Downsizing Stinks

Today, a columnist at the Toronto Sun announced that the newspaper will soon be undergoing toilet downsizing. Due to building renovations by the owners, employees of the paper will no longer be able to roam six stories of building in order to find a good place to "go." The columnist quoted our friend and toilet science colleague Dr. Michael Sykes over at the ICBE about the etiquette of using the loo in close quarters with colleagues. Sykes says, “There’s work life and personal life, and by personal life I don’t mean what movies you’ve seen."

True enough. But I don't get a lump of fear in my throat when I think about going to the loo in close proximity to my colleagues. Well, I guess I do a little bit. It's always a bit harrying to see your boss coming in or out of the ladies (or men's) room. I once was walked in on by my boss on the first day of work, due to a faulty door lock. That was a trial by fire. And ice-breaker of sorts. But I don't get nervous about it because everyone has to do it. At some point in the day, you will, inevitably, have to find a place to relieve yourself, and so I balance discomfort at being around people you know with convenience and shortest distance traveled.

I'll take shortest distance traveled any day. Unless the bathroom itself is located in an uncomfortable spot, like, say a lobby. But I will say, having one bathroom for an entire company can certainly build a sense of community.

Anyway, if you want to read the full article, I highly recommend it.

A Day at the Outhouse

And now for our next installment of outhouse romance, compliments of Awkward Family Photos.

We're not sure what the inspiration for this photo was. Maybe they thought it would be both quaint and suggestive to have the guy happily watching as his fiancée appears to be entering the outhouse. And does anyone else think it's creepy that he's standing with his face right by the window?

But in all seriousness, I owe my existence in part to an outhouse. I kid you not. My great-great grandfather came to America, and while he was staying with relatives in upstate New York, he fell in love with his next door neighbor, whom he saw walking every day to the outhouse in her back yard. I like to think it was less of a creepy thing and more of an unavoidable voyeuristic event because he lived on the second floor and everyone had outhouses in those days. But the bottom line is: I owe my life to a toilet.

Now if that's not awkward, I don't know what is.

But maybe these "romantic" photos are not so off-base after all?

A Romantic Engagement

This one we found on Awkward Family Photos. It appears to be a couple who has just become engaged, and are celebrating this romantically by smooching between charming "his" and "hers" porta-loos. What a way to begin their life of intimacy in true love and total lack of personal privacy. Compliments of U.S. Waste.

But those are some pretty cool-looking porta-potties.

Thanks to Agent K.

This Toilet is Crap

Virginia's Toilet / Virginia Gardiner / The Bathroom Reinvented / Dwell from gary nadeau on Vimeo.

Literally. It's a toilet made of poo. We think that's the ultimate in self-reference. But that's just the introduction. This student is out to create waterless toilets, to save the world from excess flushing and transform poo into something useful.

Who knows if it will ever catch on in the Western world, but we think she's onto something. If nothing else, we feel a kinship, because she, like us, realizes how useful toilets are. but you probably haven't heard this much about poo since you were three.

We discovered this video on the World Toilet Day Facebook page. Follow the link for more information.

Musical "Chairs"

What you are looking at here is the iCarta iPod toilet paper holder. That's right, straight from the Macworld 2007 showroom floor to your sophisticated, musically-enhanced bathroom, this lovely item promises to "enhance your experience." Of what? Sitting on the toilet, we suppose? Brushing your teeth? Dancing around after a shower?

You'll notice that the two arms on the front fold in, so it doesn't technically *have* to be a toilet paper holder. That's more of an extra bonus. Like what else would you want your iPod dock to do, besides play music and charge your iPod? Darn things. Might as well make them do something useful, right?

This guy puts them all over his house, apparently, including at least two in the loo, it seems. The grammar here is a little off. I still want to know what s/he means by, "The high tech is a terrific pink for a house." But, as s/he points out, while the four integrated high-performance speakers are "moisture-free" that doesn't mean your iPod is, so he says he has to be careful when "taking a hot shower." Always recommended.

This one is from my dad - we'll call him Agent P (for Padre). And it's befitting of him, since he's always the one to know all things gadget. And this post is dedicated to Agent C in Mass., who recently suffered the loss of her iPod. RIP.

