Mnemosyne, Mother of the Muses, Washes Her Hands of This Mess

Introduction - we rant, unproductively

 It is, a reliable source informs us, that time of year again. The fourth dimension of the universe is currently getting its customary seasonal media attention, which causes us to feel our habitual ennui, though it is fascinatingly intermingled, this year, by an energising strand of panic related to certain duties we need to perform as a consequence of having been elected, by a party of lunatics, treasurer of a committee. Never mind that, however. As we stated, last year, we're averse to joining in the general jollification of recollections and memories of the year gone by:

Being bored to the point of taking actual car sickness tablets - in the hope of being knocked out for twelve to fifteen hours - by the retrospectives and accounts of "highlights" that plague media as the calendar year approaches its end, we're not going to indulge in anything resembling either a) nostalgia or b) hand-wringing over the horrors of [the past year].

 We haven't changed our mind on this - indeed, belligerently sticking to unpopular views seems to have become our forte - and continue being eager for escapism. The one thing that has changed, perhaps, is that rather than attempting to knock ourselves out with car sickness tablets, as we did in 2020, we've spent most of 2021 either being sedated by morphine, or wishing we were sedated by morphine. The fact that we still managed four bog blog posts before our traditional New Year's Eve post (which we somehow continue to churn out despite our much-publicised ennui) speaks, we like to think, to the strength of our character and remarkable fortitude under unreasonable circumstances. 

We present some old photos we happened to find, using much irrelevant guff and too many sub-clauses

 If we could blame our lack of organisation and failure to intelligently catalogue the various photos that kind people send us of exciting toilets from the world over on our aforementioned dependency on analgesics, we would. Unfortunately, however, our addle-brainedness in this area is well documented. Thus, on this subject, we have nothing more to say, and no other apology to offer. However, when stumbling, the other night, barefoot, bedraggled and benumbed by [the modern equivalent of] laudanum, wearing a linen nightshirt with lace cuffs, through one of the dark, dreary crypts peopled by randy monks, dead nuns and nervous pheasants that constitute our archive, we found some rather festive photos! They are of a sink in a pub in Goodramgate in York - possibly, according to some notes we apparently made, at some point in the past, which had been hidden in an intricately carved wooden chest, and which we just managed to get a glimpse of before a gust of wind dramatically blew out our candle, the King's Arms! However, research indicates that the pictures are most likely from the Royal Oak pub, which we reviewed, without much enthusiasm (indeed, we went so far as to claim to have been "bludgeoned by the baseball bat of disappointment"), in 2011. This, we don't need to tell you, is a neat decade ago, and displaying these images now seems rather apt, n'est ce pas?

To be fair to this atrocious arrangement, there is a helpful sign informing one that one, if one attempts to wash one's hands in hot water, is about to be scalded.

To add one tiny grain of fairness to the desert of disappointment and despair that is the world as we know it, hand moisturiser is always welcome, and a friendly sign even more so.

Here is a screenshot of our dank-dreary-crypt-slash-archive. Are you rather impressed with this attempt to catalogue pictures of a pub sink in Goodramgate? We are.

The insistence by Brits to continue being scalded when attempting to wash their hands baffles the civilised world. We have written extensively on this subject and won't go into further detail at this moment.

Now we really do have nothing more to say and no other apology to offer. We are, as we are prone to exclaim, in an affected, Fry-esque manner, mongrel-bitch tired and our fist cannot form letters any more. Thus we request that you fuck off, darlings, and leave us alone. But not before we indulge in a festive retrospective of the posts of 2021! Yes! Here we go!

A festive retrospective of the posts of 2021

In February, we reached new - indeed, perhaps unprecedented - heights of pretentious academese bollocks, lamenting the increasing lack of literacy and arguing that we are all hurtling, in a little cart, towards a pre-modern state of not having a standardised written language (much as we abhor post-modernism, not to mention post-post-modernism, we would appreciate being allowed to stay in a sane and predictable state of not modernism (the horror!) but perhaps, if we were allowed a portion of presumptuousness, modernity):

Has Newtonian Physics Been Unfairly Maligned?, or, We Are Arguably Hurtling Down an Incline towards the Seventeenth Century, or, In Defence of Boffins

The next time we drew breath to rant was in July, when we railed against the proposed energetic predisposition of the proto-Indo-Europeans, which we argued was related to the horrifying tendency of Indo-European verbs to indicate motion, when everyone knows that what one really wants is to be still, with a gin and tonic:

