Dave Barry Is Not Taking This Sitting Down (7 page)

So far Michelle, showing great self-restraint, has said “I told you so” only about 450,000 times. Fine. She’s entitled. But don’t YOU start on me, OK? Not if you want me to turn your water back on.

I
f you call yourself an American, you need to know about a crucial issue that is now confronting the U.S. Congress (motto: “Remaining Firmly in Office Since 1798”). This is an issue that affects every American, regardless of race or gender or religion or briefs or boxers; this is an issue that is fundamental to the whole entire Cherished American Way of Life.

This issue is toilets.

I’m talking about the toilets now being manufactured for home use. They stink. Literally. You have to flush them two or three times to get the job done. It has become very embarrassing to be a guest at a party in a newer home, because if you need to use the toilet, you then have to lurk in the bathroom for what seems (to you) like several presidential administrations, flushing, checking, waiting, flushing, checking, while the other guests are whispering: “What is (your name) DOING in there? The laundry?”

I know this because I live in a home with three new toilets, and I estimate that I spend 23 percent of my waking hours flushing them. This is going on all over America, and it’s causing a serious loss in national productivity that could really hurt us as we try to compete in the global economy against nations such as Japan, where top commode scientists are developing super-efficient, totally automated household models so high-tech that they make the Space Shuttle look like a doorstop.

The weird thing is, the old American toilets flushed just fine. So why did we change? What force would cause an entire nation to do something so stupid? Here’s a hint: It’s the same force that from time to time gets a bee in its gigantic federal bonnet and decides to spend millions of dollars on some scheme to convert us all to the metric system, or give us all Swine Flu shots, or outlaw tricycles, or whatever. You guessed it! Our government!

What happened was, in 1992, Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which declared that, to save water, all U.S. consumer toilets would henceforth use 1.6 gallons of water per flush. That is WAY less water than was used by the older 3.5-gallon models—the toilets that made this nation great; the toilets that our Founding Fathers fought and died for—which are now prohibited for new installations. The public was not consulted about the toilet change, of course; the public has to go to work, so it never gets consulted about anything going on in Washington.

But it’s the public that has been stuck with these new toilets, which are saving water by requiring everybody to flush them enough times to drain Lake Erie on an hourly basis. The new toilets are so bad that there is now—I am not making this up—a black market in 3.5-gallon toilets. People are sneaking them into new homes, despite the fact that the Energy Policy and Conservation Act provides for—I am not making this up, either—a $2,500 fine for procuring and installing an illegal toilet.

I checked this out with my local plumber, who told me that people are always asking him for 3.5-gallon toilets, but he refuses to provide them, because of the law. The irony is that I live in Miami; you can buy drugs here simply by opening your front door and yelling: “Hey! I need some crack!”

Here’s another irony: The federal toilet law is administered by the U.S. Department of Energy. According to a
Washington Post
article sent in by many alert readers, the DOE recently had to close several men’s rooms in the Forrestall Building because—I am STILL not
making this up—overpressurized air in the plumbing lines was
causing urinals to explode
. That’s correct: These people are operating the Urinals of Death, and they’re threatening to fine
us
if we procure working toilets.

The public—and this is why I love this nation—is not taking this sitting down. There has been a grass-roots campaign, led by commode activists, to change the toilet law, and a bill that would do that (H.R. 859—The Plumbing Standards Act) has been introduced in Congress by Representative Joe Knollenberg of Michigan. I talked to Representative Knollenberg’s press secretary, Frank Maisano, who told me that the public response has been very positive. But the bill has two strikes against it:

These are huge liabilities in Washington. The toilet bill will probably face lengthy hearings and organized opposition from paid lobbyists; for all we know it will get linked to Whitewater and wind up being investigated by up to four special prosecutors. So it may not be passed in your lifetime. But I urge you to do what you can. Write to your congresshumans, and tell them you support Representative Knollenberg’s bill. While you’re at it, tell them you’d like to see a constitutional amendment stating that if any federal agency has so much spare time that it’s regulating toilets, that agency will immediately be eliminated, and its buildings will be used for some activity that has some measurable public benefit, such as laser tag.

So come on, America! This is your chance to make a difference! Stand up to these morons! Join the movement!

Speaking of which, I have to go flush.

I
say it’s time our “leaders” in Washington stopped blathering about sex and started paying attention to the issues that really MATTER to this nation, such as whether we should declare war on Canada.

I say: yes. I base this position on a shocking document that I have obtained via a conduit that I will identify here, for reasons of confidentiality, only as “The U.S. Postal Service.” Here is a direct quote from this document:

Whoops! Wrong document! I meant to quote from an article in the July 1998 issue of
Contractor
magazine, which was sent to me by alert reader Steve Hill. The article, written by Rob Heselbarth, begins:

That is correct: Canada has become a major supplier of illegal 3.5-gallon toilets. These toilets were banned by Congress in 1992 under
the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which decreed that henceforth U.S. citizens had to buy 1.6-gallon toilets, which would conserve a lot of water if they worked, which unfortunately most of them don’t, the result being that U.S. citizens now spend more time flushing their toilets than on all other forms of exercise combined.

But that is not the point. The point is that 1.6-gallon toilets are the law of the land, and as the late Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter stated: “Just because Congress passes a stupid law, that is no excuse for awwwggh.” Unfortunately, Justice Frankfurter died at that point, but most legal scholars believe he intended to finish his sentence by saying “… that is no excuse for people to go up to Canada and buy working toilets.”

