They Call This Optimism

Isn't it amazing how truly exciting taking a dump is?  Almost every time?

In the waiting room of my mind

Hi, Dave? You had that 10:30 appointment for a big steamy dump? You can come on in now, we're ready for you.

poop inside of birds

Linguistically, turducken = turd-dookin
It is the poopiest of edible bird-on-bird constructions
A thought just for you in time for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.

a little sad but really not sad

Earlier in my life I was a most social pooper.  Having a brother of nearby age is a great instigator to such a personality.  Enjoying summer camp is another.  Having goofball friends with an appreciation for gross out humor throughout one's youth is a third.  Continuing conversations across the not-taking-a-shit/taking-a-shit threshold, conversations both mundane and qua shitting; the experience of moving my bowels was enhanced when it had a social aspect to it.

It's different these days.  While I do blog about what I deposit and pop up with the DDB Annual Report once in a while, so much of the time I'm pooping I'm trying to be quiet about it.  In the morning, trying not to wake up a sleeping dear person.  In the evening, trying not to be gross.  Most of all, during the day, trying not to make a small office of middle-aged women aware of my fecal sounds or fecal smells.  The most satisfying shits I take are at home, no one else around.  Although, having the door open and being visited by the cat is still immensely attractive.  Part of it is surely apartment & city life vs house & suburb life.  

I don't feel as though anyone took this pleasure from me, I feel things have just evolved this way.  It makes sense that now I am a less crude, more devotional solo shitter.  I do long for ways to re-socialize the shit, but not in a reactionary way.  It doesn't have to be how it was before, but I did and do like that ideal as a way to take a turd.

gluten-free dumpage

For the past four months I've been trying to not eat gluten.  I feel better when I don't, and I've been alternately pretty strict & pretty lax about it.  But my diet has definitely changed.

I got to wondering how this might affect my stool.  If you take out a binding element from what's going in, is the resultant crap less structurally bound to itself?  Anecdotal evidence points to no, things maybe in fact be more solid than they were before.  But it could be like some gluten-free baked goods that look really put together, and then you dig in and they kind of crumble.  As previously hinted at, I've had a lot of dookers that seem pretty solid only to be followed less than an hour later by a torrent of loose stuff.  I only have a little look test and the feeling of things leaving my anus to evaluate.

Drive slow homey

Trying to let a many-part gross shit out slowly so that the nice people working in this office don't hear how gross it is.

Prelude to a

There are mornings on which you take a shit before you leave the house and know, unambiguously, that you're going to have to take another (much nastier and looser) shit when you get where you're going.

Hide & Go

There is a doodie somewhere in this train car. I can't see it but I can smell it.

Who put the doo doo in the doo doo jar? It was me.

I Am A Special Defecator

I strongly agree with the stop statement in black and 

I strongly disagree with the bottom statement in red, pictured above.

squish

John says I, this stool is and continues to be wet.
I'd rather it were not this way.
Not even a nice way to cool off in the hot weather.

taking your prints

I've been struck by a visual metaphor recently when wiping myself.  See if you can follow me here:

Your anus is part of your body that you're never gonna see directly.  It's back there, lord knows.  Mirrors aren't new technology, it's been possible to see your rear end in intimate detail for centuries, but it's rare that you do.  It's much more common that you may glance at some toilet paper after it has touched your bum.  Now, maybe you're a person who doesn't look back, and that's fine.  I do.  Maybe you use a bigger wad to wipe yourself, but I tend to use smaller rips of TP, two squares on average I'd say.  So I do a repeated wipe kind of situation.  And allowing for some variation in the consistency of the poo, usually the first wipe or two is about removing the bulk of the stool from your person.  BUT THEN, then you get to something interesting, which is a more intimate print of sorts.  Wiping yourself in such a way is taking a print, making an image of your butt hole.  Better than a mirror, of more artistic interest than a simple reflected anus.  Says me.  So now you can make some jokes about being booked at a police station next time you wipe.  Your welcome.

a classic poop joke that has almost nothing to do with poop

Here is a joke that I remember from elementary school:

After a long day of travelling and selling, a traveling salesman pulls off the road into the first hotel he’s seen in many miles.  Relieved and weary, he asks the front desk person for a room.  “Sorry stranger, all we got is room 13, and no one wants to stay there.”
“Oh I think Room 13 would be just perfect, I’ll take it.”
“Sir, room 13… it’s… well it’s haunted sir.”
“Listen, I’ll be in and out so quick I promise you I won’t notice anything, please just let me have the room.”
“Alright sir, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

Entering Room 13, the salesman finds nothing out of the ordinary, just your average dingy American hotel room.  Quickly disrobing, he gets into bed.  As his thoughts begin to fade away into blissful sleep, he is brought back to full alterness by a faint whisper, “When… over… die…”.

Sitting up, he thinks that he is delirious with exhaustion and it must be his head playing tricks on him.  He rolls over, settles in again, and makes another go of sleeping.  He begins to drift again but now hears, a bit louder this time, “When the… over… must die…”

Convinced he really just needs to be with the sandman tout suite, he rolls to the other side and places multiple pillows over his head.  It’s no use, the same eerie sound comes forth again, stronger still: “When the… rolls over all must die…”.

At this point the salesman is fully convinced it’s not just in his head.  He searches the hotel room – under the bed, in the side table by the bible, behind the curtains, and he finds nothing.  A surprisingly clean room.  Now delirious with exhaustion and skeptical of his sanity, he hesitantly creeps back under the covers.  Before his head even hits the pillow, it returns!  “When the log rolls over, all must die.”

Without hesitation, he dresses and goes to the front desk.  Before any words are out of his mouth, the reception clerk says, “I tried to warn you!”.  The salesman pleads with the clerk to help him inspect the room, and the clerk laconically obliges, making a brief search of the room before patting the salesman on the back, offering him some ear plugs, and returning to his post.

Trying to calm himself and avoiding direct eye-contact with the clock, the salesman returns to the bed.  He assures himself he can get through whatever challenges this log and its rolling might present.  He steadies himself and lies down.  Not a minute later he hears, louder than ever, “WHEN THE LOG ROLLS OVER ALL MUST DIE!”, and again and again, with increasing intensity and volume.  He moves towards the sound, and he finds himself kneeling the bathroom, gazing at the closed toilet bowl which he has up to know somehow failed to investigate.  Shaking, he cracks the lid and peers in.  He beholds a horrible site: a line of ants, single file, marching astride a giant, slowly rotating turd, chanting in unison WHEN THE LOG ROLLS OVER ALL MUST DIE!!!!

There was a similar joke with a gorilla in a linen closet, picking his nose and saying to his booger, “I gotcha where I want ya and now I’m gonna eatcha!”.  Why gorillas?  Why ants?  Who knows.

Scales of Limited Validity

The intrepid gf of DDB has brought something most important to our attention:

The Bristol Stool Scale

Almost seems like it's an elaborate joke or something a ten year old came up with, but it's a beautiful thing nonetheless.  Maybe the inventor was just looking to validate the human tendency towards sausage.  The food metaphors in here are indeed most potent.  So next time you need an objective measure of what you're crapping out, look no further.

2013 Annual

If you missed the 2013 DDB Annual Report live back in April, you can listen to the whole thing (sans visuals, but use your imagination) over here:
http://davewoodyllc.tumblr.com/
Remember to wipe when you're done!

Philadelphia Lawyers

I'd swear that like six straight people in this bathroom line, single bathroom line, have taken dumps. Myself included. Where are the pee-rs this time of year?

Day To Day

DNP [Did not poop] Coach's Decision

-

Who's calling the shots around here?

NE biscuits

It's time to hear once again from our correspondent BM, currently on tour and with a colon full of thoughts:

While playing a show in a Poughkeepsie pizza place I happened to meet a former financial manager for the Deep Listening Institute. He seemed a little bitter about everything, especially the fact that now he makes pizza for a living. His pizza was a little dry and bitter as well.

I am now pooping that pizza in a bar restroom in Lowell, MA before playing at an art Gallery.
Life on a road is always interesting, never thinking of things in terms of "I'm going to be here for a while" but rather taking all situations and conversations as they come is calming to me. And though this particular poo is somewhat of a workout (as I always find to be the case with meat product, in this case pepperoni), the smells are not offensive and the fan in here is blowing quite sweetly in a rusty pink noise kind of way.

