It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Erfurt latrine disaster is by far the topic that we receive the most messages about. Why this should be, we couldn't tell you, but one might of course speculate. Is it the thrilling combination of sewage and brutal, sudden death? Is it the reminder that life is fleeting, and all flesh is grass? Or is it that satisfying moment of realising that yes, for most people life is one long chain of really, really shitty moments, and it always has been, and it's not just you being paranoid and incompetent? Your guess is as good as ours - or, quite possibly, considering our track record of displaying an appalling lack of judgement, better.
If there is one person who, in stark contrast to us, has a long history of having excellent judgement, it is Our Favourite Aunt. She recently proved the excellence of said judgement by going to visit Monet's house and taking pictures of the toilets.
Is Monet's abluvium better than Bach's bog? You tell us!
Many thanks to this gem of an aunt - the most splendid of aunts; indeed, the aunt to end all aunts! - for her benevolent toilet photography!
Remember that time when we announced a toilet-paper origami competition, which resulted in people sending in actual photos? No, we didn't either. For this grievous error, we can only offer our sincerest apologies. There is probably an explanation for why this estimable and important project was lost in the mists of time, and that explanation is most likely that said mists of time were mostly opioid mists. However, we have now bribed the judges of our jury to reach a verdict.
We should probably pause, here, to review the entries. And before doing that, we should possibly attempt to explain what the toilet paper origami competition was, when it was, and why. There was a virtual, online event, this being the trend in 2020 for reasons we can't remember, and it was described thusly:
A further description inside the event read as follows:
Scrolling through the archive, we learn that the idea came from Tudor Friend and was thus, in keeping with that friend's personality, funny, creative and devilishly cunning!
The response to this clarion call of bog-related creativity was staggering. Staggering, we tell you! Here are all the entries, in chronological order. (We're not saying that some of the jurors submitted entries but we're also not saying that they didn't. The fact that Jonny entered a photo in a photo competition where the prize was a photo of Jonny dressed as a pirate no doubt says something about the modern era's lack of standards and post-post-modernist or perhaps even post-post-post-modernist atomisation and lack of coherence.)
Words cannot adequately express our gratitude to everyone who bravely entered this bizarre competition with such grace and stamina.
Before we tell you who the winner is, let us share the most elucidating comments from our international jury of experts. In no wise must the efforts of both ourselves and the jury be underestimated. This has been a long process, and has involved us insisting on motivations and writing anxious messages saying things like:
I'm going to ask you to motivate your answer, please. (Please. I've been doing this with students wanting a higher grade all afternoon. *it says clearly in the question that you have to motivate your answer, for instance by illustrating it with examples *)
On being told that this particular juror preferred a particular entry, we had to push - yes, even after the heart-rending plea above, we had to keep pushing - for a motivation:
What's good about [this entry]? Is it, for instance, the quality of the origami, or the description and puns?
The reply arrived, without hesitation:
I must admit I let myself be overly influenced by puns. That totally affected my judgement.
Another juror said, about the same entry:
I wonder how long it took to make the rose. I would have developed haemorrhoids. [...] Still, I vote for the rose. Both for creativity and sheer bravado.
And the rose is, indeed, the winner! Here it is again, for your enjoyment:
We shall be contacting the winner and arranging for Jonny to send them a signed photo of him dressed as a pirate. Be warned, however, that last time we arranged a photo competition, the prize was a signed photo of Jonny wearing a trench coat, and it took him four years to send it.
We would be remiss if we, after this bog-related onslaught, didn't also share the latest toilet photo that Jonny shared with us. Please note that it comes with a trigger warning for royalist sentiments, sartorial genius and unbridled pizzazz:
Since we have established that a) seven people read this blog and b) none of those seven ever listens to any of the Festive Videos, it matters not one whit which video we select to be this post's Festive Video and thus you have only yourselves to blame for us selecting this one:
We reported, in our last post, on Shewee Fiend Friend's distressing experience of being forced to comply with the diktat of ideological zealots. [Male person in Shewee Fiend Friend's life], having gone from not caring which way the toilet roll hangs, to becoming an over-orientation fanatic, is exhorting Shewee Fiend Friend to engage in a practice which to her eyes is misguided and wrong, with such force that she has "mostly given up and submit[ted] to [our] and his joint pressure".
