None of my blogs are researched in depth. Any ideas I express here come from a single source of inspiration and are backed only with knowledge I have stored away in memory. I don’t really feel like taking the time to write a proper essay and I am not trying to change the views of the world or even sway them. I just write to share an idea and hope that it might give a few people something to think about. The researchers here on SoulCast are people like TheNakedProfessor and StupidGenius, who present there ideas with a lot of data, presumably from a variety of sources.
Not me.
So, that brings me to today’s topic: feces (in your face bold type). Well, not exactly feces but how and possibly why it figures so largely in our language. The other day I was following some comments on Hunter’s posting about The Aquatic Ape Theory and I noticed a comment by lidstrom82 that said, “I wonder if that doesn't rob all humanity of its strongest and greatest gifts, if we simply see ourselves as an extension of animals that fling their own poop and pick each other for fleas.” Immediately I recalled something I had read a few years ago in Carl Sagan’s book, The Dragons of Eden, a book about the evolution of intelligence, concerning human language similarities with the behaviourisms of other primates.
Sadly, when apes and humans are referred to as being evolutionary relatives, some people immediately conjure up images such as the ones lidstrom82 mentioned. I don’t mean to say lidstrom82 is an ape-hater or that he looks down on apes. But when we think about apes flinging their feces we think them dirty and look at our clean hands and say, “How could we be related to such a creature?” Well, this post is not out to prove that we are related to apes (though we share 98.4% of the same genes with chimps) but how pooh-chucking is alive and well in human society.
Duck!
It is sometimes said that the only thing that separates us from the animals is the thin skin of civilization. Take away that and our lives would resemble that of many animals. (In the Dune prequel series, The Butlerian Jihad a robot keeps “feral humans” in cages to conduct experiments on them in order to study human behaviour. Stripped of clothes and culture and introduced to a society of no formal language, the humans in these cages are no better than monkeys in an over-crowded zoo.) Conversely some animals such as wolves and some birds and insects form complex hierarchical societies. Some primates live in troupes with a clan or tribe-like hierarchy. There are many comparisons that can be made.
One point that is always mentioned is that humans have evolved a complex language system of communication. Language is what helps us record, either mentally or extra-somatically, information about our environment, our past, our future plans, etc. Languages have a complex array of tenses to refer to things past, present and future, as well as things that happened before other things in the past, things that were expected to happen in the past but didn’t, things that are expected to happen in the future, hypothetical situations and so on. It is our ability to use language that has been the cornerstone of our rise to civilization. Therefore, it should be no surprise that some of our animal behaviourisms have been supplanted by the use of words over actions.
So, let’s get back to scooping up a handful of crap and throwing it at someone who has pissed us off (urine reference). The English language has steaming piles of phrases and expressions that replace actually laying our hands on our excrement by putting our tongues into action instead. Consider the following expressions and the situations in which they are used and then replace each image with how it might seem if we were referring to actual fecal matter in a way that is familiar to apes.
“Oh, shit!” – When something goes wrong. Life has just hit you with a load of feces.
“Holy shit!” – Something very surprising is happening or has just happened. It’s as awesome, or as awful, as encountering…
“I had a shitty day.” – Things went very poorly today. (Some apes wouldn’t stop throwing the stuff at me.)
“Eat shit!” – The basic message apes send when they throw the stuff.
“This tastes (smells) like shit!” – Who really knows how it tastes? Maybe it’s an ape reference. Surely some of them get hit in the mouth.
“You little shit!” – Small, irritating piece of crap that has flung itself into your life.
“He thinks he’s the big shit around here.” – The guy who gets everyone jumping for fear of what will happen if the big shit comes at them. Or perhaps the guy with the biggest load to throw!
“The shit hit the fan.” – Forget throwing the stuff. Why not let it fly everywhere?
“I’m up shit creek.” – We’ve outdone the apes with that one. It’s not just flying but flowing big enough to form a creek!
“Shit disturber.” – Someone who begins to pick up feces and prepares to throw it around, upsetting everybody.
