The Toilet Train Leaves at 10:00...be on it!
Current mood: disgusted
Ah, women. The gentler sex. Those domesticators of society--veritable bastions of all that is decorous and civilized.
Are you laughing yet?
You should be. The great secret that custodians know--at least, the guy named Chuck in the building where I work--is that women are serious pigs.
Excepting myself. I'm of the leave-things-as-you-find-them school, personally. My own trips to the Evacuation Station always have to begin with a scoping-out of the various stalls to see which toilet is in the least grotesque condition for my own use. I've come to grudgingly accept splattered pee on the seat as a standard situation, but some days, that's the best I can hope for. Never mind what might actually still be found within the toilet, unflushed. The excretions (secretions? mutations?) aren't always immediately identifiable, and my curiosity does not extend into the toilet bowl. I have been known to go to another floor just to find a stall that I am actually willing to walk inside.
I'm not sure why the ladies of my building have such execrable (so to speak) bathroom habits. Are they victims of a male-dominated society that teaches us our private bits produce only "dirty" things? Are they so germ-o-phobic that they actually flee from their own doody rather than flush it? Do they have such a fear of enclosed places that they can't take the time to push the little handle? Or are they just lazy?
And believe me...there's nothing worse than sharing a bathroom with a lazy bulimic.
One of my co-workers finally reached her limit of tolerance and actually made a flier, which she taped to the inside of the stall doors. The main graphic featured this little warning:
I admit, I was befuddled by the thought of anyone standing on a toilet seat to pee. Some kind of bizarre bulls-eye game, perhaps? Proof of agility and balance? And the fact that my friend had actually found such a graphic online proved that she was probably right on target (so to speak) in her warning. It at least explained the splatters. The rest of the flier featured positive how-to's on proper toilet behavior, written in the plainest English possible for such a topic.
Perhaps she should have tried more pictures, because things haven't really gotten better.
Even more perplexing is the fact that it may be a phenomenon contained to my building. This summer I am teaching in another building, one that houses the English department--as in, English literature and composition.
And their bathrooms are clean.
As in, really clean.
As in, the women actually flush.
And no Jackson-Pollack urine art on the seat!
I can't get over it.*
So I'm forced to wonder what vibe in our building may be causing its inhabitants to be cleanliness-impaired (again, myself excepted...maybe I just don't get out of my office often enough to fall prey to its influence). And I may never know the answer. It isn't something I, as a teacher, can bring up in class, after all. ("Today's lesson: How do YOU do 2?") Nor can I simply ask my students during an essay conference in my office. ("Oh, and I wanted to ask: Have you ever stood on a toilet seat to pee?")
So the Hygiene Gap shall remain a mystery. Which is probably just as well, because I probably don't want to know.
In the meantime, I'm going to recommend that we start putting up new fliers in the bathroom stalls that advertise the Shewee, a handy device made by a British company to help women in need.
It tells us that no more need we sit on germy public toilet seats...now we can "stand up and go like a bloke." Well...okay. So long as we point out (via more fliers?) that you can stand on the floor...an important distinction. Maybe I should leave a few of them subtly strewn about the stalls in hopes that those toilet-seat artists will take the hint.
In the meantime, maybe I'll go over to the English building to take my whizzes from now on.
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*Of course, the best feature of this bathroom is, amazingly, not its cleanliness, but the wealth of graffiti adorning the stall-walls. But I'm going to save that for "The Toilet Train Part 2: Flushing Out Your Inner Philosoph."
It's been so long since I blogged that I've lost track of all my clever metaphors and have completely forgotten where I put my allusions, similes, and creative ideas. Working on it.
Hoping to get the blog machine crankin' again soon.
But since I have written precisely zippo for so long, I finally reached a level of guilt that inspired the following "Catching Up With Random" sort of post...although like most of my personal bidness kinda posts, I'm irritatingly vague. I do have reasons to be vague at the moment--nice, healthy, legitimate ones at that--the most pertinent being: I'm suspended in that long, empty stretch between Life Decisions Being Actually Made, so until I actually know how those decisions are going to turn out, there's no point in blabbing endlessly about all the different possible roads I might be traveling. So...without further ado...
Pieces of Random
Items:
-I want to see CLUTCH in concert so badly I can taste it. And CLUTCH, they be mighty tasty...
-Far more likely that I'll see King's X in concert sometime this summer. Happy dance!
-I've been sleeping a little more than usual lately. I can't figure out of this is psychological or physiological. Or perhaps phytological. Or even parasitological. But I know it isn't pharmacological or paleontological. So I guess it's nothing to worry about.
-I do worry, though, that my new profile pic makes me look too young. Is that psychotic, or what?
-My back hurts.
-I'm impatient for Change to get here. I know she's coming, but she didn't say when, and I hate waiting around for flighty guests.
-I found the following on YouTube and it made me giggle really hard. For sheer Goofy Factor, you really can't beat this, not even with a lumpy pumpernickel crumpet...so I leave you with one of my Favorite Things...Muppets!
