Plunging A Drain Works!

[I guess I like to write about bathroom stuff, judging from the subject matter of many of my past notes. Maybe I’m overly fond of toilet humour. Maybe I need to get my brain out of the drain, my mind out of the grime (that’s not actually an expression, I’m just hoping you’ll be impressed by the rhyme and not realise). But there’s a lot that can be said about bathrooms; toilets especially. Not only are they different the world round, they offer insight into that particular culture, that particular house, that particular owner (not to mention user – and I promise I won’t end every sentence in this note with a parenthetical aside). Or perhaps it’s simply that, seeing as most of my brilliant ideas come to me when I’m in the shower, those ideas are in fact directly tied to the environment in which they are conceived. Whatever it is, this is another piece about bathrooms; well, home waste disposal systems anyway, as you probably gathered from the title, and it is, IMHO (the ‘H’ in this case standing for ‘honest’, rather than ‘humble’) quite a good piece at that. If at the end you want to protest that it’s in fact as much about words as it is about drains, well, 1) that’s what the comment function is for; 2) that’s kind of what I’m all about.]

I live in a big house. I mean very big. Big as in you look at the front and you think, wow, that’s a big house, and then you go round the side and you realise that what you thought was the front was actually the side and the real front is at least as long. And even though it’s what you might call a duplex, meaning we don’t have access to the entire house and sometimes hear strange noises coming from the half we aren’t in, the part we do have access to is plenty massive. Basement, ground floor, first floor (which I’m used to calling the second floor), and attic – three kitchens, three toilets, two showers, seven bedrooms, one living room. It’s huge.

Right now I have all of that to myself, because my six housemates have all gone home for the summer. I chose not to make the expensive flight back to Japan and instead look for hopefully-peace-studies-related work here in Bradford. Happily I’ve found some work; sadly, it doesn’t pay, so I’ll need to look elsewhere for dosh -perhaps Youtube. And while my house contract expires at the end of this month and I’ll be moving in with a friend, for the next to weeks I am the king of this mansion, king and pretty much every other title except landlord.

Mansion is a nice word, isn’t it? At least for me, it conjures up images of a grand old manor with many rooms, elegant architecture, and most of all, history. Stories. Perhaps an elderly man in a robe wandering the property to tell them. But the old in this image is the good ‘old’, not the bad ‘old’. My house could be called a mansion, I suppose; after all, it is grand, it has many rooms, it’s made of Yorkshire stone which I hear back in the day was a pretty penny (oh, and I might mention that it’s not one of those rowhouses you see elsewhere in Bradford – one house that looks like a giant caterpillar of about six houses – mine is a double at most, proportionate, and situated at the end of the street. Cobbled street, mind you.) If I take the role of the elderly man minus the robe, and yes, I am about to tell you some stories, my house could rest quite comfortably in the mansion-class lounge at the airport. Or wherever else mansions go to hobnob. However, the ‘old’ of my house is most definitely the bad ‘old’.

All the kitchens and toilets make for a lot of potential drainage problems, and the datedness of the building makes it not even worth including the word ‘potential’. We’ve had cloggage issues all year long. I’ve learnt a valuable lesson about mopping up the excess grease in the frying pan with a paper towel and throwing this away rather than pouring all the grease in the sink for it to congeal around the U-bend. But I’d like to think I haven’t been the primary source of these problems. Barring a detailed analysis of the contents removed from these pipes I guess we’ll never know, and for that task, my hand isn’t raised.

During the year, when something would stop up, someone would call the landlord and he would get someone in to fix it. I was certainly doubting the proficiency of this particular plumber as, this month, everything seemed to be once again clogging up around me, but that lack of faith wasn’t the reason I didn’t want to phone the landlord.

