I post this for a couple reasons. First, I like the guys over at CollegeStories.com. Second, they may put me in their book. And third, I know that if anyone can win this contest, it's a PoopReporter.
CollegeStories.com is offering $1000 to the author of the funniest college story. Any story from college qualifies -- they're not restricting their content to the poop genre. And since I know the caliber of storyteller on this site, I know that one of you PoopReporters can win.
So here's the deal: if your funny college story involves poop, screw those guys, send it to me. If it doesn't, send it to them. But try to work in a reference to PoopReport, just to show where your loyalty lies. Also, if you win the $1000, give me $2, as proper tribute.
Up until yesterday, PoopReport's biggest brush with celebrity was when Trent Reznor briefly mentioned us. Well, friends, that has been surpassed. Because we've been given an in-depth review by none other than Toby Radloff -- that Genuine Nerd made famous first by MTV and then recently by 2003's brilliant movie American Splendor.
Toby does a podcast with the folks at Lurid.com. I guess he is their web reviewer or something, because for whatever reason he decided to spend some time talking about PoopReport. If you saw the movie, you know how Toby speaks; it's great to hear him talk about the site. "Famous anus."
He starts talking about 2/3rds of the way through the file. His voice is pretty distinctive; you can't miss it.
In other news, we've got some links. Larfus reminds us about the the great Doodieman movie. And then he gives us something new: like Trigger Happy TV, but with poop.
Sonny Froman sends us Cow Chip Shirts. "Anyone who has worked or grown up on a farm with cattle has sooner or later been knee deep in manure (100% real cow manure was the product used to produce these shirts). The idea was conceived after reminiscing about farm chores and the staining ability of cow manure on shirts."
And finally, Anthony from The Final Wipe shares with us an email he received:
Just had to let you guys know that our son, Michael, is a Reconaissance Marine serving in Iraq. We sent him some of your Final Wipes and he said they have saved his life. With the unusual food and questionnable water Final Wipes has been his friend in the field. He wanted to let you know that Final Wipes have gone "World-wide" and to say "Thank you". Thank you for helping to mke his life a little easier.
Sincerely, Bob and Marie Wilbur, Sharon, CT
Potty tipping is apparently a costly act of toilet terrorism. The owner of Dothan-based Portable Toilet Services said each damaged toilet costs at least $150 in time, energy and repairs.
Dothan Police Captain John Givens remains ever vigilant, and expects to capture the commode culprits in a sting operation he has devised. Givens would not reveal the particulars of his plan to flush out the potty pranksters.
PoopReport wishes Captain Givens good luck, but we must admit that toilet tipping seems much less cruel than that other famous Alabama pastime... cow tipping.
In other news: In searching for a picture of a portable toilet, I found this. Check it out!
Last year, while only eight years old, Joey wrote a letter to Kohler, a Wisconsin-based toilet manufacturer, suggesting the company produce a clear commode. Joey, apparently a very curious and practical kid, just wanted to see exactly how the insides of a flush toilet work.
"It's pretty unusual to get a letter like that from an 8-year-old," said John Bashaw, Kohler's custom service director. Kohler responded that while they cannot produce a clear commode, they were sending Joey a state-of-the-art bulk-flush toilet to show their appreciation for Joey's flush of enthusiasm.
Young Joey, who keeps a toolbox tucked under his bed, received the new toilet in December; a local plumber, Dennis Potter of Ohio Spa & Parts, agreed to help our littlest PoopReporter install the crapper for Christmas.
Joey's mom, Michelle Sinay, said he already had an ample apprenticeship of sorts. "When we built our home, we would come over a lot when they were building it, and he followed the plumber around (and) just watched."
Potter showed Joey how to install the flush commode, gave him toilet tips, and then quizzed him on the unit's many functions. By the end of the training session, Joey was working on the installation by himself, disconnecting and disposing the old toilet tank, bolting down the new toilet seat, and soaking up potty knowledge from a real life licensed plumber.