Moving Heaven and Earth: Polarisation and Proto-Indo-Europeans

We then piped up again in August, when we ranted, arguably cleverly foreshadowing this post, about ennui, the properties of time, and the correct orientation of toilet rolls:

Ennui; or, A New Ease from Now On

 Finally, in December, we felt briefly enthusiastic about life, the universe, and everything, largely thanks to a photo of Jonny, wearing a beige trenchcoat, in a gold frame:

Frame of Mind

There are more links to other festive posts from your favourite intellectual bog blog at the bottom, under the Festive Video, but for now we think we really will fuck off - after having linked to last year's new year's post (a masterpiece of pessimism and misanthropy), and also all posts with the label New Year's Eve, which for some reason continue to litter the universe.

If memory serves, we started this bog blog post by describing our refusal to indulge in reminiscences and retrospectives. Well, we have never claimed to be lucid. Please bear this in mind if you have the misfortune of being affected, next year, by our book-keeping.

Festive Video - Jakob Hellman, Tusen dagar härifrån. 

(There is also a rather festive, if somewhat blurry, video version of this song. We would also like to suggest, as an alternative Festive Video to this post, watching the Going Up to Merthyr! song from our post Wales Cannot Wait.)

Related Reading

One of many occasions when we stuck, belligerently, to our opinion on hand-dryers, while breathlesslly showcasing Shewee Fiend Friend's photos from Vancouver Airport:

Springing a Leak

Since apparently this post is, despite our initial protestations and insistence on the contrary, about reminiscences, let us enjoy the memory of that time, in 2016, when an anonymous Friend made an honest effort to expand her mind by reading Jane Eyre (and hated every minute):

Kicking the Ass of Ignorance

We remain rather pleased with our Toilet Tale version of Jane Eyre:

Jane Eyre - Plunging into Passion

The original review from the Royal Oak:

Royal Oak: We Revisit a Dear Old Pub with New Toilets

There are some rather festive posts, bordering on the mind-boggling, hiding under the TOTAL TAP INSANITY label:

TOTAL TAP INSANITY

Finally, a couple of our classic posts on British plumbing:

Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?

A Note on Desperate Measures

If you're still managing to maintain the will to live: congratulations, and happy sodding new year.

New Year's Eve 2017: "A Truly Awful Toilet"

Last New Year's Eve, we were incandescent with rage. This year, we are still angry, but are too exhausted to work up any proper fury, preferring instead to recline on our chaise-longue with a drink or four in our hand, feebly waving our hunting crop in the air and muttering "Tally-ho" into the darkness. 

We still think, however, that people should complain less and do more.

Which leads us to our next point. We have been of the opinion, for a long time, that PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE. We stand by this.

We'd better move on to today's toilet pictures before our grumpiness goes supernova and someone ends up injured.

Jonny, that handsome young scallywag, says:

Christmas treat
A truly awful toilet
2/10

ARGH NO THE BLURRINESS WE CANNOT DISCERN JONNY'S CHISELLED FEATURES

The stains on the floor aren't even the worst thing about this toilet.

The picture quality is execrable, but the sign says "Out of order". Philosophical!

Jonny managed to find that elusive thing: toilet graffiti!
"Communism will win."
"Yeah, right!"
Personally we are not in favour of any ideology that is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, and are rather prone to agreeing with the "Yeah right" retort.

Unable to understand why this toilet, which is, to all appearances, tremendously shit, was awarded two whole points, we posed the question to Jonny, who replied:

Oh, lol
It had a nice mirror
And a coat hook

We move swiftly from the wet, slippery floor of whatever pub Jonny spent Christmas Eve in, and hurry towards the rarefied air of Kulturen, a museum in Lund, Sweden. We located these toilets on the first floor, and found them immensely encouraging.

Mixer tap, nice soap, paper towels (recycled), bin - SCHWING!

All present and correct: the toilet roll is hygienically covered

HUNKA HUNKA COAT HOOK! Also, the door is sturdy and goes all the way down to the floor and all the way up to the ceiling. (That odd noise was a huge sigh of contentment erupting from our chest cavity.)

Let us review some of the highlights from 2017, shall we? The year started off with the Women's March in January. There was a fuckload of resistance:

Rampant Murderous Nazis Are Taking Over the World, But Here Is a Picture of Jonny In a Toilet, for Your Convenience and Comfort

 

 

In March we concluded that rampant murderous Nazis were STILL in charge, and exhorted everyone to stop being a dick:

No Man (Or Woman) Is an Island 

 

 In April, we went to York. The title rather says it all:

Castles in the Air: Dreaming of Better Plumbing, or, Bitches Love Pemberleys, or, Bottling Up of Incomprehension and Rage

 

Luckily, pictures of Jonny appeared regularly throughout the year, for instance in June:

Feeling Single, Seeing 1.5: In Which Things Are Insanely Bleak, But Luckily There Are Pictures of Jonny

 

We ranted, of course, about Brexit, and the NHS, which made everyone very tired. Thankfully, there were pictures of Shewee Fiend Friend loading a cannon:

Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, and Knees

 

We really did go on and on and on about politics. Luckily, there was also cake, and runes:

If You Are a Medievalist in Your Mid- to Late Thirties, and/or Want to Save the World, This Is for You

 

In July, we went to York - again! - and a feud between Jonny and Shewee Fiend Friend, based on pictures of cannon, almost developed:

In Which the Privy Counsel Goes Ballistic

 

In August, we indulged in nostalgia, stating that,

We would hate to be the age we were during the nineties again, and are supremely grateful for our current level of comparative maturity and relative wisdom, but some nineties phenomena, like the widely held stance that Hitler was insane and that a murderous government propagating a gibberish racist doctrine was about as welcome as herpes, are prone to make us feel ever so slightly maudlin after the third gin and tonic.

 Ah.

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

 

In September, we enjoyed some exciting toilet pictures from Lithuanian Friend, and lamented the lack of public toilets for women:

Piss-Poor Performance

 

And also reiterated the need for female-only spaces in a deeply sexist world which is extremely dangerous to women:

"Let Them Eat Cake" - Could It Be Any More Obvious That a Man Designed These Toilets?

 

Several people claimed to enjoy our Halloween special in October, which says more about them than about us:

Halloween Special: The Mystery of the Sticky Spot on the Floor, or, The Telltale Splash, or, Scared Shitless!

 

We succumbed to philosophy in November:

What a Thing Is and What It Is Not Are Identical In Form. Or So We've Been Told.

 

Argh, we find ourselves overwhelmed by retrospection. Let us finish rather hurriedly with some wise words we wrote in 2016:

Remember that ultimately, everything you do is futile. The universe is a vast and terrifying void, containing one tiny speck of dust to which we are clinging, and ultimately destroying. We are, essentially, short-sighted monkeys with computers. Now relax, and stop giving a fuck. Have a drink, maybe.

On that note, let's have a Festive Video. As everyone knows, both women and men experience a perceived female dominance when women contribute 30-40 % of any conversation or discussion. Hence, women tend to be silenced before they've even taken up half the speaking space. Let's hear some women, shall we?

Festive video: Song Suffragettes, cover of Keith Urban's Female

Happy new year!

Related Reading

All posts featuring New Year's Eve
Last year's New Year's Eve rant: 2016 in Summary: Holding on to Hope, or, We're Really Cunting Angry, or, Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

2016 in Summary: Holding on to Hope, or, We're Really Cunting Angry, or, Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

So that's 2016 over and done with. As has been universally agreed, it's not been a highlight in terms of human enlightenment. Still, one must remember to acknowledge the progress that has been made. For instance, there is now a vaccine against ebola. France has introduced a law that criminalises the act of buying sex. 650 political prisoners have been released worldwide, according to Amnesty International. And the manatee is reportedly no longer at risk of extinction.

We have to remember the good things, because otherwise we will succumb to despair. And we bloody well can't afford to succumb to despair. 2017 is the year when Donald Trump takes over as president of the United States, which means that, most likely, 2017 is the year when a shitstorm of racism, sexism, and every kind of -ism you can think of, including nazism, will be unleashed upon the world. If we want life to be worth living, we have to fight to make it so. Human rights are won through struggle and sacrifice, and once won, they have to be defended. We have to sodding well keep fighting for democracy.

We can't afford to sit on our arses and do nothing. As Caitlin Moran says, "If you have been complaining about something for three minutes, you should have done something about it two minutes ago". If you find yourself complaining about the state of the world, DO SOMETHING. If you have money to spare, donate it to an organisation fighting for civil liberties and human rights. If you don't have money to spare, consider whether you can instead give of your time; find an organisation that needs volunteers.

Human rights will only be breached if we let them. We can stand up for each other. We can organise protest marches. We can show solidarity. There are so many things we can do. Don't do nothing.

