Balls! It's Christmas!

It is Christmas Eve! The day on which Christmas is celebrated in all right-thinking countries*, including Scandiwegia, Germany, Poland, Portugal, and Colombia!

We've got Christmas greetings from Uncle Sean, in the shape of some weird toilet pictures and a charming rhyme:

Here for [Christmas] a display of reflective art, far more preferable than a boom bounding ______. 

Eerie scenes to beautify the loo, far more appealing than that un-flushed ______.

Wasn't that refreshing? We do love the spoken and written word!

Next - behold these creepy toilet pictures! They appear to be full of spirits, and are therefore totally in keeping with the atmosphere at the Privy Counsel right now.

We don't actually know what is happening here.

Or here.

Not here either.

Nope.

We also have a Christmas greeting from Jonny. That charming young ne'er-do-well says,

It's annoying how cute I look as a ‪#‎hipstersanta‬.

Jonny as hipster Santa.

 Do you agree, readers?

(Jonny is still single, by the way, despite being very popular with the type of wanton female who frequents this blog. If you find his rugged charms irresistible even after reading this lonely-hearts ad that we wrote for him a couple of years ago, do get in touch. Help us help our favourite bachelor to haul ass into human bondage!)

Another thing, before we bugger off to drink ourselves insensible and watch bad telly enjoy the wonders of Christmas. We have created a poll! In which you can vote! The thing you can vote for is not, unfortunately, "the cutting off of the hands of people who don't wash their hands when they've been to the toilet", "the locking up into damp prisons of people who make themselves guilty of mansplaining", or even "the obligatory inclusion of rum and Richard Armitage to all parties held at the Privy Counsel", but the twelve best bog blog posts of 2015!

Have a think: which Privy Counsel post did you enjoy most this year? Which was the most informative? Or most mindbogglingly horror-filled? Have three or four large glasses of whisky, and GET VOTING!

We have included some helpful suggestions of posts you can vote for, but you can add your own favourite candidate:

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

(Please note that you can only vote once. So have lots of whisky, and think carefully.)

Today's festive video is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "We should all be feminists" speech. It is longer than our usual festive videos, but then what is Christmas for, if not to get slowly woozy on one's favourite drink, read large works of history, and listen to the wise words of someone you admire?
Listen to this, and enjoy Ngozi Adichie's beautiful voice, dry humour, and dazzling wit!
Gaaah, we bloody love this woman!

Festive video - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, We should all be feminists

*Please note that we joyously embrace the notion of not celebrating Christmas at all, or only including the pagan aspects, like drinking and eating too much, worshipping the sun, and/or having orgies.

Related reading

All posts featuring Christmas
Al posts featuring the concept of gender equality
All posts featuring Uncle Sean
All posts featuring Jonny

A Barrage of Sophistication. And a KITTEN.

We're feeling rather sophisticated this morning - we just received a tutorial on how to make Arabic coffee, and what's more, our man in Cardiff sent us this elegant and artistic picture.

Welsh Gangster Friend says:

New bar in Cardiff. Hopbunker. Fucking amazing toilets.

Beer barrels made into urinals? We couldn't agree more!

(In case you yearn for witty and sophisticated conversation, that wonderful thing sometimes called the feast of reason and the flow of soul, we may as well tell you that we responded with the words, "That's fucking amazing", to which Welsh Gangster Friend replied, in turn, "I KNOW". What can we say? This is an intellectual bog blog, and that's the level our everyday conversation is at.)

To continue today's theme, here is another sophisticated picture, which we received from Jonny the other day. That young idiot savant says,

You've got competition. 

Nothing brings a community together like the fight to save a toilet.

On further enquiry, we learn that this placard is placed in Sherburn in Elmet, a village whose inhabitants are reportedly "pretty passionate about toilets".

Finally, a greeting from Uncle Sean, who writes:

Let me introduce you to our new kitten, Savoya, who shares your keen interest in loos as demonstrated in this photo

How was this photo even taken? The mind boggles!

We rather reckon we've had enough of wit and sophistication for this morning, and intend to go back to wallowing in filth and depravity for the rest of the day. But first, a festive video.

This, dear friends, is for all the women who've had enough. (No reflection on Welsh Gangster Friend, Jonny, or Uncle Sean, who are all excellent specimens of the male sex. We believe Jonny is still single, by the way. Incredible, we know. Ladies of Leeds, what are you DOING?)

