Let us stop for a moment and contemplate the delicacy of a society. We Americans know that electricity flows when we flip the switch, that water flows when we turn on the tap, and that toilets flush when we push the lever. But the incredible municipal systems that have allowed us to advance beyond the desperate scramble for life's basic needs are interconnected -- and in the face of failure of one, they all begin to shatter. The New York Times published today a portrait of the water and sewage situation in New Delhi -- a terrifying image of a city in which one municipal failure cascades into another, until the water dries up and the rivers flow with shit. (login: poopreport pw: poopreport)

"Imagine never being thirsty for water," says an ad for a Delhi apartment building that boasts private water supplies. My God -- imagine being thirsty for water!

Listen to what happens when water is not a given:

"Every day, Ritu Prasher, a homemaker in a middle-class neighborhood of this capital, rises at 6:30 a.m. and begins fretting about water. It is a rare morning when water trickles through the pipes. More often, not a drop will come. So Mrs. Prasher will have to call a private water tanker, wait for it to show up, call again, wait some more and worry about whether enough buckets are filled in the bathroom in case no water arrives. {…} On average, she gets no more than 13 gallons a month from the tap."

"As the Yamuna River enters the capital, still relatively clean from its 246-mile descent from atop the Himalayas, the city's public water agency, the New Delhi Jal Board, extracts 229 million gallons every day from the river, its largest single source of drinking water. As the Yamuna leaves the city, it becomes the principal drain for New Delhi's waste. Residents pour 950 million gallons of sewage into the river each day. Coursing through the capital, the river becomes a noxious black thread. Clumps of raw sewage float on top. Methane gas gurgles on the surface. A government audit found last year that the level of fecal coliform, one measure of filth, in the Yamuna was 100,000 times the safe limit for bathing."

"Many New Delhi neighborhoods, like Janata Colony — Hindi for People's Colony — are not even connected to sewage pipes. Open sewers hem the narrow lanes of the slum. Every alley carries their stench. Some canals are so clogged with trash and sludge that they are no more than green-black ribbons of muck. It is a mosquitoes' paradise. Malaria and dengue fever are regular visitors. Not long ago, a 2-year-old boy named Arman Mustakeem fell into one such canal and drowned. His parents said they found him floating in the open sewer in front of their home. These canals empty into a wide storm drain. It, in turn, runs through the eastern edges of the city, raking in more sewage and cascades of trash, before it merges with effluent from two sewage treatment plants, and finally, enters the Yamuna."

What makes this story relevant to us is that New Delhi isn't lacking in water. The problem isn't supply. It's infrastructure. Leaky pipes waste 25-40 percent of the city's water supply. Water pressure tanks as people tap into the pipes, taking what they desperately need at the expense of the rest of the system. Massive sewage treatment plants lay idle when the power goes out. This isn't a problem of environment -- it's a cascade of human failings. Greed, desperation, ignorance, and incompetence.

Could that happen in America? Don't say "no" yet. Think about the power situation in California. Think about the water situation in the southwest. Think about the corruption of officials and the greed of utilities. Could it happen in America? Don't say "no" yet.

Imagine being thirsty for water.

Bowing to pressure from various political figureheads, Guy Fournier has resigned as the Chairman of the Board for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After completing less than one half of the four-year term to which he agreed, Fournier is stepping down because of remarks that he made in interviews during the last couple months: one about bestiality, and one about pooping.

In an article he wrote for the magazine 7 Jours, Fournier derided what he claimed were Lebanese sexual habits of bestiality. "In Lebanon, the law makes it possible for men to have sexual intercourse with animals as long as they are females. To do the same thing with male animals could lead to the death penalty."

Well, that's pretty gross if it's true. (And discriminatory, if you ask me.)

The opined sentiment caused a serious racket in the Lebanese community and in other areas of the Canadian government. Fournier made a public retraction of the statements, contributing them a case of mistaken information. But then, in the same disgusted tone that they took on his remarks about bestiality, the Canadian press began talking about some statements Fournier made about poop.

