Daily Weird #31 San Francisco in the Crapper

Something stinks in San Francisco. Actually, a lot of somethings clogging up sewer pipes stink in San Francisco.

It seems like only yesterday San Francisco was offering $200.00 per toilet rebates if only the consumer would step up and exchange their mega-flusher for a Zen flush. Quiet, slow running water that gently pushes excrement into the sewer… and then leaves it there to stagnate and stink. Yum. Sounds like a winner.

San Francisco’s plan has saved the city approximately 20 million gallons of water. That’s a substantial savings. Impressive. Of course, they aren’t sure if it’s the usage of less water per flush, or, more likely, that San Francisco citizens got tired of having to flush 3 times per use, so now they don’t bother to flush but once a day. They make a party out of it. Really. It’s all the rage.

“Hey, Chadwick, we’re flushin’ the low-flow around 6- wanna come? It’s a half an hour of fun. Everyone gets to pull the handle at least once! We’ve got beer!”

“Sorry, Joe, our Flush Party starts at 5:30, we’ve got 8 people using one toilet, there’ll be plunging along with the flushing at our party. Maybe you could start your’s later and drop by our’s first? We’ll let you take a turn with the plunger! Oh, and we’ve got whiskey.. it helps with the smell.”

Great work. All that water saved. How awesome are you, San Francisco government people? Now if you can just find a place to store the 8.5 million pounds of bleach you will need to dump down the sewers to clean up the excess crap that saving all that water left behind.

What? You didn’t know about the bleach. Sure it’s needed to clean the sewage before the water is dumped into the bay. I heard a rumor about drinking water needing to be bleached as well, but you know what they say about rumors… they’re usually true.

It’s my understanding that the bleach is only going to cost in the neighborhood of 14 million dollars, while the upgrades to the sewer systems will be a tad bit more, around 100 million dollars. Wow. That’s chump change.

It’s about the same amount used for a study on varicose veins. Although, I would rather see the government spend our hard earned tax dollars on studies that would be beneficial to all, such as the “Do frat girls have more sex before or after they get drunk?” study. (This was an actual study... look it up!) That could be important if I ever decide to join a fraternity, or give advice to a frat sister, or play wing-man for a geek at a frat party...(what? girls can be wing-men?).

Where was I? Oh, yes. San Francisco is in the crapper. Wait, that’s not right. Well, maybe it is. I’ll bet they’ll be importing all kinds of drinking water for the next million or so years. I know I wouldn’t want to visit the city of crap and bleach without my own (unopened) bottle of water.

I’m sure the news has passed by now to other cities. Knowing the government, and how all our lawmakers like to help each other out, they’re probably conspiring right now on new and faster ways to get all citizens in the country, perhaps even the world, to exchange their super-flushes for the new low flow. The reasoning? If everyone’s city smells like fermenting waste, after a while it will seem like it’s supposed to smell that way. I can’t help but admire the “Throw the baby out, but keep the dirty bathwater” attitude of our government leaders. Or, maybe they'll just throw some Brain Bleach in the drinking water and it will wipe the idea of drinking crap right out of our minds.... Is there such a thing as Brain Bleach?

All this bleach talk has made me think about beaches, which makes me think about vacations. I’m thinking of traveling to San Francisco this year. I thought I might hang out at the beach, do a little swimming, and maybe remove a stain or two.