Facts We Really Don't Need

Remember yo mama telling you to wear clean drawers, because "suppose you're in an accident"? Well it turns out yo mama knew whereof she spoke. Are you ready for this? Half, that's HALF the Americans who wipe their butts with paper "spend their days with 'fecal contamination'--anything from 'wasp-colored stains' to 'frank massive feces'--in their underpants," according to a piece in the end of August Newsweek. If you'll please pardon the expression, holy shit! Who would have ever thunk it? One out of every two people you see--in your office, church, or school yard--think about it. Some are toting "massive feces."  Boggles my mind this kind of stuff.

As Rachel Maddow would say, "here's another holy mackerel story in today's news." The average American uses  57 sheets of TP a day*, and this, as you might surmise, has serious environmental repercussions. If we didn't use TP at all we'd save: "15 million trees, 17.3 terrawatts of electricity, and more than 473 billion gallons of water."

And what's this all about? Article argues that it's about Americans' refusal to accept the bidet, which, like universal health care, other civilized societies use all the time. You knew it was going to come down to some silly American prejudice, didn't you? Right. No real man would use one of those things. Well, I've got news for you: lots do. I used them in Europe, and so did millions of others. What's not to like about being fresh and clean down there, dude [or dudette]? Yo mama would definitely not want you to be guilty of any kind of fecal contamination, much less the "massive" kind. Bidets are great for washing your feet in as well. Needless to say, their environmental impact is minimal. Plus, they are perfect size for a cat.

*OK, I don't know about you, but I would not go through 57 sheets of toilet paper in 5 days. Really makes me wonder about the "average" American. How in hell does a person use this much toilet paper in a day? (Of course, I have no lab data about females. They, judging by my wife, probably push the average way up. Admittedly, that's a pretty small sample.) And how do the statisticians come up with these numbers? Do they count all those loose sheets of TP you will always find in less-than-savory bathrooms? Or the bunches some halfwit has thrown in the toilet just because he could? I'm not even going to ask how they know that half of us are soiled all the time.