Profanity is the crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

April 16, 2004 10:38 PM

The Writings on the Stall :: a new compendium of bathroom graffiti
posted by anastasiav (17 comments total)

Here's an interesting one:


Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (circa 1963)
Freshman dorm
Troy, New York USA 12181
Men's restroom

Flush twice; it's a long way to the Freshman Dining Room....
posted by gregb1007 at 10:47 PM on April 16, 2004

Seen (I don't know where) on the condom machine:

This bubble gum tastes like rubber.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 11:27 PM on April 16, 2004

which hall in particular, gregb? I don't remember seeing that one my freshman year.
posted by Ryvar at 11:34 PM on April 16, 2004

Also a good site (and potentially, a much better site): Vandals + Poets
posted by Down10 at 11:45 PM on April 16, 2004

My all-time favorite:

The more I learn about women, the more I like motorcycles.
posted by alumshubby at 4:28 AM on April 17, 2004

Made me chuckle:

To be is to do.
Nietzche

To do is to be.
Sartre

Do be do be do.
Sinatra
posted by nthdegx at 6:54 AM on April 17, 2004

Also seen on a condom machine: "Insert baby for full refund."
posted by trondant at 8:06 AM on April 17, 2004

On a t-shirt of two students walking in front of Lake Mendota in Madison in high winter: "Many are stalled but few are frozen"
posted by lometogo at 9:31 AM on April 17, 2004

most inexplicable one i've seen in my building:

"have you checked your genotypic sex lately? i think you're suffering from a virilizing adrenal hyperplasia or a translocated SRY antigen."

tranlsation: i am a science geek, and i'm trying to say you're not a real man, and you're trying to make up for it by being overly macho.

to me, there just seem to be more succinct ways to say this.

"free the calcium ²⁺" makes me giggle, though. admittedly another science geek joke, but this is after all a science building.

also i did notice one that caught my eye, carved into the old marble slab of a toilet stall on campus: "class of '02". wouldn't be that interesting except i first noticed it in 1996, which means it was graffiti from the class of 1902. the fact that it has survived for 102 years without getting removed is pretty interesting.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:50 AM on April 17, 2004

also i did notice one that caught my eye, carved into the old marble slab of a toilet stall on campus: "class of '02". wouldn't be that interesting except i first noticed it in 1996, which means it was graffiti from the class of 1902. the fact that it has survived for 102 years without getting removed is pretty interesting.

That is cool, unless it was some kid who wasn't going to graduate for another six years but decided to carve it in anyway. I remember when I graduated from highschool in 2000 and there was "Grad 2002!" graffiti all over the city for some reason.
posted by The God Complex at 12:49 PM on April 17, 2004

Profanity is the cruch of the inarticulate motherfucker. Is this a common one, I've seen it before.
posted by corpse at 1:28 PM on April 17, 2004

My favourite graffiti was sprayed on two railway bridges on a freeway running through Minneapolis. The first read: Jesus Christ Saves Sinners; the second; And redeems them for valuable cash and prizes.

So why are there so many posts from Sweden. Is Swedish food particularly love in fibre?
posted by gesamtkunstwerk at 1:47 PM on April 17, 2004

My favorite bathroom stall graffiti ever, from the Harper Library bathroom at the U of Chicago:

"U of C fags suck dick."
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 2:18 PM on April 17, 2004

The only college bathroom graffiti message I recall from my education (which was back before they invented flush toilets and felt-tip pens) was at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, located atop one of L.A.'s more interesting pieces of topography, looking down over Marina Del Rey:
"LMU is built on a bluff and run the same way"
posted by wendell at 3:02 PM on April 17, 2004

nthdegx, I'm pretty sure that quote is from the Vonnegut novel Deadeye Dick or another of his. I think I'll look it up.
posted by Evstar at 4:31 PM on April 17, 2004

Evstar, it's older than that--it's been around since the 60s or 70s i believe. (i don't know how you'd research it tho)
posted by amberglow at 4:33 PM on April 17, 2004

My old friend Rick and I had a graffiti mission. After seeing a deadpan scrawl 'Off The Pig - Develop The Illegal Front' in one of the toilets at the Student Union Building at UBC in the early 80's, laughing about it, and making an in-joke of it for years, we graduated and both became world-travellin' types, and started writing in on bathroom walls all over the planet, for the sheer joy of the absurdity of it.

If you've seen that in a toilet somewhere in the world, there's a good chance either Rick or I put it there, sometime between, say, 1988 to 1998.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:33 PM on April 17, 2004