The Lavatory Reader

Jesus Had a Shit Easter

At this time of year, the thoughts of both practicing Christians and salivating Chocoholics turn to Easter. Never mind the fact that the Catholic Church is buried up to its neck in filth, corruption, hypocrisy and vice, millions of people across the world are contemplating what Easter means to them and some are considering what Easter must have meant to Jesus.

With this in mind, it might be instructive to think about what actually happened to Christ on the cross. It may be remembered that the Roman soldiers thrust a vinegary sponge on a stick at Jesus’ face...

 

And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink.

(Matthew 27.48)

 

 
Boom Operators Ain't What They Used To Be

 

Similar reports can be found in Mark (15:36) and John (19:29). Luke has it that they offered him vinegar but he fails to mention the stick and sponge. This is a crucial omission – and misses the point of the exercise although he does concede that Jesus is being ridiculed.

 

And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, and offering him vinegar.

(Luke 23:36)

 

The Methodist John Wesley (1703-1791) is equally confused, believing that the Romans were intending to be kind:

 

Vinegar and water was the usual drink of the Roman soldiers. It does not appear that this was given him in derision but rather with a friendly design…

(John Wesley – Notes on the New Testament 1755)

 

The Victorian artist, James Tissot  (1836-1902), even managed to depict this scene with the sponge on the wrong end of the stick.

 

James J. Tissot - I Thirst (1886-1894)

St. Luke, Wesley and Tissot all miss the point. The symbolism of a sponge on a stick would have been easily recognised by Jesus and the crowd gathered at Golgotha for they were used throughout the Roman Empire for cleaning bottoms. Every latrine was equipped with one or more of these sponges, which were used communally. Some etymologists believe that this practice gives rise to the expression 'to get hold of the wrong end of the stick'.

By way of illustration, consider this rather grisly account of another alternative use of the sponge on a stick:

 

There was lately in a training-school for the wild beast gladiators a German, who was making ready for the morning exhibition; he withdrew in order to relieve himself – the only thing which he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood, tipped with a sponge, which was devoted to the vilest uses, and stuffed it, just as it was, down his throat; thus he blocked up his windpipe, and choked the breath from his body. That was truly to insult death! Yes, indeed; it was not a very elegant or becoming way to die; but was it more foolish than to be over-nice about dying? What a brave fellow! He surely deserved to be allowed to choose his fate! How bravely he would have wielded a sword! With what courage he would have hurled himself into the depths of the sea, or down a precipice! Cut off from resources on every hand, he yet found a way to furnish himself with death, and with a weapon for death.

(Seneca – Moral Epistles c.62)

 

There is, of course, lots of scatology in the Bible – much of it the Old Testament. As a parting seasonal present, here is a picture of an Easter bunny made of manure and a few links to some other Lavatory Reader blog posts you may find of interest.

 

The Ark of the Covenant and the Philistines' Piles

http://tinyurl.com/yjfrv73

 

Pissing Against the Wall

http://tinyurl.com/yfwakvq

 

Eating Faeces and Drinking Urine

http://tinyurl.com/ygdmppy

 

How King Saul Shat Himself

http://tinyurl.com/ylzxd7b

 

The Worship of Baal – the Dung God

http://tinyurl.com/yj6ovk2

 

God’s Bottom

http://tinyurl.com/yjrhl99

 

What the Pharoah Did in the River Nile

http://tinyurl.com/yk9gsys

Good Riddance to the Farting Cadburys

Much lamenting across Britain with the news that Cadbury (who has been making and selling chocolate since 1824) is to be taken over by the American Kraft Foods, the second largest food and drinks company on the planet. 

 

All very sad, of course, and one must worry whether the takeover will lead to job losses or make a profit for the shareholders but it is worth considering whether Britain might just not be better off without chocolate. Obesity concerns aside, it is a dangerous commodity. Take, for instance, Horace Walpole's account of the death of King George II in 1760.

He went to bed well last night, rose at six this morning as usual, looked, I suppose, if all his money was in his purse, and called for his chocolate. A little after seven, he went into the water-closet; the German valet de chamber heard a noise, listened, heard something like a groan, ran in, and found the hero of Oudenarde and Dettingen on the floor, with a gash on his right temple, by falling against the corner of a bureau. He tried to speak, could not, and expired.

(Horace Walpole - Letter to George Montagu 25th October 1760)

 

 

When I first read this passage , I assumed the cause of this untimely death was the water-closet. I now suspect that the chocolate at least played a part.

It is also worth remembering that the Cadburys were Quakers. Their dread of hard liquor is part of the reason why they went into the tea, coffee and cocoa business in the first place. I have since learned that these hot beverages have a pernicious, windy effect and, in extreme cases, can lead people to become Quakers themselves - as Jonathan Swift reveals in The Benefit of Farting Explained.

