Alphabet of Manliness (revised and updated). Maddox

on a bowl of bull testicles because of your crippling illiteracy.

      EAT: Eating on the shitter is a monument to efficiency. Feeding the shit-sharks is a tiring task that requires a great deal of energy; why wait until you’re off the pot to replenish that lost energy later on in the day when you might risk dying of fatigue? In fact, when you consider what’s at stake, you can’t afford not to eat on the throne.

      I once knew this guy who used to take his food into the bathroom every day during lunch until one day his manager caught him. When pressed for an explanation, he told his boss about his efficiency theory, and his boss was so impressed that he let him take a permanent vacation to write a book about manliness.

      SURVIVAL TIPS

      FRIEND ’ S HOUSE: The worst-case scenario when using a bathroom at a friend’s house is realizing that there’s no toilet paper after you’ve backed one out. The reason this is such a dreadful scenario is because you’re completely at the mercy of your friend, and he, by the male code of spite, is obliged to be as big of a dick as possible. For example, he might:

       Not care

       Open the door and mock you for your vulnerability

       Having opened the door, invite everyone over for a party

       Make you wipe with tampons

      Fortunately, there are a few options at your disposal, so you won’t have to rely on his dubious empathy. The first is to use the shower curtains. While not ideal, shower curtains provide enough surface area to get the job done. The down side is that shower curtains are made out of vinyl—which tends to make sharp edges when creased—so you might as well be wiping your ass with sheet metal. Another option is to use the floor mat, but its shag carpeting may prove to be too lumpy and cumbersome. Also, your friend probably walks all over it barefoot when he gets out of the shower, and you don’t want that funk anywhere near your corn hole. Your best bet would be to use his hand towels. For an added bonus, you could neatly fold them and put them back in his linen closet for a surprise. Make sure to wash your hands with those fancy seashell-shaped display soaps he has on the counter, then stop being his friend for having them.

      WILDERNESS: Being caught in the wilderness without toilet paper isn’t as bad as you might think. After your initial panic has subsided, a moment of observation will yield a surplus of ass-wiping fodder at the ready. While there is the typical fare of material such as pinecones and twigs for the hardasses, there’s an often-overlooked resource that people don’t immediately think of: wildlife. Take a squirrel, for example. Squirrels are soft, everywhere, and they love nuts.

      THE DUMP DICTIONARY

      Now we know a lot about the different things to do while taking a dump and what to do in emergency situations, but what about the different kinds of dumps we can take? Here’s a brief primer.

      THE IMPOSSIBLE FIRE HOSE: This is one of those shits you take where everything comes out in one smooth motion and only requires one cut; the result often resembles a fire hose or resting python. These are exceedingly rare occurrences, which is why they’re referred to as “impossible.”

      THE EVENT HORIZON: When you lay so much brick that the output forms a small hill that rises above the surface of the water in the bowl. Low-fill toilets don’t count. Courtesy flush encouraged.

      CHOCOLATE SHOTGUN: This is what happens when explosive diarrhea meets a weak O-ring.

      RING OF FIRE: A common occurrence when you drink the water in developing countries resulting in dysentery. After the third or fourth day, there will be literally nothing in your bowels to shit out, so the only thing left is stomach acid.

      GREAT BALLS OF FIRE: When you have the above and you wipe from back to front.

      THE “I MOVED TO HOLLYWOOD”: When you spend a lot of time and energy in preparation, try really hard, and nothing comes out.

      CASPER THE FRIENDLY COMPOST: When you’ve had nothing but piña coladas to eat or drink for twenty-four hours straight, your yield will literally become white. Try it!

      THE GIRLFRIEND: Keeps going, and going, and going…

      THE SURVIVOR: When you think you’re done and you wipe, a solitary turd pushes through at the last minute. This is usually the cause of clogged toilets because many people forget to flush after they wipe the first time. The second unit of toilet paper overwhelms most toilets, and you end up having to mop shit off the floor. Or if you’re a guest at someone’s house, sprint to your car.

      THE PRISON BREAK: When you’re pucker-butting for over thirty minutes, and you have to go up a flight of stairs, the stimulation will give way to a turtle head that will exploit a crack in the wall, letting one loose in your trousers and making you the butt of jokes for years to come.

      E is for…ENLIGHTENMENT

      QUICKLY, NAME TWO FAMOUS WOMEN INVENTORS. Too hard? Okay, name one. How about a famous invention made by a woman? Give up? That’s because there are none. Men invented everything. From Plato’s momentous discovery of wrestling (Figure 1), to John Holmes’s perfection of the money shot, all notable milestones of human achievement have come about because of men.

      Modern researchers have made estimates regarding the earliest known evidence of the discovery of fire, but they maintain that nobody knows the exact date of this celebrated first encounter. But c’mon, we all know when fire was really discovered. It was found the second that man realized that animals were made out of meat. Since Eve’s better half, Adam, was the first man on Earth, he was the discoverer of fire. Problem solved, question answered.

      Speaking of Adam, it’s worth mentioning some of the other noteworthy nuggets of enlightenment he came across before that bitch Eve stuffed her face full of fruit from the tree of knowledge, robbing man of eternal life.

      Figure 1: Plato often contemplated the question of whether one could be taught virtue. He regularly invoked the flying elbow as a pedagogical method in which the master conveys his elbow to the pupil’s skull repeatedly, and through this repetition, the pupil eventually comes to enlightenment. Or a coma.

      ADAM—THE PIONEER OF SLACKING

      In the beginning, when God created the heavens—a vast and expansive cloud of dust and gas that eventually coalesced into planets revolving around a hydrogenous fusion core—he also fancied creating Earth, a planet ripe with the dust of creation. Being the resourceful God that he is, he decided to put all this dust to good use and to create man from it. It took millions of years and countless particles of matter to culminate in the creation of man, and what does Adam do when he’s put on Earth? What every red-blooded man does when he gets some free time: nothing (Figure 2). In his early years, Adam spent most of his time loafing around, limp-wristed out of contempt for all the hardworking animals around him. The ancient Greek statesman Aesop once told a fable about the ant and the grasshopper, in which the diligent ants labored tirelessly throughout the spring and summer months to store food for the winter, while the grasshopper laughed and played, mocking his arthropodic brethren for working so hard.

      Figure 2: Adam, seen here bored off his ass, undertaking one of man’s earliest endeavors: loafing.

      Adam, like the grasshopper, disdains those nimble, overly productive creatures that give the rest of us a bad name. When winter came, the grasshopper met his cold and bitter demise as he starved while watching the ants reap the fruits of their labor. Adam, unlike the grasshopper, did