That’s just ten. There are plenty more. As you can see, we are not so clean when it comes to throwing feces. We just do it with language instead of words. And thankfully so! They say actions speak louder than words, and that is one level of volume I am glad we don’t reach. It’s not just English either. Any language I have encountered has words for feces that are used when things turn shitty. In Danish you can call someone a cow shit. In French you say shit when things go wrong. In Japanese you can call someone a shit-dripper. In German you can call someone a shitter. Not surprisingly, when some chimps and gorillas have been taught to use sign language to communicate with humans, they have learned to create insult words using fecal references. For example, one researcher was called a “green shit” in sign language when his chimp was upset with him.
Incidentally, there was a South Park episode about being able to say shit on TV. The story revealed that shit was originally a curse word and that curse words were meant not to be used because, in effect by using them, you were cursing people literally. Viewed in this light, throwing feces at someone might indeed curse them if they become ill from e coli or other bacterial infections.
It’s probably best just to let steaming poops lie.
Note: The title of this posting is also the title of an album by the band Type O-Negative.
In the future look forward to: Explanation for the Asshole
hotaka posted on Sep 28, 2006
| views: 2809
Comments
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silverwhisper said on Sep 29, 2006....
ah hotaka...i needed a good laugh--thanks! :>
ed
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Alyss said on Sep 29, 2006....
Very witty hotaka. =)
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scalywag said on Sep 29, 2006....
ha-ha-ha-ha......quite amusing indeed
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hotaka said on Sep 29, 2006....
Thanks for the comments guys.
I thought I might have really stepped in it with this one.
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secretlife said on Sep 29, 2006....
hotaka.....this was GREAT!!!
I mean....really funny shit!
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hotaka said on Sep 29, 2006....
The secret is in the ingredients, secretlife.
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lidstrom82 said on Sep 29, 2006....
While I think humanity has always had its intelligence (and therefore) language in its history, rather than it being developed from a primitive base, I think our fascination with poop is from all sorts of reasons. You rock for displaying the versatility-ness, hotaka :) I don't think humans are above animal-like behavior - we can choose to become dumber. We're not above flinging poop, but man, sometimes it's the only weapon we have against tightasses.
Heh heh, I'm still chuckling over "origin of the feces"...
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satyr said on Sep 29, 2006....
hotaka, that's really a shitty post
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aeschylus said on Sep 29, 2006....
hotaka ...
You are in true artistic and original form!!!
And I thought you were simply posting the "Poopie List" ...
Great job!!!
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
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hotaka said on Sep 29, 2006....
There's a list???
Oh, yes. The ghost poopie and so on. No need to forward it to me. I have memorized it and I recite it out loud on the train.
No, of course not.
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aeschylus said on Sep 29, 2006....
hotaka ...
I wouldn't dare forward it to anyone!
Your's is so much much better.
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
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RollingC said on Sep 29, 2006....
That's the best shit I've seen in a loooong time..lol
And that reminds me (pops open a bottle) I haven't gotten shit-faced in a long time...
(just kidding)
had a good laugh over this...thanks...enjoyed it.
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hotaka said on Sep 30, 2006....
This has infected my mind, RollingC. I just misread your words as "poops in an open bottle."
Somebody help me. I am losing it.
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silverwhisper said on Oct 01, 2006....
hotaka, just block and nuke. he's spammed 3 other blogs in the past 5 mins.
ed
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thenack said on Oct 03, 2006....
Hey Hot, very nice piece, sorry to be the poo flinger ont this. Just correcting somethings.
Firstly on the Chimp DNA, in most previous studies, they have announced 98-99% identical DNA. However, these were for gene coding regions (such as the sequence of the cytochrome c protein), which constituted only a very tiny fraction of the roughly 3 billion DNA base pairs that comprise our genetic blueprint. Although the full human genome sequence has been available since 2001, the whole chimpanzee genome has not. Thus, all of the previous work has been based on only a portion of the total DNA.
Further, the use of percentages obscures the magnitude of the differences. For example, 1.23% of the differences are single base pair substitutions. This doesn’t sound like much until you realize that it represents ~35 million mutations! But that is only the beginning, because there are ~40–45 million bases present in humans and missing from chimps, as well as about the same number present in chimps that is absent from man. These extra DNA nucleotides are called “insertions” or “deletions” because they are thought to have been added in or lost from the sequence. (Substitutions and insertions are compared in Figure 1.) This puts the total number of DNA differences at about 125 million. However, since the insertions can be more than one nucleotide long, there are about 40 million separate mutation events that would separate the two species.
