The END product

I hope everyone had a good Christmas. I had an excellent holiday, full of family and friends and cheer. I also received some generous gifts, which I didn't deserve because I'm a huge jerk.

Christmas day was spent with my buddy John and his family. His mother and wife cooked a terrific meal, including my all time favorite, ham. I LOVE pig. The way to my heart is through food, and the way to keep my heart is through pig meat. I don't know why, but this other white meat is just spectacular. If I could only have one, I'd choose pig. I don't care if it meant me going out into the woods with a sharpened stick, I'd get me some pig! But I digress.

Johns house is a dog friendly house, and to that end my puppy Jinx was with me. She LOVES his place, his dog Buddy, and sniffing around his back yard. Accordingly, everyone there loves Jinx, including his youngest daughter Aja. She's slightly bigger than Jinx and spends her time carrying the dog around, which Jinx tolerates very well. As usual, Jinx was a big hit. Everybody was cooing over her, and everyone was FEEDING her.

Here Jinx, have some turkey. Here Jinx, have some cheese! Here Jinx, want a cracker? Have a nice ham bone. Hey Mike, did you know Jinx likes parsnip?

Anyone who is a dog owner knows what happens to dogs when they deviate from their usual diet of kibble, sticks, insects, grass and cat poo. Especially when the food is rich, varied and plentiful. Jinx has a cast iron stomach, but even she has her limits.

Shortly after everyone was finished dinner, she asked to go outside. She was very insistent about it, she had to go NOW! I let her out, and 10 minutes later let her back in. Shortly there after she jumped up on the couch beside me, hung her head over the edge and BLARF! Projectile vomit halfway across the rug! Wonderful. As me and the kid sitting beside me are scooping up runny vomit and vegetable chunks with paper plates, I notice a smell. The smell was very distinct, and was coming from the rear end of Jinx. I look at her bum and yes, there are leftovers all over her rear end. Apparently, vomit was not the only projectile that had come from her that day.

So, as I had the dog tucked under one arm bum end out, and a wet wipe in the other hand, my thoughts naturally wandered to poo, the end products of all end products.

As some of you may recall, some time ago my flawed logic identified pooing as the meaning of life. As such, much of my time is spent thinking about it. After all, if it truly is the meaning of life it does deserve some thought.

There is nothing like a good bowel movement. You feel better, lighter, more energetic and happier. How many of you can honestly tell me a really good poo doesn't make you feel like a million bucks? Just look at your average dog. Slow and mopey till he gets outside. After he's done dropping his load, he comes back in the house and tears around like nothing is wrong on this earth. I truly believe, that if everyone has at least one good bowel movement once a day and EVERY day, there would be much less war and violence on this planet.

But what makes a good poo? There are several things. It must have good volume. It must have the perfect consistency, and it must come out all in one big piece. It must not stink too much, and there should be little or no clean up needed afterwards. Most importantly, it must slide out quickly and with little effort. If it is the perfect poo, your bung hole will flutter with contentment and you'll feel light enough to float for at least the next 30 minutes.

Not every poo is a good poo. One of my least favorite poo's is the wipe forever poo. In this case, you just cannot get clean! Wipe after wipe after wipe, its just as dirty as the last one. Half a roll of toilet paper is spent just getting clean enough to pull up your pants to walk over to the nearest shower.

Then of course there is the movement where a little teeny piece is left. You can feel it there, hanging, refusing to drop, teasing you. You know that if you try to remove it with TP, it'll just make a huge mess all over the place. So there you are, with a itsy bitsy turd hanging off your bum like a butterfly cocoon hangs off a branch, shifting with the breeze. That's where the wiggle comes in. You sit there on the can, wiggling in every direction, left, right, up, down, side to side, doing the modified running man just to get this piece of poo to drop off your bum.

Don't you just hate the phantom poo? You have to go and NOW, and the only thing that comes out is a fart? Just plain old disappointment.

One of the most annoying is the "i'm not done yet". You think you're finished, you clean up, you're just about ready to flush, and BOOM! You sit back down to a poo that says to you "Sorry I'm late, did I miss anything?". This jerk is usually accompanied by two or three more poops that just can't find the accelerator pedal on the highway of the large intestine.

Let's not talk about the diaretic poops.

Of course, there's the floater poo. Those poops that float on the top of the bowl like displaced tree branches, just daring you to try and flush them. "Go ahead" they say, "Just when you think you got us down the bowl, at least one of us is actually hiding, waiting to float up and leave the next person a present".

All in all, please be sure to use a courtesy flush if you're using a guest bathroom. If not to save yourself some embarrassment, at least out of respect for the toilet owner. To those who like to host, please, PLEASE make sure you have LOTS of toilet paper within easy reach! You never know when you or your guests are going to have a wipe forever poop! There's nothing more embarrassing than having to excuse yourself early just because of a dirty bum.

Thank you for reading the above self indulgence. I'd like to dedicate this to my father, who has an appreciation for the finer side of bathroom humour. Stay tuned for public bathroom etiquette!