the benefits of being regular

i know that i'm not exactly a normal person. i don't live a typical life, doing average things like shopping for wallpaper and going to sleep at night.

however, i don't know if that makes me more susceptible to thought viruses or not. i think that i've always had a problem clearing my head and pushing unwelcome thoughts into the background, but it's been getting more and more difficult over the past few years.

last week, while spending some quality time on the toilet, a horrible HORRIBLE thought entered my head, and rather than gradually forgetting about it, my digust is spiraling out of control.

so maybe it would be best for you to stop reading here. you're safe right now. you don't HAVE to know what this thought was. i assure you, there is absolutely zero chance that, by exposing yourself to this thought virus, your life will be better. none.



trust me. especially if you live in an apartment building or spend a lot of time in hotels. don't do this to yourself. don't take this unnecessary chance.



while i was sitting on the toilet, i started thinking about the layout of my apartment building, and about how almost all apartment buildings and hotels have a general floorplan that replicates itself for each floor in the building. my bedroom is underneath and above other bedrooms. and worse, my bathroom is underneath other bathrooms.

assuming that a bathroom is being pooped in for 5 minutes/day (a very conservative estimate), and that there is an equal probability of defectation at every minute of the day (something that isn't true obviously--- i would guess that most pooping occurs during the morning, early afternoon, and early evening), there is a remarkably high chance that while you are dropping the children off at the pool, someone is taking a dump directly above your head.

seriously. there are 1440 minutes in a day. 5 minutes/1440 minutes is 0.00347. for every floor that is above you, there is a 1:288 chance that someone is pooping.

i have 3 floors above me--- every time i sit on the toilet, there is a 1% chance that someone is dumping above me. i should expect to be shit on once out of every one hundred days.

and remember--- i was being very conservative. if you're in a two-bedroom/1-bathroom apartment, the chances are a lot higher. if you are on the toilet at a prime-time, the chances are a lot higher.

that was the quick and "dirty" calculation that i did while taking my own dump last week. in actuality, the probability is approximately 10% more, by taking when one breaks up the time into continuous "chunks".

this whole thing has been really disturbing me. the other day i was in the elevator with a person who was headed to the danger-zone, and i found myself thinking of them as an enemy... the question of what they have been eating even crossed my mind...

i find myself trying to spend as little time as possible in the bathroom... trying to hold it in until the middle of the night so as to minimize the chances... i've been seriously reconsidering the benefits of being regular.