WHY WARM PUBLIC TOILET SEATS ARE LIKE ANTIQUES

I use to think antiques were boring and lame. Just a bunch of worthless crap. That is until I started watching Pawn Stars. And American Pickers. And Antique Roadshow. I now find them fascinating. And the more I learn about them the more intriguing they become. I recently finished “Killer Stuff and Tons of Money”, a book that follows antique collectors through flea markets and auction houses. Since finishing the book, I find myself looking at the world differently, trying to discover the origin of things I would normally take for granted.

Which brings me to the point in my post where I talk about pooping. A couple days ago I was hanging out in a bookstore and had the urge to drop a load. I normally prefer to duke in the comfort of my own bathroom, but when your bowels move 3-4 times a day, you don’t usually have that luxury. As I sat down in the stall, following the mandatory pre-dump seat wipe down, my cheeks were warmed by the recently used porcelain seat. Normally I would have been a little disgusted by the warmth and then moved on to the business at hand. But this time was different. As I sat there I pondered the origin of my warm toilet seat. I reflected on he who had gone before me. Did he drop a long firm log or was he plagued with a bad case of butt urine? I deduced that he must have been there for some time in order to leave the seat as warm as it was. Maybe he had the same challenge as I have, taking upwards of 15 minutes to achieve empty bowel satisfaction. I soon felt a strange bond to this mystery pooper and desired to learn more about him. Maybe by understanding him I could understand myself better.

Or maybe he was just a fat dude with a hairy, pimply butt and herpes. I stopped my pondering and hurriedly wiped and exited the stall.

My Bathroom Encounter With Larry Craig

Speaking of Idaho senators soliciting sex in airport bathrooms…….

I frequent a local health club in order to maintain my not-quite-obese-but-still-comfortably-husky physique. A certain former Idaho senator also frequents the same club. Our workouts incidentally coincide and I have had the pleasure to engage in small talk and light banter with him from time to time. Some of these conversational encounters may or may not have taken place while in the shower. Completely nude obviously. I tell you this because at no time have ever felt like Mr. Craig was “checking me out” or “sizing me up” or “trying to catch a peek at my penis.” And surprisingly I have never felt uncomfortable in these potentially awkward situations. That is, until last week.After my workout one day, I stripped down and headed to the shower room when I decided I should stop off at the urinal to drain the main vein. I had just cozied up when I noticed someone taking the urinal right next to mine. Curious, I glanced over to see who had taken the urinal next door to me when there was a perfectly good, vacant urinal two spots down. It was none other than my friend Larry. Stark naked. And his stance was uncomfortably wide. Despite the multiple interactions I had had with the former senator, I was overcome by stage fright and just stood there unable to accomplish what I had come there to do. Instead I just looked down, pretending everything was going swimmingly. He finished up and left without any obvious sign of solicitation.

I breathed a sigh of relief and headed off to the shower to wash his urine dew from my lower right leg.

Doogan Howser’s Toilet Seat Comfort Analysis

Hello.  This is a sister diagram to my fart smell diagram.  The fantastic part about these types of charts are that they are self-explanatory.  Amazing what a warm toilet seat in a different environment can do to your comfort level, no?

Would You Rather? The Fart Edition

Have you ever played that game “Would You Rather”? You know, you ask someone a “would you rather” question, like “Would you rather always smell like fish or always have bad breath?” The question is then answered and a furious and emotional debate about the correct answer ensues. (For those curious, the correct answer to the aforementioned questioned is “bad breath”. If you don’t agree with me, you’re wrong.)

I need you to answer this one for me. Would you rather have an average amount of gas that smells pretty nasty most of the time, or have copious amounts of gas that only carry a stench about 10% of the time? Wait. Before you answer, consider this. Along with the nasty gas comes the inability to hold it in. Whereas, with the over-gaseous bowels, you would be blessed with a strong sphincter, able to withstand hours of bowel-shaking, monster truck force from within.

Again, the answer is quite clear. Give me the gaseous giant any day. I speak from experience. My wife would beg to differ. She also speaks from experience. You see, she has the uncanny inability to keep her farts sealed up tight in order to release them in an appropriate location. It doesn’t matter if we’re in church, in an elevator or in a small gathering with a group of friends, she just opens up and drops those stank nast bombs when they come knocking on the door. Granted, the frequency of said occurrence is low, but the risk is oh so high. Unless of course your husband is right next to you during the crop dusting, then he’s the one who’s naturally blamed for the unsavory aroma.

On the other hand, I can chose the most appropriate place to drop my LBH’s (Loud But Harmless). Whether that be during a quick trip to the john or in my little brother’s face. The point is, it’s much more advantageous to have complete control over such a powerful tool even if it does mean a few more gas cramps than the average bowel. Help me out here.

Please tell me I’m not the crazy one in this relationship.

Europe’s #1 Contribution to Your Butt

I am currently sitting on the pot, evacuating my bowels for the 15th time today. What the crap is wrong with me? It feels like a serious case of diarrhea, but my stools are as firm as a good handshake. But that’s not relevant. What is relevant is that my butt hole is rubbed raw from all the wipage it has endured today and every time I release a fresh load it feels like a thousand fiery darts are being launched directly into my anus. As I sit and ponder my unfortunate situation, I can’t help but yearn for the days of yesteryear. You see, there was a period in my life when I wasn’t plagued by the troubles of over-wiped a-hole. When poo finger was eliminated and butt rot was virtually nonexistent. It was a much simpler time when I could sit and enjoy a good duke without the apprehensive anticipation of a painful undercarriage clean up. This bowel movement bliss was made possible through my introduction to the toilet’s under appreciated European cousin, the bidet.

A few years ago I spent some time in a foreign country. I soon discovered that every bathroom had a strange fixture next to the toilet. Upon learning the purpose of this apparatus and the general method of usage, I was disgusted with it and mocked all who used it. But I would soon learn the error of my ways. After about 6 months of continued TP usage, I sat down on the pot one day to drop the kids off at the pool, finished my business, and noticed the empty roll on the holder. As there were no extra rolls under the sink, I had 2 options. I could use my roommate’s towel to clean the red-eye or I could go against everything I believed in and straddle the fountain for midgets.

I chose the bidet. And it changed my life. As the rush of luke-warm water hit my soiled basement, my fears and misconceptions of this God-given contraption washed away, just like the poo particles from my anus being washed down the drain. For the next year, I didn’t lay hands on a single piece of toilet paper and I never felt more fresh and vibrant in my life. Instead of smearing poo across my bottom until the TP in hand looked mostly free of brown streaks, I would give my anus and surrounding areas a personal shower each time I went #2. No more painful wipes. No more chafed nut rub. Life was good.

When I returned home, my reintroduction to bidet-free American bathrooms was a sad and unpleasant one. The toilet paper on my soft, tender backside felt like sandpaper. It just felt so unnatural and environmentally unfriendly. But I slowly callused up and eventually assimilated back into this toilet paper society we call America.

But it’s days like today that I long for the warm fountain of goodness that made me feel so clean, confident and carefree.

M. Night Got It Wrong…

Our 5 senses are pretty sweet. I don’t know which one I enjoy the most. Seeing and hearing are probably my top two followed closely by taste. I think most of us take our senses for granted, but today I’d like to discuss the forgotten 6th sense. I’m not talking about seeing dead people. I’m talking about a sense that is actually legit, but highly underrated. It’s our ability to sense whether what’s coming out of our butt is of a solid or of a gaseous state. I’m not sure what you call it but it’s amazing and I am eternally grateful for this 6th sense.

Think about it for a second. As poop or fart gas reaches the end of its long digestional journey and is knocking on the door, your colon is able to determine if it’s safe to push it out in your current location or if you need to run to the nearest water closet. Sometimes it’s a little delayed and you don’t sense gas or solid until you’re touching cloth, but it usually kicks in just in time to pucker up and save yourself from having to do the walk of shame to the nearest stall to wipe down you underwear.

The only defect in this 6th sense occurs when the object being expelled is neither solid nor gas, but rather liquid. Apparently there was a slight breakdown in the evolution of this sense, because the colon seems to confuse liquid with gas on occasion. And usually at very awkward occasions. But i guess 99% of the time is a pretty good success rate.

So the next time you raise a cheek off your chair to squeeze out an SBD and you colon starts screaming “Solid! Solid! Solid!” take a second on your way to the john to give thanks for this often forgotten, always under appreciated, magical 6th sense.

What is Your Poo Trigger?

I enjoy a good BM now and again. Actually, about 4 a day. Sometimes 3, sometimes 5. It all depends on how many meals I’ve eaten that day. Because I know that within 10 minutes of finishing a meal, I will have to take a dump. If I miss my post-meal dump, things back up, cramping ensues and it could take a day or so to get back on schedule. I think this is a pretty normal poop trigger. My body knows it has to make room for the food currently being consumed so it sends a signal to the colon to get ready to drop a load. By the time I’m done eating, that load is packaged and ready to be dropped.

