It was also on the local news here in Texas

Several years ago, several of the night nurses and I went out for breakfast after work. While we were waiting for our breakfast. The morning headlines in the local  paper got our attention. I can’t remember the exact details. It was something about a tax that everyone decided the local politicians must have had a few too many cocktails when they came up with the idea. It seemed like everything was taxed somewhere along the line.

“Heck, the might as well tax sex if they are going to go that far.” One of the older nurses said, “but then you would never get the truth from any one. We would  soon have a nation of virgins.” We were talking about i after all.
“Well, they are increasing the tax on everything in the grocery store and that’s not fair. Next thing you know they will be taxing toilet paper.” everybody got quite.

“Yep, I bet it’s just a matter of time.”

I see now that politician’s are trying to reach for a way to clean up some issues with the environment
Well folks, I thought about this several times since then and somehow I really don’t think it’s a bad idea.
Personally I can’t think of a more fair tax. It is really one of those taxes that you can almost “select “how much tax you would want to pay. Every man, woman and  child would be paying his or her fair share. Every visitor coming into our jurisdiction Even illegal aliens would have to pay, no matter what country or planet they come from.

Everybody uses toilet paper. Some people use more then others. Low-income people buy the generic or cheaper toilet paper. Those with extra money buy  designer toilet paper in the perfect color to match each bathroom and they are delicately scented .They will pay extra if it is angel soft, fluffed or puffed and it has 
cute little designs on it.

Even children have their own toilet paper with their favorite characters just waiting to be used as an aid to toilet training.

As nurses we assist patient in the bathroom. This includes the very young, the extremely old and every one in between. Certain observations have been noted: 

Many older folks will tear off a few squares, fold it, use it, fold it again and then discard it. Those living just on Social Security are good at this. Young men especially like to show their strength by yanking the toilet paper so hard the roll spins around like the big wheel on THE PRICE IS RIGHT. Heck, they pull off so much paper you would think they were going to wallpaper the room! Most ladies will take just enough, no more and no less.

 Ladies fold their toilet paper and men wad toilet paper. Those who “fold” use less, “waders” use more.

Now lets talk numbers. I live in a small town in Eastern Texas called Palestine. We had 17,783 people at the last count. I am sure two or three had died and we  have had several babies born since then, so lets say 18000 for an easy to work with number. The average home has at least 1.5 bathrooms. Over 60% of our 
population was born in another country. Some pay taxes and some don’t. The average cost per person would be about .08 a week this comes to about $4.16 a year per person. Some Americans who travel to other countries don’t take toilet paper with them. If you stay here  you end up paying taxes like everyone one else.

If there was a tax of .05 per roll on toilet paper and the average person uses a roll and a half of toilet paper a week. That is 18000 people x 1.5 rolls of toilet paper x  52 weeks x .05. a roll. That come too $70,2000 a year.

We have 9 motels and about a dozen schools and 2 colleges within our city limits. All of these have bathrooms, which people use from outside our area. This income is not included because of incomplete data concerning the number of bathroom, average occupancy etc. I’m sure some Federal Funds covers some of the toilet paper purchased by these facilities. It might be included in the Student Loan Program.

People who work out side the home use bathrooms where they work and the employers would be paying for the toilet paper and the tax. Medicare, Medicaid and private insurances  would be paying the tax for residents in Nursing Homes and other health care facilities. I am sure some of these funds would be use conveniently to cover the .05-cent tax. 

After we see how this works on the local level, we can try it statewide and after that we can expand to nation wide. I realize it would take a lot of toilet paper to clean up the mess in Washington, but on a larger scale it could it can clean up a lot of crap in. Once its all cleaned up we can relax a little

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Authorities say that it helps to save taxpayers money.

According to plan, they are going to buy huge 1 ton toilet paper rolls in prisons, which you can roll into smaller rolls.

Representative of Prison Department Al Reiter says that this act helps to save 100,000 $ per year.

