Epic dumps, recalled

A Reddit thread called "Did you ever think you were going to die from a shit?" sparked a lyrical/scatological series of reminisces of epic dumps, including a two part series by ErikPDX recalling a storied moment of colonic glory following a period of post-surgical bedrest during which he consumed enormous amounts of painkillers and protein shakes without bestirring himself to relieve himself, until such time as his body could stand no more. Mr PDX included a picture of the result. I beg you not to click the link in his post which leads to it.

My entire body tingled. I felt lighter. I was covered in sweat, and breathing heavily. I felt high, delirious, in shock and awe. Great waves of increasing euphoria washed over me. Feelings of amazing pleasure I simply cannot describe. I felt as if I was bathing in a golden light of goodness. This was a transcending event. I felt like I had just touched the universe itself.

Did you ever think you were going to die from a shit? (self.AskReddit)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Funny • gross • poo poo • reddit • shit

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Aeron

If there was ever one thing that could be said that could capture both the irrelevancy and awesomeness of the Human species. This is it.
http://borborygmist.influxofdust.com/ Wayne Dyer

I have had those “Oh geez — Elvis died like this” moments.
http://www.ikaink.net Itsumishi

This definitely needs a unicorn chaser. Preferably one sculpted out of poop.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  You can never accuse BB of not responding to its readers:
  
  http://boingboing.net/2012/05/23/howto-make-unicorn-poop-cookie.html
Antinous / Moderator

Somewhat related: apricot fart thread
- http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair
  
  Long ago I discovered that eating black-eyed peas and dried apricots in the same meal gives you a superpower.
  
  i’ll give you three guesses what the superpower is
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Hmmm.
    - Jake0748
      
      My thought exactly.
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    Try eating lots of figs and rehydrated eggs. You will become your own jet pack.
dbergen

I LOOKED!!!! DEAR GOD I LOOKED!

Heating up poker now to gouge out my own eyes.
- http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers
  
  After the description, I had to look too, and dear Satan, that is a big turd.
franko

jesus, people: ROUGHAGE and HYDRATION. is it so difficult?
- http://hgomersall.wordpress.com/ heng
  
  Seemingly most of them were opiate induced. Hospital opiates also tend to be accompanied by a substantial (albeit short-lived) change in lifestyle. The combo can be pretty restrictive on one’s bowels. That’s from experience – the only time I’ve ever suffered constipation.
zachn

This is possibly the best post Boing Boing has had in it’s entire existence! Xeni – you might consider shutting down the site – you’re not likely to top this one.
SomeGuyNamedMark

Who hasn’t had a dump so big that you needed a nap afterwards?
- bcsizemo
  
  Kind of brings new meaning to, “That took it out of me.”
LogrusZed

Reagan cheese constipated me so bad when I was a kid that I was straining on the toilet for 2-3 hours after something like a week and a half without a #2 (according to my mother, even Jewish kids don’t keep track at that age but when we hit 30 it’s dinner-table conversation). I can’t honestly say, because of how water can lens, but it looked like it was the size of a softball.

It was traumatic, there was crying, blood, etc. If my now-brain was in my then-body I’d probably jab a stick up there to break it into small chunks.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  I’m sorry for your trauma, rest assured, you are absolutely not alone in having suffered the wrath of Government Cheese when St. Ronnie was in office.
  - LogrusZed
    
    Still the best cheese for grilled cheese sandwiches.
magicdragonfly

Is it that slow of a news day? Isn’t there something left to be written about SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/etc? Cops beating up on Occupy protesters? Amanda Fucking Palmer?

…Bueller…? …Bueller…?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Dude,
  
  It’s 21:30 and there are 64 other posts to choose from since midnight last night.
  - http://www.markcrummett.com crummett
    
    And “Epic Dumps” was the best you could come up with? Wow, the quality of submits has really fallen off.
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    Thank god Boing Boing is pluralist enough to not only appeal to our hearts and minds but also our sphincters.
    - oasisob1
      
      As the smartest muscle in the body, it craves intellectual stimulation.
Jonathan Roberts

This confirms my suspicions that there are a large number of people who are just waiting to be asked that sort of question.
- Donald Petersen
  
  Why, certainly!
  
  (Ahem.) Since You All Asked…!
  
  I can’t say I’ve ever felt I would physically die from a particular dump (though I wasn’t particularly awestruck by the linked pictures; I swear I’ve seen worse at rest stops along I-40), but there was this one time when I felt sure I’d die of embarrassment.
  