Festive video - Pistol Annies, Trailer for Rent

Related Reading
All posts featuring Welsh Gangster Friend
All posts featuring Jonny
All posts featuring Uncle Sean

A Fatally Fascinating Sequel

In our last post, we went all cryptic about what Dirty Harry might or might not have done in relation to some urinal or other. Uncle Sean explains, in this thrilling sequel, what was actually going on:

My apologies for the vagaries of my recent clippings. We had the great pleasure of visiting Coit Tower, which of course brought to mind the scene with Mrs. Westwood. So the loo pictured, the tower's actual loo, was shared in the spirit of architectural and filmological bog edification.
As for the resolution of the scene, that remark was meant to be ambiguous; let the mind of each individual make of it as they wish.

We don't know about you, but WE UNDERSTAND ALL THE AMUSING CONNOTATIONS NOW.

In other correspondence-related news, Shewee Fiend Friend sent us this festive picture of a cholera babe!

The top painting is a portrait of Kitty Fisher by Joshua Reynolds.
View the full Cholera Babe Parade here.

Look at this cholera babe I just found in the New York Public Library!
Looks like she has cholera anyway
Apologies for shitty phone quality

For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of the Cholera Babe Parade, a cholera babe is, as we so memorably put it in our classic post Woof! Cholera Babe Parade!, "a red-hot Victorian babe in the process of dying from cholera".

In other news, it has come to our attention that there is some competition or other, which is considered important by many people, and determines which restaurant is currently regarded as the best. Apparently, the Danish restaurant Noma was considered the best in the world until very recently. As it happens, we have a very lovely picture from Noma, which Audiologist Friend sent us not too long ago:

We are woefully unqualified to determine restaurant quality (our usual modus operandi when in a food-and-drink-serving establishment is to stumble to the bar and ask for the second cheapest whisky), but we certainly think this Noma toilet looks excellent! It's got a vertical toilet roll, which we decided last year was the ideal bog roll placement, and everything looks very clean, comfortable, and well ventilated. What this picture doesn't tell us is whether the facilities in Noma are afflicted with subjunctive taps - a particularly Danish disorder.
We shall have to continue pondering, no doubt.

We had originally planned a rampant feminazi video for this post, but then we came across this one! It was so festive, and the dudes in it so lovely, that we had to post this instead. Enjoy!

Festive video - Pjammerz Dubai, pjamming to Lloraras Por Mi by Chapa C

Related Reading

Our by now classic post about Dirty Harry: Gunning for Greatness

The original Cholera Babe Parade

A post on toilet roll placement: Rocking, Rolling, Ranting

Other posts about memorable Danish restaurants:
On Ranting, and Wine
Det lille Apotek: Big Beers and Small Toilets in Everyone's Favourite Toilet Country

Rumours, a Teaser, and More Epistolary Action (With Useful Facts about Everyone's Favourite Toilet Country)

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

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

Uncle Sean's Very Rude Toilet Graffiti

One of the luxuries of having excellent friends is not knowing where to begin.

The Privy Counsel archive is like a badly taxidermied elephant that's been left out in the rain: large, filthy, and stuffed. There are literally more photos in there than we know what to do with. This state of affairs causes both delight and misery. Delight, because we love getting amusing missives from our friends. Misery, because every time we sit down to pen a blog post, we have to leave a shedload of fantastic pieces of toilet photography out! As the poet said,

O what a life is it that lovers joy,
Wherein both pain and pleasure shrouded is:
Both heavenly pleasures and eke hells annoy,
Hells fowle annoyance and eke heavenly blisse.

We simply cannot use all the lovely photos at once! However, since we have mentioned Uncle Sean's rude toilet graffiti twice now, we had better deliver, lest we disappoint our readers.

Uncle Sean says:

Always on the lookout for glamorous loos to share with my great appreciator, here is one from this evening's depository.
The place: Sully's Snow Goose Saloon, where dogs are welcome, not just to enter, but to beg at your table - even so bold as to have a nuzzling nose in your crotch.

We don't know if the pictures below bear any relation to Uncle Sean's words, in terms of crotch-nuzzling. We really hope not. But, due to the nature of the pictures, we consider it a good idea to insert a warning at this point. We're far from prudish or easily shocked at the Counsel (hell, we count Jonny almost as a friend), but our legal team has advised us that there are limits to what one can expose one's readers to without warning. Hence, some words of caution:

IF YOU ARE UNDER EIGHTEEN, LOOK AWAY IMMEDIATELY.

