THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING

Thank you, Washington Post!

Nice ad. Very realistic.

Via.

Light a fire under your butt!

That's how Discover magazine's Discoblog described the incinerating toilets that burn up poop and leave behind only ashes.

The post also talks about a number of ways that we get rid of pee and poop...including how in India, there is a social class called the Untouchables whose job has traditionally been dealing with human sewage. (Oy.)

Yes, that is very amusing.

Grant Henderson runs a septic removal business. And he's got a new website address for it. Yay!

Drinking Pee-Pee Isn't Bad!

Via.

If you live in a town or city, when you flush the toilet, your poop and pee goes to a water processing plant. Workers there try to clean the pee and poop OUT of the water  . . . and then they probably just dump the “clean” water back into your closest river or other body of water.

And from there, you KNOW that it sometimes ends up in someone’s drinking water. So you could argue that people drink poopy, urine-y water right now. It’s actually not that dangerous; there’s a study out that says that cleaned toilet water is healthier than wild “fresh” water.

Since it’s already happening by accident, the US National Research Council is saying that it’s time to just treat our toilet flushings and re-use them in the same city the water started in. No more dumping it downstream; just drink it!

So yeah, in a way you’d be drinking your own pee. But isn’t that better than drinking someone else’s? (Via io9 article.)

What makes Super Mario super?

Zac Gorman has an insight into what makes life meaningful: Leave the toilets behind!

Sewage Truck Humor!

"A Flush Beats a Full House"

When you flush the toilet, the poop either goes into a sewer line (and leaves your property) OR it gets pumped into a big septic tank in your yard.

And when the septic tank gets FULL of poop (and other nasty stuff), a sewage truck comes along to suck all that gross stuff out!

It's a tough job, and so the folks in the septic tank cleaning business use humor to get through the day. Here's some photos of their jokes at work:

Satisfaction Guaranteed OR 110% of Your Product Back!

(Clock "Read more" to read more.)

"Reporting live from Hurricane Irene—"

"—and I just got covered in raw sewage. That's just great."

Deja Poo!

For the second time in two days, a muck-covered man's been pulled out of a sewer! Of course, it's not the same man, but still... is this a trend? (The latest story is here.)

Genius in a storm drain!

In the California town of Ceres, a man got stuck in a storm drain.

For my own peace of mind, I'm going to assume that's mud on his leg, not . . . butt-mud.

Anyway, the man was rescued. But why would he pull the storm drain cover off and then climb into the grimy hole? Read the story at the Modesto Bee, but you can already guess the reason!

Hello Kitty Septic Tank?

This septic tank will soon be buried underground. Then poop and pee will flow into it from pipes. So why does it have Hello Kitty on the side?

From here.

What does poop taste like?

I didn't know what poop tastes like, and I don't really WANT to know, either. But a guy named Gibbletwunt has told me, so now, I'll share his inspiring story with you:

When I was seven, my dad uncovered our family’s sewage system. There was some kind of blockage somewhere, so part of our backyard had an open channel full of poop and pee leading to the now uncovered septic tank, which was obviously also full of poop and pee.

My mates would occasionally come to my house for an A-Team episode re-enactment (it was 1987!). During one of these, I outran the bad guys and performed an impressive army-roll. Then I plunged head-first into the septic tank.

Your first instinct when you fall into water, or as in this instance, poopy pee-ey turd jam, is to breathe IN. Deeply. Which I did. I must have swallowed about three grumpies and was almost drowning in my own family's effluent when I was fished out by my dad. 

So today, I have a vivid memory of what poo tastes like. I can assure you that it's not pleasant. It doesn't really taste like chicken. It's slightly alkaline and has chunks in it.

"London poop is falling down, falling down, falling down" [repeat]

If you visit London today, you’ll find places like Gutter Lane or Staining Lane. And other streets have had their names changed, like good old Shiteburn (now Sherborne) Lane. 

Where did these weird names come from?

Poop!

Seven-hundred years ago, taking a poop in London wasn’t easy. There were only eight public bathrooms in the whole city! Most people pooped at home in containers called chamber pots. And when the chamber pot was full, they dumped it out the window. Hello, Shiteburn Lane!

That photo is of historian Dan Snow. He is re-creating what a street in London looked like back then. He’s mixing pee, poop, animal guts and mud to get it just right. (No, I’m not kidding!)

