One of the more hilarious things about The Autopian is that, somehow, way too many stories are either about poop or somehow discuss poop at some point. Heck, one of the site’s earliest breakout stories was about a high-flying dookie incident. It’s wild since, last time I checked, we’re a transportation site. Even discussions about oil filters have somehow led to poop!
Brian wrote about how Toyota makes oil changes easy for owners of Tundra hybrids. V10omous starts us off:
Wait, when did Toyota go to the standard “can” oil filter design?
Cameron Huntsucker had the exact opposite question:
When did they leave the can? All of my toyotas have been can; Mazda and Subaru have been pleated insert.
World24 complicates things:
Every Toyota I’ve seen in my shop has had a filter like a Pentastar: a cartridge with an o-ring.
I guess it just depends what people see and when.
V10omous:
Yeah this is like “sit to wipe” and “stand to wipe” people discovering each other for the first time … I legitimately thought every Toyota used the cartridge design.
Huja Shaw:
Yeah this is like “sit to wipe” and “stand to wipe” people discovering each other for the first time….
That’s a very specific bar you patronize.
I learned that “stand to wipe” people exist when I met my wife. That blew my mind! Wait, how did we get from oil filters to poop?
Matt wrote a Morning Dump that mentioned Porsche’s new Nürburgring-Nordschleife record. I like 4jim’s take:
I just want to drive around the ring. I do not care in what. I would do it in anything including my JKU and Pacifica AWD or a rental golf, I don’t care.
Also
Car companies: “Yea regulation rollbacks, lets make gas guzzlers again!”
Gas prices surge
Car companies: “Crap!!”
I don’t care about lap records, but it’s a bucket list for me to drive a Smart around the ‘Ring.
I wrote about the weird INNengine e-REX engine. Rockchops:
On the plus side, it stays e-rex despite being exhausted after only one power stroke.
Tondeleo Jones:
And it’s being marketed as an extender.
Spikedlemon:
It’s not the size of the piston, but how you use it.
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic images: joybarrett1961/TikTok; ToyWiz
Not surprising that among the articles posted before I have finished breakfast (PT) are The Morning Dump and Shit Box Showdown. Might as well rename the site to Scatological Daily.
I too was unaware there are people who wipe while standing. Here’s a whole article on the subject with surveys, statistics and commentary.
Jason Torchinsky is a national treasure. I’m privileged to have met him in person.
People who have an affinity for scat humor have a correlation with some form of creative genius and/or intellect. As far as automotive journalism goes, Torch is top tier talent. And considering he likes to drive around in crap cans like Yugos and 2CVs, no one should be surprised.
Consider Amadeus Mozart,
Keep well, my love.
Into your mouth your arse you’ll shove.
I wish you good night, my dear,
But first shit in your bed and make it burst.
Or Martin Luther,
“I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away”
…and describing the sensation of a good dump:
“Felt that I was altogether born again, and had entered Paradise itself.”
Or Ella Fitzgerald who invented scat as a music genre, which musician Scatman John enthusiastically declared himself as a “Scat Man”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8
Then there’s my personal idol and role model, Aleister Crowley, who wrote the poem “When Celia Farts” as part of his White Stains anthology, with the line,
“Thus finishing his grand survey,
Disgusted Strephon stole away
Repeating in his amorous fits,
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!”
There are many more examples.
The video of Sabine Schmitz crushing the Nurburgring in a Ford Transit van shows nothing but pure joy. I would have loved to have her drive me around the ring in any vehicle available. Sabine is missed.
Riding with her would have been a much better idea than me trying it. She was so fun to watch.
My favorite Sabine video is the one where she is doing a lap on the top gear test track in a Mercedes SL and trips the pre-crash sensors setting off the automatic rollbar.
“If that doesn’t go off you aren’t trying hard enough”
https://youtu.be/d00J-792ZmE
She had my heart then and there.
TIL something that was waaaay TMI.
So is this website the Shit or what?
Did you ever see ISMO the Finnish stand up comedian?
He’s got a great sketch with that in it.
After reading the discussion below, I will never be able to look at the expression stand up comedian in quite the same way again.
How about the phrase he’s a stand up guy?
We all know The Autopian is the bent.
Because of this expression as a positive my car’s nickname has transmogrified to “Pooper”.
Ken Miles already claimed that name.
https://www.petersen.org/vehicle-spotlights/1956-cooper-porsche-pooper
I did not know this existed. I love this car. For its time, I’m sure it could scat.
I learned something today… thanks.
Consult a doctor if your INNengine e-REX lasts more than four hours..
I’ll give Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche AG a call in the morning.