As in sipping of these liquors hot, there is commonly as much wind as water sucked in, which through modesty being debarred a passage downwards when nature offers, recoils up into the bowels, stomach and head, and there occasions all those dreadful symptoms usually ascribed to the vapours – all which one seasonable fart might have prevented. It has likewise been assigned as the first cause of Quakerism and enthusiasm, as Hudibras observes.

As wind in hypochondria pent

Is but a fart, if downward sent;

But, if suppressed, it upward flies

And vents itself in Prophecies.

(Jonathan Swift - The Benefit of Farting Explained 1722)

 

So three cheers for Kraft Foods. They are, unwittingly but at a stroke, ridding the United Kingdom from a substance that has caused the death of kings and led to social humiliation for many a commoner.

Earthquakes and Farting

The unfolding tragedy of Haiti’s earthquake should hardly be taken lightly. It is certainly not something to make religious capital out of as the right-wing televangelist nutjob Pat Robertson saw fit to do when he suggested that the earthquake was a divine punishment for the nation’s founders making a ‘pact with the Devil’ to liberate themselves from the French slave owners in 1791.   

Fortunately, Robertson’s comments were promptly slapped down by the Christian mainstream, the blog community and by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Even the Presidential Palace, built in 1918, was critically damaged. 

But history tells us that structures can be built to survive such natural disasters. Pliny, in his Natural History, for example, eulogises over the solid construction of Rome’s Cloaca Maxima, the world’s oldest extant sewage system which dates back to 600 BCE.

 

Occasionally, too, the Tiber, overflowing, is thrown backward in its course, and discharges itself by these outlets: obstinate is the contest that ensues within between the meeting tides, but so firm and solid is the masonry, that it is enabled to offer an effectual resistance. Enormous as are the accumulations that are carried along above, the work of the channels never gives way. Houses falling spontaneously to ruins, or levelled with the ground by conflagrations, are continually battering against them; the ground, too, is shaken by earthquakes every now and then; and yet, built as they were in the days of Tarquinius Priscus, seven hundred years ago, these constructions have survived, all but unharmed.

(Gaius Plinius Secundus – Natural History 77 AD)

 

The awesome power of earthquakes, of course, is not something that has gone unnoticed by comical scatologists. In 1607, Henry Ludlow farted in Parliament during a debate about the naturalization of the Scots. This may have been an accident – his father Sir Edward Ludlow was renowned for having farted in a committee meeting – but the House fell about and Ludlow’s farting Nay-vote passed into folklore. Endless poems were written about the fart – the best-known being The Censure of the Parliament Fart, a satirical work of unknown authorship. At one point, the act of farting is likened to an earthquake of devastating scale.  

 

Saith Mr. Moore, let us this motion repeale,

What’s good for the private, is ill for the Common weal.

A good year on this Fart, quoth gentle Sir Harry,

He hath caus’d such an earth-quake, thay my Coal-pits miscarry.

(Anonymous – The Censure of the Parliament Fart c.1620s)

 

The association of farting with earthquakes was taken further by the Whig politician Charles James Fox (1749-1806) in his slightly puerile Essay Upon Wind, in which he analyses the ‘different species of farts’.

As to fart no. 5 – which I have emphatically denominated the sullen wind-bound fart, it is the most uncomfortable, unhealthy and troublesome of all farts whatever that have been yet discovered, as it comes slowly forth, with a painful sensation and sudden rumbling, like to pent-up air in a volcano, which sometimes produces earthquakes and horrible shakes of the earth from not having a free and open passage for the gas or phlogistic air to escape. Those who are unhappy as to issue such farts from their unwholesome premises are really patients; they cannot be well with such a plentitude of impure and foul air pent up in every cavity of their volcano. However, this produces the sullen fart, issuing slowly, and mournfully murmuring at long and stated intervals; medicinal assistance is here necessary. As I have often suffered in this case myself (particularly last week, when, in a sleepless night, I thought of penning this useful essay), I think I may, with some confidence, take the liberty of saying to what I attribute the farting malady and, as a benevolent man always ready to assist my fellow creatures, and being a sincere friend to ease and liberty, I shall at the same time point out the cause.

(Charles James Fox – An Essay upon Wind 1787)

 

While humour is said to be the best medicine, none of this is likely to be of comfort to the Haitians who will be better served by generous donations to any of various disaster funds. Suggested places to donate are here:

Disasters Emergency Committee Haiti

and here:

Merlin USA

 

Pat Robertson, meanwhile, deserves the collective contempt and the combined farts of the world.

