I can't believe this is my life

Longtime readers know that I am a huge fan of Toto washlet toilets, so much so that when I moved I brought my Toto with me.  Twas a toilet transplant--I swapped the standard toilet from my new house into the bathroom where my Toto resided in my old house.  Life is good.

The Toto is a beast when it comes to flushing.  It never backed up in seven-plus years of hard use, despite the insane amount of toilet paper the distaff members of zfamily require daily.  So I was very surprised when zwoman reported a clog.  I busted out the plunger and fixed it pretty quickly.  But the clog reappeared later in the day.

This recurred for a few days so I made an appointment with a plumber.  In the interregnum I plunged a number of clogs.  And eventually a hex-head bolt appeared in the bottom of the bowl.  I put on rubber gloves and fished it out.  Then I consulted my owner's manual to see where it came from.  It turns out the inside is the same as any other toilet, it's just a porcelain S-shaped tube.

There should not be a bolt in there.  It did not take me long to review my mental Rolodex of Toto users to identify the likeliest candidate to flush a bolt down the toilet.  But zson swore up and down that he didn't do it, asserting that he knew this would piss me off to no end and would thus never screw with the Toto.  This makes sense--he loves his devices too much to jeopardize them so stupidly--and one of his donkey friends had been over recently so I mentally blamed the donkey.

The plumber showed up, augered the toilet, and a few hundred bucks later all systems were go.  Until the Toto clogged again.  I made another appointment, which was $0 because it was a revisit to resolve the unresolved problem, and when the plumber got there I asked him to take the toilet off the floor and see whatever other nonsense was flushed down there.

The guy balked.  He hemmed and hawed at me for 15-20 minutes about how much this would cost, how it would be cheaper to buy a new toilet, and all sorts of stuff that might've made sense in different circumstances.  The toilet wasn't the issue--it was the foreign object lodged deep in the bowels of the bowl--so finally I started clapping really loud like a football coach and said something like "That's great, but let's do this!  I'm willing to roll the dice here!  Let's get this crapper off the floor!  C'mon now, let's go!"  The pipeman pursed his lips and reluctantly trudged up to the salle de bain, only to find that one of the screws holding my pride and joy in place was stripped.  Not a perfect transplant.  So I had to order funky replacement screws which took a few weeks to arrive.

The poor crapped clogged regularly while I waited.  I swore at it daily, stabbing away with my plunger, cleaning up foul fluids that splashed out from my vigor.  The new mounting hardware arrived just in time for the holidays when I had a houseful of visitors lodging all manner of excreta and giant wads of paper in my wounded commode.  The plumber finally emerged from his holiday cocoon, ready to spread his wings and tackle tough issues.   

He arrived with a helper, a veritable Mario and Luigi situation.  And again he hemmed and hawed about the expense, condescendingly telling me that he already augured the thing and it must be the toilet itself, the price of a toilet vs. the price of his work, and so on.  He did not understand my argument that buying a new Toto is wildly more than the price to remove the old one, and that I'd have to pay for that anyway if I got a new shitter.  When my patience ran thin after 10-15 minutes I repeated my old ball coach approach and harangued Leaky Pete up the stairs.  About 6 to 9 minutes later he called down to me, "Uh, sir?  You should see this."

So I went upstairs.  The toilet was off the floor, and where the hole in the floor should've been was a giant lump of shit and toilet paper.  Scooping this mess clearly wasn't part of the pipe whisperer's job, so I again donned some rubber gloves and retrieved the turd with a dog poop bag.  This is what I found twixt the dung and the drain.

For the uninitiated, that's a fidget spinner.  Some jackass flushed a goddam fidget spinner down my beloved Toto.

Incredibly, I didn't explode.  Maybe I'm older and calmer.  Maybe I'm resigned to the fact that I've been stripped of all dignity and can't have nice things.  But I didn't get upset.

And I was magnanimous towards the reluctant drain weasel.  I told him "I knew there was something stupid stuck in there.  There's nothing mechanical to the drain, but there was clearly something moving around that I could lodge loose with the plunger.  Had to take it off the floor to get to it."  He simply nodded.  After I paid, on his way out the door he opined "You were like a dog with a bone with this thing."  I smiled and shooed him out.  I'm mellowing in middle age.

