Toilet Seat

Most wars have a defining slogan that fixes them in the collective memory of the nations that fight them: "Remember the Maine," Spanish-American War; "Remember Pearl Harbor," World War II. For the Persian Gulf War, the slogan should be "Remember the $600 toilet seat. " The overpriced toilet seat was the symbol in the 1980s for critics of the defense budget. Political cartoonist Herblock once drew former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger with a toilet seat hanging like an albatross around his neck.

The best seat in the house has suddenly become a rocking chair. Since it's the toilet, I know it's not supposed to rock. It has also started leaking a little bit around the base. What can I do to stop both of these problems? The leak was probably caused by the rocking. There is a wax ring or putty seal that makes the seal between the toilet bowl and the flange that's connected to the drain pipe. The rocking broke the seal. To put in a new wax ring, you must take up the toilet.

Let's consider paper toilet-seat covers, derisively known as "lobster bibs," "bathroom bibs," "Texas T-shirts" and, for their unfortunate propensity to slide off the seat milliseconds before your ascension to the throne, "T.P. gliders. " They were probably invented about the same time somebody thought of really, really big key chains for gas station restroom keys, and they've endured to this day, perhaps because of maternal entreaties some of us heard as a child. "When I was a kid, my mother told me I should cover the seat when I use a public toilet, either with a seat cover or with toilet paper," said a 41-year-old man who requested anonymity.

FIVE-YEAR OLD Sam Maugans thows a roll of toilet paper through a hanging toilet seat at a Winter Carnival at the Hallowell Elementary School in Horsham. Saturday's carnival was sponsored by the Hallowell Home and School Association.

"I went to the doctor. I told him, 'When I look in the mirror, I can throw up.' He said, 'Your eyesight is perfect.' " Cozy Morley never forgets a joke. Perhaps, really, it is that he never gives up on a joke. He found some that made people laugh about 50 years ago. Those same people are still laughing when Morley tells them the same joke. "I think when people come to see me, they see a brother-in-law, a family member, a cousin, a friend," said Morley. " 'Cozy, loved to see you. Keep up what you do. Don't ever die. You're keeping the past alive.

You could say he committed a potty foul. His legs were submerged in tepid, urine-filled water. Lumps of fecal matter drifted daintily about his toes. And a toilet seat was wrapped snugly around his waist. A 50-year-old man got stuck in a portable toilet in a park at Welsh Road and Huntingdon Pike in Lower Moreland Township yesterday afternoon. He told officials that he had dropped his keys into the murky tank and stepped inside to retrieve them. The man even took his pants and shoes off before plunging in. After struggling to free himself, the luckless man cried out in despair.

RE MICHAEL De Leo's letter "Dems and libs are for America, but against Bush": It must really hurt to be a "frothing liberal"! You start your tirade by calling all who follow the president "sheep" - nice way to begin a discussion! You, as most lefties, always put down the president, yet never do you offer an alternative plan. Instead, you are content to further the idiocy of the Michael Moore movie, and you MUST be the last on the planet to think it was a reality film!

IT MUST SOMEHOW be justifying for Republicans (i.e., the sheep) to bash everyone else for disagreeing with King George's policies. Regarding letter-writer John Barclay's comment about "liberal surrenders," he - along with his fellows - either doesn't get it, or just refuse to accept it: Democrats and liberals are not against fighting terrorists, they are simply against Bush's horrific handling of the situation. Bush's idea of fighting terrorism was to run in the middle of the desert with his big cowboy hat on, firing his six-shooters in all directions screaming, "Yee-haw!"

The princess is dead; long live the princess souvenir industry. In the year since the death of Princess Diana, clever capitalists the world over have invoked her image to sell candle holders, toilet seat covers, toilet brushes, air fresheners, a car breakdown kit, seat belts, compact discs and a colonic irrigation kit. In anticipation of a peak in the junk consumption, the Princess Diana Memorial Fund threatened last week to take legal action...

The Pentagon may have paid $600 for a toilet seat, but the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has shown it will take a back seat to no one when it comes to derrieres. According to expense reports, House officials have ordered three stools - for the speaker, the parliamentarian and an aide. These are not your garden-variety, Jack Paar-type stools. They are custom- made "hydraulic high stools. " "There's going to be a little piston in the pedestal so they can raise or lower it," said Robert Hendershot, a House official.

