I was going down Pasadena Boulevard (or Poopadena, as I like to call it), about five miles from home. Halfway down the road, somewhere between the corner store and Dairy Queen, the coffee hit me, and it hit me hard.

I quickly u-turned into an apartment complex and headed back toward the corner store to relieve my aching stomach; but just as the car got back on the road, it happened. Something that hasn't happened to me since I was three years old. I farted, and that started a tsunami of diarrhea shooting out of my anus.

It seemed the more I clenched, the more it shot out, hot and runny. Since I was in my husband's car, I panicked and grabbed a folder and stuck it between me and the seat. What a day to go commando, huh?

I thought I was doing good until I looked down and noticed the bubbly mess was now spilling over the top of my pants, and I could feel it running out the back, as well. I drove the rest of the way home in the warm, runny seat, just hoping that a cop wouldn't pull me over and ask me to step out of the car.

I made it home, ran inside, and jumped in the shower. When my husband woke up, he had his usual morning attitude, so I didn't tell him right away, for fear that he would gripe at me that the car might smell.

Later that afternoon I saw him come in the house with a bag of stuff he had cleaned out of the car -- and the poopy folder pressed tightly against his chest. Due to his crappy attitude earlier that day, I just laughed and let him rub it all over himself before he later threw it away.

Moral of the story: Don't drink coffee at 7:00 AM with no underwear on in someone else's car when you're three miles from a toilet.

We had just finished two-a-days (which is when you have two football practices during one day, usually in the summer), and I felt the need. As I made my way up to the field house I felt my legs starting to cramp. I began to walk a little faster. Finally, I reached my safe-haven and I sat down on the first open throne.

As soon as I was seated, I felt a cramp take hold of my gluteus muscles. "Why, God???" I begged. But I continued my struggle anyway.

One turd... two turds... but oh no, not three... the third turd was much more. I was dealing with a log the length and width of my lower leg. Amidst the butt cramps, I pushed the log out with triumph. It was almost out when I felt this horrible pain. But it went away after a second, so I began to wipe.

I usually go with the grain the first wipe, then against for the second and third. But today just wasn't my day. I wiped once, and when I went back for seconds it felt like I was taking a cheese grater to my asshole. I looked at the two-ply I was using and it looked like someone had slaughtered a cow on my anus paper. I knew deep in my heart: I had torn my butthole.

I let out the girliest scream ever to occur in a field house. Coach came running, and when he looked down at what I had created, he called an ambulance. I was taken to the hospital, where they looked at me funny and said it would heal itself in time. That day was forever known as the day I couldn't go against the grain.

I could feel it surge, slamming my rectum with the force of a D9 bulldozer. I knew I had to go now. I thought that if I hurried, I could make it to the shop. I scrambled to load my mower onto the wagon behind my golf cart.

It seems that the effort it took to push the mower up the tiny ramp was just enough to break the seal, because right then the floodgates opened. My pants were full of shit, and I was in a panic. I managed to clench my ass shut for another second or two -- long enough to allow me to run to the nearest tree and drop my pants, where I let loose the foulest shitting that I can recall.

When it was all over, I had a ruined pair of boxer shorts and workpants in need of serious cleaning. So I headed back to my car where, luckily, I had a basket full of dirty laundry. I grabbed a pair of pants and ran for the restroom. As if things weren't bad enough, I passed my boss, who thought it odd that I was back so soon from mowing. I avoided him, explaining that I was not feeling well and needed to get to the restroom.

I used the trash bag from the restroom to put my clothes in, and about an entire roll of the crappy institutional single-ply paper to clean up as best as I could.

To be sung to the melody of "Desperado" by the Eagles:

Desperado
Why don't you come to your senses?
You've been out buying one-ply,
That's too hard for your ass.

Oh, you're a hard one
But I know that you've got your reasons
Lack of money and coupons
Will hurt you somehow

Don't your holes get sore in the worst of times?
Chafing, soreness and a rash like hives.
It's hard to tell the good brands from the bad.