Midnight Visitors

'Twas the night before Festivus, and all through the bathroom,
despite wearing my pants,
I looked on the floor to see dozens of ants.

This, sadly, dear readers, is my tale of Christmas woe. Where is the joy, you are saying? Where is the spirit? Well, let me tell you.

This all started yon about two weeks ago, when it rained, and when it rains in the Bay Area, or at least in the East Bay for sure, it means the ants need somewhere to go, and where they usually go is your house. Or it certainly is mine. It started off, as it normally does, with a few little ants roaming around in my bathroom. I thought, no chance are they going to set up camp here. What are they going to eat, my dead skin cells? Perhaps yes.

Because, for whatever reason, decided to move in. I woke up one night to find not a pile of gifts, but that the miniature six-legged elves had in fact decided to lodge themselves somewhere in my walls probably, and were traipsing their way blithely through my bathroom, to and from my closet. Don't ask me what was on their little anty minds. I have no idea. I just wanted them gone.

So I put down some ant traps that had worked for me before. Nothing.

At that point, I was just glad that they weren't in my kitchen, though I can't say I enjoyed stepping over them in order to take a shower. At least they weren't IN my shower. Two days later, they WERE in the kitchen. And they looked something like this:

Only, in fact, it was worse, because even once I got them off the counters, they kept coming back, and they were also swarming around two of the lower drawers. Again, don't ask me why. There was no food in the drawers. But I did have to move all my tupperware.

I was just about at my wit's end. It was a Sunday, and I was having guests over on Monday night for a Holiday party. If I didn't get rid of the ants, I was pretty sure I'd have to tell people not to come. But I was determined. I posted a desperate plea on FaceBook, and got a lot of responses, recommending many of the treatments mentioned in this article.

One thing that kept coming up was Borax. Well, I didn't really know where to get Borax. What I did was I went back to the hardware store and got some kind of liquid ant killer I'd seen before and decided to try it. The guy I talked to said it was "the best." Well, it didn't look like much to me. You cut out little squares of cardboard and drip the stuff on, then leave it around near the ant trails for the ants to find it. When they do, they eat it, and then take it with them back to the nest and feed it to their babies. Shortly thereafter, they all die. Theoretically, they kill the queen, too, and then you're set.

Trouble was, I had so many ants, I kept seeing these big ones that I was sure were queens or something, but probably they were just males. I don't know that much about ant biology. All I know was I kept killing them, and they were only getting worse.

But I had hope when I saw them taking the bait - literally. They were circling around the drops of liquid like cows at a water trough. A friend came over later, and brought Combat traps, and I put down a few of those for good measure.

As a bonus, when I checked the label on the stuff I bought (Terro), it said the active ingredient was Borax. So I bought Borax without even knowing. Sweet! And I think it was sweet, because even though they didn't list the other ingredients, I think it was probably either sugar water or corn syrup. I didn't taste it to find out, though.

Anyway, I went to bed with a massive ant trail in my bathroom, and a burgeoning collection of them in the kitchen, and woke up to - practically nothing! There were a few wandering about confusedly in the bathroom, and two or three by the kitchen garbage, and that was it. It was a Festivus Miracle!

I hopped about and clapped my hands, and danced with little Timmy, and said, hooray, we can have our Holiday Party after all! Well, maybe not quite. But I did have my party as planned, and all went very well.

Until the ants started to move back in today. Sigh. Well, at least this time I'm ready for them.

Sign Me Up!

This week's post was submitted by Agent KGB in Boston. It's a post from Interbent that features "Humorous and Unclear Toilet Signs and Directions." Like the one above. The list reminds me of this one I saw in a bathroom in San Francisco early last spring.

There are also some Dada-ist looking signs, some highly suggestive, some alien-friendly, some, apparently, just for fun, and I really like the generic guy-on-toilet-seat-with-laptop - in a red circle with a slash mark through it, of course. And don't forget the Extreme Pizza bathroom for the "Extreme costumer only." So I'm guessing they only allow people who make or wear costumes in there...

Google my Arse!

Intrepid Agent HoJo detected this gem of toilet papetry on the Huffington Post recently. It was listed under "Technology." We're not sure if that's because it bears the name "Google," or because toilets and related accoutrements are clearly tech-related. We're going with the latter.