The bartender who doesn't drink is also a cancer and is pelting us with questions about our music and what it's like.

I think my biggest regret/non-regret is a refusal to nail down specific definitions for how I talk about my art. I want the work to speak for itself, but for people to want to come that doesn't cut it.

"what's your work like?"
"my work speaks for itself"
"oh...asshole"

architectural digest

I am building a pile of stools.

Doo Down Buster #9

And here we have one final squeeze from the intrepid BM.  Looking forward to more poopy dispatches from wherever he may roam.

3.18.2013
My little brown notebook has served me well on this trip to doo doo down under. Pooping has been for the most part enjoyable and when not that, revelatory.

Our last night in "Oz" was fun, we had free food and drinks all night with the crew and staff of the festival. Tostada with meat, veggies, and delicious sauce, these things called "Torpedoes" which somehow made cottage cheese delivious, lettuce wraps with many meats, venison, chicken wings. . . did I mention free drinks?

Upon waking up (my hotel door had been left open) once again in my clothes and looking into the calm warm eyes of Beowulf telling me "it's time to go home," I was glad I had already packed and noticed a red wine stain on my hat which I had just purchased the previous afternoon. After that it was cereal and milk on the place to Sydney with some fruit, then beef ragu on the way to LA.

This long backstory is to give you the context for my GREATEST airplane BM. I didn't wait in line for the bathroom as the TSA and Homeland Security apparently now forbids "gathering in small groups by the bathrooms." Luckily I had an excellent view of the bathroom from my seat and was able to watch a tattooed man, my friend Molly, a kid whose short hair had spots dyed into it, a lady with crazed eyes (his mother, I believe), and what appeared to be the Australian Liza Minelli use it before getting up to use it myself. An older gentleman stood behind me and I felt a twinge of guilt for the time I was about to spend, but didn't dwell on it.

I can't tell if it was the quality of the food, the insane amounts of wine, or just relief at relieving and finally returning home (after running through Sydney airport at full speed earlier that morning), but really, this was not strange smelling, difficult, or bizarre. Just a poo, a doo. A zen poo which I imagine was sucked out toward the cesspool but ended up diverted to the plane's jet and flung out over the Pacific, dangling in the air like a gorgeous brown cloud before gently sloping downward into the water and, after striking the water with an extremely satisfying slap, continued its descent past unimaginable and amazing forms of aquatic life who (swimming in their own shit already) paid it no mind but simply let it pass as effortlessly and easily as it had dropped from my butt, through the layers of ocean into the soft spiny arms of a deep sea crab who rocked it sweetly to sleep next to the giant red and white tube worms sucking on gas gushing from the sea floor.

It is with this poo-spereince I bid you and the doo. . . ado.

Pleasant plops, everyone.

Previously pooping pickled platypus parts,
Brian

Good Old American Cat Shit

No offense to the fine continent of Australia, but I would like to bring you back to North America for a report.  Not about my own feces, but about some feces after which I look, specifically the shits of my cat, Sofa.  Sofa has for some months done a thing where while taking her little turd in a box, she panics, hops out of the box with some poo still dangling, and then drags her butt all over the floor in an effort to scrape it off.  Things haven't been pinching off too good.  She seems really stressed out and ashamed about it, but other than swear quietly and wearily clean it up (often first thing in the morning), I thought there wasn't much I could do.

Some friends mentioned that their dog had to have some build-up scraped out of her behind, something I hadn't known about as a possibility.  My partner in cohabitation, wise in the ways of many things, pointed out that we could perhaps alleviate the strain on the cat from her inability to pinch off and our own aggravation at having to clean it up if we visited our local vet to consult on such matters.  So we did.  The vet said one of her anal sacs (which apply a carnivorous mammal's signature scent to their scat, same thing that skunks & stink badgers discharge) was backed up, had started to turn more solid, and was blocking things up.  The vet, a man of thick fingers, could not personally get in there and clean things out, but some other unknown and kindly soul at the vet did just that, and after a freaked out 24 hours and three or four oddly shaped solid emissions, Sofa is now pooping just like any happy cat should.

So if you don't want your pet to wipe their crap all over the place, maybe you should get a friendly veterinary professional to clean them out.

