SOS Gab & Eti 1.2 An architectural conservator, sending e-mail in from Britain, has suggested that Gab and Eti purchase a new toilet to display alongside the used toilet. With his scheme it has also been suggested that they investigate marketing the pair to one of the quaint colonial villages doting the subject's countryside, or, as suggested by a Columbia University freshman respondent, to the Naropa Institute (Al's beat school of embodied poetics) to be used as decorative columns incorporated into a rustic entry portal. Several architects, not all of them obscure, have stepped forward with offers to design a theme park to surround the units. One architect complained that his tempered-glass unit was superior in design to the mundane fiberglass units, a much more GRAND GESTURE (bearing in mind that a modest gesture, well maintained, becomes grand, and thus elevating our common American biffie to a refined temple of populist taste) more worthy of promotion and that he was in the midst of negotiating a highly lucrative proposal to dot the street intersections of Corning, NY with his fantastic waterproof enclosures. In our opinion a demand for fabricating a structure too highly exposing for public or polite consumption. This exuberance for recognition of the modern crapper was countered by a lengthy response from the executive director of GWSH. It seems, and this was a profound revelation to me, that our founding father had occasional want of respite from fiddling with his cullions and deposited a likewise occasional fetid mound, with a lump of lime, here and there throughout the colonial frontier. This is not to say one of a crop of 19th century turquoise-blooded societies that commemorate where George rested his noble head, as much as to give recognition to those modest heads where George wrested another anatomy. How they are able to locate and confirm these landmarks is completely beyond my comprehension, which I admit is fairly briefed. I can only surmise that GW kept a highly detailed diary of his movements at a time prior to Kellogs. Detailed data retention by the Founding Fathers would not be completely out of joint as several other notable historical figures have kept note of their excremental labors. Martin Luther claimed he was persisted upon by a stenching and rotten odoured Devil expelling a foul and rancid breath every time he had to go. I believe, though a considerable step down from Saint Augustine's vision of a Golden City, Luther's was a well intentioned warning to his flock of the presentment of Hell. I think all of this came about prior to the vogue of alchemy to form gold of common dross and variously pendulated the Rosicrucians. Enough said about the preservation of sacred sites in that. We did receive a map from GWSH. It is very nicely laid out and color coded with little house-like images and labels dated to preserve a sense of chronological continuity. One of those four-color things with different types of dotted and dashed lines leading one to really believe that it must be absolutely true that someone at some time really did wander around in that sort of loop-de-loop misdirection (unless the interns were being lead around that day by a flush master) that leaves us utterly aghast, baffled and expectorant. Despite causing me to eat a slew of bananas (organic, of course), it left me exceedingly curious to know if there is any extant documentation on the technology of 18th century TP. Was this stuff really embossed with the bearer's initials as GWSH claims? Exactly how was the hot wax applied? Was it normal to use flax and nettles mixed with the slippery elm pulp? To be continued..... on the bus Copyright 1997 Ken Follett [log in to unmask]