Toilet Talk

With some regularity, I blog about shit. 

I am surprised that more people don't talk about shit.  I don't mean about one's daily bowel movements and whether or not one needs more fiber in the diet.  Nope. I am interested in aspects of shit like in this post or this one, for  instance.  Remember the piss-pot?  (Yep, there is more for any interested reader.)

So, yes, it is time to blog about shit again.

Imagine Rome about 2,000 years ago.  How did people take care of their shit?  For that matter, where did they pee?

These are genuinely interesting questions, if only one turned their attention away from the latest video of cats playing the piano!

Anyway, back to the Romans 2,000 years ago.  Where did all their pee go?

As best we can tell from historic and archaeological data, ancient Romans peed in small pots in their homes, offices, and shops. When those small pots became full, they dumped them into large jars out in the street. Just like with your garbage, a crew came by once a week to collect those hefty pots of pee and bring them to the laundromat.

They took them to the laundromat?

Why? Because ancient Romans washed their togas and tunics in pee!

WTF! Holy shit!

So, why did the Romans wash their clothes in pee?

Human urine is full of ammonia and other chemicals that are great natural detergents. If you worked in a Roman laundromat, your job was to stomp on clothes all day long—barefoot and ankle deep in colossal vats of human pee.

I decided I needed more details.  The internet delivers:

If you’ve investigated the ingredients in your household cleaners, you may have noticed a prevalent ingredient: ammonia. As a base, ammonia is a useful cleanser because dirt and grease–which are slightly acidic–get neutralized by the ammonia. Even though early Europeans knew about soap, many launderers preferred to use urine for its ammonia to get tough stains out of cloth. In fact, in ancient Rome, vessels for collecting urine were commonplace on streets–passers-by would relieve themselves into them and when the vats were full their contents were taken to a fullonica (a laundry), diluted with water and poured over dirty clothes. A worker would stand in the tub of urine and stomp on the clothes, similar to modern washing machine’s agitator.

And you thought your job sucked! ;)

This photograph tells us a lot about how Romans shat (or is shitted?) back in the day:

Oh my!

Don't you want to know how they cleaned up after shitting?  Read that essay and find out for yourself!

Why don't they teach such stuff in history classes?  Maybe in a few years, I should offer a freshman seminar titled "Piss, Shit, and Fart--But Never Simultaneously" ;)

Our lives are so different from washing clothes in pee and shitting in the public with people all around.

So the next time you’re enjoying a morning constitutional, think about the fact that defecation and urination are more than biological functions; they are cultural activities that involve artifacts and technologies that change through time.

Indeed. Thankfully!

An ad about a piss pot in the New Yorker? WTF!

After I reach home with the latest copy of the New Yorker in my hand, I first flip through the pages for the cartoons hoping there will be some good laughs.  And then I settle into reading the essays.  Even when reading, I scan the margins for ads--over the years, I have bought two gift items from the Museum of Contemporary Art thanks to those ads, and a book.

I chuckled quite a bit when I saw an ad for a piss-pot.  Yep, a pisspot.  Of course, it is not a piece that you would buy and pee into.  It is a collector's item--a chamber pot from decades/centuries ago.  Imagine that!  One not be bothered to step out and take a leak, and instead peed right into a pot that the chambermaid carried out.

After a few chuckles, I forgot all about that.  Until today.

It is not that I have become lazy to walk to the restroom and I want to make use of a pisspot.  Life in the old country is not all that bad ;)  It is just that a blog in my feed has a post about this very ad:

I like that blog because of its intellectual approach to expletives.  The title of the blog makes that clear: Strong Language.  Though I am not a fan of expletives, I occasionally use shit and fuck when no other word would convey that meaning.  But, Strong Language is not merely about throwing expletives into sentences.  No sir.  It is way more than that.

The "piss" in the ad is what the intellectual analysis is about:

Piss is a pretty old word in English: late 13th century, from similar words in French and Latin, according to the OED

Would you have guessed that the word is that old?  Doesn't it make you wonder how old shit and fuck are?  For now we have to stay with piss:

Some piss- compounds are almost as old as the original word. Pisspot goes back to the mid-15th century; piss-burnt (discolored by urine, which was often used in tanning and dyeing) dates to the mid-16th century; piss-prophet (one who diagnosed diseases through examination of urine) and piss-house (a privy) appeared in the 17th century; piss-proud (having or designating an erection due to a full bladder) is from the late 18th century.

We men are familiar with the full-bladder salute; but, I wonder how many of us knew about piss-proud prior to this blog-post! ;)

You are probably thinking, "I don't give a shit!"  Tell you what; in that case, you need to read this post ;)