Israeli Food Label Row: Not as Nasty as God's Haemorrhoids

British supermarkets have been advised to give more precise information about food products from the West Bank. Previously food was simply labelled ‘Produce of the West Bank’, but DEFRA guidelines recommending two choices – ‘Israeli settlement produce’ or ‘Palestinian produce’.

Israel responded with a predictable hissy fit arguing that they should not be singled out for this sort of treatment. Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor argued on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme (11th December 2009) that there were lots of other regions where labelling could be split but typically refused to be drawn on what those regions might be. The blogosphere has, of course, raced into action, the move being welcomed by some and criticised by others.

 

In any event, this is hardly the first time that exports from the Holy Land have caused trouble for their neighbours. In the first Book of Samuel the problem is much more severe than incorrectly labelled dates or olives and invokes the wrath of God.

Around 1000 BCE, the Philistines, the westerly neighbours of the Israelites, ran off with the Ark of the Covenant and put it in the house of Dagon in the city of Ashdod. It’s the sort of silly thing that the Philistines were always doing and there’s a delightful sense of inevitability to their impending doom. At the end of the Steven Spielberg film, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), the pilfering Nazis who steal the Ark are melted down like wax and whisked off to hell.

 

But with this first theft of the Ark, God had something a little different planned…

But the hand of the Lord was heavy upon them of Ashdod, and he destroyed them, and smote them with emerods, even Ashdod and the coasts thereof.

And when the men of Ashdod saw that it was so, they said, The ark of the God of Israel shall not abide with us: for his hand is sore upon us, and upon Dagon our god.

(5:6-7)

 

Emerods? Emerods? The quaint spelling of the King James Bible masks the full impact of God’s punishment. Haemorrhoids are what we’re dealing with here. Even Wesley admits that they’re good old-fashioned piles and we can only imagine how sore it must be to have God’s hand upon one.

As an unpleasant aside, the word ‘haemorrhoid’ comes from the Greek haimorrhoides phlebes (bleeding veins). ‘Piles’, on the other hand, is thought to come from the Latin pila (a ball), on account of their spherical, grape-like shape.

 Back to the story and the chastened men of Ashdod quite sensibly send the Ark to their neighbours in Gath but God’s not so easily appeased.

…after they had carried it about, the hand of the Lord was against the city with a very great destruction: and he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts.

(5:9)

 

The men of Gath send the Ark on to Ekron. The Ekronites are less than happy about this but they too have to be struck down by haemorrhoids before the Philistines see sense and work out how to send the Ark home…

And they said, If ye send away the ark of the God of Israel, send it not empty; but in any wise return him a trespass offering: then ye shall be healed, and it shall be known to you why his hand is not removed from you.

Then said they, What shall be the trespass offering which we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden emerods, and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines: for one plague was on you all, and on your lords.

Wherefore ye shall make images of your emerods, and images of your mice…

(6:3-5)

 
Syrian fresco from 3^rd century CE showing the Ark being dragged home by a team of oxen.

 

Bizarrely, this seems to do the trick. God is presented with replicas of the five lords’ piles - made in gold, mind you, and with some mice to boot - and the Philistines are free to carry on their mischief another day.

Whether the ongoing crisis in the Middle East could be solved by the Palestinians offering up golden haemorrhoids to the Israelis obviously remains to be seen. My preferred peace offering would be this remarkable bronze of a giant enema bulb, here shown being unveiled outside the Maskuk Akva-Term spa in Zheleznovodsk, Russia (see here for full story).

 

Dope-Smoking Marilyn Killed by Poisoned Enema

A video has come to light allegedly showing Marilyn Monroe smoking marijuana. As this blog has shown, drugs and celebrities do not mix well, especially when bathrooms are involved... But to me it would seem all the more remarkable if evidence were found that Marilyn did not smoke marijuana.

What does need more investigation, however, are the repeated allegations that Marilyn did not die of an overdose but that she was murdered by the insertion of an enema laced with barbiturates.

Not that this method of assassination is anything new: it was particularly pronounced in Paris in the latter half of the 17th century where the best people were wont to undertake three or four enemas a day! The numbers of the nobility dying in this way eventually forced Louis XIV (1638-1715) to establish a dedicated agency to counter this threat.

 

Drowning in a Pit of Shit Part 2

The sinking of Tony Blair's hopes of becoming the first president of the European Union has delighted some and dismayed others. However, it is not the first time the unelected leader of a pan-European community has seen everything collapse around him. In the following account, the sinking feeling was more than metaphorical - resulting in a mass drowning in a medieval privy. The horror!

In 1184, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I summoned a Diet (an Imperial assembly) in the German city of Erfurt. Business as usual, one might think...

