Bears, Baubles, Booze. Merry Christmas!

Is it time to pour the hot chocolate with bourbon yet? Is the Pope Catholic? Do bears crap in the woods? Can I avoid these distressing and vulgar rhetorical questions and make up my own? The answers are, respectively, yes, yes, yes, and Should men's rights activists be locked into a dark dungeon with only each other and an Elton John Greatest Hits CD for company?

Many people whom we respect and admire, for instance Shewee Fiend Friend, swear by the coffee-with-Bailey's method of maintaining one's sanity and possibly even the illusion of Christmas cheer, but we have no Bailey's and you can't buy booze in Scandiwegia at the times when you need it the most: at night, and during holidays where you are forced into close proximity with your relatives.

In order to prepare ourselves mentally, physically and spiritually (well, we did bring a thermos full of hot chocolate with bourbon. Seriously, try it - it tastes like bourbonny velvet) for the onslaught of holidays lurking in the calendar, we spent yesterday in the woods, far away from our fellow human beings. We didn't see any bears, alas, but what we did find, about halfway along the trail, was an earth closet! This delightful rustic Scandiwegian speciality is a boon to hikers who have consumed half a litre of hot chocolate containing really rather a lot of bourbon.

No, you are not mistaken - that is indeed a strand of twinkly seasonal fairy lights on the door!

The inside of this hygienic rustic crapper offers hand sanitizer!

There is also toilet roll and arm support if you need it.

As regular readers are aware we are, despite everything, kind-hearted, generous souls here at the Privy Counsel, and we would not want you to be left to your own devices this Christmas without pictures of Jonny to fortify your spirits! We therefore went straight to the source and made known our Christmas wish:

The Privy Counsel: I'm doing a Christmas bog blog post. Do you have a recent photo with which to delight and edify our readers?

Jonny: Hmm, let me check the archives
This was outside the toilets

"Perfect. Thanks!" we said, not expecting, even in our wildest dreams, that things could get any better than that. But lo and behold! The delightful Christmas parade of Jonny's toilet photos continued!

At this point we exclaimed, quite understandably dizzy with delight:

Equally offensive signs for both sexes, and a picture of your actual nether regions - I love it!
AND A COWBOY HAT?
Where have these pictures been all my life?

Reader, IT DIDN'T END THERE.

 Jonny replied, with characteristic forthrightness:

That’s all I got
Sure there was more
Yeah it was a mirror placed too low to the ground
But meant a coat hook existed
So guess it was for the greater good
Plus I never really look at my legs so it was refreshing

We replied, almost tearful from gratitude:

Most refreshing!
Also the jacket that was tragically lost.
Thank you!

To which Jonny in his turn answered:

It brings back painful memories
But may it spread joy in the babe parade

Readers, we will leave you here. Don't forget that - as we never tire of reminding our readers - Christmas is celebrated, in all civilised parts of the world, on the 24th! We finish with a Festive Video reminding us of the gender pay gap, and the fact that women still perform the lion's share of domestic and emotional labour. You probably get the gist even if you don't speak Scandiwegian.
God jul!

Festive Video: Siw Malmkvist, Mamma är lik sin mamma


Related posts:

All posts featuring Shewee Fiend Friend

All posts featuring Jonny

All posts featuring Christmas

A selection of Christmas posts containing devastatingly handsome pictures of Jonny:

Balls! It's Christmas!

"My Friend Runs a Toilet Blog" - A Canoodling Kind of Christmas

Aloha! From Hawaii! 

God Jul! from Gothenburg! 

Happy Pedalling in Berlin

Tally-ho! It's been a while since our last post, but your favourite feminist bog blog is back! With, if not a vengeance, at least a hangover. We spent yesterday evening in a bar with the most amusing beer names, and if there is one thing we at the Privy Counsel enjoy, it is beer and amusing names!

Today we are mostly enjoying total silence, and tea, but if you fancy it we might also enjoy some kick-arse toilet pictures together. Audiologist Friend writes:

Tänkte att Tyskland kan väl inte ha något att komma med efter alla roliga badrum i England och Wales men måste dela med mig av denna hygieniska konstruktion!!! Händerna är fria eftersom man trampar för att spola toaletten, spola kranvatten SAMT öppna båda skjutdörrarna! Baren Haliflor.

I thought that Germany wouldn't have anything to offer after all the amusing bathrooms in England and Wales, but I have to share this hygienic construction!! Your hands are free, since you  push a pedal to flush the toilet, operate the tap AND open both sliding doors! The Haliflor bar.

Schiebetür! Woof!

We love this more than words can express.

Woof!

There is only one word that covers this, and that word is WOW!! with two exclamation marks.

Happy pedalling in Berlin!

That's about all we have energy for right now; we require urgent contact with the floor, and maybe some cheese.

Today's Festive Video is neither festive nor a video, but it does contain a large dose of, as our students would no doubt say, BADASS. Our friend Rebecca Nice was sexually harassed by her tutor at university. Sexual harassment is more common than most people realise. The reason we don't usually hear about it is because victims are often too scared to talk about what has happened, and because employers are inclined to protect offenders. It's funny, for instance, how often an employer will claim to take sexual harassment seriously, and to have a zero-tolerance policy towards it, yet not conduct any proper investigations when a complaint is made.
Rebecca, however, has refused to be silent, and speaks up on Radio 5: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07y68xz

You can read more about Rebecca Nice and her sexual harassment case at the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/07/abuse-at-university-case-study.

On Machiavelli, Venereal Disease, and Cat-Sitting

It is when you find yourself reading Machiavelli, genuinely hoping to pick up some advice on how to sort out your life, that you realise there is no progression happening anymore - you have already gone to hell in a handcart.

Leaving aside, however, the existential aspects of reading Machiavelli, here are the main tips we have picked up from this Renaissance mover and shaker:

1. Don't ever let your soldiers put their loot in a bank, or bury it. Make sure they spend everything they've got, so that they will always be hungry for more fighting.

2. Don't ever build a fortress on high ground, as this is easier to mine, and thus break into. Build your fortress on a plain, and dig wells, to channel the blast from any mines placed under your walls.

3. Don't be changeable, frivolous, effeminate, cowardly, or irresolute.

4. When invading a country, remember that a state with one strong ruler (like for instance Turkey) will be harder to take, but easier to hold. In contrast, a country with a weak ruler and many regional lords (think France) will be easier to take (there will always be a discontented baron who can be bribed), but harder to hold (you then have to put all the barons in their place and make sure they don't betray you in turn).

5. Don't let the children of your dead enemies live, out of misguided mercy. They will inevitably try to kill you in ten or twenty years' time. Off with their heads!

6. It is better to be feared than to be loved. At least if your aim in life is to rule a Renaissance-era city-state, or equivalent. (Machiavelli is firm on this point. Fear, not love.)

Machiavelli offers no advice on how to deal with syphilis, which is odd, considering this is a disease that plagued all strata of society in the 16th century, not excluding, of course, the Vatican. If we may offer you our personal advice in this area, it is this: Syphilis isn't that bad these days, but, whatever you do, don't catch gonorrhoea.

Moving on to more toilet-related concerns, we asked Meandering Friend if she still had the video of the famous disco toilet of Stavanger. However, it turned out she had only recently deleted it from her phone, in order to free up space! This is a tragedy of Titanic proportions, but never fear! We will simply have to conduct a field trip to Stavanger to drink beer and go to the toilet - let us know if you're keen to accompany us.

Meandering Friend writes:

Här kommer ett random toafoto istället från min nuvarande position som kattvakt i Lund (kanske kan göra nåt av det bloggmässigt? )

1. Smart konstruktion gjord av billigt-flygbolagstejp och toarulle för att alltid, när en inte är där, hålla toadörren öppen (#ingenjörskonst)... 

(Here is a random toilet photo instead, from my current position as catsitter in Lund (perhaps you can make something of it, blog-wise?) 

1. Smart construction made of cheap-airline tape and an empty toilet roll in order to always, when one isn't there, hold the toilet door open (#EngineerArt)...)

2. Gå på toa med en fyrbent kompis? (#neverwalkalone)

(Go to the loo with a four-legged friend? (#neverwalkalone))

Meandering Friend adds that there may be a film clip from a random waste disposal centre in Norway coming, if she can find a way of sending it via her phone.

We are not naturally of a Machiavellian bent at the Privy Counsel (except of course when people hang the toilet roll the wrong way round - there is no limit to how long we can carry on a toilet roll feud). Sometimes one needs to remind oneself that it's ok to stop trying so damn hard, and just drink some beer.

(Unless of course you are running a Renaissance-era city-state (or equivalent). All the bodily idioms apply here - you need to be on your toes, looking over your shoulder, keeping a firm grasp on your accountants, and steering everything with a steady hand. No beer for you!)

Festive Video - Billy Currington, Pretty Good at Drinking Beer

Related Reading

Ok, so actually, we sometimes get paranoid and say things like "the enemy is mobilising", which is fairly Machiavellian.

Previous posts featuring Meandering Friend:

A Picture of Johnny Not Holding a Fruit Pie

Disco Fever in Stavanger

Our favourite cat blog is still, by the way, Catstrophil. It has many pictures of cats.

Don't forget that there is a right way and a wrong way to hang toilet roll.

Remember that time when we visited a sewage treatment plant and managed to philosophise, while there, on how to avoid catching syphilis?

A Ray of Light From Spain

Quite possibly nobody noticed - at least we haven't received any emails from desperate, traumatised people* - but actually something weird and ominous happened recently.

We never wrote a Halloween blog post.

Regular readers will be aware that we have written a Halloween post every year since the very beginning of this blog. (If you're not quite as regular as other readers, by the way, you may have missed our recent post on the origins of the Privy Counsel - a tale of passion, violent struggle, and genital herpes!) But this year, there was no screaming bloody horror, no non-mixer taps, no weird fungal infections, no creepy dolls' eyes, no stuffed animals, no scary home-made alcohol, no blood-spattered home decorations, no meat-cleavers, no weird bits of garden hose, no electric water heaters, or any of the other traditional features of our Halloween posts.

We just thought the world was horror-filled enough as it is, and preferred to spend Halloween getting shitfaced and ranting about the patriarchy, rather than focusing on the un-dead, the un-plumbed, and the un-mixed.

To make up for our negligence, we have a special treat for you today - pictures from Audiologist Friend's trip to Spain! (Spain, by the way, as regular readers will also be aware, is on the record as being a SANE AND NORMAL COUNTRY THAT HAS ELECTRIC SOCKETS IN BATHROOMS.)

Audiologist Friend has been on a bit of a roll recently - she strolled into the Privy Counsel HQ kitchen just now looking suspiciously happy. When asked what the hell was wrong with her - sudden bursts of glee being grounds for distrust at the Privy Counsel - Audiologist Friend explained that her supervisor had tried his damnedest to find a weak spot in her work, and failed.

This is what is so great about our friends - their rampant intelligence and arse-kicking make the world a decidedly better place, despite all the horror!

We offer Audiologist Friend our sincerest contrafibularities, and hope that she will radiate smugness in the kitchen on many, many occasions.

Audiologist Friend writes:

Airb'n'b i Toledo, Spanien:
Fantastisk entré, badkar till höger som inte var något speciellt, en liten värmelampa ovanför toalettstolen - mycket uppskattat eftersom golvet var av sten och jättekallt. 

(Airb'n'b in Toledo, Spain:
Fantastic entrance, bath-tub on the right that was nothing special, a small heat lamp above the toilet - very appreciated since the floor was stone and really cold.)

We enjoy this blue shutter and the sunlight streaming in,
choosing to see it as a reminder that there are rays of light in this world.

Our eyes spy a mixer tap! And a rampantly intelligent Audiologist Friend!

We cannot, unfortunately, see the heater, but we feel better knowing that it is there.

*or indeed any emails at all, ever, from anyone. Except, obviously, spam.

After this welcome breeze of sanity from Audiologist Friend, we feel ready for a festive video. What's that? You want a rampant feminist mantra? Let's do it.

Festive video - Queen Latifah, U.N.I.T.Y.


Related Reading

All Halloween posts, ever:
Halloween

Our groundbreaking report on the toilets of the British workplace:
Oh! the horror! SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: The British Workplace

The story of the origins of the Privy Counsel:
Five Fabulous (And Frightening) Years: The Story of the Privy Counsel

Our previous post on Spain, proving it to be  a SANE AND NORMAL COUNTRY THAT HAS ELECTRIC SOCKETS IN BATHROOMS

All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

It is a truth universally acknowledged that women's jeans are the tool of the devil.

We have access to excellent advice here at the Privy Counsel, what with being in communication with so many intellectual people, and one piece of advice that has really stayed with us comes from Australian Friend and goes, "When buying jeans, go for the tightest you can squeeze yourself into. They will stretch". This is good, solid advice, and was confirmed by the semi-hot dude who sold us a pair of very nice and very tight jeans once.

There is, however, a problem with this approach. It impedes breathing, blood circulation, and digestion. It became apparent, for instance, that wearing the jeans mentioned above caused us stomach pains and shortness of breath. (Seriously, one might as well be wearing a fucking corset.)

A trifle! you might jeer, derisively, while sipping your fennel twig tea, sitting down carefully, lest your jeans split, on a velvet chaise-longue from which you will not be able to get up due to your poor circulation and propensity to faint. Well, at the Privy Counsel we like to stay not just intellectually, but physically active (within reason). We are rather fond of breathing, and doing stuff, and eating things. So for a while we took to wearing skirts.

This constitutes a change, rather than a break - you still get misery, but at least it’s a different kind of misery. A skirt usually doesn't have pockets, meaning you have nowhere to put the random, crumpled-up post-its that are the basis of survival in this perilous world; it necessitates the wearing of tights, which will leave your crotch sweaty and uncomfortable; and it will worm its way around both horizontally and vertically, requiring you to keep pulling the fabric into place in the manner of a Tourette’s-addled drug addict, scratching and yanking at random parts of your body, lest you abandon your skirt to ride up to just below your arse, leaving all of your thighs bare for pervy old men to leer at. (Try keeping this up while running for the bus.) Also, when teaching, a skirt that keeps riding up is a seriously uncomfortable thing to be wearing, on so many levels. Skirts, like jeans, are not good.

It's not just us. Tight jeans are DANGEROUS.
Image: doctorsrepublic.com

So we bought some less tight jeans. (This was not easy, by the way. Have you tried looking up women's jeans online to see what's available in the shops? There is a plethora of jeans, sure, but they are all modelled by skeletal women with the kind of shape that means you might as well have put the jeans on a pair of stilts, or a baby giraffe, for all the good it will do you in determining how the jeans will look ON YOUR ACTUAL ARSE. Wouldn't it be good if jeans models didn't look like a pair of stilts, or a baby giraffe?)

This worked really well until they - as Australian Friend had warned us, many times - stretched, and started to sag. If there is one thing a toilet blogger does not want while engaging in intellectual pursuits, it's a pair of jeans sliding downwards, and dragging one's underwear with them. Jeans, in our opinion, should stay firmly in place, and not go anywhere.

To make a long story marginally shorter, we found an internet tutorial on how to take in the waist of a pair of jeans. We performed this operation the other night, meaning our new jeans now a) don't sag, and b) don't allow us to breathe, circulate blood, or digest food. We're back to where we started, and are considering joining a religious cult of some kind, in order to be able to wear a tent with impunity.

Caitlin Moran obviously manages to find jeans that are both comfortable and attractive
- certainly in these pictures she appears to be breathing and performing all normal bodily activities 
including intellectual exertion, while looking leg-thumpingly gorgeous.
Where does one buy jeans that allow one to do all of these things?
Image: spillerena.com

Our actual point with this harangue was that we haven't got round to posting Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend's fantastic pictures from Singapore yet, due to being preoccupied with breathing, putting the sewing machine back, and picking bits of thread and fluff off the furniture. Let us quickly post the pictures now, before we faint from oxygen deprivation.

Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend says:

I've been meaning to send you these for ages! These are from my trip to Singapore last year. The first three photos are the best toilets I have ever seen, from The Jewel Box in Singapore. The toilets have floor to ceiling windows which look out over the whole of Singapore bay (view included). We had to make a pit stop there after a certain relative's bum couldn't handle the delicious Sichuan meal we'd just eaten! 

The second photos are from the loo at Singapore zoo, but many loos in Singapore have that classic open garden thing going on. It's so cool! 

The final set are from the Singapore Night Safari, which is totally awesome, but I had to wait until people had left the dunnies before I took them. In all, Singapore is basically better than the rest of the world at everything, toilets and autocracy included! 

P. S. I only saw one loo in Singapore that didn't have sensors on the sinks. Blended taps ain't got nothing on this!

Isn't this beautiful! And disability-friendly, too - check out the shorter sink!
Does this remind us of something? Well, yes. The Battlestar Galactica bogs!

This is very stylish, but, as we famously complained once in Iceland, a place this posh should be able
to afford doors that go all the way down to the floor. (We have a horror of flimsy cubicle doors.)

Loo with a view!

Same problem with the doors, here.
But look! You can almost see Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend in the mirror!
Truly a sight for sore eyes!

Masses of points for the lush greenery and mixer taps!

Doors.

But greenery!

Wasn't that lovely? Do you yearn for a warmer clime, where men are men, women are women, and all taps are mixer taps and most have motion sensors? We sure as hell do!

This post is quite long now and it appears we are expected to do actual work today, so we should probably just fuck off. But there ought to be a festive video. This one seems eminently suitable, being tropical (like Singapore), flamboyant and musical (like Medievalist [With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology] Friend), and festive (like this bog blog, and also like Medievalist [With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology] Friend). Also, like us, Elton John appears to reminisce about the jeans of his youth, which somehow allowed one to breathe and didn't rip except perhaps if one slid on one's arse down a massive rock.

Damn it. We just dropped an ibuprofen in our tea, and haven't got a spoon handy to fish it out with. Definitely time to fuck off.

Festive video - Elton John and the Muppets, Crocodile Rock

Related Reading

Our favourite post (so far) featuring Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend:
Hungover Ranting: Festschrift to Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend

An account of all the different ways in which a pair of tights can ruin your day

All posts featuring Medievalist (With a Side-Interest in Roman Archaeology)

All posts featuring Singapore

Another zoo-related post: HTFU - Wipe for Wildlife

Here's a random thing that a friend sent us, that we though was deliciously ironic

How to Love Handles

A zinging good evening to you all! As all our regular readers are doubtless aware, tonight is Walpurgis Eve, which means it's time to banish evil spirits using a combination of fire and ancient pagan rituals. This brings us seamlessly to the topic of today's Friend contribution.

Welsh Gangster Friend says:

I'm in Newport's newest pub, Urban Pop Up. 

I love the toilet door handle mechanism.

This is certainly highly satisfactory.

When asked whether the door handle "[clicked] in a satisfactory way, or was [...] just a joy to use, plain and simple?", Welsh Gangster Friend replied, "I just appreciated only having one thing. None of this handle AND lock nonsense. A handlelock. Way forward". 

We agreed that this was "A beautiful concept indeed! And it looks as though one could operate it with one's elbow, thus avoiding having to touch it - two rampant OCD thumbs up!", to which Welsh Gangster Friend added, "I believe you could, yes. Possibly even your foot."

We love engaging in these stimulating exchanges with our friends!

Actually we've been involved in a lot of hyper-intellectual debates with friends recently (one fruitful topic is, for example, "Can one rampantly internet-stalk Richard Armitage and still call oneself a feminist?"), as well as engaging in many other knackering intellectual, semi-intellectual and even athletic activities, and are only prevented from falling into a lengthy drool-inducing coma by our dedication to the noble cause of toilet-bloggery and rum-drinking.

We feel an urgent need to put our metaphorical feet up, swill some tea (yes, alright, just a dash of rum, if you insist), and delight in Audiologist Friend's recent artistic contribution to the blog, called "A bathroom in Reykjavík".

Note the lines! The light! The playful destruction of conventional planes of authentication
and the subversive autonomies of the concept of truth!
(For more intellectually valid art criticism, see our classic blog post Brownian Motion.
(We just love modern art, don't you?))
Note, above all, the festive reflection of Audiologist Friend in the flush buttons!
(If you enjoy almost seeing people, see our label Almost Seeing People.)

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is as coherent and intellectual as this blog is going to get today. Tally-ho!

We know we had a festive Kacey Musgraves video very recently (and also slightly less recently), but a lot of the issues mentioned in this song seem to be relevant at Privy Counsel HQ just now, not least the matter of people pissing in our garden.

Festive Video - Kacey Musgraves, Biscuits

Related Reading
All posts about Welsh Gangster Friend
All posts about Audiologist Friend
If you enjoy contemplating art and the meaning of life, we highly recommend our classic post Brownian Motion, or, Brownout, or, A Brown Study - Semi-Intellectual Friend's Shower, which features Semi-Intellectual Friend and a post-post-modern, deconstructuralist shower
We are great fans of modern art at the Privy Counsel
Turns out that Almost Seeing People is a fruitful area of research


Not Strictly Related, But Totally Thrilling, Reading
Our friend Jane's latest intellectual blog post. Seriously, if you are into medieval stonemasonry, YOU CANNOT AFFORD TO MISS THIS POST.