The Yogurt of Last Resort

My friend posted on Facebook a photo of an Activia flavor that I’d wager most people don’t know about: Activia Prune.

via twyla johnson

It’s such a loaded product — no pun intended — and I can’t decide what eating Activia Prune in public says about you as a person. Some options:

• “Why yes, in fact, I am staying in tonight and maybe the whole weekend.”
• “I done ate something bad, and I want it out of my body yesterday.”
• “I have damaged my digestive system irreparably, and I’m eating this in the breakroom where everyone can see me because I really want you to ask what I did. Go on. I dare you.”
• “The guy in the apartment next door knows a lot about my intimate life.”
• “I’m a busy person. I don’t fuck around.”
• “I live on the edge.”
• “I don’t understand how prunes work.”
• “I lack shame.”
• “Essentially I’m donating my body to science.”
• “Can’t talk not, because I need to go catch a cross-state bus, and also I like being the center of attention and also I create stories wherever I go.”
• “You know how some people can only take maximum strength-level painkillers? Well, I’m the that of this.”
• “Goodbye, internal organs!”

And it’s all especially curious when you consider that the colon-exploding ramifications of prune-flavored poop yogurt would be muted if they had just said it was plum-flavored. But perhaps the Activia marketing team just knows their audience.

Nine Facts You Need to Know About Le Pétomane

A preface: I am 100 percent not pulling your leg with this. I originally wrote “I am not shitting you,” but that seemed weird given the context and you’ll understand shortly.

One: There really, really was a man who in the late nineteenth century began wowing Parisians crowds with his farts.

Two: Okay, I know, but I swear this is not made up. His stage name, Le Pétomane is a blend of the French verb péter, “to fart,” and a suffix similar to our word maniac, so basically there were French marquees advertising performances by The Fart Monster.

Three: Though it may seem hard to believe, there exist more than one word to refer to this line of work — among them, flatulist, farteur and fartiste.

Four: Le Pétomane achieved his amazing feats of fart not though the means that we common men acquire our farts but through “inhaling” air into his rectum and then expelling it at will.

Five: He discovered this unique ability while swimming in the ocean, when he found that he could suck sea water into his body. And though that seems like a bad idea to invite sea water into any of your orifices, he did it repeatedly, expelling it out in high-pressure bursts to the delight of his chums.

Six: Upon explaining the newfound ability to his doctor, the doctor was all, “Nah, you’re cool.” And then he went merrily tooting on his way, and I mean that literally.

Six: He left his job as a baker to pursue a career onstage. What seems more notable, however, is that he apparently was not forced to abandon his job as a baker because the townspeople stopped buying fart-tainted fart pastries made by The Fart Monster of Fart Street.

Seven: He could allegedly imitate musical instruments. I wonder how well he could actually do this and if his fanny orchestra consisted of more than just horns.

Eight: Le Pétomane quit his career when World War I so saddened him that he no longer saw a value in farting onstage. I find this ironic, because it’s during trying times that a nation needs fart-based entertainment most.

Nine: And the real kicker, to me, would be that Le Pétomane’s given name was Joseph Pujol. It is perhaps the most apt aptronym ever, for what better way to underscore the fact that his path to fame led directly through his butt?

Source: Wikipedia. No, just Wikipedia. I know, I know. I did enough checking to determine that he really did exist, but I actually don’t care if the whole article is the result of an elaborate prank. I got more out of reading it — and then explaining it to you — than I have from most other text I’ve read in recent memory. I’m claiming no journalistic integrity here. I feel I don’t need to, see, because it’s about a man who farted onstage.

Revenge of the Reverse Toilet

Not that I’m going to make a habit of blogging about bidets, but I’ve already posted about them once today, so why not twice?

I suppose most of you haven’t wasted energy wondering about where we get that word from, and perhaps many of you thought that a better use of your brain juice was trying to figure out how to use this mysterious bathroom presence. That’s fair. I wondered, however, and I found out. Bidet, according to Etymonline, is of uncertain origin, but we know at least that it was previously French for “pony” or “small horse.” That is all.

