Merde

Alberta Minister of Culture and Community caused an uproar this week for saying, "I look at what we produce and if we’re honest with ourselves, why do I produce so much shit? Why do I fund so much crap?”

I can't answer why he funds and produces so much shit and crap but I would like to encourage him to continue to do so. Furthermore, if I may be so bold, I would like to suggest the question he really should be asking himself, and we ourselves, is what's wrong with crap?

I think effluence is erroneously maligned by most cultures. It can rain and shine all it likes but without healthy well fertilized soil, nothing edible and/or beautiful will grow no matter how hard you try. So, why aren't we producing more shit? What is this great aversion to poo?

How did something so very fundamental to life come to be so misunderstood and reviled? I blame the advent of the modern sewage system (while I simultaneously and heartily endorse it) which allowed, for the first time in human history, mankind to largely ignore their waste by flushing it away with a quick flick of the wrist. Over the years it's become shameful, this business of doing one's business.

The other night, while watching my favourite movie "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring" which was excitingly on the only TV channel I get as the late night movie, a commercial came on for a deodorizer. "What's the best thing ever?" asks a pearl necked lady. "Not leaving a smell when you use the washroom." answers an equally stiffly coiffed, stepford wife in the next shot. The commercial goes on highlighting all the benefits of using even just a single drop of this deodorizer so that you need never smell your own waste again. While this commercial is wildly funny on first view what it proposes is actually dangerous to both the individual and society.

In the first instance, changes in the smell of your waste can be an early cue to, sometimes serious, changes in your health. So by masking it you could be delaying a diagnosis of any number of debilitating, possibly lethal, gastrointestinal ailments.

But secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, try to imagine a society of people who believe that their shit doesn't stink. Like Western culture isn't insufferable enough.

I think it's time, dear reader, to embrace shit. Not only is shit a uniting factor for all humanity but for all living creatures on the planet. Moreover, no good would come to any of us without it. So, next time anyone rushes to disparage something you've created or enjoyed by referencing shit or crap say just say thank you. And, if we require a shorthand derogatory reference point, I propose the use of the term "plastic bag" instead.