Walking home from that new Thai restaurant that just opened in town you suddenly feel
that dreaded twist in your stomach, the universal sign that a monstrosity of a poop is on its
way, and it’s not the kind of poop you can hold in.
Why oh why did you ask for extra chilis in that Tom Yam spicy soup?
You run so fast to your house that if you’d have been seen you might have been picked
for the U.S. Olympic sprinting team.
You almost lose your stash at the door, now gripping those cheeks together with such force
you could crush a walnut between them.
Ohhhhh, what a relief as your load hits the pool and decorates that pristine ceramic receptacle.
Now at ease you pull out your phone and hit the Infographics Show, since there’s nothing
better than animated fact-filled fun in the midst of post-poop ecstasy.
Something then happens to you that is arguably one of humanity’s worst fears; something
so bad you’d spend a week stepping on Legos to prevent it happening.
You went to flush your giant load of spicy detritus down that hallowed hole and in doing
so your brand new iPhone slipped out of your hands and went with it.
That’s a thousand dollar poo you just took, and suddenly you’re not so concerned about
that ring of fire under your shorts.
Maybe it didn’t go down too far, you muse, but before you investigate you have to clean
your Jackson Pollock-esque artwork off the porcelain walls.
First you look around for some rubber gloves and any bottle that has a skull and crossbones
on the label.
Ok, you say to yourself, you can do this, others have, so you can do it too.
The cleaning then commences.
Nothing…you reach inside that mysterious hole and you find nothing.
Your iPhone must have set sail, embarked on an exciting adventure into the underworld,
only you have no idea where that underworld leads.
For you the toilet is merely a bowl and once you’ve filled and flushed you’ve never
thought much about the rest of the operation.
For a second you feel a little bit guilty, slightly ignorant.
It suddenly hits you that that poop of yours, those thousands of poops you’ve done from
school to the workplace to the home, have been taken care of in your absence.
Philosophically you muse, there’s another universe out there, dedicated to deal with
your dumps.
You also want that iPhone back.
You’re pretty sure that for $1,000 bucks it’s gotta be poop-proof.
If Steve Jobs were alive today he’d definitely have made all devices poop friendly.
So, how to follow the phone?
That’s difficult given that you can’t exactly get down that hole.
Ok, so that guy in the movie “Trainspotting” did it, but that was just a movie… the scene
was surreal, it was symbolic, not real life.
Then it hits you.
If they can do that in the movies then The Infographics Show can do it in an animation.
Thankfully you have the phone number of the writer writing this script.
You go get your old phone and call him.
The conversation goes like this: Hi, Infographics writer, I’m a guy in one
of your plots and I’m wondering if you can make me really small so I can go retrieve
an expensive smartphone from the toilet and by doing so explain to viewers what happens
to poop.
Sure, I can do that for you buddy.
It’ll be easy.
In writing we call something like this deus ex machina.
It’s a plot device when something totally unexpected or unbelievable happens usually
to help the protagonist, in this case, you.
Thanks so much.
By the way, can you do a face reveal?
Good luck!
Byeeee.
All of a sudden you’re just a few inches tall, but thankfully during that deus ex machina
the Infographics show writer has created a stairway of Lego bricks that lead to the edge
of the toilet seat.
At the bottom of the stairs there is a sign and it reads, “Stairway to Heaven ” You
guess that smiley face is a bit sinister, and you’re pretty sure that if there’s
anything that glitters down there it’s likely only toxic algae.
You climb to the top and there waiting for you is a miniature Scuba diving kit and so
you slip into that.
Ok, you think, time to take the plunge.
Three, two, one, jump…
You’re now submerged in the water.
Soon you find yourself inside something called a sewerage pipe and you swim with this downhill.
At the start visibility is fine, but then you find that this one pipe joins an even
bigger pipe.
Suddenly your world turns darker, and while you have a head lamp on, there’s just so
much rubbish in front of you.
It’s like navigating a meteorite storm except the stones are actually poop.
It’s a pooperite storm, and it’s not pleasant.
You can see that this big pipe is connected to all the pipes on the street, and from those
pipes you see thick brown water emerging mixed with tissue paper, that now wet, kind of looks
like translucent stained-brown jellyfish.
Some of it wraps around your mask and you wonder which neighbor’s excrement you’ve
just got intimate with.
You are startled because this large pipe could fit a bus inside of it.
It’s certainly a tunnel of gloom, a Hades of excrement and hair and God knows what else.
When you look up to the side you see rats scurrying around, nibbling on bits of food
waste that cling to the filthy walls.
How on Earth will you find your iPhone in all of this?
You daren’t even go close to the side of the tunnel where a lot of waste collects,
since those rats could rip off your tiny head in an instant.
Maybe this mission wasn’t worth a thousand bucks, you think, but there’s no going back
now.
Sewers are like rivers, they flow one way, and swimming against a sea of poo would be
unthinkable, if not impossible.
There’s no way you’re going to take that mask off because you learned in school that
in this sewage water there are parasites, as well as all kinds of bacteria and viruses.
For a small man like yourself, this might be the most dangerous place on Earth.