So the next time you’re abroad and in a fancy evacuation chamber, don’t think of the bidet as an intimidating bathroom appliance. Think of it as a pony! A porcelain bathroom pony! That wants to shoot a high-pressure stream of water into your butt.

There, now don’t you feel better?

Beyonce in the Bathroom

I realize that I'm about six years late on this one, but give a break to a guy who doesn't listen to Top 40 music and appreciate my astonishment at learning that Beyonce's second solo album was titled B'Day. This is why we have editors. This is why people who work with words should probably get a second, third or fourth opinion before an assemblage of text is finalized and then printed several million times.

Because no one with an understanding of spoken English would look at that album title and pronounce it as "Bee Day." No, that would be rendered as B Day or B. Day or maybe even B-Day, in the style of V-Day or D-Day. As it stands now, the instinctive way most people would pronounce B'Day, I'd guess, is more like g'day, which is what Australians say to each other in the morning. And that's hilarious, because it sounds pretty much exactly like bidet, which is not a glamorous pop star's music album but a bathroom fixture you use to unsoil the filthiest parts of your body.

But how is it possible that no one involved in the creative process behind this album raised their hand and pointed out that that B'Day would be pronounced like those European anti-toilets? Or was that the point the whole time?

This, I'd wager, is worse than the difference between "Paint It Black" and "Paint It, Black."

The Physics of Black Coffee, Bran and Bumpy Bus Rides

Since it’s Friday, the majority of you who read this blog will not actually read this post today. Perhaps you’ll read it tomorrow. Perhaps you never will. Regardless, I’m determined to keep it simple, and so I’ll just tell you that there exists a particular physical phenomenon called Brownian motion. This is a funny name for anything. Hilarious, even. Feel free to disagree, but you’re wrong.

Enjoy your Friday.

A Spoonful of Mystery

My folks get the San Jose Mercury, whose Sunday edition at one point came packed in with Parade Magazine, which is to journalism what productive, violent belching is to opera. However, the Merc isn’t what it used to be and now its Sunday issue features USA Weekend, a Parade knockoff that manages to suck harder and with teeth. No Howard Huge. No Marilyn vos Savant. And an even worse version of those letters in which idiots ask questions about celebrities that could be solved in mere moments by Google and IMDb.

Still, I felt compelled to flip through this past Sunday’s Parade Magazine-like publication, and while doing so I was confronted with this:

And then I puked in my mouth a little, because the foamy brown substance in the spoon was not readily identifiable. I mean, I knew what it probably was and it only took a moment for me to see the Jell-O logo at the bottom of the page, but does this image read immediately as chocolate mousse to you all?

Don’t go straight to all things scatological — fecal matters, if you will — because I first saw this as some kind of rock, then some sort of crispy thing… and then, yeah, shit. None of these seem like associations the wiggly, jiggly people at Jell-O Corp would want me to make with this product. And even if this photo is meant to depict chocolate mousse, doesn’t it look too perfectly egg-shaped there in the spoon? To the point of making it unappetizing? Poo associations aside?

Of course, the people who actively read USA Weekend would be used to consuming harmful, nutrient-free substances, so perhaps this advertisement isn’t an inappropriate one for this publication.

“How Did I Get So Many Farts?!”

On Sunday, I blogged about a possible pop cultural connection between a pint-sized Japanese comic book character and a similarly small Batman character. Today I’m talking about that original pint-sizer once again. And farts.

So while the whole Batman thing grabbed me, it’s not that particular Black Jack comic that I will remember forever. There’s another one in which little Pinoko accidentally swallows a poison capsule and Black Jack must extract it from her before her digestive juices eat through the casing. He realizes that the only way he can flush the capsule from Pinoko’s body is to fill her digestive cavity with gas to blast the capsule into an area he can reach. Black Jack succeeds, of course, but as the recovering Pinoko is consequently very flatulent. This panel appears on the comic’s last page:


Being tired but unable to sleep and reading this comic at around two in the morning, I found this hilarious — not just the situation but the phrasing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone ask the question “How did I get so many farts?” but I’m sure many people have been in a situation in which it would have been appropriate.