"Plumbers are guardians of the nation's health because they take care of everything," Potter told his apprentice.
Not awed by Potter's potty philosophy, practical Joey, now nearly a journeyman, responded, "It was just fun to put it together!"
Thanks to the UK's Freedom of Information Act, we now know that when it comes to toilet paper, Her Majesty's government spent 17 years caring more about the cost of paper than the price of a chafed bunghole.
A file recently made public begins with this: "An unusual request! A patient of mine has piles and he thinks that the government lavatory paper is out of date and extremely bad for his complaint. He has asked me if there is any chance of it being change to a softer type."
This was a much bigger deal than you might think. In 60's and 70's Britain, they would have been lucky to have such sandpaper-disgused-as-toilet-paper as the Marcal we have today -- their TP was SO MUCH WORSE, as you can see below. MY GOD!!!!
The initial response was that an increase in the toilet paper expenditure by even half a farthing (whatever the hell a farthing is!) would cost the government over 170,000 pounds. Money was the typical response whenever this issue arose, but sometimes the rejections would be more blunt: "The prevailing philosophy is that we each stand on our own feet; so I take it that the adjunct to that is that we each sit on our own bottoms - and don't expect the state to mollycoddle them!"
Finally, in 1980, the answer those poor sods were seeking: "I think HMSO and other providers should now be encouraged to supply the soft tissue variety of toilet paper." Why the change of heart? As the Telegraph puts it: "For reasons that might not be appropriately described in a newspaper without risk of offence, hard paper was less hygienic than soft."
PoopReporters, of course, know that it's not only ethical for an organization to supply soft toilet paper, it's also good for business. The reasoning is simple: if your ass is unhappy, your productivity will suffer. Please the ass, and the worker will respond in kind.
And that stuff they were forced to use... my God, it's inhumane.
For some of you, this is the moment you've been waiting for: an opportunity to find out if my voice is as sexy as my picture. Because today's episode of Chris Rockwell's The Daily Download features an interview with yours truly. We talk about -- you guessed it -- poop.
Next time you nuzzle up to your sweetie to steal a holiday kiss under the mistletoe, you may want to know what "mistletoe" means. Well, LiveScience.com claims that the ancients believed mistletoe sprang spontaneously from bird droppings. In fact, in old Anglo-Saxon talk, mistle meant dung, and tan meant twig. So mistletoe literally means "dung on a twig."
Later, it was found that birds actually ate the mistletoe seeds which remained undigested and germinated in the droppings left on tree branches. The plant then rooted itself to the bark of its arboreal host and lived off nutrients sucked from the tree.
The tradition of kissing under the mistletoe may have sprung from the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a festival marking the winter solstice. Apparently, in Scandinavia, mistletoe was considered a plant of peace, under which enemies could declare a truce or warring spouses kiss and make up.
Being the editor of PoopReport isn't an easy job. I have my hands full getting all the content online and managing all the places where poop fetish freaks try to post up their little fantasies. It's a full-time job -- which means I don't have much time to go out and see what's new in the world of online poop.
Fortunately, the ranks of loyal PoopReporters overflow. Sometimes random people send me random links -- Matt, for instance, says we should go read "a story about a roommate and poop... LOTS of poop!"
But more often then the random ones are the emails from my regular tipsters, who constantly troll the web to bring us the content we hold so dear. There's Tony, the man who brainstormed I Poop And I Vote, who lets me know whenever he finds something relevant to politics and poo. I don't get the joke on that one, but maybe another reader will.
Homeland Renewable Energy of Boston is constructing a turkey poop-powered plant in Minnesota that will pump out a clean source of electricity for 55,000 homes. Three poultry litter-fired plants already exist in England, but the new facility in Benson, Minnesota, will be the first large-scale plant of its type in the States, and the largest in the world.