A rather incendiary call to arms, what? But who are we to tell people to roll up their sleeves and defend democracy? Who do we think we are? Do we imagine ourselves to be striding up the barricades, one tit hanging out, waving a fucking flag? Hardly. Actually, we spend rather a lot of our time bitching and moaning, and moodily grinding our teeth. In a dark moment recently, we thought to ourselves that we would be fine with the zombie apocalypse arriving round about now, and ending all the rape culture and the sexist bullshit. Zombies, after all, aren't interested in maintaining a toxic, patriarchal hegemony. They just want brains. When we posited this idea to Shewee Fiend Friend, however, she said, firmly: "Yeah, but I want equality first." This seems reasonable. First equality. Then zombie apocalypse. To find the strength to fight for equality, however, we need hope. 

Hope, according to the old parable about Pandora and her box, is the last thing to abandon humankind. Without hope, we'd all stop writing toilet blogs, or whatever activity we happen to find meaningful, lie down in a puddle, and die. We're not sure that this would be a negative development, considering the way the human race is pushing this planet to hell in a handcart, but let's work on the assumption that we want to keep humanity alive. So. Hope. What gives us hope? Well, mixer taps and good hygiene, for a start.

We have had the good fortune of spending the autumn at an amazing school in the south of Sweden. This school is filled to the rafters with wonderful staff and students, who make every day spent in their company a joy! This school also has exemplary toilets. Not only are they equipped with mixer taps, good-quality soap and paper towels, they also have these amazing signs:

This reminds us of a similar sign in a toilet in a building where we have spent some of the best times, and made some of the best friends, of our lives: the King's Manor in York.

The sign says (a translation will follow for those whose linguistic skills do not quite stretch to reading toilet signs in Swedish):

Råd för att förhindra smittpsridning

För att minska allmän smittpsridning så rekommenderas:

- Noggrann handhygien - tvätta händer ofta och alltid före mat, efter toa-besök och efter man snutit näsan
- Vid nysningar: nys i en pappersnäsduk (som sedan slängs) eller i armvecket
- Undvika att vidröra munnen, ögonen eller peta näsan med "orena" fingrar
- Vädra klassrum med luftgenomdrag 3 min. minst mellan lektioner
- Vistas mer utomhus på rasterna
- Vistas hemma i stillhet vid feber eller påverkat allmäntillstånd

(Advice to prevent the spread of disease

To minimise the general spread of disease, the following measures are recommended:

- Careful hand hygiene - wash hands often and always before eating, after going to the toilet, and after blowing one's nose
- When sneezing: sneeze into a paper handkerchief (which is then discarded), or into your elbow
- Avoid touching your mouth or eyes, or picking your nose, with "unclean" fingers
- Air out each classroom for at least three minutes between classes
- Spend more time outdoors during recess
- Stay at home and rest when you have a fever)

Words cannot quite express how wonderful we find these signs. Suffice to say that when we first caught sight of one of them, we uttered a joyous WOOF! and knew we had found kindred spirits. In a world full of darkness, despair, and bad plumbing, it is kindred spirits and mixer taps that keep the Privy Counsel going! (Again, let us assume that this is something we want to aim for.)

Here is a photo of the disabled toilet at the same school:

See the sign? See it? Isn't it amazing? Also: mixer tap, covered toilet roll holder with toilet roll facing the right way, paper towels, and good-quality soap.

We dearly love signs designed to exhort the public to harden the fuck up and be more hygienic. Let's hope there are more of them in 2017!

We have, in previous years, attempted to get our readers to vote for the year's best bog blog post. However, since the only person who ever votes is Australian Friend (who tried to vote twice last time, in order to be kind, which if possible made us feel even sadder), we will not attempt that again. Also, if there's one thing 2016 has shown us, it is that elections, even democratic ones, can be hugely problematic. Let us instead summarise 2016 by regarding this picture, sent to us by Australian Friend. It says it all, doesn't it?

Australian Friend's comment on 2016.

Before enjoying a rather epic Festive Video, a word on this year's mottoes.
Our mottoes for 2016 were PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE, and FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT. We have, by and large, stuck to them. The first motto seemed to strike a chord with the populace at large. We didn't need to clarify, or explain what we meant; everyone appeared to nod sagely, as if to say "I hear ya, bruv. People totally need to fuck off more". The second motto, however, apparently caused some puzzlement. Not everyone understood what we meant by "militant". The word "militant" conjures up, perhaps, images of unattractively dressed people engaged in unattractive, even violent, activities. Let us make it clear that what we meant was not "violent", but rather "uncompromising". Women, in our opinion, make too many compromises when it comes to negotiating with the patriarchy. If you require further clarification, we wrote a Facebook post defending our stance, which you can read here.