” If to look at the rolls made in prison, you may think they don’t look the same as you can buy in general stores, but they are almost as good,” explained Reiter.

Roger Baysden, the head of Prison Industry Department claims that prisons are self-sustaining enterprises.

“Our goal is to make every possible thing by hand. WC Paper is one of these everyday utilities,” says Baysden.

Well, in conclusion, prisoners have to work harder by earning nothing while state saves money from it.

On the other hand it is fair, because prisoners are imprisoned by a reason but on the other hand it is simply taking advantage of them.

Top 10 Most Annoying Things to a Man:

1.     Sitting down on the toilet, doing your business, and having no toilet paper.

2.     When you look at the trashcan and its overflowing and nobody but you get up to take out the trash.

3.     Being the only person in your house that will do the dishes.

4.     When you put something down, come back to where you put it down, and you find it’s not there anymore

5.     People “cleaning” your workspace when they’re really just disorganizing it

6.     When people delete your favorite recordings on the DVR because it was, “taking up too much space.”

7.     People taking your tools because they don’t know where their own are.

8.     When somebody shuts off your computer when you leave it alone for a while.

9.     When you’re in the middle of getting some work done, and somebody yells for you to leave what you’re doing ,and go do something else.

10.  When that jerk who ate the last of the cearial won’t throw the damn box away.

If your target is a psycho, let it go.  If they are the type to grab weaponry and shoot blindly in the dark because they think it’s their duty as an American to use their confederate era shotguns on real people at least once in awhile, forget it.  If your best friend posted a photo of your seventh grade class picture on facebook, and you know their single mom who sleeps through anything will wake up in the morning and make them clean, go for it!  If you have a pain in the ass neighbor who will go all CSI and spend time the next day searching for footprints or other “evidence” to bring to the authorities, go ahead!  Just follow these tips.

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Don’t Get Caught!

1. Wear dark colors.  Make sure you have no white, yellow or orange on your body. Do NOT wear those shoes with the flashing lights or reflective strips.  Hoods are good, but stay away from ski masks, that’s a sure way to freak out witnesses who otherwise would ignore a bunch of crazy kids TP-ing a friend’s home. 
2. Wear comfortable clothes you can move in along with some good running shoes.
3. Make sure you are quiet.  It’ll be hard not to giggle, but save it for when you drive by the next day and see the victim outside with a garbage bag and a look that kills.
4. Park far away from the scene of the “crime”, and walk along sidewalks or streets, not through people’s yards.  Only trespass on the victim’s property.
5. Make a plan to reconnoiter at a safe place if you’re interrupted during commission and need to flee the area.
6. Depending on who you are pranking and how many people are in your party, a good idea is to hold cell phone contact with the victim inside the house.  This way, you can be aware if they see your shadowy figures outside and you need to make a quick get-away.  Just make sure you maintain your composure if you are discovered during your conversation so he or she doesn’t realize your part in the prank.
7. Be careful of footprints.  If there is snow on the ground, keep a small whisk brush in your pocket and swish those prints away as you back out of the yard.  There isn’t much you can do with mud, so only TP when the ground is dry.
8. Plan ahead to get your toilet paper, a little at a time, days or weeks before the act.  If you go through the express lane at a 24 hour market when it’s dark out, the jig is up, you may as well be wearing a sign.

Practical Tips For Making The Most of Your Window of Opportunity

1. The golden rule of Toilet Papering is to stay away from anything that causes real damage.  If it can’t be fixed the next day with some elbow grease, DON’T DO IT.  No eggs or any other sort of food, either, it’s hard to tell what will stain or stick beforehand.
2. Choose small rolls of extra strength toilet paper.  These will make it easier to really throw them over taller trees. 