I was staring at a beautiful tree frog - its tiny, bright green body with huge black eyes and cute little pods on its feet that were perfectly designed by nature to stick to any surface. There was only one problem: Those cute little pod feet were perched on the toilet seat I was about to use, and they weren't letting go. This was not a camping trip or a portable toilet in a national park. This was our home life in Australia's bush country. After a month in cosmopolitan Sydney, we were itching to see "the real Australia" - the land famous for wide-open spaces and wild kangaroos.

A print can be as beautiful as any museum piece, as messy as a newspaper, as complex as a world map, or as simple as a concert poster in a bar bathroom. A print can also be a sculpture, a wall hanging, a carving, an evolving design. It is integral to contemporary art. That's one of the qualities that the organizers of Philagrafika 2010 hope to show to visitors when the festival begins today. Running through April 11, Philagrafika features more than 300 artists from 18 countries utilizing more than 80 venues throughout this region, ranging from museums to businesses and even a boat.

RE MICHAEL De Leo's letter "Dems and libs are for America, but against Bush": It must really hurt to be a "frothing liberal"! You start your tirade by calling all who follow the president "sheep" - nice way to begin a discussion! You, as most lefties, always put down the president, yet never do you offer an alternative plan. Instead, you are content to further the idiocy of the Michael Moore movie, and you MUST be the last on the planet to think it was a reality film!

IT MUST SOMEHOW be justifying for Republicans (i.e., the sheep) to bash everyone else for disagreeing with King George's policies. Regarding letter-writer John Barclay's comment about "liberal surrenders," he - along with his fellows - either doesn't get it, or just refuse to accept it: Democrats and liberals are not against fighting terrorists, they are simply against Bush's horrific handling of the situation. Bush's idea of fighting terrorism was to run in the middle of the desert with his big cowboy hat on, firing his six-shooters in all directions screaming, "Yee-haw!"

Home improvement is a national fixation. And, perhaps inevitably, it has spawned a sub-specialty, DIY for Women, complete with brightly colored tools and special workshops at home centers. Surveys show that women are doing an increasing share of do-it-yourself projects. For instance, a 2003 Roper Organization survey of 534 women ages 25 to 49, conducted for Home Depot, found one in four women saying they did all or most home-improvement projects themselves. I am one of those women.

I HAVE THAT Steve Miller song, "Stuck in the Middle With You," stuck in my head. Especially the part, "I got clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you, yes I'm, stuck in the middle with you. " Remember Monkey in the Middle? Two kids throw a ball back and forth. A third struggles to grab it. And no matter how hard he works, he rarely gets the opportunity. This is the game the middle-class is forever playing, yet we'll never catch that ball, it will always be in the hands of the lower and upper classes.

Aitan Levy's customers were fed up with their standard-size toilet seats. Too small, they complained. And too flimsy. Bottom line - they were bummed out. So the Sherman Oaks, Calif., plumbing-fixture designer came up with a novel solution: a king-size seat for the plus-size crowd. He calls his invention the Big John Toilet Seat. "The people that complained weren't just overweight," he says. "They are big because they are tall, big because they're athletes, larger-framed, bigger-boned.

The NextGen04 demonstration house packed a lot of punch, but for the most impact, you had to head for Stop 4 on your tour map, the home theater. There, you found the ButtKicker, manufactured by Guitammer Co., a small, linear motor that reacts to an audio signal sent by an amplifier. It is similar to a loudspeaker, but instead of transferring sound waves through the air, it attaches to seats and floors and sends low-frequency sound directly into the listener's body. As Saving Private Ryan played on Draper Inc.'s 100-inch-diagonal screen, you could feel the German tanks rumbling toward the bridge in a French village, sending Tom Hanks and his squad diving for cover.

A borough woman who gave birth to a girl in a toilet Saturday has been charged with attempted murder, authorities say, for planning to leave the baby to die and then dispose of the body. But the baby's head was out of the water, and she was breathing when the woman's boyfriend rescued her - minutes before doctors say the premature infant would have perished. Denise Marie Winner, 42, of Mount Ephraim Avenue, a mother of two other children, is also charged with endangering the welfare of a child, Camden County Prosecutor Vincent P. Sarubbi said.

I am sitting in a chair to write about chairs. And as much as I appreciate chairs as objects and as furniture I want to have and to do a thousand things in (and I do) - in the day-to-day they're mostly invisible. You might think while you're sitting in your chair, but it's hard to think of the chair you're in while you're in it. It's under you, for one thing, and unless the chairs are rickety or uncomfortable, for the most part we take them for granted. Going to the Philadelphia Furniture & Furnishings Show show recently got me to thinking more about these objects that literally surround us. When thinking about chairs there is comfort, style, size and cost, but what I like best is to walk into a room and say, I like that.