Yet that is exactly what is happening. The
Contractor
article quotes a Canadian plumbing wholesaler as follows: “We’ve definitely seen an increase in the sales of 3.5-gallon toilets. The people who buy them are mostly from the States. They tell us outright they’re Americans who came here to buy them.”

The article quotes officials of both the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency as stating that it is illegal to bring these toilets into the U.S. But it also quotes a Customs Service official as saying that Customs makes NO EFFORT to confiscate the toilets. “As long as they tell us they have them,” the official said, “it makes no difference to us.”

In other words, people can simply waltz across our borders with illegal toilets supplied by ruthless Canadian toilet cartels headed by greed-crazed Canadian toilet kingpins who will stop at nothing to push their illicit wares on our vulnerable society. If you are a parent, consider this chilling scenario: Your child is attending a party, when another youngster—a “bad apple”—approaches and says, “Psst! Wanna try a 3.5-gallon Canadian toilet? All the other kids are doing it!” The next thing you know, your child is acting furtive and sneaking off to a “bad part of town” whenever nature calls. Your child is
hooked
.

Perhaps your parental reaction is: “My little Tommy would NEVER do a thing like that!” Well, let me ask you a couple of questions:

If you answered “yes” or “no,” then maybe you are beginning to see why we, as a nation, need to send a clear message to the Canadians, in the form of either a sternly worded letter or a nuclear strike. Strong words, you say? Perhaps you will change your mind when you hear what ELSE Canada is exporting. I refer to an article sent in by alert reader Joe Kovanda from the June 1998 issue of
Farm Times
, reporting that Canada’s foreign trading partners were complaining that shipments of Canadian feed barley contained excessive amounts of—get ready—deer excrement. The headline for this article, which I am not making up, states:

So there is little doubt that the entire world, or at least Japanese barley purchasers, would stand with us if we put a stop to Canada’s criminal reign of terror; if we finally stood up to Canada and said:

Some other advantages of declaring war on Canada are (1) It’s one of the few foreign nations that average U.S. citizens—even possibly the CIA—can locate on a map; and (2) Professional ice hockey would be canceled. There’s virtually no downside! So I urge you to call your
elected representatives TODAY and tell them, in no uncertain terms: “I am strongly in favor, although don’t ask me of what.” Also let them know that we, the people, don’t want to hear another word about this Washington sex scandal. Or, if we HAVE to hear more, how about some new episodes? Speaking of which, I have to go; Passionate Pam has sprung a leak.

A
s an American, I am feeling pretty darned proud of my country (America). I will tell you why: my new toilet.

I wound up with this toilet as a result of a column I wrote last year, in which I complained bitterly about the new toilets that we Americans had been saddled with as a result of an act of Congress (official motto: “100 Senators; 435 Representatives; No Clues”). This was the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1992, which decreed that all new toilets had to use 1.6 gallons of water per flush—less than half the amount of water that the old toilets used. This was supposed to save water.

Unfortunately, the new toilets have a problem. They work fine for one type of bodily function, which, in the interest of decency, I will refer to here only by the euphemistic term “No. 1.” But many of the new toilets do a very poor job of handling “acts of Congress,” if you get my drift. They often must be flushed two or three times, and even more if it is an unusually large act of Congress, such as might be produced by a congressperson who recently attended a fund-raising dinner sponsored by the Consolidated Bulk Food Manufacturers. The result is that these new toilets were not only annoying, but in some cases seemed to be using MORE water than the old ones.

So I wrote a column complaining about this, and expressing support for a bill, introduced by Representative Joe Knollenberg of
Michigan, that would allow us to go back to toilets that have the kind of flushing power that made America the most respected nation on Earth.

You know how cynics claim that Americans are just a bunch of TV-sedated zombie slugs who don’t care about the issues? Well, I wish those cynics had been standing under my mail slot after my toilet column was published, because they would have been crushed like baby spiders under a freight locomotive. I got a huge quantity of letters—some of them far more detailed than I would have liked—from Americans who care
deeply
about the issue of their toilets, and the vast majority of them HATE the new ones.

Granted, I got a few letters supporting the new toilets, but these were mostly from ecology nuts who, because of their organic granola diets, probably don’t even NEED toilets, just whisk brooms. There was also a somewhat snippy editorial about my column in
The Washington Post
(motto: “Even Our Weather Forecast Comes From Anonymous Sources”). But the vast majority of the people who responded agreed strongly with me and were ready to revolt over this issue, just as, in 1773, the courageous Boston Tea Party patriots revolted against British tyranny by throwing 1.6-gallon toilets into the harbor.

Then, about five months after my column appeared, I got a letter from Charles Avoles of Contractors 2000, an association of independent plumbing contractors. He said that a New York City company, Varsity Plumbing, in an effort to find a 1.6-gallon toilet that actually works, built a testing laboratory with room for six toilets side by side. Avoles said that Varsity duplicated all the standard toilet tests, but then, in its quest for the ultimate small toilet—the Tara Lipinski of toilets—Varsity “pushed the criteria even further, straining each model to its limits.” It must have been exciting: six toilets, pushing the envelope, going head to head! I don’t even want to think about it.

Anyway, according to Avoles, Varsity “found one particular 1.6-gallon toilet that actually works,” and the company president, Bobby Bellini, made a one-hour presentation on this discovery at the Contractors
2000 annual meeting (as Avoles put it: “Picture 500 people in a hotel ballroom watching videos of toilets flushing”). Contractors 2000 offered to install one of these toilets in my personal home, and I agreed, on the condition that I would pay full price for it, so that I could write a column about it and claim it as an income-tax deduction.