AssGuard

Charmin is amazing, always.  Here is their latest amazingness, via buzzfeed.

We've Always Been An Asgardian

Bizarmin Strikes Again!!

you know, i can't believe how much of this blog has now been dedicated to charmin, but man if they aren't just so damned wacked out i have to post.  oddly enough, charmin is actually one of my least favorite types of toilet paper.

so, charmin is opening a public restroom in times square for the holidays.

it's actually kind of totally brilliant  people need bathrooms while they're shopping, charmin needs a larger than life sized advertisement in times square a la the m&m store.

unsurprisingly, the restrooms, like everything in times square, are aimed at tourists.

Traveling to the Big Apple this holiday season?  Visit the Charmin Restrooms.  Check out our new location at 142 West 42nd Street.  You'll find 15 clean comfortable restrooms to help you "Enjoy the Go" in the heart of NYC.  It's our holiday gift to you.

the restrooms in times square aren't just places to poo, they're an experience:

Sure, we've got restrooms. But that's not all. Shake your groove thing on our dance stage. Take a load off in one of our lounge chairs. Or grab a photo op with a Charmin Bear.

not just a funny drawing, the bathroom will -really- have a potty dance floor.

yeah, you read that right.  'take a load off' in their lounge chairs.   the webpage also invites us to "Browse our pics to tour the Charmin Restrooms in NYC."  now maybe they're keeping secrets until the restrooms launch, currently 13 hours and 20 minutes from now (there's a countdown clock on the site, to increase our excitement), but all of the aforementioned 'pics' are concept drawings of the space, and not actual photos.  

not sure what those translucent arrows are illustrating.  air flow?

how long will these restrooms stay clean and comfortable, anyway.  i'd guess by the end of thanksgiving day, that shit will be covered in shit.  at the very least i think it will be difficult to keep up with all the tourists urinating on the seats, because you -know- tourists love to urinate on toilet seats "squat".

i'm also expecting there'll be some kind of a charmin shop, maybe a small stand where you can buy annoyingly fluffy toilet paper embroidered with your name or charmin bear key chains with removable tp flakes attached to their butts.  maybe an 'Enjoy the Go' coffee mug?

oh, 'the Go' is charmin's apparently not quite trademarkable euphemism for 'shitting or peeing'.  you know charmin is -all about- confusing frank discussion with obtuse niceties, not saying 'poop' but painting crotch grabbing, pee-dancing, naked bears on the walls.  it twists my mind into knots.  as a footnote to this madness, just check out this charmin ad, a faux grassroots call to arms for finally enjoying our poos.  it is a mangled labyrinth of blunt poo-talk and euphemismo.

Poo Log

i once had a friend named shelby, one of the few people who internet stalking, unfortunately for me since she was rad, does not turn up. she liked to play 'what if some crazy shit' quite a lot.  and she was good at it.  two of the ones that have always stuck with me follow.  only the second has to do with bathrooms.  don't get confused! (feel free to answer in the comments though, if you wish.)

what if...

• 1.  ...you come home and your roommate is having sex, and you can hear them.  they don't know you're home.  then you realize that their sex partner is calling them by your name, and they are calling their sex partner by your love interest's name. they are roleplaying YOU.
  
  how would you feel?  what would you do?
  
  
• 2. ...your roommate is away, and you need a pencil or some other innocuous thing that you think you might be able to find in their desk without being intrusive.  what you find in their desk is a stack of notebooks, all titled [your name]'s Poops. they're logs of all of your trips to the bathroom: sounds you made, smells, whether you pooped, other details.  and the logs go back to when you first moved in together.
  
  what, if anything, would you do?
  

which brings me to the Poo Log (double entendre, i'm assuming, intended).

poo log.  a record keeper.

when you're psyched on your poo, you call your journal 'baby'

available from Herbivore, the Poo Log is more than just a journal with toilets on the cover.  it actually helps you keep track of your poops by providing a ratings scale, dubbed the PQI (Poo Quality Index).

but lest you think you the Poo Log will constrain the creative interpretation of your poop, or try to fit your square poop through a round hole, see that the facing page provides a bit more free form area to fill out, including space for a sketch*.

put your name at the top, so you can share the Log and compare your logs..

the main problem i see with the Poo Log, for me, is simply that it seems like a kind of while-you-poo activity.  once i'm done, i'm kinda done.  but if you like to talk about your poops, and people plug their ears and yell 'tmi', or if your listeners are saddened that you don't remember the details and don't have any sketches, this journal might be just the thing for you!