- D

Doo Down Buster #8

3.15.2013

Wow, finally an "easy out" as they say.

The flowery smell is back! After a "farty party" with many beans consumed with some of the other cast members, my BMs (also my initials, Brian McCorkle, which I believe further qualifies me for this guest blogger position) are going very well indeed.

The bean were interesting, and greatly helped by the addition of some fantastic Australian cheese (it's a white cheese, can't recall what kind). Garam Masala, celery, black beans, chilis, tomato paste, a little onion. They were excellent (thanks Jason and Jess) and today I am very glad I ate them.

Yesterday I went to the Cleland Wildlife Preserve with some of the aforementioned bean-eaters. Australia may be one of the few places in the world where animals are allowed to hang out with people unsupervised. It was quite amazing.

When I first arrived, alarm bells of drugged animals and horror at captivity were going off. For example, at the entrance there's a picture of a couple holding a Koala (or, as I later found out, appearing to hold one), which I know from past experience is a horrible, horrible idea (having reached out for one and being severely reprimanded by an Australian zookeeper as a child on my last trip to Australia).

However, in this particular place (and I presume part of the inspiration for its existence), there is a Koala named Arthur who was ophaned by his Koala family and became close to his keeper over the course of 15 years, so that he now is comfortable with humans in a way wild Koalas are NOT.

I wanted to participate in the Koala holding after hearing this but not only would it have cost me 30 bucks but my animals rights friends probably would have objected when they saw the photo. I know every inch of my uptight American views on animals would have freaked out.

Elsewhere, I petted and fed MANY different marsupials and birds, stared down an emu, accidentally kicked a potoroo (sorry potoroo!), watched dingos feeding, admired (from behind a wall) a Tasmanian Devil, and finally discovered my new favorite bird, the Tawny Frogmouth.

I also spent much time recording bird songs, as they (especially the magpies here) were so incredible sounding (tritones and awesome interval jumps and "atonal" sputters). The crows added one or two extra long notes with a soft decay to their call which made me crack up every time because it sounded like a baby cooing. . . except it was a crow. Amazing place.

Did I also mention that these animals were pooping EVERYWHERE! The ground was covered, COVERED in poo. It was a doo doo dream, there were little potoroo and bandicoot poos, big kangaroo poos, weirdly shaped and colored bird poos, every kind of poo you could imagine. However while I was there I did not get the chance to add to the collection of poo. I did however get some ice cream, which was delicious but difficult to eat without a napkin on hand with my (now quite large) beard.

Probably tan but still white as can be,

Brian

Doo Down Buster #7

3.13.2013

Here is is. Really. This is it this time. Seriously.

THE poop. The poop to end all poops.

That lamb-mint-chutney pizza with a cocktail of cocktails thrown on top has destroyed my digestive tract. Here I sit, broken hearted, tried to shit and actually AM shitting slowly and painfully.

I was (if you read my explanation earlier) seized by pain and fury and anger and negativity, and it turns out (after frantically calling everyone I knew and getting no response, even from my parents, THANK GOD that would have been expensive), that is was SHIT the whole time. This whole time, it was my need to take THE epic shit of all shits was what was killing me. This is whiskey beer and wine shits mixed with lamb pizza shit.

What was I thinking? I was having a marvelous time not thinking. Schmordie.

Well, once I get all of this OUT of me I can relax and put more in.

Dave, we spoke once of the delight of drinking while pissing. This shit is so fucking crazy I'm going to go get some bread and eat it whilst I shit. I have some amazing bread, a giant baguette that's so delicious I eat it constantly and it never seems to be entirely consumed.

- I go get some bread -

YUP this is amazing. Swallowing and pooping at the same time.

I HIGHLY recommend this to everyone ever. It's delightful, but make sure the food is REALLY good or else it might not be a great experience.

What a rollercoaster ride of emotions I am on today.

Now I'm covered in crumbs.

What's with that.

Hey crumbs, could you stay somewhere else? I'm crumbed out.

Crumby but not crummy no way no meow,

Brian

Editor's note: What he said.

Doo Down Buster #6

The shits continue from our man in Adelaide:

3.11.2013

This might be the moment of my first slightly epic doo bust.

