Assassination can be broken down into several parts:

Ass Ass in Nation.

Let's think about all the asses in our nation.

ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

– yӭ𐦤⚇⍕⍑ ⅋ ƴΐ⍧ի⍲e⌊

p.s. yes there's an extra 'n' in there, you prickly stickler.

Deeply Personal Answers about Your Bathroom Habits

There's a lot of crazy people out there

Back in March, we discussed some 'Deeply Personal Questions about Your Bathroom Habits'. It was about the things that no one taught you, but you somehow learned all by yourself, in the privacy of your bathroom, insulated from the sociocultural pressures.

𐃅 Bathroom

The human body is an inefficient vessel for consciousness. Although the organic matter underneath the brain stem is precise and functional, its only purpose is to feed the mind with necessary supplies: food, water, and information. We have to pass external molecules through our bodies in order to glean useful

noiseyichael

At the end, I shared a survey of these deeply personal habits:

1. How do you stand in the shower? (Facing the shower head, with your back against it, or facing the wall/curtain)
2. What is your order of operations when it comes to showering? (Shampoo, Conditioner, Face Wash, Body Wash)
3. Do you pee in the shower?
4. When you are wiping your ass, do you neatly fold or gently crumble the toilet paper?

I am happy that we had five extremely shameless subscribers who shared their intimate habits. FIVE!

How do you stand in the shower?

I read somewhere a long time ago, and hence collected some 'anecdata' to validate that, women tend to stand facing away from the shower head, and men tend to stand facing the shower head.

I have no idea what the gender ratio of our subscribers are. But at least we can say we have psychopaths who "move around and face all directions" and stand sideways. Why do you do this? Do you just like to heat up one side of your body?

What is your order of operations when it comes to showering?

There was more of a trend here. Shampoo-Conditioner-Face/Body Wash. It's all chaos by the 4th step.

The correct order of operations is:

1. Shampoo – first because it's sudsy and fun.
2. Conditioner – smooth out your hair, leave it on for a second.
3. Face/Body Wash – I do these once I'm done with the conditioner, because you gotta wash that greasy conditioner on your face/body.
4. Tooth Brushing – I do this after the shower, but I guess you could do this while the conditioner is on.
5. I don't shave in the shower, because I use a single-blade like a learned person and I'm not learned enough to do it in the shower and not cut myself.

Do you pee in the shower?

Yes! Yes you can and should pee in the shower.

It's being washed away, and you're saving water. No one wants to hop out to pee, and it's never fun to hold it in.

I hope all of you pee into areas that can be washed away easily. Otherwise, your tub will smell like ammonia.

However, ammonia can actually be used as a cleaning agent. So I guess just pee all over yourself.

This is how R. Kelly masturbates.

When you are wiping your ass, do you neatly fold or gentle crumble the toilet paper?

This tends to be the trend. Most people neatly fold, probably 2-3 layers thick. However, I believe these people are all misguided.

The usual rationale are:

1. "If I use my finger, I can form a v-shape that fits my ass crack"
2. "I can fold it and use it again"

However, these are faulty assumptions. The superior way is to gently crumble.

1. The v-shape is not pointy enough to reach the deepest parts of the crack, which is usually the dirtiest. Gentle crumble, in contrast, creates a spring-like pressure that easily reaches the deepest parts. A neat fold requires the user to push their fingers in to fit the shape of the canal – so you're either leaving poop in there, or fingering yourself in the butt.
2. Once folded in half, you don't have enough surface area to ensure that your hands don't accidentally do the wiping. Gentle crumble, held like a bouquet, prevents this from ever happening.

Finding Gratitude in Modernity

The History of Anal Hygiene

My mother grew up in post-war South Korea, which was extremely poor. She told me that they used to take newspapers, rub it with your hands rapidly so it became soft, and wiped with it. Your hands would be all black from the newspaper rubbing.

That's pretty wild. The world today has a lot of issues, but not having tissues isn't an issue.