Our mottoes for 2017 will be the same as for 2016:
PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE, and FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT.

Let us move on to the Festive Video.

Festive Video - Flo & Joan, The 2016 Song

Because our particular brand of OCD makes us unable to handle misspellings of expressions like "en masse" (and also "en route". Oh God, "en route") in Youtube video subtitles, we are providing a full transcript ot the lyrics of this song - spelled right - below. We love the song and everything about it, but - en masse. Our usual recommendations of Related Reading follow below the lyrics.

The 2016 Song

2016 - it's been a time, it's been a struggle
But everything is fine if you're a straight, white, male muggle
We've tried to stay composed, cross our fingers, count to ten
But every time we get to nine you fuck it up again

You took David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Prince and Sharon Jones
Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett, Caroline Aherne and Leonard Cohen
Victoria Wood was enough for us but still you wanted more
Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, and the Great British Bake-Off was the final straw

You shot down a gorilla, we can't cure the zika virus
And the woman's still to blame when men force their way inside us
Brock Turner's not a rapist, 'cause just look how fast he swims
Can someone get me Ambien to calm my shaking quim?

Should we just try to unplug you and then plug you back in?
Did your parents get divorced or did you just drink too much gin?
Goddamnit, 2016, and on top of all of that
Cats is back on Broadway. Who the fuck did that?

Then throw in all the shootings, both en masse and by police
A spike in racist hate crimes and a bombing down in Nice
The death toll is upsetting, and your politics a farce
Thank you, 2016, you fucked us up the arse

'Cause all over the world it's not looking good for you
If you're female, Muslim, POC or LGBTQ
And God fucking forbid we'd let Hilllary be in charge
Instead we get the spunk trumpets and fuckboys in this farce

Yes, you really took a dump when you let twat-nugget Farage
Lead a racist referendum - who put that shitty frog in charge?
Your Brexit was a dumb-dumb, now our country lives in fear
You really are the skidmark of all the shitty years

Yes, the USA's now governed by a fuck-cheeto with hair
And it's not just in the States; the fucking clowns are everywhere

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

Three cheers for fucking Trumpy and his neo-Nazi crew
What a bloody, nasty, messy, booby-fuck to-do

We're sorry for the swearing
And we're sorry to be crude
But we're really cunting angry
And it's all because of you

You laid an egg of solid fuck
You taint-slug made of wee
You garbage-bag of bum dust
You are shitty, shitty 2016


Related Reading

Our classic post on diseases, sneezing, and paper towels:
AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! AIR-DRYERS! 

Other things that give us hope: The toilets at Kensington Palace, the fact that our friends write postcards describing toilets using italics, and also the fact that there is a man in York known, to his admirers, as Pistol Pete, who does Elvis covers 

All posts featuring Caitlin Moran, who really does make everything better even when they are really, really shitty

Remember the days when we spent less time ranting about human rights and much, much more time ranting about whether toilet-roll holders were covered? What can we say? A good rant is a good rant, whatever the topic.

The really lovely toilet at the King's Manor in York, featuring a public health sign: Let's Get Medieval: King's Manor Toilet 

Another post featuring public health signage: In Which We Express Our Gratitude to Electricians Springing Into Action

Mythbusters showing us why ONE SHOULD ALWAYS SNEEZE INTO ONE'S GODDAMN ELBOW AND NEVER, EVER INTO ONE'S GODDAMN HAND FOR FUCK'S SAKE PEOPLE HARDEN THE FUCK UP: Sneeze Spray

More festive information from Mythbusters: A Study of the Correlation between the Extremely Scary Toilet Aerosol Effect and Acute OCD in Toilet Bloggers 

All posts featuring New Year's Eve

That's it. Happy fucking new year.

Wishing All Our Readers a Towering Great New Year!

Happy New Year!

We shall keep this brief, to give you all more time for drunken revelry and orgiastic carousing, and also because sickness and ill health plague us like syphilis plagues a Romantic poet. Actually we suffer a vast deal, and have done for some time - though of course with the greatest patience in the world, which is always the way with us, for we have, without exception, the sweetest temper anyone ever met with. People often tell their other girls they are nothing to us. 

Be that as it may, we want to get back to drinking vast quantities of tea and watching old episodes of Poirot.

We have a greeting from Dragon-Hunting Friend, who says:

Happy new year from the "loo with a view" (as the lift attendant called it) - floor 68 of the Shard!