 

The Emperor… had occasion to go to the privy, whither he was followed by some of the nobles, when suddenly the floor that was under them began to sink; the emperor immediately took hold of the iron grates of a window, whereat he hung by the hands till some came and succoured him. Some gentlemen fell to the bottom where they perished. And it is most observable, that amongst those who died was Henry, Earl of Schwartzenburg, who carried the presage of his death in a common imprecation of his, which was this, If I do it not, I wish I may sink in a privy.

(Nathaniel Wanley – The Wonders of the Little World 1678)

The Emperor escaped but at least eight princes and several nobles and knights were left to drown.

Spot the difference?

Frederick I                 Tony Blair

Drowning in a Pit of Shit

This story of the Jew of Tewkesbury seems funny at first for the pig-headed stubbornness  on display – until one considers the undercurrent of anti-semitism… and, of course, the revolting undercurrent in the privy pit (although one scholar has claimed that the story is not anti-semitic).

 

And in this year, that is to say the year of our lord 1258, there fell a Jew into a privy at Tewkesbury upon a Saturday, the which would not suffer himself to be drawn out of the privy that day for reverence of his Sabbath day: and Sir Richard of Clare, then Earl of Gloucester, hearing thereof, would not suffer him to be drawn out on the morrow after, that is to say the Sunday, for reverence of his holy day; and so the Jew died in the privy.

(Fabyan’s Chronicles 1516)

 

Amazingly, these accidents were not that uncommon. In 1326, one Richard the Raker, a latrine cleaner, fell through the rotten boards over his privy and drowned ‘monstrously in his own excrement.’ It’s hard to know if it’s better to drown in one’s own excrement or somebody else’s.

George Bernard Shaw Nearly Died of Diarrhoea

It's perhaps a shame that George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) didn't die of diarrhoea – as his overarching linguistic cleverness certainly suggests a form of verbal runniness... We can console ourselves with the thought that there was a time when he thought  he might, at least according to this biographer. Happily, one can still stay at the Hotel Beau-Site and imagine Bernard Shaw's torment.

 

Our last meeting was in the summer of 1928. He had come to the Riviera for a six weeks’ holiday from his labours on The Apple Cart, and… we finally fixed up a date to lunch together… But I had not figured on accidents. One happened to Shaw’s bowels. He wrote explaining, or perhaps I should say complaining:

 

Hotel Beau-Site,

Cap d’Antibes,

August 10^th, 1928

My Dear F.H.,

I can’t come to-morrow. Yesterday I was smitten with the most undignified form of maladie du pays. My interior became a mere cave of the winds and waters; and I lay about unable to keep on my legs longer than ten minutes at a time.

To-day, after a good night, I am able to sit up and write and take my meals (such as they are) out of doors. The winds have subsided, but not the waters; and I dare not venture out of reach of the appropriate seat until I am normally decent in that respect. I therefore propose Wednesday instead of to-morrow. By that time I shall be either quite well or dead.

(Frank Harris – Bernard Shaw 1931)

 

"When will the waters subside?..."

Constipation Cures can Lead to Fatal Diarrhoea

In 983, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto II was severely constipated. Unwisely he swallowed quarter of an ounce of aloe vera juice – resulting in chronic diarrhoea. This in turn gave him such a bad case of haemorrhoids that he eventually bled to death.

 

 

Otto II sitting on the throne...

 

Like Otto, the little known English poet Edmund Smith (1672-1710) was foolish enough to attempt self-medication with predictable if fatal results…

He found himself plethorick; and then, resolving to ease himself by evacuation, he wrote to an apothecary in the neighbourhood a prescription of a purge so forcible, that the apothecary thought it his duty to delay it till he had given notice of its danger. Smith, not pleased with the contradiction of a shopman, and boastful of his own knowledge, treated the notice with rude contempt, and swallowed his own medicine, which, in July 1710, brought him to the grave.

(Samuel Johnson – Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets 1781)

How Vespasian Died of Diarrhoea

Death from diarrhoea increases the embarrassment factor. Diarrhoea is rarely as painful as full-blown constipation but it is more frequently fatal – as shown by the death of the Emperor Vespasian in 79 CE. His summer villa was found earlier in the year - it sounds like his death was less of a holiday...

 

In addition to an increase in his illness, having contracted a bowel complaint by too free use of the cold waters, he nevertheless continued to perform his duties as emperor, even receiving embassies as he lay in bed. Taken on a sudden with such an attack of diarrhoea that he all but swooned, he said: “An emperor ought to die standing,” and while he was struggling to get on his feet, he died in the arms of those who tried to help him.

(Suetonius – De Vita Caesarum 121 CE)