Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Save a Life - Flush the Toilet!

I wish I lived in an era where mankind knew a little bit less about bacteria. I'm not saying I would have preferred the days of ritualized bleedings, but I'm finding the current age, replete with anti-bacterial this and that, a little too empowering for the common man. Nowhere has this excess knowledge proven more inconvenient than in the bathroom, where numerous lawsuit-conscious concerns - and corporations with skyrocketing health insurance premiums - have fed the public's fear of disease carrying microbes.

Of course, public toilets have never quite inspired images of cleanliness. If it were at all possible, I'm sure most people would cinch tight their bladders and sphincters if it meant avoiding a pungent, poo-splattered encounter with a messy public commode. Alas, our high fat, high calorie diet all-too-frequently expands our waste processing organs to their fullest capacity, simultaneously "greasing" our plumbing and forcing many a trip to the nearest sanctioned loo. It's here, in the public space, where we find oversized sheets of paper, meant to separate our bums from the toxic surface of the toilet seat; printed exhortations to wipe properly and wash up afterward; no touch faucets and urinals; yesterday's sports section.

All these innovations exploit our fear of bacteria as a known pathogen, drastically changing the way we behave in the communal space. We suddenly kick open doors to avoid handling their knobs and latches, or contort our bodies to slip through doorways as they slowly close or open. No matter that it's impolite to do such things; what's a colleague's broken nose when you've avoided an encounter with millions of infectious bacteria? But now people, and by people I mean men, as I typically avoid the ladies' room, have taken this "no handle" ethos to yet another extreme - increasingly, folks simply refuse to flush the toilet, preferring to let their urine mellow in the basin for the next person to deal with.

While I've long ago reconciled myself to the unpleasant sights and smells of public restrooms, I find it somehow galling that grown men think it's acceptable to leave unflushed puddles of piss in the toilet. I blame it on the bacteria. Had we not known so much about them, how they live and get around, and what they do once they've climbed through your mouth or anus, we wouldn't have this phenomenon. And frankly, I fear it may not be a simple bacteria-avoidance maneuver - I bet most of these guys pretty much just don't want to wash their hands.

The End of Fun?

Saturday night is all that matters anymore.

The decline of Thursday, while not exactly telegraphed, coincided with the joint rise of low-rider jeans and exposed thongs as the evening-wear of choice, in effect blunting the once-enduring appeal of dollar beer night.

And then, not much later, Friday night and I had a falling out. It was a mutual parting, actually – I couldn’t, with any reliability, summon my liver and kidneys to her service, let alone endorse to her skull-splitting devotion to both binge drinking and fascist conspiracy theories, a.k.a. “blowing off steam.” After too many years, the standard rationalization – “It was a tough week; I earned that puddle of vomit!” – had really lost its luster, and the couch, unfathomably, replaced the bottle as Friday’s cure for fatigue and disillusionment.

With that bombshell I embraced Saturday night, as not only the last redoubt for my youthful indiscretions, but also a portal to something different, more, perhaps even better. Saturday, in fact, is ideal for quixotic experimentation. It’s a blank slate, free from work-week obstacles and the prying mandates of Jesus Christ, allowing ample time for self-realizing pursuits as well as the gutter. And wedged as it is between Friday and Sunday, Saturday night doesn’t suffocate with cast-concrete obligations – stifling deadlines, appointments.

You’re free to do what your body wills and ignore that harpy ol’ mind; if that means gobbling a half-dozen doughnuts, of the variety you typically bypass if left uneaten in the corporate kitchen – “I can’t handle the carbs,” you might say – then guzzle them down! There’s still room for an a la carte steak later! Saturday night doesn’t judge or reprimand; after all, that’s why God made Sunday.

Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk

For all its faults, Hollywood succeeds in providing an important public service beyond simple, direct to consumer entertainment. This service in no way enhances the economy, nor does it unite the harried American citizenry with a common cultural thread. Rather, through catchphrases and clever dialog easily etched into the popular consciousness, it provides a general merchandise trove of pith and wit capable of propelling both the dull and feeble-minded to undeserved heights of social prominence.

Among the media, film is most responsible for this trend. Its products can be consumed in a single sitting, generally in less than two hours, and can be viewed again and again thanks to the butt-numbing wonders of home theater technology. The result is a populace awash in stolen words of encouragement, expressions of love, and, perhaps most frustratingly, laughter. More than ever, any lout with a decent memory and outsized ego can ingest hundreds of punchlines, verbatim, and with practice, casually spin them as products of his own wit. As if it wasn't bad enough, in the previous age, when people merely thought themselves hopelessly funny. Now, with their pilfered catalog in tow, they can regurgitate proven winners and claim it as evidence of their genius.

The result? A population funnier than ever before, but, corrected for inflation, still far less funny than the guys connected to anything featuring Ben Stiller. And as annoying as in epochs past. Thanks Hollywood...