We've had some quite worrying conversations recently with Australian Friend about the Shard, and thus find this sight a trifle uncomfortable. But we hope you enjoy it!

That is quite some toilet! And with a mixer tap, too!

We don't have any new year's resolutions, though we do have two mottoes for 2016. And we mean to stick to them. They are:

FEMINISM NEEDS TO BE MORE MILITANT

and

PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE

We don't have a hell of a lot else to say. We meant to do a review of the year's twelve best posts, like we did last year to great acclaim. But we have the kind of headache that feels like you drank a bottle of Bailey's all by yourself, except unfortunately we didn't, or at least not recently. Also only three people have voted in the poll which we announced in our last post, with the intention of defining the twelve best posts of 2015. Clearly our readers are even more depraved than we thought they were, and don't appreciate democracy, or bog blog polls.

So that's it. Happy fucking new year!

Today's festive video is Miranda Lambert at the Grammy awards, because it is our ambition to kick one tenth of the arse she does during the year to come.

Festive video - Miranda Lambert, Little Red Wagon (57th GRAMMYs)


Now fuck off.


Related Reading

All posts featuring New Year's Eve
Feast your eyes on another loo with a view here: All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

"Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time" - A Review of 2014 at the Privy Counsel

Well, that's Christmas done. Most people are now back home, constipated, unable to button their jeans, and resolved to never spend several days in the company of Aunt Margery's onion breath and casual racism ever again. A new year, in which we will all do our utmost to avoid our relations, is about to dawn! A new year, in which we haven't yet mortally offended anyone, or got way too drunk and spent a whole day quietly leaking bodily fluids and wishing for death, or burned the pasta. (Yes, actually burned. Pasta.)

So, in order to draw a line under the unbroken procession of fuck-ups and screaming bloody horrors that constituted 2014, let's do a review of the Privy Counsel year. We have selected twelve of our favourite posts to represent the year as a whole, and we rather thought we'd review them in a whimsical, intellectual manner, whether you want us to or not.

Ahem.

Blogge poste the firste:
(Don't) Aim for the Stars

Why do some men piss on the floor? Why? Why? Why? Why in the name of arse? Why?
Shewee Fiend Friend, in a moment of despair, having tried to talk, to explain, to reason with the offending floor-defiler, contemplated homicide or at least dismemberment. In the end, however, she decided that moving to London was less of a hassle than trying to sort this guy out.

We stand in awe of the woman who wrote this note.
Image from flickr.com.

Poste the seconde:
Cuteness, Intellectual Solace, and a Correction

Intellectual Friend, in a moment of - we are assuming - temporary insanity, used the word cute in an email to us. This could obviously not go unpunished. Intellectual Friend, in order to regain his honour and save himself from eternal shame and mockery, had to use his wits, and use them fast. We will say, in defence of Intellectual Friend's virtue, that he did well. We haven't, obviously, forgotten his using the word cute (it's gone on the record as The Faux Pas of Doom), but we have forgiven it.

This blood-thirsty young pirate is very far from being cute.
He is completely terrifying!

Poste the thirde:
Rampant Titillation - Basically, a Real-Life Epistolary Novel

Some of our posts got very, very long during 2014. This was one of them. In its defence, however, it also showcased Semi-Intellectual Friend's, shall we say, unique take on reality. Many of our readers, actually, have expressed their appreciation of Semi-Intellectual Friend's vigorous prose and dynamic use of imagery. For instance, Semi-Intellectual Friend hatched this gem of a paragraph:

Even when you're not around (admittedly, almost always), I'm doing things like preferring hand dryers over recycled paper towels in the hopes that the negative impact of such an act will be chain-reactioned through all the atoms of our existence and push a small stone into your shoe when you're running, just at the exact moment your foot hits the ground (yeah! that was me).

We have no idea what we'd do without the support of our friends. We'd be lost. Adrift. Flushed down the drain. We thank all the gods of the universe for the backing we receive from our friends.

Without our friends, we'd be isolated, unhinged, and in the dark, like the toilet on the right.

Poste the fourthe:
An Annoyingly Long, But Brilliantly Clever, Post, Including Shewees, Beer, and Some Other Stuff

This post got really long. Really long. But it had so much excellent stuff in it - beer! feminism! decorative mould! shrubberies! - that we just couldn't restrain ourselves.

Logically, this mould can be nothing other than a clever Art Nouveau-esque decoration.

