Sunday, December 31, 2017

end of year special

Yesterday, 12/30/17, I only pooped once.  I think that hasn't happened in a long time.  I felt before I went to bed that I could've benefited from a second, but I didn't go for it.  Sometimes it's special to mark the time in these fashions.

Friday, December 15, 2017

stories we tell ourselves

There are two songs I tend to sing to myself if I really have to shit but can't at that precise moment (in transit, someone's already in the b-room, etc). 

The first is a variation on the famous first line of the "It Takes Two".  In my version, it's "I wanna dump right now", or often with a bunch of repeats/stutters like "I wanna/I wanna/I wanna/I wanna/I wanna/I wanna dump right now". 

The second comes from a commercial from the 90s that I can't seem to remember what it was for.  It was a cartoon character talking about either a board game or something edible, who at the end of the ad went "excuse me... while I chomp".  Like for Hungry Hungry Hippos but not.  I don't remember.  Anyway, my variation is "excuse me... while I dump".

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

favored input

In addition to pooping, I love food.  The input and the output, they're both great.  Can't have one without the other.  It's a great cycle.  Since I've had a very particular diet for more or less the whole time I've been writing this blog, I tend to cook a lot for myself.  Sometimes more than others.  The last few months more so than other times, but then in the last couple weeks I've been eating out more.  I find it kind of a chore to eat out, not something I enjoy if it's not a special occasion.  But boy, when it is a special occasion, what a treat.  A well-applied meal out is a form of medicine for the mind and body that should never be ignored.  I've decided that it would be enjoyable for me right now to chronicle my favorite medicines of this sort in New York City circa late 2017.  These things change over time, given changing tastes and the life cycle of restaurants in NYC, and it seems useful to keep track of it.  So this post is more about the input side of things.  Here's some things I like to do:


  • Some of these are kind of embarrassing but I'll spill.  Just today, after going to the doctor for something unpleasant, I treated myself to the following at Hampton Chutney: a dosa with avocado, arugula, cheese, and olives, and a chai to boot.  Like places to purvey, say, Korean tacos, I find the concept of the place to be silly, but then again, I'm a 30-something Caucasian transplant from the 'burbs with disposable income, so me taking a trip like three times a year to Hampton Chutney should not be a shock to anyone.  Anyway, it felt great.
  • On a more "authentic" vibe, if I'm in the East 20's of Manhattan, I'll always try to get a mushroom uttapam from Tiffin Wallah.  I love Indian food but this particular thing is dear to me for its absence of tomatoes, which is never a guarantee in an uttapam.
  • Two go-tos of mine that I prize for their absence of tomatoes and genericness are 1.) a large serving of rice and beans at a number of Mexican, Dominican, and Peruvian spots around town where I know there's no extra onions or tomatoes in the rice & beans, and 2.) a number of generic Thai spots with solid but unremarkable pad thais.  This in its way is way more satisfying than superb Thai food.
  • Most of these are best achieved dining alone.  One that happens a few times a year is sesame tofu with brown rice at Hunan Delight in Park Slope.  The shredded cabbage makes it.  It's grandly mediocre.  Like the above to entries, it's not about inexpensiveness or authenticity or deliciousness, just about solid comfort and routine.
  • If I've got a rehearsal on the LES, a favored routine involves going to Ni in the Essex Market, maybe get some rice balls or hijiki or something, and then go to fka Babycakes and get a donut or something like this.  That's a great one but also feels indulgently frivolous like the Hampton Chutney one.  But when you need it, it works.
  • A genuine banquet-feeling thing is going to Cheburechnaya in Rego Park with some other people, getting some plov and morkovcha for sure, and then some skewers of meat and other stuff to split.  I'm not a big meat eater, but this is a good reason to do it.  Good medicine a couple times a year for sure.
There you go, that's what special input looks like to me right now.

Friday, November 10, 2017

minestrone

I have never had minestrone soup before, but my concept of it is that it's similar in both smell and texture to the dump I just took.

Thursday, October 12, 2017

when you get to make a nice thing

Sometimes, you're in the middle of a long or stressful job, and you have to take a shit but you can't because you're a responsible/generous/sucker of a person, and you can't reasonable take a dump without things falling apart.  I found this morning when in that situation, if I thought "this is gonna be a great dump when I get to take it", it sowed some optimism and buoyed my mood.  Normally, I like to dump when I have to dump.  But in this case it was not so bad, even a little pleasant.

