Saturday 7 December 2013

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen poo?

An unusual blog pimp: Brendan Pope, aka Tsaven, lives on some very strange and fascinating parts of the planet. He does contract work in weird locations like Antarctica or the Marshall Islands part of the year, and tours North America by motorcycle the rest.



He's more of a "facts" person than a "people" person, and an avid photographer, so his blogs are highly informational and glorious-image-heavy about subjects like doing research on climate change, scuba diving in the South Pacific, trying not to die while stealth camping in the Arctic Circle. And somehow, despite "not getting jokes and social stuff" - or probably because of it - he's managed to tell more fall-out-of-your-seat funny stories about bodily functions than everyone else I've ever met combined.

Really, what else can you ask for in a blogger? Crazy adventures, pictures of penguins, and poop jokes. All he's missing is videos of cats.

How many other people do you know who ride through Death Valley on a motorcycle, while coming up with this kind of engineering genius?
I realized something. When taking a dump in a pit toilet like this, if you know the exact time between the poo leaving you, and then the splat/plop as it hits the pile of poo below you, you can calculate the exact distance that your dookie is falling! This idea delighted me, so I timed it on my stopwatch and set about the calculations.

I ran into a snag, though. I don't know the density of poo, so I can't properly calculate it's air resistance, which would affect it's acceleration through air. And then it struck me that given the altitude I was at (almost 7,000 feet), the acceleration of the dookie by gravity might be slightly faster then it would be in a pit toilet at sea level, and I had no idea how to factor that in. *sigh* My great plans to calculate the drop of pit toilets through the country has been foiled.

This is the same fellow who, at eighteen, infamously peed on a spider.


okay so i'm standing in front of my toilet just as i'm starting to take a whiz, and all of the sudden i feel this tickling on my foot (i was barefoot). So i look down to see this GODDAMN HUGE FUCKING SPIDER that had just crawled over my foot and was heading right for my other foot! Seriously, this thing was almost the size of a tarantula! it had to be almost 1.5-2 inches big, IT WAS FUCKING HUGE!!!! I like FLIPED out and jumped back against the wall to try and not let that thing get at my damn foot! keep in mind i had just started to pee and one you start, you KNOW you can't stop, so pee is now going all over the place as i do this fucked up little dance to stay away from this spider, who now starts to panic and running around at this crazy hyper speed! then the goddamn thing starts running for the door, unfortunetly, i am between the door and it!

Maybe two seconds have elapsed now, so i've got a LONG way to go in this pee still, i'm trying to aim it somewhere at the toilet (it's missing), and now i've got this huge spider chargeing me! I don't know WHY i did what i did next, but i had to use the ONLY weapon that i had at my disposal, so i aimed my pee-stream right at the spider! i hit the fucker DEAD ON, and he didn't like that one bit, and made a direct 90 degree turn and headed VERY quickly straight for the wall with the radiator! I don't know what i was thinking, but i did my best to keep peeing after the thing, and then the thing pops out from the radiator RIGHT NEXT TO ME and tries to bolt out the door, and i'm like PANICING so i try and pee on him, but he like SHOOTS by me into the hall and i twirl around, for some fucked up reason, and TRY AND FOLLOW THE FUCKER!. So i'm like hobbleing after this spider with my jeans now around my ankles, hobbleing into the hallway with pee going ALL OVER THE PLACE and still trying to piss on this huge damn spider! this took all of about 7 seconds, from first tickle to me running into the hallway peeing all over the place, and then the baster runs down the stairs! it's about now that i finally ask myself WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING, standing in the hallway with my pants around my ankles holding my dick and aiming a stream of urin down the stairs, so i quickly hop back to the bathroom and finish what was left into the sink (it was closer then the toilet).

So now, with my pants soaked in pee, i'm standing there in front of the sink wondering WHAT THE FUCK I JUST DID! Now there is pee on EVERY SINGLE SURFACE of the bathroom, all over all the magazines, on EVERY wall, the floor is one big pool of pee, there's pee in the sink, on the mirror, probably on the ceiling, the whole basket of extra TP is now useless becasue of pee on it, my pants and undies are SOAKED in pee, the lower half of the front part of my shirt is soaked in pee, there's pee ALL OVER THE DAMN HALLWAY AND DOWN THE FUCKING STAIRS, and now the whole place reeks of pee AND THERE IS STILL SOME HUGE PEE-SPIDER ROAMING THE HOUSE SOMEWHERE!

So i just threw my cloaths in the wash, and i'm gonna take a really fast shower, then try to clean up this huge damn mess as i wonder HOW THE HELL AM I GONNA EXPLAIN THIS ONE TO MY MOM.

I'm fucked. And i smell like pee.

I firmly believe in stealing from his life whole-hog for the purposes of fiction; I can't make shit (har) like this up.

Brendan is currently living in Antarctica, working on Palmer Station. The job appears to be generally awesome and involves many penguins, but at least once a year, it requires him to fix something that involves direct contact with leaking and/or frozen sewage.

Check out his Antarcic blog for a painstakingly photographed account of what it's like living and working on the bottom of the world (don't worry, the majority of it does not actually involve poo.)

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