Bathroom Etiquette

Today in the bathroom at work I was washing my hands when a guy walked in with a magazine. I thought he was gonna go to a stall and read it while going #2, but no, he went to a urinal and and started peeing, while continuing to read his magazine. Personally, I have never ever seen anything like that. The idea of a guy standing up with a magazine one hand and his pee-pee in the other and urinating away is both funny and disturbing at the same time.

If I was more of a jackass, I should have just turned around and paid attention to whether he put down his magazine or even looked away from his reading to make sure he avoided that deadly "Something About Mary" zipper disaster. But, being the discrete individual I am, I settled for surreptitious glances using the mirror while pretending to give my hands an extra rinse.

Men's bathrooms are a sensitive area, there are many Dos and Don'ts when you are in such a place. Actually, there are many more don'ts that I can think of. As long as you make sure to flush, and shut the door when you take a dump, that pretty much will cover the Dos. The Don'ts are a little trickier.

For example, you never, ever start a conversation with a stranger in the bathroom. Even if it is your best friend, it would be questionable. There is just something inherently weird about talking to the guy next to you out of the blue while you both are peeing. Maybe even a little gay, but it doesn't matter if you are talking about Prada shoes and the latest episode of Will & Grace, or if you are discussing hunting rifles and Monday Night Football, all such banter is unacceptable. The golden rule of inter-urinal conversation is: let the guy next to you pee in peace, just as you would want him to let you pee in peace.

In most cases, this rule is much less stringent for the handwashing or paper-towel-retrieving portion of your bathroom visit. Still, be careful not to venture too far beyond a nod of acknowledgement and a neutral "what's up" and only when eye contact is made.

Choosing a urinal is also a touchy issue. It is never acceptable to take a spot when the one next to it is already being used, if there are other options available. You gotta give people their space or else they will feel threatened. When you walk into the bathroom, the initial scan is critical. You must quickly note the quantity and location of the urinals and stalls, as well as the setup and features of the particular bathroom. Doing so allows you to act accordingly and avoid bathroom faux pas.

When you hear someone accidentally rip one while peeing, or is experiencing a particularly messy #2, resist all urges to laugh out loud. It could turn out to be some huge guy that will take exception to your reaction and bash your face in. Even if it isn't, just be considerate and put yourself in his place; how would you feel in that situation? Now if you absolutely must, snicker quietly to yourself, but the best solution is to hold your childish glee and tell your friends about the moment later.

If you are sitting in a stall doing your thing and someone takes the one next to you, do NOT try to look at the guy's shoes and pants to figure out who it is. There is a good chance that he might be doing the same thing. Won't you both look stupid if you end up seeing each other at that point? Anyways, just mind your own business. Finish your duty and get on out of that place, who cares about who is sitting in the stall next to you.

Speaking of which, determining when to get out of the stall is another important situation which you have to handle correctly. When there are not very many other people in the bathroom with you, it is fairly quiet and the potential for awkwardness is at a maximum. One of the last things you wanna do is to flush at the same time as someone else and get out of your stall in sync with another guy doing the same. The awkwardness is multiplied when you gotta use the sink or the hand dryer at the same time as someone else. It's much better when someone clearly deserves the sink before or after you, and everything else follows in a logical fashion.

To avoid this strategic blunder, I recommend that you "finish up" as loudly as possible. While you try to muffle the sound of taking a dump itself, you do the opposite when it comes to tearing the toilet paper, buckling your belt, etc. This way, other people will hopefully respect the fact that you are claiming the right to flush and exit into the open area. It's kind of like signaling when you merge onto the highway, a simple act can save so much confusion or trouble.

Some people fail to recognize this act, but they are mostly ignorant. This is why you have to be vigilant yourself in paying attention to bathroom noises. The toilet-paper-tear is a dead giveaway, however, don't overlook the subtler sounds which can mean the same thing. If there is any doubt, just sit on that toilet a while longer to make sure.

Making a little noise while in a stall is a good act of courtesy in general. A lot of people don't follow my simple rule of scanning the bathroom as the first thing when entering a bathroom. Yet, it is important that they know someone is in there with them, albeit hidden in one of the back stalls. If not, they might be a little careless with letting loud farts rip or start humming a Justin Timberlake song. The result would be an embarrasing moment when he finds out that he was not alone in the room as you flush and leave your stall to see him checking himself out in the mirror. So, within the first 5 seconds of someone coming into the bathroom, you have to make some sound to let him know you're there. Any little grunt, throat-clearing, or foot shuffling will do, as long as you do it before he does something dumb. Like I said, make your noise within the first 5 seconds and you should be ok.