But it was wilder before.

All the Ways We’ve Wiped: The History of Toilet Paper and What Came Before | HISTORY

Among tools people used in the past were moss, sponge on a stick, ceramic pieces and bamboo ‘spatulas.’

HISTORYCrystal Ponti

In very ancient times, wiping with stones and other natural materials and rinsing with water or snow was common. Some cultures opted for seashells and animal furs.

Say what?

I mean, shoving snow up your ass sounds horrible, but I get it.

But STONES?

The paper even gives us a written evidence:

Aristophanes referred to the use of pessoi for sanitary purposes in Peace (5th century BC):

“Arms dealer (displaying a cuirass): And what, alack, shall I do with this rounded cuirass, a beautiful fit, worth ten minas?

Trygaeus: Well, that one will not make a loss for you, anyway. Give me that at cost price. It will be very convenient to crap in . . . 

Arms dealer: Stop this impudent mockery of my goods!

Trygaeus (placing the cuirass on the ground like a chamber pot, and squatting on it): Like this, if you put three stones beside it. Is it not clever?”

Imagine buying your reusable toilet stone from an arms dealer. I would've rather bought his arm to do the wiping with.

Aren't you grateful that anal hygiene practice today isn't as rocky as it used to be?

Toilet hygiene in the classical era

Philippe Charlier and colleagues describe how the Romans wiped their bottoms and speculate about the resulting health problems The first mention of toilet paper in the Western world comes from the 16th century, with a short description by the French novelist (and physician) François Rabelais arguing its ineffectiveness.1 China, however, had toilet paper in the 2nd century BC,2 and the Japanese used chuugi (20-25 cm wooden sticks) during the Nara period (8th century AD) for both external and internal cleaning of the anal canal. Other cultures do not use toilet paper, partly because paper is often not easily available. Anal cleaning can be carried out in various ways according to local customs and climate, including with water (using a bidet, for example), leaves, grass, stones, corn cobs, animal furs, sticks, snow, seashells, and, lastly, hands. During the Greco-Roman period, a sponge fixed to a stick ( tersorium ) was used to clean the buttocks after defecation; the sponge was then replaced in a bucket filled with salt water or vinegar water.3 Another technique was to use oval or …

The BMJCharlier P, Brun L, Prêtre C, Huynh-Charlier I.

Greco-Romans also used moss or leaves and pieces of ceramic known as pessoi to perform cleansing. Pieces of pessoi may have started as ostraca, broken bits of pottery that often had the names of enemies inscribed on them—a proverbial way to soil upon adversaries.

Ok, I don't like the sound of 'broken bits of pottery' one bit. But inscribing names in the toilet paper seems like a great practice we need to bring back.

I could go on to talk about what people were doing in Asia, using "instruments, cut from bamboo and other wood, [resembling] spatulas. The ends were wrapped in cloth and contained traces of preserved fecal matter." This sounds quite reasonable.

But we're going to keep it focused on the Western Classical Greco-Roman culture, because it's funnier:

“The most famous example of ancient ‘toilet paper’ comes from the Roman world [during the first century A.D.] and Seneca's story about the gladiator who killed himself by going into a toilet and shoving the communal sponge on a stick down his throat,” says Erica Rowan, an environmental archaeologist and a lecturer in classical archaeology at the University of London.

Next time you wipe your ass, take a moment to appreciate that you don't need to use a stick, and that you don't have to kill yourself with it.

On Toilet Paper Positioning

Over or under?

Well, it's over. Both the debate, and the correct positioning. It's over.

But when I was looking for this image, the top search result was this in-depth blog post with citations.

Or as I later learned, a content marketing blog post by Cottonelle. Because it was so balanced and thoroughly reported, it imparts a sense of trustworthiness to not only the blog, but to the brand itself. This is good marketing. Good job, intern.