I used to not understand why some people position their toilet paper rolls so that you pull from under instead of over. Then I got a cat who thought the best way to punish me for taking a shower instead of paying attention to her was to unroll the whole damn thing onto the bathroom floor. I’ve set my toilet paper to roll from the under side ever since. Not that it helped with that particular cat as she then started taking bites out of the roll and tossing the paper bits around.
You can replace cat with toddler in there and it’s also true
We’ve had cats that were into unrolling the TP roll, then shredding it and tossing it all over the bathroom like confetti. So long ago we decided that the rolls live in the metal canister that is typically used for storing the extra rolls instead of on the usual wall mounted holder.
. . . . That time I went online to read about a cars and stumbled into a personal hygiene chat room.
Some music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8
Given the subject of the COTD, there’s no way I’m opening that link.
It’s actually quite wholesome. Scatman John had quite a talent, in spite of his stuttering.
Love it!
“I learned that “stand to wipe” people exist when I met my wife. That blew my mind! Wait, how did we get from oil filters to poop?”
I’m pretty sure the pattern was establish on day 1 with the “STAB” post, followed by Shitbox Showdown and The Morning Dump (That little dump truck icon is fooling no one).
remember early days when they used to be desperate on what to actually name TMD and insisted TMD was just a placeholder? lol
I find it hilarious that they kept it. It works.
Wait what dump truck icon$
That’s interesting conversation when first meeting someone, but I guess you really moved fast on getting to know each other 😉
COTD squared here
Worst work retreat, Ice-breaker reveal EVER!
Definitely have to keep this in mind for those meetings where they ask everyone to share a “fun fact” about themselves.
Glad to see that the toilet humor is this site’s ride-or-die. I would have expected nothing less.
The solution to pollution is dilution,bidet for the win.
More fecal matter in the editorial content of the Autopian? Why am I unsurprised?
I was reading this thinking that it was a really elaborate setup for something about Refiner Oil Filters by John Frantz, which use toilet paper to filter the oil, or the long history of toilet paper and motor oil.
When I visited in 1987 china was almost entirely stand to wipe.
Never mind what they wiped with. I’m not sure what the oil filter situation was at the time either.
Maybe an Autopian specific poop emoji car badge would be a good addition to the merch store.
Used to be common in many parts of the world to use the left hand to wipe. Only the right hand was supposed to be used for greetings, transactions, etc.
Wait, what the FUCK.
There are people who stand while wiping?!
Handstands, actually. Under the hand dryer.
Yes, because otherwise you won’t know what to do if you have to shit in the woods.
I appreciated this segue:
Torch was certainly instrumental in giving this site a scatological bent. And I’m all for it.
I was a middle school student when I discovered that standing wipers existed, thanks to the stalls in all of the boys’ rooms not having any doors, and that’s where stalls were present at all. Some of the restrooms at that school had open sit-down toilets with zero partitions, just like a military barracks I was once a guest at(and forced to use). Wiping techniques are not something I wanted to see, or demonstrate, for that matter, but nature almost always wins out against any desire for modesty.
THERE ARE POEPLE WHO SIT WHEN WIPING!?!?!
Right? How do you even get your hand round there?
Ya reach through the middle, or lean to one side, like a civilized person.
I feel like I would want some very long gloves to do that.
do you…just rub your arms on the toilet?
That’s what I’m imagining. It all seems so ungainly.
Sitting in a chair, are you not able to lean and tough your backside without touching the chair?
Now, imagine there’s no middle of the chair.
Unless you have severe mobility issues (which is a thing), this shouldn’t be an issue.
But surely that requires lifting oneself up off the seat? You’re halfway to standing up already, why not just finish (if you’ll pardon the expression) the job?
I can lean and lift only one part of me while sitting.
Standing with your pants around your ankles would require you to stand bow-legged to be able to get up in there.
Plus, the toilet paper is mounted at a height for sitting people. Because people typically perform this sitting.
Not gonna lie, this makes the mid-20th century struggle between capitalism and communism look like a playground scuffle.
Some people lean very far forward to help spread them cheeks. Others sit straight up and reach straight back down the middle of their buttcrack. Some raise one cheek while the other cheek rests on the toilet seat, then reach in at an angle. All of these techniques have both right-handed and left-handed variants.
There are two methods of sit down wiping:
1) Back to front
2) Front to back
Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so some people employ one, then the other, or even alternate as needed.
Then there’s how the toilet paper is administered. Some fold it neatly for wiping precision. Some scrunch it up to maximize surface area and absorption of fecal matter. Some even spit on the paper to provide a wet wipe for that final wipe to get all the poop off.