Later that day I interrogated everyone who both (1) lives in zhome and (2) uses fidget spinners.  That's an n of 2 people.  zson realized the enormity of the situation, likely fearing for his life, and said "I didn't do it!  That's [zdaughter's] fidget spinner!"  I noted that ownership isn't relevant here--maybe zwoman flushed zdaughter's fidget spinner.  zson didn't think that story made sense but eventually saw my point.  And of course zdaughter plausibly stated "Why would I do anything that stupid?"  

So I'm blaming zson's aforementioned jackass friend.  On the bright side, the Toto flushes like a champ again.  This cost me close to four figures, but what's money?

A few days later, zdaughter came home with a huge smile on her face, walked into my home office, and said "You won't believe what the para gave everyone in class today."  She reached into her backpack and pulled out a little case, then she pulled back the lid as one would pry open a box while proposing on bended knee to reveal ... a new fidget spinner.

Seeking Loo-topia

In 2010, journalist Chelsea Wald was on assignment at a science camp in Alaska. When nature called, she and the other residents trudged up steps to elevated outhouses over large tanks in which waste was vacuumed out and hauled away by truck. She thought the setup a mite primitive for 21st century America, but as her reporting and research on sanitation expanded, she regarded the situation as “a microcosm of the world’s poop problem.” 

Most people in the developed world flush and forget, with barely a thought to where their waste goes or how it’s handled. Billions of people in poor and developing countries have no infrastructure for handling human waste. Wald believes we must change that, since poor sanitation and inattention can poison people and eco-systems and can affect increasingly stressed resources. Her book, “Pipe Dreams,” addresses the issues as she aims for what she calls “Loo-topia.” 

Subtitled “The Urgent Global Quest to Transform The Toilet,” it’s an informative, engaging dive into human excreta. And who doesn’t enjoy a good yarn about pooping and peeing? 

Wald traveled to India and South Africa and Kenya and Dubai and the Netherlands and Haiti and towns all over America. She interviewed a lot of smart, committed people who want to improve lives and communities via better sanitation, such as a personable salesman in Indonesia peddling cleanliness one toilet and septic tank at a time – a Johnny Crappleseed, if you will. 

Chapters include “Taking the Piss – We’re going to need more pipes,” “Eating Sh!t – That sludge isn’t going to digest itself,” and “Potty Talk – Let’s analyze the shit out of this.” Wald provides a bunch of factoids, both interesting and alarming: the average person produces 100 pounds of poop and 140 gallons of pee per year; approximately 700 million people use toilets that amount to open defecation, according to a World Health Organization study from several years ago; another 600 million don’t have private toilets in their homes, but share with surrounding households or neighborhoods; nearly 2.2 billion people have what’s called basic sanitation, that’s actually long on “basic” and short on “sanitation” with little or no waste treatment; one outfit estimated that women worldwide spend 97 billion hours per year looking for safe and clean places to relieve themselves, which is more time than the total number of hours worked in Germany annually; one study estimated that for every dollar spent on universal sanitation, an average return of $5.50 can be expected, in areas of reduced health care costs and a more productive workforce; a 2017 report card by the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the U.S. wastewater infrastructure a D-plus, due to aging and inadequate systems. 

Wald writes that the toilet as most of us know it is both an engineering marvel and woefully outdated for present times and challenges. People adapt to new and changing technologies all the time and often demand improvements, yet the toilet hasn’t changed much in more than 100 years, and we’re mostly good with it. 

I recall that several in the audience are advocates of bidets (bidevotees?) and Japanese robo-toilets with sprayers and dryers and automatic lids and heated seats and such. That the next generation of toilets and waste practices hasn’t caught on here is due largely to the Victorian-era remnant of “ick factor” related to excreta and an unwillingness to even broach the subject. A combination of stigma about human waste and uncleanliness, along with cost of toilets, septic systems and basic sanitation make it a tough sell in many poor and developing countries, as well. 

History has taught us to think of the toilet as a trash can, Wald writes, when it holds the potential to be a recycling bin. Think fertilizer and disinfectants and nutrients and fuel and microbes and compost. Women are more impacted and inconvenienced than men in waste management, particularly when you factor in menstruation. The poor are more impacted than the wealthy. 