IF YOU POSSESS A SENSE OF PROPRIETY, DON'T EVEN BOTHER.

WHEN CONSUMING ALCOHOL, DON'T FORGET TO EAT FIRST, OR YOU MAY END UP ACCIDENTALLY VOMITING ON THE FLOOR.

Caveats in place, let's get cracking!

Apart from advertising the availability of free bacon,
this delightful graffiti informs us that "He's got [gonorrhoea]".
(Remember that gonorrhoea is multi-drug resistant - proceed with caution!)

One of the many zippy messages here reads "Fuck hairy tits".
We couldn't agree more!

This picture needs no explanation whatsoever.

We've been getting so many reading tips this week that we can hardly keep up.
A relative of ours informs us that human waste could turn out to be worth its weight in gold, since some enterprising person realised that precious metals can be extracted from sewage. This would also be good for the environment - hurrah!
Also, hollers Australian Friend,  a third-century papyrus containing a commentary on Homer's Iliad has been identified as having been used as toilet paper. (Read some poetry by Homer here.)

This week has been startling in many ways (accidentally brutally throwing up on the floor was highly surprising, for instance), but Friday is finally here, and we are inclined to celebrate with a festive video!

Festive video - Pistol Annies, Bad Example

Related Reading

All contributions from Uncle Sean
Get it here. (Homerian poetry, that is. What did you think?)
All posts featuring graffiti
Once again, remember that gonorrhoea is multi-drug resistant. Seriously, people. You don't want this disease.

Greetings From a Welsh Gangster

As our regular readers are well aware, we have many friends at the Privy Counsel. Friends from all walks of life. Some are Welsh gangsters, some are not Welsh gangsters. Today we bring you a greeting from one of our friends who is a Welsh gangster.

Welsh Gangster Friend writes, in a pithy, straight-talking style:

Toilet door in the pub I'm in. Anti-drugs policy taken to pretty extreme levels!

The lock still works but is, says Welsh Gangster Friend, "sort of irrelevant".

Valentine's Day or not, at the Privy Counsel we are, as usual, busily engaged in academic pursuits, and also the odd political undertaking. Uncle Sean, knowing our penchant for the political, the bizarre, and the toilet-related, sent us this lovely article about the seizure, in Hong Kong, of four thousand rolls of toilet paper imprinted with the face of Leung Chun-ying, Hong Kong's pro-Beijing chief executive. It seems that the people of Hong Kong must roll with the punches if China-friendly authorities cause heads to roll. We hope Hong Kong gets the ball rolling for democracy. At the Privy Counsel we are very far from rolling on the floor laughing when contemplating the current situation.

We hasten to take the opportunity of showing off our own festive toilet roll - a family heirloom inherited from a beloved relative who had a rather rustic sense of humour. The 100-kronor banknote featuring Gustavus Adolphus was in circulation from 1965 to 1985 and was featured, as you can see, on a rather splendid joke toilet roll. Also shown in this picture is a fake dog turd. Because why not?

This fake dog turd once mysteriously appeared on granny's elaborately set table,
right when she was expecting a veritable army of tightly-permed ladies for coffee.
How we laughed!

Since we have apparently launched into an uninterrupted cavalcade of riotous mirth, let us just mention, before we part, that we saw the film Pride recently, and were much amused. It is a hoot from start to finish, and makes some very good points along the way. And it is, needless to say, set in Wales. Hurrah for Wales!

Festive video: Dominic West kicks absolute arse on the dancefloor in Pride.


Related Reading
Our first encounter with Welsh Gangster Friend: Wales Cannot Wait
We also gave zero fucks about Valentine's Day last year: Norwegian Wood
And the year before that: HTFU - Wipe for Wildlife
We're quite fond of Wales. All posts about Wales
Other shenanigans by the above-mentioned relative are mentioned in Poo Pourri - The Paranoia Reaches Epic Levels
Oh, and also, remember that gonorrhoea is multidrug-resistant.

Invaluable Life Advice from Uncle Sean

Turns out our bitterer-than-usual outpouring of angst yesterday caused worry and concern. Well, we'd just received a picture of Jonny in the bath - what the hell did you expect? To soothe the fears of our readers, however, let us reassure you that our troubles consist not so much of imminent doom and despair as of massive, multiple (and, we hasten to add, metaphorical) pains in the arse.

