Winners Will Be Flush With Cash

Attention out-of-work-vocalists: Fluidmaster, maker of toilet-repair parts, is searching for “gifted (or just plain brave) performers who can reasonably imitate the sound of a flushing toilet.” All you have to do to enter the Fluidmaster Flush-Off is phone (714) 777-8837 and record your version of an emptying john.

Spokeswoman Gretchen Kurz warned callers to forget about merely holding the phone next to a flushing toilet -- company workers know the real thing when they hear it.

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Flush-off (cont.): Finalists will be invited to the company headquarters in San Juan Capistrano on Oct. 6, when three flushers will win prizes ranging from $250 to $1,000.

The finals often inspire unusual outfits, a toilet-seat cover worn as a necklace being one memorable example.

As in any art form, the flush is open to many interpretations.

“Some people roar -- I call that the manly approach,” Kurz said. “Some have a cartoonish effect without whooshing but with a higher pitch -- lots of squeaking.” One thing you can be sure of, Kurz added, is “there’ll be a lot of gurgles. The length of the gurgle at the end really varies.”

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Palisades-Complaint-of-the-Week: Latest honors go to the reader who wrote the Palisadian-Post: “If you need to talk on your cellphone from your car, do so while you’re waiting for the red light to change at Chautauqua and PCH. That’s a good five minutes well spent.”

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Dr. Dolittle’s legacy? The talk-to-the-animals movement is active in Southern California, judging from the item spotted by Sally Fader of Huntington Beach (see accompanying).

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‘Nuff said: Noticing the name of some rooms at Mount St. Mary’s College, Stephanie Wong of Altadena could understand why precautions would be taken (see accompanying).

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Masochist’s special: Ralph Merrill of Long Beach saw just the thing for boat passengers who love misery (see photo).

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Such a deal: I know that many of you turn to this column not because you’re in love with my prose but to take advantage of the specials I publish. Just to show there are no hard feelings, I’ve included a discount on a pizza, first noticed by Stanley Siegenthaler of Apple Valley (see photo). Guess it’s a real big pizza.

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Talk about being wiped out: In the L.A. Independent, David Chan of L.A. read a police blotter item about a drug dealer who hit a customer “several times on the head with a squeegee and fled the scene.”

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miscelLAny: I recently joked that gasoline costs millions in Turkey, after Dodi Fromson sent me a photo of a pump in that country that read “1,912,000.” But Jackson Henry of Torrance points out that even when you convert the cost from liras to dollars, it ain’t cheap -- about $5 per gallon.

“I suspect there are precious few SUVs in Turkey,” Henry added. “We should be so lucky!”

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LATIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012, and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.