I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a manly man. I generally don’t watch sports on TV unless I have some other reason to be in the room. I often carry a man-purse or murse or manbag or whatever you want to call it. I really don’t need to be the one ‘manning’ the barbecue grill, even though I seem to end up with that responsibility when the others get bored. I don’t mind clothes shopping, and sometimes I catch myself making shockingly effeminate hand gestures while speaking, like Chris Bosh-level effeminate (does the name-dropping and clip redeem me from my statement about sports?). I can’t – and this is the worst, probably – drive stick. Most of this doesn’t bother me terribly, although I do plan to someday learn how to charm a manual transmission. But I hate being helpless. I hate not knowing how to fix stuff that I use. I don’t have a car but if I get one I want to at least know how to make simple repairs on it. Changing a tire is a test of manliness, and if my memory of driver’s ed serves me correctly I believe that I could pass that test, should the need arise. I want to be able to do basic troubleshooting on a computer, though in some respects increasing computerisation is at odds with traditional measures of manliness. In light of this development it is even more crucial that I, as a man, be able to handle elementary mechanical difficulties. And what’s more, when an appliance refuses to cooperate, I take it personal (not ‘personally’, seeing as I also get more American when my authority as an operator is challenged).

In other words, to call the landlord is to admit defeat, and I hate admitting defeat. The more something matters to me, or the more I think I should be able to do it, the more I hate admitting defeat. It’s like using a cheat in a video game, or referring to a walkthrough someone’s put online. In the video game of Bradley the Travelling MK and Budding Man versus the World, specifically in Chapter 22: 1 Melbourne Place – Level 31: The Clogged Shower Drain, I was not about to admit defeat.

The shower was the worst, at least in terms of usage impediment and added disgustingness. When the ground floor kitchen sink got clogged I just started taking my dishes back upstairs to wash them in my kitchen (I’ve had to cook downstairs for the past few months due to my stove not working – I don’t consider the inability to repair gas wiring an affront to my manliness) or else I would use the clogged sink anyway and then just exit the scene and leave it to drain at a snail’s pace. The latter option increased in frequency when the upstairs kitchen sink clogged as well. However with the shower, I had to deal with several inches of soapy scummy water sloshing around as I cleaned myself, and though I could employ the ever-useful exit-the-scene recourse there as well, the next morning I would have an abundance of hairs and scum decorating the shower floor, staring back at me. Yes, I have a lot of body hair. I used to be more self-conscious about it, but now it only really bothers me when I see it in places other than on my body. I’ll be grateful for my pelt density when all my peers are going bald, and as I established above I don’t have enough manliness points accumulated to sacrifice them to chest-shaving or waxing or whatever the cooligans are doing these days. At any rate this was the drain’s problem, not mine.

I don’t know what made this morning THE morning. Maybe I’d just reached my breaking point. Maybe it was the fact that I gave it a thorough clean with a sponge and spray and then realised all the scum would come to rest exactly where it had been because the drain was refusing flat-out to take it. Whatever it was, I went looking for something to stick down it, something like a wire clothes hanger.

This wasn’t the first time I’d attempted to solve that problem myself. About a week earlier I’d read online that baking soda and vinegar worked well for dislodging drain blockages. Unfortunately, all I had was baking powder and wine vinegar, so all that gave me was a wisp of smoke and some froth. I found some bona fide drain unstopper in the middle (ground floor) kitchen and even though the website containing the baking soda/vinegar combo had propounded the evils of unnatural solutions (pun intended – isn’t it annoying when people say that just to highlight their cleverness that they’re certain you’re too dumb to catch without blinking neon signs pointing to it?), after a few days of being intimidated by the ‘For professional and trade use only’ warning, the annoyance grew larger than my preference to be ‘natural’ and I poured this self-assured 95 per cent sulphuric acid down that shower drain. It smoked more than the baking soda. It smelled like rotten eggs (or at least what I assume rotten eggs smell like, having never actually smelled rotten eggs). It too proved ineffective.