You’d be amazed at the variation of wiping styles and techniques. Once you’ve seen some things, they can’t be unseen. I suppose it’s only fair that some of those same people whose wiping techniques I’ve observed have seen mine, as much as I wished they hadn’t.
I also have observed that some don’t even wipe at all. Yes, they’re out there…
I’d say this was TMI but I did ask.
Interesting . . . but please DO NOT tell me how you know.
I already did when I mentioned how the restrooms at my middle school were. High school was the same way. If you had to take a poop and there were other people in the restroom, like it or not, you were showcased in front of an audience when doing so. The doorless stalls were commonly placed opposite the sinks and mirrors.
Then there was the occasional bar, gas station, city/county/state/national park, campground, circus, public swimming pool, or other public place whose mens’ restroom also provided no privacy for taking a crap. I’ve walked into those facilities only to see people using them on occasion, probably in dire straights.
I used to be shy about using a normal stall with a door because I didn’t want other people to identify me by my shoes or hear my noises. But my middle school made that seem luxurious once I was forced to use their facilities with effectively no coverage.
When nature calls loud enough, you’re forced to answer, regardless of whether you want to or not.
My high school was like that too. If I had to poop, I’d skip school and just go home.
I wish I had that option back then. Usually, my default was to do my best to hold it in all day. Unfortunately, given the quantity of food I ate at that age, that often wasn’t possible…
Mine was as well. I managed to go four years without ever pooping at school.
Fortunately, the German Toilet Organisation has addressed the problem with a school toilet summit in 2024. For those of you outside the Vaterland, this is probably the most German thing you will see this week:
https://germantoilet.org/en/schools/deutscher-schultoilettengipfel
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/18/german-summit-aims-to-flush-away-bad-school-toilet-experiences
BTW, my niece/godchild and her school won a prize for a school restroom that looks like this:
https://www.gettyimages.de/detail/nachrichtenfoto/june-2024-north-rhine-westphalia-unna-view-of-the-nachrichtenfoto/2157532538
Compared to many working class Americans, those people are outright spoiled.
One of the restrooms in my middle school had the toilets out in the open, no partitions of any kind. Sometimes there was neither toilet paper nor soap, not so much due to vandalism, but due to the school being cheap.
The Ruhr area is as working class as it gets. The restrooms looked about the way you describe it before the students renovated them as part of their extracurricular activities. Think toilet team instead of soccer.
I didn’t know the Germans had the same disregard for the dignity of the children that they force to attend school. But I shouldn’t be surprised, since the Prussian education model that the USA adopted originated there.
If you have the chance to watch the movie The White Ribbon, by any means do so.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1149362/plotsummary/
My elementary school didn’t have any kind of dividing wall around the toilets. They were just … there. In the middle of the room.
One kid thought he was hilarious for shitting in the urinal, and wiping his ass with that cloth continuous loop thing we had instead of paper towels or a hand dryer. He did this several times.
Thankfully in middle and high school the madness ended, and we had stalls WITH doors. Such luxury!
Ladies should never go back-to-front for, well, reasons.
Keeping a pack of flushable wet wipes in the bathroom is life changing.
I carry some on me, just because far too many times I’ve used a public restroom only to find there was no paper available.
I wish I hadn’t learned about the spit shine.
It was… something I wished I would have never seen, or at least forgotten(but didn’t). I’ll spare you all the gory details of where, when, and how.
I feel like I had to scroll too long before someone brought up “fold or crinkle”.
I think the best approach is context-dependent, based upon the type/size of cleanup needed, the speed with which a person needs/wants to complete the task, and the type of toilet paper available.
There’s also all sorts of different ways of holding and applying the toilet paper.
I can see you put a lot of thought into this.
(Cue image of Rodin’s The Thinker, but on a toilet.)
Your mention of Rodin’s Thinker reminds me of a scenario that unfolded when I was a newly hired engineer at age 23. Although I considered myself a grown man, I did not at all look like it, and my older coworkers treated me like a kid sometimes because of my appearance. I looked no older than 15 on a good day and was a mere 120 lbs at 5′-10″.
I was with this older coworker who looked like Santa Claus on an out of town visit to another office. We were at a nearby restaurant within walking distance, just having finished lunch, when I excused myself to the Mens’ room with a moderately urgent need, a need that typically arose during that time of day. I often shared adjacent stalls in the office with other male coworkers around that time and they picked up on that pattern. I decided this day that I’d go here before taking the walk back to the office, being someone who didn’t like to walk around with a turtle head trying to play peek-a-boo at my underwear with gas working its way out.
