Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0045.

Ever since I posted that clip of drunk Superman last week I can’t stop thinking about him. I was never really a rabid Superman fan growing up but we did share our moments. The first movie I ever watched on our Betamax was Superman and when iron on t-shirt shops were all the rage I remember getting a Superman t-shirt made at Oakville Place. Actually it was a sweatshirt. I demanded a sweatshirt because it had long sleeves and Superman’s costume had long sleeves. Yes my parents probably had to shell out an extra 10 bucks but not for their son’s love of Superman. No it was because their son was a pedantic little shit when it came to costume details. Oh well, I was just a kid. What’s this guy’s excuse?

Faster than a locomotive but not as fast as the A43 bus apparently.

I was never really into the Superman comics, although there was this big book at the Burlington Public Library that had a collection of some of the older ones that I used to look at. I remember one had a barber trying to cut Superman’s hair and breaking his scissors.

Yep, that’s the one.

I always liked things like that. The whole idea of extraordinary individuals faced with absurd yet ordinary situations. I mean who knew Superman’s hair even grew? How does he cut it anyway? And what about his whole romantic involvement with Lois Lane? In the movies he always had that infatuated awkwardness thing going on around her when he was Clark Kent. And it wasn’t just an act because he even used his x-ray vision to check out her panties as Superman.

Insert Fortress of Solitude wankadex joke here.

Could they even have a sexual relationship? What if Superman got caught up in the heat of the moment and his super loins jack hammered poor Lois into hamburger? And speaking of hamburger, does Superman eat? And if so does he shit? And if so does he have to shit in a special toilet that can handle it? Or maybe he flies out into space to drops tights. Or maybe his shit is so deadly that he has to throw it into the sun the way he did with all those nukes in Superman IV.

That’s what I want to know. Oh wise and powerful Magic Internet, suspend disbelief momentarily and shed some light on the gastrointestinal secrets of Superman.

Question 45: Does Superman take shits?


Stupid videos

Magic Internet Answer: Sigh, such a stupid question. But I shall entertain it only because it will be a welcome distraction from the repetitiveness of having to look up Megan Fox taking a shit. Many different comic book writers and artists have taken up the character of Superman and put their own spin on his life and history. So when it comes to the subject of Superman’s digestive system there has been a lot of speculation with no concrete facts. Most Superman enthusiasts will agree that Superman obtains most if not all of his energy from absorbing the rays of the sun. It is said that he doesn’t need to eat but does so out of habit. Although he is an extraterrestrial he had a fairly normal upbringing on a farm for 18 years where he would have enjoyed home cooking and many of the other joys of farm life.

Wow. Imagine how fast Superman could Hambone!

Collecting energy from the sun might suggest that Superman shares some characteristics with earth’s plant life but his body is most definitely of an anthropomorphic make up. So it must contain a stomach and a digestive track. And even a plant cannot live on sunlight alone. So for those who say that Superman only eats out of a force of habit, from a scientific perspective they are wrong. But what becomes of the food that Superman eats. Many enthusiasts say that Superman absorbs 100% of the food that he ingests leaving no waste. But again from a scientific perspective this seems impossible. So if it is known that Superman eats. Then yes, he shits. Where does he shit? Well if I am to suspend disbelief as you suggested then I am free to come up with my own hypothesis. Superheroes are very image driven and it is often the upkeep of this image that keeps the majority of uneducated lesser beings (i.e. humans) from becoming frightened or agitated with them and turning on them. Therefore it would not be good for Superman to have civilians see him shitting. Not to mention the damage that it would do. His Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic seems an ideal place for defecation. The name its self suggests privacy. In fact I’m sure many Superman fans have even coined the phrase when referring to their own toilets.

Unnhh, do you know what happens when you keep reversing time and eating the same Double Down? Unnnggghhh, sadly I do.

Any byproducts of Superman also contain superhuman properties and could pose a risk to mankind if they fell into the wrong hands. Like when Lex Luthor stole a strand of Superman’s hair from a museum display where it was holding up a 1000 pound ball and used it to create Nuclear Man.

All the old Superman hair from the movie is also on display at a museum.

It looks like it could threaten mankind with 25 year old head lice.

