Watch Your Ass

It’s one of those things. You know, where you see an irresistible phrase. To wit: exploding toilet.

Or, according to the Consumer Products Safety Commission:

The system can burst at or near the vessel weld seam releasing stored pressure. This pressure can lift the tank lid and shatter the tank, posing impact and laceration hazards to consumers and property damage.

And there you have it. Exploding toilets.

The thing is that this has long been a joke among my circles; a friend lives in a bungalow built, I think, in 1938; the previous owners had installed a pressure-assisted flush system, and we’ve always joked that it sounds like the toilet is exploding, or launching to the moon. Unfortunately, we’ve never found an actual toilet called “Saturn V”.

And yes, there is the risk that such a thing exists, and the price of a joke written off the cuff will be people sending me the link. After all, this is the twenty-first century, and with the internet at our fingertips there are fewer excuses for saying, “I think”, or writing half-assed toilet jokes because it’s easier than coming up with better shit.