Cow Poop Bingo in Switzerland

by Justin Glow on

In the small municipality of Ruswil, Switzerland, a grassy field has been painted with a grid. This wasn’t done to test out some sort of new cultivation method, but instead as a game that pits man against beast. Each square is numbered (there are 750 of them in the field) and spectators bet on which the cow will eventually defecate into. Hopefully there’s more than one cow, because 1:750 odds isn’t that great, especially when it comes to feces bingo.

This idea isn’t new. A simple Google search of “cow chip bingo” brings up a similar event that has taken place the past four years at the Jefferson County Fair in West Virginia. Amanda Thomas was crowned the 2007 Cow Chip Bingo Queen by selecting the correct square of I-10. The fair’s website has several photos of the event, including some rare shots of a tortilla chip superhero and the post-game playing field. Mmmm….

Photo by Reuters/Sebastian Derungs [via]

How To Use A Squat Toilet

by Willy Volk on

Today, of course, I’m a wizard of wandering; a master of motility; a gettin’-around guru. But it wasn’t always so.

When I first arrived in Zambia for my stint in the Peace Corps, I was immediately carted off to a village called Kapepa. There, I lived with a homestay family for a week. I had my own mud house, my own thatch bathing shelter, and my own pit latrine. I’ll be honest (and delicate): while I had no problems using the latrine to urinate, I had a real issue with going Number Two. My issue was so big, in fact, that I didn’t go Number Two for an entire week.

An entire week is a long time NOT to go Number Two.

One afternoon shortly after finishing homestay, we trainees were visiting the city of Kitwe. Sitting in a mini-bus, I’ll never forget the look on my friend’s face, when a week’s worth of starch finally came rolling downhill, screaming to be let out. “You don’t look so good,” my friend said to me. As her face floated in soft arcs in front of my pudgy, ashen face, I turned to the driver and screeched, “Where’s the nearest toilet?!” He pointed. I bolted. There, in that filthy hovel of a slimy little pooper, with the flies buzzing, and literally three squares of tissue remaining, I learned how to do the deed, squatting. Sweet relief never felt so good.

O, how I wish I had read Frank Bures’ excellent primer about using a squat pad before I had headed for Africa. It would’ve made a week’s worth of nail biting vanish in a moment. I could’ve printed out the treatise, studied it — and then used it for more ignoble purposes. Frank, buddy, where were you when I needed you?

Chinese Toilet Guides Running Out of Receipts

by Willy Volk on

Justin recently mentioned that Wuhan, China has started employing specialist toilet guides to help people unfamiliar with the city find restrooms. The service is proving to be such a big hit hit with business travelers that the toilet sniffer-outers — forced to draft lengthy, detailed receipts (think: reams of Red Tape) in the slow-to-write Chinese script — are unable to retain fares. In other words, people feeling the need to pee are unwilling to wait for the guides to finish writing the receipts — and simply leave.

As a result, the company that employs the guides — the inelegantly named Potty-Spotters — started providing the guides pre-printed receipts they could easily distribute. However, after one guide, Hu Gnoze, was apparently robbed of his nearly-full book of $0.38-receipts, PottySpotters is reportedly thinking of other ways to offer receipts to its customers. Oddly, one of the suggestions they’re considering is providing pre-printed receipts on travel-sized toilet paper rolls, which they argue would also reduce waste as business people would prefer to keep the receipts for their business than actually DO their business.

Can’t wait to see how this one comes out!