1. Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!

2. Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!

3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!

4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it, instead of love wasted on ingrates!

5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!

6. Satan represents responsibility to the responsible, instead of concern for psychic vampires!

7. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!

8. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!

9. Satan has been the best friend the church has ever had, as he has kept it in business all these years!

Check, check, check and check!

If that’s the case, then I’ve had a satanic philosophy for the greater half of my life. A lot of these ideas are ones that I find I’ve previously arrived at through independent introspection.

Now I must hunt down a leather-bound edition of this book.

#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.

Neanderthals didn’t die out; their offspring live on in those who push in at lines, drop litter within 20 meters of rubbish bins or those who spend their lives deceiving, cheating and robbing their kindred humanoid Mammalians. People that are vehemently self-entitled, expecting every courtesy be afforded to them whilst insisting on giving none whatsoever, are the clumps of dry shit hanging off the hairs on society’s arse-hole. Delinquents, vandals, agitators, thieves, religious fundamentalists and the callously-apathetic are my sworn enemies in life.