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Use Creativity and Style

1. Use shaving cream to write messages to your victim.  Don’t be offensive, kids and old people will be looking at this, too, not just your boys from homeroom.
2. Plastic wrap can be awesome when used sparingly.  Target a few small areas, since it can be time consuming to do it right.  A mailbox is perfect.
3. Back in my day it was all about toilet paper and shaving cream, but now plastic forks are all the rage.  Good job, younger generation!  Whenever you get a chance, take a couple extra plastic forks from fast food restaurants to keep the cost down a bit, and then plant those babies in a fork garden.
4. Bring along a box of tissues, preferably the kind that pop up when you pull one out, so you can scatter them around the yard like a little kleenex fairy.  These are a total bitch to clean up if it rains.

Next time to tackle a DIY project like assembling prefab furniture or building a shelving unit, try these tips: Use a piece of masking tape to keep track of all those tiny pieces (like screws, washers and bolts). They’ll stay neat and organizes instead of rolling all over the floor.

Take 5 minutes to cut out the junk

If you can’t resist loading up your grocery cart with potato chips and sugary treats, do what the folks at Weight Watchers do: swing by the nonperishable aisle first and stock up on paper towels and toilet paper. That way your cart has the appearance of being full, which makes it harder to “overbuy” food.

Take 10 minutes to open your eyes

Feel like your eyes get lost behind your glasses? According to the experts, you can make them pop by concentrating less on eye shadow color (especially if you wear colored frames) and more on mascara. Use black, not brown, start at the base of the lash and wiggle the brush as you move toward the tip. If you’re sporting tortoiseshell or horn-rimmed glasses, spend some extra time defining your brows-your eyes will sparkle.

Take 15 minutes to host a perfect party

You’re throwing a party and you’re starting to rethink that Hawaiian luau theme. Need a second opinion? Head over to foryourparty.com and check out the new live-chat feature, where you can ask a representative for advice on anything fro finding the best party favor to perfecting your theme or design.

At one time, I may have been glued into an album, but I’ve come undone, and the winds of time and change pick me up and hurl me about, like a dumb staring cow in a tornado.  And, like the turbinate bovine, as I’m spun and storm-tossed, a universe convulses around me, but I understand nothing.

Image via Wikipedia

Why am I even here?  I change nothing, everything changes me, yet, somehow, I remain the same.  Already, I’ve amassed a lot of “I’s”, but, with a nod to Gertrude Stein, there isn’t any “me” here.  I see what passes in front of me, but only that, and strain as I might, the cosmos doesn’t even acknowledge my presence.

The space I occupy doesn’t merit dimension, though , by the standards of this earth, that space is considered a pretty good one.  Comparisons, which substitute for absolute measures of self, show that I eat better food than most, the roof over my head sheds water, more than billions of less fortunate people can say, and my prospects for longevity far surpass the human average, all by dint of having gotten myself born into a twentieth-century first-world country.

So why do I feel, at times, that I am merely a superfluous mote, helpless to do anything but exist, like the flapping photograph, or the stupid spinning cow?  I don’t know, but if I step out from myself, and look back in, I have to ask myself why none of my self-ascribed puniness bothers me to any great degree.

With my almost complete lack of meaning, I still get up every day, glad to be alive, knowing that Mr. Coffee is downstairs to greet me as I stumble into the kitchen, trying to not step on the contingent of ankle-rubbing cats, who apparently harbor no illusions about Big Thoughts.  They are content to find out it’s a school day and that they get to help me make the chicken sandwiches for lunches.

Image via Wikipedia

I feel the weight, almost subconsciously, of eternity, even as I stand in the aisle at Walmart, reaching, for the umpteenth time, to pick out the wrong toilet paper.  Between the time wife Deborah has written down, also for the umpteenth time, exactly which squeezably soft product I’m supposed to get, and when I stand, baffled, in the middle of a mile-long row of rolled pulp, having once again left my list in the car, my mind has erased everything, and I am as a newborn, blinded by the light.  Big-roll, Large-roll, Mega-roll, Big-Mega-Large-roll, Ultra-soft, Super-Ultra-Something-Or-Other, New-and-Improved, Tried-and-True, 80-grit, Marked Down.  Aaargh!

