TEAM LAST CALL

Actually, we're having more of a house-wide crisis. We've got a broken porch light, we've got a busted handle on our front door, we've got clogged spouting, we've got a major leak in our basement, and we've got insulation in the attic thats disintegrating faster than Britney Spears' sex appeal.

These things are tedious and aggravating, and we've been meaning to take care of them for several months now, but despite our best efforts, we can't quite seem to reach any of them from the couch. And if you think we're about to miss an episode of "Passions" just to replace some handle on the front door, so that our guests "don't have to walk around the back of the house" and "get dog crap" on their shoes and "track it all over our carpet," then you've got another thing coming.

If Team Last Call were a superhero, these problems would be like shoplifters - they're annoying, but none of them are really worth the attention of a crime-fighter of our caliber.

None of them, that is, except for one.

Every good superhero has an archenemy. Superman has Lex Luther. Spider-Man has the Green Goblin. George Bush has the word "nuclear."

And now, Team Last Call has one of its own: the upstairs toilet.

Our upstairs toilet has been running for several months now. I guess we'd better go catch it ha ha ha ha! Sorry.

But in all seriousness, that toilet has been the very bane of our existence. It's what we in the superhero business call "an evildoer."

The toilet troubles began with a little trickling sound coming from near the tank. It was irritating and persistent, like Ryan Seacrest, but it was way too little to pose a real threat. Like Ryan Seacrest.

But over time, that trickle developed into a raging river, with whirlpools and rapids and everything. It got to the point where we were afraid to come anywhere near the toilet for fear that we might be sucked into the current and deposited somewhere in the middle of the Susquehanna.

Before long, it became apparent that our toilet had been possessed by the devil. It developed this supernatural glow, and every time we got near it, it would start growling like a dog with rabies. Then it started doing this thing where we'd wake up during the night and the toilet would be sitting in the middle of our room, just staring at us, and every time we'd wake up it would be a little closer to the bed, until eventually it was sleeping beside us and hogging all the covers, which we really hate.

Then the toilet started getting just flat-out weird. Before long it was strutting around the house in its underwear like it owned the place, borrowing our favorite shirts without asking, watching all of our DVDs and then putting them away in the wrong cases, drinking the last of the milk and then putting the carton back in the fridge. And then it would walk around whistling "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" by Shania Twain as loud as it could, when it knows that we hate that song!

The toilet was evil. Pure evil. We didnt know if we should attack it with a sledgehammer or put it in a suit and tie and make it CEO of Halliburton.

We realize that we might be exaggerating the situation a little bit. It's sort of a bad habit of ours. But that toilet is the devil. In fact, we can hear it right now, just drip-drip-dripping away. Somehow, it knows that were trying to write an article.

You're probably wondering why we don't just march in there and fix the toilet ourselves. It's probably just a matter of a loose connection with the hose or a kink in the chain or something.

Frankly, we're scared. Besides, if we had any actual mechanical skills, we wouldn't be writing articles about toilets for a living.

The other option, of course, would be to call in a plumber. The problem there is, plumbers cost money, and in case we neglected to mention it before, we write columns about toilets for a living.

Besides, there's a third option we haven't explored yet: holding it.

Team Last Call has been holding it for weeks, and we think it's really teaching that toilet a hard lesson.

Because if you think about it, toilets are only as important as we allow them to be. They sit there all smug, with that little smirk that says, "Sooner or later, you'll come crawling back. You always do." They're just so conceited.

We say it's time we stop letting these toilets boss us around. We don't have to take their bullying sitting down, as it were.

It's time that we took the power back! Join me! Join me in the revolution! Together we can ... oh, man ... I'm sorry ... can I use your bathroom?