*do not sketch with poo.  your pages will stick together.  and that's gross.  though some down on it's luck medical laboratory might be able to sell a few of these with some kind of poop sample pack and a postage paid envelope for hard core poop geeks to get real feedback.  synergy!

bathroom buzz

asylum.com has an article outlining "urinals we most want to pee in", which includes several old and gigantic urinals (over 6 feet tall!) but also these single person bathrooms at Bar 89.  i haven't been there, but my friend frank was just telling me about them.  the doors are clear glass when it's unlocked, but once you log the door the 'fog over' so people can't see in.  i don't understand how that works.  maybe double panes of glass and the fog is inside?  maybe magic.  either way, as they say at bucketheadland, neato neato.  

check this out folks. i found this photo in a craigslist apartment ad for my neighborhood. i saw something like this a while back on apartment therapy or something. it's actually kind of totally brilliant, but damned if it isn't ugly. and odd. and the door implies the bathtub is somewhere else in the apartment. not a totally uncommon thing in nyc where the kitchen bathtub can be appealingly quaint (especially in a place described as a 'tenement'), but for 1700 dollars, it seems a little, um, inappropriate.  makes me wonder about the deregulation of the apartment and whether they are even legally -allowed- to charge that much for it. clearly no renovation has been done in quite some time, and shoddy overpriced renovations are usually how they get the rent raised for regulated apartments. maybe it was never regulated, but that seems unlikely too.

ah, new york city real estate. how i loathe thee. i can't believe i live in a town where having A closet (and i mean literally just one closet) is luxurious.

more on that

folks, i said i wasn't going to look any further, and i didn't, but The Hater had a different version of the 'pieces left behind' (i want to make a spoof of the left behind series around that as the title/premise) on her page today and it is either far more, or just slightly less disturbing than the interrupted football game one. you decide.

weird tv of the week

there is so much that is awesomely disturbing about this commercial. from the anthropomorphizing of the young bear in a way that makes his nudity seem inappropriate* to the use of shame marketing** to the totally bizarre 'strength test' scene and the intense chasm between the tone and the narrative/subject matter***.

when i was looking for it on youtube, i noticed, a lot of people are uploading these commercials with the bears. i was going to investigate this bear commercial youtube uploader subculture and then i saw this video.

and i think delving any deeper might be too much for me.


*the flecks of tp on his butt emphasize his humanness, his nudity and his playing football simultaneously. but this commercial with humans instead of bears would be... oh my god totally amazing. but also really kind of icky and who would ever do that?

**the idea that "little white pieces" of toilet paper on my ass would be a source of embarrassment or disdain (his dad is so utterly and publicly disgusted) instead of discomfort or unhygiene.

***they go through all the trouble of saying 'bath tissue' and the commercial is absurdly vulgar in general message.

****i wish there was an easy way to format footnotes in a blog post where the reader could just click on the * and it would take them to the note and then you could just click back to where you were reading.

bee days

so i'm over at apartment therapy, trolling for work related ideas, and they've posted about bidets.

the pro- anti- bidet discussion gets rather heated, which is terribly amusing. seems people who don't use bidets really really don't want to, ever, and think it's indescribably gross.

somebody linked to this in-seat bidet, which i thought was the one with the super amusing how to animation, where they showed a button that is so the masturbation button and never talk about what it is, but i can't find the video. so maybe it's a different site? now that i think about it, it might have been a whole machine, and not in the seat.

Stewart's Foods and gas station, Oneonta, NY

bathroom type: single occupancy, co-ed
activities: pee, face wash, failed toothbrushing
amenities: none.
flush: regular
sink: regular, bars
dryer type: towel dispenser.

i forgot to take pics. oops! we slept in the car, so i used my bathroom opportunity to wash my face and brush my teeth. except i forgot toothpaste. so i just washed my face. i had to dry off with rough brown paper towels, but it worked out ok. i prefer the bar type of faucet handles, which they had here, because you can push them with the back of your hand. there wasn't anything terribly unique about this bathroom, but it was clean and got the job done. and again i didn't have to put paper down. if only it had had toothpaste!

SUNY Oneonta - fine arts building, 2nd floor.

bathroom type: small multiperson, single sex (women) bathroom. 2 stalls.
activities: pee.
amenities: separate mirror room.
flush: stick.
sink: don't remember.
dryer type: towel dispenser.

this bathroom had a sort of lounge or foyer or whatever you would call it. it was kind of jarring when i went in, expecting a bathroom, and entered what looked to be a big empty closet with a mirror. it wasn't much, so far as these things go. no where to sit, for instance. but there was a ledge at the mirror, for whatever you use a ledge in a public restroom for. hair product or setting your bag on i guess. there weren't any mirrors in the bathroom proper, however, which i find irritating for some reason. maybe because it feels like making a special effort to look in the mirror is vain or something. not like when you just accidentally 'have to' look in the mirror while you're washing your hands. of course i stopped and looked in the mirror.

the bathroom was pretty clean. i didn't have to put paper down. and it had a unique tp dispenser. not too unique, but i had never seen one like it before. it was really just the cover that was uncommon.

platekill rest area (ny state thruway)

bathroom type: large, two sided multi-person, single-sex (women) bathroom.
activities: pee.
amenities: none.
flush: automated
sink: automated
dryer type: automatic towel dispenser.

