The History of the DC Janitorial Pool

Although frequently dismissed as a base and unworthy adjunct of Darwin Central, the DC Janitorial Pool (as it is popularly but — as will be shown — erroneously known) is in fact the aboriginal organization from which all of DC’s manifold tentacles subsequently evolved. It is thus more properly to be regarded as the venerable ancestor of the vast and indomitable Conspiracy That Cares™ which is today on the threshold of total world domination.

Origin of the Feces

The inspirational — though not strictly the legal — founder of the Janitorial Pool is generally regarded as one Syms Covington (1816-1861), who served as a Cabin Boy on board HMS Beagle during its renowned voyage of 1831-1836. Covington’s meticulous zeal in carrying out his daily duties, such as the ritual morning “slopping out” of the shipboard chamber pots, did not pass unnoticed by the ship’s natural philosopher, the future eponymous founder and first Grand Master of Darwin Central. At that time still gathering the data from which he would later formulate his celebrated theory of the origin of species, Darwin recorded in his journals the overall contribution Covington’s sea-borne sanitary exertions made to the well-being—indeed, to the very survival—of the entire crew. In a passage clearly foreshadowing his later observations on evolutionary adaptation, Darwin duly noted the critical edge higher standards of shipboard sanitation imparted to the Royal Navy. “Could Nelson,” Darwin noted in his Beagle Journal, “have triumphed at Trafalgar had his gun crews been assailed, as were our French opponents, by unspeakably foul excreta flung by the rolling main from unsecured chamber pots hurtling hither and yon across the decks? I think not.”

Later, when he took up residence at Down House in Kent, the still-young Darwin instituted a vigorous regime of household management, taking pains to recruit only the most experienced and conscientious domestic servants available, organizing and drilling them along strict naval lines. He commanded from his small squad of household staff—whom his son Leonard playfully named “the DDD” (The Down Downstairs Domestics)—the highest standards of personal hygiene, utmost attention to every detail, and unswerving personal loyalty. And such was not only demanded but positively required to carry out such tasks as Darwin set. Notable among these was the morning inspection of the chamber pots, ostensibly to check for signs of parasitic infection or other medical disorders, but in practice rather a confirming symptom of Darwin’s fashionable mid-Victorian strain of hypochondria. Indeed, such was Darwin’s concerns on this score, one particular servant (dubbed the “the stool pigeon”) was required to maintain punctilious written records in a “log” book. Many of his other obsessive needs (such as cleaning the mirror by the front door carefully positioned to warn him of visitors to Down House whom he might prefer to avoid) were serviced, with loving devotion, by the downstairs domestics of Down.

Arguably, in the embryonic formation of the DDD may be traced much of the future structure of Darwin Central. The ancestral corps of chamber pot attendants gave rise by easy stages to the Janitorial Pool, which included record-keeping functions (from which evolved DC’s Central Archives) and a surveillance-mirror maintenance agent (the progenitor of Security and Covert Operations—now notorious as DC “Black Ops”).

Going Underground

The story is well known how, in 1858, Darwin received Alfred Wallace’s ‘bombshell’ letter, in which it was clear that the junior scientist had independently hit upon the importance to natural selection of, inter alia, washing ones hands after answering calls of nature. Thus precipitously bounced into publishing Origin of Species, Darwin realised he would thereby unleash a cataclysmic explosion of the fell forces of mindless reactionary drivel, bloodthirsty Bibleolotrous psychopathology, and all the other execrable excesses of the Committed Creationists. In short, realising that desperate times called for desperate measures, Darwin stepped up to the challenge as the founding Grand Master to formalise the structure of his vast global conspiracy—of which his humble staff of downstairs domestics were the foundation. And so it was, in 1859, that the DDD was formally (albeit secretly) chartered as the Worshipful Company of Custodial Attendants. The acronym, WCCA, would later give rise to a number of conspiracy theories concerning ‘Wiccans,’ but from the outset this cabal of cleaners, recorders, and spies was generally known simply as the Worshipful Company.