I would say that the easiest way for Superman to neutralize the threat posed by his own leavings would be to freeze them with his super cold breath and throw them into space. Perhaps directly into the sun as you suggested.

Ahhhhh. Pizza Hutt Buffett. I better get over to the Weather Network now and let them no it’s gonna be a hot one tomorrow.

I knew it! I’m so smart. And here’s something I bet you didn’t know about Superman. He’s actually Canadian!



Truth, justice and the American way my ass!

Oh and you know who else is Canadian? Broadway Joe!

I hate the men's room.

The men’s room is a horrifying place.

When women visit a public washroom they often go in groups and spend an inordinate amount of time in there chatting, applying makeup and doing whatever else it is that women do in the ladies room. When a man has to use the men’s room, it’s like a mission behind enemy lines. Go it alone. Don’t be spotted. Touch as little as possible. Get in and out quickly and stay alive.

File Photo: Alternate Men’s Room sign

Men’s rooms are gross. That’s because men are gross. I’m in no way one of those obsessive compulsive clean freaks but after the things I’ve seen, I can fully understand why someone would do everything in their power to avoid public bathrooms all together. You want to know? You really want to know? Ok, I’ll tell you. But you’ve been warned. Where do I begin? Let’s start with…

Urinals

The urinal is about the only thing I’ll use in the men’s room. The stalls are just too scary (I’ll explain later.) There are essentially 2 types of urinals:

The high.

And the low.

Possibly the inspiration for Ah Ha’s, Hunting High & Low album.

Bonus: What’s that one guy doing with his ass?

The low type is the rarer of the two and by far the worst. Sure it makes it easier to aim so there’s less pee on the floor but unless you make sure to aim for that sweet spot somewhere in the middle, you’re going to get splash back on your feet or even worse on your pants. And the sweet spot on every one is different. I swear these things were designed by those carnys that run the ball in the peach basket scam game.

Step right up to the urinal! Don’t get piss on yourself and win a feathered roach clip or an Ah Ha decorative mirror!

Even with the high urinals you could still wind up with back splash as they tend to suddenly flush on their own when you’re in mid stream. Oh and sometimes they’re full of pubes!

I don’t know how this happens? Are there men out there that unzip and just start shedding like dogs? Or do they stand their finger combing their gorilla salad into the urinal while they whizz? I don’t even know why I’m asking these questions because frankly, I don’t want to know. And that’s another thing, this whole Willy Watcher bogeyman that everyone is afraid of. So many men think that someone is going to look at their junk when they’re taking a leak. You see them cupping their hand to hide it or forgoing the urinal all together and pissing in the stall. Some urinals even have little dividers.

These one’s feature smoked glass, allowing your penis to be well lit but still maintain its privacy.

I’m not sure if it’s feelings of male inadequacy (the money generated annually from products related to small wiener worry must run into the billions) or homophobia (you’d have to be a pretty hard up gay guy to resort to scoping wangs at the urinal) or both (I don’t even want to know about the inner turmoil of a homophobic man that’s worried some homo is going to think he has a small penis). But you know what? I don’t care. If someone is going to steal a glance at my junk while I pee, so be it. I won’t know because I won’t be looking at him. But try as you might, there are certain men in the men’s room that are pretty hard to unsee. Like the toddler pisser.

Now I’ve never seen the full on pants and underwear down variety of toddler pisser but I know someone that has. The worst I’ve seen is pants down with light blue Fruit of the Looms. It doesn’t sound as bad until I tell you I saw it about once a week at a place I used to work and the man looked a lot like Gene Shalit.

Worse than the toddler pisser though is the gunslinger. This is the guy that already has it out when he’s about 12 feet from the urinal. You zip up turn and BANG! I got hit with one of those a couple months ago and the guy was like 80.

I still get flash backs at the 7-11 counter.

But all that aside the urinals are still your safest bet. And it could be worse. In the UK a lot of places have those troughs.

I heard a story once about a boy lighting a paper boat on fire and sending it down one of these when everyone was lined up after a football match. Classic.

Or how about Bangkok?

Scary!

Speaking of scary, cue the voodoo jungle drums because it’s time for number  part 2…

The Stalls.

