime.  Such changes are, at the very least, good for reflection, and here is something I've learned: I go through, on average, less than a roll of toilet paper a week, even at present when I spend a good deal of my time at home.  And this is pretty long lasting TP, the Marcal rolls that you buy individually (the multipack rolls never last very long).

I'd say about a roll every ten days.  On average.
I guess in some sense I share the bathroom with the cat.

young stars of pooping, 2012

I am an aural person, this much is true.  I have been around 2-8 week old babies a good bit recently.  I like these babies, they're good folk.  I'd like to now draw attention to their pooping, and some sonic aspects thereof.

Just as the vocal chords of infants (and toddlers) are nearly as powerful as those of adults, only without the mental regulation most folks possess, the sonic potential of the baby fart/poo is unsubtle and brazen, just as an adults can boldly be.  Of course when your diet is just milk, things are different, but I've been struck for the first time by the sound of someone, anyone, audibly shitting through clothing (a diaper and a onesie in these instances).  Quite a powerful sound for the untrained ear, and I imagine not much different from the sound an adult would produce in a similar situation.

Just think of that next time you're around a baby.  Think of a grown up shitting their pants and what it would sound like.  I wonder if there's some sound-proofing built into diapers.

Here's More Mud In Yer Eye!

It's not a great feeling when you have a complete-thought-poop, defined as a poo at the end of which you have nothing further to add, only to be followed 30 or so minutes later by a completely separate complete-thought-poop.  You say to your digestive tract, "couldn't that have been a single entity?  did that really warrant two trips, two reading materials, two wipings, two hand washings?  what waste."

But the colon & its partners work in ways not fathomable to this author.  Stay spry, you never know what's coming next and when it's coming.

-Dudu

MVP!

In honor of LeBron's monster Finals performance, I took a monster dump yesterday.  Bigger discreet stools than my normal output, like three of them.  Congrats, LBJ.  It flushed okay in the upstate toilet.  The shape was a very stereotypical dump shape, you might call it text book.

I think it's important for fans for the DDB to know about George Brett's efforts in the pooping field if they don't already.  He says something at the end about a "perfect double-tapered shit".  I thought at for a while that he said "double-papered", meaning something about the wiping.  Recently, a friend, one BS, pointed out to me that it just meant that the shit was tapered at both ends.  Never would have thought of that.  Mine are rarely like that, but this monster was, to borrow George's phrase, a "perfect double-tapered" doo doo.

I am away #2

Up here in the Catskills, the toilet flushes are/seem to be not as robust as the NYC toilet flushes.  My feces, as a rule, is not so big that I would ever have to, say, break it up with a stick before I try to flush it (I know some folks who have this experience often).  I make a small or loose poop.  Also, in my TP usage, I'm the kind of guy who goes for few-small-squares rip instead of a big wad.  So it's rare that I have trouble getting things down.

However up here, things are different.  Things have gotten stuck on me on more than one occasion.  It's just too much to try to send the poo down with the TP, so I've taken to flushing the stool and then reflushing for the papier hygenique.  It feels a little wasteful with the water, but then again I haven't been flushing my pee pee, so that's a little better on the conscience.  Not a lifestyle facet I would choose, but it seems to be necessitated if I don't want to go grabbing the plunger (which I've managed to avoid with some astute toilet brush usage, gross as that may be).  This morning I had a tiny little poo that burned clean, so it all went away together.  More of that hopefully.

I am away #1

I have been away since Monday, and in this time period there has been a distinct dark green color to my faeces.

One asks: is it my diet or is it the place?

finish him!

I was never very good at the finishing moves in Mortal Kombat.  I think I knew one or two, probably for Scorpion or Sub-Zero.  So you can imagine my surprise a few months ago when I started developing one of my own!

Something I'd like to make clear right off: I'm traditionally a sitting wiper.  I imagine this behavior is the kind of thing you learn once in childhood and rarely deviate from.  I remember a time in college, talking to folks about whether they sit or stand when wiping, and it felt intensely personal.  Intensely.  So it's no small admission that I tell you that I just kind of lean forward but stay on the seat.  Actually, there's a shift in foot position that comes along with it, and the only part of public pooping that embarrasses me is that slight foot shift.  This has been my way since whenever I learned to clean up after myself.

Now all craps a little different, and as I've written before, some are awfully clean, others are messy.  Messy ones could be messy in a centralized way or diffuse.  I think I must have been going through a messier streak say two months ago (these things are very streaky you know), and for whatever reason, after several well-aimed wipes, I stood up.  I felt I needed more leverage.  One final standing-up wipe and I was done.  But it was infectious, and for a while thereafter, I seemed to be finishing all my cleaning with an aggressive standing wipe.  I really put my knees into it and everything.  Let's call it a "power wipe" or a "standing power wipe".  The bottom line is that I didn't feel totally clean until I had done my finishing move.

There's something of an identity crisis that accompanies this - I'm not a stand-up wiper, it's just my finishing move!  And sure enough, for the most part, it's faded.  But I'm sure it'll come back.  Probably with more time I'll get more comfortable with having flexible technique - not just a sitter or standing, but a pragmatic wiper, dealing with each situation accordingly.  Maybe the finishing move with integrate itself more fully.  Who's to say?

Any of you readers have a finishing move of your own, something without which you can't pack up & leave?

a spring treat

...just like little balls of deep fried doo doo...

Temptation: technology

Now that I have an iPhone, I find it hard to resist the temptation to photograph my poop. So far so good, but I don't know how long I can hold out. This blog may have a new look soon.

Posted from my iPhone

arty farty

I make no claims on being a visual artist. But then again, I'm a dabbler. I like to dabble.

Yesterday morning, while in the process of waking up, an idea for an installation, or a tableau, or something, came to me. I'd like to share it with you now:

In a large space, there is a terrifically large jar. The jar is essentially an over-sized jelly jar, it's got that kind of hexagonal or octagonal prism shape, with the slightly curved (in) bottom and a circular top. There may be a screw off-top, but it's not used in this concept. The jar is empty, clean, and transparent. The jar ought to be 8-10 feet high and have a proportional radius. The aperture at the top ought to be 2-3 feet in diameter. Alright, so it might be a bit more stretched out vertically than a normal jar. Calculations not exact.

A performer, a nude performer that is, climbs up or is helped up to the top of the jar. He or she finds a comfortable way to sit over the aperture. It's not like sitting on a toilet, probably a little more like either lying down of sitting with your butt way down lower than it would be in a toilet. Variations should be tried. The performer begins letting out a single thread of poo. Performers can be selected for the solidness of their BM, and diet can be altered to highlight this feature of the performative crap. Rather than being pinched off, the performer's thread is held on to and gently rocked back and forth. This continues for some time. If the doo doo breaks and falls down, ideally a new thread is produced, or another performer is on standby to continue.

Since this occurred at a dreamy time, there seems to be something obvious that this description is lacking, but I can't remember what it is. This is what I've got, and it seems fascinating, if difficult to execute for the performer. But boy, wouldn't that be neat?

say goodnight, ralphie

Regularity is not something I seek out. I'm fine making a poo whenever it needs to be done. There's often a sentimental attachment to BMing in certain parts of the day because this is how routines work.

That said, of late, I've fallen into a new routine, a routine I don't particularly relish. I've been taking a doo doo right before I go to sleep. That's one of my least favorite times to crap. Perhaps if you're a night showerer, which I am not. There's just something a little unclean to me about going to sleep having just moved your bowels.

This was not always my opinion of the night shits. I can remember at age 15 being at summer camp and thinking how the perfect day would end with a shit, a swim in a lake, and then bed. I think that was the order, it may have been swim, shit, sleep. Actually shaving was on there as well, I think it was the "shit/swim/shave", or if in a pinch the "shit/shower/shave". Any time from the late afternoon on, this was considered golden. There was some chatter amongst my chums about how nice this combination was. I'd appreciate a morning version of the "s.s.s." these days, but the evening one would have to be in a really specific place (geographically) to get me excited now.

status report

My stool today, in the last two poops, has been remarkable.

1.) Color

2.) Texture

1. The color is beige-ish, kind of brown. For poop, it almost looks like it has some white in it, as if someone mixing paint was trying to lighten it but didn't totally mix it in. This is a metaphor though - the color is actually pretty uniform. You could say it's the color of a darker mustard, but again, uniform. Maybe the color of certain kinds of halvah. There are many types of halvah, you know.

2. It just looks so soft too. I've never used stool softener, but this just looked soft. It was longer than my usual chunks of poo are, a long, thoughtful thread. (I used to think that gluten just meant a kind of inner-food thread.) Like if you reached into the bowl and picked it up, it might be pleasant to hold.

Don't worry, I didn't, but it's worth saying that some poop just looks more inviting than other poop.

I have eaten a burrito, I have placed it inside of my tummy where it will be digested/absorbed and turned into poop. There is something delightfully bolus-like about a mature, American burrito.

tahuan baru

I learned, perhaps speciously, that one way to say doo doo in bahasa Indonesia is air besar. Literally, this means big water. Perhaps peeing is signified by smaller water. I have some more fact checking and communicating to do, but stay posted.