I had been to this mall before and I knew that the nearest public men's room was next to the mall office, which was thankfully nearby. I went into the stall and got down to business.

This particular B.M. turned out to be a really messy one. You know the kind I'm talking about, where the output has the thickness and consistency of wallpaper paste and seems to require the better part of an entire roll of toilet paper to get cleaned off. Another frustrating by-product of this type of crapfest is that no matter how careful one is, it is seemingly impossible to avoid smearing some of the nasty stuff onto one's hand. This was, in fact, what happened to me: a nasty brown skid mark across my thumb and forefinger.

Being the conscientious shitter that I am, I am generally diligent about flushing the toilet at the conclusion of my anal purging. However, in this instance my primary focus was cleaning the rogue poo off of my left hand. I fully intended to go back and flush after I rectified the situation. I really did.

Just as I was leaving the stall, one of the mall custodians entered the restroom and began mopping the floor. I went to the sink, applied liberal amounts of bathroom dispenser soap and hot water to my assaulted appendage, and washed vigorously. As I began drying my hands, the custodian saw the pile of un-flushed ass sludge and toilet paper that I had left behind in the toilet bowl.

He gave me a disgusted look. "Look at this mess!" he groused. "What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you know how to flush?"

Now, I thought the guy was overreacting a bit and kind of being a jerk; but, realizing that he probably had to deal with stuff like this a lot, I tried to empathize. So I hoped to neutralize the situation by saying, "Sorry, man. I was going to flush as soon as I got washed up."

"Like hell you were!" Apparently he was having a very bad day. "You were just going to leave without flushing and let me clean up your mess for you!"

This character was starting to tick me off; but, not wanting to escalate the situation any further and get into a ridiculous argument over an unflushed toilet, I said, "Look, dude, I said I would flush the damn toilet, and I'm going to. So chill out!" With that, I marched into the stall and slammed my hand down on the flusher handle.

And that's when things turned ugly.

I admit it now: during the course of my defecation marathon, it would have been diligent of me to have flushed the toilet one or two times to prevent things from piling up. But, unfortunately, I had not done this, and so the entire fruit of my labor was still proudly on display at the time of the fateful flush. I realized my mistake almost immediately upon hitting the handle, but of course it was too late by then. So we both watched in horror as the toxic turd and toilet paper swill rose ever higher in the bowl.

"Oh, God, no!" I was thinking to myself. "Please stop! Don't go over the rim!"

No such luck. The nasty glop began to spill over the edge of the bowl and onto my new pal's freshly-mopped floor.

If looks could kill, then you could have tagged my toe and hauled me off to morgue city. I think I could actually see the vein pulsating in the guy's forehead.

Audrey, my girlfriend of five months, was napping in the passenger's seat. We were leaving the Twin Cities, heading up highway 169 to my parents home on Lake Mille Lacs, ninety minutes north. We had just finished a late dinner with some old college friends at the Red Dragon, a Chinese restaurant in uptown Minneapolis.

The first forty-five minutes were slow-going. It was 11:45 PM on the Thursday before Christmas and the highway was mostly empty north of the beltway. We were in no-man's land, and the few businesses and small towns that we passed through were closed for the night. The sidewinding eddies of snow snaking across the road were increasingly distracting, and with no streetlights or cars in front of me to track by, the going was nerve-wracking. FM reception had phased out fifteen miles before, and AM talk radio was not up to the task of keeping me awake and alert in the advancing blizzard conditions. The hot, dry heat roaring from the vents wasn't helping either; and we still had almost an hour to go.

Audrey dozed in the passengers seat, her breath slow and steady. Every few minutes, her head would loll forward and she would jerk it up with a snort, stare blankly ahead for a moment, and then slip back into unconsciousness. This went on for twenty minutes: head slowly slips to the side, head falls forward, snort, head jerks up, head slowly slips to the side. Beginning on the snorts, I counted nine cycles; and I was trying to guesstimate the duration of the tenth when a high-pitched burbling squeal emanated from Audrey's lower stomach and spiraled down into a saucy, rumbling internal groan which seemed to fizzle out and go silent for a moment; then a muffled pop, and then it squiggled sharply up again, as if asking a question. It was as if an enormous fart had been thwarted just as it was about to make its escape and was forced to suck itself back up into the dark recesses of the bowels from whence it came, burbling fitfully.

Audrey's head snapped up as her eyes popped open. She stared directly ahead, shifting slightly in her seat. She didn't look at me, and she never said a word.

We were not yet at that stage in our relationship where either of us felt comfortable farting in front of the other, and I didn't want to embarrass her, although her reaction was priceless. I didn't know if she had heard herself or not, but the change in the position of her legs and the way her back stiffened-up indicated to me that she had definitely felt something. Something... unnerving.

It was snowing harder now, and the poor visibility had slowed our trek to a white-knuckled crawl. The occasional eighteen-wheeler would roar past us, sending plumes of snow billowing around and obliterating the road ahead in a chaotic white whirlwind. The beams from the headlights faded into the swirling, ashen haze, and the blowing snow gave one the dizzying sensation that the car was turning constantly to the right. "It's really coming down hard," said Audrey flatly, still sitting awkwardly, staring directly ahead.

"Yup," I replied, watching her from the corner of my eye. A few moments passed, and she still hadn't moved.

"So, how long ‘til we get there?" she asked, nonchalantly.

"About an hour," I responded. "I can only drive forty or so in this stuff."

"Mmm-hmm," she said, as if considering her options. I began to notice the biting, acrid scent of honest-to-god shit, and a childhood memory wafted over me in a pungent cloud: when I was twelve years old, Uncle Olaf would take me and my cousins grouse-hunting in the poplar woods surrounding my grandfather's farm. If one of us had to poop, he would make us all stop as he sent the pooper back a few yards the way we came with his hunting knife and a fistful of leaves, telling the pooper to dig a small hole with the knife and bury the leavings. My youngest cousin, Erik, had "shy bowels", and would hold it all day, stopping and squatting for a few moments now and then, clenching his cheeks tightly and waiting for the urge to pass. On one such occasion, Erik apparently decided to try to relieve some of the relentless pressure in his intestines by farting¬, accidentally shitting his pants in the process. He got really quiet, and then started crying. The hunt was officially over for the day, and when we returned to the house, Uncle Olaf explained loudly to everyone that Eric had "gambled and lost" and had "sharted" himself in the woods. It was we kids' favorite word for the rest of the autumn.

I returned from my brief meditation, unsure of what to do next. The sound that I had thought was my girlfriend's thwarted fart was, I suspected, a shart -- a malevolent fart that had escaped only by pushing out a portion of fecal matter that had been hiding, undetected, near the sphincter. She must have noticed the smell as well, as she quickly opened the glove compartment and fumbled around for the ancient pack of cigarettes I kept around as an occasional smoker.

"You want one?" she asked hurriedly, pressing the car lighter in and cracking her window before she even had a cigarette out of the pack.

"Yeah, this road's making me a little squirrelly," I replied, realizing what she was doing. I cranked the heat up full blast and cracked my window as Audrey lit both cigarettes and handed one to me. We smoked in silence, my attempts at conversation deflected with a litany of "Hmm's" and "uh-huh's." After a few minutes, the heater could no longer hold its own in its battle between two open windows, and we rolled them up.

I was slowly pulled from my brief reprieve by the odor of crap gradually emanating from the passenger seat. Audrey looked directly at me for the first time since the suspected shart, and said meekly, "I hope we get there soon, I don't feel so good."

I feigned surprise. "Do you want me to pull over somewhere?"

Audrey peered out into the swirling wasteland. "Are we close to anything?" she asked suspiciously.

"There's a rest stop somewhere up this way," I replied. "I don't remember exactly where it is, but I don't think we passed it yet."

Audrey sighed in relief. "Perfect."

Sure enough, a few miles later, a blue sign heralded the rest stop just ahead. We pulled up through the winding service road, through the silent lot, and parked next to the door.

As soon as we stopped, Audrey bolted from the car, clutching one of her bags, scooting her feet quickly through the snow, through the double doors, disappearing into the ladies room.

As soon as she was out of sight, I took the opportunity to open my door to air the car out a bit. As I did, the dome light came on and illuminated the front seat. There, smeared sideways across the back of the vinyl passenger's seat, was a dark, brown, oily stain where Audrey's lower back would have been.

We had been dating only a few months, and there was still plenty of giddy mystery in the relationship. It was far too soon to let a hot smear of partially-digested scallops and hot and sour soup ruin the honeymoon. I knew what I had to do. I deftly reached into the back seat, yanked a small blanket off the floor, and got to work.

I was able to scoop up most of the shit in one corner of the blanket, as there wasn't much of it. Then I folded the corner over several times and used the rest of the blanket to wipe down most of the vinyl seat. While the shit was sticky, it was not particularly runny, so it hadn't run down into the creases of the seat. It was sort of greasy, however, preferring to smear around rather than get nicely sopped-up. I needed some type of solvent.

I searched the glovebox. Finding only a small bottle of Armor-All, I squirted it liberally onto the vinyl of the passenger seat. I kept up the process of wiping and folding, wiping and folding, until the stain was gone and the blanket was ruined.

I gave the seat one last spritz of Armor-All, polishing it with the last clean corner of the blanket, spritzed a few blasts of the stuff into the air, and lit another cigarette for good measure. I took the wadded-up blanket, reached down and stuffed it under my side of the car in the snow, closed the door, and waited for Audrey to return, most likely wearing different pants and smelling like too much perfume.

Ten minutes passed. Audrey came trudging back to the car with her bag and two cans of grape pop from the machine inside. She was wearing different pants, as I had foretold. Sweatpants, this time. She climbed into the car and sat down without looking at me, babbling something about "getting comfy". She immediately slid forward in the newly-polished seat, slipping back and forth crazily. I smiled, but didn't say a word. I hoped that she would just assume that the slippage was due to her fuzzy sweatpants, although I couldn't imagine how she couldn't have guessed that some of her shit had spurted up the back of her pants and onto the seat, since she must have seen the mess on her own clothes when she was changing.

We pulled out of the rest stop and continued our journey headlong into the frosty void. We sipped our sodas and discussed childhood Christmases and the upcoming holiday weekend, both of us privately trying to put the past ten miles behind us. Audrey never did admit to sharting herself that blustery night, and I never brought it up, though I never did see those dark-blue corduroy pants of hers again. The event had passed, unacknowledged by all, with only a tattered, shit-stained blanket laying at a deserted rest stop to tell the tale.

While the US government seems content (so far) to allow its citizens to read funny poop stories, it has drawn the line at allowing them watch people poop on each other. Ira Isaacs, a fifty-seven-year-old Los Angeles director, will go on trial next month on a six-count federal obscenity indictment for making films like Laurie's Toilet Show, Mako's First Time Scat, Gang Bang Horse (Pony Sex Game), and Hollywood Scat Amateurs No. 7.

(You don't want to Google those titles.)

But Isaacs isn't pursuing common-sense defenses like First Amendment arguments or the fact that consenting adults should be able to watch other consenting adults poop on whoever and whatever they please. Instead, he's arguing that his work is art, not porn, and thus not subject to decency laws.

"I don't want to say this is porn," Isaacs told Radar Magazine, "I don't think the people watch my stuff to watch sex. They can watch porn for that."

Isaacs elaborates in an interview with Adult Video News (link NSFW): "People don't buy my videos because they want to watch people having sex. Regular porn does that. I need to convince people that mine is serious art."

So he's going to take the stand and argue that Debbie Does Imodium is serious artistic expression. And 2 Girls 1 Cup, as Reverse Cowgirl points out, is going to bolster his case -- because (and our own poll supports this point), the people watching it are not looking to get their rocks off. "People are trying to shock themselves, because in today's world, everything is shock on TV. {...} People need a lot to be shocked these days." People watching 2 Girls 1 Cup, he says, aren't seeking sexual gratification. So the gratification they get can only be artistic.

Isaacs' product is packaged like porn, is marketed like porn, and is consumed like porn. Doesn't that make it porn? Six years ago, I asked the same question to Jed Ela, the artist behind ShitBegone toilet paper. "Your {declared artistic} intentions aside," I asked, "you are making and selling a product. You market something that appeals to a niche. To me, that sounds like capitalism. If you consider ShitBegone art, how do you differentiate it from what Proctor and Gamble does?"

Ela's answer convinced me that ShitBegone is art. So because I'm also convinced that Merde d'Artista is art and Fountain is art and Cloaca is art, does that mean that I have to believe Hollywood Scat Amateurs Numbers 1-6 are art as well? I sure hope not. Because that kind of art is gross.

Usually we took turns driving, so at the time of this incident, Jenny was behind the wheel. There we were, traveling the interstate on a cold Sunday evening in January, listening to campy eighties acts like Duran Duran, Cyndi Lauper, and Wang Chung, when all of a sudden I began to get a vague feeling of discomfort from within my internal workings. No worries, I thought to myself. It's just the pepperoni, sausage, green pepper, and onion pizza that I'd had for lunch earlier in the day talking back to me a little bit. We were less than half-an-hour from arriving back at school, and I figured we'd be there long before things started getting really serious down there.

All of a sudden, like a hunting knife gutting a deer, a huge cramp cut through me, and the pizza began doing jumping jacks and cartwheels inside my stomach. I realized with horror that if I didn't find a restroom soon, I would have my very own personal toxic landfill inside my pants.

"Um, Jenny," I said, trying to keep the rising feeling of panic out of my voice. "Can we stop at the next rest area?"

Anxious to get back to school so she could call her boyfriend, Jenny gave me an exasperated look. "Oh, come on, Little Lord Fartleroy, can't you hold it a little longer? We'll be back at school in twenty minutes."

Just then another horrendous cramp seized me, and by the look of contorted agony on my face my sister could see that my request involved much more than just a simple draining of the ol' lizard.

"Okay, hang on," she said. "The rest area is just ahead."

"Well, hurry! I can't hold back much more."

We passed a blue highway sign that stated "Rest Area -- 2 Miles." I moaned audibly, and my tormented innards convulsed angrily. In my current state of misery, two miles seemed like the distance between the earth and the sun. In response, Jenny stepped on the accelerator and the speedometer crept up to seventy.

"Can't you make this thing go any faster?" I whined.

"If I go any faster, I could get a ticket," said Jenny. This was back when the speed limit was still just fifty-five.

"I'll pay for the damn ticket!" I bawled. "Just get me to the rest area, quick!" The speedometer moved up to seventy-five.

We came to another highway sign. "Rest Area -- 1 mile." I cursed loudly and writhed around in the seat like a freshly-caught fish flopping around in a rowboat, trying desperately to keep at bay for just a little longer the smoldering brown torrent that was surging up inside me. My sister glanced over at me with concern and pushed the speed up to eighty.

Another sign: "Rest Area, Next Right." Finally!

Jenny slowed the car down as we entered the ramp to the rest area, but she was still racing me pretty fast towards my hoped-for salvation. She pulled into the first free parking space. I already had the door open and one foot on the ground before she came to a complete stop. I bolted out without bothering to shut the door and waddled up the walkway to the restrooms as quickly as I was able, holding my butt cheeks together in an effort to keep the noxious ass sewage sloshing around in my guts from exploding into my Fruit of the Looms.

My efforts to maintain control of my sphincter until I could reach the blessed solace of the porcelain throne ultimately proved futile. Just as I put my hand on the door handle to the men's restroom, I felt the warm, smelly, gooey sensation that we all know and dread fill up the backside of my pants and proceeded to cascade down my legs.

I slunk miserably into the nearest available stall to survey the damage. It was pretty bad. The underwear, of course, was a goner. My jeans were also pretty well saturated all the way through, with most of the back half having changed from blue to a very unattractive shade of brown. Even my socks were spotted with drops of waste product. I realized I had a problem.

The rest area was crowded that evening, and I had no desire to display my predicament to the other patrons by walking back to the car sporting a pair of extremely soiled pants. I desperately needed a change of clothes, of which I had some packed in my suitcase in the trunk. But I had no easy way to get to them. Just like these were the days of the fifty-five mile-per-hour speed limit, these were also the days before cell phones. So I couldn't call my sister to tell her what had happened.

As I was cleaning myself up and trying to figure a way of this mess, the restroom door opened and I heard an older male voice. "Excuse me -- is there a Little Lord Fartleroy in here?"

"That," I said, "would be me."

"Well, there's a young lady waiting outside, and she wanted me to ask if you're okay."

"Excuse me, sir?" I said meekly, "Can you do me a favor? That's my sister out there. Can you ask her to get a clean pair of pants, socks and underwear, and then give them to you, and then you bring them in to me?"

He hesitated for a second. "Umm... okay. Be right back."

There were several other guys in the restroom, and it was obvious to anyone within earshot what had happened. I heard the wise-ass in the next stall snort audibly and emit a suppressed chuckle. I sighed heavily as I realized there was simply no way I was going to emerge from this experience with any semblance of dignity.

A couple of minutes later, the guy that I sent on my mission of mercy came back in. Without a word, he slid my clean clothes under the stall door. "Thanks," I said.

"No problem," he replied, and hurried back out the door.

I finished cleaning myself up and put on the stuff the guy had brought me. Then I wrapped my damaged clothing in toilet paper and left the stall. I washed my hands quickly, avoiding eye contact with anyone, and hurried out of the rest room. Jenny was waiting for me out by the car, trying without much success to suppress her laughter.

"I guess I should have driven a little faster, huh?" she asked.

"Just get me out of here, quick."

To this day, I can't drive by that rest area without thinking of that fateful night.

As the late afternoon rumbles of hunger awakened my animal desire for food, it was decided that the family would get some exercise and walk the fifteen blocks to El Maguey. The Mexican invasion had recently hit Missouri full tilt, with one of the more positive side effects being the Tex-Mex restaurants that popped up in every strip mall. We strapped shoes on the kids and headed toward our greasy destination.

"Hot plate! Hot plate!" cautioned the waiter as he slid the steaming dishes to their places next to the empty basket that once held chips but now cradled only a crumpled sheet of grease-spotted wax paper. As I hastily doused my chicken chimichanga with what remained of the tiny pitcher of salsa, I wondered to myself if "Hot plate!" was the first phrase taught to illegal Mexican immigrants after their nighttime baptism in the Rio Grande.

Having finished our dinner and finding ourselves sufficiently stuffed, we started the long journey home, hoping to burn off some of the recently ingested Mexican fuel. Six blocks into our hike, I felt a familiar and unfriendly twinge of pain in my lower abdomen. The cool breeze that augmented this near-perfect evening made me acutely aware of the beads of sweat on my upper lip and brow. As the caged beast in my gut began to stir, readying for its violent escape, I quickly took stock of the situation.

I needed to find refuge and find it fast. We were deep in the heart of a residential neighborhood and at least eight blocks from the dream of my own toilet. "Just knock on a door," thought my frightened cerebrum. But what would I say? "Hi, I know we haven't met but my name is Mark and I really need to shit. Do you mind if I paint your toilet brown while my wife and kids play on your lawn?"

I decided to try and make it home. With two kids, four and five years old, fast travel was not an option. I was running out of time. I quickly blurted, "Daddy's going to crap his pants. See you at home," and waddled ahead like a scalded penguin, pinching my butt cheeks for dear life.

The giggles and jeers from my children faded behind me as I pulled away. I was doing all right, shuddering with the rhythmic ebb and flow of abdominal cramps. The contractions were becoming more frequent. Only four blocks to go.

The sun was nearly gone and the earth was in the final throes of dusk. I was almost to the entrance of Columbia Country Club, which is marked by a lighted sign surrounded by several bushes and clumps of tall elephant grass. It was then that the mother of all poop-cramps grabbed me by the back of the neck and demanded submission. "Yes, Master," I said as I shuffled into the delicate landscaping and yanked down my shorts.

The caustic flow came so fast and so ferociously that I feared that I had not dropped my pants in time. The power of the warm soft blast nearly pushed me forward from my crouched position. RELIEF! God, it felt good. I crouched there with my elbows on my knees, able to breath for the first time in several anxious minutes. A cool chill raced up my spine. I felt the glow of a job well done, the timeless relief of a powerful bowel movement. I had transcended. I had communed with my ancestors. It must have felt much the same eons ago as my prehistoric ancestor ran through the forest clutching his spear and noticed that familiar twinge of pain.

"Hey, I see Daddy's butt!" The sound of a child's voice snapped me back to reality. I looked to my right and saw the silhouette of a woman and two children. My children. Headlights! I quickly realized that my shiny white ass was hanging out of the bushes, reflecting in all its glory for every passerby that drove the busy street just ten feet away.

I quickly pushed my way deeper in the bushes and away from the blast zone. I skinned off one sock and then the other. It was a two-socker. I left my socks just feet away from my beastly deposit as a gift for the Mexican landscaper who would tend the area the next day. Fitting revenge for the meal his countryman had served me.

My wife and kids could not contain their laughter, but I felt like a million bucks. I floated home on rubbery legs, breathing the cool evening air. Something had happened to me there next to that clump of elephant grass. I was transformed. Right there in the bright headlights, I had touched something that transcends time and space.

I shit, therefore I am.

I have a stupid ritual on the mornings that I have my college classes. Since I will never take a dump at school, I sit on the pot three or four times at home before I leave for class to try and force out anything that is in me. In reality, there is nothing up my ass; it is all anxiety. If it was a day that I did not have to go to class, I would be relaxed and pain-free.

Last Wednesday, forty minutes before class, I was on my home pot doing my usual thing, trying to force out something. A sliver of wet poop exited my rectum and I wiped. The toilet paper was smeared with dookie and a bright red substance. Panicked, I wiped again and it was bloody. The crap in the toilet was also orange and maybe bloody. Freaking out, I told my wife about it. She said it was nothing; she has hemorrhoids and has dealt with bloody stools for years. My wife was kind enough to examine my asshole and she said I had a bright red "bump" sticking out of my bunghole.

I forget to include one important detail: on this Wednesday morning, I filled my crockpot with the fixings for chili. I used the spices from a Texas Chili bag that my wife bought me when she was on a business trip in Houston earlier this year.

Anyway, after seeing the blood in my poop, I was a basket case. I never pooped again on that Wednesday, but I did eat a lot of chili that evening, which contains tomatoes and bright red peppers. I stressed myself out all day that I had colon cancer, especially after surfing the web and reading about the symptoms.

Thursday morning, two AM. I wake up with some serious cramps. I held the load as long as I could -- I never poop in the middle of the night. But there was no way I was going back to sleep, so I jumped on the pot and squeezed it out. It was long, brown, beautiful, and blood-free. I dropped more logs at five AM, nine AM, and eleven AM. All blood-free, I think -- the turds all had a red tinge which could have been either the chili or the cancer.

I ate leftover chili on Thursday and Friday afternoons.

Friday morning, I had to go to school. I went through the same stupid ritual. The only difference was now I was scared to force out a log -- I figured that straining would pop another hemmy or the tumor up my ass and I would bleed. I squeezed out a red speckled log (hopefully red peppers and chili beans) and then wiped. The smear on the paper was a reddish brown. After flushing, I went to my refrigerator and examined the last of the chili. It was the exact same color of the smear on that toilet paper.

I never shat again on Friday. Saturday morning was a bitch. I had to be somewhere at two PM and I could not drop a load, even though I had a strong desire. Between eight AM and one PM, I must have tried ten times to drop something off in my bowl, but nothing happened. Every time I felt something on the edge on my bunghole, I was afraid to push to hard. I was so scared of ripping something.

I never did take that dump. I spent the afternoon at my appointment walking around feeling like I had a spike-covered dildo up my ass.

That sight of that blood on my toilet paper has really fucked up my head. It was a one-time thing, but I fear it so much that my asshole has become a shy cave that won't produce those large, beautiful logs of yesteryear. God help me.

"Go ahead," I told my companions. "I'll catch up in a second."

At that point in my life, I had made a habit of mixing six-to-eight egg whites with some orange juice in the blender and drinking it as part of my breakfast. It's a quick and easy way to consume protein. And so I passionately wretched out this quick-and-easy protein.

