Blast From The Past, Shitlist Style...

THE SHIT LIST: ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 27, 2009

Alright, so in a testament to my complete inability to mature, and in an attempt to alleviate at least a little bit of the boredom that is FOB Sharana I have composed the following. It is a list, a list of all the different types of shits you take in a combat zone. Each shit is named, with an explanation immediately following. 

It is unfortunate but each and every one of these shits has been taken by this GI at one time or another. These disgusting situations are due to several factors, most important is the quality of the food that they feed us, but also due to the quality of our water, the amazing amount of foreign non-mind altering substances that we imbibe, and just the basic unhealthiness of this entire situation.

This is intended to be not only instructive but also humorous, and a thinly veiled plea for Pepto-Bismol or if you are cheap...Pink Bismuth.

Without further adieu, I present for your examination, THE SHIT LIST.


1.The Bubble Guts Shit: Normally a shit that happens about 3-5 hours after Mexican night in the chow hall. Characterized by a sort of bubbling in your guts prior to an explosive shit. Somewhat akin to the bubbling of a boiling pan of water, right before it comes flying out your ass in the most relieving of waves!

2.The Ambush: Simply put, a shit that sneaks up on you. You may be standing there doing this or that when your body tells you, “Hey We have to shit!” Prior to your brain even registering the 4th syllable of that sentence your bowels begin to vacate themselves. Normally this shit is preceded by some sort of either natural or man made laxative or a healthy helping of enchiladas.

3.Combat Shit: Any and all shits taken outside the wire. (We’ll get to the ones you have while being shot at!)

4.The Ghost: A shit where you visit the crapper and you go through the motions, you feel all the feelings and then when you go to wipe you are greeted by none other than clean paper. On the first swipe, no less. Then when you examine the receptacle you find...NOTHING. Creepy.

5.Blowback: This is when you have a particularly large shit that is taken in a freshly cleaned and emptied port-a-shitter. Which has also been freshly filled with whatever the hell that liquid shit is that they put in there. You drop trou, pop a squat, shit, and the splash from the liquid flies up and gives you a little kiss on the ass. Blowing back, right on your butt. 

6.The Mountain: These are rare, have only seen them in Sharana. They have really bad shitters here. Sometimes they are without water, which doesn’t stop the GI’s from dropping a deuce. Sometimes these nasty pricks shit in one that already has a load sitting in it, left by some undiscerning GI who couldn’t care less that he couldn’t flush. Anyway, another GI will sit down and drop his present off right on top of the other one which creates a pile somewhat similar to a mountain. Note: Some of these piles have been known to exceed the threshold of the toilet seat. That guy, whoever he is, is one nasty fucker.

7.The Two-Fer: These are hilarious. As I said previously, the military shitters are notoriously bad and they also are notorious for not being able to handle the bombs we drop. Given the caliber of food we eat here you would think that someone would figure out we need like industrial shitters made to handle a 2000 pound bull, but I digress. So as a courtesy you flush at least once mid-shit just to make the room tolerable to the other nasty GI’s in the room. When you do that, you promptly clog the toilet making the continuation of your task an impossibility. So you have to pull up your pants, and carefully, move the operation to another stall. This is especially funny if, at the time, all the other stalls are full. Yet, due to the low quality of the shitters, when you get to the next one you clog that one too. Hence, the two-fer!

8.Torpedo in the door: This is the name given to your shit, after an ambush between where you are ambushed and where you are going to shit. It is basically a synonym for the Frankenstein. Used also by some to describe a particularly large shit. The only way to characterize these is to say this. When you are done with one of these, you ask yourself what women are bitching about with the childbirth thing. Because you are fairly certain that no child has ever been born bigger than that turd you just dropped.

9.Shittus Interruptus: A shit that interrupts anything you really want to be doing. Perhaps you are courting your own personal “desert rose” and you have an uncontrollable urge to make a B-line for the shitters and take care of business, during which time your “desert rose” is yanked for some detail that needs to be done, or perhaps even worse she is surrounded by four guys from another unit and is enjoying the attention. Making her of absolutely no use to you.

10.The Marathon: Fairly self explanatory. Any shit that takes an inordinately long time. This can be used as either the descriptor of a particular shit, or it can be used to modify another type of shit. For example, “I just had a marathon bubble guts shit!”

