It struck me, after coming up with the title of today’s column, that we have really only two places where we think of turds as being, as far as it relates to our own bodies. Either the turds are inside of us (so who cares), or they’re being transported away from us (so who cares). The transition time from one so-what state to another isn’t that large, so it can be ignored as far as most folks are concerned. Now if we see a turd somewhere (probably anywhere), then we exclaim, “Ooh! That’s gross!” because categorically, the turd is Not Where It Should Be. It’s interesting. Society is always making turds, but never wants to keep them around to inspect them or brag about them. I mean, what if you could save turds and hang them on the wall? If we really wanted to, we’d develop the technology to stuff turds so that they wouldn’t smell bad and people could have them as personal trophies of great achievement. Hey, I’d buy one. But then again I spend my spare time writing a column called Adventures in Defecation, too, so I guess I’m not normative. I guess about the only celebration that poop ever gets is when you let one go and then call in your friends to look at it. Otherwise, even bragging about turds is done at a distance. When the guys are sitting around the table at home, drinking brewskis and talking about important things, even then they don’t show someone else their turds, they just brag about it. Pity the turd — the poor unsightly turd, that no-one ever recognizes and wants to get away from them as quickly as possible. I guess that’s why we have toliets - people didn’t want to wait until they got to the outhouse. They wanted that turd gone NOW! And to think, modern plumbing owes its existence to transporting human waste as far from humans as possible and as quickly and conveniently (to the poopers of course) as possible. If it were any faster, we’d have wi-fi toliets that would dissasemble the poop and beam it somewhere else. Maybe we could do that and sow the seeds of life on other planets. Or maybe we’d all have portable eco-recycler units surgically attached to our butts that would allow us to dump anywhere, anytime and immediately regain the energy that we lost in excretion. I don’t know. Something must be done to reverse the lowly state of the turd, and I just hope that this column can make some small dent in the problem.