Now it seems to me some products
Say it right there on the label
But you never buy the ones
That you can get

Desperado
Oh you ain't getting' no younger
Your pain and your suffering
Can come to an end

And freedom, Oh freedom
From the worry and shame.
Your prison is walking
With your ass all scrunched up

Don't your holes get sore in the worst of times?
Chafing, soreness and a rash like hives.
It's hard to tell the good brands from the bad.

You're losing all your dignity
Ain't it funny how the feeling comes
And stays...

Desperado
Why don't you come to your senses?
You've been out buying one-ply,
Starting the ache

It may be gamey
But there are creams all around you
You'd better let somebody help you
LET SOMEBODY HELP YOU
You'd better let somebody help you
Before you need a bag.

Today, W was enrapt;
Finally, he had crapped.

Breaking wind, he scared the Dow;
A jobless recovery was it for now.

Happily, he raved about the GDP.
The toilet was outsourcing hee-hee-hee!

-- posted 7.26.02004 by Mary Mills

There were no toilets in sight, so I decided not to tell my friends, and to hold the little rascal inside me. We carried on walking, when all the time the pain was getting worse. I was waddling desperately, trying to keep both bum cheeks clenched.

About an hour later, I saw a loo. I rushed inside, desperate to be sitting where I belonged. A women stopped me, and I found out it was one of the public toilets were you pay 20p to get the door to lock. I put in the money and sat down with a sigh of relief.

That relief soon turned to grunts of agony. Because I had been holding on for so long, the monster had changed from slush to rock, and I couldn't push it out. I was at my wits end, desperately trying to send the poop to where it belonged. The little devil just didn't want to leave the comfort of my arse. I could hear my friends telling me to hurry up, but I wasn't coming out 'til the beast was flushed away.

By now, I had been sitting on the loo for nearly half an hour, and tears were flowing from the pain. I knew that my mates -- and anyone else in the toilets -- would hear me grunting and sobbing fit to burst. I bit my lip and carried on, experimenting with strange positions and contortions.

All of a sudden, the toilet door flew open! The toilet had a timer, and you weren't allowed more then thirty-five minutes on the loo! The entire contents of the toilets (about ten people) and all my friends saw me sitting, pushing on the bog, red faced, tearful and straining with a vengeance!

I grabbed another 20p and stuck it in. I was safe, for now. Eventually, of course, the poop came out with a plop. I breathed again, and flushed calmly. Soon, I had left the torture chamber far behind. However, my mates haven't forgotten! Their new name for me is "Constipated Cathy."

I was in the car early one morning when it started. Tummy rumbled, butt cheeks slammed shut, and I prayed to make it to the next town.

The first store I came to was a Wal-Mart. I tight-cheeked it to the back bathroom by the layaway department. I thought it would be safe, because it was early and not many people were in the store. Into the last stall -- the one farthest from the door -- I sprinted. I had only just sat down when my bowel let out an angry, irritable growl and my insides fell out!

I sat there with a look of absolute horror on my face as loud shrieks and gurgles came forth from some spot hidden deep within my body. Loud and thunderous, they echoed in the empty bathroom. After what felt like decades, I grabbed toilet paper and proceeded to wipe what was left of my ass.

I stood, pulled up my pants, and looked in horror at the broken handle on the toilet in which I'd just exorcized my demons. I tried with no success to put the handle back on; it just hit the floor with a loud clang.

I grabbed my purse, walked as fast as I could out of the store, got into my car and sped out of the parking lot. I truly feel sorry for the poor high school kid they probably sent in there to deal with the situation.

About an hour later, I felt like I had to fart. I kept letting them out continuously for ten minutes. After ten minutes of farting, another one was on the way. I was letting it out when I felt something wet coming out along with it. I ran to the bathroom, holding my butt cheeks together with my hands.

Just as I was unbuckling my jeans, I felt it coming out. And just as I sat down, brown water came blasting out of my butt like there was no tomorrow. I had to hold on to the toilet seat to keep steady. After five minutes, the explosion was done.

About ten minutes later, I tried to fart again, and the same thing happened -- except as I got to the bathroom, I was just about to sit when it exploded twice as hard. It went all over the toilet, the wall and the floor.

This happened five more times that day. If you buy those sugar free candies, be careful about how many you eat.

Mother and I laughed at this, not thinking much of it.

The next day, when it was time for my daily dozer, I waited for it to crown as usual so the excretion would be a smooth one. I heeded the landlord's warning and flushed BEFORE wiping; but I was disturbed to hear the toilet abruptly stop in mid-flush. I jumped up in horror, flipped on the light, and saw that my feces had plugged the hole like a cork. It wouldn't budge.

I had to wake mother up to get a coat hanger, and all she could find was a little plastic one. We sat beside the toilet, poking at the plug 'til we could feel it no more. It took three or four more flushes for the toilet to run smoothly again.

I am utterly traumatized by this experience, and would like a new toilet, not one of these conservative pieces of bullshit that uses less water. Or I could just start eating more fiber and drinking more water...

It takes a lot of will power to chug an entire bottle of Milk of Magnesia, or to eat a box of dried prunes just for the pure satisfaction and health of pooping. So, in other words, I am jealous of people who crap after every bite they eat.

I have a friend who goes at least four times a day and rubs it in my face every time she wipes. "When was the last time you went? I just went five minutes ago! Ha!"

So my word to humanity is this: be grateful you have the capability and enjoyment of pooping! Because pooping happiness only flushes me about once a week.

Long story short: we were forced to purchase a new set of tickets home, and now faced a three-hour wait before our new flight departed.

I must mention the fact that, during our weeklong stay in the Citrus State, I had been struck with a god-awful case of constipation. That's right, not once during the entire week was I able to drop the kiddies off at the pool. Up until this point I was not terribly bothered by this, nor had it been a source of terrible discomfort. I had, however, noticed a dramatic spike in the old fart-o-meter.

So vile was the odor emanating from my bowels by the end of the week that, taking notice of an impending release at one point during our trek down the highway, I deviously locked out the power windows from the driver's side console -- thereby offering no chance of escape -- and let loose with what could only be described as a level ten eye-watering nose-scorching make-your-mother-cry jolly roger of a fart that almost immediately sent my comrade clambering for the power window button. Obviously to no avail. Faced with the gravity of his situation, he actually began clawing at the passenger side window, weeping and begging for mercy.

Karma, it seems, is not without a sense of humor. As we navigated through the airline terminal crowd, I was about twenty paces ahead of my pal; between us was an elderly woman to whom I was unintentionally subjecting a fierce onslaught of farts. I heard my friend call out as he approached from behind, "Can't you wait till you get to a toilet?" Surprised, I turned, only to be met with the grimacing glare of this poor old woman trapped in the line of fire.

I now knew that the time had come to purge; so I headed for the first available restroom, threw down my luggage, and dropped one of the nastiest bowl crackers I had ever seen. One of those triple flushers that make you wonder how in the hell it ever fit inside of you in the first place...

So when the diarrhea sweats hit me while at work one day, I decided I would try to ride them out. I was wearing a g-string, and of course the hot liquid-y bile-ly poop would drizzle out through my crack ever slightly, no matter how hard I tried to hold it back; thus I smelled like a popped colostomy bag. My co-workers kept wondering what smelled (and I kept "wondering" with them because I was so horribly embarrassed).

Every now and then I would creep towards the bathroom, thinking I might "blow it," but I managed to make it through my shift without a full-blown accident. So I rushed home (at the time I lived twenty minutes outside the city) on one of the most painful and desperate drives in recent memory. I made it to my apartment complex, still without accident.

I approached my door; unlock, close, lock, and boom I crap my pants. It was explosive, horrendous. To crap one's pants in a g-string, the bathroom only feet away...

I was disheartened, and dripping, so I dripped my way to the bathroom, my two cats at my feet, to go clean up. When I came back out, I found my cats licking some of the places where I dripped my shit. Ugh.

She went through a great number of tried-and-true gag creators; but apparently either her uvula had taken a long vacation or her sweet, contemplative, patient, horse-like attitude had carried over into her gastro-intestinal concerns -- for she was completely unable to create a heave that would bring the lost and wandering tooth back up. (For the un-initiated, horses lack the reverse esophageal spasm necessary to vomiting.)

