Apparently a number of people are employed in figuring out how to make toilet paper perform better in the bathroom. I really prefer my toilet paper to be more inert. I don’t want to think it’s doing anything behind my back, at least nothing I’m not personally doing with it behind my back. But we’re stuck with performing toilet paper now. We’re in the heyday of fancy tissue manufacture. The stuff is definitely on a roll.
It all seems a little precious. After all, humans have had a million years of evolution and didn’t even bother with toilet paper until a hundred or so years ago. There wasn’t paper of any kind for a lot of that time. Early paper would be your papyrus, but as far as we know no one used it as a butt wipe. It was not in great supply, which is why we used to have palimpsests, wherein an old written-on piece of papyrus was scrubbed clean for re-use, and I’d venture to say there never would have been a good market for palimpsest toilet paper. TP is a one-and-done kind of product.
Still, Marketing has insisted we upgrade our toilet paper experience, and has gone to considerable lengths to develop features that might give the product a commercial edge. Charmin, for example, has invested a not-piddling amount of research and development into its new scallop-edge perforations, designed to give you a clean tear every time, so you no longer need to suffer the horror of uneven edges. The straight-edge perforations we’ve all become accustomed to don’t tear as neatly because of the angles at which we come at the problem. Apparently most of us can’t be arsed to take a dab of care in tearing off TP, even though we’re just sitting there.
When I’m bored I like to imagine explaining all this to the fellow a couple hundred years ago who cleaned his butt with a corn cob.
It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it? I mean, when I encounter those toilet paper dispensers in the pit toilets in wilderness areas, the kind that will not give you more than two squares at a pull before snapping back, and that feels like slick parchment paper, I am not primed to expect a delightful experience, and frankly I’m pumped there’s any toilet paper at all, never a guarantee in those situations.
Charmin, of course, is the worst offender of several brands of toilet paper whose super softness owes to its use of virgin wood. I don’t know. I don’t have hemorrhoids, but even so I’d like to think that if I were given the choice of asswipes with angel-soft plushness or an intact old-growth forest, I’d come down on the side of leaving the giants alone to sequester carbon, clean air, and house birds and bugs and critters. I am so accustomed to my recycled-paper or bamboo TP that I don’t even like the soft TP I occasionally encounter in people’s houses. It feels icky, and also leaves butt crumble. Next thing they’ll manufacture secondary after-wipes to take care of the butt crumble. They’ll design double-roll dispensers and market it as Fluff ’n’ Buff.
The Trump administration, however, has caught wind of the move toward bamboo and other more sustainable toilet paper. In order to prop up the timber industry that has been treated so unfairly, they are now mandating standards ensuring a percentage of each roll of TP be made using giant redwoods and European mink fur. As the press secretary has pointed out, developing a TP market using fur from the 5,000 remaining European minks in the wild will lead to more protections for its habitat. You know, probably. Plus, they’re in Russia and we’re not putting tariffs on Russia.
Mr. Trump is said to be interested in soft toilet tissue on a personal level, and aides reveal he has inquired into having top-secret documents made out of the same materials, in case that’s all that’s at hand in the golden bathroom.
I don’t want thoughts of Trump anywhere near my TP preferences. We’ve been on board with Who Gives since the very beginning of their marketing campaign. It works, the company works, the wrappers are bright- it’s all good. https://ctrk.klclick.com/l/01JVSRZ4HYDWBY5DX57W4JJGZZ_6
On the other hand, it’s hard *not* to think of the current administration while getting rid of shit.
Okay, I’m in. I’ve just subscribed to a bi-monthly delivery of TP. We’ll see how we go (to use a Murr turn of phrase)!
A box lasts me most of the year. I am either naturally clean or I have low hygiene standards.
I’d expect nothing more from the orange asswipe. Thanks for the info Murr and Vicki. Time to review my paper preferences.
They’ve got bamboo and recycled TP at WGAC. I like the recycled. Don’t think about it too hard though.
With Trump as president, and some of the “mandates” he’s already tried to bring about, I never know when you’re being darkly whimsical or if it’s the truth. I think that says more about him than it does about me, because usually I understand irony and sarcasm. With him, all bets are off. He’s already been going on and on about water pressure in conjunction with showerheads and toilets. So TP would not surprise me.
