Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the classification and categorisation of… uh, stuff. First we will look at the various kinds of toilet paper you will find, bog roll if you will, their properties and the differentiators between them.
If you go into your local supermarket-me-do, you will notice that for a half-decent toilet roll you’ll pay about 30p. This number drops slightly based on the volume, quiltyness, ply and number of inexplicable pictures of chickens or boondoggles.
The average man consumes his own weight in bog roll once every thirteen days. Well, not consumes, that would be disgusting. But you know what I mean. Uses. Multiply that by the headcount in an average enterprise and the money expunged on what is nothing more than sheets of paper poo-brooms for its staff is astronomical. For corporations, the cost of their lav tissue must be substantially lower than 30p. Especially when the smart, and gastronomically talented, employees will save up for days just to save their own 8-ply silky, aloe-vera-painted tissue at home.
That brings us nicely onto the two categories of corporate bog roll.
Rough and Ready
Back in the olden days, “two-ply” simply meant you used two leaves instead of one. Sometimes when leaves weren’t available you could use a handy, nearby rock or stone. Or, for the larger gentleman, boulder.
Or cliff face.
Depending on where you are in the world, rocks tend to be quite unpleasant to use after a good quality intestinal outflurry. They have points, and rough bits, and moss, and bird poo on them, which defeats the point really doesn’t it.
Rough and ready toilet paper is the equivalent of a Caesarian section for your ringpiece; a butcher shop for your bum. And 2-ply corporate is typically just twice as much arse-scratching per wipe.
Greaseproof Paper
The second kind of paper shit shovel for businesses is a strange greaseproof-paper-style tissue. It does little in the way of removing residual processed-and-expelled foodstuffs from a Gentleman’s posterior, instead opting to smear and spread.
Greaseproof paper is, of course, a false economy. Like most of these enterprise cost-saving measures. You need to use about five rolls of the stuff to improve your hygeine as much as two sheets of high-friction Rough and Ready tissue. Fact.
Talking Points
While you’re here, let’s talk about talking in the Gents’ Altar of Ablutions. There is only one topic of conversation that is appropriate in there: the advantages and disadvantages of the 7 different type of drywall (you do know them all don’t you?!). Anything else is banned.
Especially Strictly Come Dancing. Anything to do with sequins, actually. Except Debbie McGee‘s arse. That’s fair game.
“Did you see the game last night?” is also acceptable, as long as the game you’re talking about was Manchester United vs. Randy Couture’s Angry Clenched Fist.
You don’t talk about cars in The Bogs because cars are penis extensions, and the mere suggestion of cock-vox is punishable by permanent exclusion from public gents. (Those people who “go home at lunchtime for a crap because they don’t like using shared/public toilets” are the excluded ones. Take note! Do not trust these home-only shitters!).
Passing the Time While Doing the Crime
Until 2007, the only way to pass the time while dropping the kids off at the pool was a trusty copy of Autocar, Maxim or The Sun. Broadsheet newspapers could also be used by those blessed with large cubicles of rectal purification.
But then Apple launched the iPhone and the on-bog entertainment (OBE) industry was born.
Google joined the scene in late 2008 with its Android smartphone operating system. Since then things only improved, so here is my list of preferred time-passers:
1. Angry Birds Space
Angry Birds is brilliant, everybody knows this. It has been the staple diet of the Common Male Poocannon (Homoerectus ShitHowitzer) for many years. The reason behind its success is that blokes love it when birds bend and twist (and arc, parabollically) to their every whim.
Combine this with the final frontier and Isaac Newton’s genius 17th century invention of gravity and Einstein’s General Theory of Naughty Piggies Sitting in Gravity Wells and you have the reason for me being so very late to so many meetings.
Well done, Rovio, for your services to OBE!
2. Cut The Rope
Similar to Angry Birds, but with sweets and spiders and an iguanafrog thing, Cut the rope is a strategic headfuck that requires you to cut ropes to feed the green protagonist. But one wrong move and you’re up cubicle creek without a bog roll paddle.
3. Firefox / Safari / Other browser
When all else fails, you can identify a connoisseur of casual toilet-time fun by the types of bookmarks in their phone:
CNN – Discerning shitter with a dirty finger on the global news pulse.
Daily Mail – Radical crapper with a phobia of sharing a cubicle block with anybody with a tan.
New Scientist – Bore
Playboy – Worryingly loud, panting, squeaking shitter.
World of Warcraft Forums – Pervert. Should be immediately directed to use the disused Disabled john in future.