On toilet paper

There are many critical factors to be considered before launching the mind-blasting adventure of buying toilet paper. And there is, thanks to the industry, several choices to choose among. Today I stumbled over toilet paper with flowers on it. It didn’t end with that, it smelled like flowers too. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t trust someone who had a habit of smelling toilet paper. So I’m making a new rule about checking out the toilet of newly made friends before actually accepting their invitation. You have to be able to trust a friend, so I never trust them before I’ve seen what paper they prefer.
They’ve learned to live with it.

Anyway, if I had wanted to wipe my arse with flowers, I’d follow my needs out in the backyard, and not in the toilet, as it were.

As said, there are considerations to be made. If I had been really rich, I’d go for velur or perhaps silk, handed to me by a half-naked belly dancer. But fate hasn’t treated me that well, not yet at least, so I will have to settle with regular paper.
Have you ever tried that really thin paper? It’s almost like spiderweb. I don’t get the point. In such instances you end up practically using your hand, since it’s too thin.
So the fabric is one of the deciding factors. The fabric, and the thickness. You can’t use sandpaper, either. You have to search for that middle path philosophers are always going on about. In terms of toilet paper, I think they might be on to something.

Then there’s the price.
I’m not cheap. In weekends I spend money like a trucker at a striptease bar. And I’ve been to striptease bars and seen the truckers. They could probably halve the debt of a small country if they joined forces. But why do that when you can have a naked girl dance before you?
Anyway, there’s a greater range in toilet paper prices than generally believed. There’s the "Royal" brand (not its real name but it goes for a royal atmosphere, which is always good when you’re taking the piss) where you get 2 rolls of about 40 metres/130 feet to 32 NOK. Then there’s the "Economic" solution that goes for the sandpaper feel, which is priced the way I’d like all toiletpaper to be; 6 rolls to 14 NOK. But the price you pay for not paying the right price! Sandpaper isn’t very humane when you’ve caught the wandering diorrhea.

I think prices could have been lowered considerably if it wasn’t any colour printing on the paper. I have no idea why someone came up with the idea that toilet paper should look nice, considering what you actually are using it for. Shouldn’t moralists somewhen rise up and state that flowery toilet paper is Vanity? The benchmark of a weak society?
Say no to coloured toilet paper, is what I say.
You don’t get much satisfaction from it anyway, since you’re not using it up front, so to speak. Unless you’re one of those who take pleasure of fais le kaka in front of other people. In that perspective, it wouldn’t be much of a point in talking common sense to you, would it? (If you want to further debate this, send me an e-mail and we’ll discuss it.)
Alas, the colours have to go.

So we’re typically dealing with fabric, thickness, price and estetics as the deciding factors. We’re seeing the complexity of choosing the right kind unfolding as an existentialistic problem, when you’re standing by the shelves stacked with screaming labels. One national company, Lambi, has a lamb on its package, by the way. I don’t get it. When I’m wiping my ass, am I supposed to think of sheep running along on the vast, Irish countryside? Does it further enrich the experience of going to the toilet? I don’t know.
I’ll have to do some research on it.

I’ve also noticed that very many Norwegian convenient stores have the terrible habit of putting the toilet paper just by the entrance, so customers fail to notice the significance of the choice they’re opt to make. It’s like the stores are saying: "Might as well get it over with, just buy the paper, you need it", without respecting the cultural greatness of it, and further denying the customer the right atmosphere to make the right choice. If I’d been running a shop, I would have a separate room for toilet paper. There would be people paid to assist you, who knew what they were talking about, and preferrably some soft pipeflute music lingering in the background. You mustn’t stress a decision like this! You’ll spend years, yes years, of your life in the bathroom!

Can you comprehend the historical meaning of the invention of toilet paper? It is tremendous! Prior to it, great men and women who conquered countries and seas, rose great buildings and waged terrible wars were subjects to the primitive satisfaction of using leaves or the hand even.
It all puts the genius of men like Hannibal, Jung He, Plateau and Cæsar into a new light, doesn’t it? And as Rome wasn’t built in a day, the toilet industry is slowly adapting to cultural changes and explosive trends. Who knows what the future holds? It is perhaps one of the only things that makes me go on, that gives me hope, and lights the otherwise gloomy looking future.
In my opinion, all we can hope for is world peace and more advanced toilet paper.
Preferrably silk.

And one day, one day, when the global society as a whole has learned to respect the importance of toilet paper, and be proud of it too, we might go right into a public bathroom and do our thing, without having to fear the trauma of realizing that there’s no paper present! A trauma I had to face today at a restaurant that for the sake of retaliation will be kept anonymous.
We must only hope. Hope and pray.

Still no fish, btw.