I have thus far been eating pseudo-Chinese food made with sesame + soy oil, garlic, ginger, carrots, onions, muchrooms (of which I bought far too many due to a lack of cognitive grasp of the metric system), and zucchini with a little lime, sugar, salt, and pepper served over rice.

It was last night during tech that I consumed my second meat dish here in Oz (I'm confused by people's use of this term, but it is in fact better then writing "Australia" when you're in a hurry), some delicious pepperoni (or was it Sorpressata?) pizza. I believe this has led to my current doo bust session (stil nowhere near as epic as some I have had in the past). The doo has a distinctive smell to be sure, I won't attempt to describe it more then to say it is. . . flowery.

Along the course of this doo, I have noticed something interesting which may be related to Australia in general, a curve motif.

I first noticed it on my door, a single white scratch. Then to my delight, the light in the bathroom seemed to be making similar curves wherever I looked. It reminded me of the rivers I had seen from the plane, of the blue spray painted grass, which I assume had been painted to mark wires or sewer paths, but within the bounds of the paint there was this same curve.

Perhaps it is all in my mind, the significance of the curve (definitely with regards to its relationship to this contintent in general), but I enjoy finding relationships as much as I enjoy manufacturing them.

More on this to come.

Brian

Doo Down Buster #5

Australia is a fun place to be. I can't tell if that's because I'm in Adelaide specifically or if the whole world has just suddenly become awesome. Why would I ask questions about my own extremely fortunate circumstances and general happiness? I guess I won't, though I'd like to delve deeper into this matter, I am here comissioned to write on a specific topic. Pooping. Doo. Poo. Shit. Merd(re). Caca. The brown. The butt puddin. Ass sauce. Et cetera.

 

I've noticed since I've been here that if I eat meat, my movements (the ones in mah bowels that is) are slightly less easy. Now this may be well known, well established, completely true and non-subjective, but to me, it is news. We had a wonderful dinner thrown for us by the Adelaide Festival the other night with a feast of cuisine that was all excellent, Baramundi (amazing fish) in curry sauce with noodles, Crispy Eggplant (I usually hate it but this was amazing), Lamb and beef roast (the lamb here makes me actually like lamb), and as much wine as I've ever seen ever. This was a wonderful feast and we had a great time (picture to come), and the pooping which occurred later was actually quite enjoyable as well, if slightly less easy.

 

Now this brings me to a topic I think about a lot. Pooping.

 

Are those of us who enjoy pooping also anal expulsive in the Freudian sense? Outgoing, friendly, and as wikipedia says "(sometimes) artistic ability"?

 

I would certainly say that I fall under this category, though hopefully not ALL of the problematic elements of it. Cruelty and all that. That's funny thing about pre-late 20th Century writing. It's all focused on the negative characteristics of something as opposed to the good stuff.

 

Speaking of which, it is at this point I must end this post, though I have much more to say. Keep bustin that doo, all of you.

 

Bustin down under there way down way down,

Brian

Doo Down Buster #4

Evidence from BM of the real effects of being in the Southern Hemisphere.

Doo Down Buster #3

BM takes us to new depths of exploration, now in real color!

3.10.2013 11:00pm

The venue for our performances is an old German beer hall called (appropriately) the German Club. It has the most amazing toilet I've ever seen, a giant silver trough dotted with metal knobs that gush out water when you pull a metal chain attached to a large white porcelain bowl at the center.

There is only a single drain and the water running out of the knobs washes all the pee into it. Also interesting is that the female and male toilets are right next to each other and in between them is a large tiled room with chairs facing some of the stalls (male, female, who knows what those are for). The chairs in the bathroom are just normal black chairs. I still haven't ascertained what they are for. . .

 

This post is another cheater, I must admit, I did not bust doo here either. My pride as someone who can poo, doo, or bust in any place and nearly anytime is beginning to wane, as it wasn't until my return to the hotel that I actually did the deed.

 

It makes one wonder, is it a search for solace in a strange land? Perhaps the strange situation of having my own room (nay, ROOMS) after living with so many people in such close quarters for so long that makes me wait until I am in private or at least a familiar place?