Here are some memorable factoids from the post:

• "70%¹ of wipers already prefer this position. Not that you should ever blindly follow the crowd, but a whopping 70% of the population prefers the “over” position."
• "[Advantages of "Over"] Less likely to transmit germs. When the toilet paper is hung “under”, your knuckles will inevitably rub against the wall as you tearoff a sheet. This action can actually transmit germs onto the wall or other bathroom surfaces²

Literally never thought about this, but now I will pay more attention to my hand-to-TP contact.

• Who cares about toilet paper orientation? Quite a lot of people apparently! Roughly 50%³ of the population say they pay active attention to toilet paper orientation, and 20%³ say they get agitated if the toilet paper is oriented the “wrong” way. 19%³ of people admitted to changing the orientation of toilet paper in someone else’s house.
• Does gender play a role? According to most studies, gender does not play a role in how you orient your toilet paper. However, men³ do rate higher for agitation if the orientation doesn’t match their preference.

Imagine irascible men getting PISSED while POOPING about the toilet paper. And who are these insidious 19% of people changing orientation of the TP? This is why our society is polarized.

• Ask the experts. Some think how we mount our toilet paper says about our personality. Dr. Gilda Carle is a consultant for Cottonelle^® Brand Toilet Paper and has devised a toilet paper personality test that links paper preference to personality types.
• What does hanging “over” say about you? Generally, Dr. Carle⁴ says that people who utilize the “over” technique are more likely to have a dominant personality type.
• What does hanging “under” say about you? If you hang “under” you’re more likely to have an easy-going nature, according to Dr. Carle⁴.

What? So 70% of the people are likely 'dominant', and 30% are more laidback? Also, you're a toilet paper consultant? What are your credentials? Do you have an extra sensitive ass-muscles?

• Toilet Paper Over or Under Etiquette. It’s nice when everyone in the household subscribes to the same toilet paper orientation but unfortunately that’s not always going to be the case. “Over” and “unders” have to find some way to live together and we have a few tips.
• Defer to the person who cares. Decide who cares the most about the toilet paper orientation. If someone is the type of person who gets agitated with it being hung “the wrong way”, then keep things moving smoothly and go with their way.
• What to do in a divided household. That’s fine if only one person in your household has a passion for toilet paper hanging, but what if you have two people with opposing views? In that case, we recommend switching the toilet paper when it’s your turn to use the bathroom. When you finish, you can switch the toilet paper to the opposite orientation for the next person.

This sounds like a great parenting advice for kids with different gender orientation. But also, I don't think I want to be friends with someone SO STUBBORN that they need to switch TP when they use it, and SO SENSITIVE that they switch it back.

In any case, I will now be secretly changing the orientation of TP in every bathroom I visit to create more division.

A Critique of Toilet Paper Branding

toilet paper branding is always so sanitary. why don’t they tell it like it is and make it covered in shit?

A neutral problem

A dialogue

“Shrinkage is a smaller problem, and expansion is a bigger problem.”

“Well, I’ve been hurt by shrinkage plenty of times.”

“It was supposed to be a neutral statement.”

“Neutrality has nothing to do with this.”

quotes.txt

I do love poop. I can't help it. The heart wants what it wants. I enjoy being clever and pithy and political, but nothing's going to get me like dumb stuff.

– Sarah Silverman

I have a natural propensity to work on big piles of poop.

– Robert Pattinson

If aliens are watching us through telescopes, they're going to think the dogs are the leaders of the planet. If you see two life forms, one of them's making a poop, the other one's carrying it for him, who would you assume is in charge?

– Jerry Seinfeld

Everybody looks at their poop.

– Oprah Winfrey

You have to accept the fact that sometimes you are the pigeon, and sometimes you are the statue.

– Claude Chabrol

sound.wav

prompts.bib

• Buttsassin
  /imagine Butt Assassin --v 6.0
• Flying TP
  /imagine Giant toilet paper bouquet flying through the grand canyon --v 6.0
• Peachy Pessoi
  /imagine A rock stuck between a peach --v 6.0