first bathroom of tour. rest area bathrooms are usually pretty clean. because, you know, people clean them. this was was pretty much all automated. except the soap. i think i've only seen like 1 automated soap dispenser ever. i'm not a huge fan of the automated flush in general, because i usually put paper down in places that have them, and my in stall movements seam to confuse the electric eye. but i -am- a big fan of the automated towel dispenser.

i put paper down even though there wasn't any pee on the seat. partially because it seemed like the right thing to do first day of tour (when i'm stlil relatively clean myself) and partially because the -was- pee on the toilet, in the notch area in the front, where the seat doesn't go all the way around. i mean, i wiped it off, but it just put me off to sitting right on the seat.

as i mentioned in the intro, i couldn't take a pic of the bathroom really, so i just got the toilet.

pooped in bathrooms

when i was a kid, my brother would make fun of me for going to the bathroom. i don't mean shitting and pissing. he would make fun of me for -going-. getting up from dinner and using the bathroom. he claimed that i went so often that i couldn't be actually using it every time, he thought i just wanted to see the bathrooms. i don't know why he would think this. maybe he didn't understand the concept of 'pissing like a girl' (as in often). but in retrospect, i don't think i went all that excessively. and i was never just checking out the bathrooms. not back then. but, i mean, we were in restaurants. why wouldn't i have to pee? but he would always say something. but i guess that's what brothers are for. and to be totally honest, i'm not sure which brother it was. feels like all of them but i know it wasn't andy. it could have been just dom. or just dave. or both. but i have no idea.

some of you may know that i hate going to the bathroom. again, not the pooping or peeing parts (though that can be uncomfortable, depending on what i've been eating), but the -going- part. and while it may seem like that has something to do with my story about my brother, i don't think it does. i just find it really inconvenient to stop whatever i'm doing and go to the bathroom. so i put if off a lot. that is, often. and for a long time. i'm trying not to do that so much anymore, because i know it's not that good for my bladder. but so far i've had a pretty strong bladder, at least as compared to the folks i hang out with.

i think about bathrooms a lot though. i dream about bathrooms way more than a normal person should. usually because i have to pee. but whenever i'm in a really nice bathroom, like at The Pub in williamsburg, or a bathroom with some notable amenity, like sanis toilet seat cleaner, i think about making a public restroom guidebook. i think about making guidebooks a lot actually. and i think about making Al's Guide To Touring, and there is a whole chapter in this imaginary guide about bathrooms. apparently i'm obsessed with bathrooms and didn't realize. another bathroom related project i fantasize about is making stickers ranting against women squatting in public restrooms with the seat down. lift the seat, folks! i would put the stickers up in every bathroom where i found pee on the seat. or maybe every bathroom.

another thing that makes me want to talk about bathrooms is my menstrual cup. because different bathroom set ups are better or worse for emptying and cleaning it. last tour, i dropped that sucker in the toilet. luckily it was my last day (of menstruating, not of tour) and i didn't need to put it back in. (also, i know that's gross, but it's silicone so i sterilized it). i -think- mort (my period, mortimer menses) is due on this tour. he comes pretty much every tour. ah, timing.

anyway, where am i going with this? well last tour i decided i wanted to make a zine a la that guy from the yeah yeah yeahs book, slept in beds. pooped in toilets. except i think he wrote poems or something (i haven't read it, maybe it's just photos. also, who sleeps in beds on tour? slept on floors makes more sense. slept in vans.) and i'm going to write reviews. i decided to do a blog because if i say i'm going to do a zine when i get home, i just won't do it. this way i'll be motivated to keep going. and if i make a zine out of it in the end, cool.

so here is it. my tour bathroom blog. it's day 2 of tour (this leg of it anyway) and i decided to keep a blog of all the bathrooms i use. i was going to review each one. i'm trying to decide if they should just be bathrooms i actually poop in or all bathrooms i use. thing is, i haven't pooped yet on this tour.

there are so many decisions to be made about this sort of thing. do i just do this on my lj? do i start a separate lj? blogger? then i decided not to review bathrooms in people's houses, because that's rude. but i'll take pictures maybe. unless there's a lot of personal stuff. i can ask i guess.

so far i've used 3 public restrooms and no private restrooms on tour. what i didn't realize until the platekill rest area on the ny thruway is that the logistics of photographing a large multi person bathroom. because there are other people in there. and i think they don't want their picture taken. i think these would be great shots though. long exposures that show the people moving around. you know you want that. but i don't want to get in any fights. so i just took a pic of the toilet. it's pretty boring. the picture.

the second bathroom i went in was at suny oneonta in the fine arts building. and i ran out of room on my camera so i had to take phone pics. sorry. i'll get the kinks ironed out. eventually.

the third bathroom i was in, just now, i forgot to take pictures. oops. it wasn't terribly interesting, but it was the first single occupancy bathroom i've been in so far. it just slipped my mind.

ok, so, enjoy!