A few people had toilets built in their homes. It was a wooden seat with a hole in it. Under the seat was a deep pit that collected the poop called a cesspool. If the house was by the river, the toilet would just vent right into the fresh water.

Chamber pots are purty!

A woman named Alice Wade thought this was a stupid way to live. So she hooked up a pipe from her toilet to a rainwater gutter. The idea was that the pee and poop would flush down into the sewer system.

Good idea! Unfortunately, one of her grumpies blocked the rain gutter, and the pee and poop started building up. And according to a complaint that was filed, the “stench” was horrible!

Finally, in 1357, some new employees were added to the city of London. These included muckrakers (they picked poop up) and gong farmers (they cleaned out cesspits and cesspools).

And you know what? I think that “gong farmer” might be the coolest job title ever!

Top photo by M. Caimary.

Bottom photo by Abulic Monkey,

information from a delightful BBC article.

Nice Slogan!

The Advanced Plumbing company in Richmond, Virginia, has an interesting motto:

Herding Turds So You Don't Have To!

Ooh, if you worked there, your business card would list your occupation as "Turd Herder." But if that was too gross, you could just go with "Turdherd" instead.

Photo by Desiree Williams.

"You poop more than anyone!"

Many countries don't have enough toilets. Not good! So an group called International Development Enterprises (IDE) helps by installing new sewage systems in these places.

That IS good! After all, in places like Cambodia, only one person in five has access to a toilet. But I still felt bad for a man there who got a new toilet and started using it right away.

Then during a village meeting, it was announced that he'd done something special:

"Congratulations! 

You produce more poop 

than anyone in the village."

Yay!

This news story from the BBC also has this photo of an aid worker explaining that if people always poop in the woods outside of their village, they are surrounding themselves with grumpies!

Get it? Get it?

Wineed to Poo is apparently a plumbing service in Seminole, Florida. (It took me a moment to figure out that their Poo bear is holding a roll of toilet paper!)

One truck you do NOT want to drive behind!

"Oh, the humanity..."

How do you know when you're going to have a bad day?

Well, an unlucky Florida driver was behind the business end of a sewage truck ... when the sewage truck spilled its load of liquid poop.

So that was sort of a tip-off that things weren't going to go well!

Via.

"We're #1 in the #2 Business!"

There is an Australian company named Grieve Septic and Liquid Waste. Their motto is "We're number 1 in the number 2 business!"

But this company gets noticed more for their trucks.

You know, the ones with Turd Burglar written on them.

But wait a minute. Why would a burglar steal poop? 

After all, these guys get PAID to take the poop away. Is it more fun to pretend that it's a crime? (And is it a crime that I'm asking these stupid questions at all?)

Track That Flush!

Have you ever wondered where your poop goes after you flush? You SHOULD. And if you live in the United Kingdom, Poland, Ireland, or South Africa, now you can!

Flush Tracker has a map that allows you to enter a bathroom location. You can then track where flushes go from that spot! Just for kicks, I did a trial flush from 10 Downing Street, London, which is where the Prime Minister lives. And right now, my hypothetical poop has gone a half-mile at a speed of five miles-per-hour on its way to a sewage treatment plant. 

But what do we call this poo trips? Maybe...

• excrement excursions
• turd trajectories
• plop journeys
• scat scootings

Anyway, this is a fascinating thing to watch, but it’s also done to highlight World Toilet Day…which is TODAY!

Article on Flush Tracker here (via).

Why couldn't it have been the "Poop Sloop"?

The town of Salisbury in Massachusetts has a new sewage pump-out boat for its harbor. Yes! The new boat will pump the pee, poop, and chemicals out of the holding tanks (or “heads”) of other boats in Salisbury Harbor.

What I like about the new boat is that they had a naming contest for it. Here were some of the incredibly awesome possibilities:

• Headhunter
• Potty Mouth
• Poop Sloop
• Discharge Barge
• Floater
• Muck Sucker
• Dung Dingy
• Captain's Log
• Poo Pourrie
• Doody Call
• Poo Bear
• Pumpty Dumpty

The winning name: the Down Winder. Humph! Even Poo Bear was better than that! But according to a community official, the problem was that “no one wanted to answer to the name Poo Bear or Pumpty Dumpty when called over the radio.”

Anyway, after the Down Winder offloads a boat’s sewage, it will transport the yucky stuff to the local sewage treatment plant. This is WAY better than just dumping it in the harbor . . . which is the way that pretty much what everyone has been doing with their shipboard poop forever!

Article here.