11.The Gotcha: These are especially funny to watch. This is a shit where the GI in question thinks he or she is finished with their business, has cleaned up, and is walking away from the shitters when their body informs them that they are so very, very wrong and they have to quickly face about and move back to the shitters posthaste. Basically, this is your colon playing with you. “Ha Ha, you thought you were done! I gotcha!” (That’s what would be said if your colon could talk. Which after a year or so of Army food is not beyond the realm of possibility.)

12.Whistling Ass Piss: Everyone has heard the phrase, pissing out your ass. Which is when you have a particularly watery shit somewhat similar to what comes out the other end. The only difference between that and this is, in this you add a nice long bit of flatulence that whistles out along side of it.

13.Midnight Prowler: Any shit that wakes you up and forces you out of bed. Every GI knows that in a combat zone, shitting is a process that will take you far from your bed. So even if a shit wakes you up, you have to decide whether you have to go and get it taken care of. If it can wait till the morning it will. There is no reason to get out of bed for a non-emergency.

14.The Tease: This is a real pain in the ass...literally. This is when you feel all the tell tale signs that it is time to visit the shitters. You get there, you may even drop trou and sit down. And you get nothing! Basically, you colon is teasing you. “I got to shit!” then you get there, “Oh wait, I was only kidding.”

15.A.M.M.R.E.: A military acronym for the After Mission Meal Ready To Eat Shit. Anyone who has ever eaten an MRE or even better subsisted on them for any length of time exceeding 1 day knows this utter joy. It is a commonly held belief amongst GI’s that MRE’s are laced with a constipation producing chemical. After having eaten these things for any length of time you become about as clogged up as a Polynesian whore after a long weekend. Which has led to another bit of slang, “Popping the cork”. In our case it has nothing to do with wine. But you will be whining when it happens. So you have to get back, and you know you have to shit because you have about 27 pounds of MRE shit waiting behind the blockade that has now taken over your booty. So its time to pop the cork. You sit down, and you push, and you push, and you push and finally the dam breaks and every MRE, along with a burger you had in 1985 comes spilling out your hind end.

16.The Frankenstein: This is a bi-product of the ambush. First you are ambushed, then the dump in question sets up residence half way out your butt so you are forced to clench your butt cheeks together so hard that you can no longer bend your knees when you walk because you need all those muscles to keep the beast at bay. So now you are relegated to walking from wherever you are to the shitters with your legs straight and unbending making you look like a camouflage Frankenstein.

17.Radio Watch Shit: You have radio watch. Maybe you are on the Quick Reaction Force for your FOB. You proceed to the shitters to do your thing. You are sitting there mid-poop and the radio screams to life. Something bad is happening, the Taliban is coming over the wall, there are mortars falling everywhere, the Sergeant Major just showed up. (All these things are equally horrible.) So you have to either force the rest of this out in about a nano-second or you have to stop, and return when you have available the time that this beast requires. Whatever you do your life will suck.

18.The Taliban Assisted Shit: Some GI’s may refer to this as a combat shit. Possibly you have been out on mission for several days and either you don’t want to shit out there or because of your MRE consumption you have been unable to do so. Either way there is quite a back up in the pipes. Then the Taliban decides to do something, whether it be shoot at you, drop a few mortars on your head, launch an RPG right at your face, or maybe you just drive over an IED. Promptly after which your bowels vacate and you are all better. Except for the rather unfortunate mess in your pants.

19.The god Hates You Shit: This is a shit where everything goes wrong for you. First, this is a bubble guts shit, but you didn’t feel it because you were asleep at the time. The trip to the shitters reveals that this beast is also a “Frankenstein” And the fact that you were asleep also makes it a midnight prowler, you get to the shitters and find out that it has now become a “blowback marathon” and finally you are confronted with the fact that there is no TP in the shitter and you forgot your baby wipes. Not to mention even if you did have them you wouldn’t know if you were clean anyway because you forgot your headlamp. Everything comes at you at once, everything goes totally wrong because god hates you!

20.The Glorious: This is where everything goes right. The polar opposite of #19. Not to mention it should alleviate some deep seated stomach problems that you had been having. The sense of relief cannot be described in words.

Yes, ladies and gents this is how bored I am here. So bored that I actually took the time to name and describe all the different sorts of shits I have taken while here in country. I just want all of you to remember that I did this during working hours, so all of you paid for this. So I hope you enjoyed it, it is the end result of your tax dollars at work. I hope the President will remember that the next war he decides to start!

Later,

I love you Mom...