Comparison between a base substitution and an insertion/deletion. Two DNA sequences can be compared. If there is a difference in the nucleotides (an A instead of a G) this is a substitution. In contrast, if there is a nucleotide base which is missing it is considered an insertion/deletion. It is assumed that a nucleotide has been inserted into one of the sequences or one has been deleted from the other. It is often too difficult to determine whether the difference is a result of an insertion or a deletion and thus it is called an “indel.” Indels can be of virtually any length.
To put this number into perspective, a typical page of text might have 4,000 letters and spaces. It would take 10,000 such full pages of text to equal 40 million letters! So the differences between humans and chimpanzees include ~35 million DNA bases that are different, ~45 million in the human that are absent from the chimp and ~45 million in the chimp that are absent from the human
In short, we are very very different, we were designed that way, and thats the reason I don't sling shit as a show of being pissed!
Keep up the good writing,
TN
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thenack said on Oct 03, 2006....
Then again, you run into saladine and you know you have to say, ook youk , kk, ook you asshole. Small things amuse small minds, and hes been taunting everyone for weeks and it still seems to give him pleasure, perhaps chimpanzees evolved from saladines ancestors.
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lidstrom82 said on Oct 03, 2006....
The original saladin was chivalrous and respectful of his enemies, who were war-mongering christians who missed the point of their faith. saladine, on the other hand, if he/she's startin' something, they're still cool...unless of course they fling poo.
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hotaka said on Oct 03, 2006....
thenack, that was one awesome comment. I'm keeping that.
Yes, I realize the percentages are misleading. When I first read that in a book I found myself thinking, "But there are so many differences. How can just two... percent. Duh! Of course two percent can still mean a huge number of individual differences."
But it sounds so much more scientific and proper that way you explained it.
Cheers! No poop for you.
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thenack said on Oct 03, 2006....
Phew, thats a relief!
Gotta get home, cheers people
thenack
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kruuyai said on Feb 15, 2007....
hotaka... I caught the title of this post out of the corner of my eye on your most popular posts lists and had to check it out. This is hilarious! Thanks for cheering up an otherwise crappy day. -
RollingC said on Feb 15, 2007....
hey...you're supposed to say shitty day!
(but that's all right..lol)
I got a question...does shit really fly....or only when it hits the fan ?
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hotaka said on Feb 16, 2007....
As long as shit has force behind it to send it through the air, it flies. I am sure there are equations for calculating how much force it would take to move how much shit a certain distance.
Kruuyai, now you know what I had to say to get recognized on SoulCast. Thanks for reading my shit.
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kruuyai said on Feb 16, 2007....
Rolling: crap, shit, dung, poo,.... it's all the same :)
Hotaka: You're welcome. I hope to see some more shit like this coming down the pike. (what's a pike?)
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hotaka said on Feb 16, 2007....
Isn't a pike a fish? Or a long pole with a knife on the end?
In the case of the former it should be "coming out of the pike." In the case of the latter you have to be careful where you are sticking your pike and how high you raise it after. Otherwise it will no doubt be oozing down the pike and possibly slip free and land on your hands. And that would just be shitty.
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kruuyai said on Feb 16, 2007....
That sure would be shitty. You know, every time I hear the word "pike" I remember a day back in high school, I was sitting around in a classroom with a bunch of other girls. For some reason, there was some kind of a break and everyone was just chatting. I was off in my own little world, not really a part of the conversation going on next to me, when I overheard one of the girls say,
"I like pike better."
Naturally, I assumed they were talking about the fish. My uncle, who was visiting from Alaska, had just brought us some Alaskan King Salmon steaks, which I found quite delicious, so I jumped into the conversation and said,
"I like Salmon the best. Especially when you fry it with onions and a little lemon juice... it's so good."
The girls looked at me silently for a moment and then turned away and continued their conversation. It was then that I realized that they were talking about their preferences between pica and elite type fonts on their typewriters. Boy, did I feel shitty! Anyway, it served those little shits right for excluding me from their conversation. lol
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hotaka said on Feb 17, 2007....
