December 2010
22 posts
Life's Little Annoyances - Issue #1
#1 The sickening splash of public toilet water against your vulnerable anus
Hands up if this has ever happened to you. OK, hands down.
As we all know, the cold splash is a cruel and terrible thing, but it’s even worse when it happens in a public toilet. As with the largely hypothetical choice of choosing between eating one’s own shit or that of a stranger’s, most people will choose the former. It might be shit, but there’s a certain degree of comfort and solace one will find in the act of eating their own shit which they would not otherwise experience whilst feasting on the stool of parties anonymous.
This same principle applies to arse-splashes: it’s regrettable when it happens in the comforts of your own residence’s toilet, but you get over it rather quickly. When it happens in a public toilet however, well that’s a whole other story. After a frantic and ginger wipe-down with fist-fulls of toilet paper, you will have to spend the remainder of the day shopping with the knowledge that particles of someone else’s shit, however tiny they may be, remain on the surface of your rear.
If you’re a male, you can expect the average public latrine to contain a selection of cubicles, each of them with a bowl more shit and urine-sullied than the last. This is, of course, largely the result of callous and irresponsible people who refuse to lift the fucking toilet seat up when they piss. If they had exercised even this slight courteousy, then the next user would be spared the microbial assault on their buttocks from the urinal residue that taints the seat’s surface.
Douchebags like this should be using the urinal like all the other grownups, but they insist on using the cubicles for pissing. They probably engage in this antisocial behavior because they have incredibly-tiny penises that cannot be extruded far enough outside of their trousers for them to use the urinal without the risk of wetting themselves. There are of course people who inexplicably leave shit smears on the toilet seat and one can’t help but imagine the circumstances of their placement. And so with filthy toilet seats a plague on the male toileteer’s conscious, the last thing he would want is the eponymous shit-water splash.
Now I’m well aware that some of the more savvy toileteers have strategies to counteract this phenomenon. The most well-known of these is the famed and widely-practiced ‘lily-pad’, which essentially involves deploying a sheet of toilet paper onto the surface of the bowl’s water. This pioneer sheet serves in the capacity of a countermeasure against the upward splashes, which are themselves a result of plummeting excrement and its impact of the water’s surface.
But even then, this doesn’t always work. Aside from the wildcard element of Newtonian fecal physics, certain varieties of shit are more resilient and tenacious than others. Specimens such as the post-constipation deuce or the diarrheal-geyser can often bypass the defenses of the tissue screen, resulting in a cold and moist shock to the sphincters of unsuspecting toilet users everywhere.
For the benefit of readers, I’ve done extensive research on this topic, and I have the following anecdotal findings to share:
- Rather than deploying a single sheet of toilet paper to disrupt the physics of surface tension, I’d recommended using a small handful of crushed sheets.
- These have proven to be far more effective, as the folds essentially create a sort of ‘tissue kelp garden’ that inhibits and slows the movement of the shit as it strikes the water. My theory is that the speed and rate of aquatic displacement has a direct correlation with how severe the resulting up-splash is. In Layman’s terms: The faster the shit moves through the water upon impact, the greater the splash.
- This method also has the added bonus of acting as a sound-suppressor of sorts for the inevitable *schloop!* sound that your shit will make as it impacts the water. If you’re one of those weirdos that farts, groans, grunts, and moans audibly in public toilets, then this is a moot point to you, as you care little for the horror you inflict upon your cubicle neighbors who have to listen to you.
Shit safe my readers, but most of all, shit smart.
“It is a “scandal” when the Government conceals things it is doing without any legitimate basis for that secrecy. Each and every document that is revealed by WikiLeaks which has been improperly classified — whether because it’s innocuous or because it is designed to hide wrongdoing — is itself an improper act, a serious abuse of government secrecy powers. Because we’re supposed to have an open government — a democracy — everything the Government does is presumptively public, and can be legitimately concealed only with compelling justifications. That’s not just some lofty, abstract theory; it’s central to having anything resembling “consent of the governed.” But we have completely abandoned that principle; we’ve reversed it. Now, everything the Government does is presumptively secret; only the most ceremonial and empty gestures are made public. That abuse of secrecy powers is vast, deliberate, pervasive, dangerous and destructive. That’s the abuse that WikiLeaks is devoted to destroying, and which its harshest critics — whether intended or not — are helping to preserve. There are people who eagerly want that secrecy regime to continue: namely, (a) Washington politicians, Permanent State functionaries, and media figures whose status, power and sense of self-importance are established by their access and devotion to that world of secrecy, and (b) those who actually believe that — despite (or because of) all the above acts — the U.S. Government somehow uses this extreme secrecy for the Good. Having surveyed the vast suffering and violence they have wreaked behind that wall, those are exactly the people whom WikiLeaks is devoted to undermining.”
—
Glenn Greenwald (via azspot)
Whilst it’s true that Wikileaks does pose many potential problems for governments (in terms of security risks) I find it difficult to argue with the sound logic of this writeup.
I think it’s always important to be critical and cognizant of the implications of governmental secrecy. As with all other methods of governance, democracy is a process that will, if left unattended, atrophy into a form of despotism where power is accumulated increasingly in the hands of a few.
While it could be said that that the government often assumes the role of information ‘gate-keepers’, active democratic citizenship should involve a strong initiative for gate-watching. Governmental accountability and transparency are at the very core of democratic ideals, which are themselves built upon a foundation of designated consent by the people, representative leadership, and a dedication towards the perpetuation of this elective reciprocity - not in the efforts to erode it.