If you aren’t inclined to become a commode crusader, Wald has plenty of suggestions for simply assisting the waste movement. Learn about your own sewage or septic system. Upgrade to low-flow or improved toilets. Don’t flush anything other than the three P’s – pee, poop and (toilet) paper; discard everything else. Monitor wastewater systems and water quality in your area. Speak up for those being shamed for peeing, pooping and menstruating. Advocate for safe conditions and good pay for wastewater workers. Talk about toilets and pooping and peeing – maybe not at the dinner table, but most everywhere else is fair game. The pandemic highlighted the ease with which pathogens spread and underscored the importance of hygiene and best health practices. Waste management, or mis-management, can loose pathogens and spread all manner of health problems. Hurricanes, floods, rising seas and climate-induced disasters can cripple massive sewage systems. 

If we’re to become more self-sustaining, we’ll have to use all the resources at our disposal. Though if we reach a point where we’re re-purposing and re-using our waste, I’ll be leery of the next generation of shiitake mushrooms and mung beans.

Everybody Poops

Tom Ricks is a decorated journalist, having won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. His work focuses primarily on military and national security issues. He is, in short, a serious dude.

If you follow him on Twitter, you know that he's also witty, irreverent, and smart.

Recently, though, he's been full of shit. Or at least some of his journalistic work has been.

Ricks writes a blog at Task & Purpose, a site focused on a broad range of military and veterans' issues. His posts vary widely, from military history to tactics to policy to military-based video games. And of late, shit.

In early September, Ricks launched a contest for his readers, asking for submissions about the most memorable combat craps they'd taken.

There weren't a lot of entries, but the final one was a doozy. In the midst of a firefight with the Viet Cong, a young officer felt nature's call. As he concludes, "Despite all mortal reasons not to, I finally succumbed to the most powerful force on earth—a shit whose time had come."

That's a story worth reading.

So's this one about a dickhead officer who got what had long been coming to him. The kicker: "The door was blown open by the Majah who stumbled out. He was covered from head to toe with a colorful mixture of shit and toilet paper as if he had been tarred and feathered in different material."

In this time where nearly everything seems covered in shit of one form or another, a couple of good old fashioned poop stories seem the kind of mindless crap we all need. Your mileage may vary.

Friday Entrepreneurial Update

We've all got talents here at G:TB. Mark excels at recreational hoops and finding blank spots on his body for new ink. Danimal's a renowned hobnobber and elbow-rubber, not to mention an elite triathlete. Me, I have a talent for wasting time while appearing productive during the workday. Case in point.

Not all of us can turn our natural abilities into financial gain, as nice as that might be. Now, though, through the miracle of modern science, one of us is well on his way to a gilded existence.

According to a recent Washington Post article, the local sanitation utility, D.C. Water, is now in the business of selling human poop as fertilizer.

TR just struck brown gold.

D.C. Water's not just selling human waste, they've created two different branded offerings designed to appeal to diverse markets. Fresh Bloom is a less-processed offering, with a gummy consistency, while Cured Bloom is sun-dried and turned, offering users a more soil-like experience.

As you might imagine, reaction to the Bloom product line has been mixed. Lidia Epp, a New Kent, VA-based biologist goes full alarmist, "This is Flint, Michigan, happening everywhere in the country in slow motion."

Sunday morning in TR's backyard

Meanwhile, Bill Brower, resource recovery manager at D.C. Water's Blue Plains treatment facility, and wholly unbiased observer notes that independent scientists, "have looked at all the literature, and if biosolids are applied correctly there’s no significant risk to human health or the environment."

That 'if' is doing a lot of work in that sentence, but as one who tends to fall on the side of modern institutions generally doing the right thing, for fear of crippling lawsuits and public approbation if for no other reason, I lean towards Brower's point of view. (And I'm conscious of how much work 'generally' is doing in that sentence - Wells Fargo says 'hello'.)

I lean in that direction in large part because I've used processed human poop on my own lawn without negative consequence. Without positive consequence, too, for what it's worth. The locally sourced pelletized poop was inoffensive in smell and appearance, but didn't do much for my lawn. I'm sure my lack of attention to the grass played no role.

Watch this space for news about the G:TB-sponsored Kickstarter campaign to fund launch of TR-branded bags of poop. Next step, profit.

Gheorghemas Gift Guide

This isn't a Gheorghemas post, but if it were, it'd fit perfectly on day number two. You'll understand soon enough. Honestly, I'm kinda pissed at my kids for not showing me this until last night.

Please enjoy this commercial interlude for an actual, real product. If you like this one, the makers have numerous other adverts to satisfy your interests.



I wonder if these guys know about Toto. The synergy there could be world-changing.

Is zson really TRson?

TR likes to joke that he's really my son's father, and I'm starting to question whether that's a joke because over a five day span last week zson did the following:

1. At his nursery school graduation (which I did not attend due to work commitments and my general view that this wasn't a big deal, which apparently was not shared by many other dads who took off from work to be there and probably think I'm a heel), while everyone else was singing songs and reciting poems in unison, zson and his friend Danny yelled the closest things to expletives that 5-year-olds know. Stuff like "Underpants!" and "Butts!" and "Poop!" and "Penis!" zwoman was mortified.

2. After his nursery school graduation, zson and Danny and some other kids went to a nearby pizzeria with their respective moms. Danny dared zson to pick his nose and eat it. zson obliged. zwoman was mortified. This has become one of his signature gross-out moves.

3. He pulled the dry erase penis coloring stunt. I almost fainted.

4. He announced that when he grows up he wants to be a rock star or a baker.

5. I asked him why he was walking funny and he said "I'm stretching my balls out, they are sticking to my legs." He was going commando because that's his thing lately.

6. Later that day I was in the kitchen and he yelled from the living room "Daddy I pooped but don't worry my pants are clean." I asked how that's possible and he replied "The poop is on the floor." Apparently he was trying to make himself fart and instead he shat. His commando status allowed the (inordinately large) shit in question to fall nearly unfettered out of his shorts and onto my floor. He remained unfazed throughout. zwoman was mortified.

7. We went fishing and about 15 minutes in he announced that he had to poop. The closest storefront was a vintage car store that I've always wanted to check out so we hustle over there. I haven't showered yet that day so I'm oily and stinky and we both smell like sunblock and unwashed armpits. We walk in, zson bent over with intestinal distress, and the young guy who works there greets us and asks if he can help us. I point to the to-die-for-beautiful tangerine 1972 Porsche 911 RS lightweight (which is worth something like $1.4 million) and say "I'd love to buy the RS but I can't. My colleague here could really use a bathroom though."

He points us right to the impeccably clean loo. Immediately upon mounting the bowl, zson rips a monstrously loud fart, a deep basso booming blast of a thing that I'm sure was clearly heard in the showroom. He then announces (in his outside voice) that he doesn't have to poop after all, and it was all just a fart. So we get cleaned up and come out to the showroom and the young guy is laughing at us and he knew that I knew cars from my whole line about the RS and we talked about all the beautiful stuff they have in the showroom, including an old 356, some newer Ferraris, a Ford GT (which another sales guy started up and goosed the throttle so a potential buyer could listen to its angry engine note), and several other less audacious 911s. At some point I turn back to the RS and see the bottom half of zson sticking out of the passenger side window, his upper half firmly planted inside it, squirming around and torquing on 44-year-old irreplaceable car parts. Mercifully he was wearing shorts with no zipper or buttons, otherwise he would've scratched the door all to hell, but I still almost had a heart attack and pulled him out of the car. None of the worm guts on his shirt wound up inside the car, as far as I could tell. The young guy was not fazed and continued to talk about cars they're getting in, cars they used to have, etc. and when I turn around again zson is wiping his greasy paws on the 2007 GT3 RS (which is worth a mere $200k or so), trying to pry the driver's side open and getting kidprints all over the thing. As I pulled him off the car he announced "This is my favorite car here" and the young guy said "Me too! This is the best driver's car we've ever had, in my opinion. You have great taste in cars!" We were even invited to come back anytime we want. Despite ripping hellacious farts, sullying over a million dollars worth of cars, and generally acting like a jackass, zson charmed the daylights out of some total stranger while giving me palpitations.

zson has TR written all over him.

