Paper chase

One of the many important functions of this blog (insert your own joke here) is to point out that some things are not a good idea even though lots of really smart people are telling you it is a good idea.

Exhibit A this time would be an automatic toilet-paper dispenser.

According to the Associated Press, “A year in the works, the electronic tissue dispenser is being rolled out to the masses by Kimberly-Clark Professional as it seeks to capture more of the $1 billion away-from-home toilet paper market. The company believes most people will be satisfied with five sheets — and use 20 percent less toilet paper.”

Several thoughts immediately come to mind:

1) What on earth is the “away-from-home toilet paper market”?

2) Why does Kimberly-Clark believe that “most people will be satisfied with five sheets”? On second thought, I don’t want to know.

3) And, from a factoid later in the article, why do “Americans typically use twice as much toilet paper as Europeans”?

I don’t know about you, but I am not flushed with excitement over this news.

It is slightly encouraging to know that this fancy electronic toilet paper dispenser has some fallbacks.

It has an emergency feed button. It also has a manual feed roller. Some models will even have a “rescue roll” on one side of the machine.

That, I believe, is the way God intended us to use toilet paper. Simple, non-electronic and effective.

The prospect of being trapped in a toilet stall and frantically waving your hands under the motion sensor trying to get a few lousy sheets of paper is not something I am looking forward to.

I’m sure that back in the good ol’ days, some codger grumbled that the upshift from corncobs to the Sears catalogue in the outhouse was an questionable interface for the new platform.

All I know is that if you combine Murphy’s Law with Montezuma’s Revenge, you are in what the first President Bush used to call deep doo-doo.