The popular thread on bathroom graffiti continues:
I was going to write to say that your other reader‘s college was not unique in featuring restroom grout puns. I remember a similar collection in one of the men’s rooms at my large university. But it turns out this phenomenon goes far beyond our two schools. A quick Google search reveals a tumblr collecting photos of grout puns called “The Groutlands”, a reddit thread, and even an Urban Dictionary definition of groutfitti:
It involves writing in the tiny space of grout in between tiles in public toilets. The phrases always are made up of some pun using the word grout. Other examples include movie titles, like “The grout, the bad, and the ugly” or simple words, like “groutrageous.”
One of the photos from The Groutlands is seen above. Back to many more submissions from readers:
I can’t believe I’m actually writing about this to someone whom I consider to be the most intelligent person in the blogosphere. But here goes. From the bathroom stall of my university, in 1994. Imagine Julie Andrews singing this:
Blowjobs and handjobs and licking Clitoris,
Watching my grandmother douche with Lavoris,
Flossing my teeth with an old tampon string,
These are a few of my favorite things!
Another:
At Stevenson College, UCSC, in the men’s room across from the main classroom, circa 1993, someone had written on the condom dispenser: “THIS GUM SUCKS.”
Another goes geopolitical:
This was in the early ’00s in a Safeway bathroom. It’s the only piece of bathroom graffiti I remember, because I’m still trying to figure out quite what it means: “Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon should eat pork together.” Can’t tell whether it’s just a big Fuck You or a call to compromise and find common ground by doing something unpleasant and unthinkable together.
Another political stand:
Princeton University, early 1980s: “SAVE SOVIET JEWRY”. Underneath, in another hand: “WIN FABULOUS PRIZES!”
Another:
From a Jamaican restaurant in Madison, WI, circa 1993: “If you jerk it, they will come.”
Another:
High school was a rich vein for this. One of my favourites: “Flush hard, it’s a long way to the cafeteria.”
And another:
Spray-painted on a concrete seawall: “Man’s downfall will be his own intelligents.”
Another notes:
Your other reader neglected the essential preamble to the “paid a dime but only farted …”
In days of old when men were bold
And toilets were not invented
Men left their load by the side of the road
And walked away contented.But here I sit, broken-hearted …
There. Nothing like a nice high-brow contribution to start off the new year!
Another agrees:
You know what I love about The Dish? Where else can you read a lengthy post about bathroom graffiti followed by a post about the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta? And feel the same level of enthusiasm for both?
The Dish 