Toilet Paper Apocalypse – A Shitty Situation. Here’s how we fix it.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues. We are in a state of uncertainty, fear and hopefully evolution. So many of us cannot believe that this has happened and those of us who anticipated it don’t feel any more comfortable with the situation. As I continue to face the reality of this crisis, I have not lost my sense of humour. In all of the challenging situations I’ve been in, humour has prevailed. Likely on my death bed, I will utter one last lame joke. Perhaps it’s a coping mechanism that I use so that I don’t have to face difficult emotions. Just kidding. Someone said that about me once as if it was a psychological problem. Luckily, I didn’t give a shit and most of this article will be about shit.

Toilet paper reveals human nature

This may be the first article that has specifically addressed the reshaping of human behaviour in response to this pandemic. In order to thrive as a species, we need to understand our own behaviour and take intellectual steps to ensure we’re not devolving. The toilet paper drought has ravaged countries around the world. Primarily first world countries that use toilet paper, just like mine. It’s important to address the theory of why this is occurring and discuss a solution to the problem that we have yet to acknowledge. It’s a shitty problem but we’re not going to let it clog us up.

Repatriation reality

I arrived back in Canada last Saturday; I am now seven days into my self-isolation period. Self-isolation includes my toddler, my dog and working full time from home. It also includes a lot of Facetime, over-thinking and space for my anxiety to take on new and exciting forms. I had heard about the mass hoarding, price-jacking insanity that was happening with toilet paper while I was in Mexico. I didn’t fully believe it. It was kind of like the US presidential election which I also didn’t believe was real but here we are.

Why would people be hoarding toilet paper for a pandemic of respiratory illness? It made no sense, therefore, I decided it was not real. I’ve had two people drop off groceries at my home since my repatriation into Canada. In both instances, there was no toilet paper at the grocery store. A third friend, thankfully, found toilet paper for her and her husband and rationed some to me. Her one box of shitwipe had to be rationed between four people.

Panic purchasing!

I was shocked when I discovered the apocalyptic, toilet paper drought was real. Are you serious? There really was no toilet paper? You really had to stand in a line for that one box? This is actually a Christmas gift because it’s that coveted? K. Cool. What the fuck is going on.

This shift in normal human behaviour began an odyssey of theories in my mind. I know how normal it is to panic in an emergency and make irrational choices. People who are evacuated from their homes due to wildfire or flood often show up at reception sites with items like lamps and a cup. They don’t take photo albums or passports. That’s why I made myself an evacuation list. I would be the one to bring the lamp.

Let’s get real

Let’s get this shit out in the open. No more crap. I’m going to say it like it is and then give you my personal shit theory. This is the real deal. Here we go.

There is no logical reason whatsoever for you to hoard toilet paper. In some countries, they don’t even use toilet paper. I get that you need a clean ass. I get that. Let’s keep in mind that prior to this, we’ve never run out of toilet paper as a country. I understand that there is a fear of losing everything because in a pandemic, so many people can get sick. Businesses are shutting down  and from that lens, toilet paper manufacturers could shut down as well. I see the logic behind the madness. If everything stops, does everything run out?

Choices

There are SO many alternatives if you did happen to run out of toilet paper and become completely unable to get more. I will explain these to you shortly so you can have peace of mind. You are hoarding toilet paper because you’re acting like a wild animal. No offence. I feel it too. If we take a breath and think clearly about what we need to hoard, if anything, I would assume the choice is SOAP. The very first item on the list from the world health organization about ways to prevent spreading COVID-19 is wash your hands. Wash. Be clean. Clean your goddamn hands, your house, your body and all your vector children. Soap.

Hand sanitizer is a great tool and we need to use that as well. We need to use it responsibly and again, there is no need to hoard it. Use soap as much as possible and hand sanitizer for things like door knobs, baskets at a grocery store or any other public surface. Right now, a large majority of people in Canada are working from home, off work or isolating. Keep your house clean and wash your hands with soap.

Survival, soap and shitwipe

Yeah, I know. You’re shocked right now that I freaked out about the TP thing and that you didn’t think of soap. Imagine this. You are stuck at home for one month and you’re not allowed to go anywhere. You are camping in your home with what you have and you need to use creativity, resourcefulness and intelligence to survive. You have one job; don’t get the virus. That’s your whole entire purpose as a human being for this one month we’re imagining. Don’t get the virus. It’s the one time in your life where you have zero responsibilities other than survive in your home with what you have and don’t get sick. What do you want to run out of – toilet paper or soap?

Dishes, laundry, hand washing, showering, cleaning floors, walls, doorknobs, etc. Soap. You don’t want to run out of soap. You can make soap. I bet there’s a Youtube video on it. That lovely, little Italian woman is teaching everyone to make home made noodles. She’s a hit. It’s gone viral. I’m sure making soap is out there.