Turkey plop is preferred as power plant fuel over pig shit and cow pies. "Poultry litter is drier material, so it burns better, and there's a lot of it," says Charles Grecco, an investment banker who helped arrange the plant's $202 million dollar finance package, and who apparently knows his shit. The 5-megawatt plant will consume 700,000 tons of poop per year, and produce fertilizer as a by-product.
The plant will use processes that prevent the phosphorus and nitrates in turkey turds from entering the neighboring water resources, according to Grecco. Additionally, the plant will emit no more carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, than would naturally escape from the same quantity of decomposing crap, Grecco claims.
Fibrowatt, a subsidiary of Homeland Renewable Energy, is planning to build more poop-powered plants in other poultry producing states.
The poop inbox doth overflow with the gifts of holiday-related poop links. Crapola helps us make it a brown Christmas with this little stocking stuffer. But she's just getting warmed up. How about Reinderpoop.com, of which she says, "Including Poop-o-Grams to send for free! Perfect for those who were too lame, too cheap, or too broke under the Bush "economic recovery" to purchase Sphincterine or the Journal of Ass Production for their family and friends for the holidays."
Oh wait, there's more email from Crapola: "I adapted/improved upon a poem at http://www.kimstamps.com/poop.html to create this doody ditty:"
R E I N D E E R P O O P
Santa saved a precious gift
Especially for you
Just a little something extra
And it comes from Rudolph, too!
He knows that you've been naughty
Instead of being nice
You are on his sh*t list
And he's checked it over twice
Santa hopes your present
Doesn't throw you for a loop
'Cuz all you're getting this year
Is a pile of reindeer poop!
Crapola's not the only one in the holiday spirit. Larfus gives us the Farting Santas and, finally, the 12 Days of Xmas as presented by farting elves. Enjoy them!
BuildingGreen Inc., publisher of the GreenSpec Directory and Environmental Building News, has selected its top 10 green building products of 2004, recognizing the most interesting products added to the GreenSpec Directory during the past year. Among the 2004 top 10 include the FlushMate IV pressure-assisted toilet flush mechanism, which reduces the water required per flush from 1.6 gallons to 1.0 gallons. Sloan Valve introduced the 1.0-gpf FlushMate IV mechanism in 2003, and the first toilets with the mechanism became available in 2004.
It is estimated that standard toilets and urinals flush up to 20% of the world's available drinking water right down the sewer. The manufacturer of the FlushMate claims that the installation of their product will save up to forty thousand gallons of water per year in a large commercial building.
Pressure-assist toilets have an inner airtight "flushometer" tank into which air is compressed as the water tank refills after a flush. The air pressure released with the low-flow flush sweeps all the waste from the toilet bowl and saves additional water by eliminating the need for second flushes typical in other low-flow toilets.
PoopReport endorses the use of innovative toilets that save water while affording the standard comforts that we Poopers have come to enjoy on our porcelain thrones.
The Port-O-Jet dragster, a flashy outhouse powered by a 750-pound Boeing jet engine, reportedly is capable of breaking the World's Land Shit Speed Record of 45 mph, currently held by PoopReport's own Mr. Blaster.
Here's the latest on Ronald Preston McPike, a 52-year old psychiatrist from the sleepy hamlet of Bonaparte, Iowa, who was charged with harassing a public official after paying a parking ticket with shitstained dollar bills.
Assistant Des Moines County Attorney Heidi Van Winkle sought the maximum $500 fine and 30 days in jail for McPike who wrapped the $5 ticket together with several pootaminated bank notes, and mailed the package to outraged city officials.
McPike's lawyer, Bryan Schulte, said his client had made a "serious error in judgment."
"He was vexed at getting parking tickets left and right and didn't consider what he did a criminal act," Schulte said.
Associate Judge Gary Snyder said McPike demonstrated "immature behavior unbecoming a professional person."
"It's hard to put this case into perspective because people seem to get more riled up about parking tickets than anything else," Snyder said. "This is a public heath issue which shouldn't have happened."
An Orange County Florida sheriff's deputy dismissed for pissing in a public elevator argues against his firing saying a chronic ailment is to blame.
Deputy Carl Brown, caught in the act by a surveillance cameras, says his actions were caused by a medical condition, and provided doctors' documentation that he had a condition that caused him to urinate frequently and sometimes uncontrollably.
The videotape showed Brown reaching up to the security camera and pushing it aside when he noticed it after urinating.
An internal investigation determined Brown had violated two standards of police conduct -- conformance of laws and conduct unbecoming an officer. He was given a 40-hour suspension for the first offense and fired for the second.
Brown is scheduled to appear in court next Monday to appeal his firing.
First I wanted to tell you how much I love your site. It brings me much Joy!!
I also wanted to tell you about my podcast. I do a daily (I hope, if not it gets uncomfortable) podcast from my toilet while taking a dump. There are also past episodes in mp3 on my web page www.apeboymonkeygirl.com ...
Sure enough, that's what he does. Daily poop reports from on the toilet, with the narrator telling us what he had to eat, how it's coming out, and keeping us entertained while we're waiting for resolution.
In today's Podcast (a Podcast, according to Wikipedia, "involves the recording of internet radio or similar internet audio programs. These recordings are then made available for download to your iPod or other portable digital audio device."), Chris attempts to answer this week's question in PoopReport's Ask PoopReport section: how do people with long fingernails wipe their butt?
Does he solve this riddle? Find out by visiting Apeboymonkeygirl.com (strange name for a poop website) to hear a live-at-the-moment playback as Chris enters the bathroom, drops his pants, poops and then tries to wipe while wearing fake nails.
My favorite quote: "Whoops. I did break a nail. The good news is that it is in the toilet, and not in me."
Chris, we at PoopReport admire your scientific spirit. We have tons of unanswered questions that need an adventurous mind such as yours. We've always wondered, for instance, how obese people wipe. Maybe you can tape a bunch of pillows to your arms and your waist and help us find out?
In the old cop shows, the grizzled old veteran detectvies would get their big break when the rookie everyone understimated realized that the criminals are robbing banks in alphabetical order -- Apple Bank, Birch Street Savings and Loan, Citibank, and so on. So they hide out at next bank down the list and get their man. Stupid, predictable crooks, but it makes for easy resolution within the constraints of a half-hour episode.
My Dream Park, a large playground structure in Monona's Winnequah Park, had been suffering a rash of poop vandalism. Hoodlums -- no, let's use a stronger word -- EVILDOERS had been attacking the park, leaving their vile, corn-ridden calling-cards on playground equiprment.
Back in the good ol' days, a few swipes with the janitor's trusty mop would be enough to solve this problem. But this is post-9/11 America. "We'd have to close off the park," said Monona Police Chief Walter Ostrenga, "and hire a hazardous materials team to go clean and disinfect the park."
This homegrown terror group struck repeatedly, each dookie it left a brazen slap in the face of all that is good and civilized, costing the taxpayers thousands of dollars in cleanup fees. The police put up cameras and lights, but even that wasn't enough to deter the perpetrators. The cops were baffled. There was no motive, no witnesses, nothing to predict the next strike.
Until Bob McNown, Monona's secret weapon in the fight against crime, finally realized the crucial bit of information that had eluded the brightest minds in all Dane County: the criminal masterminds ONLY STRUCK AT NIGHT.
Gosh, that was easy. So Bob hung out in the park after 11 PM. The perps (stupid teenagers, unsurprisingly) turned up at 12. Bob called his colleagues, an arrest was made, and now Monona is safe again.
Thank you, Bob McNown. That you for being smarter than the criminals. We need more people like you -- now more than ever.
(Thanks to Dennis Arnold for sending this in.)
When considering the ecological effects of massive discharges of treated or untreated excrement into our rivers, streams, and estuaries, the issue is not just human waste. The fact is, animals generate 130 times more excrement than humans nationwide. So, we must also consider proper management of the manure generated by the hundreds of millions of domestic animals we keep as pets or maintain as food stock.
The issue can be as small as realizing our individual responsibility to pick up and properly dispose of the snicker doodles our pooches leave on the sidewalks and in the street gutters before the waste is washed through the storm sewer system and into a nearby trout stream or swimming lake.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, through its Natural Resources Conservation Service, advises, requires, and pays farmers to engage in specific manure management programs designed to safely stockpile and dispose of animal waste.
State and locally funded Soil and Water Conservation Districts run education and outreach programs that encourage farmers and animal owners to employ best management practices such as grass filter strips between stock pens and adjacent waterways or ponds.
Many land grant colleges have agricultural extension services that help citizens understand and address manure management effectively.
Many government agencies and educational institutions maintain extensive Web sites to dispense data detailing practices for properly managing and disposing pet and farm animal wastes. State and local government generously subsidize the cost of installing agricultural best management practices.
It is perplexing when reports of manure spills, fish kills, and E. coli contamination of public waters fill the media. Take for example a recent incident in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where about 1.8 millions tons of liquid manure discharged from a 12-inch PVC tile into the headwaters of Point Creek in late November 2004.
In agricultural settings, PVC tile often is part of a subsurface system of drains used to draw excess storm water off farm fields so that crops are not drowned out. Farmers routinely spread manure across the surface of cropland to dispose of the waste and take advantage of its fertilizing properties. Centuries of observation and common sense tells us that natural processes will ensure that a thinly applied layer of manure decomposes quickly, and that the soil usually filters most organic pollutants before they contaminate the underlying groundwater.
So, what happened at Point Creek? Was an immense quantity of manure stockpiled or spread on porous soil overlaying a shallow or broken drain tile system, or did someone intentionally dump two million tons of liquid manure directly into an inlet to the subsurface system?
Manitowoc County executive Dan Fischer says, "I am truly uncertain yet where the liquid manure came from." Fischer said if the cause of the spill is a defective tile line or an underground crevasse, it can be easily addressed. However, if the issue is connected to how state and federal agencies mandate manure management, "then it becomes a horse of a different color," concluded Fischer.
What Fischer is referencing is that according to Wisconsin's recommended best management practices, liquid manure is injected into the soil; and from there, it is assumed that the soil will filter the manure before it reaches the porous drain tiles typically three to four feet underground.
While Fischer continues to investigate the source of Point Creek's massive manure pollution, Russ Tooley, director of Centerville CARES, a grassroots environmental group, questions the system of using liquid manure injection on land with subsurface drain tiles.
"Point Creek seemed to be recovering from prior contamination during the summer, but this will set us back again," said Tooley. Cropland with drain tiles and modern farming methods that spray liquid manure over those tiles are always a disaster just waiting to happen. Liquid manure drains just like water, but it kills our fish and poisons our water," Tooley explained.
While no game fish or large rough fish are documented as killed yet, some small, dead minnows were collected by the state DNR, and believed killed by the manure spilled into Point Creek. Raw manure, as well as other organic waste, draws dissolved oxygen from creek water to accomplish decomposition, thereby depleting the oxygen fish require to breath.
Tom Ward, director of the Manitowoc County Soil & Water Conservation District said his department has not experienced many problems with polluted discharges from subsurface drain systems. Both Ward and Fischer stress the importance of studying the effect of drainage tile discharge to identify methods to reduce environmental impact while maintaining and improving farm profitability, such as the study project at Discovery Farms.
With more than five tons of livestock manure produced each year for every person in the United States, compared to 80 pounds of solid human waste, is critical that we who are pet owners and farmers, or who have neighbors who keep animals learn, practice, and preach methods of proper animal waste management.
Find out which agencies in your community receive and respond to reports of illegal dumping of human or animal excrement into public waters. If you see evidence of an illicit discharge, call the hotline. Adopt a stream, or join with volunteer stream monitors in programs like HoosierRiverwatch. Be aware and get involved.
