On the Toilet

On November 12, 2015, in a tweet punctuated by four exclamation marks, Stephen Curry announced that his wife had bought him an automatic toilet.

Curry, one month later in an interview with ESPN: I bet if I did a case study on my performance since I got the toilet, you’d see the difference.

Six months later, the Warriors became the first team in basketball history to blow a 3-1 series lead in the NBA Finals.

I wasn’t doing well that summer, but I’d rather not say why.

In 2014, toilet-maker Flushmate recalled its line of high-pressure toilets due to multiple explosions.

For many years, I feared that a poisonous spider hiding in a toilet would bite me fatally in the ass.

ESPN: Were you on the new pot when you posted that tweet?

Curry: Well, I am a big social-media-on-the-toilet guy, because that’s my break time. But no, I was in Minnesota… And the next day I had 46 [points]. There’s a reason for that. I was very happy.

Everyone knows Elvis died on the toilet.

One of my favorite scenes in literature, from Kobo Abe’s The Ark Sakura, involves the protagonist of the novel getting his foot stuck in an unusually high-powered toilet.

Judy Garland died on the toilet.

I have never had sex on a toilet.

I have never, as far as I can recall, fallen into a toilet.

John Harrington probably invented the first flush toilet in 1596, but his invention failed to catch on with society at large due to the terrible stench it introduced to the home.

Around the same time, Harrington completed the first English translation of the epic Italian poem Orlando Furioso.

The author of Orlando Furioso spent 26 years writing and revising it. According to the novelist David Markson.

Man proposes, God disposes, is a quote widely misattributed to Ludovico Ariosto, the author of Orlando Furioso.

Flush toilets were not widely adopted until the late 18th century, when Alexander Cummings designed the S-shaped pipe which prevents the sewage smell from rising into the home.

Cummings is buried in Joseph Grimaldi park, where Joseph Grimaldi, the famous English clown, is also buried.

In 1832, the clown Grimaldi and his wife, Mary, made a suicide pact. However, the poison they used was faulty and led to nothing more than acute indigestion.

Their failed suicide proved so traumatic that they could never bring themselves to try suicide again.

The one experience I shall never describe, Virginia Woolf called her intended suicide. According to Markson.

I recommend installing a bidet.

I have never flushed anything valuable down the toilet. Drugs for example.

The comedian Lenny Bruce died on the toilet.

I was once forced to ask my mother-in-law for help locating her plunger.

It’s in the garage.

Once, while working on a movie in Atlanta, the bathroom I was using began to move. The teamster driving the restroom trailer had decided to change locations.

A few days later, I met another teamster named Earl who claimed to be the drummer in Bad Brains.

We were working on a Christmas comedy which features one of Robin Williams’ final performances.

The movie didn’t turn out well. The screenwriter asked to have his credit vacated. The official credit now belongs to a fictitious Michael Brown.

The movie includes a car chase scene which climaxes when a porta-potty is intentionally dropped off the back of a truck, wrecking a pursuing state trooper, Mario Kart-style.

The most famous toilet fatality in cinema is probably in Pulp Fiction.

My wife says there is also a toilet fatality in Jurassic Park, although I’ve never seen it.

Just before filming on the Christmas comedy began, I ate dinner at the same table as Joel McHale. He made fun of me for ordering fish.

Further down the same table, I overheard Tim Heidecker discussing Terrence Mallick’s movie The Tree of Life in reverent tones.

Seven years later, I read an article in The Believer, an interview with Heidecker in which he mentions The Tree of Life again.

Later in that same interview: Gregg [Turkington] and I have this thing going where we pretend to be two guys talking who aren’t super familiar with toilets. Like, ‘You know, the thing with the bowl, it’s a round… pot.’ ‘Oh yes, I know what you mean.’ It kills us.

In 336 AD, the heretic Arius died on the toilet. His death was widely believed to be a form of divine retribution.

Arianism (not to be confused with the racial dogma of Aryanism) suggests that Jesus is not God the Father’s equal but his subordinate.

Many historians now believe Arius was poisoned by opponents of his theology.

Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
—John Harrington, inventor of the flush toilet

Does toilet water actually spin in opposite directions on opposite sides of the equator?

If a toilet is installed on the equator, which way will its water spin?

Could this be a viable means of determining the exact location of the equator?

Idea for an art installation: a toilet on rails which can slide to either side of the equator, allowing users to determine which way the water spins on the way down.

The installation could be called Earth’s Only Natural Border.

Due to subtle polar movement in the earth’s rotation, the true equatorial plane drifts about 30 feet throughout the year.

Therefore, the exhibit itself would also need to be on rails.

My two-year-old sometimes flips sentences so that the object acts upon the subject.

The rubber ducky has Ernie.

The toilet is on Daddy.

My poop is afraid of me.

Stephen Curry recently won his fourth NBA championship.

When I told my therapist about Curry’s automatic toilet, he said, There’s a guy who wants nothing to do with his own shit.