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Happy World Toilet Day!November 19, 2006... As you may already be aware, today is World Toilet Day. World Toilet Day is an initiative of the World Toilet Organization (WTO), a non-profit organization that "communicates the need for better toilet standards in both the developed and developing economies ... [and] facilitate[s] an exchange of ideas relating to health and cultural issues." Not surprisingly, the WTO was founded in Singapore, a country where failing to flush can result in a heavy fine. In the words of the WTO, the purpose of declaring each November 19th World Toilet Day is to: Have people in all countries take action, increase awareness of toilet user’s right to a better toilet environment, and to demand for it from toilet owners. As such, it is also the toilet user’s duty to contribute towards its also the toilet user’s duty to contribute towards its maintenance, cleanliness and hygiene. When I first learned of World Toilet Day, late this summer, some time before International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I thought it was a outrageously silly idea. Celebrating toilets? Ha! Jokes were duly made about marking the occasion, briefly, in the company of one's favourite commode... Having digested these videos, however, I see the point. Who among us has never encountered a toilet that isn't even clean enough to shit in? Who among us has never had to "hold it in" while we're out and about because of the lack of inviting places for a nice sit down? What a bummer! ***** The number of toilet photos in my photo album is asstounding. In my travels, I have come to know many a remarkable john. I've seen a fully functional--and filthy--toilet on a dirt floor in a Texas barn. I've felt the wayward spray of a Turkish toilet's flush in West Germany. I've smelled a toilet that has gone uncleaned since a brush with greatness--i.e. the "visit" of a celebrity--twenty years before. This toilet, though, really sticks out in my memory.
It may shock you to learn that the photo above was not taken in remote, backward Kazakhstan, but in the US and A, where it appears a fair number of the citizens are still confused about the proper role of the toilet. ***** Stress and strain as I might, I could think of no songs about toilets. These are as close as I got... Buffalo Tom - BirdbrainDeep Purple - FireballI love to sing along to "Birdbrain," which made the cut today because of the line "Twenty-five years are just washed down the drain." "Fireball" is, I believe, the third Deep Purple song to find its way onto the pages of Afterbirth of the Cool. I guess I kinda like the band, eh? "Fireball" appears here today because of the sound effect at the outset, which has always sounded a bit like a flusing toilet to me. It is also worth noting that the band uses the word khazi, a rarely heard euphemism for toilet, in one their other songs. If you can think of any songs about toilets, let me know. It's the kind of information a fellow should always have close at hand. ***** P.S. The related issue of the simple lack of public washrooms in Toronto, clean or dirty, is addressed in eye magazine this week. Permadink | | |
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