Previously, the high salt content of the water Carmelians pooped in required periodic flushing of golf course greens and irrigation plumbing with potable water to remove the leftover salts. Upgraded equipment and better processing techniques will remove the salt and eliminate the need for flushing with drinking water.
Dick Andrews, the district's general manager, said the project should eliminate golf course irrigation with potable water except in the case of extreme drought.
The agreement also anticipates surpluses of recycled wastewater to benefit steelhead trout habitat by raising the water level in the Carmel River Lagoon. The lagoon suffered a severe water shortage this summer.
The project will result in about 300 acre-feet of water returned to the Carmel River each year, enough water to serve about 1,200 homes, said David Berger, general manager of the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District.
PoopReport supports ecologically sound use of recycled wastewater, and readers should anticipate periodic articles on this issue.
Robert Kilroy-Silk, former talk show host and right-wing member of the European Parliament, was doused with a bucket of liquid manure last Friday evening as he arrived for a live radio show at the Manchester High School for Girls.
At the start of the program, host Jonathan Dimbleby explained to listeners that panelist Kilroy-Silk had been covered from "head to toe" in a soupy slurry of shit. Kilroy-Silk cleaned up and changed clothes before joining the rest of the panel in a post-poop plopping political discussion.
Kilroy-Silk explained that as he got out of his car "a guy tipped a bucket of farmyard muck over me, and then threw the rest of it over me and the car. I was totally covered, it was all through my clothes, and it stank to high heaven."
Kilroy-Silk said he then grabbed his attacker and told him, "You obviously like shit, have some back," and rubbed liberal measures of the mire into the assailant's hair and face. Kilroy-Silk said on air that his shit-faced assailant had shouted, "In the name of Islam!" as he tipped the bucket of barnyard brew onto the MEP.
Kilroy-Silk, a well-know critic of the European Union, was discharged last January from his popular BBC radio show host position after describing Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb-amputators, and women repressors" in a column he wrote for an English newspaper, the Daily Express.
Kilroy-Silk says he hopes to press charges against his shit-slinging assailant, who remains at large after slipping out of the MEP's grimy grasp and running from the slimy crime scene screaming "Ensheeeeelah!"
Dennis "I didn't know my pants could hold THAT much!" Arnold wants you to visit the Toilet of Terror, telling us, "To get the full effect you do need to have your speakers on for this one."
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain a tilted and signed white urinal that shocked the art world in 1917, beat out two of Picasso's most well-known works, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica, and scored ahead of Andy Warhol's fabulously famous Marilyn Diptych and Henri Matisse's poetic masterpiece, The Red Studio.
Attendance at the Turner exhibition has been rising after a sharp fall in the wake of 1998's showing of Chris Ofili's elephant dung paintings, seen by more than 1,400 visitors a day.
PoopReport hopes the art viewing public responds enthusiastically to this year's awarding of top honors to Duchamp's "Fountain," a tribute to modern humanity's most common function, waste elimination.
Also, I found this while surfing for the other links.
Diane Blair's boyfriend, Kenneth Fleegle, is charged with forcing Blair's seven-year-old son to rub feces on himself as a form of punishment for "going to the bathroom on the floor where he wasn't supposed to go." Apparently, in addition to being a piss-poor guardian, Blair also neglected to potty train her kid.
While evil Mr. Fleegle is being held in the Allegheny County Jail, bad Ms. Blair faces a misdemeanor charge of child endangerment for allegedly not trying to stop her boyfriend's abuse of the child. Blair said, "I would technically not do it myself, but I would do it a different way. Just because I didn't stop it, I shouldn't be condemned. You know what I mean?"
No, PoopReport does not know what the hell you mean, bitch!
Thankfully, the child is living with a foster parent while the case makes it way through the Indiana County, Pennsylvania courts. Here's hoping both adult perpetrators of this heinous crime get their just desserts.
U.K. energy giant British Gas believes luxuriant toilet paper is partly to blame for the recent rash of clogged toilets across England this year. The utility operates a plumbing division with 1.2 million crapping customers and reports unblocking more than 35,000 toilets in the first six months of 2004.
So British Gas commissioned an independent scientific research firm, Advantica, to conduct tests to determine just how long it takes for various tissue products to dissolve in the toilet. Advantica found that the lower-priced tissues broke up into easily-flushable pulp in just three to four minutes. At the other end of the scale, moist wipes and other similar posterior-pampering paper failed to break down after several days.
British Gas spokesperson, Alan McLauglin said, "The explosion in luxury toilet paper is placing the UK's toilets under considerable strain. Our tests have revealed that some paper takes hours to disintegrate ... resulting in our plumbers being called out more often."
This came in email over the holiday. Since I'm too cheap to go out and get the book for myself, we'll just have to take Greg's word for it. -Dave
Hello Emperor Dave,
I do enjoy being on your mailing list and occasionally dipping in for a visit to your Vast Poo Empire. Thanks for all the hard work, and please don't get a job.
It has occurred to me that there is something you could be selling on your site - or at least providing a link. It is one of the most incredible graphic novels ever penned, and a major subtheme is poo. Poo like you've never seen it before. I can't recomment this highly enough.
It is out of print and perhaps hard to find, but a new edition is supposed to be published this year. Here's a blurb, snitched from its publisher's site:
--------------------------------------------------------------
"Ed the Happy Clown"
by Chester Brown
Chester Brown's indispensible first book collects the now-classic absurdist Ed storyline that was originally serialized in the first 18 issues of Yummy Fur. The bizarre range of subject matter is almost impossible to describe in its appropriate context: cannibalism, incest, necrophilia, and the head of a certain former U.S. president attached to another man's penis. See it to believe it!
---------------------
Oh, and did I mention that it is also about poo?
Kind regards,
Greg
Somebody out there check it out and get back to us.
How would you like to be relaxing on the crapper, trying to pump out a grumper, maybe even humming a bar or two of your latest favorite tune, when the walls suddenly collapse on your head?
Well, that's exactly what happened to Eminem backstage at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Rome. Yeah, the Detroit-based rapper was head-butted on the crapper when one of his oversized bodyguards bulldozed down a stall divider while forcing his big fat ass into an adjoining toilet cubicle.
PoopReport certainly hopes Eminem exploits the gruntus interuptus incident in graphic new song lyrics.
Julie Arnold went for nearly a year in Niagara Falls, New York, without a regular paycheck, but still managed to support her infant daughter and a husband disabled in a car accident. But after moving to Florida, she decided to expand her self-employment into browner fields. Arnold entered the Brevard County market with a pet waste pickup service called the Super Duper Pooper Scooper. With only her Aerostar van, disposable rubber gloves, plastic trash bags and spunk, Arnold began making house calls to poop-challenged customers.
Surprisingly, Arnold's enterprise has plenty of counterparts. According to Matthew Osborn, another poop-oriented entrepreneur who operates the online Dog Waste Removal Service Information pages, over 200 companies nationwide offer pet waste removal services.
"There are three reasons you hire somebody else to do this kind of work," says Osborn. "Number one is the yuck factor. There are some things that people just don't like to do. Number two is they physically can't do it. Maybe they're old or disabled. Number three is time. A lot of my clients were two-income households, professional people who might be working up to 60 hours a week. They've got better things to do than shovel up dog crap."
"I would rather change dirty diapers than clean up (dog poop)," says Gitta Deleo of Titusville, Florida, owner of a 100-pound Labrador retriever. "When I first heard about this, I couldn't believe there was a service like this around here."
Julie Arnold hopes to cash in on the demand for contractual poop scooping, and chances are that she will. Matthew Osborne founded his business in Columbus, Ohio, as a one-man operation. In 1998, after ten years scooping poop, Osborne sold his enterprise for $200,000. When he sold out, he had six employees, five pickup trucks, and 600 clients a week.