Back to the present. The website had also talked about fishing the clogging substances out with a wire clothes hanger, of which I had none, not having been able to collect any in this particular chapter of the Bradley game. It or anything like it was nowhere to be found in my inventory, you might say. I tried sticking a knife down the drain, as that had been useful in Level 30 – unclogging the sink drain in my kitchen – when combined with unscrewing some piping below, but the knife was to wide for the shower drain. The only other similarly-shaped object I could find was a pen, but upon approaching the drain wielding it, I thought better of that tactic. I would’ve dropped it in, most def.

All this time I knew I could use the basement shower, but enough was enough. However, I was out of ideas. I got into the shower (as that intent was what had triggered all this activity this morning, which explains for you why I was naked this entire time – I wasn’t kidding when I said ‘minus the robe’, you know!) and was just about to turn on the water for another scummy jab at my manliness when my eye fell upon none other than the plunger.

Ah, the plunger. I am no stranger to that most oddly-built of implements, I must admit, though thankfully I had not previously required this particular plunger in its traditional capacity, our middle toilet – cracked though it may be – repeatedly proving itself quite up to the task of digesting my excrement. Other toilets in my life have been less satisfactory; American ones especially, which is odd considering they serve a clientele of much larger average body size than their high-tech multifunction Japanese counterparts. But you can read more about that in another of my articles. Suffice it to say that I have honed my plunger skill over the years (as well as, in lieu of a plunger, the strategic use of the exit-the-scene course of action) but had never applied it to a non-toilet drain. Considering someone had mentioned it in the comments on the natural solutions website, I thought it at least worth a shot.

In my early plunging days, when I was but an amateur, I used to go for large pulls, hoping to time it for precisely when the pressure from the rising water level was at its highest. This method was unreliable and inefficient, as it limited plunging to once per flush which meant waiting until the water slowly drained to where I could flush again. In the worst cases, when the water level was virtually at a standstill, it was useless, and worst of all, it sometimes led to disastrous splash-back. Ugh. Fortunately over the years my technique matured, notably following the discovery of the push-pull maneuvre in which the user gently pushes the plunger into full suction and then executes a series of rapid pulls and pushes up and down, without breaking the seal, which creates what I imagine to be the equivalent of an underwater earthquake in the general vicinity of the U-bend and, in my experience, effectively unclogs the toilet 100 per cent of the time with minimal risk of splash-back. Oh the elation of seeing the murky water swirl down the hole with a glorious glug-glug-glug!

And so armed with this plunger (a conventional red; cup, not flange, well-suited to this task, I later learned) and the wisdom of many years of plunging, I approached this boss-level blocked shower drain and applied the suction. It was a foreign application of a familiar operation and I was dubious as to its chances, but nevertheless entered the push-pull phase.

There were a few moments when nothing seemed to happen. Then, with a quietness incommensurate to so momentous an occasion, a hole appeared in the water above the drain and the rest flowed over the rounded sides into the narrow abyss. I couldn’t believe it! In so little time and with so little effort it seemed my troubles were at their end! It took the rest of my shower for me to really believe it, but the drain clarity held and I finished my cleansing ritual swimmingly, which in this case ironically meant without swimming. It had been a long time since I’d seen the shower floor at the end of a shower (and it was perhaps my preoccupation with this while towelling off that caused my elbow to knock one of the three soap/shampoo racks off its screw; however, this far along in the game I was well-accustomed to dealing with such petty foes, catching it in midair and returning it to its place without fuss).

Jubilant at this victory (on a par with the Queen at her 60-year celebration, I daresay), the much-awaited clearance of Level 31, I proceeded to (yes, i know that phrase is over-used, but I wasn’t the one to over-use it and I quite feel that it’s justified in this case) the middle kitchen with plunger in hand. Would it work on a sink as well?