While obviously exulting in this epic triumph of right over wrong; good over evil; over over under, we nonetheless feel some concern regarding Shewee Fiend Friend's human right to hang the bog roll any damn way she chooses. This led us to wonder whether Shewee Fiend Friend is, in fact, the greengrocer of the Privy Counsel bog blog.
Having gone through, like many people, what one might term a moderately woke phase (one of the more sinister manifestations of which was, apart from an increased propensity to indulge in humourless ranting, a bona fide crush on Justin Trudeau) some years ago, we came out the other end with a determination to read the kind of literature that we have had a nagging feeling, ever since high school, that we really should have read, but never got around to due to other concerns. For instance, we went back to 1984, enjoyed the SCUM Manifesto, and made the acquaintance of Václav Havel's greengrocer.
For readers who are perhaps slightly less intellectual than the desired ideal (we are absolutely looking at you, Semi-Intellectual Friend), the famous greengrocer appears in Havel's essay The Power of the Powerless. Havel writes:
The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop
places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers
of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to
communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of
unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that
he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his
ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a
unification might occur and what it would mean?
I
think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of
shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor
do they use them to express their real opinions. That poster was
delivered to our greengrocer from the enterprise headquarters along with
the onions and carrots. He put them all into the window simply because
it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, and
because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could
be trouble. He could be reproached for not having the proper decoration
in his window; someone might even accuse him of disloyalty. He does it
because these things must be done if one is to get along in life. It is
one of the thousands of details that guarantee him a relatively tranquil
life "in harmony with society," as they say.
Here is a funny yet achingly intellectual meme that we made a couple of years ago.
We put it to Shewee Fiend Friend that she
might be the greengrocer, and the toilet-roll orientation (the correct
one, which she is now engaging in, albeit against her will) might be the
slogan. Shewee Fiend Friend pondered this. Then she wrote back:
Ok I’ve finished reading it. It gets heavy towards the end. Basically you are suggesting I am a collaborator
In your own ideology! Which you think is morally just!
You
are criticizing my collaboration of a system you believe in and have
tried to convince me of! How do you, as the post totalitarian dictator,
somehow get the moral high ground here??!!
Regarding the moral high ground we would argue, firstly, that we always had it. As we have stated before, categorically and determinedly, on the issue of toilet-roll orientation "there is only one possible position, morally as well as intellectually". Secondly, having conceded, on more than one occasion, most notably
perhaps regarding the Canadian prime minister but also on several other
points, some of which we can remember, to Shewee Fiend Friend that she
was right and we were wrong, perhaps we win the moral high ground on
this occasion by virtue of past humility, however haphazard and
accidental? Or perhaps it is simply the case that smugness will triumph. Whichever argument we employ, we doubt that Shewee Fiend Friend will agree.
Reader, it is hot, hot, hot out there, rather in the manner of Mr Rochester's bedroom. Jonny, that connoisseur of fine bathrooms, sent us this exquisite toilet selfie, which we would argue is on a par with the weather, in terms of hotness. Attached was this greeting:
You can't really tell but the shirt is waaaaay too big
This is all very well, we thought, but what in the name of arse is going on with the mirror? Jonny's theory was as follows:
Who knows? It was a Mediterranean restaurant so maybe it's normal?
When we suggested, in line with the current fashion for political correctness, that Jonny might be guilty of xenophobia, perhaps even mediterraneophobia, he retorted, quite reasonably:
I don't think so? Just my first time in a Mediterranean restaurant so statistically it's the norm.
