For those of you who say "Pooing is cool".....

[Duke87]

I nearly always pee sitting down. Less messy that way.

In Germany it is proper etiquette for men to sit down to pee on non-urinal toilets for exactly the reason you mention. It contains the splashing. My sister observed that the task of cleaning the hall bathroom at my parents' house got a lot easier after I moved out since with no men regularly using it anymore there were no more little yellow splatters all over the place to wipe up.

But I squat instead of sitting probably every other time I poo.  I find that it straightens out the "tubes" better and makes for fewer danglers.

Yep. Back in the jungle we didn't have toilets to sit on and squatting was the natural way to poo. Our bodies are designed accordingly - things absolutely slide out better when you squat compared to when you sit. However, you can get much of the same effect by leaning forward and, if that's not enough, buy lifting your knees up too.

Throughout Asia, signs like this are common:
http://www.vagabondish.com/wp-content/uploads/sign-sitting-toilet-malaysia.jpg

The reason for that is that in much of Asia these are common:

which are designed to be squatted over, not sat on.

[kphoger]

you can get much of the same effect by leaning forward and, if that's not enough, buy lifting your knees up too.

And then pulling yourself back up out of the toilet after you've fallen in.

which are designed to be squatted over, not sat on.

This could also end badly.
–I've fallen and I can't get up!  And I'm going to need a LOT of toilet paper!

[NE2]

This could also end badly.
–I've fallen and I can't get up!  And I'm going to need a LOT of toilet paper!

This happens anyway when you have to poo and ralph simultaneously. If you're lucky your toilet is next to the bathtub.

[realjd]

I nearly always pee sitting down. Less messy that way.

In Germany it is proper etiquette for men to sit down to pee on non-urinal toilets for exactly the reason you mention. It contains the splashing. My sister observed that the task of cleaning the hall bathroom at my parents' house got a lot easier after I moved out since with no men regularly using it anymore there were no more little yellow splatters all over the place to wipe up.

Of course Germans also build shelves into their toilets to catch the poo for further inspection.

[kphoger]

The German Poo Shelf Toilet, for those who are unfamiliar, is explained below.  I have personally only encountered these in Poland, not in Germany itself.  I suspect they're remnants of the GDR days and, like separate cold and hot water sink faucets, are both less common in western Germany and also seeing more modern upgrades in eastern Germany.  I had no problem using GPSTs during my time there, but they do make for a more pronounced odor until you flush.

Next to the infamous Squat-hole toilets of Asia and southern France, the German Poo-Shelf Toilet is undoubtedly one of the least pleasant methods of waste removal - assuming you're like most folks and don't feel the need to get to know your waste. It finds itself here in western Poland because this region was once part of Germany until the Germans got all riled up and tried to take over the world. They're better now, but the legacy of their doody-tech remains.

The Poo-Shelf comes from a period in German history when Germans were less interested in world domination and apparently more interested in spending quality time with their feces. That, or they were prone to accidentally eating their wedding rings and needed a toilet that allowed them to conveniently rummage through their dung before dispatching it to the abyss. Those must have been fascinating times and I'm quite glad I wasn't born in them.

I don't know how many such devices are in existence. Perhaps they're quite rare and I was simply lucky to stumble upon such a specimen. All I know is that upon encountering the German Poo-Shelf Toilet, one is forced to solemnly contemplate the reason such a horrible mechanism exists, and what demon designed such a thing.

Rather than whisking your waste away, the GPST simply lets it sit there, mere centimeters from your rump, so that you might think about the brief time you had together. When you're done reminiscing - or when the odor of a pile of poop begins to negatively affect the ambiance of your bathroom - you simply pull up on the flushing mechanism to send your creation on to the Great Beyond. However, if the flushing mechanism doesn't work - well, you're on your own with a shelf full of poo and a toilet designed so as to render the plunger useless. Good luck and God bless.

It should also be noted that any gentleman who chooses to stand up and use the German Poo-Shelf Toilet for the purpose of bladder-emptying can be expected to enjoy as much splash-back as one might get from say, peeing on a coffee table. The toilet, in all aspects aside from cigarette butt and chewing gum disposal, is utterly useless.

Those who believe in intelligent life in outer space often say that any culture advanced enough to achieve space travel would probably not make themselves known to us until we too have reached a certain level of civilization. I take that to mean the elimination of war, and every German Poo Shelf toilet currently in existence. Although stopping warfare is a tall order at the moment, I encourage every able-bodied soul to grab a sledgehammer, get to Germany, and start swinging.

