One, Top Gear is awesome. Two, I really want to be paid to drive somewhere cool. Ian Frazier's thing on driving across Siberia in the New Yorker just instigated a similar desire in me.

Apparently, no one shares my love for Top Gear.

1, 2: Yes, yes. But let's have some comity early on about pooping outside being weird to offset later disagreements.

It's not that strange....I am afraid I can't entirely achieve comity on this.

Well, crap.

I think I would shrivel up and die if Sir Ranulph Fiennes told me I was ignorant.

6: I think he probably says that to most people.

Unfortunately, in Britain it's SWPL to hate Top Gear.

SWPL to hate Top Gear.

I rather thought that might be the case, though my small collection of Scottish friends love the show. But they're all total nerds. I wonder how that interacts with the SWPL-ness.

The presenters can be dicks sometimes, and I disagree with them on almost everything, but I have to confess to still occasionally finding the show entertaining. There's space on TV for big dumb stunts and stupid shit.

There's space on TV for big dumb stunts and stupid shit.

I should hope so.

Can't see the link at work - is he using "ignorant" in the dictionary sense or the colloquial Brit sense (= offensively stupid)?

I rather enjoy Top Gear as well, TBH. I think the SWPL-hate is mainly to do with a) Clarkson's occasional wobbles into politics (hates Gordon Brown, hates speed cameras, hates environmentalists, likes fast cars) which are admittedly grating but fortunately infrequent and b) apparently it has a sexist atmosphere.

I love James Mays (he's the sensible one they continually make fun of). He is building a house out of lego. A real-size house. How cool is that? I so want his job.

||
Does anybody read enough Russian to work out what's being so assiduously sold on that old thread? Or are they a bunch of spies using the site as a dead letter drop.
|>

Which old thread, OFE?

This one. 459 et seq.

I watch it sometimes too. I liked the one with a lorry drag race.

I hate speed cameras too, but not because I'm pro speeding. I just hate cameras in public places. Fuck CCTV.

There was some book featured on Start the Week that I've forgotten the title of, because it hasn't been published in the U.S. about how much space in Britain that would have traditionally been public is now private and guarded by private guards and cameras. It sounded fascinating. I wanted to ask if anyone had read it, but I can't find the show and thus the author's web site.

||

Just subscribed to some journals, and when they sent my subscription detail find that the bastards do them on a calendar year basis.

So I've paid the full annual subscription price for 3 months subscription.

Fuckers.

>

14 the last time i saw it was some kind of porn sites
ad links

yes, the same repulsive thing, i'd vote for their deleting and blockage

on the topic, i recalled the other day i thought a maneuver which can help to the people suffering frequent constipations, i'd love to name it after me even, but sure it is already named someone's reflex
so you can't push out the hard mass stuck in there, take toilet paper and push it back pressing on the sphincter
the next thing one feels is increasing intrarectal pressure and the mass sliding out due to it

21 is the best comment ever posted to this blog.

Let news of the Read Maneuver be sung far and wide.

i'm flattered, and am glad to be helpful, if you love chocolate/cheese and eat it in that, large quantities the maneuver could help
it's the post reminded me that, otherwise it would never have been said out loud i suspect

Everybody poops outside,
Everybody cries. And everybody poops outside.

21: Before people run off to shove toilet paper up their butts, there's a simpler maneuver to try first: Simply squat instead of sitting. Sitting is not a good position for pooping - on the veldt, everybody squatted, and we liked it! When I build my own house there will be a squat toilet available for the master bedroom - this sitting thing is absurd, and I'm sure it causes cancer or bad breath or some other bad thing.

Before people run off to shove toilet paper up their butts

I'm not sure why you're trying to discourage this. As you were, everyone.

21 is particularly notable because it doesn't use the || and > markers, which suggests that read considered it to be entirely on topic. What on earth have huge compacted fecal masses got to do with the topic? We were talking about Top Gear!

...oh.

re: 26

A lot of people can't squat. I can now, but for much of the past 2 years a minor sports-caused knee injury meant that squatting for any length of time was bloody painful.

maybe it's my explanation, paper is not for shoving up, it's for providing insulation layer between fingers and the skin, you never touch the mass, but feel it through the sphincter skin when it's distended, otherwise it perhaps won't work, a reflex
the maneuver should work when valsalva and squatting didn't help, or maybe it works as efficiently as squatting

29. Interesting to speculate on the role of constipation associated conditions in killing off early humans who were too old or injured to squat on the veldt. There's a paper to be written here, possibly for the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1st April issue.