  I met my lovely wife online, through the Personals section of the online version of The Onion. Never would have met her otherwise, since I was a teetotalling metalhead who lived in the Valley, worked long hours on Will & Grace, and never had time to meet people outside of work, and she was an elementary school teacher in Silver Lake who hadn’t willingly set foot in the Valley since she graduated high school a couple decades ago. But before I met her, one of my earliest dates I met through The Onion was a sweet UCLA grad student who lived on the Westside and was a couple years younger than I. ”Cathy” lived in a nice apartment with a roommate who was rarely home, and our first date went fairly well. Dinner, a movie, something like that. Toward the end of the date, through conversational circumstances that made perfect sense at the time but whose details I can’t remember for the life of me, I ended up mentioning that she was dressed a little… well, “schoolteacherish” for a first date. And she was, and I know that no woman (or man, for that matter) wants to hear something like that on a first or ninety-first date, but believe me, it made sense at the time, but still she inevitably (and blamelessly) took a small degree of offense, but still wanted to go out again. So we made a date for the next Saturday evening.
  
  I dressed as well as I could manage at the time (new jeans and a clean, wrinkle-free black shirt with buttons and a collar and everything, ’cause I’m a regular Mr Fancy-Pants metrosexual clotheshorse studmuffin, yessirreebob), and hopped in the ol’ ’94 Toyota pickup and made my way over the hill and headed toward the sunset. I arrived outside her building, set the parking brake, opened my door, and stood up.
  
  And the most ominously unwelcome rumbling commenced in the deepest bowels of my bowels. Goddamn if it couldn’t make itself be known and felt and dealt with while I was still at home, or even a few miles ago when I might have found a Jack In The Box, or (better still) a car dealership whose pristine customer plumbing facilities I could have befouled before arriving at Cathy’s blameless, undeserving residence.
  
  But whaddaya gonna do? Her neighborhood was devoid of public restrooms within scurrying distance, so I had to gird my loins, clench that sphincter, and knock. And she opened the door with a knowing grin.
  
  My god, she looked fantastic. Tasteful, minimal makeup (just like I like, so you don’t even know it’s there without a comparison view), a hot Little Black Number of a dress that exhibited plenty of leg, and significantly more cleavage than I would have given any teacher credit for outside of a certain Van Halen video. Certain parts of me just wanted to stand there and ogle for a while and let her know just how devoutly appreciated her efforts were, but those parts were urgently overridden by my shaking knees, quivering guts, cold-sweat-slicked brow, and quavering voice that asked, as coolly as Steve McQueen himself could have managed when he’s about to shit his pants on a date with Jacqueline Bisset, if I might make a quick visit to her loo.
  
  Bless her heart, at this point, “Cathy” figures I just need to take a quick leak. I know better than to go for the bathroom that adjoins her bedroom, so I make for her roommate’s bathroom, which unfortunately is separated from the living room in which my fetching date awaits by naught but a damnably thin and flimsy masonite door.
  
  “You can tell by the smell, he ain’t feeling very well…” as the song goes. And this was one of those occasions when you know a big part of the problem consists of an admixture of extraordinarily loose stool coupled with an inordinately vast volume of regrettably high-pressure gas. Under those circumstances, one is faced with a dilemma: what’s the best way (or, more accurately, least godawful way) to let fly with the carnage? In one enormous ripshit of an assplosion, where it sounds simultaneously like the Hosts of Hades trumpeted out a fifty-voice Brown Note Apocalypse and your butt threw up; or in small, measured, limited, tightly controlled fartlets and squirts? The sole advantage of the former is that you get it over with much more quickly, so I figured I’d try for the latter. I wished to god she would have had the TV on loud or something, but no dice: she was silently out there, fifteen feet away, waiting for me.
  
  So I experimentally dilated the butthole by the smallest diameter I could manage, just to see what would come out. BRRAAPP!! SPLOOSH!! Damn. That was, well, the opposite of unnoticeable. Anti-subtle. Let’s try another. BBLLAARRPP!! FIZZZZ!! SPLASHSPLASH!! Fuck. There is no way she can’t hear this. FFFFBBBLLLPPPTTTZZZZ!! Jesus. There’s no way her fucking landlord can’t hear this! SSSPLLOOOSSSHHH!!
  
  And so on and on. It did absolutely no good at all to try to be quiet and controlled. This was the most boisterous and unruly busload of kids anyone has ever dropped off at the pool, and no matter how much I choked them off and tried to force them to walk quietly single-file, they wouldn’t stop jostling, shoving, screaming, pulling each other’s pigtails, and leaping out the door four abreast. Kinda like the end of that Van Halen video. Class dismissed!
  