Poste the fifthe
A Life-Affirming Experience

It was the heat. We swear, we kept chugging water, all night long, but - without wanting to be unnecessarily indelicate - it was so hot that we just sweated all the water right out. The result was not, perhaps, the worst hangover of our life, but definitely one of the top five. You'd think we'd have learned by now. But - the heat.

A girl's best friend in a tight spot - a clean, stylish Icelandic toilet.

Poste the sixthe:
Foul Play, Also Fowl Issues

In this post, we ranted about the pissiness of the universe, noted the sudden absence of dwarves in our archive (the pheasants, however, are still in place, and as boisterous as ever), and reminisced about "that time when we went to Sir Toby's with Obsessive Emmerdale Fan Friend, and some other nice friends, to watch the rugby, and Wales won, or lost, or disappeared in an earthquake, or similar".

Life is perilous, and we're not sure of the state of Wales, but here, at any rate, is a reassuring toilet-roll holder.

Poste the seventhe:
On the Nature of Academic Friendships

In which we philosophised on the state of having weird friends.

This water-saving toilet is IN A WINE MUSEUM.

Poste the eighthe:
Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts, But Totally Trust the Toilet Attendant

In a fit of unbridled adventurousness we went to visit a friend in Athens. Greece has been hard hit by the economic downturn, but the locals were wonderfully friendly, the alcohol (and the coffee, and, oh God, the food) was tasty, and the plumbing was interesting and functional. Greece was also, in our experience, remarkably free from sexual harassment. We were only exposed to one very dispirited catcall during our stay, and we spent many hours travelling on the metro alone, wearing a short skirt. In fact, Greece is so awesome that we have, with Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend, hatched a plan to "open a feminist commune/library in Oia on Santorini. It's going to be amazing". We'll keep you posted.

This gentleman is called Bo. Here's how excited he is about the prospect of a feminist library.

Poste the ninthe:
Privy Counsel Pin-Up: Jonny! (Try to Restrain Yourselves.)

Every now and then, we post a photo of Jonny. Jonny is a nice boy but has very poor impulse control. If you could see some of the photos he's sent us but which we've decided - in the interest of mental hygiene - not to publish, you'd go park yourself on the toilet floor and never get up.

Still, this is inarguably an awesome photo.

Poste the tenthe:

Rosy-Fingered Dawn (But No Bloody Lock on the Door) in Istanbul

Sometimes our rampant intellectualism takes even us by surprise. What compelled us to quote classical Greek poetry in a bog blog remains a mystery, but there you are. We were quite excited by the prospect of travelling to Athens via Istanbul, and in many ways, we weren't disappointed. The quality of toilets at Istanbul airport was uneven, and if we were to use one word to sum up the facilities, it would be unreliable. However, the coffee was good, and the staff in Starbucks were the friendliest people we have met anywhere.

THE LOCK DIDN'T BLOODY WORK. AAARRRRRGGGH.

Poste the eleventhe:
Lead Pipe Dreams

As regular readers are aware, we love ranting. Love it! Nothing gets our juices flowing like a good rant, especially a plumbing-related one. Turns out we have finally met our match! 2014 was the year in which we introduced Exuberant Archaeologist Friend, who turns out to be a champion among ranters. A champion!

"Who are the barbarians now, motherfuckers?"

This lead pipe, marked "Vespasian", has been officially declared The Sexiest Lead Pipe of the Year.

Poste the twelfthe:
Rocking, Rolling, Ranting

2014 was also the year in which the question of which way to hang the toilet roll was finally settled. There need be no more discussion on this subject now.

If you suffer from combative flatmates, the vertical position is recommended.

2014. Some stuff that happened was BADASS. Some of it was just bad. Let's have a festive video and get it on with that champagne!

Festive video - Maddie & Tae, Girl in a Country Song

Related Reading

Caitlin Moran on women in music wearing no clothes (from a Marie Claire interview):

It’s like if every single male artist dressed up as farmers. In every video they were on a farm. Whether it was Jason Derulo or Oasis, they’re always on a tractor, they’re always surrounded by sheep and always in boots. And all the songs are about enjoying farming, and this is all you've had for ten years – you’d think you were going mad.

Postscript

If you are in need of spiritual solace, rest assured that 2014 was also the year in which The Prettiest Mixer Tap in Britain was introduced. Contemplating it is very soothing. Thank you, Tudor Friend.

