Oh sure this lid  looks good down, but try getting it to stay up on its own now that this extra thick seat-fro has been added.

The Jeopardy Lead-in

Contestant 1: I’ll take Unscrupulous Things Toilet Seat Manufacturers Do for $2000 Alex.

Alex: Because they refuse to manufacture toilet seat lids so they can accept a carpet-like lid cover without tipping back toward the bowl and crashing loudly onto the seat, toilet seat manufacturers are known by this term.

Contestant 1: What are Bad Samaritans?

Alex: No.

Contestant 2: What are Russian Oligarchs?

Alex: That too is incorrect.

Contestant 3: What is Eligible for a David Hardiman essay highlighting a detail so minute it can only be seen through an electron microscope or by his very small mind?

Alex: That’s right. That was a tough one. Almost had you there.

What the Hell Are You Talking About Dude?

Let me explain. You’ll thank me when it’s over (I’m referring to this essay and not your life). It is an open secret in the porcelain altar industry that the Toilet Seat Lid Manufacturing Council has cast a malevolent blind eye to a frightening practice they’ve tacitly encouraged for decades – uncorrected toilet seat lid angles. Purchasers of these toilet seat lids have complained about it for decades, but their legitimate concerns have been met with locked doors and Ocupado signs. And, after years of benign neglect by an industry noted for its constipation of action, consumers are finally getting up off their asses and putting up a really big stink. Litigation is the embarrassing cloud in the room the Toilet Seat Lid Manufacturing Council doesn’t want to talk about. OK, maybe they don’t want to talk about it, but couldn’t they at least turn on the exhaust fan.

I Say Again Dude, What in the Hell Are You Talking About?

I’m talking about that harrowing and jarring event known as toilet lid blow back syndrome. This unbidden calamity occurs when Jane Q Housewife dresses up her otherwise drab toilet seat lid with one of those thick fabric toilet seat cozies – cozies that the rapacious toilet seat cozy industry is all too happy to churn out. Oh sure they look good, but the unspoken design flaw is that they’re so thick that instead of the lid leaning firmly against the tank, it now teeters precariously between the tank and seat-slamming disaster. And there it’s perched; a fully armed seat sporting its 1¼” high-loft, deep-twill seat toupee. It’s so delicately balanced at a 90° angle to the seat that any atmospheric disturbance – even an errant fart – may cause the lid to tip over and collapse with ear-splitting ferocity onto the innocent seat below. This sonic shock has been known to activate enough adrenaline to scare off a perfectly planned bowel movement.  

Studies published in the “Are You F*cking Kidding Me?” issue of Good Housekeeping prove that within a 30 yard SFV (Sonic Fallout Zone) the unexpected report of a slammed toilet lid is powerful enough to set off car alarms and induce cardiac arrest in house pets. A medical marijuana farmer in Colorado reported a portion of his soothing crop of Mellow Sunshine became a discordant nightmare of Harsh Ultra-Violet when his wife’s newly installed Wamsutta Luxuriant High-pile Toilet Seat Cover lid came crashing down one morning when the slight breeze produced from Mr. Greenjeans removing his overalls in preparation for his doodie duty, toppled the unstable lid and sent out an SFV shock wave ruining the cannabis crop in a 30 yard arc from Ground Zero.

Surely the Council recognizes what Good Housekeeping has empirically proven: that Mafioso-style ultra-plush toilet seat lid covers saturated with deep-pile thick-twilled nylon carpet cozies, tip the scales of lid balance decidedly in favor of lid failure – aka Slam, Bam, in the Can. The toilet lid industry refuses to add an additional 1/2” of porcelain between the tank and the lid to ensure the loftiest of cozies do not cause the seat from crashing down should a gnat land on the wrong side of the cozy thereby tipping the scales in favor of slamation. No. Instead the toilet seat manufacturing industry has accommodated the $2 billion toilet fixture cozy market by creating differently sized lids – each a ticking time-bomb of dangerously engineered, aurally combustible design. Lid sizes include:

1. Elongated Lids: For those suffering from elongated pubic hair
2. Traditional Lids: For those suffering from reading this essay
3. Low Salt Lids: For those individuals whose buttocks are on a sodium-restricted diet
4. Web Cam Lids: For those demented souls who choose to record their excremental sacraments for posterior posterity
5. Mint Lids: Allows serious cable-layers to arise from their seats with minty fresh thighs. (Note: Also comes with 200 yards of Anal Floss.)

This lid list about covers it.

Part II

It’s Deeper and More Involved than You Think

A bereaved household holding an open casket wake for a recently deceased turd.

And it’s not just ill-conceived toilet seat covers that have acted as a corrosive agent against the civilizing bulwark of indoor plumbing. There are other caustic catalysts rendering the private indoor excremental experience unnerving. Somehow a contagion has been loosed on the America’s lavatory psyche whereby everything associated with this naturally filthy act must be covered in Comforel^® Nylon in order to sanitize it. And while modernity has given us the benefits of SoftSoap, toilet paper and flush toilets – all a boon to salubrity and convenience – it is these puritanical excrement-deniers that have birthed the Swathing Movement. That is, to cover everything in the bathroom that’s ceramic in a thick carpeted masking agent.

Pee nice or Oscar the Grouch will eat you.

The Swathing Movement traces its roots to Turin, Italy, whose famous shroud was allegedly used to wrap or swath Christ’s lifeless body. This hallowed shroud was then known as a Jesus Cozy. But this penchant for sanitization has gone too far and led to the creation and marketing of gaudy and totally unnecessary 5-piece carpeted bathroom sets: (2-piece) tank, (1) lid cover, (1) seat cover and (1) contour rug – all in rich, lustrous fabric. The tank cover comes in a 2-piece set. One for the tank’s lid and one for the tank itself, although you can buy just the tank lid cover and go bottomless. Of course if you’re sitting on the toilet you better be going bottomless. That they make a fabric seat cover astounds – aren’t those things supposed to be disposable? This one is absorbable. 

I call this neurotic covering of bathroom fixtures the Cozification of America. And this fixation goes beyond Bed, Bath & Beyond – well beyond. Buying one of these 5-piece cover-ups is called doing the reverse Full-Monty on your toilet in which everything is covered instead of exposed.  

Further Analysis

Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

If you do suffer a mental incapacity and buy a 5-piece fabric set to surround your stark porcelain surfaces with plush carpet, there are 3 major areas in which to concern yourself:

1. 1. Any errant bodily liquid or solid (hmm…where might those come from) that gets absorbed onto the fabric seat cover or contour rug is memorialized forever and part of your permanent record. This target overflow areas allow you, a loved one or a friend, to sit or stand in desiccated filth forever.
3. 2. The combined thicknesses of a tank cozy combined with lid and seat cozy makes it impossible to keep the lid or seat up unless you lean something against it hefty enough to counteract the pitch – like a tombstone.
5. 3. The 3^rd and most common problem with this purchase is that you were goofy enough to make it in the first place. C’mon people. A seat lid cover maybe. That’s it. What’s next: RV cozies or even scrotal cozies.

Oh Jesus! I Googled it and they both exist. I’m so screwed. My world will never be Mellow Sunshine now.

Putting a Lid on It

And I don’t want to portray this essay on illuminating the mendacity of the Toilet Seat Manufacturing Council as some kind of fashionable rant. Rants are completely out of fashion now. When was the last time you saw a rant strutting down a runway to the approbation of fashionistas? That there is a market for these effluvium-absorbing articles bewilders me. Then again maybe I’m just easily baffled. Like the time I visited Bed, Bath and Beyond and asked them to direct me to their Beyond Dept. I was transported down a tunnel of loving white light at the end of which were all my deceased relatives waiting to see me. No, wait. That was a Near Death Experience I had recently. Damn. I’m always confusing a visit to BB&B’s Beyond Dept. with my Near Death Experience. I do have one question though – why was my grandfather swathed in carpet?

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