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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Better sit down for this
In our neighbourhood, most of the yards are beautifully manicured and decorated with tasteful sculptures, such as friendly woodland creatures and jaunty garden gnomes.
In our yard, we have a toilet.
Not a cute little ceramic sculpture of a toilet. No, it's an actual life-sized, lovingly used toilet. It's the garishly pink commode that used to sit in our main bathroom, but a few years ago my wife decided it no longer fit our decor -- if you are a household appliance or plumbing fixture, not fitting in with the decor is the most awful thing that can happen to you -- and ordered it out of the house.
The general idea was I would lug the banished toilet to the back alley and abandon it for the garbage collectors, but the thing about old-fashioned toilets is they are extremely heavy, so I briefly parked it in our backyard and by "briefly" I mean for the last three years.
Surprisingly, my wife was not all that upset about our new lawn ornament. Instead of ordering me to finish the job, so to speak, she just filled the toilet up with potting soil and turned it into a planter. Every summer, she grows strawberries in our yard toilet.
I rarely eat strawberries anymore, but that's not today's point. Today's point is, for some people, toilets are an endless source of humour and enjoyment; whereas other people -- let's refer to them as "women" -- don't seem to find them nearly as fascinating.
Being a typical guy, I am always on the lookout for major developments in the world of toilets.
Over the years, I have written many groundbreaking columns on the newsworthy issue of toilets, including toilets malfunctioning on the International Space Station, major contests wherein you can win a high-tech toilet equipped with a big-screen TV and state-of-the-art stereo system, and people sitting on toilets who have been bitten by snakes in sensitive areas, by which I mean Australia.
Which brings us to today's urgent toilet news, beginning with a story that will make you proud to be a Canadian.
According to a news item I am holding in my hands, a Canadian stuntwoman named Jolen Van Vugt has just set a world record for being the fastest person on a toilet.
Perhaps you will be even more proud when I explain this toilet was equipped with a motor and wheels and Van Vugt recently raced it at a speed of 75 km/h at Sydney Olympic Park in Australia, breaking the old record by seven km/h.
"I've broken Guinness World Records before, but I never thought I'd be the fastest toilet rider in the world," is what she told Australia's Daily Telegraph newspaper with typically Canadian humbleness.
Normally I'd linger on that moving commode moment, but you will be even more flushed with emotion by our next news item, which appeared under the disturbing headline: The World's Scariest Toilet.
What is so alarming about this particular toilet, the story states, is it happens to be suspended on a glass floor at the top of a 15-storey unused elevator shaft in a posh penthouse in Guadalajara, Mexico.
The brilliant concept, according to architects Hernandez Silva Arquitectos, is that whenever you need to brush your teeth or relieve yourself in a relaxing manner, you can do so while standing on a glass floor and peering all the way down to the bottom of a ponderously empty pit.
Call me a hero with fire in his eyes if you must, but I personally am not terrified by a high-altitude toilet of that nature. I am a lot more afraid of a wild toilet overflowing with prickly strawberry plants.
Now that is something you don't want to take sitting down.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 7, 2012 A2
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