I wiped the corner of my mouth, swished some water, put a piece of gum in my mouth, and jogged to join Britton and Greg. I felt somewhat better than I did just a few moments ago, so I decided I could make it the rest of the way, no problem.

About halfway up the mountain, I felt the infamous rumbling in my stomach. "Just a little gas," I thought to myself. But I was hesitant to expel any for fear of sharting.

I decided to brave a fart anyway. It burned both my butthole and my nostrils. To my relief, though, it was just air.

Rare are the times when I am offended by my own stench. This was one of those times.

The aroma was instantly evident to both Britton and Greg as well. "I beg your pardon," I explained. "It won't happen again."

We arrived at the top of Battleship Rock, where we briefly rested and had a bite to eat. Our appetites were lost after I defiled the fresh air once again. The cramping in my gut was almost unbearable. The pain was my bowels telling me it was time to go home and find relief.

About a half-mile down the mountain, there was a rumble, a sharp pain, and what felt like a bubble of air trying to escape. To my dismay, it was not air, but liquid-hot diarrhea. As soon as I realized this, I surprised my fellow hikers by immediately dropping my shorts to my ankles and assuming a crab-walk pose (face-up, with my hands and feet holding my butt off the ground). They did not ask what I was doing, because it was obvious. Explosive bursts of waste splattered against the rock I was straddling. I could feel wet drops on my calves and forearms.

Groaning, I stood and removed my shorts from my ankles. I had no toilet paper, so I wiped as well as I could with my socks. I left my socks and my boxer shorts soaked with crap on the trail. I used the last of my drinking water to rinse the drops of brown from my legs and arms.

Just as I was cleaned up enough to continue hiking, the second wave of eruptions began. I knew there was no holding it back. This time, though, I had time to remove my shorts all the wayand squat in a proper poop-in-the-woods posture.

The only thing I had left to wipe with was my Metallica Justice For All t-shirt. It, too, was sacrificed.

By now, Greg and Britton were teary-eyed with laugher. I literally thought I was going to die, and we still had several miles to hike. I had no water and nothing in my stomach for fuel. I could barely move my legs. I don't think I have ever been so miserable in my life, and hope I never am again.

What a way to welcome the new year. I haven't pulled a Rocky since.

And like the last time I worked out a lot, I wound up developing a hemorrhoid from the excess pressure against my pelvic muscle floor.

The last one gradually went away on its own. This time, no such luck; not only did it not go away, it got bigger. It was huge. And painful. It was like having an extra testicle, in the wrong place.

I hooked up with a local surgeon. He poked and prodded in his pre-consultation and announced that he could take care of it right then and there.

"Do I get anesthetic?"

"Sure. But I'll warn you: the injection is going to hurt."

"How much?"

"A lot. You won't want to be my friend anymore."

He actually said that.

"I'd rather not be awake, then."

"We can do that, too --" he looked at his calendar "-- tomorrow!"

When you check in and prepare for surgery, they make a habit of asking you the same questions over and over and over again, just to see if you change your answers. It's all part of mitigating their risk. Assuming you confirm fourteen consecutive times that yes, you're having your right arm amputated, and no, you haven't had anything to eat that morning, you're less likely to suddenly remember it was supposed to be your left and that there was that splendid omelet on the way in.

So by the time they put my IV in and put me in my little rolling bed, I'd already had to confirm three times, "Yes, I'm here for... uh... a hmrd."

"Sorry?"

"I said, 'a hemorrhoid.'"

I tried to keep my voice down, because there were other patients in other pre-op bays and my God, what would they think? But my anesthesiologist had put something in my IV though to relax me, so by the time they got to sixth or seventh confirmation, my response was more along the lines, "WHY YES, I HAVE A GIANT HEMORRHOID! WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE IT!?"

The surgery was uneventful. One second I'm staring at the faceted lights in the O.R. and then, like blinking, I'm looking at the ceiling in Recovery.

The surgeon told me that he didn't just take care of that one big one, he also took care of a few more inside that might some day have caused problems. I pictured the inside of my rectum looking like Frankenstein's, criss-crossed sutures going every direction.

He gave me three prescriptions. "The first is a stool softener. Take two every day. You'll need it. The second is percoset, for the pain. The third is lorazepam, for the anxiety."

"I don't have anxiety."

"You will."

This caused me some anxiety.

"See, some people worry about their first post-surgical bowel movement because it can sometimes be painful. But if you take your stool softeners and a good dose of percoset and lorazepam an hour before you go, everything should be fine in the end. Haha, see that? I made a joke."

I went home.

Not that you asked (but you are reading this story, so you deserve what you get), but I generally go about a week between poos. Today was poo day. And when I poo, it usually sort of sneaks up on me and all of a sudden it's like, "Hi there! Let's go NOW!"

So I wasn't really ready with the painkillers. The best I could do was down a couple of percosets on the way in.

I stripped down completely cuz... well, y'never know how you might have to contort, or whatever.

I sat down and tried to read an Onion article, but I knew this wasn't really going to be a sufficient distraction. So I bore down and cut loose.

Right about there is when the shrieking started. Thank God no one was home. The dogs ran off to hide somewhere. It felt like getting a digital rectal massage from Edward Scissorhands. It felt like someone pulling ten feet of barbed wire out of my bunghole.

And that was just the first volley. Once you get started, there's no turning back, right?

I felt around for something I could squeeze to take my mind off it. All I could reach was that Onion, which ended its life sort of wadded up.

Round two arrived, accompanied by something that was half-wail and half-laughter. Honestly, there was absolutely nothing funny about the pain on a personal level; but from an objective viewpoint, how do you not laugh at a naked, shrieking man flailing on the toilet?

By this point I was sweating profusely and feeling vaguely nauseous.

Fortunately, the pain largely subsided. It still hurt, but only in a vague, distant way as I finished the job.

I was not ready for the sight in the bowl.

I've seen dookie. I've seen blood. But nobody was ever meant to see that much dookie and that much blood all in the same place.

If I'd had the foresight, I'd have taken a picture to really give those guys at RateMyPoo something to talk about.

Instead, I cleaned up and went to lie down on the bed to whimper for a while.