29: Constipation is a young mans' game.

32. Nah. I'm 58 on Sunday, I eat mainly veggies, beans and brown bread, and I'm as constipated as you like.

Also, see ttaM, it's hard to squat if you've recently had a run in with a sabre tooth tiger.

"paper is not for shoving up, it's for providing insulation layer between fingers and the skin"

Just go ahead and touch the poop.

i can't cause increase in the feco-oral transmission of something trying to help with the other problem, it's against ethics

Regardless of whether you touch the poop or not, you should still wash your hands.

Ah, so anything can be used in lieu of the paper. Like a coke bottle, for instance.

19: They're not all about porn, are they? "«Матрица» Киану Ривзу" looks to me like it says "'Matrix' Keanu Reeves", based on the time-honored sound-out-the-Cyrillic-and-hope-for-cognates method of attempting to figure out what Russian text is about.

i omit any maxims coz it's like the given

Having pooped outside on four continents, in weather conditions ranging from ass-blisteringly hot to near-hypothermically cold and hailing, I believe I can say with some authority that pooping indoors is, if anything, underrated.

40: Apparently travel is over-rated if you main memory is pooping.

38 why do you need me to go check it again? curses
i didn't pay attention to any Keanu Reeves
that was a new text and it's as dirty as others
they really should be deleted and blocked, Russian those kind of texts sound really abhorrent

At the risk of getting back on topic, let me also recommend Top Gear's Botswana special and the Vietnam special, which are in similar veins. The US special (driving from Florida to New Orleans) is also pretty good, though more uncomfortable, particularly when the guys get attacked by rock-throwing rednecks somewhere in Alabama.

41: What am I supposed to remember, other cultures and their charming folk arts? I'm an American! How much for that church?

44: What with all the worries about green house emissions, you should try to remember that you don't have to travel that far to find people to look down on.

the time-honored sound-out-the-Cyrillic-and-hope-for-cognates method of attempting to figure out what Russian text is about.

I'm pretty sure this is how the CIA was coming up with Soviet force estimates in the early 80s.

The first time I went to one of those enormous cut-price US grocery stores, Costco or something I think it was called, I noticed that the shelf space devoted to fresh fruit and vegetables was one-third that devoted to laxatives and indigestion remedies.

When I Had a radio show, I played some clips in between songs of a guy rambling drunkenly in Russian that I had found on Napster. I had no idea what the guy was talking about. Someone soon called me up and complained about the filthy and obscene language I was broadcasting to Russian-speaking listeners. That one incident was all it took to convince me, for years to come, that despite all evidence to the contrary, a good number of people were actually listening.

i should really patent the method! then
the downside is until the sphincter is distended enough one should pass some time pushing
yeah better the fibers perhaps

47: That's at least partially because Costco is not really a grocery store. Its a dry-goods warehouse that has only sort of evolved into selling groceries. The idea is to stock-up on bulk quantities of self-stable food and things like toilet paper (to keep poop from your finger) and diapers. Even people who buy a lot at Costco are usually not there often enough to buy lettuce.

"Downside"? "Pass"? Talk about low (fresh) fruit...

According to the paper, Pittsburgh is talking about banning plastic PVC pipe, handcuffs and other locks, wire and cement to make it harder for protesters to block streets. So now I have to clean-out the back of the Jeep to stay out of trouble.

downside means something unfavorable, pass means spend, please read only the direct meanings
i did not check urban dictionary before commenting
which i should always do to avoid ambiguities

52: but, as far as I can tell, you'll still be able to carry assault rifles. Just not drainpipes.

50: ah, that does sort of make sense. Not sure it was Costco though. It seemed to be mainly food.

52: How can a city ban pipe? Wire? Locks? Cement? Are these not the very stuff of civilization?

56: That's why I like to keep them in the back of the car. You never know.

57: I was half joking, but seriously, it's like banning water bottles or duct tape.

"handcuffs and other locks"? Hopefully no one rides a bike in Pittsburgh.

self-stable food

Very grounded stuff, like potatoes and peanuts.

59: I wouldn't. Too hilly.

Is everyone in Pittsburgh as pusillanimous as you?

I'm sure people won't be arrested for having those things unless they are also committing a thought crime.

Probably not. We have a very active cycling community pushing for bike lanes, bike racks, making it illegal to crash into cyclists with cars, etc. There are also some very nice trails. Still, it is hilly and the infrastructure runs toward the crappy.

62: Everyone in Pittsburgh has a vagina that is precisely the right size, thank you very much.

64: Don't encourage him by giving reasonable responses to his nonsense. Sheesh. And you a parent and all.

I have a toddler and I work at a university. Giving reasonable responses to nonsense is about three quarters of my waking life.

making it illegal to crash into cyclists with cars

Presumably already illegal, no?

It's hardly nonsense to inquire about a city's pusillanimity index.

69: Yeah, maybe not for someone suffering from their own pussillanimity anxiety. So you're right, not nonsense. But nonetheless our vaginas are right-sized to a man.

68: Distressingly common, though. One dead and one critically injured this week. Outside of a few heavily traveled routes, most people don't expect to see a bike.

Aw, reading only the direct meanings of things greatly diminishes my joy in life.

I didn't mean anything insulting. Please ignore my bathroom humor.

Ambiguities are the straw that stirs the Unfogged drink.

Two, I really want to be paid to drive somewhere cool.

Have I mentioned that my great-grandfather accompanied the Citroen-Haardt expedition (best link I could find) as correspondent for National Geographic?

"Please ignore my bathroom humor."

I tried to put than on my business card, but the university print shop wouldn't do it.

illegal to crash into cyclists with cars

Goddamn liberals taking away my freedom!!1!!

Seriously, the sooner we start treating drivers as operators of heavy machinery, and holding them to the appropriate standards, the better. Na Ga Ha Pen, but a boy can dream, can't he?

re: 71

Yeah, Oxford has a fairly high rate of deaths. Thousands of cyclists though, so it's not that they are uncommon, it's more that a minority of them are idiots and the streets are small and shared with buses.

72 it's okay, it's me bringing up the topic open to interpretations is to blame, sorry, please carry on about expeditions
been

14, et al: It's porn spam. My Russian is both extremely limited and extremely rusty but it seems to be throwing out celebrity names in the tried and true combination of deceptive advertising + Google spam.

I apologize for having interrupted all this talk of distended sphincters.

Bathroom humor is the straw that stirs the turd in the Unfogged punch bowl.

Then again, maybe not*.

*Re: rare 20 minute midday comment gap.

81: I was in the can. Very stopped-up. Too much cheese from yesterday's pizza.

Fifteen minutes.

(with olives)

Dammit.

I don't know what you mean by "midday", either. It's 9:31!

Or 10:23. Whichever.

That reminds me. Why is unfogged on Mountain Time?

Unless it's some secret Illuminati reason, in which case, forget I asked.

Unless it's some secret Illuminati reason, in which case, forget I asked.

Sorry. Freemasons got my keyboard.

Because we're based in a Mountain bunker.

But nonetheless our vaginas are right-sized to a man.

I'm starting to think you didn't take my post very seriously.

I assure you we take vaginas very seriously.

83: Yes, I forgot that Unfogged was on Mountainish time (Mountain - 6 minutes, ~Great Basin Time).

Yeah, Oxford has a fairly high rate of deaths.

Higher than 100%, even.

|| I really hate dropping footnotes to explain to the court basic concepts that it surely already understands simply because some other attorney on the case doesn't get it.|>

93: Everyone adds value in their own morally strange way. We're just like snowflakes that way!

97: May it please the court.
By 'tort', I am not referring to a pastry.

I really hate droppings, especially when underfoot.

52: According to the paper, Pittsburgh is talking about banning plastic PVC pipe, handcuffs and other locks, wire and cement to make it harder for protesters to block streets.

Since no one asked: is Pittsburg having some kind of problem with protests? Or is this some preemptive kind of thing?

max
['Just in case!']

The G-20 comes next month.
Also, enough with spelling reform. Our ancestors fought the Post Office for years. We get to get our silent, terminal 'h'.

101: Most likely, they're just trying to squeeze some political contributions from Big Plastic, Big Handcuff, Big Lock, Big Wire, and Big Portland Cement.

