Now this, although tangentially scatological, is funny.

For some reason I thought toilet paper was a decidedly American custom, and that the Continentals had other methods of toilet hygiene, the bidet coming to mind. How widespread (no pun intended) is TP nowadays? Does anyone know? I'm shocked that the ecologically friendly Swedes would consent to kill trees for such a lowly purpose.

Robert, I'd say the majority of Europeans use toilet paper. Bidets are mostly a Southern European thing rarely seen in the North.

There's something about this story that makes it sound like Stephen Glass or Jayson Brown is doing the reporting. For example, even if the cost of taking it back is high, paying for what was actually delievered has to be even higher.

Robert: Swedes afraid to cut down trees? Where do you think Husqvarna chainsaws come from? Europeans don't have the sort of hangups Americans do about cutting trees - most of their forests have been managed for generations.

Government work: the stuff came out of somebody else's budget, so the cost doesn't exist. Except that the taxpayers of the locality paid to store the TP for 20 years. Note how everyone in the article acted as if the supplies had just come out of the sky, like manna.

Good idea: just go ahead and build a life-size receiving dock and a couple of paper-mache fork-lifts. Then conduct services, in which you chant and wave around sheets of paper, while you wait for more TP. That will prove to everone that government workers are as smart about material reality as South Seas islanders.

See what happens when you don't starve the beast?

Proving once again that victory isn't always to the swift....

Just think of the awesome fort you could have built with that many rolls!