The restroom was very cramped, a one urinal, one stall, one sink arrangement that was the size of a closet. I got seated in the stall with my pants and underwear at my shoes. About 10 seconds later, as I was getting started, I heard a bunch of people come in. It was everyone who was at the table I just ate lunch at, all older male coworkers of mine, maybe 7-8 people between the ages of 50 and 65, as I sat there making rude and obvious noises that left zero mystery with regard to what I was doing in that stall. To make matters worse, the stall had this giant gap that made the stall door useless as a privacy barrier and I was plainly visible to anyone who walked into the Mens’ room, in spite of having latched it. This gap was at least 3 inches wide. Upon entry into the Mens’ room, anyone walking in had an immediate line of site view at that gap and whoever was exposed by it. Further, the stall door had maybe a foot chopped off the top of it, allowing anyone who walked up closely enough to the door to see my face, totally unobstructed. Three of my coworkers got too close and we made eye contact as they towered over the door. If I’d have known the gap was that bad and door height insufficient(neither was obvious when I entered the stall), I’d have waited to go at the office which was only 5 minutes away, but by the time I noticed the setup was that bad I was already seated and relieving myself, having been in a rush to get started after finishing my lunch worked its magic on my digestive system, instead of paying close enough attention to the restroom layout to recognize the hazard. The door wasn’t like the awkward half stalls at certain highway rest stops I used, because it still towered above me as I sat, but anyone of normal height would have been able to stare at me over the door had they walked right up to it.
So there I was, seated just like Rodin’s Thinker, leaning forward to avoid making eye contact with the crowd in the room, face resting on my right hand, left hand over my lap, dress slacks and undies on my dress shoes. Thinker wasn’t wearing a dress shirt, so at least I had that on for some coverage, but it didn’t do much to cover my lower half. They all could see me sitting there exposed from my dress shirt down as they entered the Mens’ room or looked my way, and quickly turned away once they realized the awkward situation regarding the restroom layout and the fact that I was engaged in what was supposed to be a private activity, rendered much more public than was typical in a public restroom thanks to that obnoxiously-sized gap between the stall and stall door coupled with the slightly-shorter-than normal stall door and the cramped quarters of the restroom. It made me a bit nervous, but it was far too late for me to abort the operation and I kept doing what I came there to do, continuing to generate awkward noises with my posterior as I sat there feeling exposed while the crowd of male coworkers awkwardly stood nearby with just a flimsy metal partition for coverage that failed to obstruct me from their gaze.
As they were taking turns at the lone pissour adjacent to where I was seated less than two feet away, me able to see side profile views of the faces of each user as they stood there relieving themselves in front of the stall door, the Santa Claus looking coworker decided to either make things either greatly more awkward or slightly less awkward. I’m not sure which, because my noises were loud and were echoing about the small, cramped restroom contrasted only by the silence of everyone else and the quieter sound of urine splashing the urinal, the serious/unfriendly tone greatly multiplying the awkwardness of the situation. Changing the overall vibe of the room, the Santa Claus looking coworker blurted out, “A young engineer is in there meditating. Sitting there just like Rodin’s Thinker.”
It was obvious that he caught a glimpse of me, whether he wanted to or not. I think they all did. There were some chuckles.
A bit of conversation and open acknowledgement of the situation to cover up my bodily noises was arguably the less awkward scenario than everyone in the room hearing all of the intimate sounds of waste matter leaving my body as I sat there visibly exposed by the stall gap. The sounds were nasty and gave away the fact that what I was engaged in was not at all a frictionless process. Hard to say whether this coworker was doing me a favor or not, but I rolled with it. Given the choice, I’d rather be amused than humiliated.
Another coworker, an older man near retirement, then said, “So young man, are you in there sitting and thinking, or shitting and stinking?”
I was making the cramped, unventilated room smell very ripe, there was zero secret to everyone present what I was doing in here, and rather than recoiling in shame, I owned it.
I already had my comeback ready, retorting with, “Both.”
Everyone cracked up laughing. They finished draining their bladders next to me one by one, roughly half of them washing their hands before leaving. They obviously didn’t want to linger in the foul air and got out ASAP.
It took me some minutes to finish. I had to go pretty bad. Not an emergency, but in another 10-15 minutes it would have become one. Instead, it was over with and I felt the relief of a well-stimulated valgus nerve.
Wiping up was a bit of an ordeal given the size and consistency of what came out, but at least I got to do that alone and in private. When I flushed, it was a lot and barely went down as the toilet sputtered, streaking the toilet bowl with skidmarks that would give any Corvette or Hellcat owner envy.