My wife on the other hand has a more unique poop trigger. Every time she enters the super store Fred Meyer, her bowels loosen and she has to visit the little girl’s room. Without fail. This doesn’t happen at any other store, grocery or department. Only at Freddy’s. I am currently baffled by this strange phenomenon. It must be a psychological trigger that has developed throughout her life. Kind of a Pavlov’s dog and bell type thing. Something about Fred Meyer has conditioned her body to think it needs to poo. Strange. She does have fond memories of frequenting the store as a child. Picking out back-to-school apparel, buying her first bra, eating at the F.G. Meyer deli. Perhaps it feels like home to her and the only other place outside of our bathroom that she feels completely comfortable taking a crap.

Whatever it is, I can always plan on her coming home a little late when she’s going to Fred Meyer to shop.

Japan Earthquake Learnings: Creating Relatable Analogies of Poop (CRAP)

Every so often, I experience something that completely changes my perception of reality. A paradigm shift if you will. You know what I’m talking about. Something that makes you look at the world differently for better or worse. The birth of your first child, learning Einstein’s theory of relativity, hearing Christian Bale speak for the first time outside of a movie and realizing he’s not American. Well, a couple months ago I came upon something that  rocked my world and I haven’t been the same since.

You all recall the tsunami that devastated Japan I assume. Watching the  destruction and resulting suffering was enough to humble the proudest soul and change one’s life forever. However it wasn’t the actual disaster and suffering that changed my life, but rather a short instructional video that was created to teach children about the threat of an impending nuclear disaster as a result of the tsunami. If you haven’t seen it you can check out this gem here.

When I first watched this video it blew my mind. I felt a little like Doc Brown when he realized he could use the electricity from a lighting bolt to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity he needed to power the Delorian back to the future instead of the plutonium he had always used. “Why hadn’t I thought of this before?” I marveled. Using poo analogies to teach difficult concepts to children. Genius! As Papa Squat has said, taking a dump is the Great Common Denominator . Everyone can relate to it. Even little kids. When you tell a story about crapping your pants, it’s hilarious to all, young and old alike, because everyone’s done it.

So it makes complete sense to use something so universal, like poop, to explain something so complex, like nuclear meltdowns. Once I realized this,  I’ve been using what I now refer to as Creating Relatable Analogies of Poop (or the CRAP method) to teach my kids all sorts of useful information that would have otherwise been too advanced for their small brains. They now understand why the housing bubble burst, where babies come from, and the aforementioned theory of relativity. All thanks to CRAP.

Give it a shot. CRAP with your kids and let me know how it goes.

Tricks of The Farting Trade – Fart Capturing

It’s an age-old mystery. You let out the rankest, thickest, post-legume eating air biscuit and while everyone around you quickly vacates the premises with a look of sheer disgust, you stand there, liberally breathing in and admiring your thunder from down under. Even as I write this on the dooker, I’m basking in the aroma that fills the room with a sense of accomplishment/comfort. Is it something nature has built into us so we can mark our territory in the wilderness? Or is it something we develop the more time we spend with our gas and poop?

At any rate, this super power we possess opens the door for many opportunities of teasing and torture, my two favorite of which are covered wagons and cup o’ farts. For those unfortunate enough to not know what I’m referring to, allow me to explain. You’re laying in bed with your spouse and have the sudden urge to release some vaporized poo. Not wanting to let this opportunity go to waste, you let it out and before your spouse has the opportunity to exit the bed, you pull the covers over her head and trap her in the foul stench. You have just executed a flawless covered wagon.

Then we have the cup o’ fart. This sly trick can be executed at any time and in any location. All you need is your hand, a ready-to-be-released barking spider and a poor, unsuspecting target. When you’re ready, you drop the stinker into your open palm and quickly close it, trapping in the fart bubbles, only to be released under the nose of the aforementioned target. Years ago, a friend of mine took the cup o’ fart to a whole new level and introduced me to the jar of farts. He successfully trapped a nasty butt trumpet in a mason jar which he let ferment on his bedroom shelf. The concoction was released 6 months later under the nose of his dad who first dry heaved, then chased him around the house, cursing his name.

From the Logs of Doogan Howser – an Intro

Greetings from the shadows of the everlasting porcelain throne stall. By way of introduction I am Doogan Howser MD and I am pleased to be a part of this noble endeavor of discussing the world of dooking. Due to my stubborn bowels, I spend about an hour a day on the pot taking care of business. So while I am not a real doctor, in the traditional sense of the word, I feel more than qualified to opine on the matter. Maybe you could say that the MD stands for Mad Diarrhea or Messy Dumps. You choose. I hope to assist in bringing to light what has long been kept hidden behind closed doors of graffiti-covered stalls. And you can rest assured that every one of my posts will be written whilst sitting upon the can.