Porta Potty Pot Party

Men LOVE dirty bathrooms. Top sociologists seem to think that it's the only explanation for the rift between the genders that has existed and even widened, despite the best efforts of interior decorators everywhere, since the introduction of the indoor toilet. But a crack team of experts here at the Federal Intitue of aLleviating Trouble in the Home has proven that there are extenuating circumstances that must be taken into account before this battle escalates into a battle bigger than the OJ trial.

Way back in the Neanderthal days, like before 1900, people didn't use toilets. Nature was everyone's toilet, and you just went pretty much wherever you felt like it. This was, of course, before they'd invented things like trichinosis and EZ-Gro fertilizer. Bathrooms were ALWAYS dirty, because they were made of things like dirt, which is inherently dirty (lexicologists today believe that this is how it got its name). Which vastly simplified the cleansing process you went to another spot when yours got too messy.

Soon thereafter, people started running out of places to go and do their business and they decided something needed to be done about this. So they expanded the whole concept of toilet facilities into the third dimension they dug holes. Then, as they entered the Enlightenment (when things like houses and eating utensils became chic) they put walls up around the holes so they could read without being disturbed. Up to this point, the gender gap didn't even exist. Men were men and women were women and nobody complained about hair in the bathtub (the bathtub hadn't been invented yet) or the fact that there were spiders the size of major appliances building condos next to them as they went about their business.

Then, early in the 20th century, a chemistry genius at the Lysol company named Thomas Crapper invented a disinfectant solution that would clean toilet bowls and dirty sinks more efficiently than any yet introduced. However, since toilet bowls and sinks had yet to be discovered, they needed to find a reason for people to buy their product (besides being a delicious non-caloric dessert topping, which was the original intent). As a clever marketing ploy that has yet to be equalled by the best on Madison Ave., the Lysol company introduced the indoor toilet to provide a niche for their product.

This is where the trouble began. By adding the bathroom on to the main house, it became something that people had to deal with on a regular basis, even when they weren't heeding nature's call. So naturally, people started treating it almost as if it were a REAL ROOM, and women whose total control over household matters had long since been accepted by everyone began thinking about ways to make it aesthetically pleasing.

You can see where this is leading. As we all know, almost all men have a crippling genetic deficiency: they are born without an aesthetics gland. This renders them helpless when it comes to making sensitive aesthetic decisions such as matching clothes, choosing wallpaper or cleaning anything other than guns, cars and sports equipment.

Now women had long since accepted this about men... it is, in fact, the very Darwinian basis for pair-bonding, since men needed women to pick out their wardrobes (before marriage, all men dressed like golf pros). But the advent of the bathroom threw an evolutionary monkey wrench into the works, since it is not natural for people to expell anatomical substances anywhere near where they eat, do laundry or watch TV (except when watching America's Funniest Home Videos). Bathrooms, like all rooms, get dirty over time. But women seem to think that even though the filth is created by warm, caring human beings rather than nasty, alien outside things that it is WORSE filth and needs to be eradicated more frequently. So when things like razor stubble and sink stains started appearing, women complained that it made their homes look shabby. Men, of course, couldn't relate at all, because of their other physical deficiency, which is characterized by speckles and splotches on the cornea that exactly resemble razor stubble and ring-around-the-tub (which explains acid-washed jeans and the Don Johnson look). Being unable to see anything out of the ordinary, men would go for years without ever cleaning a toilet or scrubbing the sink, which drove women to invent the Equal Rights Amendment.

What women have to realize is that we men do not INTEND to go through life as shabby, stubbly creatures that oppress women into subservience through sheer filth. And to help in the struggle for total equality, I have come up with a product line that is sure to save marriages and lower the deficit: stubble-flecked linoleum and pre-ringed ceramic. It comes in a large variety of shades and patterns to exactly match your mate's hygiene habits, and perfectly accompanies our popular Mr.-toilet-seat-lowerer available at home stores near you.