It's World Toilet Day!

Happy World Toilet Day, everyone!

On that day, the waters did part, and did reveal a glistering Throat, of astonishing depth and suction. And down that throat did vanish the Vile Effluvium of Daily Living, along with the evidence of various Drug-Related Transgressions. Man saw that this Throat was good, and caused it to be connected to the Sewer, that it might swallow his leavings in an Endless, Voracious Gulp.

And thus was born the Toilet, and thus did Man and Toilet live in Harmony (or, at the very least, a sort of Disturbing Intestinal Symbiosis), for many years. But, as these Vilesome Vassals* are wont to do, one day the Toilet did rise, and Swallow Down the Life of his Oppressor in a series of Gruesomely Grotesque Gurgles.

--Book of Bogs, chapter 11, verse 19

Joke Victim: I'm off to take a shite.
Me: Really? Most folks I know prefer to leave one, but suit yourself.
Everyone: Augh! Not again!

A fresh friesia mist
a blooming nasal protest
a wilting tissue.

One empty summer's afternoon, when none of my mates were in and the city baths were closed, I decided to play a joke on my mother. I went out in the yard and gathered all the feathers I could find, and fashioned them into the crude semblance of a bird. I used twisty juniper twigs for its feet, and an acorn shard for its beak. It wasn't terribly convincing, but it used up twenty minutes in the search for materials, and another ten in the construction. That was half an hour gone, and the prank, that'd make thirty-five minutes. Maybe forty, if Mother batted it to pieces, and I had to go round with the dustpan.

The prank, right: I was going to stick this thing in the bathtub, and say there was a bird in there. Mother was going to see it and get her nose all out of joint, before realising it was only a clump of rubbish. But when I pulled the shower curtain aside, didn't some scraggy-wing bat fly out at me?

"Fork!" I screamed, flinging the yardbird at it. (I was going through a period of substituting common words for curse-words, not for the first time, nor yet the last.) I slammed the door in its face and went to get Mother.

"There's some great horrible bird in the toilet," I told her.

"What, the one I watched you stringing together out on the picnic table?" She scarcely glanced up from her book.

"No, not that one. I was just putting it in--you know, to scare you--and damned if there wasn't an actual bird."

She eyed me up, all skeptical-like. "If I go up there and there isn't a bird, you're for it."

"Swear on your grave."

She glared at me, but plodded heavily upstairs anyway. Seemed the afternoon was wearing on her, just like it was on me. It was beastly hot that day, and we didn't have the air-conditioner yet. We didn't get that till the following summer. I hung behind, not wanting to see the horrid scragglewing thing again. I'd built it up into a sort of--of malignant zombie hawk, by this time. I had quite the imagination, back then.

"Eeeeeeeaagh!" went Mother, slamming the door. She'd just seen it, too. "That's no bird. That's a big filthy bat! Oh, I thought I heard scratching up the chimney last night! Faugh. Go in your bedroom and shut the door. These things can have rabies."

"What are you going to do?"

"Get rid of it, of course."

And she did, after a short and noisy struggle, during which the bat got broken. It couldn't fly any more, and the neighbours' cat had it for tea. The story didn't end happily for anyone. Mother had her book interrupted; the bat died; I had to clean up the mess. The afternoon wore on. I went into my bedroom to hide from the heat, but the sun dappled my carpet in a buttery-yellow way that made me think of swallowing bite after bite of pure margarine. The boredom--

--oh, wait. The bat story's over. Nothing else happened that afternoon. I just mooched around, feeling sulky and unfulfilled. Ever have a day like that? I hate that kind of day. A person needs a spot of excitement in their life, and not just some silly old bat, either. A person needs tantalizing packages that turn out to have new books inside, and tell-all letters from overseas. Computer games with several endings. Afternoons at the arcade, or maybe at the mall. Friends--someone to find at the end of the day, and recount one's adventures to. A person needs--

--no, really! The bat story's over!

My sister had a little orange boat, made out of plastic. Every day, I used to put it in the toilet. She never played with the boat, but she still hated me doing that:

"Mum, Socar put the boat in the toilet again!"

"Wasn't me. It was Mr. Nobody."

Mother'd shoot me a look of pure loathing, then: "What are you, five years old? Still with the Mr. Nobody? Get the boat out of the toilet, and wash it off. Stop tormenting your sister. Don't the two of you have anything better to do? Who hasn't done their piano practice today?"

And suddenly, we'd be gone like the garbage on dust-day: just a candy-wrapper'd mess to remind you we'd been there at all.

* Or, perhaps, "vilesome vessels"--either would do, really.