{"id":148,"date":"2005-06-23T20:05:19","date_gmt":"2005-06-24T04:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=148"},"modified":"2008-06-22T11:19:27","modified_gmt":"2008-06-22T18:19:27","slug":"a-walking-tour-of-urinals-of-the-puget-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=148","title":{"rendered":"A Walking Tour Of Urinals Of The Puget Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

In reality, this report focuses on only a single urinal in the Puget Sound area, but I thought the above title had more, you should pardon the term, pizzazz. This may become its very own category, if I get together enough entries of this sort. Let’s all hope that never happens.<\/p>\n

I was in my local CompUSA<\/a> this morning, picking up a copy of Norton Ghost, when I felt the little twinge that lets you know that you are in need of a restroom\u2014when Nature calls, you gotta accept the charges. I knew they kept their WCs in the back of the store near the Mac section, so I made my way back there.<\/p>\n

The first indication that things would not go completely as planned came when I noticed that the restrooms were located in the “training” section, and that the only access to them was guarded by a young woman behind a desk, there to sign me up for lessons on how to master that wiliest of foes, the personal computer. She looked up expectantly as I neared her desk, and it was with only a slight sense of mortification that I pointed toward the john and said, “just here to use the restroom.” She gave me one of those “too much information” looks (look, Lady, I would have been perfectly happy to slink by without uttering a word or glancing in your direction, but that seemed rude to me; Lord knows, I<\/em> had no urge to announce my eliminatory proceedings to some stranger behind a desk) and waved me through.<\/p>\n

Once I got there, I found the men’s bathroom to be clean and well-maintained, which is about what you’d expect in a corporate powerhouse retail chain like this. Upon locating the urinal, however, I was frankly struck dumb. I wish I’d had a camera on me. The thing looked like a dollhouse appliance. It was perhaps half to two-thirds the height of a regulation urinal, and stood only about shin-high to me. I glanced about. thinking perhaps that I had stumbled across the children’s urinal by mistake; but no, this and a single toilet stall were the only facilities in the facility. I began to wonder if I were looking at the first wheelchair-accessible urinal I have ever encountered.<\/p>\n

Once I had determined that this was indeed the only fixture of its type in the room, I shrugged and proceeded with my business. In addition to being pygmish in stature and placement, the thing turned out to be poorly engineered. A properly constructed urinal has two prominent design elements: a preponderance of gently sloping vertical surfaces that catch and guide the stream of ejecta to the target (the drain), and a lack of sharply-angled corners and crevices, to ease cleaning and prevent splashback. This particular pissoir was effectively the antithesis of these qualities: shallow, diagonal walls and acute angles. About the only thing that would have made it worse would be if the receptacle were actually convex.<\/p>\n

To top it off, the acceleration from point of exit to the lower-than-ideal target zone was enough to result in a dangerous rate of speed at impact, wholly unsuitable for successful containment of a liquid projectile. I stood there, a victim of my biological needs, trying to ignore the micrscopic patter of millions of tiny aerosolized droplets striking my bare legs. I don’t think it’s too much to ask of a urinal that it not place you in a sort of Nietzchian vignette, where when you piss into the urinal, the urinal also pisses onto you.<\/p>\n

In conclusion: CompUSA may be a great place to empty your wallet, but unless under duress, I would not recommend it as a place to empty your bladder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In reality, this report focuses on only a single urinal in the Puget Sound area, but I thought the above title had more, you should pardon the term, pizzazz. This may become its very own category, if I get together enough entries of this sort. Let’s all hope that never happens. I was in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roominations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}