I never thought I would be compelled to publicly complain about plumbing.
Yet, here we are…
“D*ck Guillotine.”
No, I’m not talking about the lead singer of the fantastic dumb-rock band, Electric Six. That would be D*ck1LOL, I can’t actually type out d-i-c-k because of my stupid self-censoring WordPress plugin. Hilarious, I say. Valentine. Though I can see how you could easily mix those two up. Instead I’m talking about the Word Of The Day, brought to you by the fine ----- at Better Beach Rentals.
“Better Beach Rentals?!?” you say. “I totally forget that you were still hung up on that bizarro beach house experience you had…way back in March.”
Okay, so I know that my ongoing review of the shit-tastic fiasco that was our 5-week stay at Eden Cove 9 (aka EC9)–which you can read up, albeit in reverse chronological order, here–has been dragging on for a while now. But I plead with you to give me a break–there were more layers to this stinky-ass onion than I had anticipated.
Plus, you know…I’m kinda long-winded about the smallest of frickin’ details, so there’s that working against me too.
All that being said, we really should just dive right into today’s theme without further context…
Level Four: Plumbing The Depths Of Hell
Shower [Severe-Lack-Of] Power!
So keep in mind that EC9 is very loudly touted as a “luxury experience,” and if you look at pictures of the bathrooms, you would be inclined to agree. Even in person, they look pretty fancy for the most part.
But be not deceived. The all suck butt in their own special ways.
For starters, EC9 boasts 3 and 1/2 bathrooms, including 3 very nice tiled showers. Good luck getting a luxury experience in any of them, though.
Two of them suffer from the same problem, and that is the shower has 3 options: the big shower head, the handheld shower head, and the body jets that shoot out right at ya. The issue is that you really only get to choose which one not to use at any given time, so the water pressure is always split between two of them, therefore you never get any decent pressure from any source.
It may sound like folly to complain about this, but I guarantee you, when you (or your insurance company) is paying for “luxury” and you can’t get a shower with decent pressure–it will piss you off to no end.
Eventually I discovered that the Elder’s shower–the least fancy of the 3–only had one option, the big shower head, and thus could actually provide a decent and comfortable experience.
The catch, though? The handle that allowed you to adjust the temperature was…simply missing. Just not there at all. In time I found that I could move it ever so slightly if I really dug my nails into the exposed hardware and twisted, but nevertheless is sure made for several nearly-scalded-scrotal experiences.
Though the most tolerable, Shower #3 still fell waaaaaay short of “luxury.” I mean, how hard can it be for maintenance to replace the ----- heat-adjusting handle? That can’t cost more than $10!
The Impossible Toilet.
Speaking of easily fixed issues that remain unaddressed, the Impossible Toilet is the one thing that made me say, “Really?!? The management and/or owner couldn’t be bothered to do this one thing right? Me-thinks I might be in the midst of a shit-show…”
What is this Impossible Toilet of which I speak, you wonder? Well let me show you:
Do not adjust your television sets. You are seeing a toilet handle that got installed upside down. And remained upside down. Again, I know how stupid it sounds. But this was the moment that the thought “Oh my god, I rented a ----- fun house” first went through my mind.
As you can see from the video, with the handle pointing in instead of out, it actually becomes really hard to get your hand back there to flush it. And once you do…well, nevermind not trying to rub the back of your hand all over the toilet lid–the human arm was never designed to pull up while in that position. I think I pulled a tendon in my arm every time I tried to use that toilet.
And surprisingly, even if when I was motivated enough to put the lid down just to flush, I found that it still hurt my arm like heck to pull up with my arm twisted around in that position.
Yet another reason to leave you wondering “what is up with this place? It’s just so…weird.”
The Back Breakers.
Of all the 4 toilets in EC9, I don’t recall a single one having a stable seat. That’s right: they were all Back Breakers.
A slightly wobbly toilet seat seems silly, but when you have pre-existing back issues? It’s no laughing matter when you’re sitting there doing your biz, when you go to slightly readjust your position and–WHEEEVP!2Because that is totally the sound something makes when it goes sideways. Your torso remains in place while the seat and your hip region slide violently to the side.
It’s not a joke man. That will jack your back up lickity-split.
A quick errata though: now that I think about it, there was one toilet that was nice and stable. But of course, it had two fatal character flaws: 1) it was the only toilet that couldn’t be accessed from a common space (like a hallway), as it was attached to the room where the in-laws would be sleeping, and so I only got to use it on occasion, and then only in the middle of the day; and 2) it had a vent constantly blowing freezing cold air directly at the king (or queen) upon their throne, so long-term shat-sessions were, shall we say, highly discouraged.
The D*ck Guillotine.
Yes, it is the moment you’ve all been waiting for, in which you finally get to find out what, pray-tell, exactly a D*ck Guillotine is.
Let’s start with yet another visual demonstration:
Growing up, one of my aunts had a D*ck Guillotine in her main bathroom, and it literally GAVE ME NIGHTMARES. And if you’re of the ilk who like stand when they pee, than you should be gravely terrified of these C*ck-Choppers as well.
As you can see from my demonstration, a DG is a toilet seat that cannot physically stay in the upright position. So if a gent goes to take a whiz at a DG, one of three things happens:
- He has to awkwardly hold the seat in the locked and upright position with his non-aiming hand. Not only is the human back meant to never be in this position, it’s just plain nasty to be touching the underside of a toilet seat. Gross.
- He tries to out-piss the toilet seat. But c’mon, we all know that you can’t fully empty your bladder in the time it takes for the seat to get to stream-level. This always ends in one way: a violent and ungodly attempt to cut off one’s flow before straight-up pissing all over the toilet seat during its descent. Even if stopped in time, there is the real medical threat of straining one’s urethral sphincter muscle in the process. And nobody wants that.
- If one is overly-endowed, the D*ck Guillotine lives up to its name..and pinches your peter in a particularly peculiar position. Ouch. So…three cheers for being an “average man”?
In other words, such a toilet is completely ----- useless to any man who doesn’t have the time and/or functioning knee joints to sit down to pee. COMPLETELY USELESS, I SAY!
The Steaming Pile Of Sh*t.
Instead of ending on the high note of penile decapitation, I’ll leave you with how we left the lone toilet we had on the top floor with our and the Younger’s bedrooms: fortunately, not completely full of shit.
With about 5 days left to go of our 5 weeks stay, that toilet decided to stop refilling itself with water after flushing. Often times this can easily be rectified with just a little bit of fiddling, but not this time, no siree, Bob! The fricking handle to the water valve was frozen in place on top of that, and the last thing I wanted was to break the ----- thing off trying to get it to turn!
So we just learned to co-exist with a toilet that we couldn’t take a dump in for those final days. We limited it to liquid waste only, and then after a handful of uses, would use the Younger’s whale bath toy to haul enough water over to manually induce a “flush.”
Now, you may be wondering: why we didn’t do what any renter should have done and called the Better Beach Rental’s maintenance team to come out and fix it?
I’ve already touched on some of the interactions we had with these guys (the elevator, the smoke detectors, etc), while I’ve yet to share other run-ins and fiascos. Let’s just suffice it to say we were rather frustrated with their seeming inability to get anything fixed in a timely manner.
Anne Frankly, we were simply tired of their sh*t.
The End.
…of the plumbing stories anyway.
Why, but of course there is more. With these asshats, there’s always more…
Content created on: 24/25 July 2021 (Sat/Sun)
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