Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward."

Amazing.

Thank you NY Times Mag.

And, if you guessed that "the egocentric system" was the one you use when you tell your friend, through the back bathroom door, to look for spare toilet paper behind the towels, in the cabinet to the left of the sink, you guessed right.

A. That photo is promotional material for a "flexible use" sleeping bag called Sexy Hotness.

2. That roll of toilet paper looks to be flying through the air, which is, in my experience, an unusual way to receive toilet paper.

d. It's not absolutely clear if the dude is peeing or pooping. His pose betrays pee. His bare ankles (in what I think is supposed to be extremely cold weather), the fact that the sleeping bag is unzipped at the bottom, and the aforementioned toilet paper make me think poop.

Thank you PSFK.

I hope Teddy Kennedy appreciated the fact that he was part of what might have been the greatest SNL Celebrity Jeopardy sketch ever made...

My favorite, anyway. The origin, in fact, of my love for the word poop.

Peace, Teddy.

Maybe I'm extra special partial to this because I've fallen in love faster with Raul Ibanez than any other baseball player, and it's a little unsettling to see him react so angrily to what I consider to be an understandably suspicious, imperfectly presented, but ultimately harmless blog post, but maybe my rapture runs deeper. Maybe the debate really does provide a totally fascinating angle from which to look at press and rumor and the evolution of information flow...

Good for ESPN for hosting the discussion. Good for Jerod the blogger for participating with cool and humility. And good for Raul for offering stool samples if requested. Radical transparency, baby.

I think that'd be a good Facebook status message.

But only if it was (were?) true.
 
Which it's not, for me, at the moment, sadly.
 
Someday.

There's a bathroom in my uncle's house that's definitely haunted.  By a friendly and fictional ghost.  Which is another discussion for another day.

Today's point is that the last time I was in there, I had a few memorable thoughts; I started wondering if that bathroom might be a particularly good place for ideas; and I decided it probably was.

And that's my first place like that, my first place to go to think or get creative, my first geographical muse.

And I realize that a non-trivial percentage of idea places belong to crazy people.  But I also realize that a not even close to trivial percentage of crazy people, at least by my definition, are easily as cool as they are crazy, if you pay attention.

So, yeah, I have an idea place now.  Or I'll be testing one out anyway.  Testing it out next time I'm visiting my uncle and cousins and have to poop.

I think they've built a better mousetrap.  And I think cheese, the old school bait, the one they use in cartoons, does slightly more efficient work than peanut better.

8 traps set. 

4 cheese.  4 peanut butter.

4 old school style.  4 newfangled.  Peanut butter and cheese evenly distributed between types.

3 caught mice. 1 old school with cheese.  1 newfangled with cheese.  1 newfangled with peanut butter.

2 had their bait taken without snapping.  1 old school with peanut butter.  1 newfangled with peanut butter.

1 snapped but caught nothing.  An old school trap with cheese.

2 went untouched. 1 old school with peanut butter.  1 newfangled with cheese.  They were clearly placed on the wrong shelf and will relocate tonight.

I should have graphed or tabled that.  But that might have been a little overkill for a mouse catching experiment.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

My great grandfather grew up in rural central Sicily.  He was a musician.  There was some kind of dispute with the mayor of his town.  A parade.  A request for a bribe.  An assault with a clarinet.  So he fled the island.  And landed in New York City.  In the nineteen teens I think.

When he arrived, he found himself in a Little Italy situation.  He found some other Sicilians.  Rural people.  People like him.  And made some great friends.

And, every Sunday, he and a few of those dudes would hop on the Long Island Railway and cruise east, out of the city.

And, when they'd get where they were going, they'd wander off into fields or woods, separate, dig holes, squat, and poop.

They did it, they said, for the breeze on their balls.

I'm going to sleep on the eve of the election, and I feel like I ought to post a little Ween.

Maybe it's because I think my nerves medicine worked for the Phillies.

Maybe it's because my cousin Zach rolled down from NY today, and we discussed the fact that we expect our next Ween-inspired adventure to be even sillier than the last.

Maybe it's because, as a recent email just alerted me, my "mind has finally evolved into a child's circus land full of poop songs."

Regardless, Blue Balloon is track 2 on La Cucaracha, and I love it.

Apparently using the word poop in the title of my last post did not drive heaps of traffic to this blog. 

Oh well.  I still think poop is a funny word.

All started when I first watched Saturday Night Live Celebrity Jeopardy.  John Goodman was playing Marlon Brando.  The Final Jeopardy question was "What year is it right now?"  And Brando answered "poop." 

I lost it. 

Truly haven't been the same since.