Preface: For reasons obvious or otherwise, this diary will not contain any visual components: no videos, photos, or lengthy descriptions will be indulged in.

So, after one ill-fated conversation with my mate over how much I enjoy a good poop, we got to talking about what makes a good poop. And the answer was, really, that we didnt know. I have no idea why I enjoy one day's poop more than another. All we had was the age-old 'well a clean snap is awesome'... Which, while it is more than likely seeded in truth, there is no real scientific rigour to what makes a good poop. Being scientists, we decided that it would be best if, for the betterment of humanity and the advancement of poopscience everywhere, maybe I should take it into my own hands (purely figuratively speaking) and make a 'poop-diary', similar to people keeping dream diaries, but, you know, poopier.

That idea proverbially festered for several weeks, until today. A discussion came up about it in #rly, and after some lengthy details being fleshed out, I now present to you, to my knowledge, the first attempt at a scientifically rigorous poopdiary ever undertaken by humanity. I decided to allow the honour of hosting this bastion of all that is science and research to go to GON, for two reasons: firstly, poopdiary.blogspot.com was taken (albeit unused), and secondly, because this was the first suggestion presented in #rly, by titan-. Which lead to me rummaging around for my GON account password, logging into my account, and embarking on this wild journey of discovery.

So heres how its basically going to go down. There are many factors which I envisage influence the overall satisfaction of any given poop: contents of poop (a factor of culinary indulgences of the 24-48 hours prior), mood before and after poop, time of day of poop, texture of poop (clean snapper? sloppy sprayer? how stained did it leave the bowl afterwards?), place of undertaking (crimping at home, versus uni, versus public toilet), length of time spent on poop, and obviously any extenuating circumstances (there is a tale I could regale you with here about The One That Wouldnt Flush, but I think its best to avoid tangents at this stage).

So in attempts to facilitate adequate conclusions to be drawn on each of these factors, I will record several things for each poop:

- Time of day and length of poop: I think 'morning', 'afternoon', 'night' should suffice here. My average poop time is about 10-15 minutes, so any significant deviation from this should be quickly apparent.
- Firmness: A 1-5 scale rating should do here, where 1 is 'it dripped out' and 5 is 'it was so solid it ripped something'.
- Location: Home, Public toilet, Uni. Other categories could be coined as required. My own personal preferences are going to weigh heavily here, since I have a strong aversion to pooping outside of my own home.
- Extenuating circumstances and other thoughts/comments: Comments on my health (emperical evidence suggests colds and the like can reduce overall firmness of any given poop), mood*, etc., could all be recorded here.
- Satisfaction rating: Obviously the most important factor, since it is what we are eventually attempting to optimise. 1-10 rating system, to allow for fine differentiations between personal feelings towards any given poop.

*For the sake of conciseness, I think it is adequate to assume that I was generally happy while undertaking any given poop, and any significant deviation from this (depressed, ecstatic, hungover) can simply be mentioned under extenuating circumstances.

As well as the above, I will keep a general running diary of dietary trends each day. I dont think specifics will influence it too much, so just a general 'toast/cereal/coffee/nothing' breakfast, 'subway/sushi/whatever' lunch, etc. should do. Within reason, I cant see time influencing it too much, so it will just be a simple 'morning, lunch. afternoon, dinner' documentation. This will probably make for boring reading, so Ill try and keep it at the end of any post, and only make reference to it if any important factor or strong correlation is developing.

I dont know how quickly links between overall poop context and poop satisfaction will become apparent, so this could possibly take months to come into fruition. But science is never easy and rarely quick, so I will do what I must.

Let the poop diary begin

Stan.