An Onerous Oeuvre

"You can't write anything longer than it takes your average person to take an average crap."  - Jeff Goldblum's character in The Big Chill explaining the editorial policy at People magazine.

Throughout my life, words have been my milieu. I still enjoy perusing a dictionary, or a thesaurus just for fun. If forced to choose a favorite book, my choice would be the Oxford English Dictionary. It's not just definitions, but the etymology, synomyms, antonyms, homonyms...all at your fingertips.

The act of writing anything of substance eludes me. Attempts at poetry or songwriting yield pretentious, heavy-handed bupkis. Creative writing of length withers on the vine; the fruit of my pen sere and juiceless. However, I modestly admit that some of my musings and doggerel has been of merit. Perhaps, my writing talent lasts as long as it takes to evacuate fecal matter.

The question now posed, "How long is that?" In the wild, animals can evacuate quickly, as fast as 12 seconds. Medical science attributes this to a defensive mechanism. That moment of relief can cause a lapse of awareness to the prey giving an advantage to the predator. I believe a vestige of this mechanism personifies itself in humans when port-o-potties are involved. Things always seem to move faster in those situations.


Being unique individuals, the time it takes to lighten the load can vary from person to person. Other factors...diet, stress, exercise, medications, the length of a specific news article, etc.... come into play. Perhaps I should conduct research on the topic.

That leads to the question as to what type of methodology should I employ? Descriptive, experimental, ex post facto? One thing I do know is that I will forego any content analysis.

Of course research does require extensive interviewing. The being said, I believe I should eschew
going into public restrooms with a stopwatch while announcing, "Okay guys, show me what you got!" as ever BB

"I did all the poops...because poop's funny." -  Danny DeVito as Frank Reynolds in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia