tim!: A History of Sh*t 2002 It occurs to me that I rarely see anything about the historical value of feces. Not how it pertains to our society, not how it is dealt with on a small scale, not how it is dealt with on a large scale. Due to the personal nature of this topic, and its inherent gross-out factor, the reader may wish to think twice before proceeding. If you do decide to stop here, and never delve into the world of feces, as the rest of us are about to, that is certainly up to you. As this is still your choice, it is the opinion of the author that 'you people' aforementioned, possess an irrational fear of their own waste matter, and all of you should spend time with it [the waste] in an effort to get to know it just a little better. I am being slightly flip here. I find it difficult not to be somewhat jovial on the subject; after all, we are talking about poo here. But also, I am remembering that this is an historical document, one that will be referenced for generations as a benchmark for how we as human beings deal with what it is we find coming out of us.
Firstly. It must be noted that people have been defecating for a long long time. This sounds like an obvious statement, I concur, however - it must be said. Sometimes the obvious escapes us. Why, even myself up until the tender age of 13 believed actively that females did not do any such thing. Defecate that is. They just didn't do that, because that was gross, and only boys did gross things. Girls were beautiful flowery creatures that were not involved in such heinous crimes of passion. I didn't have an alternate explanation for how the female half of the world got around to removing their waste in an efficient way. It did not occur to me. I suppose I thought that they could eat whatever their little hearts desired, and then by some powerful and magical force, the resultant discharge would vanish before it ever saw the light of day or the cool fresh waters of the commode. Now I know this is not the case. I want to speak now only to the under 13 male readers who I know comprise 82% of my readership. Believe it kids. I know its hard to take, the idea that Amy in your math class pinches one off every morning after gym class, and then proceeds to use that golden and soft hand of an angel to wipe the soiled crack of that buttercup of an ass, but you know what? She does it. She does it just like her old man does it. The main difference being that she doesn't have hair on her ass, I don't imagine, and that she probably doesn't talk about it to her friends like her father does. Ok. That brings the seventh graders up to date. Now for the rest of you.
Things that everyone does but most of us will never admit.
1. Scratch ass and then sniff hand. You know you do, so please do not embarrass yourselves with an attempt to lie your way out of this.
2. Look at open toilet bowl at the deposit of fecal matter now floating in the water. It is actually recommended to do this from time to time in order to see whether or not the poo sinks or floats, or if you have occult blood. I'd want to know pretty quickly whether or not I had blood in the poop.
3. Pertaining again to #1: while wiping ass with cheap toilet paper, a lone finger escapes the borders of safety and lands in the forbidden zone. You then have a choice of options. First, you can get up and wash your hands, but then you have to deal with the problems associated with standing up and not being done down there, you know? Second, you could just press on, but you still have to decide what to do with that finger. Do you ignore it? Do you smell it? (research shows that most of us do) Do you wipe it off, and proceed? It gets complicated really fast.
I'm not sure if this pertains to the history of shit or not, but it is shit related, and it did happen in the past, so yes, the two most important criteria have been met. A friend of mine once was dancing on a table, maybe it was a coffee-table, and everybody is dancing and I'm thinking he went to pass gas, or in layman's terms - to fart - and he got more than he was expecting. But this was a severe case, one that ended up running down his leg. I did not witness it, but heard about it from several sources. It was a source of pride. I don't think he was embarrassed. He was not the type to get embarrassed. In fact, he may have kept on dancing right through the subterfuge. But then, there is a very good possibility that I am just making that up. That I want him to have done that, but that he likely did not. It will be the first thing I ask him next we meet.
You know the water we drink and the water we bath in, what we bath our pets in is the same water that has received our worst fears, our darkest days? It is hard to fathom that the bowl of water/feces that is conveniently transported away from us goes through a series of filters and chemical treatments and comes right back to us in our home. For all I know, I could be drinking the water that Julia Roberts flushed down the toilet 2 weeks ago. If I lived in LA it would be much more likely.
In fact I just had a great idea. Famous people could use a tracking device/system to monitor the progress of their waste water treatment and subsequent revival. They could then package this as a product for consumption by the common man. Ok, granted this is slightly f*cked up, but not out of reach, for some. You have a choice of bottled water from today's top stars, the A list as it were. Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise and Britney Spears recycled waste water would cost the most, say $100 a bottle. If you don't have that much to spend, there would be lesser stars' waters available for less money. The B list would include such scrumptious selections as Melanie Griffith, Joshua Jackson (Pacey from Dawson's Creek), or any one of the Bee Gees. These would go for $25 a bottle, and you get a poster with the tenth purchase. If you mix and match Bee Gees, the effect is not cumulative. You have to be loyal to one Bee Gee. For those who are really broke, but still want to feel involved in pop culture, we would offer a $3 list of one-hit wonders and has beens such as Ted McGinely, Don Knots (who may have already passed away), any one of the Brady Bunch kids, especially the cousin, Oliver, played by Robbie Rist. As a matter of fact, Robbie Rist water is on a list of its own, a special jump-the-shark list that will also have to include Ted M., apparently the King of causing a television show to tank. He's done it like 10 times. There is a whole site dedicated to this phenomenon.**
The best part about this is that people will buy it, just to have one, and it will be a fad. Only 10,000 people have to buy a bottle from the A list, and that's a million dollars. You know that more than 10,000 of those pet rocks were sold. Ten thousand people is not a lot of people. Not when we think of China and India. That's like half the world right there. And the overhead will be low. If a person's trash is public property once it hit the curb, then so must be their liquid/semi-liquid waste. All you'd have to do is tap into the sewer system just below their house, and then purify it. But if you're going to just sell it as water, you may as well just "say" that it is Julia Roberts water, when in reality it is just Brita filtered water from your own house. You'll be getting paid money for famous toilet water, when the owner is really more likely to get my neighbor's unfamous toilet water.
As there is a never-ending supply of sh*t in the world, and humans as a species aren't going to suddenly stop using the bathroom, I feel it is appropriate to end this in mid-sentence, as if you were just about to make the most important discovery of the last 500 years, a discovery that would change the way people live and see the world for the next 1000 years, something that if I could just wake up and write this down, it would be so great, so very very wonderful and I just can't seem to stop thinking that if
Parenthetical aside -
** Jumping-the-shark is a term used to describe the circumstances of a popular TV show suddenly becoming unpopular, and eventually leading to its demise. The site of same name allows the viewer to vote on when they think a particular show tanked, and keeps a tally of results. Ted McGinely has apparently caused this to happen several times. To name a few: The Love Boat, Happy Days, Welcome Back Kotter. Although in all fairness, he just got credit for Kotter because he looked like the guy who did the deed (Bo). Whoever that is. It is a shame that Ted McGinely was never cast on Aly McBeal, but then that show tanked just fine on its own. If Jon Bon Jovi weren't busy being so f*cking awesome, we could blame him.
