Sometimes, I am so proud to live in this country, I get a little misty-eyed. That feeling came over me recently when we started on plans to renovate our bathrooms. Technically, our house is listed as having 1.5 bathrooms. That’s being a bit generous.

I’m not knocking our downstairs facilities because I love the setup. I just think calling a commode sitting on a raised platform in between the washer and dryer a half bath is a little fib.

Yes, our downstairs toilet is a real throne, sitting about a foot off the ground with a shower curtain around it to offer privacy. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
But until now, you have had to manually fill the tank in order to flush. As we got plans ready to renovate our upstairs bathroom, we also had a new toilet installed downstairs. It’s luxurious – the tank fills up by itself and everything.

This is where my patriotic weepiness kicks in. I just wonder if we could have afforded a few more luxuries, however. A simple, white toilet just seems so blah. And not very American.

Good thing for us, the people at Roto Rooter have thought this thing out. The company that fixes your pipes will now give you “the best seat in the house.”

On Wednesday, they will unveil a contest that will ultimately give some lucky guy a “Pimped Out John.”

Roto Rooter has finally found something that all men can get behind. The toilet will have lights, a flat screen HDTV, iPod and dock, TiVo, xBox 360, and DVD player. The throne comes with a laptop so you can check your e-mail, a bullhorn so you can call for more toilet paper and bike pedals for the ultimate in multi-tasking.

There’s even a beer tap and a fridge in case you get some hunger pangs. And if there’s a plumbing problem, there’s a Roto Rooter emergency button. It’s sort of a version of “On Star.”

Ever since I found out this news, I have hardly slept. I toss and turn and think of all the times I have wanted to set the TiVo to record something, but couldn’t because I was, well, indisposed.

People like to badmouth America sometime, but I think this will shut them up once and for all. We are blessed to have engineers so dedicated that they knew building a toilet with a DVD player, but without HDTV capabilities just wouldn’t be fair.

Imagine if they didn’t add the bullhorn and some poor guy had to strain his voice, yelling for someone to bring him a fresh roll. Of course, my mother-in-law would want the ultimate throne to have an extra-large TP dispenser since she can’t sleep unless she has 30 rolls or so in the house, but that’s another story.

I just wish I had known about this contest before we got the ball rolling on these projects. I totally would have developed a contingency plan to get this thing installed in the basement.

In all honesty though, I don’t mind just as long as I know that somewhere out there, one lucky guy can do his business, play a video game and pour himself a nice cold beer.

Talk about proud to be an American.