Crappy Business

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.... bloody shopping centres love to charge us for a simple basic human nature of crappy business, don't they? Bloody 20 Sen to take a piss or a dump? Shit! Bullshit! Making money out of other people's dump!

ou think computers are the greatest invention? What about excel spreadsheets? What about cars? washing machines? microwave ovens? televisions? DVDs? telephones? light bulbs? trains? rockets? aeroplanes? submarines? air conditioners? The list can go on and on but never in your mind you'd give credit to toilets! Please give toilets its due recognition. Toilets should be close to your hearts! In fact, instead of spending thousands of Ringgits on a BMW 3-Series or iPhones, you should spend well on toilets. Have it full blown automated, confortable and user friendly. Hell!, put some aesthetic value to it. Have it covered with jewels and what not. Bottom line is, you wouldn't know where your crap would appropriately be deposited if it wasn't for the existence of a toilet. Sure you can take a dump anywhere by the road side or the river bank; but that'll just give humanity a bad name. You might as well regress back to monkeys (if bloody Darwin has any truth in his theory). So go learn about toilets. Here are some of my thoughts and findings on toilets:

Who invented the modern flush toilets?

Many thought Thomas Crapper was the inventor of the modern day toilets. I certainly thought so until today when I Googled his name. Thomas Crapper was a plumber who founded Thomas Crapper & Co in London. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. He did, however, do much to increase the popularity of the toilet, and developed some important related inventions, such as the ballcock. It was Sir John Harington of Kelston (picture) who designed the modern flush toilets in 1596. Harington's first flushing toilet is called the Ajax (i.e. "a jakes"; jakes being an old slang word for toilet), installed at his manor in Kelston, and which was reputed to have been current with the Queen Elizabeth herself. In 1596, Harington wrote a book called A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax about his invention. The book made political allusions to the Earl of Leicester that angered the Queen, and he was banished from the court.

Did toilets exist before the modern flush toilets?

Before Harington, there are no historical records of who specifically invented toilets. However, ancient civilizations used toilets attached to simple flowing water sewage systems included those of the Indus Valley Civilization, e.g., Harappa and Mohenjo-daro which are located in present day India and Pakistan and also the Romans and Egyptians. The modern flush toilet system designed by Harington only come into widespread use in the late nineteenth century. This is when Crapper contributed, i.e. widespread popularisation. Nevertheless, the idea of toilet, as mentioned earlier, was already an idea being implemented as old as human civilisation itself. The picture here shows the remainings of the ancient toilets. Many gauge human civilisation progression by measuring it to technological advancement of areas such as transportation, telecommunication, medical, agriculture and literature. Looking at how advance toilets were in the ancient times mentioned earlier, I vote toilets to be the epitome benchmark for human civilisation progression.

Toilets as contributor to economics

Come to think of it, toilets contributed quite significantly to the economy. First you need manufacturers of ceramics and porcelain. They make tonnes of money. Then you need construction companies to put together those toilets into useable condition. They make money. The housing developers wouldn't be able to sell houses if those houses don't have toilets. Then you have the cleaners, the plumbers and of course, bloody shopping centres love to charge us for a simple basic human nature of crappy business, don't they? Bloody 20 Sen to take a piss or a dump? Shit! Bullshit! Making money out of other people's dump! If those toilets are clean, at least there's something to shout about. No! bloody filthy, dirty, disgusting toilets everywhere in the public areas. What is worse is that they usually come without any toilet papers and no bloody water host. What the CRAP! is going on? Just a minute ago I happily stated that toilets can be the epitome gauging element of human civilisation. Now what? You know what? If the political parties desperately need credits for the next General Elections, they ought to include "proper maintenance" for public toilets in their manifesto. Damn! we can spend loads of money for a submarine but we have no allocation from the budget to upgrade public toilets? (I may be wrong. For all you know, all local governments have such budgets, which was probably reallocated for the procurement of orkids to accompany all light poles in the city/town).

Toilets from the perspective of a great leader, Mahatma Gandhi

I Googled the net to look for famous quotations on toilets. Could not find any. However, I came across an interesting write up concerning toilets from the perspective of a great leader, Mahatma Gandhi, as follows:

Mahatma Gandhi, India's greatest leader, had, in the words of a biographer, a "Tolstoyian preoccupation with sanitation and cleaning of toilets". Once he inspected toilets in the city of Rajkot in Gujarat. He reported that they were "dark and stinking and reeking with filth and worms" in the homes of the wealthy and in a temple. Some homes simply had no toilets. "Latrines are for you big people," a poor man once told Gandhi. Many years later when Gandhi began encouraging his disciples to work as sanitation officers and scavengers in villages in India, his diligent secretary and diarist Madhav Desai noted the attitudes of villagers. "They don't have any feeling at all," he wrote. "It will not be surprising if within a few days they start believing that we are their scavengers."

The irony of this is that, the ancient toilets were first found in the ancient civilisation of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro which are located in present day India. Go figure that one out!






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