I rejoined them at the table about 10 minutes after they walked in on me as if nothing was unusual about what occurred in that room. Because there really wasn’t anything unusual about what occurred in that room other than the banter. It was used for its intended purpose by all entrants, an event that normally would not have been remarkable in any way nor started up an awkward exchange by itself. It was the setup of the room that was unusual, and being far from ideal, that caused any awkwardess that arose. Being exposed like that is awkward, and I don’t think anyone was expecting to get a free shitshow that day, nor was I expecting that me needing to address a biological need would create one. But I did, and we all knew it.
As I sat at the table, the Santa Claus looking coworker who was sitting adjacent to me when we ate then asked, “Feel better?”
I looked at them, smiled, and doing my best Hank Hill impression, said “Yup!”
They all cracked up laughing. One of the old men looked like he was about to choke on his drink.
I think they were hoping I would be embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I’d already used a public restroom in much worse scenarios than this multiple times in my life by then, and laughed it off. I still had to see those coworkers frequently, the Santa Claus looking guy on an everyday basis, so it’s not like I had much in the way of options to pretend this never happened. That office also had a lot of people that liked to share poop stories, and word of my ordeal at the restaurant eventually made its way around. It never bothered me; many coworkers had worse stories.
Although I visited that restaurant many times again after that with many of the same coworkers, I never did use that stall for a sit down session again. The nearby office had Mens’ rooms that offered slightly more privacy and that was a much preferred place to take a dump than this restaurant. In spite of my willingness to go when I need to, I still prefer privacy, and waiting a few minutes is a very small price to pay in order to obtain it. If I know I’m going to get a more private arrangement than to be exposed, I’ll walk an extra five minutes, as long as the turtle’s head isn’t TOO aggressive. In any near-emergency, I’d still use the place at the restaurant with zero hesitation, but the need never came about again with enough urgency to justify a repeat of that performance in front of an unwanted audience.
As an enthusiast of all things morbid, grotesque, profane, indecent, disturbing, ugly, awkward, and downright disgusting, dear reader, hopefully this story haunts your memories to the grave!
I’m 71 and today is the first time I’ve heard of such a thing as standing wipers. And I’m no wallflower.
I was a middle school student in the late 1990s. It was at the tender age of 12 when I saw some kid from my gym class standing up to wipe after using one of the open toilets in the locker room. It was right after gym class and I recall him asking to use the restroom during gym. Going during class was his only chance at getting privacy, but the coach denied him. Instead, about 25 of his fellow students in addition to said coach got to witness his wiping technique after he awkwardly sat on the toilet in front of them all during what sounded like a desperate emergency.
That school was Hell.
Yikes!
I had to use that same toilet during one bout of desperation. As a working class kid whose parents didn’t have much money for food, when my grandmother cooked a massive feast on various holidays, I certainly took advantage each and every time. On one of those feast days, I had to go back to school the day after, and like it or not, what goes in eventually comes out.
I was a small-framed boy physically underdeveloped for my age, could only hold so much matter in my GI tract, and having over-eaten the day prior probably 5-7 times more than normal, once I ate lunch at school, in spite of my effort to hold the oncoming morass from the digestive process that occurred(as was an almost-daily habit given the lack of privacy for #2), I really had no choice in the matter once it was threatening to kiss the back of my underwear and shooting a stabbing sensation up my abdomen. It was quite embarrassing sitting down with my pants on the floor and butt exposed making all sorts of awkward squishy-sounding noises interspersed with the sound of wind instruments without any privacy for the ordeal. I even clogged the toilet, which seemingly had enough suction to swallow a brick. But I still don’t regret gorging myself when the opportunity came the day prior. That was my opportunity to be satiated and I gladly took it, consequences be damned.
That all said, fuck that school and its administrators up the butt with a red hot poker. They’d have deserved that, IMO.
I was a skinny kid too and it was no fun. I got my revenge by being a skinny adult.
I’ve stayed skinny as an adult as well. I still eat like a horse though.
That worked until I was in my mid thirties. After that I needed to work at it. And I do love to eat .
Still works for me into middle age. Probably because I put 10,000+ miles per year on my electric bicycles/velomobiles. There’s a downside: lots of toilet visits from all the food. But due to my negative middle school/high school experiences with their facilities(among others), as long as the facility is clean enough to take a seat and not come into contact with unwanted matter, nothing intimidates me away from using it, no matter how far away from the privacy ideal of my home commode it strays from. It doesn’t matter who else may be present in the restroom. When I gotta’ go, I’m totally shameless about it. Been that way for decades. Other peoples’ judgement won’t dissuade me. Torch seems to be the same way. Life is easier as a result.