 

Speaking of, my bathroom has two drains, one in the shower and one in the middle of the floor. Everything is tiled, tiled, tiled. I suppose it's in case the shower or the sink overflow. I've also noticed that I can't tell the difference between the half-circle and full-circle flushes. Perhaps I will learn.

 

Doo Down Buster,

Brian

Doo Down Buster #2

More piping hot stuff from BM:

3.09.2013 11:30pm

I wish I had had a camera. I went to a friend of a friend of a friend's house here in Adelaide to use their pool and generally be sociable and relax before the grueling tech sessions and every day performances to come.

 

They had a beautiful house whose roof was covered in solar panels, to get there we took a free tram and passed a wonderful bar called WheatSheaf that hosted a music series which sounded amazing. Our generous and charming hosts had two children, three cats, a dog, and at least three chickens that I could count. Their house was an old halfway house for people just getting out of prison and about to re-enter the 'real world' that they had spent 3 years renovating and making it so green that the house literally pays for itself. They use almost no electricity or other forms of energy and even have an amazing fresh-water pool free of chemicals (didn't catch exactly how it works, a menacing looking shed nearby apparently purifies the water by shaking the molecules somehow).

 

I didn't poop here so I'm cheating a little. But it was an interesting bathroom experience. Their small boy who was obsessed with robots and wearing overalls with no shirt, shoes, or socks kept walked into the bathroom while I was using it without apology or surprise. Not only that, but he did it AGAIN while giving a tour of the house to others, almost leading everyone inside as I was relieving myself. Luckily I had just finished, I was zipping up my trousers when the door swung open and he loudly exclaimed "and this is our bathroom."

 

Nice kid. Nice house. I've decided corrogated metal roofs are the best way to go.

 

Doo Down Buster,

Brian

Doo Down Buster #1

Doo Doo Bloggin' is pleased to present our first ever guest shitter, Mr Brian McCorkle, a man learned in the ways of the stools.  The aptly initialed BM is currently on assignment Down Under, and he will be bringing us the straight dish on pooping in Oz in the coming weeks.  Without further ado-doo, take it away, BM:

3.9.2013 12:20am

It just slipped out, nothing unusual about it (other then the mars dust color). The strange ribs purchased for me by a policy language copywriter for the Australian government and the chinese food purchased generously by my employers/cast members/friends surprisingly made no effort to remain inside those bowels, they just, SHWOOP.

I was reading the Adelaide Festival program so I kept reading, thinking, "there's more to come," but it never came. Upon finishing the program and tossing it to the side into the hallways of my ridiculously lavish lodgings, I was faced with a choice: half-circle flush or whole-circle flush.

I was also struck by the fact that though I had claimed (and others have confirmed) that toilets in Australia (or anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, I think) flush the other way, I wouldn't know the difference.

Once I was approached by a professor of physics to write a program which randomly selected pictures of galaxies and catalogued the direction of spin (or lack thereof). What an interesting coincidence that I should find myself once again cataloguing spin, albiet in a much more "worldly" context. But I digress.

My first flush (at least that I wasn't too jetlagged and drunk to pay attention to) to settle once and for all the direction of toilet spin in Australia and if the spin of water in a porcelain bowl is the same across the surface of the Earth or if gravity has something polarizing to say (and it usually does). However this particular toilet flushed in an unusual way, it shot water down the center of the toilet while simultaneously raising the water level so that the spin of the flush was nearly impossible to discern. I remembered this being the case, to my great disappointment, many years earlier as a young choir-boy visiting Australia. I gave up then, but I am not so easily daunted these days.

I performed a more direct experiment with water-spin the next day (video to come), plugging up the drain in my sink and seeing how the water spun into it when I pulled it out. Result: counter-clockwise.

Is it different from the Northern Hemisphere? Nearly impossible to say. Perhaps I will learn. In the meantime there are many interesting doos to bust, and I look forward to them.

Doo Down Buster,

Brian

fast food bathrooms

"To be alive is to shit into a strange place."
Joe Wenderoth, Letters to Wendy's (August 28th, 1996)

Life's Metrics

One reason I haven't been posting much is that I've almost always been pooping at home of late. There's just something that gets the juices flowing for this kind of thought when I drop a turd outside my living space. I'll find myself wanting to comment on the out n about peeing I do, but that's not what I'm about.