That sounds very Aquarian of you. Maybe Scorpio and Aquarius have more in common than I'd like to admit. -
RollingC said on Feb 17, 2007....
Are you guys talking fish shit ? -
kruuyai said on Feb 17, 2007....
hotaka: I think they're both water signs, aren't they? I know Scorpio is (oddly, for a desert creature), but what about Aquarius? From the name, it should be.
Rolling: I can't help it. I majored in oceanography, and spent two years doing my Master's in the company of scientists who had devoted their entire lives to studying the fecal pellets of the copepod.
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hotaka said on Feb 20, 2007....
kruuyai, it's an air sign. I have an ex-SoulCast friend who is a water sign and told me something very interesting. Air signs are good at noticing surface details while water signs are better at seeing below the surface. If the two of us were to meet someone, I would walk away remembering things like scares, moles, hair style, shape of nose, shape of ears, jewelry, fingers, and so on, while she would walk away thinking about what made that person tick, what his fears were, what his true intentions were and so on. -
kruuyai said on Feb 20, 2007....
interesting, because it's true that I am about the most unobservant person I know as far as the physical world around me. I don't know if I'm all that perceptive about what's under someone's skin, though. Isn't that weird that the water bearer is an air sign? -
hotaka said on Feb 20, 2007....
He/she might be carrying water on wings, like a fire bomber. Hey, who's a fire sign out there? Watch out coz I might just dump on you. -
kruuyai said on Feb 20, 2007....
lol... that could be taken a couple of different ways. Which are the fire signs? They might start avoiding you from now on. = ) -
Tappa said on Feb 20, 2007....
Great reading here. Just to add a note for thought....
When studying English Lit atsecondray school, Shakespeare came up (as he does, you know). The play was Macbeth ( or Hamlet?). The sisters were trying to teach us that Shakespeare's use of language was timely and not to be regarded as stagey. And I always thought how weird it is in the scene where (may have this not quite right in terms of character) a guard i think comes on stage hollering about an attack. He's yelling "Merde! Merde!" which our dear little nuns told us was french for murder. Now yelling "Murder! Murder!" does sort of sound like what you'd do if there were an army invading your castle.
But how much more appropriate is it to shout the really true translation...
"Shit! Shit!"
Now THAT is effective writing! LOL
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hotaka said on Feb 21, 2007....
Tappa, thanks for that insightful contribution. If I may say so, that's the shit. I can't imagine the nuns would have told you what was really being said. It's hard to imagine. Sure, murder and merde sound similar enough to be related. Heck, either is appropriate to shout if someone has come to kill you. -
hotaka said on Feb 21, 2007....
kruuyai, oh, yeah. Dump on you. I get it. This is the fecal post. -
kruuyai said on Feb 21, 2007....
Tappa: The little nuns were bullshitting you on more than just the merde. Shakespeare's use of the language was indeed flowery for the times. That's the way they did it back then, because the audience had to stand watching the plays for hours on end, so that was their way of making the play more interesting to the audience. (Personally, it has just the opposite effect on me). -
hotaka said on Feb 22, 2007....
Tappa, you might have been one of the more refined people sitting in the balconies and fainting as they shouted, "Le coq!" -
RollingC said on Feb 22, 2007....
Hey I'm a fire sign...Leo...but never really truthfully followed that stuff. I've been told that I'm more Cancer than Leo but what the heck....I'm a Rabbit in the Chinese astrology so I'm sure to drop some rabbit shit into this discussion.
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hotaka said on Feb 22, 2007....
Ooh, another rabbit. Wait, was that you on my pig post? Aw, now I can't remember who said he/she was a rabbit. I think I can guess your age though because my girlfriend is a rabbit and I think you are a cycle older than hers. -
aeschylus said on Feb 27, 2007....
gee hotaka: "Air signs are good at noticing surface details while water signs are better at seeing below the surface. If the two of us were to meet someone, I would walk away remembering things like scares, moles, hair style, shape of nose, shape of ears, jewelry, fingers, and so on, while she would walk away thinking about what made that person tick, what his fears were, what his true intentions were and so on." Another thing we water signs notice of our air sign friends is some "deep ass stuff" ... hehehe Nice to see you romping about. Wonder what you have when you have two drunk Aquarians? Now, when you have two drunk Pisces, you've got... Fried Fish. Civil Gideon is expanding, kiddo. Drop by some day. aeschylus -
hotaka said on Feb 28, 2007....