It kept thinking about this at odd times, and it kept making me laugh. Eventually, it occurred to me that the line would make an amazing improv exercise in style of Mel Gibson’s “GIVE ME BACK MY SON!” line from Ransom.

(I hadn’t seen this video in a few years and upon rewatching it I’m surprised to see Office add-ons Ellie Kemper and Zach Woods in it. Way to graduate from YouTube, funny people!)

Imagine a group of people speaking this line in different ways to another person in the group. Both must keep a straight face. There’s so many directions you could take it. Confused. Forlorn. Inexplicably elated. Angry at God. Hysterical. Resigned. Awed by the miracles of nature. You can emphasize the I. You can emphasize the farts. You can emphasize the many You can say it like a fat southern sheriff. Or a valley girl. Or a grizzled prospector. Or a 50s housewife. Or a someone performing Shakespeare Or Jan Brady. Or Jerry Seinfeld. Or Shirley Temple. Or Mr. T.

The possibilities are endless.

The Dumping

So I have this friend Lela — a soulmate, really — who I don’t see very often because she lives in a different city than I do. Also, she doesn’t have ears or arms, so she can’t use the common technological means to communicate with me from afar. But the arm thing notwithstanding, I decided to write her a Facebook email explaining that I would be in her town this Thursday and that we should meet up, if possible. Because, you know, soulmates. And I actually wrote a thoughtful little note explaining how I’d be happy to see her.

But then Facebook ruined it all with the word entry verification form it made me fill out in order to send this message looked like this:

“The dumping.”

I don’t put much stock in horoscopes or the arrangement of scattered chicken bones, but it’s hard not to read something into these two words being assigned to the email I send to a friend I haven’t talked to in a long time. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how the mystery that is life will reveal how “the dumping” will figure into our lives.

Ha ha. “Dump.”

Yin, Yang and John

New Zealand, as a nation, likes making an effort at being green. Failing that, it likes making an effort at seeming green. The telltale signs are everywhere. Case in point: the toilets.

We have these flush activators in America, with the buttons each being composed of one part for little flushes and another for bigger ones. But here they're everywhere --- homes and hotels --- as if the entire toilet-using population of New Zealand is in on the effort to conserve water whenever possible. The funny thing about these buttons is that they are composed of two organic, interlocking halves, which means they essentially form a yin-yang symbol. The one above --- found in my hotel bathroom --- even has little eyes, though one is weirdly winking. (Ol' Winky is for when you don't need to clean out the whole bowl.) And because I see these buttons every time I use a toilet, I get reminded of the Taoist symbol for spiritual balance between three and six times a day, depending on my fluid intake.

Toilet philosophy, of course, is nothing new. The bathroom is maybe better suited for pondering than any other room in the house. But in this case, the fixtures are mapping bodily functions onto existing philosphical concepts. Inadvertantly, yin (dark, negative and feminine) gets associated with the bathroom activities that require a full flush and yang (light, positive and masculine) with the less intrusive expulsions.

And, being male myself, I find these associations funny. But I'm pretty sure that I'm the only person to pass through New Zealand bathrooms and have this thought, so I guess the joke will remain an inside one.

As far as other matters go, the weather is fair but the kiwi birds remained hidden.

Squishy Fishy, Part Two

I have a friend, whose name I’m declining to mention, who works in Washington D.C. for a member of congress, whose name I’m also declining to mention. This friend occasionally reads my blog and happened to do so this morning, when she learned of the awful squishy fishy toilet seat. The following email describes the resulting action:

I was reading your blog this morning, the post about your new toilet seat, right as [NAME OF CONGRESS PERSON] walked in and said “Is that a toilet seat with fish on it?” Not really knowing what to say, I went with “Um, yeah, it is. Uh....” Because what really do you say when your boss, a member of congress, asks about a cushioned decorated toilet seat on your screen? At this point, the office had to come over and look at what I was reading. Could have been worse, I guess?

I’m just pleased to know that my blog has distracted an elected official, however briefly. Perhaps I can convince this congress member to pass anti-cushioned toilet seat legislation?