Another possibility, put to us by a reliable source, is that the mirror is a portal to hell. "And not the fun one." We are inclined to agree.
Finally, we are delighted to announce that Jonny has joined the proud Privy Counsel tradition of giving up on learning Greek.
Unfortunately for Jonny, of course, he only counts as a friend for administrative reasons.
The obvious Festive Video for this post is the Swedish punk classic Sheiße
(or, as the annoying diktat of the modern German grammar commissariat would have it, Sheisse) by Ebba Grön, which one might argue, someone pointed out to us recently, praises the beauty of free speech.
Quoth the poet: No retreat, baby, no surrender! We don't know what your coffee table looks like, but ours has a pile of books intended for summer reading the thickness of
roughly three paper editions of the OED, of which we have read about one
finger's breadth since June; every time we try to peruse a page we fall
asleep. Writing, under these conditions, is a challenge to say the
least. Still, this is not an apology, nor even an explanation, for our perhaps paltry bog blog post production of late. It is
merely a preamble to the main business, which is -
- well hell, we don't know. Ennui? As Morrissey said, "I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and
heaven knows I'm miserable now", or as Al Swearengen put it with perhaps
rather more force, "Many times that's what the fuck life is: One vile
fucking task after another". What with our current consumption of coffee and opioids, not to mention our customary preoccupation
with syphilis, one would be hard pressed to say whether we are at risk of turning into a Romantic poet. Time
will, no doubt, tell.
Be that as it may, we have some rather competent original content to delight and enlighten you with today. Shewee Fiend Friend, that intrepid straddler of time zones, has been to Amsterdam Airport again. Has she, in fact, blessed this international travel hub with her presence more times than any human now living? The regularity and vigour, indeed, with which Shewee Fiend Friend visits the main airport of the Netherlands is spectacular to the point of being worrying. It's almost as if she is gripped by some sort of fit, or seizure, exclaiming, "I'm going to Amsterdam Airport!" and then, as P. G. Wodehouse would arguably put it, sort of goes to Amsterdam Airport. Medical science will possibly never advance far enough to give us the answer; we'll have to content ourselves with drinking more coffee, and perusing these pictures. Here is Shewee Fiend Friend's review of what she argues is the best public toilet she has ever experienced.
I excitedly told the wrong audience ([Person whose apathy [was] so severe he didn’t even have critique]) that the Amsterdam airport’s toilet was the best public toilet I had experienced
Now I shall correct that error, at 4:30am because I’m jet lagged and can’t sleep of course
So lovely to enter a clean room with clearly marked doors that extend from floor to relatively high ceiling
The stall has these 5 wood coathooks of varying sizes
Honestly most were too big to be of any use with a backpack but they are very aesthetically pleasing. But you just need one. And if you’ve got a purse they’d be great
This device was chock full of paper and I love the seat sanitizer
Look at this bin placement. By the door. Amazing. My thigh did not press uncomfortably against it
So much space. Fun flush
Totally fine sinks
Nothing too fancy, just all very very efficient and comfortable
There is no limit, it seems, to the energetic antics of our friends. Jonny (who counts as a friend for administrative reasons) has an important contribution to make to the debate (is it still a debate if it has been settled that there is a wrong and a right way of doing things and the right way has been established and described at length?) on toilet roll orientation.
Schrödinger's bog roll?
One for your next correct hanging position debate
We note that whether this roll is hung correctly depends on the position of Jonny. If he is to the right of the roll it is hung correctly, but if he moves to the left, a large neon sign will, morally, erect itself, so to speak, over the latrine trench and scream, in large, frantic lettering, "ERROR! ERROR! FLEE!". Also, we would like to take this opportunity of informing Jonny that, whatever one's views on toilet roll orientation, one should never position oneself under the roots of an uprooted tree as it, we have been informed by a reliable source, may turn over again and crush one, under its root system, into clumps of soil. This is not a fate that we would wish on this bog blog's main contributor of toilet selfies. Or, arguably, anyone else.
Jonny has also excelled himself in the "rugged handsomeness with rustic hand-dryer and grit on the floor" genre of toilet photography, and submitted what might be the hottest bog selfie of 2021!
Is your mind boggled? Ours is!
Some random bar last night!
As regular readers will be all too aware, we are fans of clear signage at the Privy Counsel. If you, too, enjoy a) clear signage and b) men in rugged lumberjack shirts using authoritative body language, then brace yourself!
In a Thai restaurant I can't spell the name of
Chaophraya
There was a sign
Lovely bin
Poorly used
"Lovely bin - poorly used" might be the first line of a really great haiku about hygiene and the futility of human endeavour, if anyone felt like writing it. We would, but we are rather busy at the moment with the kind of crazy, overcompensatory coping mechanisms that you develop when you, for complicated reasons, can't walk, sit, or sleep. So fuck off, darlings, and leave us alone.
Oh yes, the Festive Video. We were possibly rather hasty, there, with our exhortation to our audience to fuck off. If you'd like, you can postpone the off-fucking for a couple of minutes and listen to this great song. It's a funny fact, we have observed, that even as you become increasingly conservative with age, you also become more of a hippy. Thus we have, with advancing years, developed a fascination with the moon, going so far as to stand outside staring at it, boring our friends with remarks about its whereabouts, sometimes even going so far as to comment on its colour and size, and downloading an app. Yes, it's that bad. Anyway, the app helpfully informed us yesterday, or if it was the day before, that there is now a quarter moon. Enjoy.
How many proto-Indo-European verbs mean to “move”, “move
round”, “drive”, “draw out or forth”, or “get shaken”? We are asking, not because
we want to rudely expose anyone’s ignorance about proto-Indo-European verbs or
because we have some kind of perversion (actually both those motives might not
be entirely unrelated to reality), but because it seems to us that roughly half
the time we look up the etymology of a word, it comes from a PIE root with the
meaning to “move”, “move round”, “drive”, “draw out or forth”, or “get shaken”.
One almost inevitably reaches the conclusion that something was deeply wrong
with the proto-Indo-Europeans. Why this obsession with movement? one wonders. Why
have so many words indicating action? We don’t know about you, but all the
people we know who like doing things are disturbed to the point of pathology.
If one were feeling a bit rabid, one might theorise that there is a reason
Indo-European languages are so dominant in Europe and what is commonly described as "the Indian sub-continent", and that
reason is that they were spread by a bunch of psychopaths who were not content
with being comfortable where they were - possibly having a beer and using
terrible puns, or at most flapping their arms about while discussing how much
they hate post-modernism - but were intent on striding about, sweating, in order
to get to new places. The deeply repugnant effect of the spread of the
Indo-Europeans is that the descendants of these psychopaths are now striding
about the continent enjoying depraved activities such as playing football (or
worse: watching others play football); cycling while encased in tight,
unflattering lycra garments; and going to each other’s houses to play
boardgames. “Come,” as we are accustomed to sighing, with gritted teeth (oh no,
sighing while gritting your teeth is not at all like licking your elbow; it is not
just possible but to be encouraged among right-thinking people), “friendly
bombs”.
An illustration of the horrifying energy levels of the Indo-Europeans. Source: Wikipedia.
The
latest such example of a word deriving from a root meaning to “move”, “move
round”, “drive”, “draw out or forth”, or “get shaken” is one we came across in
an effort to delve into the deeper meaning of the word “polarisation” by
looking up “pole”. “Pole”, in the sense we are interested in at the moment, is
the third one listed on Etymonline after “person from Poland” (not an
irrelevant word in this context; we’ll return to this) and “stake, pole, post”,
and what we are told about its origins is this:
"northern
or southern end of Earth's axis," late 14c., from Old French pole or
directly from Latin polus "end of an axis;" also "the sky, the
heavens" (a sense sometimes used in English from 16c.), from Greek polos
"pivot, axis of a sphere, the sky," from PIE *kwol- "turn
round" (PIE *kw- becomes Greek p- before some vowels), from root *kwel-
(1) "revolve, move round."
