I have repeatedly said the local papers (CDT and Daily Collegian) are full of sh*t, and Tuesday I was proven right when both featured front page stories about a State College resident who was the unfortunate victim of an exploding toilet on Monday. And really, when we have the two papers covering stories like this, it makes my job much, much easier.

First let me give you a rundown of what happened. It looks like State College borough workers were flushing a sewage line in a neighborhood off of S. Atherton causing the water pressure to build and forcing raw sewage (read: sh*t and piss) into at least one home. Disgusting right? It couldn't get much worse than that you're probably thinking. Well think again because lucky State College resident John O'Brien just happened to be sitting on the toilet when the eruption occurred.

Now let's look at The Collegian's coverage of the story. First of all their headline is "One crappy day: Local man irked by toilet explosion." Really? You're going to go with a pun there huh? And not even a good pun. Something like "When The Sh*t Hits The Man" or something like that. Oh well. But as the Best Week Ever Blog points out (yes, that Best Week Ever) there are at least five fantastic quotes in this story and they are as follows:

1. “I was doing my business, sitting on my toilet, and the toilet blew sewer water into my butt,” he said.
2. He woke up, drank a cup of coffee, grabbed a book and relaxed on his porcelain throne — “The toilet is where a man does his best thinking,” O’Brien said.
3. O’Brien said the eruption reminded him of a French bidet, a plumbing fixture meant to replace toilet paper that shoots water at its users. “I don’t think they meant for that though,” he said.
4. O’Brien is more worried for his three daughters than for himself, he said. “They have open areas that can get infected easily. I would never want this to happen to my girls,” he said.
5. The floor and toilet was covered in much more fecal matter than he could have created on his own, and five to 10 gallons of water, he said. “The poo was more than I would produce,” he said.

OK, let's just analyze a few of these spectacular pieces of journalistic gold. Clearly Mr. O'Brien has no shame, but then again how much shame can you have when you just had a raw sewage enema? But my favorite quote in this story has got to be #4 where O'Brien's fatherly instinct (and clear understanding of the female anatomy) comes into play. I hope all females out there are taking note. You have open areas that can get infected easily, you have been warned.

But there's one part of this story that isn't getting any attention at all, and really needs to: "The toilets in his neighborhood do this at least twice a year." WHAT?! Your toilets explode at least twice a year and you haven't addressed this? Look, if my toilet so much as overflows I'm thinking about moving, so if the thing starts to spew fecal matter around my bathroom you better believe I'm outta there.

The CDT spoke to other residents in the neighborhood who experienced problems with the sewer lines as well, although none to the extent of O'Brien. But one interesting story came from Darlene Dorfi whose daughter almost got sucked into the toilet.

“My daughter was the one who was on the toilet,” Dorfi said. “She said it started sucking her in so she jumped up right away.”

Can you imagine what was going on in this neighborhood on Monday? One guy has a literal sh*t storm in his bathroom and another person is being flushed down the drain. The only thing that could possibly make this story any better is if we could hear from John O'Brien in his own words. Oh wait, YOU CAN! Thanks to the tech geniuses over at The Collegian we get about 30 seconds of audio of what I assume is the interview Erin Rowley did with O'Brien, and yup he's just as fantastic in audio as he is on the written page.

So, just think of that story this weekend when you're drunk with your head in the toilet. I'm going for the sink myself.