UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
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Friday, September 23, 2005
So I'm moving. I haven't moved in over seven years, partly because my rent was low and I liked my place, but also because I've always known that moving is an awful experience. Yeah, everybody knows moving is hell, but don't you know people who've moved like eight times in five years? They always give the impression that it's beyond their control, but that's a load of bullhonkeys; sitting still is the easiest thing in the world. If you move once a year, it's your own itchy feet and your own damn fault. Army brats have to move. You don't. I don't.
But I am, now. From Park Slope to Greenpoint. No biggie. Just a hop, skip, and a smile. Except that I've inherited a particularly virulent strain of packratism from my parents, both of whom are congenital sufferers of the same affliction. It took 25 boxes just to pack all my books. Now it's time to get serious. I'm cancelling or name-switching bills; I'm starting to enter my new address when websites demand my personal information for registration. My lower back is starting to cinch up in anticipation of the big lift, and my credit card is trying to cut itself in half before I hand it to Moishe's Movers, because they are going to bend me over a wardrobe box and give me a proper Israeli rogering. I'm'a spend a LOT on this move. It's gonna hurt -- but presumably it will hurt less than having spine replacement surgery. I just successfully navigated the sharky waters of TimeWarner Cable's account-changing process, and after a long string of clueless assholes, this last customer service drone was a chirpy Canuck named Sarah, and she was so good that I asked to speak to her supervisor so I could praise her. Her office was outside Toronto, which probably explains why she was all helpful and knowledgeable (i.e., because she's Canadian (i.e. not American)); I think my previous dealings were with convicts from New Mexico or some other place that is very hot right now. They were mean and they didn't want me to be happy. (And who could blame them? I think I'd rather break rocks with a sledgehammer than get press-ganged into phonebanking by a cruel and unusual penal system. Goddamn! Can you imagine? You've got to be super friendly to the people you talk to, even if they say shit that in the yard would get them shanked in a nanoscond. I'm picturing guards patrolling a room like hell's own pit bosses, eagle-eyeing the head-setted cons shackled to dirty cubicles, slapping their nightsticks into their palms as a reminder of the consequences of telephonic impoliteness. And the chairs aren't ergonomic, either.) But so I spoke to her supervisor, compared her favorably to the Christ, and as a result I think they're gonna let her have the leftover donuts after the hockey game, eh? And now a completely unrelated thing. Here's a product called Just a Drop, which has a distinct whiff of hoax about it, but seems to be for real. And I know some people who would buy it in an instant. What it is: a bottle of a magic solution, just a drop of which will mask, hide, eliminate, or destroy the odors created when you poop. Like while you're pooping, say in a public bathroom, you drop a drop into the bowl, and you need not have a fear of offending any current or future visitors to the same bathroom with your poop's odor. I hate this product, and I hate the society that makes people think they should ever need or buy or use something like this. Having grown up in a pragmatic and body-positive environment, I understand that a) everybody shits; b) bathrooms are meant for people to shit in; and c) shit sometimes has an odor. I accept these things, and I always have. In fact, I had never even heard the term "courtesy flush" until I heard Tom Arnold's character request one in Austin Powers when he hears Austin being strangled in an adjacent stall and assumes it's the sound of labored poopage. Courtesy Flush? What's this bizarre creature? I later found through informal polling that, especially in public restrooms, certain folks are so worried about other people smelling their poop that they will reach back and flush the toilet multiple times during a bowel movement. While they're sitting there, just flushitty-flush. A couple of people even suggested that it was appropriate to use the courtesy flush to cover up the farty sound of excretion. Unbefuckinglievable. Am I crazy? I poop til I'm done and only flush once. The culture that teaches poop-shame causes irreparable damage from the get-go. This model on The Surreal Life 5 (Caprice, not Janice Dickinson) described the most extreme version of the "courtesy flush" that I'd ever heard of. Explaining shared-bathroom etiquette to Pepa (of Salt 'n' --) she said "Oh, yeah, if you're pooping? As soon as the poop hits the water, you have to flush. So there's no chance of smell." Pepa was understandably horrified. The look on her face was like "this blond fool flushes the toilet every time a single doot leaves her pooper? Wow." Now okay, Caprice is a model, and has been surrounded by idiocy and shallowness her entire career, and maybe models are expected to live up to a superhuman standard, an ideal that does not have to perform all the base functions of life that the rest of us do. They certainly don't eat. BUT WHATEVER. They do eat, and they do poop. This fucked-up syndrome creates people like the character Paul "Shitbreak" Finch in American Pie, who couldn't or wouldn't defecate in the bathrooms at school, requiring the quick midday dashes to his fucking house that gave him his nickname. This is seriously pathological, but I bet you know somebody who has this problem to a similar degree, if not in the exact form. I know this girl who would only poop at home, and she got so used to holding it in that she'd get constipated for days at a time. Once she didn't shit for a week. That's hot. No, wait, I mean: that's fucked. (I will grudgingly admit that there is a legitimate use for this product: somebody who uses the men's room on my floor at work has something very very wrong with his gastrointestinal tract, and if you enter the bathroom after he's been there, it smells like a truck full of week-old corpsemeat. It's a knock-you-on-your-ass powerfully bad smell. He can use this product. In fact, I may buy a bottle and leave it in the bathroom, chained to the stall wall like a pen at the bank.) So tell me, people. Tell me your stories. When did you first hear about bathroom courtesy, and what are the rules as you understand them? Are you a shy shitter? What's the most extreme scatological anecdote you've got? Do you let people hear you poop or smell your shit? I NEED TO KNOW. ---------------------------------- P.S. -- This has got to be a purely American obsession, right? Obviously in societies without running water, the smell of poop is permanent a fact of life, like air or cockroaches (In some places, rivers of poop run down the middle of the streets! How festive!). Outhouses or squat-johns allow no flushing of any kind. But even in first world nations with flush toilets, people aren't this freaky. And it's a totally bourgeois concern, too. Because poor people? Waaaay to poor to worry about poop smell.0 comments |
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MY IMAGINARY GIRLFRIENDS Chan Marshall Rotem of the IDF Eleanor Friedberger Amy Goodman Bernardine Dohrn ('69) Maya Rudolph Joanna Newsom Imogen Heap Caroline Dhavernas Shana Rae Ray DISALLOWED FOREVER "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!" - "from whence" - "...the exception that proves the rule" - any use of the question "spit or swallow?" - the phrase "drop trou" - fake-o reviewer verbs: "penned" for wrote "helmed" for directed "lensed" for whatever - "expat" - the euphemism "passed away" - pronouncing merci beaucoup as "mercy buckets!" (see also: "grassy-ass!") PET PEEVES "confinscated" - trying children "as adults" - "drownded" - misuse of reflexive pronouns, as when someone says "Please talk to Bob or myself." Come on people now. "Myself" is not just a fancy version of "me"! LEARN IT. - tattoos in the Courier font - any use of Comic Sans |