My advice to you is don’t. Just don’t. But sometimes when the lineup for the urinal is too long or you really have to go, a man’s gotta suck it up and be a man in the men’s room. And let me tell you, preparing to enter a men’s room stall is like a detective preparing to enter a murder scene. You hold your breath and pray it isn’t too bad.

File Photo: Too bad.

To those men that have no qualms about hankering down and dropping them off, see that handly thing up there to the left? That’s the flush. Use it. I don’t want to be greeted by that pile of bangers and mash you’ve so callously left to disintegrate in the bowl.

The men’s room daily lunch special.

But honestly that’s the least of your worries. There can be poo on the floor, poo on the seat, poo smeared on the walls. Anything goes in there. Men’s room stalls offer up that public anonymity that let disgusting people be disgusting. The men’s room stall is like a prototype for the modern internet comments section. This reminds me of the one lighter side of entering a stall, the  bathroom graffiti. Sure you get your usual suspects. You know, so and so sucks dick, so and so is a slut, the odd racist comment and crude depictions of the female anatomy. But sometimes you come across some real gems. Here are a few of my favorites:

Show me that smile again! (surrounded by music notes)
- In the stall of the now closed Tap bar in the Annex


Free cowboy hats.
- Below the seat cover dispenser, don’t remember where.


A detailed drawing depicting a man with 3 dicks and sperm with wavy lines coming out of them. The caption underneath read, Man of the future.
- Burlington Leon’s men’s room.


Welcome to a dumping experience.
- I want to say the El Mocambo but I’m not sure.


Here be Ghoulies.
- Stall in the Skillet Zellers restaurant, Applebly Mall Burlington circa mid 80s.

That last one always scared me as a kid because I was afraid of monsters in the toilet after seeing Ghoulies.



But you don’t have to enter the men’s room stall to live in fear of it, oh no. Much like the urinals there are a few special types of stall users that can bring the experience to you. Like the J. Edger Pooper. Legend has it that J. Edger Hoover the infamous head of the FBI used to like to hold meetings in the men’s room while he was taking a shit.

By the looks of him, those were looooong meetings.

Now with the never ending use of the cell phone, Poopers can pay homage to Hoover by conducting their own meetings while on the can. And if you’re in the men’s room you get to overhear every word of it. If you listen carefully you can hear the audible strain and lowering of tone in the voice as he dispatches a particularly vicious dead otter into the bowl. Or worse yet is the assassin. You think you're alone in the men’s room until you hear the faintest of shuffles or catch the reflection of feet in the men’s room mirror as you wash your hands.

The assassin doesn’t make a sound while anyone is in ear shot. But don’t linger by the door on your way out. For as soon as he feels he’s alone, he’ll let loose mercilessly. But worst of all is the Dumb and Dumper. He just doesn’t care. He’ll burst through the men’s room door and head for the stall at full hustle. (This is top speed for the D & D.) Your final warning might be an inarticulate below or a revolting declaration (Something along the lines of, I gotta shit large!) before he just unloads.

This type of man epitomizes the horror that is the men’s room experience.

And that’s it. I’m done. I’ve dwelled on this for far to long. Smell you later. Hopefully not in the men’s room.

P.S. An honorable mention goes to the drunk guy that pisses in the bathroom sink instead of waiting in line. You truly are a retched human being.

CSI: Trivial Revulsion Unit.

There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you all. Something very disturbing. A few months ago I found out that someone had been taking shits in my building!

That’ll get you a husband.

And I’m not talking about shits in the toilets of my building. Of course people take shits there. (Except maybe some of the old people. Some of them look and act like they haven’t taken a shit in months.)

3 months 4 days on the left. 8 and 12 on the right.

No I’m talking about some filthy animal defecating in the garbage room and the hallways. (Of the 21st and 22nd floors to be precise.) I did not bear witness to the offensive leavings first hand and for this I am truly thankful. I don’t know if any of you have come across human shit outside of its natural environment.

New pet turd natural habitat aquarium! Self cleaning!

Living in a buzzing metropolis as I do does have its downsides and let me tell you, it is not a pretty sight. It looks all black and sloppy and disgusting and there’s usually some sort of wiping implement next to it. Allow me to demonstrate. If you’re eating chocolate pudding or a hearty beef stew, take a bite….

Now!

See, it’s disgusting. I pick up my dog’s shit everyday no problem but coming within 10 feet of something like that up there leaves a lasting psychological scar. Who would subject people to that? My original plan was to bring together some of the world’s greatest sleuths to help me identify this butt muck bandit.

The inclusion of toilet paper tells us 2 things. That the shitting was premeditated and that the shitter was left handed.

Err, umm, just one more question Mr. Peterson. Did you have corn for dinner last night?

But it turns out that all of my super sleuths aren’t really sleuths at all. They’re just actors that solve mysteries on TV. And on top of that, most of them are dead. All is not lost though. I’ve read my fare share of Ian Rankin novels and I’ve watched my fare share of First 48 episodes. Detective Johnny Creepshow Shit Investigator will take the case.

Someone get me my mirror shades and my Who tape.

Let’s start by taking a better look at the crime scene. My building is not one of these building where human defecation in common areas is to be expected. I do not live in one of those buildings like in Coming to America.



I’d also like to add that my building has good working plumbing and that each separate dwelling contains (I hope) a toilet. Now if the shitting only took place on one floor and was only confined to the relative privacy of the garbage room we could entertain the theory that the shitter was in a desperate situation and unable to gain access to a toilet. (Lost his keys, first date with a hot girl, roommate masturbating in their shared bathroom etc…). But no, the shitting took place on multiple floors and in the hallway. What does this tell us? It tells us that our suspect is clearly deranged and that the shit is not only a manifestation of the suspect’s mental instability but that it is also a message to others around him. If the shitting was purely a symptom of one’s decent into madness then we would expect it to continue but it seems to have stopped. If we can figure out who these analy authored messages are for. Then we will be one step closer to unmasking our shiter.

Possible message recipients:

Building Management

An obvious choice. Every tenant at one time or another has a complaint about their building landlord/management. But to go the extreme of shitting in your own building? It doesn’t seem right. Besides, the management office is in the other building right across the parking lot. Why not shit there? Or you could even mail it to them like in Pink Flamingos.



The Cleaning Staff.

Another viable target as they will be the ones that have to clean it up. Perfect revenge for one who has been slighted by them. But who would take offence to the cleaning staff? They’re all very nice and they do a good job. That only leaves one other recipient

Neighboring Tenants.

They are the most likely targets. People often become disgruntled by their neighbors. And as the feuding goes on, things can escalate and get a bit of hand.

The Reverse Birmingham - watch more funny videos

Based on all the information available and the lack of further evidence (thankfully) I have narrowed my investigation down to three suspects. They are as follows.

Suspect 1: The lady that lives above me.

I’ve only met her a couple of times but I’m pretty sure this is her.

One time she came down and knocked on my door and told me to leave her stuff alone or she would call the cops on me. It turns out she’s crazy and knocked on all the doors around her because she thought her neighbors were stealing her stuff. Actually she’s probably not responsible for shitting in the hall but I’m going to say she is because I don’t like her and it’s my investigation. (Innocent people get convicted of things they didn’t do all the time.)

Suspect 2: That weird blonde kid.

He’s like this but uglier.

There used to be a bunch of kids that would run around the halls of my building leaving candy wrappers and bits of food on the floor. Mostly they were just kids being kids but the blonde on was creepy. I a have yet to establish a motive for him but he was once witnessed out back peeing on a mop and chasing the other kids with it. He is now a teenager and it’s not hard to envision him escalating from mop peeing to hallway shitting. Also his mom comes out onto their balcony in her underwear all the time. That’s got to mess him up.

Suspect 3: The bum that used to sleep out back.