  Finally, two minutes or two years after I’d sat down, it was all over. I wiped as well as I could with minimal paper, not knowing how thoroughly her toilet could flush (Santa Monica plumbing can be notoriously unreliable, especially near the beach), and prayed it would all go down in one shot. And it did. I searched in vain for a lighter, book o’ matches, or aerosol can of air freshener… then just shrugged my shoulders, washed my hands, stepped out quickly, closed the door firmly behind me, and said, “Ready to go? Damn, you look amazing!”
  
  And to her credit, we had one hell of a good date. She smiled at me, making no reference or allusion indicating she’d heard a single thing emanating from her roommate’s poor abused can. It’s like it never even happened. And the next date ended in bed.
  
  But there were only a couple more dates after that, since our TV Production/Grad Student schedules weren’t easily compatible. At least there were enough dates following that I don’t believe she held the Epic Shitsplosion against me. In a figurative sense I mean, not just the literal sense.
  
  She was a classy broad, better than I deserved at the time. I expect she’s made someone very happy since then.
  - Jonathan Roberts
    
    Thanks so much for sharing that with us.
  - Jake0748
    
    Excellent story, well told. Bravo. Reminds me a lot of Jean Shepherd’s stories, (albeit with a lot more pooping and farting). :D
    - SomeGuyNamedMark
      
      Reminds me of the movie “Dumb and Dumber”
  - http://www.facebook.com/people/Christopher-Lee/100001074475538 Christopher Lee
    
    That really WAS a cool story, bro!
  - eraserhead666
    
    That’s when you really need a monster fart fan in the ceiling.
  - http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
    
    Reading this quietly was the biggest challenge I will face today.
  - IronEdithKidd
    
    Well crafted story. I’d imagine you were perhaps a writer for Will & Grace? If not, you should’ve been. That story is hilarious.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Who says we will wait to be asked?
koko szanel

All that excitement over crypto Anal sex.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

As a dog owner, I get to pick up crap and feel its heft once or twice a day. Some of my dog’s dumps were monumental . . . generally after a “skipping” a day. She’d produced a couple that damn near filled a bag . . . barely enough room on top to tie the sack shut.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_IPOSJWIKX5OXY3M2XGNIBOR4R4 JenniferS

It is possible to have a backup so bad that they have to perform surgery on you. I think it’s called an impacted stool. It happens to people that are put on opioid pain killers, because they can’t pass their stools as a side effect of the drugs.
http://www.markcrummett.com crummett

Moving on now, please!
penguinchris

Given how much build-up there was I was pretty disappointed. Would have been a better story without the photos – for more than one reason. But I’m the one that just clicked on photos of someone else’s massive shit on the internet so that may disqualify me from complaining ;)
- http://BrianEaston.net/ Brian Easton
  
  Here I sit, broken hearted…
  - millie fink
    
    Surely some country has an old saying: “He’s all farts and no shit.”
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      How about, “The turd doesn’t fall far from the asshole”?
legotech

There is a chapter in The Bloggess’ book about just this sort of thing…it was funny enough reading it, but it’s the chapter she picked to read at her appearance here in LA…O M G.
Ethan Campbell

Oh dear… I can’t wait for the movie based on that reddit thread… maybe that’s a topic fit for Uwe Boll (although I have a hard time seeing how he’ll shoe-horn the prostitutes into it, but I’m sure he’ll manage).
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  I thought most movies nowadays were already based on shit?
- oasisob1
  
  Actually, when will the first movie based on a reddit thread be produced? It will happen.
chiptooth

The tester turds shown in the link seem hopelessly inadequate in this context.

http://neatorama.com/2012/04/26/artificial-toilet-testing-uh-material/
retepslluerb

Curly: I crap bigger than you!
3William56

There is a serious (!) side to this post. I had a somewhat similar experience after 3 weeks of painkillers and antibiotics following throat surgery last year. Although the constipatory effects of the medication were briefly mentioned, it was in no way made clear how serious, painful and miserable the effects leading up to the rapture of release could be. Add that to the already nasty effects of the operation, and the downer effects of long term use of serious painkillers, and, joking aside, the last few days were amongst the most unpleasant of my life. As I said at the time – folk who joke about constipation have never *had* real constipation. I sure as heck hadn’t.

Something medical staff really should be making post-op patients more aware of, and providing medication/diet advice on how to avoid.

But damn… when that train finally left the station…. whoooooooo! Had to check the pan to see if it had broken through the bottom of the bowl, and whether my intestines had gone along for the ride.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  They should have given you Colace when they sent you home on opiates, but they probably don’t think of it for throat surgery.
  - SomeGuyNamedMark
    
    Pro tip, don’t go “This Colace doesn’t seem to be working, maybe I’ll take some milk of magnesia also.” I was on post-surgery percoset at the time. Lets just say after my fifth stomach clenching trip I should’ve let the Colace do its job alone.
marilove

So, apparently drastic changes in elevation can cause serious constipation. I am born, raised, and have spent most of my life in the low, low, low deserts of Arizona, but recently flew to the high, high, high mountains of Colorado Springs for a week.

By the my 6th day there, I was in soo much paaaaiiin. This is not an ailment I am used to having. Finally, my friend told me that I probably needed some milk of magnesium, which, at the time, was the nectar of the gods. That is some great shit (lol, pun) and it was cheap, too!
Beanolini

moment of colonic glory

And was this glorious moment immediately eclipsed by the realisation that he (like the still unidentified member of my immediate family) had created a stool of such size and density that it could not be flushed before being broken into pieces with garden tools?
joel_hanes

You want to read I’ve Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina.
ImmutableMichael

I’m just going to pretend this post never happened.
- Ipo
  
  What post?
Marky

As a younger man I was walking home about 4am after a bout of teenage beer guzzling. I guess this was enough to start the bowels, I was struck with the worst belly cramps ever. Only two houses from home, but there was no way I was going to make it. The only choice I had was in my pants or not. I dropped trou and let it rip in my neighbors side yard. Knew it was big, but I took Lot’s advice and didn’t look back.
I woke up at the crack of noon, went into the kitchen for some desperately needed water. Across the street I saw my neighbor, a police car and an animal control van. I couldn’t figure up what was going on, so I pulled on some shorts and a shirt and walked over.
About halfway there I had a premonition about what they were discussing, but running back to the house would probably look guilty.
“Hi Mr Johnson, what’s going on?”
“I was out cutting my lawn and spotted THAT,” he pointed but didn’t look.
“I called the cops right away, they called animal control. They think there may be a bear on the loose in the neighborhood.”
The animal control guy came over, said “I’ll take a sample in, the cops said to keep an eye out. It might be a large animals, if you see one give us a call.”
“Of course it’s a big animal, nothing that large could come out of a man” Mr Johnson said.
I had to look. Yup, it was big. I felt a perverse sense of pride that my baby could cause such a ruckus.
“That’s pretty big Mr Johnson” I said, and just walked back to my house.
BarBarSeven

I have one. But won’t go into the ugly detail, but will provide the backstory.

Okay, so from about January 2001 to November 2011 I worked mainly as a “self-employed” web developer. It sucked. I will never do that again. I had all the freedom to keep my own hours, but that was countered by the intense demands of clients that would keep me up at all hours. I mean, who cares right? I work my own hours so I can sleep whenever I want to right? So I did that.

Soon my sleep schedule became semi nocturnal at best. It was a slow process, but by body adjusted. I mean, 10 years is a long time right?

So anyway, flash forward to November 2011 I get a chance at a full-time, real-world 9-5 job again. FINALLY!!! I am psyched. I am nervous about the interviews & screenings, but even more nervous about shifting my sleep schedule back. I literally didn’t know if I could do it. I mean, if I had to take client meetings when I was freelancing, it wouldn’t be a big deal if I showed up groggy since that was expected. And since meetings were only 1 or 2 hours long, I could force myself up, show up at the meeting & then go home and crash. Can’t do that when I have to work 9-5.

Anyway, my body is slowly getting used to normal hours again. It was a painful process & my first week of work was a dizzy mess to be honest with you. But soon, I got back to normalize…

You see, the first thing I noticed when I started to notice when I went back to 9-5 was my sensitivity to sunlight. It was nuts! It was like I was a vampire trying to get used to sun in my eyes at 9:00am. My body clearly was starved for it, but it was in shock as well.

During that period, the constipation came. Big time.

I don’t know what caused it. The change in hours? The melatonin levels shifting due to sunlight? A combo of that all? But whatever, I was seriously constipated by the second week.

So after downing every tea combo that used to help me in the past and failing miserably, I turned to good old psyllium husk powder. Hadn’t taken that stuff since I was a teenager—in my 40s now—and was going through some family nonsense that make my stomach need that stuff. But now I needed it.

Took one huge glass of the stuff mixed with water after work. Had a meal. Took another huge glass after that meal and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up earlier than expected but clearly needed to hit the bathroom.

Won’t go into the visuals, but I do not think I have ever had a more solid, darker and bowl-filling turd come out of me in my life. To say it felt like a relief was an understatement. It’t like I got rid of an alien visitor. I felt relieved, color came back to my skin & could actually press my stomach in again.