Deep thoughts

If you have no toilet paper, you can use:

• Paper towel
• A sock with no match
• Coffee filters
• Cotton make up pads
• Wipes or a diaper
• Napkins.
• Q tip (especially for Ghost Shits – more later)
• Water. Here’s the clincher; the moment of epiphany!

*Perhaps this goes without saying but don’t flush the above items. Especially the sock.*

Soap box it

You don’t need just water. You need soap. If you have soap, you can clean yourself and protect yourself from the virus. If you don’t have soap, you have very few other resources that are comparable. Hand sanitizer should be used if/when you’re in a public place. Soap is cheap, it came be made at home and it is the logical, good old-fashioned way to avoid sickness. WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS.

Hand washing is at the top of the list for prevention of contracting the virus because we put our hands on our face and in our mouth so often. We touch so many things adn transmit the virus easily. Now that everyone is binge watching Netflix (probably the show Contagion) and 8 million IGTV videos, hygiene may be forgotten because you’re at home with no pants on. It is still so important to maintain protocols for stopping the spread of the virus. Hygiene still matters (the pants thing is fine).

Did you?

Did you buy soap?
Did you buy toilet paper….?
Who wants to be on my team for Survivor?

My Theory on Toilet Paper Apocalypse

As I said, I couldn’t believe the toilet paper catastrophe was real when I returned to Canada. I felt no urgency about toilet paper when I was planning my isolation period or how I was going to prepare for the pandemic. At no point did I consider a toilet paper drought or hoarding to be on my list of pandemic protocols for survival.

Let’s get into my theory because I feel almost positive it is why the toilet paper apocalypse is occurring. Here is the story.

Highlighting global crap

An outbreak starts and a few people begin to worry. It spreads quickly but not as quickly as fear. Even before the outbreak has been declared a pandemic, there is one enterprise that immediately capitalizes on it. The news. Why wouldn’t they? The news wants a story. When I left Canada, the news was primarily focused on Trump’s actions (that’s a forever thing), Iran and the US election. It was mostly conflict.

COVID-19 takes over

In Canada, we had environmental activism clashing with oil industries, sustainable development movements competing with corporate megatrons and all sorts of other serious issues; such as, winter and how annoying it is.

Suddenly, all you could find on the news was Coronavirus. Then Wuhan. Then COVID-19. And then SARS-CoV-2. Now it’s a continuous reel of negativity and death tolls. We should obviously throw in the debate over naming the virus and the racism that has suddenly plagued innocent Asian people simply because the outbreak began in China.

When was the last time you saw a conflict or act of violence on the news? It’s still happening. It’s just not as exciting a story for journalists who are  relentlessly spreading fear.

Directed perception

The news has endless catastrophic, shitty things to write about and it goes on as we speak (read…). They highlight every death; ignoring every innovation or scientific achievement to fight the virus. Netflix and the news stations obviously had a Zoom meeting to discuss the use of the word ‘Contagion’ and how to time it with the fabulously coincidental show ‘Contagion’. Let’s mix all the layers of fear together in a big fear soup and see what happens to people.

They go shit bonkers. They throw shit balls. Shit becomes the top item on everyone’s mind. Holy shit. I have to shit. What if I can’t shit. What the shit is happening. Holy crapballs.

Animal planet

At this stage of the game, we’ve got global panic. Everyone goes into fight or flight mode. All executive functioning in our brain ceases to exist and we are now primitive animals. We have no conscious awareness; fear has spread through our mind and body faster than Tik Tok spread into high schools. It’s all we can watch. Fear takes over the human psyche and we become jungle creatures.

Perhaps we could evolve ourselves a bit in this story (from the jungle creature example) and relate our behaviour to a dog or a cat. Some people are quite domesticated so they have a bit of a step up on the jungle humans, however, it doesn’t change the outcome of the shitastrophe that ensues.

Animal safety precautions

Animals always hide their waste in order to stay safe from predators. They don’t necessarily know what predator could come. Even without seeing a predator or understanding it, animals are instinctive and bury or hide their waste because they know it can be a way to track them. They could be hunted, found and killed. Hiding excrement is the norm in the animal kingdom.

Cats often bury their waste so that they don’t appear to be challenging the dominant cat. If you had a family of cats living with you and a particular cat that dominated the meowfest, the other cats would not want to insinuate that they were challenging the leader, so they bury their waste. Hide it in order to stay safe.

Ants are survivors

Ants (yes, I’m now comparing the human species to ants) carry their waste and dead away from their sand-paradise. They instinctively know that waste and deceased ants could carry disease. Ants also understand that what killed one of them may come after the rest so they carry dead little ant bodies away from their home in order to protect the rest of the ant civilians. I’m already feeling my respect level for ants lift as I write this.