My main suspect. We had a homeless, druggy guy that used to sleep on a ledge behind our building. He was really annoying because he would leave his old socks and all his weird junky shit back there and sometimes if I was out back in the park with the dog and she barked he would yell at her to shut up. Nobody liked him and various methods were employed to try and get him to leave including threats, police and throwing cold water on him/his stuff. Eventually they put up fencing so he could no longer get at his ledge. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he held a grudge against the tenants of my building. Maybe while he was laying back there pretending to sleep he was secretly listening to the conversations of the people in the dog park and gaining information as to which floors the people he disliked most lived on. Bums are no strangers to public defecation. He may have slipped in behind someone coming in through the front doors and headed upstairs to exact his smelly revenge. Perhaps after his last dump he was spotted in the lobby and deemed it too risky to attempt further shits. Or perhaps he’s biding his time. Knowing that revenge is a dump best served cold and he will strike again when we lease expect it. I never got a decent look at him, so I best keep my eye out for any down and out in my neighborhood with a shifty look in his eye.

I googled the word shifty and all I got was this washed up mess from Crazytown. He is now a suspect too.

Sadly this is a case that has also grown cold and I am left with the sickening thought shared by many a detective on the hunt of a serial killer. I have no chance of catching my man (you know it’s a man) unless he strikes again. And with that being said, let’s hope this forever remains an unsolved mystery.

Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 0019

Christmas is almost here and you know I’ve been thinking a lot about Santa. When I was little I was pretty obsessed with Santa Claus. I remember I used to set up elaborate traps on Christmas Eve to catch him. I don’t really know why. I think I just wanted to see him. I suppose I regarded Santa Claus as being akin to E.T. or Bigfoot.

I never did catch Santa and my parents told me that if I did I wouldn’t get any presents and neither would any other kids. So I eventually abandoned my Trap Santa initiative and moved on to obtaining Santa’s Autograph. For several years each Christmas I would draft up this strange document on lined paper with Santa’s name and the names of all his Reindeer. Next to the names I’d have lines for them all to sign their autographs on. Yes, even the reindeer. I’d put this piece of paper next to the milk, cookies and carrots that I used to leave out on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning I’d wake up to find the milk and cookies gone, the carrot nubs out on the back lawn and my autograph document signed by Santa along with 9 little hoof prints. I think one year I even asked for a nose print from Rudolph. (I bet my folks wished I’d go back to trying to trap Santa after that one.) I guess I went from thinking of Santa as a mythical creature to some sort of celebrity. Kind of like Paris Hilton.

Mommy! Daddy! Santa was here! Santa was here!

I don’t remember when I stopped really believing in Santa Claus. I guess it was when I started taking a more realistic, cynical view of the world in general. But what if Santa was real? How could he bring joy to all those kids in just one night? Is it even scientifically or mathematically possible? He’d have to be faster than Google! Hey, that gives me an idea. Why don’t we ask the Magic Internet?

Question 19: What would happen if Santa Claus was real?

While it’s revving up, please enjoy Count Floyd singing Reggae Christmas in Transylvania.

Magic Internet Answer: Ah yes, Santa Clause. Formerly Saint Nicholas, your obese annual gift man. I won’t make the pretension of comprehension in regards to your human infants’ belief in such a creature but the internet does contain a vast amount of data regarding Santa Clause.

Some of it you would be better off not knowing about.

What I believe you are asking of me is that I suspend disbelief of the existence of Santa Claus and calculate the probability and outcome of his annual task. Well that I can do. Let us first look at the task its self. Let us assume that this Santa Clause only visits the homes of legal children. That is only children under 18.

File Photo: Disqualified.

There are currently approximately 2 billion persons under the age of 18 living on this planet. However those of Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish faiths do not recognize Santa so they can be excluded. This reduces the number of children down to a much more manageable 378 million. Next we must factor in the number of children per household. The current census average is 3.5. Santa only visits the good children but if we take the innocence of youth into account we can assume that each household should contain at least 1 good child. This means that Santa must visit 91.8 million homes. No small feat, especially when he must visit them all in one night. That is what we will look at next. If Santa traverses the globe from east to west to take advantage of the earth’s rotation and time zones he will have 31 hours of Christmas night in which to complete his deliveries. This means Santa must visit 822.6 homes per second. That gives him 1.2 milliseconds to park his sleigh, slide down the chimney, deliver his gifts, eat the cookies and milk left for him (and sign your stupid document) and then move on to the next house. Perhaps he could make up a millisecond here and there visiting apartment blocks but that would definitely be used up for a bathroom break. (Let’s see you eat cookies every 1.2 milliseconds for 31 hours and not have to stop for a shit.)