May it please the court, Your Honor looks especially fetching today. That robe really brings out Your Honor's careworn despair and martinet brutalism.

||

Plans under way for memorial statue of Gary Gygax

Insert your death-trap joke here.

|>

105: I was pretty nerdy in high school, but doubt I have played D&D for more than 8-12 hours lifetime. Where were all the games that filled people's lives and made them permanent sufferers of nerd stigmata fans?

102: The G-20 comes next month.

Ah. Must keep America free of Dirty Fucking Hippies so that our fine, upstanding Christian lynchmobs can operate uh, peaceably.

We get to get our silent, terminal 'h'.

Apparently, it's also invisible to my eyes. It was right in front of me, but the verbal processor section of my brain did not pick it up. So I will, in the future, correct this. I will also undoubtably fail miserably. My apologies in advance.

103: they're just trying to squeeze some political contributions from Big Plastic, Big Handcuff, Big Lock, Big Wire, and Big Portland Cement.

Maybe; but they're already squeezing campaign contributions from the security companies they'll hire to monitor the event. Declining to comply with every idiot recommendation might reduce the monies flowing in already.

max
['Crooked if you do, crooked if you don't.']

Actually, apparently the plan is to import extra cops from cities that are used to dealing with protesters.

I'm not sure if this is better or worse than importing a bunch of suburban yahoos who generally view possession of a messenger bag as probable cause.

I'm still trying to decide whether to take the G-20 off work. I'm pretty sure Oakland will be fucked for traffic even if there isn't a single protest in the whole city.

Can't see the link at work - is he using "ignorant" in the dictionary sense or the colloquial Brit sense (= offensively stupid)

That would be the latter. And they are offensively stupid, but that's part of the charm. I dunno. I like cars that go fast and people talking about them in ridiculous manners while occasionally doing really stupid shit. (But for some reason I can never watch stuff like Jack Ass).

making it illegal to crash into cyclists with cars

As long as they don't take away our right to at shoot bicyclists' heads. Oh good. They didn't.

I have a toddler and I work at a university. Giving reasonable responses to nonsense is about three quarters of my waking life.

I have a 13-yo. Don't expect it to improve any time soon.

And about the crapping thing: how much of your day do you really spend on the toilet, and is that time really so enjoyable that you can't give it up for a few days to enjoy outdoor life?

But you CAN enjoy that time on the toilet and still be in the outdoors. If you go canoeing/kayaking in an ecologically sensitive area, like the Green River of Utah, they make you pack all of your waste out. In order to help you with this, you rent a small box filled with chemicals that serves as a toilet. If you position it just right, you can poo and gaze out upon the wonders of the world - gorgeous rock formations, cliff dwellings, cottonwoods quavering in the wind, even the lazy river itself.

Clarkson is best when he isn't talking about fast cars though. He's interesting when he talks about Citroens and Hondas and Fiats and people movers with soul, and boring as fuck when he gets on about the latest very very fast thing from BMW.

A friend of mine watched Top Gear for the first time a couple of weeks ago (he doesn't drive): he said that he suddenly understood where half the people in his office got their "sense of humour" for the first time in five years.

The best thing I saw Clarkson on was the ep of Who Do You Think You Are (celeb brits of various backgrounds explore their family tree and cry unexpectedly: it's generally very interesting, esp.on cultural mobility and the sexual scrapes our forebears got themselves into).

Clarkson discovered he was heir to the fortune made by a 19th-century manufacturer of a patent screw-top sealed jar for jams and jellies (like the Kelner jar only dfifferent). Anyway he decided he was owed billions of pounds and went searching for what had happened to the factory. First of all he became enraged because in the 1880s the government had insisted it stop emitting toxic gases all across the urban neighbourhood. So he decided Green Do-Gooders had stolen his inheritance. Then he gradually discovered that actually this legislation hadn't driven the factory out of business -- instead it was inherited by the son of the ancestor who invented the jar: this son was a twerp and a wastrel, the factory went bankrupt, the patent was sold and all the money disappeared.

Clarkson plays being a loud entitled oaf for comedy -- but he really is one, I think. When he was making this programme he filmed part of it in a shop another friend works in -- she said he was a total dick in real life.