PS it was indeed a really good dump, sort of knobby but benevolently so

Thursday, September 28, 2017

no apologies

I wrote last year about how I want to share my support of others when they've had a big crap in the loo just before I go in there.  It's not a thing of shame at all, it's something we can find solidarity around.

Last night in midtown Manhattan, I was at a restaurant.  I was waiting for a minute to get into the single stall bathroom.  The person before me came out, made eye contact with me, which is rare, and then gave a little performative "I'm sorry about that" shrug, all wordlessly.  I'd never experienced that before.

I wanted to say it wasn't necessary - first off, the seat was down (this was a men's room, so I don't know the person before me took a dump, but the odds are good) and it barely smelled of shit.  So even if I felt vengeful for being subjected to the shit-smell of another, nothing to worry about there.  But I don't, and I hope that person never feels the need to give that shrug to anyone ever again.  Poop it out and do it proud, I say.  Stink up the joint... for me!!!

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

hard to say goodbye

Sometimes I regret the incredibly brief periods of time I get to spend my with poop before I flush it away.  For the record, I look back, and the other day, I was looking back, saw the few discrete turds I'd produced, and wondered about them.  What their journey to becoming those turds was like, what their aspirations were.  And I just covered them up with TP and flushed them.  Cold.  Maybe some day I'll have my life better set up to know each shit a little better.

Friday, August 25, 2017

dispatch from W.I.P.E.

We're very lucky to have an all too rare dispatch from the field!  This one comes from DDB reader W.I.P.E. (Wisconsin Pooping Experience).  Dated 8/17/17, it reads:

"Dear Doo Doo,
For the last two months I have primarily been shitting in an outhouse, which as caused some observations about Doo Doo I do think you'll be interested in.
First, is the sense of finality in Flushing.  One poops, wipes, and flushes, and for me, and I think for many of us, the flush is an act of finality, the culmination, the indication of the end of the poop (although there is pulling up your pants* & washing your hands**, which is perhaps more post-poop ritual than poop).  Without anything to flush in the outhouse, the poop act feels strangely incomplete.  I suppose this is all conditioning, because we poopers have not always had flushers.  One could retrain oneself to think of the pulling up of the pants* as the culmination. 
Second, is the post-poop inspection.  Noting the stool for signs of health, loose or knotted, dark or light, yes I did have beets and corn for dinner last night, etc. etc.  This fecal check-in simply does not exist in an outhouse.  It all disappears down a hole in the ground, never to be seen again, or at least not analyzed uniquely aside from its new pooped neighbors.
Still, I have nothing against the outhouse doo doo experience, simply that [it] is different.
Sincerely yours,
W.I.P.E."

DDB editor's notes:
* - or whatever
** - if you're into that kind of thing

W.I.P.E., thank you for these eloquent thoughts.  I've personally not pooped in a proper outhouse in some years, but it is truly a fruitful place for thinking about the rituals we all have around shitting.  Examining the nature of poop rituals and prizing solitude vs socializing is really interesting with multiple-seat outhouses.  I hope you've got one of those.  I'd also think a lot about the idea of splash back in flush toilets vs outhouses, and the attendant sounds that go with each if I were in your place.  Given my recent bowel escapades, the post-poop inspection you mention is particularly important for me now, so I'll happily stay with my flush model for the present time.  Meantime, many happy non-flushings to you out in the great dairy state!

As a reminder to you other readers, DDB always welcome your thoughts on pooping!

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

what's going on up there?

Well, I've had a colonoscopy.  Some doctors put a camera up my butt and looked around.  Not such a bad thing at all.  No picnic, but nothing to fear either.

The most interesting part was taking the stuff that makes you shit beforehand.  It's very salty tasting liquid, and in this case, you drink a cup every 15 min.  About 90 minutes after you start, it all comes tumbling down.  It said it would be watery stool, but what I didn't expect was the force with which the water would exit my butthole.  It was like a damn firehose.  Comically so.  Out loud, to no one, I made exclamations.  It was like a comedy show gag.  But over a long period of time.  So that's something you can have fun with.