I turned the tap on drizzle and watched the sink fill slowly – disappointing specimen – then assumed the position and began. But this opponent was equipped with a defence mechanism; my first vigorous thrust was returned in kind with water shooting back at me from the overflow hole! I retreated to regroup. Should I try something else? Having nothing else to try (I’d already previously unscrewed the piping below and scraped it out, which hadn’t worked like it had upstairs; rather, it’d left the piping clogged AND leaking) I closed in once more. Holding my hands above the level of the overflow hole eliminated that threat, but it did mean that I needed to stagger my thrusts to keep the drain flooded and therefore pressurised. It took longer than the shower, but in time this adversary did too acquiesce. And this time, it rewarded me with the fading, defeated cry of ‘Glug, glug, glug…’.

And so ends this particular episode in Chapter 22 of Bradley versus the World. I sense the finale of this chapter drawing near, and fear that this was not actually its big-boss level. What will that be? The skies are growing darker.

However this clearance was glorious and I intend to savour it gladly. I hope you’ve enjoyed this walkthrough; though Bradley is still in beta-testing and not yet available to the public, you may be able to find applications for these techniques in other games. Myself, I’m thinking that perhaps ‘master plunger’ would be a skill worth adding to my CV in Level 28: Getting a Job, yet uncleared. Is there anywhere I can get certified for that sort of thing, I wonder?

To conclude, here’s a brief overview of some of the other levels I’ve cleared in this chapter.

Level 6: Insufficient Clothes-Drying Devices

Level 7: The Lack of Sink-side Towel Rack

Level 8: The Uncooperative Toilet Seat

Level 11: The Frictionless Showerhead Holder

Level 14: Attack of the Flies

Level 21: Save the House from Burning Down was a harrowing ordeal. I still don’t know how I managed to clear that one; certainly wouldn’t have without the assistance of the other characters in my party. I won’t give away everything but I will hint that you need to make sure that by this point in the game you’ve acquired the power to call in a fire department strike.

Bonus Level: Clean the Garden, which I haven’t completed but did have a go at the other day.

Till next time, this is Bradley the Travelling MK and Budding Man, signing off. If the next mission is what I think it is, it will be a doozy for which I must seriously prepare.

Bathrooms, Culture, and Objectivity

[Originally published 5 December 2008. Updated 2 November 2010.

Sometimes I wonder if I was better at writing a couple years ago than now. That thought saddens and confuses me.]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about objectivity. Is it a trait able to be possessed or an ideal we’re meant to strive for and never attain? Do one’s experiences (upbringing, for example) determine one’s opinions, or can truth be seen from information alone – can we say something is better even if we’re not used to it? Is it possible to cut through the dark, hazy, swirling clouds of glass shard opinions to cold, hard, complete facts, or is this refractive mist untraversable?

But that’s a rather lofty plane to start from, seeing as the eye of the storm is only for those who’ve first flown through the storm. A more realistic goal would be to look at one type of opinion – the kind formed by cultural upbringing – and determine if it can be brought around to acknowledge another culture’s way of doing something as superior. Taking the questions of life in manageable slices – for that purpose these swirling waters of half-truths from the sea of knowledge are, in this case, contained neatly in a bowl, so that rather than plunge through them, we can observe safely from above as they are slowly flushed away to reveal a clean conclusion (although there has still been much plunging done on many an occasion, and assuredly unclean remnants). I’m sure you catch my drift, although the scope of this note is intended to cover more hygienic utilities than merely the toilet.

I’ve seen a lot of bathrooms. On home services we would travel around the country (the US, that is) visiting supporting churches and relatives, staying in either motels or people’s homes. This was always interesting as it would usually be fairly soon after we’d arrived from Japan. For those of you who don’t know, Japanese and American bathrooms are vastly different, and since cultural differences give rise to multifarious clashes of opinion, an exposition of the topic should be quite informative. Not to mention that I’ve been meaning to get this out of my system for years.

