I think I had a shit today. I definitely had two prawn sandwiches, neither of which provided requisite relief from this hangover. Instead, a bottle of incredibly cheap rosé wine finds me warm and dead.

Normal service has been resumed. One early morning rabbit-gun, and one post coffee snake-trailer.

I used to get these terrible headaches. I would go to school on Monday, I would get a headache, which would get worse and worse until I got home and began to be sick. This would continue until the next morning, and sometimes carry on all the next day.
These headaches continued regularly until up until the age of 22. As I got older I desperately tried to work out the reason for them. At various points, I attributed them to stress, my sinuses, my stomach, my bowel, and my joints (which are affected by an inherited semi-permanent arthritis). At various points I have been on heavy doses of Ibuprofen, Pizotifen, nasal sprays and migraine drugs. I began to link these various problems together, finally deciding that they were all somehow connected to my stomach; with constipation as an underlying signifier of my health.

I concede that this style of thinking sounds a little Victorian. Having not been trained in medical techniques, I, like most people, resort to a style of folk medicine. I read recently that in the 1800's people would treat earache by tying a roasted onion to their ear. We have faith in our doctors, until they can't do anything for us, and then we resort to superstition. Superstition is just common sense turned in upon itself. A sad inner logic that prays to a god we don't believe in.
Even people I know who are training to be doctors have a superb ability to turn off the critical faculty when reasoning with their own body. This is because medicine is not an abstract science. Diagnosis and application are very much in the realm of the everyday knowledge. Trial and error. 'How we feel', is very much the indicator of success or failure.
Scientific knowledge is beyond individuals, it exists as an inter-subjective collection and interpretation of data. This ability to exist both within and without an individual''s understanding is what has made it the defining technique of acquiring knowledge.
For medicine, this is tempered somewhat by the fact that the success comes back to individuals. Large scale testing of techniques and drugs is what makes it a science, but there will always be the unknowable, the unaccounted for, the individual response or lack of response to a treatment.
This accounts for the rise of folk medicine and quackery; homoeopathy, crystals, herbal medicine. Some of these will work and some will not. I know of a Father who bought a strange machine from a man on the internet, wasting several thousand pounds because his son was dying of cancer. The man who sold the machine was probably as deluded as the man who bought it.
Damien Hirst recently said that he was throwing as much money as he could at death; to stave it off; to allay his fear of it. Damien Hirst is a twat. Superstition is natural, but to confuse it with tested, scientific knowledge is not only foolish, but dangerous.

My headaches stopped when I started wearing contact lenses. I had been wearing glasses all day, every day, since the age of 10. Recently I asked my optician about the link, and he told me that some people's eyes just don't get on with glasses.

I haven't had a shit today. And I have a terrible headache.

I was telling someone about this blog, about how it was meant to reveal that critical thought can occur anywhere, and concern anything. Interesting chains of reason can be formed from uninteresting things. Humour can be a form of critical thought.

I was just about to say that ideas don't always have to come from universal themes, but I suppose, actually, I'm just introducing a new universal theme.

Life, Love, Death, Shit.

I'm not even joking.

Nietzsche hated the German people for their food. He had a finely tuned digestion system and found their obsession with meat and bread did not agree with him. He said that he never gave time to a thought had while sitting down. He would take long walks to encourage thought. 'Thus Spake Zarathustra', his most famous book (which, for the record, I have not read) basically involves a man walking down a mountain, spouting shite to people as he goes.

As this blog proves, you can tell a lot from a person by their attitude to their digestive system. Nietzsche was one of the greatest thinkers of all time, and he was obsessed with proper bowel movements. He drank peppermint tea and ate small amounts at regular intervals. But then, he also had a nervous breakdown that involved hugging a horse, and spent his last years commanding that the German emperor go to Rome to be shot.

Someone has pissed all over my toilet roll. I'm not accusing anyone, it could have been me. In fact, I hope it was me, seeing as it was just me who had to wipe their arse with it. I wouldn't wish that on anyone else.

I hope I don't get a rash.

I like to think that these writings aren't influenced by external circumstances. But, I've been drunk and busy for the past few days, and therefore haven't been staring for quite so long at my own shit.
  I went to Pizza Express on Friday night. On their sugar they have, 'Pizza Express' written in the company font. On their sweetener they have 'Pizza Pizza Express' in a bastardised serif version of the 'Comic' font from Microsoft Office. Pizza express may soon be receiving an inquisitive letter.

Like freshly baked madeleines for Proust, the dark pebbles in the toilet take me back to my childhood. Climbing up giant rocks on a small island off the coast of Brazil. We hit the big rocks with little rocks and each time we hear a different, perfect note. There are leeches there that drop from the trees and you have to pick them off you otherwise you end up covered in tiny red lumps. They have a name but I don't remember it now.

The Three Portugese Phrases I Learnt.
1) The name for those flying leeches
2) Big wave/Little wave
3) Guarana

Guarana is the only word I still remember, and for years I had forgotten that. That is, until I moved to South Tottenham, which has an odd mixed population of Orthodox Jews and Brazilians. The Brazilians are nearer to Seven Sisters, and the Jews are in Stamford Hill. Guarana is an incredibly sweet and fizzy drink that, according to the can, tastes of cherry. Really it tastes of sugar, but as a ten year old, sugar is probably the flavour you crave most. My family would drink coffee before the rains came, every day at three o'clock. Everyone would go to sleep, but I would lay in the silencing volume of the rain, the house creaking under the pressure of the water, and read what ever book it was I happened to be reading.

Now I drink Guarana at work. I find it gives me the purest sugar rush, and is the nearest thing to drinking an entire pot of espresso. And I pride myself on saying the name of the drink like my Brazilian cousins say it, rolling the 'R' around your mouth, like saying it is as much fun as drinking it.

Oh also, the island off the coast of Brazil with the boulders; it stunk of shit.

My sinuses are full of cheap red wine. Not having learnt my lesson in France, where the cheap red wine at least tastes like wine, We drank a few bottles of what tasted like rotten blood at a bar last night. Drunk children in spandex danced to 90's music inside while we sat outside; opined and smoked. Smoked and drank.

This morning I made an attempt to crap, but all that came out were hardened pebbles of disdain. When I wiped my arse, there was a mucus layer.

Three and a half days of shitting, 'au Parisian'. Cheap, red wine has taken its toll and yesterday I passed a dark tar like substance, of ominous proportions.
  Our poo tells wordless truths. To stare in to the toilet is to converse with an old friend who does not shy away from uncomfortable topics of conversation. It knows our secret abuses, our public excesses, our physical foolishness. These things are the making of our faeces, and through this pooey prism, they are refracted in to their constituent psychical elements.
  We are staring at a self portrait sculpted by our colons.  From all that we have eaten comes a likeness so accurate that it must be flushed away and never spoken of, lest by description we recall our muddy doppelgänger too clearly , and bring it in to being.

Observation and evaluation are necessary companions to the act of shitting. In Germany and Holland, the toilets have waterless shelves in the bowl which offer our crap up for inspection. In Paris and Britain, our shit plops down under the water. Embarrassed but curious, it peeks out from underneath it's porcelain gazebo in case we care to steal a glance at our now un-conjoined, filthy poo-twin.
  I have always felt honesty to have more authenticity than truth. Truth has to be abstracted from reality, ironically detached from the empirical situation which it hopes to describe. Honesty can be contradictory and paradoxical, reflecting our humanity more directly.

That we all shit is truth.

That we are fascinated by our shit is honesty.

A thin bit, a thick bit, and a little round bit left at the front of the bowl. Then spent a few minutes pulling hair from the plug hole. Sort of like squeezing a big spot, there is more and more and you think it might not stop.

I'm going to France tomorrow. If I somehow have more interesting things to do than blog about my own shit while I'm there, then I'll give you a round up when I get back.

I think they are getting bigger every day, but is this sustainable growth?

I have a friend who takes their shirt off before they do a shit. I took my cardigan off today, but that was all. It gave me an electric shock. It's my own fault really, you should never wear nylon clothing with rubber soled shoes.

It seems that yesterday's beheomoth was not an aberration. I believe we have entered a new phase of what I am now ominously referring to as, 'The Cycle'. If I could be so bold as to place a value judgement up on it, I would describe it as 'good', in the true, moral sense of the word.
  I believe this is either deeply connected to the financial crisis; or, paradoxically, completely separate. Only time will tell.

I awoke with what I thought was my kidneys having a fight in the middle of my back. After breakfast, I went to the toilet and afterwards, had the strange sensation of only needing to wipe twice, but having to flush three or four times.
  Shitting should be like death, but it isn't, or maybe that is what makes it so life affirming. It is the opposite of buying food, which always seems to confirm life's constant repetition. I always know I'm depressed when I can't stand to buy food, but yet, my whole outlook can be changed, just by doing a bigger than average crap.

A Poem.

I am hungover.
I am cold.
I am bleeding.

Luxury toilet paper?
Blunt irony.
I prefer value.

No window for me today.
No blue sky shitting,
no cloudward flush,
no healthy chimney me.

And why now,
again, again?

We are surely empty,
like our garden,
icy and brown.

Let me rest.
I must rest.

After a slightly vinegary breakfast at a local cafe, I head to the toilet for some quiet time. The seating arrangement places you in front of a large ground floor window, modesty preserved by a piece of wood across the glass. The wood leaves a gap where the sky peeps down on your unclothed groin, and you counter with nonchalant ploppen. It strikes me that I have not taken a shit while looking at the sky for some time. I live in a windowless warehouse and my family home's toilets face away from the window. It is nice to feel my bowels move in time with the clouds.
  Later, after more coffee, I flow a gooey worm that lurks just underneath the surface of the water. Predatory, it reminds me of the ancient snake that ate crocodiles.

Nothing to report today apart from the fact that my turd had some sort of two tone effect. Like the markings of a robin, but in shades of brown. It could have been a trick of the light, but I checked from a few different angles.
  Incidentally, I went to see the Andre Serrano show last night, which featured a room full of photos of shit.

Still in distinct sections, but the sections are larger, and more fluid. If previously it could be compared to droppings, this morning's efforts are more like fresh dung from a larger, unspecified mammal. I attribute this change in consistency to the three (3) cans of super-strong cider I drank last night. The corner shop sells both regular, and super-strong versions of a popular brand of cider for the same price. Idiots.

Incidentally, there is something rather festive about taking a shit before breakfast.

Coffee has the most wonderful properties don't you think? I won't go in to detail, but for some reason the word 'flume' keeps popping in to my head.

Sean Ryder did a column for the Daily Sport for a while, and one week he listed all the different types of shit you could have. I don't remember them all, but one involves passing waste onto toilet paper that has been floating in the bowl for a while. The poo becomes entangled in the paper, creating a ghostly, white-veiled floater. This phenomenon, according to Ryder, is called, 'The Bride'.

I'm having to really lean into this one. It's not easy, and at the end of it all: pebbledash. I've spoken before about the link between our sense of infinity and the bowel. Today, on the other hand, felt resolutely finite.

After passing an oyster (overworked and showy, but not very big), we returned to the throne for a second time and within seconds I was looking through my legs at what looked like a baleen whale.

Having previously been feeling like a rabbit at gunpoint, I think I can say we are back in the territory of 'the normal'. For now at least.