The Prettiest Mixer Tap in Britain

Post-Postscript

2014 was also the year in which our friend Jane started her blog Temple of Janus. This blog is - if this is indeed possible - even more rampantly intellectual than our own humble bog blog! Jane specialises in sexy pictures of features of medieval architecture - of the kind that keep scholars the world over up at night, salivating into a bucket. There is also fierce, groundbreaking analysis.  It's a scream!

Tod und Verzweiflung, But Also A Rampant (If Temporary) Triumph

You know how, some days, the only combination of words that accurately describes one's existence is Tod und Verzweiflung? Today, however, is a great day, for today we can say, with utter confidence: "Pah! We laugh in the face of danger. We drop ice cubes down the vest of fear!"

We have defeated the vicious attempts of the Privy Counsel archive to confuse us, ruin our equanimity and make us into gibbering wrecks (or "a gibbering wreck", depending on how many of us one decides there are, and whether we are using the royal we or just an ordinary plural). We have found the elusive "New Year's email"! As regular readers will remember, pictures from the famed New Year's email turned up during one of our archive raids back in August, and we wrote, on the occasion, with touching bewilderment:

As you may suspect, the Privy Counsel picture archive is a total fucking mess. (Read all about the pheasant situation here and here.) There is stuff that's been in there so long we can no longer identify it. Like pictures from German Friend labelled "New year's email", for instance. "What email?" we ask ourselves, squinting in the light of the guttering candle. "And, crucially," we further ponder, taking a quizzical swig from our hipflask, "from what year?"

 We won't go into details of the bravery displayed by the Head Privy Counsellor as we battled against skeletal hands, spiders, and mysterious murderous monks (fuck knows what they were doing in our archive) - suffice to say, we found the email! Behold - an amusing vignette from German Friend! (Look out for interspersed Scandiwegian vocabulary; German Friend is multi-lingual and multi-talented. Oh, and did we mention he just got a dog? We don't know a lot about it at present, only that it isn't called Doris. We'll keep you updated.)

[...] Meanwhile in [German Friend]-land the Christmas and New Year edition 2013 was pretty good. 

I can put some blame on Blighty for blighting a small portion of my stay back home, as on December 23, still in London, I had to pedal through puddles of monstrous extent, errands, presents, etc, you know, and the shoes, the brown shoes got soaked. Horror.
Never really recovered, not till the next day, departure day, anyway, and so, as a good man only owns two pairs of shoes at most at any one time, I had worn "them ole boots", looking strong and masculine, but under the surface, literally, having a blister party! A 5-hour walk with hyperactive 70-year-old min pappa in Berlin didn't help the matter. New shoes were bought on New Year's Eve (how come nobody ever mentions New Year's Adam? Not fair!). 

Anyway, back in Hamburg for nyår, some peeps from here (London) and there (Germany) joined me and we partied on down in the Washington Bar (you don't have to know this place, but if you are ever in Hamburg looking for a spot to party, I can recommend it. "Klein aber oho", as we say in tyska!). 

[...] A pink-tinted necessary with head rests for male customers! "Kopf hier." Don't fall asleep though, the room is fully armed, pistols dangling menacingly overhead! 

A DJ's wild phantasy at Hamburg's Washington Bar. Blue is so 2014. We love the look. And the decks. And the Boombox. Not so much the blur of the pictures. Sorry. Poop.

"Kopf hier." Jawohl!

One could, if one were so inclined, make any number of rude jokes 
incorporating the word "gun".

Close-up of the simple but poignant instructions.
We do love clear signage!

We have no idea what's going on here.

Or here.

Or, for that matter, here.

This isn't, frankly, much clearer.
It looks, however, like German Friend had an excellent Silvester!

We had an amusing and oh! so intellectual conversation with German Friend recently about the German word Trümmerfrauen, and are delighted to note that the word Trümmer is incorporated in the libretto of today's festive video! We're at risk of feeling so smug about this that we have to stop writing immediately, before our head explodes.

Festive video - Patricia Petibon, Der Hölle Rache Kocht in Meinem Herzen (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)

Related Reading
Last time we mentioned German Friend, and discovered the concept of the mysterious New year's Email: A Blog Post of Astonishing Clarity
A very German post: A Germane Issue
One of the most exciting things to have happened during 2013: The Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here
Another post with a festive Mozart video: Up in the Air - Introducing Exuberant Archaeologist Friend
All posts about German Friend

In other news:
CHRISTMAS IS COMING
Have you considered turning your back on mindless consumerism and instead benefiting mankind by spending a penny on Oxfam Unwrapped, WaterAid, or ToiletTwinning? Or why not donate to Amnesty International, or your local women's shelter?