Squishy Fishy — A Short Rant About a Toilet Seat

Upon moving into our new place, Aly and I discovered that the toilet seat, which had always been up during walkthroughs, had fish embroidered into the top of the lid. This struck us as strange, as the lid and seat look fairly new while the guy who previously lived in this unit did so alone — no kids, no ichthyologist girlfriend, no halfwit brother who might see the design and clap his chubby hands saying “Fishies! Fishies!” Aly and I presume that the cleaning crew, after doing what they could with this toilet, closed the lid, like polite people do, finally allowing us new tenants to gaze upon the seat that should not be. However, the unwelcomed fish design, looking like something a six-year-old might have created with a handful of stickers and too little parental supervision, was the least of our objections, as we would soon learn.

Upon returning the lid to the up position so as to hide the stupid-looking fish, I found that the toilet seat itself was cushioned, by which I mean that component itself was not made of either porcelain or hard plastic but instead foam rubber. (I guess, then, the toilet seat itself is a cushion.) Short of a body embedded in the wall, this is one of the nastiest surprises I could imagine in a new house. The mere thought of a toilet seat with a squishy texture repulses me. Spongy textures have no place near wherever human waste is being expelled.

And although we’ve since removed the horrible thing, I can’t help thinking of a second reason to hate it: Specifically, who would be inclined to buy a cushioned toilet seat aside from somebody who spends such an inordinately long amount of time on the pot that the pressure of standard, firm seat against the rear end had apparently caused discomfort? Personally, I do what I have to do and then continue with my day, but whoever purchased Squishy Fishy clearly suffered from a digestive disorder, possibly from a parasite obtained while abroad or from some sort of voodoo curse. (I’m speculating here, but I’ll bet I’m not far off.) And now I have to wonder exactly how communicable that disease might be, for despite thee new, firm seat in place of the previous one, I am still using the same toilet, for the most part.

If you’re reading this now and I now you socially and you happen to have a seat like this one, please make every effort not to tell me.

In closing, enjoy two more pictures of the house, each fairly unrelated to this post’s topic. First, the pathetic contents of our fridge on the first night in the new place:

And, second, what Adam found in the backyard, buried in dead bamboo:

There is much to notice in this new place.

Handshakefulness

Tonight marked the first rerun of the 30 Rock episode “Retreat to Move Forward.” Aside from being a thoroughly funny episode, it is also notably the one whose plot involves the Wikipedia profile for Janis Joplin being edited to include such misinformation as that her legs bent the wrong way, she speedwalked everywhere, she ate cats, she feared toilets, and that she had a signature cocktail made from cherry juice, buttermilk, and tequila, all in an effort to make Jane Krakowski’s character appear stupid.

The last first time the episode aired, Joplin’s actual Wikipedia page had to be locked to protect it from vandalism inspired the show. Tonight, the Wikipedia nerds are on high alert since they realized that the episode was airing again. This in itself strikes me a damn hilarious, but one particular discussion on the article’s take page took the cake.

Oh, coprophobia, when will you stop being relevant?

Alternate title for this post: “Robot Penis.”

On Trumpet Solos and Greek Mythology

Anyone who has stopped at my office has likely met the woman who controls the reception area. She also directs quite a bit of business beyond that entrance, but her status as a guardian is key, both to this post and to my work life in general. Simply put: that reception area might as well be a drawbridge, because if you are deemed unfit for entry, the office is basically impregnable and you will soon be dogpaddling around the sharp rocks in the moat. This I like.

What’s interests me most about The Guardian — as I’ll refer to her in this post, for the purposes of not dragging her into the whirlpool of misspelled words and aborted ideas that is my blog — is that she has two distinct personalities. If the one that sends unpleasant, unreasonable people packing is Cerberus — and, yes, I realize that I just blew the whole two personalities motif by comparing her to a three-headed character — then the other is Hestia, the manifestation of all things comforting, warm and familiar. (And yes, I realize I just skipped from a medieval-themed metaphor with the moat-and-drawbridge comparison to a Greek mythology-themed one, but I don’t care. God, you’re picky today.) She’s the one who can exorcise bad feelings about work and co-workers better than most. She’s the one who brought me a plug-in space heater from her home just because I had casually mentioned that my un-heatered house was painfully cold last winter. And she’s the one who happily casts off unwanted visitors when she knows the day’s workload means that I probably don’t have time to chat. (A note: Don’t feel weird about me crediting The Guardian with having dual or possibly even dueling personalities. A Gemini, her birthday being just a few days apart from mine, she totally cops to it and, I’d imagine, would be cool with be noting it myself.)

At times, however, The Guardian blends the two personas to further some goal, and when it happens I can’t help but to watch in astonishment as she makes magic happen with interpersonal skills that I could only hope to one day have. I remembered the best example of this office mediation prestidigitation this past Friday afternoon. Some time back, The Guardian sent out an email to the entire office with what amounted to a request to make both of her jobs easier: retaining her authority in front of visitors while keeping her sanctum holy. For you see, The Guardian’s desk sits about ten feet from a room I identify on tours as “the pretty bathroom.” (It’s seriously the best-looking room in the entire office. Purple walls, lightbulbs lining the mirror, and generally a better smell than other rooms have, even though it’s a bathroom. When I’m showing interns around, I always try to end the tour there.) People like to use the pretty bathroom, but therein lies the problem. The Guardian’s email basically pleaded with those who might do so to acknowledge that its walls were no thicker than those in the rest of the acoustically vibrant office and that no magic spell made the actions performed in that room somehow inaudible to those who sit nearby. She asked not to be put in the position of having to fabricate reasons to the strangers waiting in the reception area for why those rude noises were manifesting, giving the equivalent of a Bronx cheer in their faces, then vanishing before they could be properly reprimanded. (“No! You don’t do that! Bad!”) If I recall that now-deleted email correctly, The Guardian offered an excuse along the lines of there being bad pipes in the bathroom, which, given the circumstances, wasn’t exactly a lie.

As I mentioned before, the reason this six-month-old story is rolling around in my head today stems from the fact that late on Friday afternoon — before Palmer gave me a ride home, saving me from wading through the swiftly-running creeks that were the streets of Santa Barbara — I was walking through the nearly empty office, looking for my coffee cup. (An everyday ritual: placing it down then instantly suffering a type of brain damage that sends me on a Legend of Zelda-style quest to find it half an hour later.) I stood in earshot of a bathroom — not the pretty one, but one of the tenement-style ones in back — and distinctly heard a sour note sound out from behind the closed door. I froze, partially out of the mental energy it took to assure myself that no, that wasn’t me, frenzied in my coffee mug search to the point where my body went on autopilot. When my brain had cleared me of any wrongdoing, I then heard more: a dozen or so staccato blasts, then the noise of a toilet paper dispenser spinning, then finally a rollicking, Dizzy Gillespie-style finish. Given its position at the end of this musical sequence, I’m inclined to think it took the trumpeter by surprise.

I’m not one to judge others for the fact that they are human and, thus, must perform the biological tasks that allow them to remain alive. The occasional sonic output while using the facilities is normal, permissible, even expected. But when someone composes freeform jazz, they’re overstepping a line, likely as a result of a frijoles-inclusive dish from Los Arroyos or a legume-heavy to-go salad from Savoy. It’s one thing to engage in this kind of activity in an empty building or even in a public restroom, where anonymity can lessen the amount of shame incurred. However, when the office is near-empty but totally-not-empty, this kind of performance creates the most problems in that I knew how many people would be using the men’s room and who, given their desk’s proximity to the bathroom, would be the one most likely to use it. Of course, as my coffee cup search continued, I had a hallway bump-into with the trumpeter himself. Picture it: me, trying to hide any expression which might read as “I know what you did” and him, sheepishly waving “hey” as he passed by, knowing full well that he had announced his troubles to anyone not listening to an iPod with the volume turned up. (This group constitutes a good chunk of the people I work with, and the trumpeter is all the better for it.)

Not only did the incident take me back to The Guardian’s email cautioning against this type of activity, but it also made me realize that had I her tact, I would have picked out words that would have simultaneously vanquished the shame but reminded him that other people have ears and would rather not know him on such an intimate level. I lack this skill, even in the context of essays like this, in which I can take however much time I need to scroll through my mental word bank and remove the “shame on you” words. At least I made it through this chunk of text without resorting to using the phrase “taking a dump.”