The
French, as usual, have left their grubby etymological fingerprints all over the
place, as evidenced by the roots of the word we are interested in, “polarisation”:
1812,
"state of having different properties on different sides," from polarize
+ -ation,
and in part from French polarisation, noun of action from polariser.
Figuratively from 1871; of social and political groups, "accentuation of
differences," from 1945.
"Why
this obsession", you ask, "with the source of the word 'polarisation'?" "Isn’t it
too hot to worry about anything more complicated than a gin and tonic?" you
might reasonably object, and you would of course be right. The reason we’re
interested in drawing out or forth the meaning of “polarisation” is that
someone told us something amusing and we’d like to go on about it at length.
Bear with us; we’ll get there.
Society
is becoming more and more polarised, we are told, and this is bad. The reason
given is usually that we are now, as individuals, encased in what are known as “bubbles”
(specifically, we understand, of the filter variety) or "echo chambers". These
"bubbles" or "chambers" are caused, some argue, while others state that it is
merely that their effect is amplified, by social media. (Reward yourself with
another gin and tonic if you saw this coming.) The effect of the filter bubble is to shield one from news, opinions and angles that one doesn't like, thus confirming and strengthening one's beliefs and worldview. So for instance, if one held the view that hanging the toilet paper the wrong way round is a sane, normal and fruitful thing to do, one would only read media, follow social media accounts, and talk to friends who endorsed this view, thus ending up with the erroneous conviction that one's warped minority belief was shared by the majority of the population. The theory is that if everyone is encased in such a filter bubble or echo chamber, strife is inevitable as when people meet in the virtual forum, they become enraged by what they consider the heretical beliefs of other people, and start metaphorically throwing rotten grapes at each other's faces and hurling insults about the cut of their toga.
An illustration of what a polarised conflict might have looked like in the ancient world. Source: Asterix at the Olympic Games, by Réné Goscinny and Albert Uderzo.
Others argue that polarisation is simply a factor of human society; it is natural to want to bond with others who share our views, and our social rituals include affirming commonly held beliefs, and viewing out-groups with suspicion. (Anyone who has had the misfortune of viewing a football match will have seen an illustration of these phenomena.) Indeed, one might argue that we could all freak out a little less about social media and our various digital devices, and take a moment to contemplate one of the many images of gentlemen on trains, in the olden days, wearing hats and reading newspapers. Were these gentlemen, one might ask oneself, reading newspapers propagating views they didn't share? Probably not, or they wouldn't be sitting sedately but gesticulating furiously and perhaps taking their hats off.
An image of people on a train, reading. We note that two women are standing, and find this fascinating. We are forever hearing that in the past, there was a thing called chivalry. Chivalry apparently meant that men and women interacted freely, and men did things like open doors for women, offer them their seats on trains, and shield them from traffic by helpfully always walking on the side of the pavement where the traffic was (how convenient it is for a woman to always be accompanied by a man when leaving the house!). All valuable and laudable habits, we can probably all agree. Nowadays, the argument goes, in the wake of the Me Too hysteria, men simply can't tell the difference any more between telling a joke and violently assaulting someone, and thus it has become impossible for the sexes to interact in a natural way. We don't know what the hell is going on in this picture from an age in which we are told that chivalry still existed, and the men, presumably, should have experienced an irresistible social pressure to give the ladies a seat; possibly all the men in this particular photograph had arthritis, or polio, or were blind due to tertiary syphilis. We can only speculate.