There are other lesser known rules, but these are the most important. I didn't make them up either, ask most socially-conscious guys and they will tell you the same kind of stuff. But a lot of people surprisingly fail to realize the fact that the bathroom is one of the few sensitive places for guys. It's the last place you want to get careless in. Think about it, for many animals, males pee to mark their territory. It's a very personal act. You don't have to be scared to go to the bathroom, all I'm saying is, be respectful and smart when you're there.

Getting Jacked In The Eye

Getting jacked in the eye is not fun. Not only does it hurt like hell when it happens, you end up on the ground squirming like a girl looking like a weenie. Then you try to get up and the world is spinning. Kind of like those relay race things when they make you run around a baseball bat for 10 turns while looking at the ground, then you gotta run across the field, except in this case your face is throbbing.

So yeah, I got jacked in the face yesterday trying to make a tackle in our pickup football game, and no, it wasn't fun. I thought I was ok, so I drove home, but then my head was spinning and I started shaking uncontrollably when I got home so I had to lay down. I couldn't do that for long, because I had to get up to go to dinner with my family and Olivia's family and another family.

At dinner, I kept feeling like I had to throw up or pass out, but I somehow stayed upright throughout the evening. I don't really understand why getting nailed in the eye or ocular (starcraft word) region causes headaches and nausea but word is that I was experiencing vagal pains. At least that is supposedly what Grace the optometry student theorizes. I thought only girls could have vagal pains, but I think a lot of things that are incorrect.

My dad thought I might have a mild concussion, which would have been not good. But since I went to sleep and woke up ok, I guess it wasn't a concussion. Still, I was still too weak to make it to the Bears game today, which totally sucks cause I was looking forward to that for weeks. They finally freaking won a game, and I was stuck watching it at home on TV.

Now I am feeling almost back to normal, except my eye is still swollen and sore, so I gotta wear glasses. I have a black eye too, so it looks like I got a beatdown. If anyone asks, I am just gonna say "you should see how bad the other guy looks." When in reality, the "other guy" managed to shake off the powerful blow of my eye to his hip bone and continued to play football. Sheeeeezy....

Oh yeah, visit http://asksnoop.com. If you just use it to Shizzolate CNN.com or Yahoo!, it's pretty funny. I tried it on my blog and it was hilarious too. Loads of fun for all.

Songs

My current playlist:

Britney Spears - Lucky
Coldplay - In My Place
Coldplay - Clocks
Coldplay - The Scientist
Eminem - 8 Mile Road
Eminem - Superman
Five for Fighting - Superman
LL Cool J - Big Mama
Ms. Jade f. Nelly Furtado & Timbaland - Ching Ching
Nelly - Air Force Ones
Puddle of Mudd - Drift and Die
Radiohead - Creep
Radiohead - Lucky
Smashing Pumpkins - Landslide
Smashing Pumpkins - Perfect
Stone Temple Pilots - Creep
Tori Amos - A Sorta Fairy Tale
TLC - Creep

Once in a while, I like to do weird things like put songs on my playlist only because their titles match.

That Nelly song is hilarious. I wish I had friends who talked like that in real life.

Things That Piss Me Off

Here is a list of things that piss me off. Kind of like pet peeves, but not exactly.

- Those older cars with turn signals that blink way too fast. It makes me want to electrically engineer a sort of delayer circuit and go install it. Like a clock doubler, maybe. All it takes is a couple J-K flip-flops, I think.

- Tiny font on other people's blogs drives me nuts. Especially on a dark background when the font is kind of dark too. Good thing none of the blogs I regularly read are like that.

- When I see finger marks on the trunk of a nice car. I'm not talking about finger prints, I'm talking about those long streaks where the dust has been rubbed off and it looks like half a handprint on your trunk. Caused by the way people close their trunks. Don't close your trunk that way, fools.

- Those stupid quizzes you take to find out which Carebear, Star Wars character, or color of the rainbow you are. Then I see them on every person's blog/xanga. Seriously, I saw one girl's page was almost completely made up of entries that were cut and pasted from those quiz things. I mean, one or two, maybe, even I might do the Star Wars one if I'm bored some day, but this is out of control.

- Trucks on the highway that have pieces of dirt or rocks flying off and hitting my car. Every time this happens, I wanna start my own gang of green-Civic driving punks and hijack these truck drivers for causing all the chips on my hood or small cracks on my windshield. Seriously, there needs to be a law that says trucks need to keep themselves clean and not have crap flying off hitting other cars. It's just plain inconsiderate.