I never recognized the fecophiliac pattern to Kenny's life until a few months ago, when my wife observed, "Have you ever noticed that ninety percent of the stories from when you were a kid start off with, 'This one time, Kenny...', and then have something to do with excrement?"

A rush of memories came to my brain. Here's a sampling.

When we were seven years old, Kenny had a Charlie Brown-like crush on a cute little girl named Julia. But instead of sending her a note in class or playing kissing tag with her on the playground, he thought of another way to capture her attention. Kenny fashioned a poop-capturing net with three long pieces of toilet paper held in place by the toilet seat. He then dooked out an impressive log, wrapped it in the toilet paper, and brought it to my house to show me. "Let's take it to Julia's house," he suggested.

I rarely questioned his authority or good judgment, so I walked with him down the street to her house. We dropped it on the porch, we both peed on it, we rang the doorbell, and then we ran. I don't know if Julia ever found out who left her the gift, but she and Kenny never hooked up. I guess it wasn't a great way to pick up chicks.

Fast-forward about eight years to when we were in high school. Kenny was spending the night at my house one evening. I got up from playing Dungeons and Dragons and was taking a dump when, for the first and only time in my life, my butthole made music. It sounded exactly like a slide whistle, starting at a high pitch, smoothly going down to a baritone note over about three seconds, going up again, then ending with a staccato fart punctuated by a grape-sized turd plopping in the water. I heard Kenny, outside the bathroom, bust up laughing.

"Did you hear that!" I yelled.

"Yeah!" he answered. "Hey, when you're done, don't flush it. I wanna see it."

The rest of the movement was pretty uneventful, although the last turd was pretty long, and I even got a little coil action at the end. I let Kenny in. He gave it a long look while I stood by, waiting for his appraisal. I knew it wasn't my greatest work, but I was still proud of it.

"Not bad," he said. Then, to my shock and horror, he thrust his hand into the toilet and grabbed the biggest piece, held it high above his head with wet toilet paper dripping down his arm, gave me a wicked smile, and started chasing me around the house with it.

Never has a teenage boy been so flabbergasted and terrified as to be threatened with his own waste.

I've since asked him what made him think to do this. He shrugs his shoulders and says, "I just thought it would be funny."

When we were nineteen, we both went on two-year Mormon missions. I went to France and he went to Paraguay. Kenny spent half his mission suffering from parasitic diarrhea. He lost a lot of weight and crapped his pants more than once, but he didn't let it get him down. He tells me he used to sneak into other missionary friends' apartments in Asuncion while they were out proselytizing and fully empty his loose bowels in their toilet without flushing, leaving a feculent, foaming, fermenting butt stew for them to discover later that evening, along with a note written in dry marker on their mirror: "A little present from Elder Kenny."

It was all in good fun. He once asked me if I ever did that on my mission. No Kenny. You're the only one who thought of that. Just you.

After our missions, Kenny went to BYU and I went to Arizona State. Then we both ended up at U of A, where Kenny attended medical school and I went to law school. We both got married and started families. Kenny went on to do a residency in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic. The time period between his mission and the end of his residency was a ten-year stretch with no Kenny poop stories. But in about two months, Kenny will be finishing his fellowship in gastroenterology. He will be spending the next thirty years of his life looking into people's colons, analyzing their poop, and getting paid a half-a-million dollars a year for doing it.

I'm very happy that he found a constructive outlet for his coprophilia -- he just as easily could have become a psychopath ass freak. I'm now looking forward to going fishing with Kenny, sitting around the campfire, and hearing stories about things he's pulled out of people's butts.

What. Toilets for low-caste girls studying at the Pardada Pardadi School, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Why. To bring dignity and hygiene to girls who desire both but can afford neither.

> Pardada Pardadi: learn more

> NPR report on Sam Singh

Please note: while this fundraiser has officially closed, donations will be accepted until toilet construction begins. Feel free to contribute!

Students at Pardada Pardadi.

Results to date:

$14,906.25 as of May 7, 7:30 AM!

Full list of donors below

Your editor with two girls in Karanpur.

Sam Singh stands near one of the thirteen toilets already built.

Today PoopReport has a unique opportunity: to help girls in a tiny village in rural India get actual toilets to poop in.

Karanpur is in the state of Uttar Pradesh, four bumpy hours east of New Delhi. It's a haphazard collection of brick dwellings without doors or windows, split up by narrow paths humped in the middle so rain and sewage channel into rivulets on either side. A couple hundred people live here in walking distance of their fields, with cows roaming the alleys and goats tied up in courtyards. Stray dogs laze in the dust. A few frayed power lines bring weak, sporadic electricity. Plumbing is nonexistent. No trains or busses stop at Karanpur; it may not even appear on any maps. Karanpur is typical of Indian villages but for one respect: the fifty village girls who attend the Pardada Pardadi girls school.

Pardada Pardadi was founded by Virendra "Sam" Singh, a sixty-eight-year-old American citizen and chemical engineer who left India in 1960 and returned in 2000 to invest his savings in a school for girls. Eight years later, the school enrolls 700 lowest-caste girls aged 8-21 from 43 surrounding villages, teaching them academics along with health, hygiene, money management, legal awareness, and life-changing vocational skills.

It's not easy to convince a poor father to send his daughter to school. Daughters are valuable labor, even eight-year-old daughters. The abstract promise of an educated future cannot overcome the reality of living hand-to-mouth, praying for a good monsoon and fearing what drought might mean. It's not a question of a father's love -- it's stark economics.

So Sam structured the school around tangible economic incentives for attendance. It provides free books, uniforms, and meals, and deposits ten rupees ($.25) a day into a bank account set up for each student, building a 30,000 rupee ($750) trust that matures the day the student graduates, turns twenty-one, or marries -- whichever comes first. This is a huge sum in rural India -- on graduation day, it transforms a girl from the daughter of a poor farmer into one of the richest and best-educated women in the entire district.

Pardada Pardadi provides an education, job prospects, and a nest-egg -- enough to liberate a girl from marrying a barber at fifteen for the sake of a goat and to elevate her entire family along with her.

But the promise of the future doesn't change the reality of the present: nearly every girl at Pardada Pardadi wakes up before sunrise to go poop in the fields.

