Smell My Finger

I've gone on record in the past that my only criterion for evaluating toilet paper is whether it's strong enough that your finger doesn't go through it. All those TV commercials that go on about how soft it is are wasted on me, and on Mrs Bison too, since her buying decision is based on "what's the cheapest 2-ply stuff in the store today?" I rolled my eyes when they started finding new ways to differentiate their product, such as "it doesn't leave little bits of white paper up your arse when you're done", and I never understood why the product was advertised with fluffy cartoon bears and kittens, unless the subliminal message was that wiping your hole on their product would be just like using the fur of one of those creatures.

Now, however, I am ready to declare a winner in the bogroll stakes - Charmin Ultra Strong gets my vote. Yes I know it has annoying cartoon bears on its commercials, but not only does it pass the finger test, it also seems to enable you to get away with substantially less product.

On an unscientific but statistically meaningful sample of recent uses I was able to achieve zero-tolerance wiping with no more than six sheets in all but one case. The exception was an eight-sheet fudgy encounter, but this would probably have required a good half-roll of certain other products, and was canceled out by a four-sheeter yesterday. This is good stuff! Normally I wouldn't subscribe to the notion that buying a more expensive but superior product gives you better value than the cheap option, especially when the product in question is only purchased to be shoved up your arse, but in this case I would recommend the product for any man reading.

Note that I said "man". One day last week I pulled six sheets off a new roll in the morning; by the next morning the bastard thing was practically fucking empty. What do women do with bog roll? Are they making papier mache hats out of it when I'm not in the house? Do they eat it as a filling but calorifically negligible mid-morning snack? Does it mysteriously migrate out of the house, like all the ballpoint pens which I bring back from hotels, and which disappear so that there's still never a pen by the phone. Ever.

I'm thinking of installing an extra bog roll holder - "His" and "Hers". On mine will be a roll of Charmin Ultra Strong. At six sheets a day I could buy a "Big" roll and it should be good for about a month. A twelve roll pack would last me a whole year. Even allowing for occasional bouts of dysentery I should be able to buy a few jumbo packs of twenty four and have them last me until my fifties. Anything longer than that would be pointless - I might be in Depends by then. On the other bog roll holder would be "Women's Special Roll", i.e. the cheapest most miserable shit that money can buy, which can be wound round your entire hand three times before use. I expect this roll will need replacing daily. There's no point putting the good stuff out because it makes no difference whether it's as thin as tissue paper or thick like a blanket - they'll still yank off thirty sheets. If you really did use kittens to wipe your arse they'd need a whole basket of them every morning. In fact, they'd probably want something larger, like a tiger.

On a not-entirely unrelated note, just over a year ago I stayed at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, the one that was just attacked.



My abiding memory, other than the incident with the pigeons, the midnight Muslim festival and the man who offered us a hooker when we arrived at the hotel, was a particularly violent spicy chicken dish that made repeated assaults on my sphincter one night. Charmin Ultra Strong was made for such occasions. Of course, my evening wasn't interrupted by gunfire and the sound of lunatic Muslim extremists coming to my room to kill me. I don't think they make a roll strong enough for that...

[By the way, I apologize for the title, but Mrs Bison thought it was funny so what could I do?]


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison