You Might Have to Use the Jakes, John or Loo, but Don’t Name a Kid After It

Thomas Crapper

It is no coincidence the etymology of the name of the melancholy Jaques from As You Like It is Jakes, which is the slang for toilet. Many of the character’s most brilliant asides (which anticipate Hamlet’s dark view) amount to the fact that everything is shit. Describing his state in Act IV, Scene 1, he says “it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness.” Jakes has something in common with John which is another word for toilet and derives from John Harrington one of the 102 god children of Elizabeth I, who is credited with inventing the first flushing toilet. John is obviously one of the most common names in the English language. It functions like Massimo which also happens to be one of the most common male names used by Italians. However don’t parents who name their male offspring Jake (which is a close relative of Jakes) realize that they are adding a heavy psychic burden to children? Aren’t such children already weighted down with the baggage of their progenitor’s unfulfilled dreams and wishes? Do they have to add to that the stigma of being named after a toilet. The same applies to seeming innocuous name of Lou. It is hard enough to be a male in our current society. What child named Lou isn’t going to be challenged by having a name that sounds like loo? Loo is not Lou, but the road to hell is paved with homonyms as well as good intentions. As a rule, can we agree that it is best not to name children after crappers, despite the venerable Thomas Crapper, who was so instrumental in promoting the use of the flush toilet?

Shit or Get Off the Pot

 photo: rfc1394

The problem with a lot of public toilets these days is that they have electric eyes and the water shoots up into your asshole before you’ve even had a chance to wipe yourself. Then when it’s time to wash up and you go to the sink, the wall dispenser may spurt some soap on to your hand. But that’s no guarantee there’s going to be any water to suds up with. That’s the problem with modernity. It’s like the road to hell— it’s paved with good intentions. Ostensibly the reason for all these electric eyes is to save water, though it’s unclear how this functions in the case of the shitter unless they're trying to prevent OCD types from flushing too much. However, perhaps the electric eye is aimed at another kind of compulsive documented in Judith L. Rapoport’s The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing: The Experience and Treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Going to the bathroom at one of the rest stops on an interstate or at the airport can really be a comedy of errors as you hopelessly dash towards the sink to try to wash the polluted water from your anal sphincter. It’s embarrassing enough to see all the eyes looking at you suspiciously as you run to the basin with the seat of your pants now revealing a big wet stain, only to find that by the time you're finally able to get a hit from the faucet, the toilet is ready to again spurt meaningfully again up your wazoo. Wasn't it easier the old way? You went to the bathroom.  Occasionally a piece of toilet paper would get caught in the wrong place and trail toilet water after you as you tried to buckle your pants. However, generally it was a slam dunk, in which you finished taking your crap and had time to gaze narcissistically at your face, after having simply turned on the tap to wash the soap off your hands.