Being under general anesthetic for the first time was not much fun at all, but the aftermath had a nice thing or two to it.  One was lying down and being aware of how empty your bowels were.  Kind of a cool feeling.  I often think of what it must feel like after you get, say, a hysterectomy, and your guts reshape to fill in for something that used to be there.  This was like a small and temporary version of that perhaps.

Also cool was getting some snaps of what they saw.  Some things are private... but not much, so here's two shots of what I'm working with:



Tuesday, August 15, 2017

IO

It's worth saying again, or maybe this is the first time I'm saying it, that I'm always tickled and baffled by people who have a clear sense of "if I eat this, it will make my bowels react like X".  I go about my eating as if it had nothing to do with my shitting (and as someone who farts very little, that's not much of a factor either).  Maybe people think this about cheese, or bread, or meat, or certain vegetables?  I don't know.

One time I ate a bunch of cherries and had to shit shortly after and thought the two might be related.

Also there's a great Nigerian restaurant I go to sometimes that when I get the pepper soup, I can tell when that's the thing that coming out of my butt.

But other than those two things, it's all blissfully unconnected for me.  Perhaps it's because there are few forms of fecal output that stress me out.  I'm okay with some loose stool if that's the price for food I want.  Seems like stomach pain would be more of a deterrent to me, various forms of stool are mostly interesting, not daunting.

All this is despite all my dietary mishegas, which is essentially about cause and effect.  But blessedly, so far for me, none of the effect things are digestion-based.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

shit or get off the

I love the easy clarity of when an entire office wordlessly decides that one bathroom is meant for dumping only.

Monday, June 12, 2017

a big one



I was recently in a hospital for ~72 hrs. Shitting was a central part of why I was there. There’s so much to unpack about this experience, but the big obstacle is that hospital time is quite different from regular time.

Let’s say you're at work. You’re doing your work thing, work work work work work, and then you have to shit. You psych yourself up, pick your temporal spot, and then shit time is the special time, it flows differently from the work time. It’s a kind of reverie, a kind of luxuriating. It’s private, it’s yours, and you can choose to do with it what you want. I usually choose to savor it, pretty much every time. No phone, no productivity, just shitting.

At the peak of my hospital stay, I was shitting (and by that I mean some yellow liquid was coming out of my ass) about every 20 min. Sometimes I would wrap up in there only to get back on my hospital bed, feel that feeling again, and say yeah I gotta go back in there. The frequency with which I shat was like the frequency you might blow your nose 2/3 of the way through a cold. Not luxuriating to be found in that. The quality of time there is totally different. I probably put ass-to-crapper 65 times in that hospital. None of them stand out.

At one point in the midst of the torrent, I decided it might be helpful to take off my underwear & hospital socks (I was otherwise wearing only a gown). That was in the period where the stomach pain was higher, and the casting off of the clothing was like a casting off of pain, or an aspiration to do that. You think about when you’re young and you learn that different people have different shitting rituals, and some involve taking off a lot of clothes. You’re fishing around for something that might help. Maybe it helped a little, hard to say. Mostly, at that point, my body felt fine, but every 30 min or whatever I’d get a little discomfort in my stomach and if I waited, my colon would start to tingle. The watery dump would be out with 2 seconds of getting my ass in place. Another 3-4 min would follow with a little pushing and not much coming out. The kind of status quo you want to alter.

At one point I emerged from the bathroom and said to those present, “pooping really does make me feel good”, or, however you were feeling before, take a shit and you’ll feel better, something like that sentiment. Then came some more painful ones that made me question that sentiment. Whoops. Generally a true statement though as far as I’m concerned.

At one point, my S.O. thoughtfully asked “how’s your asshole?” and, she was amazed to learn it was holding up AOK despite the steady outflow & wiping burden placed upon it. Really no adverse effects in that department, happy to report.

With some targeted antibiotics in my system, the works were slowing down but things were still pretty loose. Before I left the hospital, I did have one shit that was bright green that looked like a cross between a hydra and a floret of broccoli. I was pretty proud of that one. It’s hard to frame these things though. I also had one really nice shit too that I likened to a road that can car, bike, and rail traffic all at once - there was a solid part, followed by a loose part, then chased by some water. 3 in 1 stool!

After returning home, things having solidified a little, I did have a moment where I sat on the crapper for 10 minutes, pushing, and nothing came out. I was humiliated and sore and sad. And I was like, wait, is this constipation? Next time, things came out just fine, but the point is that for all my shitting, I have never really known constipation, and even 10 min of it humbled me. So props to you stopped-up poopers out there, we have very different lives you & I.

Anyway, things are pretty much back to normal now. I took a real big turd at work today. It felt like a solid all the way through affair, but when I flushed, the logs broke into so much dust and algae. It’s like a straw man dump. Ersatz solid dump. I wonder what this means.

PS I got all this by consuming something that had some human doo doo in it. So be careful out there friends!

Wednesday, May 31, 2017

echo chamber

I was just in the UK.  I hadn't been to Europe in 4 years and I forgot about the differences in common Euro toilets compared to US ones.  I'm sure others could write more authoritatively than I, but one thing I noticed is that the more cavernous shape and less water really amplifies things.  So if you're used to crapping in a US commode, shitting in Europe makes you feel like all your dumps are really big dumps.  Based on the sound.  And maybe that might make you feel good about yourself.

Friday, May 19, 2017

big shit data

DDB reader EMS passes along the site of a fellow traveler.  This is truly some impressive work, and you should check it out:
https://imgur.com/gallery/w3k1l
Not that data is everything, but it's nice to see the current work outlook on data applied to something truly shitty.

Monday, April 3, 2017

Dumplock Holmes

Sometimes I consider myself a forensic dumpologist.  An amateur forensic dumpologist, of course.  No one pays me for my time and my insights.  In other words I like to think about the mechanics of the bathroom.

Some times you think, did that person take a dump?  And then you use some visual and olfactory clues to see if they did.  Not because they did something wrong or gross, just that the biographical info of where and how this person dumps are general things they're unlikely to share with you in conversation.  Maybe you notice some dump marks on the toilet bowl, and you have insights into the size and consistency of their dump (e.g. it was massive and solid enough to leave marks).  Maybe you have sonic clues to help you interpret things as well.  That's always kind of nice.  Maybe you gain insights into this person's routine, how chaotic their life in their home is, etc.

It's not that I'm trying to solve anything, it's that the acquisition of information is an end in and of itself.  And dump info is often pretty fleeting.

Monday, March 20, 2017

Why Not Me?

Dumping is full of so much potential optimism.  There is so much potential for plenty, every day.  In getting ready to shit today, I was walking to the bathroom, and I was thinking, "why not me? why can I not be prodigious? why should today not be my day to dump the most?".  Forget the conservative ideas you know and let you mind and your bowels aspire to greatness.  You can be the shitter you want to be, it can be you, or me, or any of us.

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

passing it on

It strikes me that there are but few inflection points in this life we have for interrogating one's wiping style.

  1. When you're first learning to wipe, you get a particular philosophy.  Maybe a couple from multiple parents or people who are around you.
  2. Your body grows and your fine motor skills improve and you refine these techniques (probably without thinking about).
  3. If you have a physical condition that prevents you from executing your earlier techniques, you evaluate what was, what can be now, and make some adjustments.
  4. You are responsible for teaching a young child how to wipe.  Perhaps having an external eye on this makes you re-evaluate your own techniques.  Or maybe you propose one method and another person rearing this child proposes another.  And you have to debate pros and cons of different styles.  Strips or wads?  Standing or sitting?  Wet or dry?
I like the idea of people raising a kid just as a way to revisit how wise their ass wiping techniques are.  A great sideways reason I think.  Bold.

I've been getting a lot of ripped TP when I wipe of late.  It's not my favorite, but I haven't changed it up.

Sunday, January 22, 2017

dumpstream media

This here blog is a pretty reasonable forum to talk about feces.  Assuming certain things about "politeness" or whatever, that is.  People who wanna come here and read up do, and those who don't dig doo doo simply stay away.  But it's nice to see some mainstreaming of talking about shit, particularly from a funny lady.  So I was chuffed to see this fecally focused personal essay, that deals with such things as the pleasures of taking a dump while strolling about in public, in the New York Times.  Good onya NYT and good onya Rachel.