intestine cleansingIf you think most Americans are full of crap, you're right. According to USA Today, "Most people who eat the standard American 'goo and glue' diet have about 5-10 pounds of matter stored in the colon." What is this "matter," and more importantly, does it matter? Apparently so, according to this spam e-mail I recently received:


To: John Hargrave
From: Discover the benefits of a healthy colon
Subject: Pur1fy yr colon inst@ntly

AS SEEN ON CNN!! Cleanse your body of fecal buildup with our intestinal cleansing program. Safe and effective herbal colon cleansing product of intestines and colon with our low-priced colon cleansing program. Click here to 0rder colon cleansing kit NOW!!

You may know them by other names: "herbal cleansing," "colonics," or "detoxification." They're herbal diets that clean you out like the Roto-Rooter guy: a one-way ticket on the Dookie Express. The e-mail had five uses of the word "colon," but ironically it was punctuated with no actual colons.

Now, I eat pretty badly. I'm on the SNIKTA diet, which is the Atkins diet in reverse: 100% carbs. Three bowls of sugared cereal for breakfast, cookies for lunch, and a hoagie roll for dinner. You know what's the bread of life? Bread. That's why they call it that. So if anyone's colon needed cleansing, it was mine. And possibly James Lipton's. I'll bet that guy's butt has seen more action than a Korean bathhouse.

So I scoured the Internet for something that would scour my intestines, and eventually found my way to a leading butt site, which sells all-natural colon cleansing products. The site also features graphic photos of their customers' copious bowel movements, a new genre of hardcore I'm calling "poo-rnography."

[WARNING: DO NOT VIEW THESE PHOTOS WHILE EATING, PARTICULARLY IF YOU ARE EATING BRATWURST OR PLUM PUDDING.]


These, my friends, are the satisfied customers of intestinal cleansing products. These aren't testimonials; they're testigroanials. Disturbingly copious, these pythons of poo have been placed atop the toilet seat like showroom pieces. Even grosser than the pictures is the thought of these people fishing around in the bowl with bare hands, carefully lifting their long ropes onto the seat without breaking. I'm no doctor, but that just seems unsanitary.

I'll admit that I was curious. Who's not curious about their poo? That childhood sense of fascination and pride never really goes away. That's why we stand and gaze upon it lovingly before we flush it away. It's like losing an old friend. Occasionally I write my poo poetry in the form of hai-poo.

colon cleansing programsSo I bought DrNatura's unfortunately-named "Colonix" kit for $75.00, which arrived in the mail a few days later. The three-step program consisted of all-natural pills, a powdered supplement, and herbal tea. The instruction manual promised that Colonix would empty my pooter of "mucus, toxins, and metabolic waste," not to mention "harmful parasites, including intestinal worms and their eggs."

Hold the phone. Worms!? A very real possibility, the manual explained, with more than 2.8 billion people infected with some form of roundworm or hookworm. I found this exciting, because I had plans to go fishing on Saturday.

I was a little worried about when to start the cleansing program, especially after seeing those pictures. "If you want to 'play it safe,'" the manual warned, "and you work from Monday to Friday, you should begin taking Colonix on a Saturday morning." They acted like poo would soon be shooting from every available orifice, like the fountains at the Bellagio.

I could just picture sitting in a meeting, when suddenly a reverse volcano of poo would shoot out of my ass, lifting me off my seat, with geysers of hot poo streaming from my trouser legs. I would be thrust around the conference room, like the jetpack guy at the Olympics, leaving a sad brown trail across the faces of my co-workers.

So I started taking it on Monday, just before work. I've always wanted to do that in a meeting.


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