Early Operations of the WCCA

The nascent WCCA, though besieged from the very outset by the benighted forces of irrationality, nonetheless held true to its mission statement as a “caring” conspiracy. At a time when typhus and other diseases of poor sanitation still took a grim and regular toll of hapless Londoners, the Worshipful Company began a series of covert but benevolent activities. A typical operation would consist of forced entry at midnight into a public venue, such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, installing the requisite plumbing with a flushable toilet in a broom closet, and finally affixing the cryptic letters “W.C.” to the door. Popularly misunderstood to represent “water closet,” this deliberate piece of bogus etymology has been erroneously sanctioned by the Oxford English Dictionary and is still widely believed to this day.

From Worshipful Company to Janitorial Pool: The Growth of Darwin Central

In accordance with the Darwinian principle of complexity from simple origins, the WC was from the outset of Darwin Central the principle agency of recruitment. To this day, it is thought that all “Caring Conspirators” are required to enter the secret society at its most humble level and ‘evolve’ their way into whatever niche for which they are best adapted within the global conspiracy. Thus, the WC formed — under the popular misnomer of ‘The DC Janitorial Pool’—the most public face of the highly-secretive Darwin Central Conspiracy.

The method by which Darwin Central identifies potential recruits is unknown, though it is clear that only the very best and brightest are approached. But if very few are called, even fewer are chosen—and the brutal winnowing process commences with induction into the ‘Janitorial Pool’ and the extreme demands of the initial 24-month basic training at "Bowl Camp."

Bowl Camp

It is thought by some that DC operates up to a dozen secret training facilities world-wide, but others hold there is only one primary camp the location of which is periodically moved to ensure security. Such DC-watchers believe that the presence of a camp can sometimes be detected by a nexus of reports of mysterious disappearances or other unusual phenomena. Thus, it is generally thought that a DC training camp was, if only for a period in the 1970’s, located within the so-called ‘Bermuda Triangle’—having been moved there from Area 51. Many currently suspect that the ‘Mount Arafat Anomaly’ of Northern Turkey, which some Creationists believe holds the remains of Noah’s Ark, is in fact an underground bunker currently housing Darwin Central’s "Bowl Camp."

Given the high attrition rate of recruits, considerable security problems potentially arise from flunked trainees ‘going public’ (also known as ‘opusing out’). And it is true that much of what has leaked into the public domain about Darwin Central has been from precisely this source. However, DC nonetheless retains security by two principal methods:

1. constantly bombarding new recruits with such ingenious and omnipresent misinformation that they can no longer distinguish fact from fiction; the ultimate truths of the organization are only revealed later, when unquestioning loyalty has been demonstrated

2. ensuring that the entire Bowl Camp training experience is so profoundly and personally humiliating that no one in their right mind would ever own up to having experienced it.

Nonetheless, a few facts of the training regimen have been exposed by drop-outs, generally via anonymous postings on the internet. From such imperfect sources, it nonetheless seems probable that among the practical skills DC Recruits acquire at Bowl Camp include:

• sniper-grade urinal marksmanship (ladies not exempted)

• extreme-altitude plumbing

• complete cladistic analysis of all known porcelain-dwelling micro-bacterial pathogens

Of particular brutality is the notorious ‘Sanitation Survival Course’, whereby solitary trainees are parachuted into some desolate and inhospitable region. Known venues which have previously been used for this exercise include the Kalahari desert, the island of Borneo, and Akron, Ohio. Equipped with nothing more than a 2-day supply of MREs, a roll of dental floss, an IKEA allen key, and an autographed photograph of Sir Neville Chamberlain, the inductee has three weeks in which to complete a complex set of grueling tasks, such as:

• distilling a serviceable household bleach from the juice of a cactus

• removing limestone stalagmites using a torque wrench improvised out of seaweed, and without marring the living rock of Carlsbad Cavern

• rendering an entire face of a sea-cliff possessed of a gull colony entirely guano-free (probably the only possible use for the Chamberlain photograph)

• assembling, while blindfolded, the entire works of a toilet cistern in less than two minutes--on a live-ammo firing range

• re-grouting a 25-square meter mosaic-tiled floor, which has been extensively land-mined, using only the end of a chewed twig and a paste made from toxic caterpillars, yew berries, and llama fat

From such circumstantial evidence, it seems likely that the notorious phrase, “survival of the fittest,” which is so often wrongly attributed to Charles Darwin, in fact arose much later to describe the condition of the small number of inductees who actually made it through to graduate from Bowl Camp.