So does my growing up in Japan predispose me to preferring that style? Will I, even after my experiences with both cultures, always say that I like what I’m used to? Is it truly impossible for me to judge objectively which style is superior (in terms of comfort, convenience, cleanliness, etc.) or even that there is a ‘better’, not just personal preference? I’ve been against that word ‘personally’ ever since the debacle with Miss South Carolina, but I concede that some things are matters of preference, ignorance being one of them. Bathrooms, on the other hand, are not – certain aspects are measurable and, more importantly, indicative of deeper realities.

In fourth grade a girl in Kansas asked me if it was true that Japanese toilets are holes in the ground with pigs at the bottom that eat what comes down (alas, such questions are an inevitable element of home service trips). Now, I have seen some veritable holes in the ground on both sides of the pond – usually in the form of porta-potties, with all too vivid contents and absolutely no telling what’s at the bottom (forgive the toilet humour, this really is meant to be a clean analysis) – and I suspect filthy public toilets are a staple of just about every culture. But I intend to discuss home toilets, the fact that most Japanese homes now have Western-style toilets making comparison possible.

Now to be perfectly candid – and this could be a result of pride, despite my best efforts to purge it – I believe I can say objectively that the Japanese bathroom style in general is better than the American. The real test, though, is whether I can convince you of that, or if we are all simply products of our time and places.

The most apparent difference upon entering an American bathroom (mid-FOB state) is the toilet sitting right next to the sink. For me this is about as strange as having it in the living room. How is anyone else supposed to use the sink or shower during that time, or for a while afterward, seeing as the atmosphere is most likely unbreathable? Japanese toilets have separate rooms, next to or off of the sinkroom. One doesn’t have to wait for the shower if another is using the toilet or sink, and vice versa, but I suppose Americans avoid queues with multiple toilets. More cleaning.

As for the actual device, one neat contraption on the Japanese toilet that allows it to have its own room is a spigot on top of the toilet that runs automatically with the flush (the water runs down into the toilet to be used in the next flush). The top is shaped like a sink, and with a bar or bottle of soap and preferably a towel, no separate sink is even necessary. Saves space and water.

On to usage. I don’t mean to be rude (and I hate it when people say that, because it immediately becomes clear that they intend to be just that), but I don’t think it’s stretching the truth to observe that the girth of the average American is somewhat larger than that of the average human. So how is it that their toilet seats are smaller? Not all, of course, but a surprising number are small enough to make me worry while sitting that I’ll lose my balance and fall off. Could this be the end-product of cramming the toilet into the same room as the sink and shower? I want my space, on the seat and between the walls.

It’s almost winter. How many times have you gingerly eased onto the seat because you know it’ll be frigid? None, if you live in Japan. No, I’m actually not talking about their fully-mechanised, fifty million sex-specific functions-equipped robot toilets. Those make good conversation but honestly are kind of intimidating, especially when the lid opens automatically as you open the door and a voice rumbles, “ENTER INTO MY LAIR…I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU”. No. I’m referring to an ingenious accessory far cheaper and compatible with all U-shaped toilet seats (the O-shaped ones are just a mistake, and whaddaya know, that’s what we get at university, otherwise I’d have someone in Japan send me said object). It looks like two socks partially attached at the openings, and slips nicely onto the seat. And there you are, dead of winter, broken heater, but no piercing nether chill. Another thing toilet socks have over heated seats is that they never get too hot, like when someone leaves the seat heater on high and the next user gets a bold behind branding. Toilet socks even come in different colours, so you can match it with your toilet rug, which of course you have because the floor’s cold too, you know.

Temperature could be called a matter of preference. I like my Arctic Chill in my gum, not my buns, but maybe you’re not so particular. I haven’t researched what is most conducive to irrigation (although apparently squatting is the best position, which is what traditional Japanese toilets require. Funny how function has largely been replaced by comfort – or in the case of American toilets, as I hope you’re slowly coming into agreement with, all-around lameness), so if you insist, we can leave that one in the realm of preference. However, I don’t think anyone prefers a half-hearted flush. Clogged toilets are high on my list of things I would go to great lengths to rid the world of, up there with the word ‘just’ in prayers and sentences ended with ‘so’ or ‘but’ (or, God forbid, both!).

