I’ve been warned to stay away from potty humor and toilet type news in my blog. They say it degrades my profession, disgraces my doctoral degree, and reduces the power and “flow” of my heady form of scholarship (or schizophrenia) but, alas, I cant seem to help myself. Everything reminds me of bathrooms, toilets, poop, pooping and the holy grail of toiletry, the all important flush efficiency ratio. Practically every story I read is rife with bathroom related vocabulary and crappy metaphors that mesmerize my soul and stimulate my inner child’s silly bone. Have you never been fixated on bathroom fixtures? Does just hearing, reading, or thinking about the Biblical flood and Noah make you want to tinkle a little or a lot? Does an office building sign about EVACUATION PLANNING mean something quite different to you than just a mad stampede of workers to the stairwells when a Taliban in a turban and suicide vest or deranged domestic Pro-Life lunatic storms your commercial complex with an AK-47?

By the way, do you realize just  how important it is to move your bowels on a regular basis, otherwise known as being “regular” ? Who cares about being “normal” as long as one remains “regular”, intestinally speaking. My mother made a very big deal about it and  like achieving success in business, dieting or health in general it was something to crow about. Go ahead. Ask yourself, would I rather be slightly schizophrenic or severely constipated? I know. Please dont force me to choose, dammit! Admittedly that’s a Sophie’s Choice type “no win” question if there ever was one. Plus, aren’t you the least bit interested in where idiomatic expressions like “move your bowels” came from? Also, what about all the water we waste and all the thousands if not millions of parched Sudanese and Biafrans who would be delighted to chug our overflowing toilet bowls and giant-sized toilet tanks just to quench their thirst and wet their perpetually chapped and sunburnt lips? See what I mean? Toilets and toilet technology are directly relevant to large-scale global problems and widespread human suffering. I certainly know I suffer when I’m constipated….

We waste our water and flush our toilets like there is no tomorrow. Water conservation is a joke to many people. We flush our toilets like a busload of obese pensioners and widows playing the slot machines in Vegas, with or without their reverse mortgage money and Bozo buckets of silver dollars. The point is we cant NOT flush. I don’t know about you but leaving even one stray square or sliver of toilet paper in the toilet bowl is nearly an OCD “capital crime” in our Mr. Clean obsessed American culture. God forbid someone would go to the bathroom stall after us and find some yellow water or a “floater”. People have barfed up their corporate lunches and/or called 911 on speed-dial over such miniscule sanitation errors. OK, I admit it. In the past I’ve been part of the problem and not the solution. Because I drink Starbucks expresso roast like its vitamin water I am often overcome by Nature’s Call when I am out shopping…very often while cruising Big Lots, Walmart or Costco looking for deals on toilet paper and related bathroom paraphernalia. Aisles upon aisles of flushable baby wipes, inky toilet bowl cleaners, ginormous packs of 18 count double roll triple-ply and commercial disinfectants known to be more powerful (and antibacterial) than napalm and nuclear bombs are all of great interest to me. I once left Costco so loaded up on toilet paper and paper towels that I had to strap the entire wooden pallet to the roof of my Lexus. I’m sure those who saw me drive by made snarky and flippant comments to their passengers like, “Jew or not Jew?”
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Anyway, try just to hear what I am saying big picture. If Sigmund Freud had not turned his drug-addled attention to more cocaine, morphine and other symbolic forms of oral and genital stimulation, ie. his many phallic shaped smoking pipes, soft leather chewing tobacco pouches, ubiquitous penises imagery, Egyptian obelisks, etc., he might well have posited a very different theoretical framework, one based on larger Cosmic principles…. like what swirling black holes remind me of rather than just assuming that every patient  unconsciously desires to have sex with their offspring and visa versa. Me thinks Siggy may have been projecting too much and doing too much blow….. Anyway, have I lost you on the long winding way to the pirate ship’s Porta-potty? To me this SHIT is of vital importance and SOMEBODY has to finally stand up, speak out, pull down their trousers and do their duty.

A really cool energy efficient dual flush retrofit kit: