Not a real product, sorry Deadheads.
 
As if the title of this post wasn’t strange enough, before a toilet that once resided in Jerry Garcia’s master bathroom was stolen, it was purchased at auction by online casino Goldenpalace.com for $2,550. After beating out a dozen other bids for Garcia’s commode, Goldenpalace.com announced its latest acquisition would join actor William Shatner’s kidney stones and a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary on it in a traveling exhibit. It was also said people would be able to actually sit on Garcia’s old master-bathroom toilet and pose for pictures—for a price. Because nothing says “throw away your money here” more than a traveling exhibit sponsored by an online casino full of kidney stones, an old grilled cheese sandwich, and a funky toilet once used by the King of the Deadheads, here’s a little bit more about Garcia’s throne from its description in the auction:

“Located in Garcia’s master bedroom suite on the second floor of 55 El Mirador Dr. in Nicasio, CA! Overlooking the pool with a view of Mt. Tam and Mt. Diablo! Salmon color! 25″ deep x 19″ wide x 16″ high!”

In total, Goldenpalace.com purchased four of Garcia’s crappers spending a total of $5000 on the bathroom items from Garcia’s former home in Nicasio, California. Also offered in the auction (held to benefit a now-defunct charity assisting children and families in need, The Sophia Foundation), was Garcia’s stereo, his two-person jacuzzi, a bidet, and his kitchen sink. The salmon-colored toilet in question was outside former Garcia homeowner Henry Koltys’ house in Sonoma, California, waiting to be picked up by representatives from the casino when it disappeared. As far as the theft of this costly used toilet was concerned, the police had almost no clues or leads to pursue. Here’s a statement from Sgt. Greg Miller on the great/gross Garcia toilet caper of 2005:

“If somebody tries to sell it as Jerry Garcia’s toilet, there’s a possibility we could get it back. Frankly, I wonder if they even know what they have.”

To date, Garcia’s lavatory has never been recovered, which may be reason enough to believe that someone knew exactly what they were swiping and the latrine is now part of some sort of Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia shrine, where Deadheads gather to pay their respects. On the other hand, it might be residing in less lofty conditions in the home of a toilet thief.

Below is a recording of “The Weight” taken from the soundboard during a Grateful Dead show on July 18th, 1990 in Deer Creek.
 

“The Weight” with shared vocals by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Brent Mydland. This would be one of the last live appearances of Brent Mydland, the longtime keyboardist for the Grateful Dead, who would pass away eight days later on July 26th, 1990.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Headline: ‘Ozzy Pleads Guilty to Killing Jerry Garcia’
Read a sweet 1982 love letter written by Jerry Garcia to Vogue cover model
Dead to Dan: Steely Dan’s amazing guide to giving up the Grateful Dead and becoming a Steely Dan fan
The Grateful Dead guide to dealing with a bad LSD trip

 
Comrade, fed up with those white capitalist tiles in the restroom of your favorite people’s bar or local workers’ canteen? Then why not tell the capitalist pig owner to change them to more pleasing images of the glorious socialist high rises of former Soviet countries.

This is what you will find in the Galeria Urbana restaurant in Kaunas, Lithuania, where the walls of the comfort station have been decorated with tiles featuring photographic images of Soviet-era high rises or “небоскреб.” The tiles are the work of Lithuanian design studio Gyva Grafika, who wanted to bring the “outside inside” and re-examine the country’s “dark Soviet occupation history” and the “culture that was introduced to [Lithuania] by force.” Many of these Soviet-era high rises are now being demolished or modernized under EU-sponsored renovation projects as Lithuania hopes to move “forward to a better and more optimistic tomorrow” as “a strong north European country.” It certainly provides a talking point over dinner and a distracting way to spend a penny.
 

 

 
More after the jump…
 

 
I’ve heard stories about sewer rats magically appearing in people’s toilet bowls but I never really understood exactly how the rats were able to pull off this feat. Didn’t they need oxygen to breathe while crawling through the plumbing? Are rats good swimmers?

Too many questions and never any solid answers. Until now!

 
Thanks to the kind folks at National Geographic, we FINALLY have definitive proof of how sewer rats are able to pull off their Houdini-esque toilet stunt. It’s actually quite mesmerizing to watch, people who suffer from musophobia need not click play.

 
Via Gothamist

 
The streets of London were once believed to be paved with gold, but now it seems they are covered with discarded plastic bottles full of urine and carrier bags full of shit—or so one newspaper reports. Apparently, the lack of public rest rooms in the capital has caused some taxi drivers to “improvise” when answering the call of nature. The problem was highlighted on an Uber forum in March of this year when drivers shared advice on “Toilet issues.”

The thread began with the following question from user Momo, who posted:

Help plz bros! Working 18 hour days I struggle to hold on to a pee for that long. Tried peeing into a coffee cup but only a grande size holds my wee. I overflowed on them petite cup all down my new Primarks! Lol! I find milk and coke bottles don’t fit my willy width. Don’t want a customer to get with one of those stuck. Might not get my 5 stars man! What can I do? Is there a bottle that fits all out there?

Whether this was genuine or just a troll out for laughs cannot be discerned—but let’s be honest, there is something about the wording of this post and the relish with which it is written that makes it seem a little fake. A little too Ali G, perhaps?

In response another Uber driver Backdash offered this advice:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000NV878S/?tag=ubne0c-20
For emergencies only
and this:
When you see a place to piss go piss whether you have the urge or not.

 

 
So, it does seem that toilet breaks are an issue for some taxi drivers. Indeed, there’s even an app to help distressed drivers find the nearest “comfort station.” However, Momo was not content with these helpful suggestions:

Working London there is no where to pull up without getting a ticket. I even had to dump in a Tesco bag the other week. Hid the log under the passenger seat until I lobbed it out. Blamed the bad sewers whenever people asked what the smell was! Lol!

By now, of course, this is beginning to sound very much like a troll’s wind-up, but City Metric who covered the story notes:

Public toilets in London, especially at night, tend to be placed in areas with busy nightlife, where drivers are unlikely to find a parking spot. Yes, that driver in the original tweet could have gone to Starbucks – but he could have ended up paying both the price of a coffee and a parking ticket for the privilege.

It’s not just the lack of public restrooms that is the problem. In 2012, one cab driver in Darlington, England was pulled over for leaving his vehicle unattended at a taxi rank to answer a call of nature—it is illegal in Darlington to leave a cab unattended. What’s a poor cabbie to do, modify their driver’s seat into a toilet on wheels? (This would clearly cause a worse sanitary problem, but what at the alternatives?)

Tim in Cleveland chimed in on the Uber forum:

No where to go in Cleveland either. Ohio law requires gas stations to have restrooms, but not a single one in Cleveland complies! Fast food restaurants close their lobbies by 10 pm. You have to wander into a bar or leave the city to get a restroom after that. I hit the 24 hour grocery store that’s in the next city.

London cab users have also witnessed the problem as some have pointed out on Twitter:
 

@houghhough this happened to @Sathnam with @Uber in London…  Neil Fisher (@nfmusic) June 7, 2015

@Sathnam @nfmusic @Uber Better than the boot I suppose ...

— Stephen Hough (@houghhough) June 7, 2015

 
Whether this gleefully defecating “Momo” is genuine or not, there appears to be some kind of an issue, though one not everyone wants to hear about:

POST # 11/ @DenverDiane@DenverDiane: These three

Drivers @Backdash@Backdash, @momo@momo and
@sinbad@sinbad are mistakenly thinking
that they are in the London, England SubForum…SOMEHOW!

P….L….E….A….S….E
Use Conversation Feature to PM your
London colleagues. NO ONE wants to
know that your “Willy” won’t fit into
the neck of a Coca-Cola bottle.

As for stashing a Grocery-Bagged Dump
under your seat until you Fling it out
the Window… WAAAAY TOO MUCH
INFORMATION!

City Metric approached Uber for a comment and are currently awaiting a reply.
 

 
The damage caused by earthquakes has led the Japanese government to consider installing toilets and providing drinking water in elevators. The suggestion comes after dozens of people were trapped in elevators across Tokyo after a 7.8 magnitude quake hit the city on Saturday.

Normally elevators will automatically stop at the nearest floor when earthquakes strike—the doors will open allowing passengers to escape. But after Saturday’s quake, fourteen elevators became stuck between floors trapping some passengers for over an hour.

A meeting between officials from the infrastructure ministry and elevator industry members agreed to consider providing toilets for such emergencies. Suggestions include collapsible cardboard toilets with a waterproof bag or absorbent material inside.

As many of Japan’s latest elevators include seating areas for the elderly, intstalling such emergency facilities underneath seats is a possibility. Japan has about 620,000 elevators in its buildings, of which 20% are in Tokyo.

Nicholas White knows exactly what it’s like to be caught short in such an extreme situation. On 15th October 1999, Mr. White popped out of his office at the McGraw-Hill Building, 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, for a cigarette break. On his return, he became trapped in an elevator after a power dip caused the elevator to stop between the 13th and 14th floors. Despite signaling his distress to the onboard surveillance camera, security staff did not notice Mr. White’s predicament until the afternoon of the 17th, almost 41 hours later. (And these eagle-eyed guys were in charge of security?) During his accidental incarceration, Mr. White relieved himself by urinating through the elevator doors—he hoped someone might notice the stream of fluid running down the elevator shaft—apparently no one did.
 

 
So, Japan’s neat idea for bringing relief to a nightmare situation is not as strange as it sounds, though one hopes it won’t be misused as the following comic video suggests…
 

 
H/T Guardian and Metro

Arguably the most “high-end” model, this Santa Claus toilet decor exhibits the closest attention to detail.
 
The original inspiration for a holiday post was this amazing piece of dinosaur-themed Chanukah paraphernalia—the Menorasaurus Rex. Hoping this objet d’art would lead me to a glut of tacky Chanukah kitsch, I scanned Etsy for similar crafts, only to find a disappointingly tasteful (and sometimes downright sublime) array of Menorahs. At the risk of sounding biased, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that when it comes to holidays, no one does garish quite like the Christians.

Unfortunately, lurid displays of Christmas cheer are so predictable, it’s difficult in this day and age to find anything that even registers as gaudy anymore; A Charlie Brown Christmas was bemoaning the spectacle and commercialization back in 1965, and it’s certainly only gotten worse since then. But just when you think you’ve become completely desensitized to Christmas branding, you come across a product—nay, a slew of products—trying to cash in on the season with what can only be described as a virulent animus towards good taste.

Behold, the Freudian fever dream of anthropomorphic Christmas-themed toilet decor. These festive loo accouterments depict reindeer, Frosty and even Jolly Old Saint Nick himself as the guardians—the repositories even—of human waste, and apparently there is a subset of people for whom this idea is “cute.” If you’re one of those people, bless your flagrant disregard for decency. If you’re aspiring to be one of those people, I also threw in some (less literal) Santa-specific bathroom decor at the end, just in case you weren’t ready to commit to evacuating your bowels into Santa’s waiting mouth. This, ladies and gentleman, is why—despite my admittedly boring atheism—I will always refer to myself as “culturally Protestant.” We are the John Waters of religions and I can’t help but be a little proud of our relentless vulgarity. I mean, why treat religion like it’s something sacred?
 

A lower rent version, made all the more disturbing by the fact he has his tongue out.
 

Poor reindeer. Just because they’re animals, doesn’t mean deserve this foul indignity.
 

As members of the exploited proletariat, you sort of expect elves to deal with a lot of shit—albeit usually less literally.
 

Frosty awaits his fate with a stoic smile.
 
More after the jump…