Search Results for "loo roll"

It’s a banner week for loo roll dresses here at the ICBE. First it was Pippa Middleton, resplendent in TP and now it’s the lovely Posh Spice, all decked out in loo roll for her baby shower:

Looking good Mrs. Beckham!

Read at I’m Not Obsessed (via MoeJackson.com)

Any excuse to post an article using the term loo roll! Here’s Pippa Middleton, sister of Kate “Duchess of Cambridge” Middleton, on the left at the royal wedding and on the right sporting a loo roll dress during lighter times:

Hate to say it but they did a pretty nice job with that dress!

From the Daily Mail

Really, it’s any excuse to use the term loo roll. But this time it’s UK retailer Waitrose who has decided that wiping your buttocks with toilet paper containing cashmere extract is just the ticket, for, well, I have no idea.

While I would hardly approve, I would totally understand the appeal of wiping yourself with, say, a cashmere sweater. That stuff is soft, and I bet it would feel really nice (anyone care to comment on the absorbency of cashmere?). But just slapping a little extract in there and calling it a day seems remarkably lame.

More at Consumerist (via)

You learn something new every day. Today I learned that in the UK, they call toilet paper loo roll. How awesome is that? In fact, everything sounds better in the Queen’s English. Take this blurb for example:

As they settled into the X Factor house today the finalists popped to the local shops to stock up on essentials, including a bumper pack of loo roll.

In American English, it would be something like this:

As they settled into the X Factor house today the finalists drove in their very large SUV to Walmart to stock up on essentials, including a super-mega-value-pack of toilet paper.

Lame!

Source

It’s been years since I have used truly awful toilet paper.

A couple of decades ago, when I frequented the public ice arenas of Edmonton, Alberta, I did a lot of necessity-based toilet paper exploration. There was some terrible stuff out there back then. The worst was the TP that was dispensed a single square at a time, and consisted, from what I could tell, of a very fine grain sand paper.

Recently though, my exploration has diminished, and even when I strike out for a public bathroom I’m rarely treated to anything less than perfectly adequate loo roll.

Now for all my experimentation back in the day, never once did I end up hospitalized with a wiping-related ailment, like certain toilet paper manufacturers would have had you believe in the 1920s. That’s right, back long before the internet was even a twinkle in anybody’s eye, scare tactics were being employed to convince people to drop premium cash for premium TP.

When you ask for just “toilet paper,” danger is probably the last thing that enters your mind.

Correct! But wait, it goes on!

You are risking your family’s health every time you do this.

AUGH!!!! My family!!!

via BoingBoing

My most formative memories of my childhood all involve the bathroom. One time, during intermission at a hockey game, I was faced with two tasks:

1. Get food from the concession
2. Go to the bathroom

In my current wisdom and experience I know that there is right and a wrong order in which to perform these tasks, but at the time I wasn’t so knowledgeable. So I got my food. Then I took my food into the bathroom with me – as I recall it was a hamburger wrapped in a foil sack which I placed in my pocket – and went pee.

My parents spotted me after I did my business, and made the connection that I had just strolled into a public bathroom with food. They were less than impressed, and I hadn’t even taken my burger out of its wrapper.

Food and bathrooms don’t mix. It’s not just the ick factor either, with all the flushing that goes on germ-laden droplets are constantly quite literally whizzing (ha!) through the air. So I was more than a little disturbed to hear the following tale over at Eatocracy:

The intern with the shaved head was on her phone in the bathroom again. She seemed to regard the third floor ladies room at our office as her personal rec room which was…fine, if somewhat unnervingly intimate on occasion. I realized, though, that I’d severely, thoroughly, grossly underestimated her level of one-ness with these particular environment on the day several years ago when I saw her emerge from a stall, eating cereal. From a bowl. With milk.

Yuck! It’s not just wrapped food. It’s food that’s open to the disgusting environment of the public bathroom. And it’s not just open food, it’s open food that’s actively being consumed.

Eating is the opposite of what bathrooms are for. Don’t eat in the bathroom.

Read the full story at Eatocracy, including a few other tales of gross places to eat.

via J

Anybody who has ever travelled to Japan will tell you that going to the bathroom there is nothing like going to be bathroom here in North America. Fearless ICBE International Liaison Daniel provides us with an actual picture of an actual Japanese bathroom with a kimono and a bajillion buttons. No, we don’t have a clue how it works!