OPEN DEFECATION: A SCOURGE OF INDIA

My first train trip in India was the six AM Shatabdi Express to Jaipur. The sun rose late on that December morning, illuminating hundreds of men squatting in the fields next to the tracks, mile after mile, their asses towards the train, pooping on the same ground hundreds of men had pooped on every single day before.

Men only. Modesty forces women to poop in the fields before sunrise, or to hold it until after the sun sets.

This is the practice across India, including in Karanpur. And the sanitary ramifications are staggering. Poop is a vector for bacteria and viruses, and it attracts insects and rodents that are equally unhealthy. People poop faster than Mother Nature can degrade it, which means people who poop in the same place day after day will inevitably come into contact with festering feces. A speck of poop on a shoe gets touched by a hand that passes a glass of water to a two-year-old: that's how disease spreads.

Why do people poop in the fields? For some, it's because they're ignorant of hygiene and bacteriology; for others, it's because they're too poor to have any other choice.

LET'S GIVE THEM A CHOICE

A few months ago, Sam Singh was asked what impact he expected his school to have in his students' villages. Sam answered that girls who are educated about hygiene keep themselves and their families at a higher standard. (My wife and I saw this for ourselves in our tour of Karanpur: where the students lived, we met spotless girls and saw spotless one-room dwellings standing in sharp contrast to those without students at the school.)

But that wasn't what Sam was being asked. How can the school influence not just the girls, not just their families, but their neighbors as well?

This was something Sam hadn't considered. His solution is the reason you're reading this: toilets.

Here is an appliance that embodies his philosophy. A toilet protects its owner from the danger and humiliation of outdoor defecation. But it also provides a haven for neighbors to achieve the same standard of safety and dignity -- educated or not, Sam knows, no woman wants to poop in the fields. Here is an inexpensive way to improve health and spread sanitary practices beyond the walls of his students' dwellings.

Sam settled on the Sulabh toilet model, which collects and composts waste in alternating pits that need to be emptied only once every ten years. But as inexpensive as they are, they still cost too much for Sam to fund them on his own. He approached participants of the World Toilet Summit for fundraising help. My wife and I accepted his offer to tour the school and meet his students; and now I'm passing his plea for help on to you.

PoopReport is dedicated to laughing about poop. It's easy for us to laugh because the threat posed to us by poop is limited to the dangers of individual humiliation when Taco Bell attacks. Our toilets and sewers whisk our poop away, giving us dignity and sanitation in one quick flush. This fundraiser is our chance to offer the same basic dignity and sanitation to the girls of Pardada Pardadi -- to give them one more weapon in their struggle to break the poverty cycle.

Sam has raised enough money to build thirteen toilets in Karanpur so far, each one graced with the green-and-yellow double diamond of Pardada Pardadi. Each toilet was spotless when we saw them -- testament, again, to the importance these girls place on hygiene in general and on toilets in particular.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Sam's immediate goal is 43 toilets in Karanpur itself, followed by a toilet for each of the 700 girls in his school. Every cent will help achieve this goal. A dollar is lunch for four workers building a toilet. Twenty dollars may pay the labor cost altogether. And $250 -- which is no small sum, even for an American -- will fully cover the cost of bringing health, sanitation, and dignity to a student of Pardada Pardadi, her family, and her neighbors. For $250, Sam and his team can build a complete toilet.

Part of Sam's fundraising scheme is naming rights: if you sponsor a complete toilet, he'll inscribe your name on it. Upon completion, he'll send you photos of the toilet bearing your name, along with pictures of the students and the family whose lives will change because of your generosity.

There's something funny about the idea of a toilet in the middle of India bearing the name "Di Uhreea" or "Bunga Din" -- but there's something truly moving about it, as well. So help take the first step towards making these girls' bathrooms as sanitary and dignified as your own. Please give today.

Click the button to pay using PayPal OR your credit card. The payment goes directly to Sam Singh's PayPal account -- PoopReport doesn't touch any of it. PoopReport will publish a running tally of the amount raised as that information arrives.














Amount raised to date: $14,906.25 as of May 7, 7:30 AM.
Tremendous thanks go out to:

APRIL 29

$250. Thanks, Logjam!

$250. Thanks, Prarie Doggin!

$10. Thanks, Eoz!

$250. Thanks, Daphne!

$15. Thanks, anonymous!

APRIL 30

$250. Thanks, Cory Doctorow!

$250. Thanks, anonymous!

$25. Thanks, lilacsigil!

$11.75. Thanks, anonymous!

$250. Thanks, Dave!

$25. Thanks, Nicole!

$250. Thanks, Rich Shupe!

$10. Thanks, Rosalind!

$250. Thanks, anonymous!

$20. Thanks, anonymous!

$10. Thanks, anonymous!

$25. Thanks, pepe!

$250. Thanks, Sheelagh Carleton!

$30. Thanks, Dane Buson!

$20. Thanks, anonymous!

$250. Thanks, anonymous!

$250. Thanks, CaCa Doodle Doo!

$250. Thanks, Erik!

$50. Thanks, anonymous!

$25. Thanks, Lynell Hunt!

$25. Thanks, Ralph Giles!

$20. Thanks, ryan!

$20. Thanks, anonymous!

$250. Thanks, Adam and Rebecca!

$50. Thanks, SK!

$10. Thanks, elle!

$250. Thanks, Aatish!

$10. Thanks, Guillem Cantallops Ramis!

$20. Thanks, Earline!

$25. Thanks, max!

$50. Thanks, Vicki Brown!

$50. Thanks, Rich Morin!

$20. Thanks, anonymous!

$250. Thanks, anonymous!

$4. Thanks, anonymous!

$10. Thanks, Joe Gamache!

$250. Thanks, The Disco Squad!

MAY 1

$40. Thanks, anonymous!

$250. Thanks, Raoul!

$30. Thanks, Jens!

$20. Thanks, addie plum!

$10. Thanks, anna!

$250. Thanks, Tim Chesnutt!

$250. Thanks, anonymous!

$25. Thanks, anonymous!

$4. Thanks, Jessica!

$25. Thanks, Jennifer Laidlaw!

MAY 2

$150. Thanks, Snapper!

MAY 3

$250. Thanks, John & Ida Sands!