Originally posted on a Vietnamese blog, this label choice is a marketing strategy I have not encountered before, and if I have, certainly not in such an egregious form. I'm guessing that the developers for this product sat around a board room table and decided that by slapping the name of a highly successful technology-oriented company on their TP, they could generate a boatload of sales. Or perhaps some other kind of load? I couldn't resist...

I am also guessing that Google and their lawyers will be after this company soon, if they are not already.

But my favorite part about this piece are the translations of the Vietnamese text, which you can read on the original post from Huffington, and also the "100% Virgin Pulp." I think that would definitely appeal to the Catholic masses.

(Photo via Huffington Post)

World Toilet Day

Today is - are you ready? - World Toilet Day! I'm not making this up. It was founded by the World Toilet Organization, which I am also not making up. But this is serious business. (So to speak.)

The text from the WTO page reads:
"World Toilet Day is a global day of action to increase awareness for toilet users' rights and to advocate a better toilet environment. This day is marked by individuals, toilet associations, and other advocacy groups across the world to bring attention to a cause that truly affects everyone on earth."

And if you go to the World Toilet Day Website, they'll give you two reasons we should have it.

#1: Because 2.5 billion people worldwide are without access to proper sanitation, which risks their health, strips their dignity, and kills 1.8 million people, mostly children, a year.

#2: Because even the world's wealthiest people still have
toilet problems - from unhygienic public toilets to sewage disposal
that destroys our waterways.

Get it? #1 and #2? These people are awesome. They even advocate more toilet stalls for women.

Now this is one cause we can really "get behind."

(Image - A WTD Press Conference in Ghana, courtesy of WTO)

Thanks to Agent RC for alerting us!

In One Door and Out the Other

I just spent a week in Massachusetts with my family, and catching up with old friends, and experiencing Ye Olde New England Bathrooms. One interesting feature of one of these bathrooms was the one belonging to my good friends Agents D and K. They are in possession of a large bathroom with a claw-foot tub and the convenient (or not) feature of two doors, one on either side of the room. Here's the view from the kitchen door:


And here's the view from the living room:


So, basically, if you want to use the loo, you have to first go in one door, walk across the room and lock the other door, then walk back and lock the first door. Well, I guess it depends which door you walk in first, but you get the idea. Unless you want to live dangerously, in which case the only door you probably really need to close is the one leading to the kitchen, since the other door opens onto a little vestibule with no other access, and not the living room itself.

We discussed possible reasonings for this set-up. They pointed out that the house used to be all one house and was divided into four apartments. So most likely, this room was not originally a bathroom (it may also have been built built before there was a lot of indoor plumbing.) There are, however, very old-looking locks, of the round, turny kind that I used to have in the room I lived in in Maine. It's like a round, brass knob that sticks out, and you turn it one way to get the bolt to go out, and the other way to draw it back in. It's usually situated somewhere above the knob.

Their guess was that the room may at one point have been a walk-in closet. But then, why the locks on both doors that could only be manipulated from the inside? So you could lock yourself in the closet? Hm... It's possible it was always a bathroom of some sort. Or a small bedroom. Or maybe the locks were added later. Maybe it was a bathroom, and the people who designed it were just too lazy to walk around to get in from the other side. Your guess is as good as mine.

One thing I do know is that I am not particularly fond of the bathrooms with two doors. It's enough to monitor one door to make sure it's locked and no one walks in. But then when there are two, then it really doubles the chances of this occurring, and that's not really a great thing, in my opinion. Or you just have to have to think a lot, because it would be so easy to just wash my hands and walk out the one door, completely forgetting about the other.

I've seen several two-door bathrooms on the West Coast, so this set-up is not limited to New England. And in fact, in those cases, the bathroom was accessible only by walking through someone's bedroom, which was kind of odd. I'm sure it's handy if that's your bedroom, but I like a little separation of personal space when I'm visiting someone's house usually.

Anyway, since Agent K has such a spectacular bathroom, you should really think about buying her new book, Life in Violet. It's a novel, set in New England, about a girl named Violet. I've so far only read the first line, but that was enough to tell me it was good! So you should go buy it, and then read it while you ponder the value of two-door bathrooms.