Yeah, I know three-quarters of the world squats over a shallow trench outside their thatch-roofed huts or on the bare wet ground in a rice patty; and I know they wipe their asses with banana leaves, corn cobs, or a handful of dirt, if at all. And yeah, I realize all those high-minded eggheads at the World Toilet Summit over in Beijing are trying to elevate the developing world out of its Stone Age state of plumbing. But ask yourself: "What's so relevant about World Toilet Day anyway?"
Absolutely nothing!
Now, World Poop Day, on the other hand, is a day of real unification -- especially as envisioned by Dave Praeger, creator and editor of this august site.
While humanity teeters on the very brink of annihilation, divided by race, religion, and politics, with violence and horror threatening to overwhelm any progress toward universal peace and liberty, what single human feature unites us all? Poop! And even though Poop For Peace Day was April 16, 2004, do not despair -- for it is never too late to poop for peace.
The philosophy of this PoopReport is that the act of pooping acknowledges our shared humanity, and consummates our unity with all other living creatures. As humans, whether black, white, red, yellow, or brown, we all must relieve our bowels of their burden. Conservative, liberal, socialist, royalist, revolutionary, pacifist, or war hawk, we are all united in the struggle against the tyranny of the bowel. Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Pagan, Wiccan, or whatever, we all must offer our sacrifice at the altar of Grump.
So, to acknowledge World Toilet Day, PoopReport suggests that instead of contemplating the toilet as "a tool of social change," go take a good old-fashioned shit! Yeah, think of Bush, Blair, bin Laden, Sharon, Saddam, and the Pope. Think about the fact that twelve or so hours after they nosh, there’s some toilet or bedpan somewhere in this world into which a pile of poop is going to resoundingly plop.
Ponder our differences, but realize one thing: we are all human beings, and our poop proves it. Brothers bonded by the movement of our bowels; sisters united by shit.
Encourage your family to join in. Call your friends. Email your congressman. And then go grunt out a grumper for your fellow man.
South Australian state Greens MP Kris Hanna said cameras are legal in workplace toilets and changing rooms -- and that he would move to tighten laws and ban them those private places. His comments followed revelations that a camera was discovered in a women's shower at an Adelaide boarding school.
The State Government declared the hidden camera "sickening and perverted" but said it was not against Aussie laws. Now aren't you glad you live in the good ol' U.S. of A.?
In other world news: As part of a religious rite, Hindu worshippers build mounds of cow dung -- some several feet high -- to symbolize a mythical mountain that Krishna raised to save devotees from an ancient flood.
Celebrators actually compete to see who builds the biggest cow flop pile, or Goverdhan. This year, in the Belanganj area, the colonies of Balkeshwar and Pathwari had their own 20-foot tall Goverdhans, for which tons of cow shit was carted in for devotees to pat by hand into shape. The trans-Yamuna area had a 12-foot tall heap of crap that was judged slightly better built that the other mounds of poop.
After reverentially molding the mountains of cow dung into shape, the worshippers anoint the heaps with milk, curd, and honey, then circle of the mounds chanting religious hymns. After completing the religious ceremonies, the more affluent residents organize community dinners called chappan bhog where they enjoy up to 56 dishes that were favorites of Lord Krishna.
overturned about 90 unsecured port-a-potties since last November. 
sprang spontaneously from bird droppings. In fact, in old Anglo-Saxon talk, mistle meant dung, and tan meant twig. So mistletoe literally means "
of the manure generated by the hundreds of millions of domestic animals we keep as pets or maintain as food stock. 
in 
natural processes will ensure that a thinly applied layer of manure decomposes quickly, and that the soil usually filters most organic pollutants before they contaminate the underlying groundwater. 
group, questions the system of using liquid manure injection on land with subsurface drain tiles. 
effect of drainage tile discharge to identify methods to reduce environmental impact while maintaining and improving farm profitability, such as the 