Transitions: From Pope to Poop in One Easy Step

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an incredibly ambitious and important mission. They seek to eradicate (or drastically reduce) the spread of disease in the world. One of the ways the foundation is using its substantial resources is in developing better sanitation systems for the billions of people across the planet who lack access to modern plumbing (wrap your head around the scale of that problem for just a second).

Here's a quote from a Fast Company story on the topic that puts it in even sharper terms:

"Only 4.5 billion people in the world have access to clean toilets. That may sound like a lot, but compare that to a different statistic: 6 billion people have access to cell phones. This lack of toilets is a major cause of sanitation-related diseases, which is why the Gates Foundation has long worked to promote the cause of better toilets for the developing world."

Turns out, though, that in order to build a better toilet, you need to build better fake poop to facilitate the testing process. Enter Maximum Performance, the synthetic feces manufacturer of choice for your discerning billionaire foundation leader. As part of its broader toilet development and testing mission, MaP developed a soybean paste and rice mix that's a more than reasonable facsimile for poop. Says, Fast Company:

"The Gates Foundation procured 50 gallons of fake poop for its Reinvent the Toilet Fair, flushing it down all sorts of new kinds of commodes. When MaP isn't supplying feces for developing world toilet prototypes, it performs "flush performance" tests on all sorts of conventional toilets."

That's some powerful shit.

When you're on a roll...

Hate to trump that heartfelt good-bye to Ricardo Montalban, but when poop news hits the wires, G:TB is there. Once again, the great state of Florida brings you the important fecal news of the day:

Feces-throwing monkey on the loose in Tampa Bay

CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP) - Wildlife officials said a rhesus monkey known to throw feces when mad is on the loose in Tampa Bay. Authorities have been trying to capture the primate since Tuesday afternoon, but it managed to evade a bucket truck and tranquilizer dart.

Gary Morse with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the adult male is thought to have escaped from an unlicensed source. It was last seen in Clearwater.

The monkey is not considered dangerous.

I am unfamiliar with the denizens of Clearwater, but I'm pretty sure not being able to distinguish a feces-throwing monkey from a resident of Clearwater is a negative. Might want to get the Chamber of Commerce working on something.

Slow news day in Fort Pierce?

I'd email this to Mark this morning with my usual sarcastic subject line of "take a wild guess where this occurred?", but I am quite certain he is still sound asleep with visions of Timmy Tebows dancing in his head. So instead I'll tackle this one, though I'm sure none of you will even give a crap about this.

Let's start with this - how is this item even worthy of a news "article"? Did they put it up simply as a punchline? I mean, I started laughing even before I finished the headline...

Visitor defecates on Fort Pierce woman's porch

FORT PIERCE — A 31-year-old woman on Wednesday found a likely unwelcome surprise on her porch -- a human bowel movement with an "overwhelming" stench, according to a police report released Thursday.

"Likely unwelcome surprise"? I'm most certain a human bowel movement on your porch is an unwelcome surprise, but that's just me.

The victim told investigators the doorbell to her home in the 700 block of Beach Court rang, and she saw a red Jeep Cherokee blocking the driveway. However, she didn't recognize the vehicle, so she didn't answer the door.

I guess she didn't realize red Jeep Cherokees are to home poop delivery what pink Cadillacs are to home cosmetic delivery.

A friend stopped by shortly afterward and told her a "human bowel movement" sat on the porch, describing the odor as "repugnant." Toilet paper also was on the porch "where the suspect attempted to clean themselves."

Hold on. (1) - Did the friend actually use the term "human bowel movement"? Who the hell talks like that? (2) - Since when do doorstep defecators bring toilet paper with them? Rhymo, can you hep us here?

The victim told police a neighbor indicated a heavy-set woman drove off in the red Jeep and that she was selling Mary Kay products.

Um, OK, you might not believe me, but I wrote that Mary Kay joke above before scrolling down and reading the entire article. So I'm keepin it in.

The victim told investigators the smell was "overwhelming and she had to clean it as soon as possible."

Police have no suspects and collected no evidence at the scene.

No evidence? What about the steamy, smelly human bowel movement sitting on the porch? Police also confirmed there is no truth to the rumor the lady called the shit "poop".