Recommended reading for Ralph

[clarencebunsen]

www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=pitfalls-of-inventing-a-better-toilet

How can you resist something which included the phrases
"The golden age of the toilet, "
and
"The modern toilet has probably added a decade to the human life span (and was voted the biggest medical advance of the last two centuries by the readers of the British Medical Journal). But it is flawed. "

[clarencebunsen]

Challenge:
Find a way to make this topic go downhill

[dgriffin]

What a great article, CB! My mind has always run toward the gutter, and now the wastepipe. Two favorite books here are “Flushed With Pride: The Story of Thomas Crapper,” by Wallace Reyburn, and “Dirt: A Social History,” by Terrence McLaughlin. The latter is a fairly serious book, but it’s well written and filled with examples of how our poor ancestors put up with absolute filth. My favorite story was about ladies in 18th century England having their hair done every few months, with or without a washing. The style at that time for women of means was a high and very full crown of hair, sort of like a beehive. Women who reached the stage in life where they could afford it, by then often didn’t have enough hair to support the style and so the hairdresser would add lint and pillow stuffing, etc. It was considered indelicate to sit across from a lady and mention the bugs crawling around in her hair.

And I can’t remember if I found an answer in “Dirt” or in one of John Fowles novels, nor do I have any idea how this obsession of mine started, but when I was a little kid I always wondered if cowboys changed their underwear. I still don’t know the answer, but sort of don’t care anymore. (Certainly not since that cowboy movie where bunking in together got a bad name.) I now know from “Dirt” or “A Maggot” that nobody wore underwear until French ladies in the 1600s began to wear underpants, evidently as a turn-on, for whom I’m not sure. Women of other nations soon followed and finally us guys. I guess one day some dude began to think about how underwear might help to save his outerwear.

You’ll have to pardon my Cornhill lack of social graces , but I was never 100% sure of the reason behind a bidet, no pun intended. My brother-in-law and his wife installed one when they renovated their upstairs bath some years ago, but I just figured they were kinky anyway, so… The SciAm article mentions that a bidet can be quite a convenience for people with short arms, as well as old folks. I’m becoming an old folk, so I’ll be happy to have that knowledge someday, maybe sooner than I had hoped. And now I understand that little nozzle I see in hospital bathrooms that can be folded down over the seat. About two weeks ago, visiting my wife’s aunt in a rehab hospital over in Massachusetts, I used the bathroom and examined the device, which looked like a miniature shower head. I saw that you could aim it up or down, and I thought, “What the heck would you aim it up at?”

Do a search of "bidet" on photobucket.com and you'll find the many alternative uses people (and animals) have found for the bidet.

[clarencebunsen]

One of life's persistent questions:

Why do women refuse to put the seat back up when they are finished? It is such n inconvenience.

[Ralph]

Not for nothin', but for those that have worked either in a nursing home setting or had babies, that "crap" don't rinse off with plane water!!!!
So what's the point with the bidet?

[dgriffin]

Oct 16, 2008 21:08:34 GMT -5 Ralph said:

Not for nothin', but for those that have worked either in a nursing home setting or had babies, that "crap" don't rinse off with plane water!!!!
So what's the point with the bidet?

Hmmm. No experience here, but maybe that's what the beer is for.