There are techniques for avoiding stoppage – or clearing it – that I’ve picked up over the years (which I believe are cross-cultural enough not to necessitate me going into detail, though they do at times require a master’s hand – not ‘hand’ literally, gross! You people tell the most disgusting stories, by the way. You know who you are). But who wants to be worrying about that with all the other concerns involved in the process (like, why didn’t I check before now if there was any toilet paper?). I want a toilet that does its business after I’ve done mine, and to that end having it sound like a rocket launch is entirely okay with me. Gives me a feeling of satisfaction, to be honest. But a wimpy gurgle followed by a stall (in the stall)? That’s just not fair. I’m not saying that Japanese toilets don’t clog, it just seems to happen much more frequently in America. That again confounds me when considering demographics, although diet could play a part in both issues. Exit the scene, exit the scene.

Interestingly, all my complaints tend to fly in formation. There are anomalies, but generally the performance of an excrementary implement can be accurately predicted with not but a cursory glance. I see it in my mind; the pockmarked white, squat, small, cold, O-shaped seat, with a flush that would make a leaky tap seem like a flash flood. As luck would have it, this type is the most common kind in American homes. I simply do not understand how a society so well-off could settle for a standard so low. Is it possible that the East does Western-style better than the West? It is true that what Japan is best at is taking everyone else’s ideas and making them better. But I wouldn’t want to push the line of cultural egotism.

Moving on (and this would be an apt place to take a bathroom break), American showers are anything but standard. Unfortunately, nearly all do have one thing in common: the curtain. I hate the curtain. If I want a separate room for cleaning out my insides, how much more would I want the same for my outside, a much more splashy affair? Obviously the American experience improved when I realised you have to keep the bottom of the curtain inside the tub, but that doesn’t change how cramped it is. Some are large than others, but still being a tub there is never much room to maneuvre. And that’s exactly what I want, a room to maneuvre, with a proper door, waterproof please, and the tub separate from the shower.

Japan’s big on hot baths (a tradition originating from natural hot springs), so even the smallest homes (and they do get small there) have, in a room separated from the sinks by a glass door, a space for showering next to the tub. You take your shower, get clean, then get into the tub of hot water. Since everyone is clean getting into the water, multiple people can use the same bathwater, and if it’s equipped with a water heater it can even be reused the next night. If you’ve never experienced this you might be thinking that it’s gross. Tell me that after you’ve done it, especially in the winter. Better yet, go to a hot springs and soak, then get out and lie in the snow. If you can get over the nakedness.

But the curtain is about where the uniformity ends with American showers. Somewhere along the line in our great bathing history, someone decided that a knob for hot water and a knob for cold water was old-fashioned; inadequate. It’s the computer age, after all; the utilities must match. So I’m stuck trying to use this joystick thing (with no two alike in the country) to elicit hot water from the pipes and having minimal success…wait, oh, I get it, nosedive increases power while stall decreases – piece of cake for gamers. Barrel roll to the left for hot, right for cold. Then – get this – once you have a satisfactory temperature flowing from the tap at the bottom (because that’s where it always comes out of first), you pull the choke, hear the sound of a laser charging up, then PSSSHHHH it spews out from the showerhead. We are a generation hooked on immersive entertainment.

At least, I hope it spews – and immerses. And in a reasonably wide spray. Too often the result is far less exciting. In this day and age, everything must have settings, and a shower head is no exception. Which is no problem, unless the ‘normal’ setting is missing. Seriously, I really don’t care about all these neat-o patterns and alternating rhythms, just give me the regular wide, consistent stream. Somewhere between the single, powerful-enough-to-carve-your-crush’s-name-in-your-arm jetstream and the evaporates-before-it hits-the-floor drizzle, the cheapest single-mode showerhead-type spray got left out. Talk about experiencing coexistent furious opposites, though the only paradox here is how such a wealthy nation could have such unmanageable cleaning facilities.

We’re old-fashioned in Japan, we still use hot and cold knobs, usually an off-white plastic, not the crystal and gold bejeweled joysticks that are all the rage here in America. Works pretty well for me. If separate hot and cold knobs are too difficult, there’s also the type with a numerical temperature setting on one knob and the power on the other. And the showerhead doesn’t come straight out of the wall, it’s attached to a hose. There’s a high notch and a low notch for the hose, so you can get the temperature right with the head on the low or holding it, then hang it on the high to shower without messing with a switch unless you really want to.

I didn’t actually know this was a cultural difference until recently; I thought America had hoses too. Maybe they do, but I haven’t seen them, and the odd silence I received from Dave my suitemate (that’s short for the-guy-who-lives-across-the-toilet-from-me) seemed to indicate that he had not either (I didn’t press him on it as he was rather engrossed – emphasis on the ‘gross’ – in the biology experiment growing in our shower). And that’s where the hose really comes in handy. There’s not a huge difference when actually showering, although by holding the showerhead you can shower without constantly rotating. But a hose is certainly useful when cleaning, as Dave was attempting to do when he discovered an uninvited pet. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that with a hose it’s possible to get the stream right to the mess.

One more thing, kind of an integral part of the experience – the water. Whoever knew you could have ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ water? Now, I really don’t know if this is a cultural difference, and this section could be labeled tangential, but what I do know is that I never experienced any of this weirdness until my ninth grade year, here in America. I’m talking about rinsing and rinsing and never feeling like the soap is coming off. That’s soft water. According to Doc Wiki, hard water contains calcium and magnesium cations which react to form precipitates (commonly known as ‘scum’) that clog pipes. Therefore sodium chloride is added to replace these ions and prevent buildup. Seeing as hard water shortens the life of a toilet and tangles hair, I’m all for softening it up (unless the toilet in question is the very kind described above or the tangled look is what I’m going for). Just don’t overdose on the softener, because sodium doesn’t rinse well, hence the inescapable slippery feeling. So it’s a balance, although a case could be made for furious opposites here; keep it hard, make it soft. But I won’t make that case, and you’re free at this point to remark, “What a pointless paragraph.” Likely. I miss junior year chemistry.

However, it does to a degree perpetrate the increasingly and distressingly popular notion that regular water is no longer good enough. Just look at how many varieties of bottled water there are for sale at the store. “Fresh spring water”? No healthier than the water out of your toilet (PRE-use), plus it consumes plastic made with oil, which is not exactly abundant. I do applaud the financial genius of the person who came up with the concept, though, for successfully convincing consumers that they need to buy something they can get for free. Marketing at its finest. Next it’ll be oxygen. In fact, next is now. Ever been to an oxygen bar? Good, neither have I and I don’t intend to.

Where does this leave us? Precariously perched on cold toilet seats, unsure if all our waste will go down, or rinsing repeatedly and ineffectually under a shower too strong and too weak, cramped and barely concealed behind a flimsy curtain. The affluent experience leaves us unable to get rid of the filth or even separate it from ourselves or even hide it. But is this only a concern of interior design?

Telling, isn’t it, the places in our houses that we put the most time and money into, such as the entertainment centre. I have nothing against widescreens and recliners. But I do find it a little unnerving that we invest so much more in letting the muck into our lives than cleansing ourselves of it.

Ultimately, these are only symbols. Your bathroom should be whatever floats your rubber ducky. I am curious to know, now that hopefully you are ignorant of cultural toiletry no longer, what you consider to be the best. To see whether you are regardless nothing more than a product of your surroundings, in which case I probably am as well, or if there can be something better than what we know, above and beyond this downward spiralling torrent of disaster.

Something that replaces rather than filters, erases rather than shelters, and sends further away than the already clogged drain.

Something solid, objective; intangible, untaintable; scarred, personal.