His own poop, by the way. Not someone else's. While being interviewed by a Toronto community radio station last May, Fournier gave the audience a treat when he extolled the pleasures of defecating. ''The most extraordinary thing is that, in the end, as you grow older, you continue to go poop once a day if you are in good health, while it is not easy to make love every day. So finally, the pleasure is longer lasting and more frequent than the other.''

This statement is as bad as accusing another country of enacting legislation so its male citizens may fuck sheep or goats? C'mon, Canada! Fournier is human, and quite an old human at that! Of course he's going to enjoy taking a dump. At the age of seventy-five, taking a poop is something to be celebrated.

Why would the media perceive taking a good, healthy dump as a statement equal in offense as one insulting an entire country? What is it the connection between bestiality and pooping in the eyes of Canadian politicians? I can only surmise they must see both activities as repulsive and unnatural -- which is pretty sad. I have news for you, oh Canada: you should have heeded the Kids in the Hall's sage wisdom in their skit "Granpa's Poo" -- because it could some day very well be you who hasn't pooped for six years. It might be you who gets an ovation at dinner from your family for finally dropping one lonely kid off at the pool. I cannot and do not want to believe that the same country who gave us some of cable television's best ever sketch comedy will then act as if admitting one enjoys being able to move those creaky old pipes is wrong.

Oooo, blame Canada.

Attention all hobos, tramps, bums, bag ladies, and shopping cart people: the public parks and recreation areas in Vegas want you back! While you are NOT permitted to pee or poop there, please feel free once again to set up camp -- or "squat", if you will.

The Las Vegas City Council on Wednesday dumped a rule that made it a misdemeanor to sleep within five hundred feet of a deposit of urine or feces. This is a reversal of part of an ordinance discussed previously here at PoopReport -- one that faced ridicule from civil libertarians. Council members claimed it was "mistakenly" included in a broader ordinance that banned public urination and defecation. This latest poop and pee ordinance was passed unanimously by the City Council; the statute against actually perpetrating the pee or poop still stands.

Back in August, Vegas City Attorney Brad Jerbic said that rules on setting up camp near bodily deposits would be considered separately, but nothing has reached the recommending committee yet.

I still don't get why the city would bother worrying about it. If it's illegal to pee or poop in public anyway, how are you going to nail someone for setting up camp NEAR an unauthorized "deposit" of bodily waste? How do you PROVE that a deposit is human? Would they need to? Does dog poop count? What about bird poop? Rabbit poop? Squirrel poop? Rattlesnake poop? Surely ANYWHERE a vagrant sets up camp in an open area is less than five hundred feet from SOME deposit of urine or feces.

Wouldn't it be easier to pass a law that makes it illegal to camp in those areas at all? Why involve poop? Doesn't poop have enough to worry about? I'm thinking that the poop aspect of this is a way to discourage transients from roosting but without overtly singling out the indigent. By appearing to be concerned with public health and safety, is Las Vegas covertly addressing their vagabond problem through the back door?

I have exciting news for toilet paper aficionados. According to a very reliable source I have to keep anonymous, Quilted Northern is working on a product that is sure to make our bottoms happy: not one, not two, but THREE plys of quilted goodness may soon make their appearance on store shelves in a variety of roll sizes (single or double) and package sizes (from four to twenty-four packs). No date has been given, but if and when it is made available to the general public, I can tell you that Quilted Northern Trio is going to be stocked from floor to ceiling in this PoopReporter's bathroom.

The company has already been asking a number of lucky butts to report their opinions about the product, possible advertising strategies, and reactions to pricing schemes. Due to confidentiality issues, I wasn't able to get my dirty little PoopReporting fingers on the advertising and pricing information. Believe me, I tried.

After hearing this bit of news, I had to wonder. Why hasn't this been done before? Here we are nearing the end of 2006, and we're still suffering through the same ol' one- and two-ply crap. Why does it take so long for companies to make obviously-needed improvements on their products? Don't they use the products themselves? Don't they have people they pay to come up with these ideas before anyone else? I'm willing to bet it will take another year after the release of the Trio for them to slap a "now with aloe" label on it.

Well, no matter the reason for their oversight, Quilted Northern is better late than never in producing the Trio. Today I think I'll unroll three rolls of one-ply toilet paper and re-roll them together. That might give me an idea of how it will feel.

(I also wonder how many Poop Reporters have tried doing this. Maybe a poll is in order.)

After a six-month layoff, it's great to be back poop reporting again. But it's almost as if I have fallen asleep for six months, because I've woken up to face the same old shit. Searching for articles to report, the first that caught my eye has more than an echo of a piece I wrote back in February. Yes, dear reader, it seems that the problem of managing bowel movements at school is rearing its ugly turtlehead again. Much like the plan at the New York school I reported before, administrators at Battle Creek's Westlake Elementary School decided to implement "multiple scheduled bathroom breaks" for those in third grade and above. (Kindergarten, first, and second grades all have in-classroom bathrooms.)

Under the new rules, a kid *can* answer the call of nature during class -- but he or she would lose some recess time in return. As Kate Oliveri writes in the Battle Creek Enquirer: "Some parents say that has made kids feel they're being punished -- they've had to stand against a wall for five minutes during recess -- and singled out for having uncontrollable urges during the school day."

No wonder the kids associate bodily functions with breaking the rules -- having to stand against the wall for needing to go to the toilet seems like good old-fashioned corporal punishment to me.

My first thought upon seeing this article: what would happen if a kid had some kind of disorder? I didn't have to read much further to happen upon the story of Jessie Schuemann, whose son has "a medical condition that requires him to stay hydrated frequently." The fourth-grader told his mother that in 2005 he was " punished two or three times for going to the bathroom outside the schedule."

Schuemann is, naturally, indignant. "I don't care who you are, no one is going to tell my son when to go to the bathroom."

The reason for such dire consequences, according to principal Jeni Harris, was "to give teachers a chance to catch up with students who missed instruction time while in the bathroom." But after receiving complaints from parents, Ms. Harris has decided to dispense with the negative consequences for bathroom visits outside the scheduled times.

Kudos to Ms. Harris for putting an end to the loss of recess. But why did she feel the need to put into effect such drastic measures in the first place? We are living in a world in which The Man is demanding more and more of one's time and energy as each day passes. This trend starts earlier and earlier in school, with all the tests, tests, tests that kids have to take before they're even old enough to grasp the concept of SATs, let alone matriculation to MIT. At least allow a child to urinate and defecate in peace, without losing recess time for something perfectly natural and normal.

Well, kiddies, as September winds down, our thought move on to the national event coming in October. I'm sure most of you are leaping ignominiously to the conclusion that ol' Bilgy is gonna write about Halloween. Not so fast! Before that auspicious evening of sugar and chocolate debauchery happens, you parents may want to be aware of the fact that October is National Toilet Repair Month.

Though they mention it nowhere on their site, Fluidmaster, the "leading manufacturer of toilet repair products", has offered up the magnificent month of October to encourage folks take better care of their loos. And in the one article I could find about this occasion, plumbing experts offer a few tips for treating your toilet with the dignity it deserves.

One plumber, for instance, recommends avoiding too many over-the-counter drain de-clogging products. "Most of the time - like 99 percent of the time - that stuff just doesn't work," said Charlie Hart, owner of Chugach Sewer and Drain. "It actually makes the problem worse and folks end up calling us anyway."

Hart also suggests you avoid those drop-in-the-bowl cleaning tablets. "They plug up the jets and are harmful to the fill valves. People often find that in a short amount of time after using them, they will be having problems with their toilets."

Another plumber reports that with toilets, like with anything, you get what you pay for. "If you want a toilet that will cause the least amount of trouble, you might as well start out with one that costs $250," he said. "Our typical visit (to repair malfunctions) is $100. And with a $150 toilet, you are probably going to end up having us come over more than just once in the life of that toilet."

So before you launch you Oktoberfest offensive of beer and brats, and before your ankle-biters -- er, children -- load the bowl with half-digested tootsie rolls and way too much toilet paper, do what the press releases tell you and show your throne some respect. You'll find all sorts of tips and tricks on keeping your toilet in tip-top shape at toiletology.com.