The next words that flash through your mind are, “eat your heart out Bear Grylls.”
Would he do the sewer challenge?
Not likely.
You can just imagine him surviving on sandwiches…that’s poop between two slices of wet tissue.
The entree of course is cold poop soup.
You keep swimming in this putrid water, trying hard not to get near the bottom.
The reason for this is, what lies at the bottom is a world of thick poop.
There’s a sign on the wall with a picture of this mess and the words, “sewer sludge”.
Get stuck in the sludge and your cause of death will be “suffocation by poop.”
That’s not the way you want to go.
You’re going to follow the water since you’re sure your phone has been taken with it.
But as you’re swimming down that tunnel you meet another guy that has also been shrunken
by the writer to make this show make sense, since at the start the writer said you knew
nothing about sewerage systems.
He takes off his mask and tells you that poop sludge and whatever else is in it, doesn’t
just stay there.
That would be dangerous.
It would become very toxic.
He tells you if you want to know just how bad untreated poop sludge can get, just read
about the “Great Stink” in London in 1858.
This little guy explains to you that there's something called the “activated sludge process”,
which is basically a process in which microorganisms feed on the organic compound rich material,
namely lots of people’s poop.
Then it’s given more oxygen in what’s called a mechanical aeration process and the
outcome should be cleaner liquid.
What’s left can be dried out, and that dry stuff can be used as fertilizer.
He tells you, “What goes in, comes out, but in a way, goes in again.”
For a second you wonder if that makes you a “Coprophiliac” (poop-eater), but you
quickly brush that thought away.
The small guy notices your concerned expression and says smiling, “Waste not, want not.”
“Anyway,” you say, “I have to get that phone…Thanks for the education…and I promise
to check out the Great Stink just as soon as I’m big again.”
You swim and swim past more poop… past more rats… past rats covered in poop…past poop
covered in rats….
past people’s poop covered in other people’s poop.
Tissues, hairs, even a candy wrapper at one point gets stuck on your mask.
A few seconds later and a used opened diaper covers your face like that scene out of Alien.
This is nothing like that time you Scuba dived in the Maldives.
But then suddenly this dark world opens out into a much more pleasant looking pool of
water, and you see a sign that reads, “Sewage Treatment Plant.”
You manage to climb to the side of this pool and since you’re so small no one can see
you.
You witness chemicals being added to the water, and you guess this is the treatment part.
You hear two guys talking, and it looks like it’s one of the bosses explaining to a new
kid just how it all works.
He says that it takes days to clean the water, and after that, it might be released into
rivers or oceans, but you have got to be really careful because if it’s not cleaned properly
it can pollute those rivers and oceans.
The guy says this has happened before, many times.
This guy explains that perfect cleaning is what happens at this plant, but he said at
some other places the treated water can be used in farms or factories, while some countries
will turn that stuff into drinking water.
After what you’ve just seen in that river of refuse, that foul and infested lair where
no man should ever go, all you can do is GULP.
The first thing you’ll do when you’re big is find out where sewage is turned into
the something you later drink.
You’ve come this far and you will stop at nothing at getting back your beloved iPhone.
You’re a smart guy, and you know there must be a part of the facility where all the stuff
you shouldn’t flush, the stuff that makes it past the sludge, will collect.
And then you see it, a giant grate where a bunch of things have collected.
You put the mask back on and start swimming towards the mound of junk.
When you get there you are startled, because when you take off your mask staring right
at you is a doll’s head.
Just the head, not the body.
You start pulling items out of the pile, finding such things as a Justin Bieber action figure,
a bunch of used diapers – this makes you wretch – tons of cigarette butts, sanitary
pads, enough dental floss to wrap around a small town, lots of plastic spoons…you even
find a grill, a multicolored one, so you expect it was worn by Tekashi 6ix9ine.
In fact, there are dentures everywhere, but you’ve got a full set of teeth and you just
want that iPhone.
One thing you thought you’d find was about three million unwanted goldfish, or those
that had gone to “goldfish heaven”, but there wasn’t a fish in sight.
Finally, you see it, your iPhone, nestled between what looks like a half-eaten cat and
a gang of hypodermic syringes.
At your size, wrestling the thing out of the pile isn’t easy, but eventually you get
it to dry land.
You clean it down with some dirty tissue and then by using your feet you call the Infographics
writer again.
RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RING, RING….
You call again and again, now scared out of your wits that you’ll remain this size forever.
What you don’t know is that it’s Friday and it’s 5 pm and this Infographics Show
writer is really hungry.
His girlfriend is waving a bottle of quality wine at him and she’s getting more upset
by the minute because he’s been taking so long to write a show about…about poop of
all things.
Frankly, she’s not impressed.
So, sorry buddy, it looks like there just isn’t enough time to make you big again.
Maybe next time if I’m in the mood to employ a bit of deus ex machina I’ll change you
back.
Adios chapo.
If you thought a show on poop was a bit painful to watch then we suggest to see how painful
things can really get, so have a look at this utterly macabre video, “Most Painful Things
A Human Can Experience.”, or perhaps you’d rather check out this other video instead.
Either way, click now!