Gunning for Greatness

At the risk of boring all our readers to actual, salty tears of desperation, we must inform you that we've had another one of those days that aren't as bad as one expects, despite various gruesome elements like a presentation and - horror of horrors - a group collaboration. (Last time we had an unexpectedly good day of this sort was back in March.) We do realise that a tale of angst, drama and insurmountable difficulties makes for more exciting reading, but really, we've just had quite a nice day. The weather has been pleasant, and we had a really nice lunch.

HOWEVER. We know that our regular readers come to this blog expecting action, wit, and dirty puns, and therefore we shall share with you today our latest missive from Uncle Sean. That stalwart of ironic detachment and really quite perverted thoughts sent a message containing the following multi-media material:

Dedicated to bringing you noteworthy loos from our travels, we must begin with Dirty Harry:

Festive video - Dirty Harry, "Penetration"

Where, oh where could this scene resolve?

We must confess that we're not quite sure what Uncle Sean is driving at. Maybe he's been to the San Francisco area? And perhaps got shitfaced on way too much beer? Like Dirty Harry is about to get in the movie clip? And he's perhaps thinking that Dirty Harry might have ended up using a urinal like this one? And then proceeded to make more phallic puns?

The possibilities are endless.

We visited a random history site recently which had the audacity to call itself a "multi-media" blog simply by virtue of featuring a single crappy embedded video. This miffed us to the core - we've been doing regular festive videos for YEARS! Spurred by pride and conceit to up the ante, we've decided to add, on top of the rampantly festive video above, A FLAGRANTLY JOVIAL GIF. This one comes to us from a rampant feminist friend, who claims that it illustrates a useful way of dealing with mansplainers and misogynists.

http://barfingunicorn.tumblr.com/post/114348618414/do-u-ever-just-wanna-throw-a-motherfucker-at

Uh-huh.


Related Reading
Actually, when we started doing regular embedded videos, it was because we were similarly spurred by pride and conceit, having seen Semi-Intellectual Friend's blog and getting ragingly jealous of the zingy format: Handwashing Extravaganza

All posts featuring Uncle Sean

Clint Eastwood being laudably hygienic:
Privy Counsel Pin-Up: Clint Eastwood, or, Black-and-White Baths, or, Dirty Men with Guns

That other time when things ended up not quite as bad as we had feared:
Southern Comfort: A Joyful and Soothing Italian Toilet

The Bottom Line Is, There's a Copper-Bottomed Approach to Jeans. Bottoms Up!

So it turns out other people actually manage to wear skirts, and even dresses. (If you haven't read it already, see our rant about the impossibility of wearing skirts (and also jeans) here.) We were having a conversation with some rampant feminazi friends of ours the other day about the struggle to allineate feminazism with the real world. It went like this:

Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend: I like to keep the scales balanced by listening to rap music but never shaving my armpits. 

The Privy Counsellor: We shave our armpits but take a manly interest in plumbing. 

Friend of Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend: I scowl at male babies and drop the word "patriarchy" into casual conversation. But I wear dresses.

Note, here, a) the balancing act that is required to perform gender in a socially acceptable way while staying reasonably sane and maintaining a modicum of comfort, and b) the fact that there are people out there who manage to wear things, perhaps even with tights. However, we find comfort in the fact that Bridget Jones, like us, finds it hard to wear skirts without them riding up:

12.15 p.m. Was bloody Richard Finch yelling: "Bridget. This isn't arseing Care in the Community. It is a television production office meeting. If you must stare out of the window, at least try to do it without sliding that pen in and out of your mouth. So can you do that?"
   "Yes," I said sulkily, putting the pen down on the table.
   "No, not can you take the pen out of your mouth, can you find me a Middle-England, middle-class voter, fifty plus, own home, who is in favour?"
   "Yes, no problem," I breathed airily, thinking I could ask Patchouli in favour of what later.
   "In favour of what?" said Richard Finch.
   I gave him a really quite enigmatic smile. "I think you might find you've answered your own question there," I said. "Male or female?"
   "Both," said Richard sadistically, "one of each."
   "Straight or gay?" I exoceted back.
   "I said Middle England," he snarled witheringly. "Now get on the bloody phone, and try to remember to put a skirt on in future, you're distracting my team."
   Honestly, as if they would take any bloody notice as they are all obsessed with their careers and it is not that short, it had just ridden up.
   Patchouli says it is in favour of the European or single currency, which she thinks means either. Oh fuck, oh fuck. Right. Ah, telephone. That'll be the Shadow Treasury press office.  

(Fielding, Helen. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. London: Picador, 1999. Pp. 80-81)

Luckily, there may be hope for womankind after all. After our recent rant, Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend sent us a sympathetic message about the secret to wearing jeans. It said:

It's hard, this feminism lark, isn't it? Also, my advice re jeans buying. Buy the pair that comfortably fit your legs and arse, and take those motherfuckers in at the waist.

For all fat-bottomed girls out there, this is the only way. I've not bought a pair of pants in ten years that I haven't performed this quick operation upon. Much less stressful!

We have taken these words to heart. Finally, a sensible approach to wearing jeans while maintaining all of one's vital bodily functions! Hurrah! Bottoms up!

We reckon some hardy toilets from a tough, male environment would come in handy right about now. The following photos are from Carspect, a vehicle safety inspection garage in Svågertorp, Sweden. The photographer is Our Mum, who is very ladylike, but totally has this tyre-changing thing down. She also deals with other traditionally male areas like leaky pipes, Latin grammar, and rodent infestations, with style, pizazz, and even brio.

We enjoy this festive green floor and covered toilet-roll holder. There is also disability-friendliness happening,
and the bin is at a very comfortable distance from the toilet.

A lovely sink with a lovely mixer tap, a lovely empty bin, lovely paper towels,
and a lovely, sturdy coat hook on which you can hygienically hang your handbag. Woof!
(See another toilet we enjoyed, that had a very empty bin, here.)

You knew what the festive video was gonna be, didn't you? YEAH.

Festive video - Queen, Fat-Bottomed Girls

Related Reading

Ten Things That Feminism Has Ruined for Me (Guardian article)

A blog post about all the ways in which tights can gang up on you and ruin your day (from Mytightswontstayup.com)

Our massive rant about jeans: All Mouth and No Trousers - Sichuan Food in Singapore

Our most Bridget Jones-esque post ever: "Drunken Routs, in Which More Things Were Broken Than Heads and Furniture, Sister!"

Another post about shamelessly plagiarising other people's words: Coasting Along: Saving Time and Effort by Plagiarising Our Friends. Also Some Otters.

To be honest, there are quite a few of these. Here's another one: Rampant Titillation - Basically, a Real-Life Epistolary Novel!

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

Jazzing Things Up in Oslo

Did we mention that sometimes we just sit and look through things that people have sent us and roar with laughter? Well, it's true.
If truth be told we do a fair amount of despairing weeping as well, due to all the uncategorised photos of anonymous and forgotten toilets that clutter our archive. At one point we might have to do a Parade of the Unknown Toilet, just to clear those ones from the depository.

Today is also a day of parades, but for different reasons! Today, you see, is syttende mai, which Norwegians celebrate for good, solid reasons which we cannot for the life of us remember, despite a very hefty education. (Just kidding.)
So we thought we'd post some festive Norwegian toilets! Audiologist Friend, reporting from the Opera House in Oslo, writes:

Konsert/operahuset i Oslo. Riktigt maffiga badrum!

(The concert/opera house in Oslo. Really bombastic bathrooms!)

We got quite confused when trying to find the location of these magnificent bogs, as there is both an opera house and a concert house in Oslo, but a quick Google search assured us that these are the facilities in the Opera House.

Luscious and disability-friendly - woof!

We love these solid-looking doors.

A vision of excellence!
If a bit brown. Did we mention we hate the colour brown?
The only kind of brown we can abide is Brownian motion.

Wasn't that magnificent! Our best wishes to the people of Norway on their Constitution Day!
Rest assured that the festive spirit will continue here at the Privy Counsel - Medievalist (With a Side Interest in Roman Archaeology) Friend sent us some highly convivial toilet photos from Singapore the other day, which we hope to be able to post very soon.

Because we are unable to imagine anything more festive than Norwegians doing the lindy hop, let's have some Norwegians doing the lindy hop.

Festive video - The Norweegies during the European Swing Dance Championships, 2013


Related Reading

Previous posts from Norway:
Apparently There Was a "Best Norwegian Café" and "Best Latin Translation" Competition, and Here Are the Winners!

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian/Scottish Fabulousness

All posts featuring Audiologist Friend

A post containing some very festive Norwegian music: Ask Not for Whom the Bog Rolls

Fifty Shades of Bullshit: Fastidious Thoughts

That's quite enough now, thank you.

Surely there is a legal limit to how much bullshit one person can be subjected to in the space of a week? The misogynists in our life reach ever new heights of idiocy; the mansplainers are collectively suffering from a verbal diarrhoea so virulent that we worry they might have cholera; the SEO spammers keep ignoring the notice we've inserted at the bottom of this blog instructing them to go away lest we taunt them again; and an outrageous article has caused us to splutter, choke on our tea, and huff in indignation. Let's deal with these issues one at a time.

The misogynists we are choosing to ignore. The well-meaning mansplainers we are mentally patting on the head in a patronising manner, and the asinine ones we are mentally pushing out the window (there is a very satisfying thud as they hit the pavement).

We've been receiving some very sweet SEO spam comments, from people who have evidently made an effort with their prose - one even went so far as to attempt to write to us in Google-translated German! (No doubt this was inspired by our recent foray into the trendy Kreuzberg district of Berlin, accompanied by some seriously edgy rampant feminist rapping - they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.) Let's have a look at a couple of the best ones. The first SEO-spam comment says:

г [sic]
First оf all I would like tо say wonderful blog!
I hаd a quick question tҺat ӏ'd like tо aѕk if yoս don't mind.
I was interesteԀ to know hoԝ you center yourself ɑnd clear уour
head prior to writing. Ι Һave hɑd difficulty clearing my mind іn gеtting mү tҺoughts out.
I do enjoy writing ɦowever іt ʝust ѕeems likе the first 10 tߋ
15 minutеs are սsually wasted just trуing to figure out how to bеgin. Any recommendations or hints?
Cheers! 

Ӊere is mу site [link omitted]

The flattering suggestion that our head is "clear" while writing causes us to gibber incoherently.

The second really sweet SEO-spam comment reads:

Hеllo it's me, I am alsо visiting thiѕ web page regularly, tɦis site is trulү gоod and tɦе people are rеally sharing fastidious tҺoughts.

Mƴ web blog [sic] [link omitted]

Fastidious thoughts! We take this as a compliment to the collective intellect of our friends, and move on.

Now for some ranting! We came across an insane article (in the Huffington Post, which should surely know better?), entitled "4 [sic] Genius Gadgets In British Homes That Americans Should Borrow".

We know, right?!

[let's pause here while you all get your breath back and clutch your head after - it's ok, we just did the same thing - banging it against the wall]

The article presents common rage-inducing expressions of lunacy like there being no electrical socket in the bathroom, and there being separate taps for hot and cold water, like clever innovations that we should all embrace. If you ever needed proof that the enemy is mobilising and that there are spies lurking in every conceivable place, including in the pantry behind the gherkins, this is surely it?

Thankfully, there are still forces for good in this world. The eminent newspaper Sydsvenskan informs us that the Swedish public transport company Skånetrafiken is introducing extra fancy toilets on its Pågatågen trains. A survey showed that passengers were dissatisfied with the train toilets, finding them dingy, and Skånetrafiken therefore decided to focus on improving them. "Pimp my toilet" should be a more common phenomenon - Skånetrafiken has pimped one of the train toilets into looking like a royal loo!

We are amused, thrilled and delighted in equal measure!
Image: Ideas / Sydsvenskan

Finally, can we just say how much we fucking detest picnics?

Festive video - The Specials, Too Much Too Young


Related Reading
Our classic post on mansplaining:
On Mansplaining and Monastic Drains

Our classic rant about British taps:
Are You British? Does Tap Sanity Elude You?

More tap-related musings:

Kick-Arse Suffragette Friend: Causing Quite a Stir!

Our epic tap-ranting Toilet Tale:
Terminator Toilet

All posts featuring royal toilets

Cracking Some Suds in Kreuzberg

Tally-ho and a spanking good evening to you, dear readers! The bird cherry is in bloom, blackbirds or similar are tweeting and flapping in the shrubberies, and we've had just enough beer to enthuse exuberantly about our recent toilet pictures from Audiologist Friend! (But not enough to cause us to spend tomorrow affectionately clasping the toilet bowl. We might give it a friendly nod, at most.)

As you might be aware, the night which is, above all others, dedicated to fire and pagan rituals - Walpurgis Eve - was celebrated recently. Audiologist Friend joined the festivities in Berlin, and indulged in the pleasures of toilet photography while she was at it. She did right to indulge. After all, das Leben ist wie ein Kinderhemd - kurz und beschissen!

This is one of those times when we are able to offer our readers a chance to practise their colloquial Swedish. As usual a translation follows below the original. Audiologist Friend writes:

Första maj-firande i Kreuzberg; Berlin bjöd på många överraskningar. En var denna - en trevlig bar mitt i Görlitzer Park där toaletten varit ett tvätteri? Eller är det bara en retro skylt som hängts upp? Trots jacket i toastolen gick det mycket bra att använda toaletten. 

(Celebrating May Day in Kreuzberg; Berlin offered many surprises. Among them this - a nice bar in the middle of Görlitzer Park, where the toilet is in an old laundry? Or maybe it's just a retro sign they've put up? Despite the cracked seat, using the toilet was a straightforward business.)

Fully signed up to the hipsterish retro laundry concept

We're calling this Stilleben with Sink, Mirror and Quite a Full Bin.

Kreuzberg toilet seats - cracking under the strain?
We embrace this social-realism take on toilet photography.
(For an even less glamorous bog, see this one photographed by Justin Townes Earle.)

As all our regular readers know, we are ardent fans of Germany (except, obviously, its inhumane and repugnant policy on prostitution), and its weird and wonderful inhabitants. One of our keenest contributors, German Friend, has been delighting us with tales about German underground bars for years! Er hat Haare auf den Zähnen, as the saying goes. We are happy that Audiologist Friend, of whom we are very fond, had a good time in Germany, of which we are also very fond (except, obviously, etc.).
Audiologist Friend has actually been very busy lately, jetsetting around several parts of the world, acing exams, and leaving gnomes and feminist treatises outside the Privy Counsel door.

Hot dog! but we were excited to find this waiting for us
when we walked through that door!
The gnome's name is Baltazar.

We are great fans of feminist treatises at the Privy Counsel. Struggling to achieve gender equality (and all other kinds of equality) in a world populated by loafer-wearing, overly-familiar-term-using, mansplaining asshats can sometimes feel like fitting wheels to a tomato - time-consuming and completely futile. It can feel, at times, like one has toted lots of weary loads, and is going to keep on toting for the foreseeable future. However, as we all know, das Ei will kluger als die Henne sein!

A reasonably intellectual member of the Privy Counsel,
showing off this joyfully rampant feminazi t-shirt saying
"Ich fänd's unanständig, keine Feministin zu sein".
(Get it here.)

There has been some rather rampant misogyny happening in our immediate vicinity recently. This nuisance must now cease! In the meantime, let's have a festive feminazi video.

Festive video - Sookee, Vorläufiger Abschiedsbrief
(Sorry, mum, we know you don't like rap. Here, watch an interesting and rampantly intellectual interview with Sookee instead. You might like it. It's in German.)



Related Reading
That time two years ago when we got very enthusiastic about spring:
In Which We Indulge in Poetry and Out-of-Context French Expressions

Our favourite piece of Germany, ever, helpfully imparted by German Friend:
The German Existentialist Toilet Is, Perhaps, Here

Another German Friend highlight:
Put Him in a Longboat Till He's Sober: Sail-loo-rrr Lingo with German Friend!

