Shower Dissidence

I am always looking for a way to give my middle finger to the government.

Some people would say I am obsessed.

Back in the 1980s in Ontario, prepared meals totaling less than $4.00 were exempt from sales tax. So for years I almost never bought a meal for more than $4.00. The health food franchises I patronized were very helpful at first. You could get a 1/4 lb. combo at McD's for $3.99 and the other restaurants, like Harvey's and Wendy's, had similar deals.

If I wanted to spend a bit more, I would often order the items separately and ask for separate bills.

Inflation finally eliminated most of those combo deals, unfortunately.

Then the "progressives" at Hamilton City Hall prohibited smoking in cabs some time back in the 1990s. Prior to that, the rule was sensible and tolerant. Smoking was by mutual consent. I just ignored that bylaw without consequence for the next twenty years. Sometime around 2014 one of the city's Antifa type Gestapo employees snuck up on me and issued a fine for about $300. I figured that was worth it. $300 worked out to about $15 for each year I ignored the intrusion. I would have happily paid $15 a year for a smoking license anyway if I had to.

So I paid the fine and continued to ignore the mandate until I quit the business.

I don't like to be pushed around by the worms who wriggle their way into political power and then self-righteously tell me how I am to live my life.

Fuck them.

95% of what the government does is a net loss to society. The legitimate 5% of what they do, they do poorly, as in protecting people from criminals, or repairing roads. (And these are the same idiots who would have us believe they can control the climate.)

One thing I liked about living in a highrise apartment building was the garbage chute. I found garbage anonymity to be a plus.

The other thing I liked about living in the highrise was the shower. It was great. The pressure was strong and the temperature was consistent. It was pure luxury.

Then the building was sold and the new owners came around and installed these low-flow nozzles that delivered what could be best described as a mist rather than a shower and which, for some reason, caused wild temperature variations from freezing cold to scalding hot.

I sure as fuck didn't put up with that for very long. I started researching solutions to the problem. I got the idea of hacking showerheads from Jeffrey Tucker but within a very short time I purchased a cheap shower head from Canadian Tire and gouged out the flow restricting O-ring. It provided me with a tolerably decent shower for the next ten years.

I even took it with me when I moved and re-installed the fraudulent device in my old unit. Too bad about the new tenants who would be paying about 65% more in rent than I was paying.

Then a short while ago, that trusty old nozzle cracked. I expected it would be harder to find a new hackable shower head by now as manufacturers scramble to appease the Greta Thunburgs of the world by making their products hack-proof.

I reread Tucker's article about shower dissidence and he recommended a perfect solution. It is an easily hackable unit that sells for $1.97 (U.S. I assume.)

I found something that looks identical online so I ordered it, from China, apparently. It cost $1.80 (CDN) plus $5.54 for shipping.

I immediately noticed three things about it when it arrived.

It was stamped with a flow rate of 2.5 GPM.,

There was no washer or O-ring to extract,

And it was made in the U.S.A. (I guess it's legal to make them in the U.S. and ship them to China. And then back here. Nyuk, nyuk.)

Slightly disappointed at the 2.5 GPM. flow spec since that was mandated in the U.S. in 1992, I installed it anyway and tried it out.

Damned if that was not the BEST FUCKING SHOWER I've had in over a decade!

I thought I might be imagining things so I took a pitcher and a stopwatch and measured the actual flow rate.

It was a staggering 3.6 USG per minute.

I just ordered another one in case this one ever breaks and by then the government has figured out a way to stamp out this brazen act of political dissent.

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