Ed note: I thought I was really clever when I wrote this back in 2001. Now, not so much. -KV
Another Ed. note: I just took out a bunch of jokes. Boy did we hate frat guys back then. -KV
Bathroom Bonanza
Klaus Varley
Part I: Flushee's Revenge
There is a universal truth in this world that few people know. Historically documented and scientifically scientificated, this fact will revolutionize not a damn thing, but hopefully make the world a little bit cleaner.
What is this ontological cleanser of cleansers? Raising air quality emission standards for all full-size vehicles? No way. Limiting the amount of off shore drilling and oil transport in the
Pacific? Not even close, and what's with all the questions? The answer is something that affects our daily lives, not some fuzzy abstract environmental mumbo jumbo.
The revelation? All urinals are not the same. They collect the same thing, but oh, how their methods vary.
What am I talking about? Five letters: urine. Plain and simple. Look folks, I'm not writing to gross you out (poop) or disgust you (George W. Bush). This is an information piece. You will become informed individuals at the conclusion of, well, not this paragraph, but definitely by the end of the article.
It was a warm day, and I had five minutes before my first summer-school class. Wandering into Royce Hall in my new Gap cargo shorts I entered what is commonly known as "the place where people go to the bathroom." No one around, (see Part II) I comfortably unvelcroed my shorts and began the process. And then it hit me. Yes, IT.
The pee, the urine, the IT! A maelstrom of warm liquid violently tickled my knees like a warm sprinkler. I was hit. Turn your body Klaus! Stop the flow. Concentrate. Putting off those bladder control exercises until now was a mistake. Channel the peeing muscle. Flex! Nope. I turned, frantically aiming in a myriad of angles, but the backfire barrage was relentless. A warm stream now condensed and dripped slowly down my left calf. And I couldn't stop peeing. It was like that Sarte play, or the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. There was no escape. No escape!
The clever engineers at Flushee Inc. have created a device that can aeronautically redirect a steady stream of liquid back at the source, showering everything within a five-foot radius. They christened this clever devise "the urinal" and went on their day engineering other wonders of the world.
What they failed to realize was that the name "urinal" has already been taken by legitimate waste management companies, such as PNS and Uranimo, and refers to a practical, useful apparatus occupying men's rooms in universities throughout the land.
This confusion, however, has gone unnoticed in most of the country, due to the large number of states in which long pants are the norm. Here in the West, however, we will not tolerate Flushee's carelessness. The confusion must end. Today. Now. We demand our sanitation. Give it to us yesterday, and that's not soon enough… You get the picture. Buy PNS. Buy Uranimo. The Flush stops here.
I went to class that day wet as hell. Not from pee though. I splashed water on my legs and scrubbed them with a paper towel. Sure, I got funny looks from people in class, and I heard a few references to my losing battle with the Urinator, but at least my legs weren't sticky like a dried Popsicle. Perhaps that's a bad analogy. At least they weren't sticky like dried urine stuck to my legs.
Disgusting, I know, but think about this: What if I had worn pants? How many times have I worn pants and not known about Flushee's evil scheme? How many others are pawns in this sick game of contamination? Is it a game to you Flushee? Is it? Because it's real to us. So real.
I pee in toilets now, and will continue to do so until the situation has been resolved. I recommend you do the same. If you are female, you are already way ahead. (what else is new?).
And if you are ever in UCLA's Royce Hall, and you see a guy exit the men's room wearing long pants and a smile, note: Keep your distance. This man is tainted, courtesy of Flushee Inc
-KV