Wednesday, June 22, 2011

1519 Waste Management

When you hear the term waste management you usually think of vast mountains of garbage at a landfill, acres of broken-down appliances and giant trucks moving large deposits of refuse.
So when I read of this new appliance the other day I thought a new level of weirdness had come to the waste stream.
BTW. Sorry. This piece is about toilet humor. Or toilet tragedy. It's about a new device from Kohler, the most ultimately deluxe toilet on the planet.
Someone has way too much time to sit and think on their hands.
Let me describe the toilet's assets. It senses you approaching, raising it's lid in greeting. It can even welcome you with the sound of piano music.
Cool, my own excremental jingle.
Maybe it'll play George Thorogood's "Move it on over," or a little grunge tune like "Smells like teen spirit."
Speaking of which, the super toilet has a charcoal filtering device for sensitive nostril odor elimination. It also calculates the amount of water for the flush based on the time you expend sitting.
Great…interesting books mean higher water bills.
It also has a foot-warming heater, an iPod dock and an oscillating bidet with integrated air dryercertainly one way to go green with the whole toilet paper usage thing. But an oscillating bidet with integrated air dryer? Gotta be an environmental price for excess water and power usage.
The cost for this commodious commode? A mere $6400. But hey, what price comfort?
Waste stream management or western culture going down the decadent toilet? What will future anthropologists studying the rise and fall of the American empire say when they dig up one in a then ancient landfill?
Man. They certainly came a long way from squatting over a ditch.
America, ya gotta love it.

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