Been reading up on diet and work schedules and am fairly convinced the shift in my finally getting regular sunlight in the morning after 10 years of not combined with the melatonin adjustment was the cause of the initial constipation.

But wow. I do not want to ever feel that way again. If I somehow have to be freelance again, I will never ever work outside of 9-5 hours in any way/shape/form ever. Night shifts will kill you and screw up your guts.
- SomeGuyNamedMark
  
  Since we are sharing here in SA (Shitters Anonymous) I’ll toss in a quicky.
  
  I was on my honeymoon and we decided to mix some backpacking with indulgent B&B stays in Washington state. Our last day out I tried to make a relatively fancy camping breakfast for her by including dehydrated eggs.
  
  The eggs tasted fine and all but I would later wonder if they got fully rehydrated or digested because I started to turn into a human Mt St Helens complete with fumes that would’ve made Dante retreat from hell. This not only lasted the entire car trip to the airport with my new wife threatening divorce but the plane ride home. I was on the plane clutching my abdomen wishing they offered colonics on flights while everyone around me desperately turned on their vents as high as possible.
  
  I still feel sorry for my fellow passengers and haven’t touched dehydrated eggs since.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    They’re just basically sulfur powder.
Recluse

Doesn’t anyone remember a very early podcast called “The Daily Download”? If I recall correctly, it originated when its creator noticed that podcasts on all manner of crazy topics were popping up and thought idly “I could probably podcast my dumps”.

Which, indeed he did. They were quite entertaining.

Seems to be a link extant, but I cannot currently access it from behind my work firewall: http://www.apeboymonkeygirl.com
relawson

You know why pitching a huge loaf feels so good, right?

Prostate.
Craig Kaplan

Regarding the feeling of “bathing in a golden light of goodness”, I’m surprised that the term “poophoria” hasn’t come up here or in the Reddit thread. As I recall, there’s even some physiological basis for poophoria. Look it up, and you’re welcome.
http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z3RmrKnnLk
ElfSternberg

Good grief. So we’ve all become our grandparents: we’re now all of the age where “a good bowel movement” is the best part of our day?
elchip

On the flip side, kinda: I had been having seriously messed up digestion for a long, long time from multiple GI infections acquired while traveling. Basically, taking a normal shit seemed impossible, and everything either way too soft or just liquid. Black and tarry. Depressing, it was.

When I finally got the proper antibiotic to deal with everything, it all turned around. Within the space of 48 hours I was taking normal brown shits again. Nothing in my life has given me this much joy, nothing. The infections have been gone for over six months and I still feel happy after every normal shit.
Just wanted to share.
http://www.xradiograph.com/ OtherMichael

The Giant Colon at the Mutter Museum is not to be missed.
http://profiles.google.com/kevin.liske Kevin Liske

Damn you Doctorow! I have wasted a morning reading about shit and trying not to laugh too loudly!
DiabloD3

We need Gilbert Gottfried to read the quoted part.
skeptacally

You know, as soon as you include the sentence “I beg you not to click the link…” people are going to click the link.

Put me right off my lunch, I tell you.
- Donald Petersen
  
  Be more respectful toward those who ain’t too proud to beg, and the universe may reward you, if only by not punishing you with hi-res closeups of piles of shit.
redstarr

The folks my mother used to work with went through a phase where they were sending each other photos with their phones of their poops with captions naming them. One day, she checked her phone in front of me,and said ever so casually “Nevermind. Just a picture of some shit a girl from work sent me.” . I was curious what the “shit” in the pic was, assuming “some shit” meant “some stuff” or “some thing” rather than literally feces. She laughed and handed me her phone, knowing full well what I was about to see, with a “Well, you asked for it. I told you.”. I should have known better at that point, but I took the phone anyway and was faced with the long partially coiled turd proudly labeled “The Cobra”. While that game was being played, I feared opening any forwarded messages from her, worried that she thought I might want to be included in the game.
http://constipanimated.tumblr.com/ Greg

Just like Rome Sweet Rome, this Reddit thread has sparked a bidding war amongst the Hollywood studios. Unidentified sources tell me tomorrow’s Daily Variety will break the story that Universal has optioned DEATH CRAP. Brett Ratner is attached to direct.
http://www.batshite.com/royalflush Scott Bartlett

I feel like I’m witnessing an important moment in internet history.
- Bad Juju
  
  I feel like I walked into an alt.tasteless thread from the grand old days of 1993.
http://expatriato.blogspot.com/ Muscato

I’m late to the party, and it’s breaking my heart because, boy, do I have a tale to tell. Let the words Ghana, upcountry, rice balls, and off canned mackerel give you likely (more than enough of) the gist…