"Deep ass stuff" aeschylus? Sounds like sodomy. I hope you meant it as a compliment. Nice that you've stopped by. I guess I look bad now by saying I have been too busy to email you, huh? -
aeschylus said on Feb 28, 2007....
It was poor humor. I would never! insult you. Your pics are too great and it wouldn't do to insult one of the world's romantics. I've been too busy taking on bad-ass politicians and other so-called authorities to look at emails or messages myself. Seriously considering that mountain in Tibet again. Just remember to not swoop down on those fish for a mid-afternoon snack when we come up for air. aeschylus -
anonymous said on Oct 21, 2007....
באתר פורנו המציג את ה סרטים כחולים/ מכל הספקים וכל אתרי סקס / הגדולים והמפורסמים בצילומים של סרטי סקס /הכי מטריפים. באתרנו ישנו מבחר של אתרי סקס / הגדול במדינה, וכן קישורים לחרמנים שמחפשים משרדי ליווי הכי טובים במדינה עם נערות ליווי /הכי יפות, סקסיות, חרמניות שיודעות מה זה סקס ישראלי/ אמיתי ברמה של פורטל סקס365 הידוע בזה שיש לו מעל אלף סרטי סקס / במלאי, וכמות פורנו כזאת יש לא בכל חנות סקס או חנות סרטי סקס פורנו זיוני גייז ישראלי/ | סקס ישראלי /ומה שממש טוב, רוב הישראליות רוצות סקס כול היום, אז מה שצריך - זה לזיין שרמוטות חרמניות ולתת להן סקס אפילו יותר חזק ומהר מאשר בכמה משחקי סקס / שבהם לא צריך שום הכרויות ותאמינו לי - לא צריך גם לחפש סטוצים כי אם תכנסו ל אתר סקס /שלנו, תראו שלא חסר לנו סקס ישראלי חינם/ או מספרי טלפון של נערות ליווי וגם לא מכוני ליווי שעוסקים ב משחקי סקס / המפרסמות ברוב אתרי סקס / בישראל. אז בדרך זו או אחרת, כולנו מגיעים לצורך לעשות סקס ואמת שכאשר ממש בא לנו על סקס ישראלי/ - כבר לא משנה אם חלמנו על סקס חינם /כל חיינו, אנו נחפש אתרי סקס / באינטרנט, ורצוי שזה יהיה סקס ישראלי/ או כמה סרטונים עסיסיים של סקס הזמינים לגולשי סקס בכל אתרי סקס/ הישראלים חרמנים אנשים בעזרת סרטים כחולים/ כי בהם ניתן לראות בבירור שזה סקס ישראלי/ המצולמים על ידי תעשייני סקס כחול לבן / שלא מתלהבים מאתרי סקס בעולם/ הנפוצים ברשת בימינו. אז מי שבאמת רוצה להוריד סרטי סקס ומתענג מצפייה של אם בנות המציגות את סקס ישראלי/ בתור סקס שמלא בקטעים של זיונים וגם בסרטים עם סקס חינם/ עדיין נקראים - סרטי סקס / כי הם מציגים את ה גייז ישראלי /לא בתור מספרי גייז אלה שורש הבעיה של ערוצי פורנו ישראלי/ המרוויחים את כספם ל ידי צילום סרטים כחולים/, משגל, מציצות זין, סקס אנאלי, סקס בתחת, גמירות סקס עם שרמוטות מוצצות זין בשביל אתרי סקס חינם /ובמיוחד כדי לקדם את ה פורנו ישראלי/ ולא רק קטעי סקס חינם/ אז כמו שנאמר ב סקס ישראלי/ שקראתי לאחרונה - אם אתה רוצה סקס עדיף שתתחיל ב פורנו ישראלי/ ותגיד לכולם אני אוהב סקס ישראלי/ בכל הצורות וממש ממליץ על האתר סקס 365 שמצלם את כל סרטי ה סקס בישראל כולל סרטי גייז ישראלים / אשר משתתפים שחקנים גייז ישראלים חתיכים ומצוידים .
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