Update! Loyal reader Michelle, an American currently living in Japan, relates her own experiences with Japanese toilets…

There are two different types of toilets here in Japan, the “squatty-potties” and the “western-styles.” I happen to prefer the squatty potties, and it’s been written that squatting is actually healthier for the body. It doesn’t feel good to us Americans, but that’s because we slouch all the time in couches and office chairs, and our muscles are all out of shape. For those accustomed to sitting on the floor, this is really quite comfortable. I can never forget a scene from the Tom Selleck movie, Mr. Baseball, where he said something about his Japanese couch that went like this, “You tell me how to talk, and how to wear my mustache, next you’re going to tell me is how to take a crap.” Then he walked into the bathroom, and you hear him yell something like, “Help, I need someone to tell me how to take a crap!” A lot of Americans stress over which way to face. The truth is that you face the hood of the squatty-potty, but the secret is that as long as you can reach the toilet paper, no one will ever know if you did it wrong. I happen to prefer these because it’s easier not to come in contact with anything, and as long as you aren’t wearing anything long and ridiculous like a wedding dress or coveralls, it’s much easier to tuck your clothes around yourself so they don’t fall into the water. And often times, there is no water until you pee or flush, anyway. But, I am not most Americans. Nah, it’s a sad thing to say, but a large percentage of us military folk are pretty squeamish. Imagine a tour bus full of skiers and snowboarders. Daredevils, right? Wrong! When the tour bus stops at the rest-stop, it is customary to see a long line of females lined up outside a restroom with rows of empty stalls. They’re all waiting for the one western style toilet. The Japanese ladies have to walk around to enter the restroom. It’s really quite embarrassing.

Getting back to your picture, this toilet is probably located in a hotel room, as it’s pretty standard for them to leave a kimono in the room for use around the hotel. However, the layout is pretty typical of a stall in a public restroom. They often have that wide and blessedly convenient shelf behind the toilet. Sometimes, you’ll have a sink either located next to the toilet, or on top of the tank itself. And the sink will be rigged to the toilet, so that the water turns on when you flush for hand washing. Although, soap and towels are rarely inside the stall. The toilet paper rolls are pretty standard, and the rectangle under them is the garbage can. The buttons in your picture, well the top one on the wall behind the toilet is actually not a button, but a rubber stopper. No slamming of the toilet seats, please. The silver knob to the left is for flushing. You can’t see it in this picture, but often times they have little characters on the wall next to the knob. If you turn it one way, the toilet will flush using only a little water, and if you turn it the other, a lot of water will come out. I can never remember which is which. Ok, getting to the row of buttons next to the tank. That’s your bidet settings. It varies from model to model. Usually, there’s an on and off button, and hot and cold water selection, and the dial is to adjust the angle where the water will splash. You have to actually be sitting on the toilet for the bidet to work. And if you decide to full around with the buttons and nothing happens, be sure to wait a few minutes before standing up. There’s nothing worse than looking like you peed yourself because the bidet finally decided to kick in as you were in the process of standing up! Other models will feature the famous heated toilet seat. Ah!! I love that. There is nothing better than coming in from the cold after a day of skiing, and placing your cold butt cheeks on something warm. Some people think like me. Most American men do not. They feel warm toilet seat beneath them, and think of the person who must have just finished sitting there while taking a dump. Good ol’ American squeamishness, once again. And every once in awhile, you’ll come across something they call the Princess setting, as it’s mostly found in female restrooms. This button makes the sound of flushing without actually wasting water on an actual flush. Aha! Japanese squeamishness……but I’ve used this too!

It’s kinda luck of the draw as far as hand-washing goes. It is always a good idea to take hand-sanitizer with you on road trips, as the public bathrooms often lack soap. I can’t understand why that is so in a country where cleanliness is prized. But it’s not uncommon to see the Japanese carrying around washcloths and hankies for just such a purpose. Often times the various businesses will hand out little packets of Kleenex with their logo on the wrapper. Other bathrooms are technologically savvy. The sinks on the bullet train have a motion detector for not only the water, but also for the soap, and the blow-dryer….yes, all coming out from the sink!! Other hand dryers look like little recessed boxes. You place your hands inside, and slowly draw them out. About six seconds later, dry hands! Very efficient, but it’s fun to laugh at the recent arrivals here who don’t understand what the square thing is and are too scared to go near it!!