But, hey, this is the cell phone generation; I’ll just call home and ask. Duh.  Uh, oh, no reception.  Maybe it’s all the shrink-wrap that’s causing interference.  I move to the Rubbermaid aisle. No answer.  Back to the TP aisle.  No reception.  One more try; from the candy row.  No answer.

Instead of walking back to the car to retrieve my list, I boldly decide to Make A Choice, hedging my bet, as usual, by picking up a large bar of Ghirardelli dark chocolate, to use as a peace offering when I inevitably bring home the wrong 24-pack of quadruple-ply, environmentally and politically incorrect bowl clogger.

I do wonder, at times, if maybe I’m really just being sent for the chocolate, and everything else is merely part of some convoluted and otherworldly ruse, the angels momentarily bored with their own daily grind.

The people in my life get more bent out of shape if I get the wrong toothpaste (again), or the wrong kind of sandwich bread, than they do when I tell them that Brian Williams and Katie Couric give us two weeks until the Apocalypse.  If Brian and Katie say it’s so, then that’s all there is to it, but we still have to eat, wipe, and brush in the meantime, and I guess the little things are all I can hope to control. 

I’d best spend my wisp of existence working on improving the TP selection and making sure I get the right combination of whiteners and plaque-busters.

But, whoa, look at this:  Off-Brand Whiter-than-White bread is on sale; I’m sure the girls will love it.  Maybe, one of these days, I’ll get around to solving the global warming problem, but first I’ve got a few things to work out right here in Wally World:  I wonder if store-brand margarine be okay, and what about that marked-down beef, and hey, lookit, two-for-one on 55-gallon drums of Diet Grease. . .

I went to the store the other day and saw some magazines in a rack.

It is not surprising how we are sometimes force fed information.  We can be made to believe we are overweight, under qualified, and not worthy.  We aren’t the only ones under the scrutiny of the public eye.

Let’s look at some examples, shall we?

As we can see, this grouping of magazines is considered to be the obvious choice in terms of being scrutinized.  What’s interesting is that the general public feeds off this information.

Why do we really care about Casey confessing?  or about Anna Nicole and Howard?  or the those thin women that have diet issues?  Why are we shown on a regular basis these items while we stand in line just wanting to buy groceries?

It’s magazines like this that not only gives us what we see, but gives us what they want us to see.  Somehow, they are convincing us of what we want to hear.

Let’s look at a not so subtle take in this area:

What?!  Consumer Reports? How is that pervading my mind with others thoughts?  Aren’t they looking and observing “facts” to report back to the consumer?

The short answer is yes, they are.  However, there is a theme here.

Money….after all, we are in the marketplace, remember?

Everything bought, sold, information shared – it’s all about the dollar signs.

There’s much to be learned from how these publications communicate, and what they are actually saying to the general public.

Next time you’re standing in line at the market, just remember one important fact: information is for sale, just like the toilet paper in your shopping cart…both can serve similar purposes.

The original items that were previously used for our wiping pleasure ranged from various sticks and leaves to corn cobs and pieces of linen fabrics. Prior to the earliest known toilet paper product being introduced in the late 1800’s people reached for items commonly found around their environment.

It is rumored that those people who lived in the northern portions of the world generally used the tundra moss during the summer and resorted to handfuls of cold snow during the winter months. To those people who resided within the tropical zones old coconut shells and mussel shells were commonly employed.

The Greeks used clay pieces and stones while the Romans had the most logical method of cleaning that I have found. In ancient Rome they used a sponge which was attached to a stick and then immersed into a container of salt water.

In the 14th century the Chinese emperors were using scrapes of rice paper and the Europeans began using hay, grass, straw and old rags. Many early societies in the far eastern world used the left hand for wiping. This was considered to be an acceptable practice and has lead to the theory of why the right hand is extended in friendship and not the left.