Black Ops – or Brown?

It seems probable, from the above accounts, that this elite corps of crack custodians is intended for operations beyond simple sanitation and building maintenance. There is speculation that some previous DC Grand Master (though probably not Darwin himself) hit upon the notion that there is not a secure facility in the world to which a janitor cannot gain entry: “Quis custodes ipsos custodiet?" indeed? It seems probable that the Janitorial Pool thus provides ideal cover for any number of covert operations. This is worth bearing in mind if the harmless-looking mop-pusher in your building seems to simply ‘appear’ in the vicinity of sensitive meetings and conversations, seems a tad too keen to dust the photocopier, or offers to help run data backups of your PC.

Indeed, there is a body of intriguing albeit circumstantial evidence that some nefarious activities, widely attributed to DC Black Ops, may have been conducted solely under the aegis of the Janitorial Pool instead. For example, documents recently found in former-Soviet archives reveal that Tsarist police uncovered—mere days before his fateful journey to Sarajevo—that Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was addicted to the low vice of micturating without first raising the seat (an offense long held to be capital by the DC Janitorial Pool). And so it must be said, in all questions of “Black Ops, or Brown”: we report—you decide.

Organization / Uniform / Insignia / Other Regalia

As holds with other divisions of Darwin Central, little (beyond the previously noted accounts of Bowl Camp drop-outs) can confidently be asserted about Darwin Central’s Janitorial. The identity or even the official title of the current ‘Head Custodian’ of the Janitorial Pool is unknown, though it has been established that he or she is customarily referred to by codename ‘P.’ Ranks and relative grades of other personnel within the division are unknown, except that the small band who attend to the Grand Master’s own Executive Washroom are widely regarded as the supreme elite of the corps.

No reliable description exists concerning the range or appearance of official uniforms of the Janitorial Pool. However, there is an intriguing photograph, allegedly smuggled out of the Bowl Camp mess hall, which purports to show the official coat of arms of the division. The crest, visible in the photo, appears to consist of a toilet seat framing a portrait of Kent Hovind, who appears to have a large, pink block wedged in his mouth and labelled, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche de pissoir” – that is, “Let them eat urinal cakes.”

Institutional Culture and Esprit de Corps

One might well suppose the typical DC Janitorial Pool Custodian to be a fastidious, bacteriophobic, anally-retentive drone lodged somewhere deep in the obsessive/compulsive personality spectrum. But one would thus suppose wrongly.

Although the available evidence is fragmentary, it nonetheless consistently portrays the typical DC Custodian as a free-wheeling Dionysian libertine who balances hard work with even harder play. A “Scarab” (as DC Custodians sometimes style themselves) believes on the one hand, “We are the Custodians of the Truth!,” but on the other hand, “We clean up the mess – we get to make the mess!” It is stated in The Secret Protocols of the Elders of Darwin (which many discount as an unreliable source of dubious provenance) that it is “P”, the director of the Janitorial Pool, who by venerable tradition chairs the DC Entertainment Sub-Committee Working Group.

It is also said that no virgin has ever emerged from a party in the Janitorial Pool—but it should in the same breath be pointed out that no virgin would ever wish to attend one in the first place.

An intriguing satellite photograph of the Galapagos, taken on 12 February 1991, by chance appears to have captured an enormous outdoor gala in progress on an otherwise uninhabited island of the archipelago. This is generally believed to be the location of DC HQ, and the occasion can only be the Caring Conspiracy’s annual Darwin Day (D-Day) festivities. Although the resolution of the image is low, some hallmarks of Janitorial Pool culture have tentatively been identified, viz, the Grand Master’s silk pavilion modelled after the yurt of Genghis Khan, the enormous FSM beer fountains abounding with raunchy pole-dancing strippers, and the gargantuan ‘Wicker Piltdown-Man’ replete with hapless Creationists preparing to meet their exquisitely-cruel, excruciatingly-slow fate in the torpid, methodical, and mercilessly blunt jaws of the legendary anthropophageous tortoises of the island of Santiago.

And for a DC Custodian, it just doesn’t get any better than this.