The ICBE focusses on etiquette for the public bathroom because the rules are the trickiest there, and frankly what you do in your own home is largely your own business. However, most of us don’t live alone and so there are some rules of etiquette that you should be following at home. Note that many of these rules will apply if you are a guest in someone else’s home as well.

If you live alone, and have no guests, do what you want

Yes, you read that right. If you live alone, and if you never have any guests at all (sorry to hear that), then go ahead and do whatever the heck you please. I mean really, etiquette isn’t about you, it’s about other people, so if there are no other people there is no etiquette!

Leave the damn seat down

Yes, you heard me correctly. Stop being lazy men, and put the darn seat back down. Really, is it so hard to do something thoughtful for the women in your life? How would you feel if you sat down directly into the toilet bowl one day? Not so hot eh? (End confrontational tone) There have been studies done which show that the most efficient thing to do is simply to leave the seat in whatever position it was when you finished up, but this is one of those cases where we think women need a break.

Learn to Aim

We realize that it’s not always easy to hit the toilet bowl (actually that’s not true, we just made that up to make you feel better). But just because you missed and peed all over the seat and floor, doesn’t mean you should leave your work on display for all to see. Wipe that pee up! This goes for public bathrooms too, there’s no excuse to leave a trail of piss behind anywhere.

Close the Door

Unless you and everybody else you live with agree that it’s okay to use the toilet with the door open, you should probably close it. Your husband or wife might not mind so much if you are doing a #1, but your roomates probably will. And nobody wants to watch you poop – trust me.

Don’t Pee in the Shower

Of course if the first rule applies you are free to pee anywhere you want, though we are always surprised that people enjoy standing in a pool of their own urine. Chances are though somebody else is going to use your shower sometime, and we really don’t think they are going to want to have anything to do with your pee. Go to the bathroom before you get in the shower, and save us all from being grossed out.

Use the Fan

Not all bathrooms have fans, and that’s too bad. But if the bathroom does have a fan, you should probably be using it – especially for #2. Not only is it going to help with the smell, but it’s going to cover up all those lovely noises that have a tendency to emanate from the bathroom under the most opportune of circumstances. Heck, it’s even good to help prevent mold and mildew, and I think everyone can agree that’s a good thing.

Replace the Toilet Paper

Go to the bathroom often enough, and sooner or later you are going to be the one that finishes the roll. Don’t just leave the empty roll dangling there, replace it! You don’t want to get halfway through a #2 only to spot an empty roll, and neither does anybody else. Oh, and don’t pretend that two squares left counts either. That’s just stupid.

Okay, people give bad advice every day, it’s just that usually it doesn’t fall under my domain. Here’s an excerpt of a Q&A I saw today:

Q: I have been dating my boyfriend for almost five months… weekend trip to Disney World… I am really worried about the bathroom situation. How do I “take care of business” without him knowing?

A: The best way to avoid the tell-tale smell is to do your business in a public bathroom… lock yourself in the hotel bathroom for your morning (and/or evening) grooming routine, which should include burning scented candles and playing music at full volume. Run the shower, tub and sink, and stuff a rolled-up towel in the space under the door to muffle any errant sound

What?! First of all, the women asking can’t even refer to taking a crap/poop/#2 in any kind of direct manner? But what really gets me is the #1 piece of advice is to use a public bathroom? Please! First of all, public bathrooms tend to be gross, second of all if this relationship has any hope of surviving you are going to have to learn to go to the bathroom. Use the fan and let loose.

And a little tip: the “Honeymoon Period” of a relationship ends the very first trip. Travelling is the best way to really get to know somebody, and you can’t hide all your shit from him anymore woman (no pun intended).

Read the original article here

We love reader mail. We especially love the hate mail that we used to get quite a bit of. One of our recent letters comes courtesy of Mark N., who writes the following as a rebuttal to our discussion on hanging the toilet paper:

“I think you missed the boat on this answer. First of all a real man never hangs the roll at all. He may work on motors, mow the yard, or clean a deer all day but hanging a roll of paper is to much work. A real man puts it on the edge of the sink, back of the toilet, or on the floor beside the toilet. Come on now……. it truly is too much work to take the empty roll off and put the new one up there.”

My wife would kick my ass if I was too lazy to ever bother hanging the new roll. Then again, I’ve never spent the entire day cleaning a deer, so what do I know?!