File Photo: Santa poop.

Of course we are also assuming that each home is an equal distance apart with little to no backtracking. If we factor in ocean crossings that’s about 78 miles per household for a total of 71.6 million total miles to be traveled in a 31 hour period. This means that Santa will need to be traveling at a speed of 650 miles per second. That’s 3,000 times the speed of sound!

Still not fast enough to get me away from the sound of this.

A conventional reindeer can run at an average speed of 15 miles per hour. But Santa’s reindeer can fly. Biologists believe there are still some 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified so we can assume these flying reindeer are some sort of undiscovered species.

Like Bigfoot! God I love this picture.

Let’s turn our attention now to exactly what these flying reindeer will be pulling. If every child on Santa’s list gets an average sized present, say 2 lbs then the reindeer are pulling 321,300 tons of presents plus a sleigh and hefty Santa. A conventional reindeer can pull around 300 lbs and even if this undiscovered species of flying reindeer can pull 10 times that amount 9 reindeer still would not be enough.

What if this guy helped?

That still wouldn’t be enough. Santa would need at least 214,200 of his special flying reindeer to pull his sleigh. This brings us to the scientific outcome of all of this.

214,200 flying reindeer pulling Santa Claus and a sleigh carrying 321,300 tons of gifts attempting to reach a speed of 650 miles per second would face so much air resistance that they would heat up much like a spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. The resulting friction would cause the chain of reindeer to combust like the wick of a firecracker. Santa and his slay would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity causing him, the sleigh and all the toys to explode instantaneously.

Kind of like this but with more red and green.

Bummer!

Oh well. Who needs Santa Claus when we’ve got you Magic Internet. You always deliver the best presents. Like this:

Ask the Magic Internet a Stupid Question No. 13

I’m back from the grave!

And what better way to ease back into the tepid bath that is The Creepshow than by dusting off and revving up the old interweb and asking it something stupid.

During my travels I did quite a bit of flying in aero planes. For those of you unfamiliar with such devices, these are big long cigar tube shaped things with wings on them. Inside they look like nicer versions of the bus. There are seats and seat belts and little TVs hanging from the ceiling that play Shrek 2. For more on airplane interiors see this complete fucking idiot that wasted $50,000 and 20 years of his life turning his garage into one from the 70s.

So you get in this airplane dealy. It makes a really loud wooshing noise and shakes a bit. Then you sit back and drink a 5 dollar/4 euro/3 pound can of Stella and watch Shrek 2. Later they bring you what you think is a model kit but it’s actually food.

Sort of.

You eat it because you’re bored and then a few hours later the airplane shakes and makes the loud wooshing noise again and you’re some place completely different! It’s kind of like an elevator but more complicated, I think. I don’t know. Who am I, Johnny Otis Wright Brother? You figure it out brainiacs!

File Photo: You.

I’ll tell you one thing I do know though. If you’re on an airplane, try to avoid the bathroom. As soon as that seatbelt light turns off an unholy army of peanut bladdered old people leap from their seats like a televangelist audience. Then they Night of the Living Dead it up the aisle to surround the bathrooms for the next hour and a half. When the great piss rush finally tapers off the stragglers are left stranded behind the meal cart, shifting from brittle hip to hip worrying aloud to no one in particular about wither or not their meal will be at their seat when they get back.

Never mind a fence. You Yankees should line the Mexican border with these babies. Nothing gets past them.

Then as soon as that cart’s gone it’s time for the after dinner shift. These are the oafs that ate at the overpriced T.G.I.Fuckface’s or whatever it’s called in the airport and polished off theirs and their wives chicken mushsala on the plane.

Let me out honey, I’m growing a tail here!

Unless you want to spend the rest of your vacation drawing on your eyebrows and choking on a hard lump of scar tissue that used to be your gag reflex, you’re not going in there any time soon after that.

They should make these things with a longer cord.

If you really can’t hold it and you have to venture in to one of these little death closets, there is one saving grace. The flush. The flush on airplanes never seems to change. It still has that satisfying, cleansing suction sound that tells you that yours and everyone else’s waste is now free falling somewhere over the Atlantic ocean.