Let us therefore make amends for causing some of our friends to worry to the point where they were on the brink of packing a suitcase full of whisky and booking a plane ticket, by providing a light-hearted post full of, if not positively rampant joie-de-vivre, at least a decided conviviality.

We are grateful to Uncle Sean for this contribution. That connoisseur of quality urinals says:

To drive the point home, the advice is both bloody and painfully legible.

Mothers worry. Give her a ring, you prat.

Proving his worth as a toilet blog contributor, Uncle Sean follows up with the following eminent drinks bottle. (It's when you start taking pictures of random, only-tenuously-toilet-related things that you know you are an obsessive toilet perv and have definitely skidded to the wrong side of the sanity spectrum. Welcome to the club, Uncle Sean.)

Suggestive of the loo and by extension the flushable deposits therein, but all is a ruse, as the inspiration for the brew is a strongly masculine (but amusing) rock-n-roll podcast.

You were worried that there wouldn't be a festive video, weren't you? Well, tough shit - you worried needlessly!

The video is priceless for the advice, the scenery, and the passing images of wilderness toilets. Go Blue Bagging!

Festive video - Washington Trail Association, Do It Right: How to Poop in the Woods. 

(Read more here.)

Related Reading

Posts about toilet-related environmental concerns:

HTFU - Wipe for Wildlife

Toilet Paper - It's Time to HTFU!

Other places where one needs to dispose of human waste: SPACE!

Space Waste

More Graffiti, and More Information Than Any Sane Person Can Reasonably Handle on Such a Hot Day

It's really too hot for any cerebral activity to be happening, at all, ever, but apparently there are some people still at it. Uncle Sean, for instance, has sent us more graffiti, Unreasonably Attractive Friend has shared Youtube material which he has unreasonably been withholding until now, and a relative of ours sent us a very interesting article indeed. 

Starting with Uncle Sean, that very, very, very old friend of ours, he says:

We remember this reflective urinal:

This festive graffiti featured in the post
Musings on Labels. Oooh, Hang on, "Label" - That's a Whisky, Right? back in June.

But the poignant lessons learned since:

"Go forth and die!" Don't you just love anarchic graffiti? We sure do.
You can just about glimpse Uncle Sean's handsome face in the mirror. If you enjoy almost looking at people in photos,
you may get a kick out of our classic post Celebrity Toilet Premiere.

This says, unless our intellectual capacity has abandoned us entirely, "Find it! Life[,] liberty and the pursuit of unhappiness". We seem to remember reading something interesting on the pursuit of (un)happiness recently, but we're buggered if we can remember what it was. Probably it was some random article being bandied about on Twitter - we'll let you know if we find it. In the meantime, have this philosophical reflection on material possession and personal fulfilment.

Unreasonably Attractive Friend informs us of this useful invention, which apparently ensures the pursuit of rampant amounts of happiness for incontinent golfers. We believe Unreasonably Attractive Friend intended a twinkle-in-the-eye comment on the Shewee, our favourite urinary device.

 (A note on editorial policy: Some of our friends choose their pseudonyms themselves. Others are ruthlessly assigned one by the Privy Counsel editorial team. We won't tell you which scenario resulted in the name "Unreasonably Attractive Friend".)

If you still have the energy, Unreasonably Attractive Friend also shared this information about the Roman sponge-on-a-stick bottom-cleaning device (read more about it here and here) being reincarnated in this disturbing American product.

A technologically-aware relative of ours, meanwhile, sent us this highly enjoyable article from Slate magazine, on why Californians will soon be drinking their own urine, prompting us to comment that drinking water is a piece of piss. (For information on other things that are a piece of piss, see this blog post from 2011.)

To paraphrase an author we admire to the point of unhealthy obsession, we're mongrel-bitch tired and really fancy a trip to the beach, so fuck off, darlings, and leave us alone.

Related reading
The Intellectual Streak Continues: Leeds university Library Bogs, or, Yorkshire Graffitti

Let's Talk About Graffiti
Graffiti in Everyone's Favourite Toilet Country (i.e. Denmark)
Information on the Roman version of toilet paper: The Roman Bath Museum - Crap on a Stick

More information on the same subject: The Finer Points of Roman Hygiene

On the Eighth Day God Created Paratroopers, But He Forgot the Soap

Non-toilet graffiti can also, occasionally, be interesting: Mystery of medieval graffiti in England's churches (BBC)

Musings on Labels. Oooh, Hang on, "Label" - That's a Whisky, Right?

