No poop (actually there is, but read this news story)

Edmonton reverend is fed up with public poop (and drug dealers, alcoholics, etc).

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/01/26/edm-signs-public-washrooms.html

Inner city needs more public washrooms: pastor

Last Updated: Monday, January 26, 2009 | 11:15 AM MT Comments12Recommend12

CBC News

Rev. James Holland hopes these signs will draw attention to the problem of public defecation in Edmonton's inner-city area. (Tim Adams/CBC)

Homeless people need a place to use the washroom, the pastor of an inner-city church says, and he is launching a sign campaign to send that message to Edmonton city council.

Rev. James Holland said he often finds human excrement on and around the grounds of his Sacred Heart Church of First Peoples in the McCauley neighborhood.

It's frustrating, but it's hard to blame people, he said. The only public washroom in the area isn't open in the winter.

"There is a tremendous need for people to have a place to go to the bathroom," he said.

Holland has cleaned up as much as five piles of human waste in one day, and last summer, he decided he had enough.

He put up large, professionally-made signs that read "No bodily functions", which featured a drawing of a squatting person with an "x" over it.

However, the city's parks department took the signs down, after someone complained about them being offensive.

Holland admits there is a bylaw against putting up signs without permission from the city, but there are also bylaws against public urination and defecation which are not being enforced, he said.

After some wrangling with city hall, Holland put his signs back up again. The city has now agreed to leave them there "until the community decides we don't have a need for them," he said.

Holland is now having signs made for people in the community who want them. He also has support from the McCauley Community League.

Holland said he is motivated by concerns about the health and safety of children who live in the area.

"It's certainly not healthy for our children to have broken glass and human waste laying around in the park," he said.

The city will look at the question of whether Edmonton should build more public washrooms on Tuesday.

A report prepared for council notes there are very few public washrooms in central Edmonton.

Vandalism, dirty washrooms, and the problem of facilities being used for drug use and prostitution have been identified as potential issues that will need to be dealt with.

Happy IndePOOdence day

To my american friends: enjoy the holiday you bastards, Canada Day was on a tuesday this year, how lame is that? You get friday off?! Sheesh.

In other news, I spent the morning at school working on an extra curricular project and had the need to defecate so I took advantage of the nice low flow toilets in the new building. Made by American Standard it claims on the back of the bowl to use 6 litres of water per flush. Not bad. I think the usual home toilet is about 10L. These were installed in part to meet LEED specifications for sustainability. I think the building is designed for silver, or maybe gold certification. Anyway, the urinals are waterless and the toilets are 6 litres to a flush, the lights have motion sensors and timers and air circulation is cleverly calculated for efficiency. But they only just installed a bike rack and they leave the computers in the lab on all day/night.

I thought this was a fun poo because it came out all at once, really easy, quite soft. It was like a 30 second poo, seriously, even though it's a pretty substantial one. And check out the symmetry at the bottom. Like a bow tie of poo!

Magna Cum Poo

I decided to do some school work at a school I'm not a student at, University of Toronto. I got a coffee and a danish and sat at a table in one of their fancy new buildings, the one with all the bamboo in it.

I was there about two hours, had my coffee, wrote about 5 pages of a science fiction story and then I felt it coming.

I could tell it would be a kind of unpleasant poo, I think the coffee had a lot to do with that. I went to the men's room and it just sort of spooged out of me. As you can see it's not a very robust poo, and it didn't feel particularly healthy. But these things happen.

It did feel good to have a poo at a fancy major university instead of where I go to school. Even our new bathrooms aren't as nice as the one I used at U of T today.

Sorry about the glare and reflections. There was a lot of light in the bathroom; a skylight and hidden indirect lighting. If I tried to angle it one way I got the skylight in the shot and the other way gave me the indirect lighting.