The Giant John: a Trend for the Future
I’ve never been completely at ease with the fact that my given birth name is a synonym for that special place we all deposit our daily load. Don’t get me wrong, if it wasn’t for Queen Elizabeth I’s ‘saucy Godson’, Sir John Harington and his invention of the first British flushing toilet, then we might all still be crapping in wooden holes in the backyard (probably not), but why couldn’t the inventor have been named Sir Bob or Sir Tom. Having to visit the ‘Bob’ is way more linguistically poetic than having to visit the ‘John’.

Oh well, what’s done is done. I’m not about to change 500 years of sound British etymology. Although, now that I think about it, I will continue to take issue with the ‘Port-A-John’. Technically a free standing Port-A-John latrine is not a flushing toilet and therefor it is nothing more than a glorified outhouse – the very thing Sir John Harington was working to make history.

With that said, I wonder how the right and honorable Sir Harington would feel about this new product available at George Morlan Plumbing, aptly titled – the Giant John. I’ve been quite obsessed with the Giant John over the last few weeks. When out-of-town guests arrive at the Skelton Ranch, sure Powells Books and other Portland standbys are put on the sight-seeing tour but really the trip to George Morlan to witness the Giant John is the only thing I want to show people.
When you first gawk the Giant John your head fills up with hundreds of questions, questions you’re not sure you really want answers too. It is utterly captivating.

Yesterday the misses and I stopped in at the Portland Home Show of which Georgie Morlan had a booth set up. And wouldn’t you know it but the Giant John was out on full display. Onlookers stared in amazement. Some actually gave it a test ride. I was content to just sit back and watch people’s faces as they did double and triple takes, their eyes slowly giving clues that their brain was attempting to unravel the dark mysteries of the Giant John. Everyone had a joke on the tip of their tongue but folks were careful to scan the waistlines of those in close proximity so the possibly offensive joke would not fall on possibly offended ears.

The Giant John was the highlight of the Portland Home Show. Also Yolo is a cool paint company that makes environmentally responsible paint in some pretty nifty colors. They are nice folks too.

The two trends that I noticed at the Home Show were; 1) everyone wants giant things (stoves, refrigerators, windows, sinks, etc) – if it’s good enough for a restaurant that feed’s 200 people a night, then it’s good enough to feed my small family of four and, 2) why buy it real when you can buy it fake – wood, metal, stone, anything natural should be replaced by the ugliest plastic composite you can find.