Whatever one's thoughts are on polarisation, it is a truth universally acknowledged that some things are right, and some things are wrong, and one thing that is wrong is hanging one's toilet roll in the "under" orientation. (For less regular readers, it might help to know that we have explored this topic carefully in a previous post.) We have been explaining this for years on this blog, and our mind is boggled whenever it turns out that a friend of ours persists in their misguided habit of hanging the toilet roll the wrong way round. We have mentioned before that in the case of Shewee Fiend Friend, for instance, we are, for the most part, joined in a pure and beautiful friendship, like "two pulsating brains, beating as one". However, there are certain subjects on which we disagree (for instance, The Great Bike Pedal Débâcle of May 2021 nearly ended our relationship), one of which is toilet roll orientation. You may imagine our surprise when our chat conversation with Shewee Fiend Friend revealed this tantalising information, in November last year:
[Person in Shewee Fiend Friend's immediate circle] usually hangs the tp your way. Not consistently though.
[...]
This is actually worse than if he had principles and was doing it that way consistently. I think he's just never thought about it.
[...]
I think he intuitively has an instinct to do it a certain way but usually isn't thinking about it so 70% of the time it's a 50-50 chance which way it will end up. 15 % of the time he does it the way that seems right to him and 15% of the time he just leaves it there empty. I've put a lot of research into this analysis. Far more effort than he puts into hanging the tp.
Our response to this information was, understandably, as follows:
We find this incredibly stressful. Just thinking about it. It's bad.
To which Shewee Fiend Friend replied:
It's really difficult for me. I would rather have a declared offensive.
Naturally we then hurried on to other topics of conversation, but a few weeks later we had a conversation with a colleague, which led us to reveal this fascinating information:
Our work friend admitted today that she and her husband have a fifty-fifty scheme going with the toilet roll. So it's apparently not just you. We are appalled but also intrigued.
Shewee Fiend Friend said, "I don't know how it works. It is appalling". Which is a good summary of the whole sorry mess.
Incidentally, when discussing culture wars and polarisation, Shewee Fiend Friend likes to bring up the Huguenots. There are few things we enjoy more - and we are not being sarcastic here - than listening to Shewee Fiend Friend expound on the horrors of the Huguenots. The splendid and beautiful rant we had the privilege of partaking of a couple of years ago has unfortunately been lost to, if not the mists of time, then to the moving, moving
round, or driving between different digital communication platforms. However, this abridged version has been preserved for posterity. Here, for your delight and edification, is a relatively brief rant about the Huguenots, consisting of a summary of a conversation Shewee Fiend Friend had with another friend:
Then we complained about society in general and she brought up how she thinks left/right wing are like the late-reformation ideologies.
She likened it to the Puritans.
So I went on about the Huguenots.
She is hoping the timeline is similar to the Reformation so we will live to see the return of theatres and fun, and the downfall of censorship.
I think the Puritans might be an even better comparison.
The Huguenots also entered under a cover of [political symbol].
And everyone was like, just let them have their [political symbol].
Then they started burning shit.
There is more stuff about Huguenots burning things, terrible slaughter, and a man being put into a cage, which we would tell you more about if the internet hadn't destroyed our memory. You can probably look it up online if you're interested.
Speaking of polarisation, let's have a picture of our favourite toilet babe, Jonny (who counts as a friend for administrative reasons), incorporating at least three things that are prone to causing violent disagreements: face masks, handwashing, and non-mixer taps!
It is a truth universally acknowledged that literally everyone enjoys a toilet selfie from Jonny.
Now for a Festive Video, before we remove ourselves from the computer to venture forth into the real world and drink beer!
Festive Video: Jon Bon Jovi - You Give Love a Bad Name
As usual, since Blogger fucked up the embed function we don't know if the video is working, so here's a link to be on the safe side: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrZHPOeOxQQ.
All posts featuring Intellectual Friend, our etymological guide, without whom we would be lost in the wilderness, without a map and with no dried fish. He might accurately be described as both a Pole and a pole, engaging in much wandering but always remaining a fixed position to which one can return for intellectual solace, and whisky.