Jesus Christ we have so many German Friend highlights we are unable to restrain ourselves:
Tod und Verzweiflung, But Also A Rampant (If Temporary) Triumph

Some information about Germany: A Germane Issue

All posts featuring Audiologist Friend

All posts featuring Germany

Ask Not for Whom the Bog Rolls

We know, we know. We go on and on about our friends, and shamelessly steal words that they have written and post them on our toilet blog, as if that were an honour. Well, the truth is that without our various cronies, there would be no bog blog. Our comrades send us photos from all over the globe, offer us advice on moral dilemmas, and keep us amused with the stories of their fuck-ups and debacles. Many of them are also good, honest people. The other day we were pondering the lives and deeds of our various bosom buddies, and feeling very smug about what a favourable light their endeavours shine on us.

There is the friend who gets incessant promotions at work, the one who is going off to work on a reproductive rights expedition, the one who used to volunteer at Planned Parenthood, the one who campaigns tirelessly for the rights of her people, the ones who have had to flee their homeland and are pursuing their dreams in a foreign country with a new language, all the ones who are rampantly intellectual in a wide variety of fields - we could go on all day. 

It is our ambition, however, not to bore our readers to death, and so we content ourselves with saying that we hugely enjoy basking in this nuclear-meltdown-strength reflected glory. Keep up the good work, everyone!

We also enjoy receiving messages and photos from all the various chums who make up the Privy Counsel Collective. Indeed, there has recently been, to borrow a plumbing metaphor, a veritable flood of communications, and we have acquired more toilet photos than we know what to safely do with. Since our archive is prone to becoming crammed, unnavigable and downright dangerous, our legal advisory team has instructed us to get a few of the recent ones published before they, too, disappear into the vast cavern that is the Privy Counsel Archive.

Lo, a contribution from Bogsley Hansson Friend:

We've said it before and we'll say it again: HUNKA-HUNKA!

Read more amusing toilet signs here.

Bogsley Hansson Friend says, on our asking (needlessly, you might think), whether the photos are from a toilet: 

[The Elvis picture is] near by. All in a restaurant had lunch at in Cannon beach [read all about it here]. Where sent the previous pics from. The sign was in the actual toilet though.

Bogsley Hansson Friend has rather a talent for having lunch in interesting places, and finding fascinating toilets. (He is also hugely well-read and very generous, but his flair for toilet photography is what mostly benefits our regular readers.)

This delightful trawl through our personal correspondence does not end there! Behold, an almost painfully intellectual epistle from Uncle Sean:

We were recently in Key West, where, in a span of 10 years Ernest Hemingway wrote 70% of his literary output. His output of a different sort would have occurred here in his studio's loo.

*tries to think of Hemingway-related pun, fails*
If you enjoy celebrity toilets, have a gander at our  Celebrity Toilets label.
Or check out Johann Sebastian Bach's bog!

Uncle Sean continues: 

This one is from Seattle in a now defunct hotel in Chinatown (now an exhibit in the Wing Luke Museum) where over 100 years ago there was one loo per floor - crammed in the closet like a metaphor for the Chinese-American experience in the U.S. during the long lasting and racist era leading up to and spanning the Chinese Exclusion Act.

See what we mean about the rampant intellectualism and learning of our friends?

According to the internet, Hemingway "once took a urinal home from his favorite bar and moved it into his home, arguing that he had 'pissed away' so much of his money into the urinal that he owned it".

On that inspiring note, let's acknowledge the fact that we've been busy as fuck lately by eating anti-social amounts of garlic, and fantasising about going on a Thelma and Louise-style road-trip to the south of France, by no means excluding the possibility of involving Richard Armitage in our doom-filled quest for freedom.

Today's festive video is a contribution from Norwegian Friend. It's from the very first Norwegian TV broadcast ever, in 1960, and is possibly the most festive thing we have ever seen! You're welcome.

Festive video - Nora Brockstedt and Deep River Boys, Voi Voi


Related Reading
All posts featuring Bogsley Hansson Friend
All posts featuring Uncle Sean
All posts featuring celebrity toilets