So I’m playing Candyland with my daughter, and I ponder the psychosexual effect that the tarted-up teen Princess Frostine might have on her ("She’s so pretty, Mom!" as I shudder), but I guess that since she isn’t a Disney Cleavage Princess, I can probably dismiss her with an eyeroll or two. I also look at the clearly dopey, probably uncontrolled diabetic King Kandy and figure the lil’ Princess has him wrapped around her sugah-sweet glove-clad finger. Ah, the politics of kidworld.
But wait.
There’s an older version of the game at my daughter’s preschool, and in that game, there is no "Princess Frostine." There is, however, a QUEEN Frostine.
Oh, dear.
For this casts a whole new and much more sinister light on the revision that my daughter owns. What, I’m forced to wonder, happened to the erstwhile queen? And who is this princess person? A daughter lovingly named in memory of her mother?
Or perhaps...a second wife, the successor to the middle-aged Queen (thrown over by King Kandy, naturally), now masquerading under the ambiguous guise of "Princess" even as she services the fat, wealthy king in his bloated midlife hedonism?
Or maybe the old Queen died of sugar-shock and the daughter has taken her name as a symbolic gesture.
Let’s hope.
But still I wonder...why did the manufacturers see fit to replace the Queen with a lushly curved and made-up princess? Was there some shame in being the wife of King Kandy (jolly old hutt that he is), or perhaps in the implication of age versus youth? And if a Princess she had to become, why does she have to look like Christina Aguilera?
Methinks our age-obsessed and hypersexualized culture has gone a few lollipops too far. I wonder what Hasbro would have to say on the matter? It’s worth a google...I’ll keep this blog posted of my findings.
In the meantime, I’m just glad that my daughter is far more interested in Gloppy the chocolate swamp blob than in Tarty Princess F. But time is not on my side in this matter.
For a couple of reasons, I’m on a quest to compare and review free photo-sharing and free blog websites. Since my experience with both is limited, I thought I’d enlist help in my research...specifically, from You, dear reader. So here’s what I’m wondering:
B1) Have you used any other blogging sites besides Myspace? If so, which ones? The big ones I’ve noted are Blogger/Blogspot, Wordpress, LiveJournal, and of course Myspace. Any others I should peek at?
B2) What did/do you like/dislike about them? And is there anything you’d like to change about Myspace or any other blog sites that you’ve used? This is both in blogging there and in posting comments on others’ blogs.
B3) What do you think is most important when you’re looking for a good blogging site? How important are customizability, security, popularity, community/networking, ease of use, etc.?
P1) What photo-sharing websites do you use? So far, I’m considering Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, and Snapfish. Those are the most popular, but there are so many of these things, I’m not sure if there are others I should include as Undiscovered Gems or the like.
P2) Likes/Dislikes? Anything you’d change?
P3) Features required/preferred? Such as layout, security, storage space, flexibility (can they print your pics? create photo albums to mail you? etc), any other aspects I’m forgetting...and is video handling a concern for these sites, or would people just rather use YouTube for that?
Sorry for the boring and serious blog, but if you give me good responses, I’ll post something good within the week. Deal?
(Not to put pressure on myself or anything... :-P)
but what about *my* needs??
Current mood: satisfied
So there's this meme in which you google "[Your name] needs" and see what comes up. Kind of fun...buuuuut...half the things that came up were posts in the blogs of other Andi's who've already done it. I hate being so common. :-(
Nevertheless, I soldiered on, ignoring other people's lists (even though I'm sure they look pretty much like mine)...here's what I got:
~Andi needs to add some functionality that will fall out of the .5 timeframe.
~Andi needs to write a description of herself.
~Andi needs to find out about Sam and the Lord of the Flies soon, because my tolerance for having her in the dark is going to wear thin fast.
~Andi needs to see Mardi Gras...
~Andi Needs A Jobbie-job
~Andi needs new shoes and a winter coat
~Andi needs to find out about Sam working for the devil.
~Andi needs to explain why Grandfather drove a golf cart and Leo's brother has to follow behind carrying the clubs.
Which begs the question: Who the hell is Sam? I particularly like the last one, though...and one of those is Absolutely True...can you guess which one? :-)
To be a little less...frequently-found...I re-did it using my screen name (visible right over yonder), and that was much more interesting...mainly because so often the phrase "random needs" is an object, not a subject and verb. So it took a little more scouring, and I didn't find anyone else with that name who'd done the meme. Here are the results:
random needs an upgrade (this one turned up a lot...must be true)
random needs comforting yella (WTF?)
Random - Needs Sorting. (Gosh, I hope I get Gryffindor!)
random needs to to be in English (um...)
Random needs an editor!
RANDOM needs more cowbell
Random needs hubby kisses
random needs custom prototype
random needs fixing
Random Needs Solid Finish
random needs more data before it can produce random data for you (wait a second..."it"??)
Random Needs a F**
Random needs Math
I think we can all guess which one here is my favorite, right? And it's so, so very TRUE.
Gotta go take care of some needs...
Currently
listening
:
Apple
By
Mother Love Bone
Release date: 08 September, 2003
disgusted
blah
discontent
groggy
satisfied