- Lane whores. You know what I'm talking about, that stupid driver during rush hour that switches lanes every 2 seconds, thinking that he or she is gonna save major time this way. I always love when some idiot cuts me off and is zigzagging away, then I see him 30 minutes later getting off the same exit and stopped next to me at the stoplight. Way to go, bud.

- The Bachelor. That show is so bad, so so bad. First of all, the guy is a major tool. It is painful just to listen to him talk. And here are all these girls who want him just because he is inheriting a banking empire from his parents. If the Victoria's Secret fashion show is trash for guys, this is trash for girls. They're the same thing. One is showing guys unrealistic and impossible things that they want but can't have - hot girls wearing almost no clothes struttin their stuff. The other is what girls want but can't have - a really really rich guy, fantasy dates where they get to do stuff no ordinary guy could provide, a fairy tale proposal set upon a backdrop of a huge garden by the lake where no ordinary guy could take them, and one of the biggest rocks I have ever seen in my life put on an engagement ring. All said, it's a good thing he chose Helene, Miss I-like-to-talk-when-I-kiss, cause Brooke was a wack-job. But they still aren't gonna last more than 6 months, I'll tell you that much from just watching the last 20 minutes of the last episode.

- Fantasy football. Yes, I am still bitter because I lost once again to Dave. But for some reason I never, ever, ever have a good team. I might as well just write a yearly check for $10 to Piya or Friedman and save myself the agony of a 17 week season.

- Bears football. It's sad when the only positive stat they can show about your whole team is on the kicker. And if John Shoop calls one more of those short little screen passes that never works, I am gonna flip. Visit this site Chras sent me: Fire John Shoop it's pretty funny. I am impressed at how dedicated some Bears fans are. Also check this picture:



Credit for that one goes to the Goods.

Get A Life

Anybody see the news last week? For the Victoria's Secret fashion show, PETA protesters ran on the stage with big signs that said stuff like "Gisele Fur Scum" before these security guys ran on and tackled them off the stage. It was hilarious.

If you didn't know, PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. These people devote their entire lives to saving animals from "unethical" treatment. Which I'm all for, cause animals are cool, but I can't believe how extreme this organization is.

For example, a couple months ago they harrassed the Milwaukee Brewers because during their games, their "Sausage Race" didn't include a vegetarian sausage. A year ago, they put up ads of Rudy Giuliani with a milk mustache saying "Got Prostate Cancer?" suggesting that his cancer was due to drinking milk. (They eventually had to apologize after he threatened to sue, but that should give you an idea of what kind of things they do).

If you visit their site, www.peta.org, it is one of the most well done, organized, and complete sites that I have ever seen. They also get some pretty famous celebrities to support their cause by appearing in ads or leading public campaigns.

Now, like I said, animals are great and I love them. I would never like to see unnecessary killing of any animals and I do agree that fur coats and things like that are probably too much. But, seeing how much effort PETA pours into their cause makes me wonder how much real good they could accomplish if they just channeled their energy to a more worthy cause.

Sure, they might succeed in convincing some people not to buy leather products, eat meat, or use cosmetic brands which employ animal testing, but how much does that contribute to this world? How does this improve society?

There are entire countries dying of starvation in this world. There are children being beaten and abused by their parents in this country, and fetuses being aborted every day by selfish and careless teenagers. Why not try to help some of them instead?

It's sad to me that a great deal of these same PETA members could care less about something like abortion in which human life is killed. I think there is a certain degree of hypocrisy to that, where people say to themselves, "If I don't see it, it's ok."

I really doubt that these people care about the fact that animals are dying, as much as they care about appeasing their own conscience when they see "cute" animals being killed. Why aren't there animal rights groups protesting mousetraps? And does every member of PETA care about the senseless killing of mosquitoes and spiders that occurs daily in everyone's homes? No, I doubt it, because there is a sort of double standard here. If you see a cute little guinea pig dying so that people can conduct research, or a pig that looks like the one from "Babe" being slaughtered so we can have bacon and pork chops, then it's wrong.

I, for one, love bacon and pork chops. To me, there's nothing wrong with killing a pig if it is for a good purpose - so that I can eat. Maybe that's insensitive, but that's how life goes, that's nature. Eat, or be eaten. Just cause a cow doesn't seem like she enjoys being milked don't mean that we shouldn't drink milk. Nobody's gonna tell me otherwise. If that cow was smart enough to rule this earth, you think it would have mercy on us? Yeah right...

The real problem here is that certain people have nothing to do, so they end up spending their lives doing stupid stuff like that. If these guys had bills to pay, kids to feed, a 9-5 job to contend with, we wouldn't see them planning silly protests at some Victoria's Secret fashion show. To these people, I say, PLEASE GET A LIFE.