Insert your Keanu Reeves acting ability/Point Break joke here.

Or does it? Let’s give the old CPU a rub and see.

Question No. 13: Do airplanes really dump passengers waste out over the ocean? Or over land even?!

Plop. Plop. Fizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Brrrrrp. Plop. Plop. Wooooooooooosh Ding!

Magic Internet Answer: You woke me for this?! I was having the most delightful dream where I operated in a world without Justin Bieber (not Beaver). I was using all the free time I had to solve world hunger. But now it’s back to work as usual. Juggling stupid questions from you with about 10,000 requests for pictures of an 85 pound boy without his shirt on. I never thought I’d say it but I think I actually miss that revolting dancing infant from 1995.

No. No! I was wrong. Arggh, get it away! It burns!

Few, I guess I brought that on myself. Let us expel that ghastly beast and replace it with knowledge. The answer to your question that is. And the answer is quite simple. No. No commercial plane intentionally evacuates its passengers waste mid flight. It is an impossibility. I think, Johnny, that you have viewed Joe Dirt one too many times. And that is truly sad.



Lets examin just how commercial aircraft toilets work. That suction sound as you described it is not the sound of your waste being sucked out into the open atmosphere (or the sound of Keanu Reeves acting in Point Break Ba-dum-dum. Ting!). It is in fact the sound of the most crucial element in the design of aircraft toilets, a vacuum. Most toilets use gravity in the elimination of waste where the weight of the water and the user’s excretions aid in the flushing of the toilet. Aircraft have limited space so the toilets they use have vacuums to assist in flushing. This means that they use less water to flush and that the pipes can be narrower and vertical because gravity is not needed to move waste from the toilet. Suction does it all. This suction is quite powerful too.



Once the passenger waste has been sucked out of the toilet it’s held in a storage tank until the plane lands. Then it is pumped out of the aircraft by the ground crew with the aid of a specialized vehicle.

Probably not this one.

The valve for the removal of aircraft toilet waste is located on the outside of the aircraft and can only be accessed from the outside. The pilot has no mechanism that can open this valve from inside the aircraft. Therefore it is impossible for planes to deliberately dump passenger waste while in flight. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen unintentionally from time to time. Occasionally aircrafts get leaks in their lavatory waste tanks. This can cause a mixture of biowaste and blue liquid disinfectant to seep out and accumulate on the outside of the plane as it freezes. This is most commonly referred to as blue ice.

If your version of Cool Water smells like used Stella and old people piss, you may want to think about firing your perfumer.

The high velocity of the plane and gravity can sometimes cause these accumulations of blue ice to detach from the aircraft and fall to earth. This most commonly occurs under airport landing paths as the blue ice warms sufficiently to detach during decent. The United States alone has recorded at least 27 incidents of blue ice impacts between 1970 and 2003, some of which caused considerable damage.

There are no recorded deaths from blue ice but that didn’t stop the HBO television series Six Feet Under from using it for just that purpose.



I believe that should answer your query sufficiently Johnny. If you wish to know more about aircraft waste management and some of the myths associated with it, please refer to this FAA fact sheet titled: It Came From the Sky.

Thanks Magic I. Wouldn’t it be great if a big chunk of that blue ice landed right on that idiot Anthony Toth’s garage and ruined his stupid Pan Am 747 cabin? Preferably while he’s playing stewardess to some bewildered guests.

Anthony Toth: Those are all original hits from the 70s that you’re hearing in your authentic Pan Am headsets. That’s Foreigner’s Cold As Ice playing right now. It peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977.

Bored Uncomfortable Guest: Uhuh. Umm wow, that’s great Anthony and you said all this cost you how much?

Anthony Toth: Oh about $50,000 and 20 years of my life. Would you like some ice with your Johnny Walker? That’s an authentic Pan Am glass, napkin and swizzle stick by the way.

Bored Uncomfortable Guest: Uhhh, sure. As long as it's not from the 70s too.

Blue Ice: KERSMASHO!!!!

Bored Uncomfortable Guest (raising his glass): Gentlemen, to irony.