Bog Blog

I normally don't like this guy but this is a lotta fun


Supposing ... The 'fun' is put back into bodily functions

Charlie Brooker
Friday September 29, 2006
The Guardian


Ours is an increasingly polarised world, with a population separated by one yawning partition after another: racial differences, the generation gap, the rich/poor divide, inter-faith squabbling - in fact everyone's alienated from everyone else in some way. It's the only thing we've all got in common.
Actually, it isn't. We've also got our bodily functions. When Michael Stipe sang Everybody Hurts, he might as well have sung Everybody Empties Their Bum instead - because it's true (admittedly the song might have felt a bit less poignant with those lyrics, but on the plus side, the video would've been memorable).


Our bowels are a great leveller. Angelina Jolie is the most beautiful person on earth, but even she's suffered the odd bad-stomached scatological interlude, the kind that turns the bathroom into a tropical stink-chamber powerful enough to necrotise your face the instant you open the door. Yeah. She's done that, too. It's a comforting thought.
Bodily functions may be universal, but that doesn't mean they have to be performed in a disgusting fashion. I, for one, am grossly offended by "performance farters", for example - witless bozos who think it's acceptable to break wind for comic effect. In my book, that's assault; it's particles of their excrement wafting up your nose, for heaven's sake. It should carry a prison sentence of at least five years. I'm not joking.
Annoying though they are, such chuckling guffers are at least comparatively rare compared with the everyday horror of the gent's toilet - a place where time's stood still since the Dark Ages. It doesn't matter where or who you are: even a chortling, dinner-jacketed toff swapping bon mots at a glittering soiree becomes a grunting dehumanised beast the minute he steps into the gents.
Men's bogs are disgusting, and our tolerance is baffling. Take urinals. It's the 21st century - why are we still standing in a row, sloshing piss around like animals? It may come as a shock to delicate female readers, but a huge proportion of men, on taking position at a urinal, immediately perform the following ritual: 1. loudly clear phlegm from nose and throat; 2. spit said phlegm directly into urinal; 3. use personal stream to chase phlegm down plughole; 4. vigorously shake self dry while breaking wind, clearing throat, and sniffing; 5. leave abruptly without washing hands. (Look, I know it's disgusting, but it's true - every man reading this knows it.)
I'm more genteel - ie I'm one of the ones who often can't "go" when someone else is standing there. Not because I'm a wuss, but because I'm a civilised human being who believes it's the sort of thing you should do behind closed doors. In silence. With no ladies present. Usually.
Surely I'm not alone in this. Gentlemen of Britain, it's time we held a secret ballot. Let's vote to make private urinals compulsory by 2008. Oh, and working hot taps would be nice too. Together we can do it. All we need is the guts to say "no more". That and "now wash your hands".