Check it, Peons: Your CNN Humiliation Compartmentalized

Thursday, November 29, 2007

NO MORE PISSING IN THE STREET


So-
As I was walking home from work late Monday night, my retinas were accosted by a horrific sight:
A woman with her pants pulled down, screaming at her boyfriend, pissing in between two cars in Midtown. The weird part was there was a bar just a few feet away. A shitty bar, but a bar with a toilet. And she wasn't even squatting. Just hunching. I guess she didn't want her hoo-hoo too close the the dirty New York street. That ass was high in the air and the piss was just gushing out all over the place...
Now before anyone starts thinking that this is an isolated New York problem, read on. Apparently, some high tech geniuses aim to prevent this type of behavior, at least in the fine city of London:
A new service promises Londoners they'll never have to spend much time looking for the loo.
Westminster City Council, which covers London's bustling Oxford Street, the West End, Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, on Thursday launched "SatLav" — a toilet-finding service for cell phone users. Tourists, theatergoers, shoppers and pub patrons in London's West End can now text the word "toilet" — and receive a text back with the address of the nearest public facility.
The system, which covers 40 public toilets, pinpoints the caller's position by measuring the strength of the phone signal. The texts cost about 50 cents, and most of Westminster's toilets are free.
The council said it hopes the service will stop people from urinating in alleyways, saying some 10,000 gallons of urine ends up in Westminster streets each year.

A few thoughts:
1. I don't think it is the "tourists, theatre goers and shoppers" that are pissing in alleyways. I am having a hard time visualizing some family from Ohio purchasing a Union Jack tea set on the way to seeing " Les Miz" and then deciding to whizz in tandem behind the gift shop. Let's be honest. This is something drunken revelers do. And if the New York woman is any indication, knowing that a toilet is just steps away won't help. Drunk people simply like pissing in the street.

2. 10,000 gallons! Who calculated that figure? Was there a staff of statistitions hired by the British government? How do they know? Did they round up or down? Which kinds of measuring instruments were used? How can they just throw this figure out there with no explanation?

3. I suspect Larry Craig would appreciate this service, don't you? Except in England they call soliciting gay sex in a bathroom "cottaging". Isn't that cute? Ah, I love those quaint English collquialisms...Well that and the fact that men call other men "c*nts".

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't be so sure. Tourists could view urinating in the streets as a cultural experience. If buying illegal knock off Coach bags from Canal Street can become a part of midwestern tourists to-do lists in NY, anything can happen.