During our own colonial era the corn cob was a popular item found within the common home. The first paper products used for personal wiping were the mail order catalogs which were hung in the privy area. The Old Farmer’s Almanac had special holes placed into it so as it could be carefully hung in the toilets.

The first actual toilet paper product is credited to the German Hans Klenk, an American named Arthur Scott and a British gentleman named W.C. Alcock. History has dedicated the toilet paper to these three men.

In 1928 Hans Klenk became the first European to roll paper bands however the American Arthur Scott had previously accomplished the same effect in 1890. W.C. Alcock created an alternative to the current popular newspaper use in the 1880s.

The modern toilet paper roll has definitely made life much easier and more hygienic for us all. At last count there were over 5,000 companies who produce bathroom tissue in various parts of the globe.

The same person asked me about how much toilet paper they should store up on for emergency use. As survivalists we believe in storing food for as much as a year and as such we should store extra toilet paper also. You can roughly base your storage upon the rate of 1 roll of 1000 sheets per person every three days. So a rough count would be for storage of 100 rolls for one year per person.

Each family is different and these figures may very well change from one family to the next. When in doubt store extra as it will make a great trading material when needed.

Do you believe me if I say that we don’t need toilet paper at all in toilets?

You may find it very difficult to believe.

But let me just tell you a story about a friend of mine named Danial and his landlord, Jack.

Danial was an Asian student studying Accountancy in University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Illinois while Jack was an American.

Danial rented a room in the basement of a house owned by Jack in Champaign. The room was a bit unique as the kitchen, bathroom and toilet were not inside the room but instead, they were right outside of it. That enables Jack to do his regular checking of the kitchen, bathroom and toilet as Danial locked only his room when he was not around.

There was something that made Jack surprised and curious whenever he checked the toilet. He noted that there was no toilet paper in it every time he checked. Not even one piece!

He did not think that Danial kept toilet paper in his room as the tenant did not share the toilet with any other tenants in the house. He wondered how Danial cleaned himself or to say it straight forward, cleaned his buttock after doing the normal stuff people do in toilets.

One day, Jack met Danial by chance when he was checking the kitchen.

After greeting each other, Jack suddenly asked, “Danial, why is there no toilet paper every time I checked the toilet?”

“I don’t need to use it actually,” replied Danial.

“Then how do you clean yourself in the toilet?” asked Jack.

“I just use water and my bare left hand,” said Danial.

Jack was shocked with the answer and then asked, “I hope you don’t mind me asking but isn’t that disgusting to use your bare hand to clean?”

Danial felt a bit embarrassed by that question but he managed to keep his cool. He then replied by asking Jack a question.

“Jack, let me just ask you this. If you got some mud on your hand or on any other part of your body, is it enough for you to clean it only by wiping it off using some pieces of paper?”

“Or, would you prefer to use some water and clean the mud off using your bare hand? I am sure you feel more comfortable to use water as it will clean the mud off much better”

Jack was, once again, shocked. Feeling ashamed, he did not really answer the question but instead, he right away said to Danial that he did sometimes clean himself using water and his bare hand in the toilet.

Danial smiled as he knew that Jack was not telling the truth. However, he just nodded and didn’t say anything more as he didn’t want to further embarrass Jack.

Well, guys. Did you see the logic for not needing to use toilet paper in toilets? Do you feel disgusted when you heard some people clean themselves in toilets using just water and their bare hand?

Don’t be surprised when you travel to other parts of the world, especially to most part of Asia, and you find out that there is no toilet paper in most public toilets there but instead, you only have a water tap and a short tube.

Don’t worry guys. Toilets at their hotels, especially those graded with more stars, do have toilet paper for their customers who come from different culture.

The main point here is that we should realize that some people have their own way to keep their personal hygiene. In fact, their way may make some other people to re-think of their own way.

So guys do you really need toilet paper in toilets or are you more comfortable with Danial’s way of personal cleaning which seems to me to be more hygienic? You may even have your own different way of personal hygiene in toilets! Feel free to let me know of your thoughts.