Good god, how are we going to get through four years of this shit? I’m fucking tired already.
I’m with Mimi, I’m fucking wiped. (No pun intended!)
It’s true. He’s made hyperbole history.
Hey Murr: We already have secondary wipes to take care of butt crumble (or heinie chips as my college roommate referred to them. They’re called baby wipes and my boss, his wife (who apparently sometimes cleans the shop bathroom on the weekend) and I have had several fights over the supposedly flushable variety. They assumed since the sheets I brought in were labeled as flushable that I was flushing them. No. And they thought I needed to be told twice not to flush them. No, I heard you the first time. They really don’t like to hear that.
Decades ago when I attended Bible college, the powers that be thought that toilet paper apparently made from newsprint was important for aspiring missionaries and pastors to use. I guess we were all supposed to develop hemorrhoids as the thorn in the side or ass crack as it were to develop character.
The more extreme cults used burlap. And yeah–flushable wipes are flushable in the same way raincoats are flushable. I mean, you CAN.
I’ll deal with whatever type of paper is provided as long as it is loaded properly on the roll, which is *clearly* having the end over the top.
That is the way the patent illustration indicates.
You went there, huh?
Unless you have a cat.
Years ago, yes
A creative and entertaining post, as usual.
As a retired forest ecology professor, however, I feel compelled to add a comment about the “super softness owes to its use of virgin wood” and the leap to “old-growth forests” being cut down for toilet paper. “Virgin” in the case of paper making just means from wood chips (vs recycled paper), not virgin (not previously cut) forest. Most of the softness factor comes from how they process the wood fiber, how they create the multi-ply sheets, and from the hardwood content. Typical toilet paper is 70% hardwood, 30% softwood. Ironically, so-called “hardwoods” (aspen, poplar, maple) give softer fibers than “softwoods” (conifers, like pine, Douglas-fir, hemlock, etc.). Much of the raw material for toilet paper and tissues is from plantation grown hybrid poplars (fast growth, white fibers needing less bleaching…).
Nobody cuts down old-growth to make toilet paper, but that doesn’t mean some old-growth wood doesn’t end up in TP. Every tree has some less valuable wood in it (the branchy top, a fast-growing knotty core…), so after high value wood is milled from an old tree (e.g. clear, knot-free wood with tight grain for interior trim, cabinetry, guitar tops…) the crappy bits are chipped up for paper or composite products.
Anyway, a bit late to the party with this but hopefully it gets a view or two.
Thank you for this information! I feel much less guilty now every time I wipe my butt.
I’m honestly glad I came back to check for more comments. Good information is always an aid to getting through life.
Murr’s writing can be so compelling: I googled “toilet paper standards mandate virgin trees” because the scenario she painted was just ridiculous enough to be fact in this current shit show.
Thank you—yes, it is getting harder to know what is legit anymore.
Thanks for the comment! I admit to not being up on things and always like to stand corrected (except by nincompoops). Now please make it so my high dudgeon is appropriate.
I always wanted to know: Where on the body is my high dudgeon? And where is my low?
Will, thank you for that information. Very informative!
Thanks!
(Scintillating topic as usual.)
Years ago when we lived in Zimbabwe, the TP contained bits of actual unprocessed wood like splinters and twigs. It was referred to as “John Wayne TP” because it was “rough and tough and didn’t no shit offa nobody.”
I remember that line. But actual TWIGS?
Here in Australia baby wipes are labelled “do not flush”. Who remembers when toilet paper came in pretty colours?
Oddly, here baby wipes are also labeled “do not flush” and yet wipes for adults are labeled “flushable.” Something seems kinky here.
I don’t know nuttin’ about all that, but I assume all wipes should not be flushed. C’mon, people. Get some John Wayne toilet paper and rough yourself up. We need callused heinies.
The Japanese figured it out more than 50 years ago with the squirter wipers bunghole system, which are available in the low budget models, cold water, for under $50. No more toilet paper. No more dingleberries and no more trees.
Now if they made it recirculating cold water…wait…no…
I love the name “squirter wipers bunghole system” — I’m sure that would sell like hotcakes!