h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Public Bathroom Graffiti - A31586871
Author: Jordan - Hell Hath No Fury Like West Virginia Scorned - U201497

Man, what an entry to research! I looked through literally thousands of online images, blogs about this, news articles. I began this entry because I was amazed at how many people brought markers and pens into the bathroom with them, and came out amazed at how many people bring cameras to the bathroom with them.

I guess there's a chance that this entry gets yikesed, but I cover up almost all of the profanity with asterisks (I left a** in there once, which is fairly mild, because it was a rhyming part of a poem and asterisks don't rhyme with anything). I also included a warning.

If anyone knows of some good bathroom graffiti, please let me know. If it's entertaining, I'll try to put it in. That would be great. I'm grateful for all comments and replies, as always, even if it's just to say I'm juvenile and have a dirty mind for distributing this filth.

Excellent treatment of a brilliant subject

Plenty more to say and suggest later. For now, till the thread gets going, well done. Those 5 years of practice are really starting to show

I knew of a pub in which the bathroom's walls were covered with black boards, and chalks were readily available.

Spotted just a typo:

"everyone is entitled to my oponion"

unless you're missing a "[sic]"

I liked it, although I was disappointed. After that warning I was expecting something much ruder!

No great grafitti to add, but what amazes me is the people who take the time to hang around in stinky public loos, scrapping their grafitti into the doors!

When I was little and had to go to the loo with my mum, she'd tell me not to read it because it was rude, while very clearly reading it herself!

If I spot any gems I'll bring them along to the thread later, but being in Essex mostly I see phone numbers and offers of various sexual acts. Nobody's phoned though.

Oh, and I agree with Eco Worrier that the warning suggests much ruder graffiti.

I'm desperately trying to remember the grafitti on one a wall in one of the disabled toilets at our University campus, Someone had written soemthing 'vaguely' offensive to disabled people, and then beneath it, pressumbably by a disabled person, they'd written a whitty remark pointing out the idiot who wrote the first couldn't spell properly.... I'm sure it went on for a few more sentences too alternating between the two or more writers

Thanks everyone

"everyone is entitled to my oponion"

Yeah, that's how the original was. I'll add a [sic]. Not sure why that didn't occur to me.

To be honest, I wrote the intro before I edited the entry. There used to be some much ruder stuff, but I shifted the focus of this entry more towards using humorous examples. I have plenty of ruder examples in my notebook that I excised if you're really, terribly heartbroken

Maybe a first suggestion, then.
Your Entry and its examples are good as they stand. Adding other examples to the Entry itself won't improve it, I fear.

So how about collecting the suggestions into a separate Entry, a bit like a Talking Point, and link the two when this one's picked?

(My own favourite, for its simple clever ambiguity, in a heavily graffited cubicle in college thirty years ago:

This place brings out the best in us).

What would that look like?

Maybe like a list, edited by you, of the best graffiti suggested by other Researchers? Maybe sectioned like in the main article?

Hey, I don't know like what. Just something fun beyond the EG norm, that's all.

A fascinating topic, just what the Guide needs!

My favourites must be ¡Viva la menstruación!, written in the ladies' bathroom of a university clinic, and "Fighting for peace is like f***ing for virginity"

And don't forget the interactive "toilet games", like the "toilet tennis" where opposite walls have "look left" and "look right" written on them.

Also, maybe a reference to the famous "Kilroy was here" story involving Stalin? (You can read it here A508277)

I haven't been a public loo for years. Thanks for reminding me and enabling me enjoy the entertainment aspect of it without having to endure the pong and squalor

Once, on holiday if Florida, we had a trip in one of those glass-bottomed boats. A lady viewing the fish and coral with her child suddenly got all excited and said "look honey, that fish is going to the bathroom". I don't think I'd ever heard "bathroom" used as a euphemism for having a s**t or going to the loo before. Now I always think of that fish "going to the bathroom" when I hear or read it.

The graffiti (should I say graffito if it's only one? - I don't know, anyway) I remember is "I'm pink, therefore I'm spam". Must've been a philosophy student doing Descartes.

A very fine entry!

Thanks all.
I had not read about the Kilroy saga before That's fascinating, thanks so much for bringing it to my attention. I've added a sentence about Kilroy in the para about 'x was here'.

I've also added the 'virginity' quote to the political section. I was undecided about whether to include it, but since someone else brought it up, why not?

The thing about the interactive toilet games is that it's funnier in person than it sounding when reading about it. Believe me, I tried It ends up coming off as rather stupid, at least the way I wrote it.

Tibley - yeah, here in the States, 'going to the bathroom' is a popular euphemism for pooing, even when it's not in the bathroom. I'd say small children are more likely to say that, probably because their mothers force them to use a polite term for defecating.

The "virginity" one was found on the main campus of my Uni on the cafeteria level, but it's a popular one, I think.

>>Jesus is a Mexican car Mechanic.<< Was it found like that? Else "mechanic" doesn't need the capital letter.

Here in Germany "Wo ist das Klo?" (Where is the toilet?) is rather popular, because it's a quote from a long-running cat litter ad. Usually, someone writes a witty description of how to find it.

Also, of course, in the women's if someone writes the popular "WWJD?" (What Would Jesus Do?), someone is bound to ammend it with "He'd go to the men's room" sooner or later.

,,,,
(oo)
---ooO-(_)-Ooo---

++Mala was here++

The first place I saw the "virginity" one was, I think, on GreyDesk's researcher space, oddly enough. But I've seen it since then.

Yes, it was found like that. I was fairly meticulous about following capitalizations, even when it's annoying to read

Surely GreyDesk's space is not a bathroom

fair enough, if annoying (Must admit I'm one of the types who corrects spelling, though usually in pencil )

At last h2g2 reaches my level !

What about the age of grafitti ? Amongst the ruins of Pompeii, they found graffitti. (And it's content hasn't altered over the years.)

Possibly one of the most famous pieces of graffitti in the 60's was "My mother made me a homosexual." Underneath which would be written "If I gave her the wool would she make me one too ?"

And finally - possibly - the last word on graffitti.

I HATE GRAFFITTI (writ large and in red)

Below, in another hand, - "I HATE ALL ITALIAN FOOD."

One would think with all this wit
That Shakespeare had been here to sh




I once saw,

'May the hairs on your ass
Turn to drumsticks and beat your bol to death'

Many years after seeing this piece of graffiti I was teaching a class and, as I walked around the desks, I heard the word 'bol being used.

I instantaneously recalled the graffiti and whispered it to the boy concerned. He said, 'What's that you said, Sir' and I replied, 'You heard'.

Well, a good hour later when we were having a break, a boy came up to me and said, 'Is it true you said to BODR, 'I hope the hairs on your ....' (He quoted this pohrase back at me absolutely verbatim.

I ended up won'ring how BODR recalled this entire senence an hour after I had whspered it to him once, when he couldn't recall basic scientific facts even after I 'd repeated them on several occasions

"What about the age of grafitti ? Amongst the ruins of Pompeii, they found graffitti. (And it's content hasn't altered over the years.)"

I've heard about that, but was it in bathrooms? If it was, that would be magnificent. We have an entry on graffiti itself, which could actually do with a good update someday.

I like the Shakespeare one I think I'd like to include that and the Italian food one, if I can find a place for them. Googling around turned up this interesting variation-

It makes me wonder, to see such wit,
If Shakespeare had been here to sh**.
Some swear they saw Shakespeare walk in,
But others say that fart was Bacon.