Oh, damn.

Three other articles about my office smelling bad or workplace bathroom habits:

• Bathroom Humor Birthday
• She Forgot Tired
• The Shitter Swap

Royal Kooparillo

Tonight, I have only to report two interesting things that happened at the grocery store.

First off, someone has apparently poured a sud-producing substance in the fountain at the Chapala Street Ralphs. Aly theorized that it was done by Ralphs itself in order to make the fountain look Halloween-appropriate and bubbling cauldron-like. Given that the police were speaking with the managers when we were there, I'd guess the bubbles were more likely the result of some Halloween prank. Here's the photo I took with my cell phone.


Then, while wandering the snack food aisle, I came across a product with which I was heretofore unfamiliar: Poppycock.


To some, "poppycock" might be an entirely innocent name for something you eat. It's not. At all. My research into the origins of silly words taught me where the word comes from, and I actually wrote about it on my blog back in August 2005. I'm fine with repeating it now, however, just because it's such a great story. "Poppycock" literally means "caca poopoo." Originally from the antiquate Dutch word pappekak, meaning "baby feces," the "poppy" part is related to the word "pap," which can either mean "soft baby food" or "worthless substance," the latter more often used in the context of "pile o' pap." Linguists don't seem to agree on whether "pap" shares a common origin with "poop," with some presuming that the latter was onomatopoetic, but I think the similarity is too striking to disregard. The "cock" part has no relation to the contemporary English use of "cock," but instead comes from the Latin cacare, meaning "to defecate." If I'm not mistaken, the same Latin word ended up in English as "caca." Thus, "poppycock" refers to soft baby doo, or the doo resulting from the consumption of baby food. Or, in my terms, caca poopoo.

With that being known, if poppycock still seems appealing, then by all means indulge.

Bacon Machine

It makes me laugh.


It makes me wonder why I had never thought of it before.

[ Source: Botinok ]

Armitage Shanks

Just when I think it’s sunk in, I realize it hasn’t and I’m a stranger again.

The novelty of living in this old city never struck my mind more sensationally than when the spit flew from the mouth of an Shakespearean actress on landed on my forehead. The construction of the Globe affords me the privilege of groundlinghood — I’m standing with my stomach pressed against the stage, the cast of an all-female production of Richard III screaming, crying, and dueling no more than six inched from my awe-stricken face. The actress playing Richard defies the confines of gender with a malicious grin; the actress playing Anne, who would be pretty if she didn’t have the nose of the pigfaces from that “Eye of the Beholder” episode of the Twilight Zone, is the one whose saliva has splashed on my head. Her Anne is both dignified and pathetic. It was the second performance of a Shakespeare play at the reconstructed Globe within twenty-four hours, the previous being an all-male Richard II. I never thought I could like the history plays like this.

I live among the unnervingly wealthy here. The bitchy, British judge from American Idol shops at the grocery store we went to the first day. We saw him. The Dutch embassy is our next door neighbors. They’re nice people, I’m sure. Our front window looks out onto Hyde Park, a sprawling green better than any strip of brush we call a park in the States. Aside from the palace within the park, there’s a golden statue of Prince Albert — ahem — and the Serpentine Galley, which is presently featuring a show by Cindy Sherman.

The flatmates are good, certainly better than I expected from a school that admits cows into its undergraduate program. Some of them suck beyond the telling of it, but mostly I’m happy.

In the interest of conserving the flat’s most prized resource — toilet paper — I braved the bidet today. Webster defines “bidet” in a way that makes me smile: “a bathroom fixture used especially for bathing the external genitals and the posterior parts of the body.” Truthfully, I think the toilet’s little sister is a fixture made only for women. The male genitals hang in such a way as to be teased annoying by the bidet’s stream of water. While the stream does clean the desired parts, it strikes the seldom-stuck region to the rear of the nut sack in the process, causing an unpleasant slap-slap-slap that does not make me smile. I think Bidet Town is an area of the European lifestyle I will leave uncharted after all.

And most impressive above all these things: I learned how to use the tube without getting lost.

Where do I go from here?