MAY 4

$250. Thanks, Audrey Adams!

$250. Thanks, Ryan Niswonger!

$20. Thanks, anonymous!

MAY 5

$20. Thanks, anonymous!

MAY 6

$250. Thanks, Eileen Mills!

$8,471.50. Thanks, 93 other anonymous people!*

* The names above belong to those who sent me the details of their donation. According to Renuka from Pardada Pardadi, a total of 150 individuals have donated a $14,906.25! Thanks go out to everyone; but due to privacy issues, I'll only post your name up on the board if you email it to me.

An open sewer in Karanpur. Help improve the sanitary lives of the girls of Pardada Pardadi!

But much like America and England, there was also the undercurrent of restless youth, gathering here and there in small groups, looking for "excitement". That excitement was usually channeled into legitimate outlets like organized sports at the local Police Boys Club (a community facility) or into the thrill of anything deemed "illegal" or "dangerous," like nicking a pack of cigarettes while the shopkeeper's back was turned.

Innocent times, but with a code of honor, if you will. Unfortunately there was also the unsavory type who would turn up uninvited, brag about some petty crime he'd committed, and generally want to hang out with your group. One such cretin had been annoying a couple of local lads, and they hatched a plan to get the message across that he was not welcome. The idea was to lure the creep to a dark place, like a cellar, and give him a short, sharp shock that would not injure him but would guarantee that he didn't come back.

The device was an ordinary house brick with a bunger (M80 firecracker) laid in the hollow part and a large turd laid over the top. The turd was troweled, sort of like icing on a cake, leaving only the wick exposed. The device was secreted into a hiding spot in the far corner of the empty-keg cellar at the local pub. Nice and dark, and only one exit. Hee, hee.

Sure enough, the bonehead turns up later that night, talking crap and generally being obnoxious. The local lads are careful not to let on what's in store for him as they casually mention that they have been thinking up some mischief, but they need a third man for the "operation". They tell him that they need to sneak into the empty-keg cellar at the local, after closing time, and that they'll explain the rest of the plan there.

Everything goes to plan, with the idiot thinking that they're going to knock off a keg of beer or something along those lines. The three of them slip silently into the darkness of the cellar. Once inside, their eyes adjust to the tiny amount of moonlight coming through the ventilation bricks. Whispering in the shadows, the local lads build up the tension and tell him that their plan is daring and dangerous, but it can't work without him, etc., etc. By now the drongo is quivering in anticipation and can't wait to do whatever it is that they've got planned.

So as they all have a preparatory ciggie, one goes to the cellar door and the other pulls out The Device. They tell the dickhead to "hang on to this." And what with the musty dankness of the stale beer and the cigarette smoke (and the crust that's formed on the top), he has no idea what this heavy brick-thing that he's holding in front of him is. All it takes is a "Shit! What was that?" to distract him while the fuse is lit, and the locals are gone.

The moment after the explosion, they open the door to see how it went, and the stench is incredible. By the light of a couple of matches they can see the moron still standing there in shock, brick in his outstretched hands, his chest and face spattered with a million shit-bits. Behind him, the wall has a silhouette of his head, a bit like an Aboriginal cave painting where they put their hand on the wall and spit paint on it. Except this is with shit.

Mission accomplished. He got the message.

Nervous as a titmouse, I slunk into the facility that morning already soused with about five cups of coffee slathering around in my belly. I'm a nervous cat. I really didn't want to meet the CEO. I just wanted to do my crappy management trainee job from nine to five and leave without any fanfare.

Upon arrival, I downed a bran muffin that tasted like a bat turd and another half-pot of coffee. I knew it was a mistake but I'm obsessive/compulsive, and if there's coffee or goodies set in front of me, I drink and eat them.

The CEO finally came out of his hidey-hole looking quite ill to my untrained eye, with an unhealthy red flush in his cheeks. "I'm sick," he said after introducing himself. "A touch of the stomach flu. But we'll spend a half-hour together anyways, if you don't mind." After shaking hands, I tried to wipe the sticky gumbo he'd left on my right hand onto my polyester trousers. I detected a whiff of monkey death. Did I mind? Yes. This guy smelled like a melted jar of Mexican prison-issue Cheez Whip. Sweaty, greasy sweat globules poured down his brow; his breath reminded me of the festering tailpipe of a chinchilla.

"I need to use the restroom," I heard myself say. I needed to get away from this guy before I vomited up chunks of intestine.

"You can use the executive room," he said. And then he dropped the deuce:

"I need to go, myself."

This worried me, since I was about to download a serious tube of Brylcreem.

The restroom was pristine and had mirrors everywhere. Barry Manilow had been imported from some desperate elevator music company. I clunked my hairless kipper onto the tungsten-flavored seat and plastered the bowl with a liberal amount of dookie. It spattered all over the bowl and up onto my tailpipe.

After wiping with a space-age paper that smelled of dandelions, I got up and looked for the handle, knowing this was three flushes, minimum.

No handle.

Wouldn't you know, this toilet had one of the sensors that detected the consistency of the poop before flushing it down.

I started to panic. I stepped out of the stall. I stepped in. I flashed my hand in front of the sensor. I pounded on the sensor. I wiped the sensor. I spit on the sensor. The flaming pile of goat whip started to burn my nose hairs.

And then I heard the CEO knocking on the door. "You okay in there?" he called.

A phlegmball coated my throat. In a voice that sounded like Ernest Borgnine after drinking a barium enema, I said, "Give me a second."

I begged the sensor to flush down the pile. Nothing happened.

I started to plan. Maybe I could scoop it into a bucket and carry it out of there? But no, I could hear him in the back of my mind, saying, "Why are you carrying a pail of poop out of my bathroom?"

I gave up, washed my hands, and opened the door. The whiff hit his nostrils and he looked at me as if I had just announced on Dr. Phil that I was marrying Tom Cruise's brother Larry.

I only lasted four months on that job. Every time I saw the CEO, he gave me a nasty look. I went on to grad school and pretended like I'd never had a job after college at all.

Two drunks stagger about in the woods and suddenly come up behind a man with his pants down. He is pooping. One drunk says to the other, "I'll hit him over the head, and you grab the cigar."