A teaspoon of salt: went down like sugar. Vinegar water: no effect. A series of throat burning attempts to jam any and every finger down there to create even a slight excess of saliva in her mouth: nothing.

At last, desperate, she called a nurse friend of hers. "Don't try Syrup of Ipecac!!" the nurse told her -- it could create a projectile-vomiting episode that may never end. "Try Castor Oil."

So down the oil she did, relating later that she burped for two days afterward and each one smelled of rotting fish. She chugged the entire bottle, to no avail except for a now-burning need to evacuate her bowels. After two hours of trying to bring the rouge tooth back up, this revelation stunned her to a new conclusion: if the tooth wouldn't come back up the way it went down, she would wait for a messier -- but more certain -- exit.

So, holing herself up in her apartment for an entire weekend, she saved her shit in the first and most expendable container she came across -- a Wal-Mart sack. After waiting the entire weekend (and digging through what must have been the grimmest experience of her life with only a spoon to keep her company), she finally unearthed the treasure. And then she went to the dentist to have it autoclaved.

The moral of the story: carry your own spoon with you, from your very own house; because you never know what traumatic experiences to which other people's spoons have been exposed.

The Mall is a pleasant street blocked to traffic and filled with lots of fun shops. It's always busy, milling with tourists and locals almost every day of the week. Very early one Sunday morning, I was walking down the utterly deserted Mall when I saw something that made me stop and gape as if I were gazing upon an unnumbered Wonder of the World.

Earlier, I had passed a large empty Kentucky Fried Chicken box. A few paces later, I had passed another KFC box and a few empty soda cans. Then, in the middle of the Mall, I saw the monstrosity. Or the offering. Or whatever the hell it was.

It was a massive, pyramidal turd, glistening in the morning sun. It had to be at least two feet across at its widest point, and the tapering tip was a full twelve inches above the pavement. It was astounding. It must have weighed ten pounds, and it looked so solid I'm sure you could have driven a Range Rover up one side and down the other.

Yet that was not all. I let out a very uneasy laugh as I got closer -- because this pristine movement, this Object, was encircled by a ring of carefully interlocked chicken bones.

Was it a prank? A work of urban art? An offering to some long-forgotten god? I have no idea. And as I studied this magnificently twisted display, I realized that The Object was centered with geometric precision inside the tiny split-rail fence of bones. There were a hell of a lot of chicken bones, all of them stripped bare of even the tiniest bit of gristle -- and there had to be a lot of bones to completely circle The Object in their interlocked and overlaid configuration.

The conundrum was this: Did the one who passed The Object carefully construct his symbolic circle of bones and then, with the precision of the Enola Gay's bombardier, drop his load dead on target? Or did he first purge himself of The Object and then have the unimaginable nerve to remain in full public view while he placed bone against bone against bone in what had to have been a time-consuming construction?

I'll never know. To this day I still can't decide if his balls were bigger than his bowels, or vice versa.

I finally arrived in Richmond, where my cousin was waiting for me. Before going to his house, he showed me around a little, taking me to different stores and stuff. For some reason, we went to a farmers' market, where I found pistachios on sale for $4.00 a pound. Anyone who knows anything about pistachios knows that that's a steal. So of course I shelled out the four bucks.

But the problem is, once I start eating pistachios, I can't stop. So by the next day, I had eaten them all.

After the farmers' market, we got to the house where my cousin was staying, and I was ready to take a monstrous crap. But when we got there, I realized that he lives with a kind of fancy family in a fancy house. I can't just go in there and take a dump the first time I meet the people! So I had to wait until the next day when everyone was gone, which was after I had already eaten a pound of pistachios.

I went in, and -- to get right to the point -- I took the biggest dump of my life. It was about a foot long and three inches in diameter, and this is no exaggeration. This turd was so huge I knew without trying that it wouldn't flush. So I snuck outside, found a little stick, and proceeded to break the turd up into small, flushable pieces. I thought about taking a picture first, but figured no one would understand (people rarely understand me, anyway). Still, needless to say, I told this story to everyone who would listen.

"As the bee gathers her sweets for winter," promised inventor, painter, and budding, photographer Samuel F.B. Morse, at the announcement of photography's birth in 1839, "we shall have rich material -- an exhaustless store for the imagination to feed on..."

If only Morse could have known just how rich and exhaustless pooping in the Peoples Republic of China really is. With 1.3 billion people, that's a lot of poop.

Ultimately, photography and poop serve a patchwork of functions. It is an art form, a record-keeping mechanism, a means of communication and a medium whose usefulness is shared by the many disciplines of both the science and humanities. Photographs and poop have the power to teach as well as excite the imagination, transporting us across time and space to new horizons.

Halfway through the show, I got the mudd butt from drinking all day. I knew there probably wasn't an available bathroom around, so I decided it wouldn't be so hard to find a spot in all of the woods surrounding the place.

Yeah, right. These hippies are like vermin. There were hippies crawling out of the woodwork -- doing drugs, boinking, you name it. I really had to go bad, and I kept desperately searching for a plot of land to do the business.

I finally found a spot that I thought was secluded enough, so I proceeded to drop trou and bomb away. All of a sudden, this hippie couple appeared maybe twenty feet in front of me and started sparking up their stuff. I thought if I was really quiet they wouldn't notice, but of course I had the MUDD BUTT -- I couldn't control the noise, nor the smell.

One of the hippies either caught a whiff or heard the commotion, and turned around to catch a glimpse of me squatting and staring at them. This was sure to be an embarrassing moment. But this hippie just walked right up to me, handed me his bowl and goes, "Would you like some help with that?"

Damn! Can you imagine?? How freakin' awesome is that?! Someone would walk right up to you and hand you some herb while you're doing your business...

I proceeded in having a most chill dump ever.

Bottom Line: Hippies are mad cool about the doo-doo.

It all started after two ice cream sandwiches at my last stop. All of a sudden I got those loud, large, high-pitched cheek vibrating farts that last forever. I swear they felt like they lasted for ten minutes each. And the smell was like I had an overflowing outhouse in my pants.

Well, I knew after they started to hit the rapid-fire stage that this one just couldn't be farted away; so I started to look for someplace to go. Just in time I came up to this rundown diner/hotel/truck stop about two miles before the freeway. It looked like something out of Mayberry RFD. But I didn't care and my shorts and pants didn't either.

They only had one men's room. You know the kind -- the ones that you need to drag around that engine block with the key attached to it. Good news: it was a small private one-seater room with a self-locking door. Bad news: as soon as I closed the door and got my pants down about to my knees, still bent over trying to turn to the seat, my ass exploded with this dark half-solid, half-liquid smelly disgusting CRAP-O-LA. It came out of me like I had turbo boosters up my butt. Turning to sit, I was decorated the walls, sink, mirror, and the entire toilet.

I didn't know if I should cry or burst out laughing. I did the latter. I cleaned myself up the best I could, of course running out of toilet paper. I was just about done anyways when I heard someone trying to get in, but it was locked.

I started gagging and had to get out of there. Still, I waited a couple of minutes in hopes that he would leave. Then I left, dragging that heavy key behind me.

When I got back to my truck, I could see the door to the restroom of horror. I watched some guy dragging that engine block and key. He opened the door and it shut behind him. Two seconds later he came flying out, gagging and spiting. But the poor guy left the key in there, and the door locked behind him. The last thing I saw as I drove away was the guy talking to the attendant, either about the locked-in key or the new wallpapering job.

When will corporate America address this issue for their employees? A discussion or memo about Shameful Shitting would be ridiculous. So here is a solution: music. Music just loud enough to mask any noises made dropping the kids off at the pool.

It seems like such a simple solution that I am sure some company somewhere has already discovered it. Even better -- what if someone invented a bathroom fan/speaker combo? You could have the noise combined with always-important odor removal! Just another get-rich invention I just thought of. It's yours. Run with it.