As we may have gone on and on about to the point of insufferability on many, many previous occasions, we are blessed with extremely lovely friends at the Privy Counsel. (All our friends who contribute regularly have pseudonyms, in order to protect them from embarrassment in the real world, and their own labels; locate these in the "labels" list below on the right. Jonny counts as a friend for administrative reasons.)
What with life veering towards the batshit-crazy end of the spectrum, we lack the spiritual strength (is that a thing? If it's a thing, we lack it) to pull our own photos from the archive (also, remember that thing we mentioned the other week, about the dwarves and the pheasant? That situation's still not been resolved), so it's lucky that our friends are so vigilant and generous with their time and intellectual resources. Here's a contribution from Uncle Sean, a very, very, very old friend, who contributed so memorably to our last post. Behold - poetry, art, genius.

The urinal was not particularly noteworthy, however a mirror at face level is always good fun, particularly one that spews out, "SKUMFARTS", where scum is debauched by trading a little rounded "c" for the imposing angularity of a "k", where the "a" is represented as a stubby cock and balls, and the exclamation at the end is a steaming or perhaps radiant pile of dung.

As someone said, "I love the spoken and written word! It makes me feel so free!" Skumfarts is probably our favourite word, right after rampant, festive and megalomania.

The fun doesn't end there, however. Our favourite French person in the whole world, who we can, due to the aforementioned unsound work-life balance and ensuing reduction of our short-term memory and strain on our spiritual strength, call Feisty French Friend (you can, in a sense, read about this feisty firecracker's wedding here), shared this lovely video. It's from a French B&B! Voilà, pour votre plaisir.

Related Reading

Amie Australienne Va au Mariage, Casse Toilette (Australian Friend Goes to Wedding, Breaks Toilet)

In Which We Indulge in Poetry and Out-of-Context French Expressions

Pictorial Eloquence

Tally-ho! We've been busy as [insert industrious animal of choice], here at the Privy Counsel, running hither and thither, and probably other directions as well, and generally racking our brains, taxing our intellect, and engaging in a fury of cerebral activity. Our frantic industry has rendered us unable to tend to our bog blog with the attentiveness to which it is accustomed, and as a result, the pile of toilet pictures in our archive has grown to an alarming size. We suspect there are a couple of dwarves and a pheasant trapped in there - we can hear them muttering at night, and scratching the walls - but the sheer volume of pictures means we can't get in far enough to help them. A radical reorganisation seems indicated, and will definitely be executed as soon as we can spare the time. Any decade now, in fact.

In the meantime, here are some pictures that kind people have sent us recently, and which haven't even made it into the archive, having instead lain in a large unorganised pile on our desk, therefore being easy to find. Tally-ho, yoik, and all that.

Bogsley Hansson Friend sent us this festive greeting from Canada. A goose indicates to ladies that this is where they should head when nature calls, while a stag (below) performs the same office for gentlemen.

We could wax loquacious on the subject of gender stereotyping, but actually we're still really busy.

Tudor Friend calls these toilet-seat covers "classy and toilet-related".
We are unable to resist the temptation to consider them also "Elvis-related".

According to Semi-Intellectual Friend, this is an Iron Age toilet in Gurness.

A dear friend who we like to refer to, for reasons lost in the mists of time, as Uncle Sean,
sent us this picture, with the most eloquent caption:

"There I stood, poised at the urinal, zipper, hand, posture as you would expect,
with no further intention than relief, but there before me this artwork, this quote, edification."

We fucking love toilet poetry. If you find Uncle Sean's musings inspiring, you may want to check out
Danish Friend's bog poetry, or even Intellectual Friend's toilet graffiti.

Another thought-provoking contribution from Bogsley Hansson Friend, this time from Seattle.

Since we try to end all our  blog posts with a festive video, here is a most convivial clip of a highly festive Twitter acquaintance of ours, the Loo Tour Lady.

Festive video: The Loo Tour lady

Related Reading
If one gets too overworked, one can end up believing that one is a tiny, speckled hamster:
Safety at Work
If you enjoy the combination of archives and art: 
Blurry, Lop-Sided Archive Musings
Danish Friend's bog poetry:
Christmas 2013: Shetland Shithouses Part II. Umm, Poetry in Motion?

Intellectual Friend's bog graffiti:
The Intellectual Streak Continues: Leeds University Library Bogs, or, Yorkshire Graffitti