That’s what happened to human beings. We lost our ability to think due to panic and became wild animals. We then began acting like wild animals and naturally, our primitive instinct kicked it and without understanding exactly what the predator was, the self-protection mechanisms kicked in and any possibility of having shit around became a life or death scenario. Hence why we’re having a toilet paper disaster.

We’re all just animals

It’s crappy because human beings aren’t intentionally acting like wild animals, however, fear has escalated to such a degree that we’ve literally lost our capacity to be conscious beings. We’re freaking the fuck out and trying to hide our waste from a predator, just like every other jungle creature on the block.

Solution

After thinking about this toilet paper situation for far too long and coming up with a list of resources should this fiasco continue, I’ve determined the best solution for people who are so terrified of a TP drought that they are hoarding it or purchasing it from the newest toilet paper Instagram sensation. If you’re acting reasonably with regards to toilet paper, this advice is not for you. This is for the hoarders who are clearly in a self-destructive panic spiral.

I’m going to introduce a few different types of shit. These categories are from a credible source.

Five types of shit

• The Power Dump
• The Tequila Shit
• The Spicy Shit
• The Coffee Crap
• The Ghost Shit

The Power Dump

This type of shit is when you really, really have to go and you shit so quickly that you don’t even need to push twice. It’s a single shit, likely in log format, and elicits a sense of deep satisfaction.

The Tequila Shit

This is the kind of shit you only see once or twice in your life, if you’re lucky. It’s when the worm comes out too.

The Spicy Shit

This shit is a real burn. It’s the result of eating spicy food the night before and the outcome is either mild to severe discomfort or use of Preparation H.

The Coffee Crap

The coffee crap is pretty standard. It’s part of a digestive process that’s natural and makes more space in the intestine. It is connected to the gastrocolic reflex. This is also known as the morning shit, dropping the kids off at the pool or doing your online banking.

The Ghost Shit

This is very special type of shit and it is what I will advise, in a totally non-medical sense, for those of your who are panic hoarding. I take no liability, as usual. The following two pieces of advice will save you from your current state of fear and transform you into a coping superhero. Shit n’ all.

Ghosted

The ghost shit is when you’re a perfect amount of constipated. You’re not so constipated that you give yourself hemorrhoids or need to dis-impact yourself. You’re just constipated enough that the shit is like a ghost and even though you know for sure that you just took a shit, there is no sign of it on the toilet paper. It is such a perfect release that no residue or remnants of the perfect shit remain. That shit ghosted you.

The way to achieve this ideal constipation state is to cut out a bit of fibre and go hard on the carbs. This fits perfectly with the whole Netflix-News-Contagion trifecta. When you feel like you have to shit, don’t go. Wait a full day. Again, I take no liability here. 

Safety first

Don’t wait so long that you have cramps because then we’ve taken this too far. This is a real science and is totally individualized. Some people shit three times a day; some once and some every couple of days. No judgment on the shit cycle. Do a self evaluation on your shit cycle and determine how many shits you need to skip in order to be the perfect amount of constipated.

Individualized Constipation Program. You do you.

For some, this may be a shit every three days. Others, it might be just The Coffee Crap and not again for the rest of the day. Again, it’s a scientific protocol but it’s individualized. As long as your diet is relatively stable and consistent, your shit cycle should also be regular. A nice regular shit cycle is the perfect for the foundation for voluntary, individualized constipation for the purpose of toilet paper hoarding reduction.

Using this approach, you will need very little toilet paper. If you can master the cycle of Perfect Constipation and ensure you Ghost Shit each and every time, you NEVER need to worry about having toilet paper. You’ll need….MAX one square for the ghost shit and even if you don’t have one square, you know what you do have?

SOAP!

Problem solved

So. For the sake of crap, please stop hoarding. We need intelligent response and having a freak out over toilet paper is not intelligent. It creates more problems and we don’t need that shit right now. The elderly should not be driving from store to store, unable to find toilet paper because Joe Shitface is selling 3000 rolls from his Buick. Just stop it.

See the ant. Be the ant.

Buy soap. Help others. Look at your behaviour and if you need, pull your head out of your ass so you can see that there are more important measures to take right now. Do not hoard toilet paper. Do not jack up the price of anything to capitalize on fear or this global crisis. Take a lesson from the ants and try to keep our species thriving by working together to prevent predators and disease (capitalism and COVID-19).

Using resourcefulness and your internal tools, you can keep yourself calm and rational. With a calm body and a mind that is not in flight or flight, you can think your way through these instinctual and counter-productive urges. Your ass will be clean and even if it isn’t, YOU HAVE WATER AND SOAP. Even if you didn’t have that, you’re supposed to be at home anyway. So who’s going to judge? Go home, wash your hands and starting believing that your shit don’t stink!

Ghost it.

Thank you for reading! Comment below!