This is a horrid toilet bowl design, found in older buildings in Germany. There is a dry flat shelf right underneath one's posterior, upon which poop falls. It just sits there, for the entire performance, smelling up the joint. Several flushings are required to wash everything down the drain, and it leaves a skid mark as a present for the next person. Males who use these toilets to urinate tend to spray everywhere.

WHY? Why would anyone design something so evil? Perhaps it was for health or scientific reasons - so that people could inspect what came out of them & identify any problems. Or, maybe it was to conserve water - no bowl to fill, less water wasted? Or, maybe nobody in Germany knew how to build a toilet except sick, sick, twisted Nazi Fecalpheliacs. Or perhaps it's a joke they play on the tourists. A national joke. That's gotta be it!

"There are two basic designs in Germany. The first is called the "Tiefspueler" . An image of a Tiefspueler toilet bowl is here: http://calfarme.biz/downloads/bioflush.JPG The second is the Flachspueler – what you called a poo shelf. The Tiefspueler has the problem that because of the greater distance between the user's behind and the water level (of the water inside the bowl), there is the significant risk of water splashing up as the excrement falls into the bowl – wetting the occupant's posterior, which, I assure you, is *gross*.The Flachspueler solves this problem by having what you called a "shelf" , where the poo comes to rest until it is flushed. There is a small and shallow puddle of water on the "shelf"  (if there isn't one then the toilet is either defective or a misdesigned copycat Flachspueler not made in Germany and made by manufacturers who don't understand the entire concept of the thing). The puddle is there to prevent the poo from sticking to the shelf and from leaving the skid marks you mentioned. The distance between the water level of the puddle and the user's bottom is much less than with the Tiefspueler and there also is much less water that the poo drops into. This avoids water splashing up and wetting the user's bum, but at the cost of potentially stinking up the place. That's why a lot of Germans have Klosteine (look it up) in their loo, or ventilators or both.
The Flachspueler is also more suitable for hospitals where the stool may need to be visually inspected (no kidding, I'm a qualified [male] nurse) or where stool samples may need to be taken. But both German designs allow workarounds to their respective shortcomings:
Tiefspueler users can put a bit of toilet paper into the bowl before sitting down, so the water won't splash as much when the stool drops into it, and Flachspueler users may flush several times, to remove poop as soon as it is deposited, so stinking up the place can be avoided." Thanks Jens!!

[Dr Frankenstein]

Yeah, I'd feel uncomfortable using a squat toilet.

Re: Wikipedia article about TP orientation... We see where that site's focus is.

[Duke87]

you can get much of the same effect by leaning forward and, if that's not enough, buy lifting your knees up too.

And then pulling yourself back up out of the toilet after you've fallen in.

What kind of huge-mouthed toilet do you have that it is possible for an adult to fall in?

[NE2]

What kind of fat ass do you have that it is not possible to fall in?

[The High Plains Traveler]

Way more information than I needed.

HB, you and I have a point of agreement. And I can't justify it, other than the fact that my wife hangs it the other way. We don't have a cat.

[kphoger]

you can get much of the same effect by leaning forward and, if that's not enough, buy lifting your knees up too.

And then pulling yourself back up out of the toilet after you've fallen in.

What kind of huge-mouthed toilet do you have that it is possible for an adult to fall in?

I wear a 30-inch waist, and I need a belt to keep them up.  Leaning forward and lifting my knees, I become the perfect shape to slip right in there.

[Duke87]

Okay, you're small. Still, while I could totally see someone with a 30 inch waist falling in attempting to squat over a bare bowl, is that really possible with the seat down?

[1995hoo]

Returning to the original topic of iPads in the bathroom, I just received a survey from Food & Wine magazine asking about whether I read their digital edition. I told them one reason I prefer the print edition is that I do most of my magazine reading while sitting on the toilet and I prefer to handle a paper magazine instead of an iPad screen when I'm doing that.

As far as falling into the toilet goes, in our powder room we have a framed poster from Michie Tavern in Charlottesville showing "The Necessary" (an outbuilding containing a four-holer toilet facility with a rope overhead) with the following text: "Notice Ye All: If ye bottom falls through ye seat, do not call the proprietor. Use ye rope to pull ye out."

[Molandfreak]

Returning to the original topic of iPads in the bathroom,

[kphoger]

Okay, you're small. Still, while I could totally see someone with a 30 inch waist falling in attempting to squat over a bare bowl, is that really possible with the seat down?

Maybe, maybe not, but it's more likely by assuming the position you describe.

Well, OK, I suppose, my way, there's the possiblity of your foot slipping and ending up covered in water and poo.

Which is more likely?  Let's get a scientific study going.  We need volunteers.

[hbelkins]

Which is more likely?  Let's get a scientific study going.  We need volunteers.

If "viatology" is the scientific study of roads, what would one call the scientific study of bowel movements?

I know ... "viatology." 

[jeffandnicole]

I sure to God hope there's a poo-ing forum out there that has random off-topic discussions about highway signs.

[Brandon]

I sure to God hope there's a poo-ing forum out there that has random off-topic discussions about highway signs.

It's got to be a rather shitty topic. 

[NE2]

I sure to God hope there's a poo-ing forum out there that has random off-topic discussions about highway signs.

http://www.poopreport.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10422&p=161141#p161141

[Molandfreak]

I sure to God hope there's a poo-ing forum out there that has random off-topic discussions about highway signs.

http://www.poopreport.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10422&p=161141#p161141

Ho-ly-poo.

[Alps]

Which is more likely?  Let's get a scientific study going.  We need volunteers.

If "viatology" is the scientific study of roads, what would one call the scientific study of bowel movements?

I know ... "viatology." 

"Scatology" is a thing.

[J N Winkler]

The German Poo Shelf Toilet, for those who are unfamiliar, is explained below.  I have personally only encountered these in Poland, not in Germany itself.  I suspect they're remnants of the GDR days and, like separate cold and hot water sink faucets, are both less common in western Germany and also seeing more modern upgrades in eastern Germany.  I had no problem using GPSTs during my time there, but they do make for a more pronounced odor until you flush.

The washout toilet--which is the name in English for the Flachspüler or Hochspüler--is not anything to do with East Germany specifically.  The one example of it I have seen is in a private house built in the 1950's in Bruchsal (near Karlsruhe in far western Germany) by the parents of a distant cousin-in-law.  My experience of toilets in the former DDR is admittedly limited to Berlin and Dresden, but all the toilets I saw in those places had the conventional bowl profile.

In the US, toilet bowls tend to be very shallow with a large-diameter pool of water.  In Britain, toilet bowls tend to be very deep with a small-diameter pool of water just above the spout.  I don't recall that the British design is better than the American one in terms of backsplash, but it does get the coproliths into a small package that flushes readily at the cost of making it somewhat more difficult to assess their quantity and consistency.  Most continental European toilet designs I have seen (as far north as Sweden and as far south as Spain, Italy, and Greece) represent a compromise between these two extremes.

I am personally not a fan of squatting on the bowl rim since this means putting one's feet in urine splash.  It is also difficult to impossible to do on toilets whose bowl rims are rounded (very common in public bathrooms) or narrow (another feature of British toilet design).  It is possible to get a lot of the benefit just from squatting with feet on the floor.

[agentsteel53]

coproliths

leave it to JNW to come up with a scientific synonym for "turd".

at the cost of making it somewhat more difficult to assess their quantity and consistency.

"I know what you're thinking.  did he fire six shits? or only five?"

[kphoger]

coproliths

leave it to JNW to come up with a scientific synonym for "turd".

Well, yeah, but then he went and ruined it by using "urine splash".

The washout toilet--which is the name in English for the Flachspüler or Hochspüler--is not anything to do with East Germany specifically.  The one example of it I have seen is in a private house built in the 1950's in Bruchsal (near Karlsruhe in far western Germany) by the parents of a distant cousin-in-law.  My experience of toilets in the former DDR is admittedly limited to Berlin and Dresden, but all the toilets I saw in those places had the conventional bowl profile.

My pooing experience in the former East Germany is also quite limited.  In fact, I really only recall using one toilet there; there may have been more, I don't know.  At any rate, I've still seen more of them outside Germany than in Germany.

[bugo]

http://www.kjrh.com/dpp/news/local_news/tulsa-man-inside-white-water-park-toilet-arrested-as-peeping-tom

[kphoger]

By the way, who doesn't think pooing is cool?