Archive for the ‘Lists’ Category
Top 8 Urinal Etiquette Tips
April 25, 2013 | Lists
Urinals exist because pub owners were fed up having perfectly good ceramic ruined by drunk guys who couldn’t wait for a stall. In theory, they could be convenient for the vast majority of men who pee standing up – we’re not here to judge those who do so sitting down or after having thrown a roll of plastic over a motel room floor. But in practice it is far preferable to wait for a stall than to stand in front of the porcelain and be subject to the numerous breaches of civilized conduct taking place at nearby stations.
Here in an extension of our earlier guide to Bathroom Etiquette, we offer our male readers – and any female dexterous and bold enough to give it a go – 8 tips to ensure civilized conduct the next time you see a man about a horse (and by that we mean excuse yourself to urinate in a public washroom):
1. It goes without saying that conversation is verboten in this environment even if one utterance from you over your mobile phone could save the lives of thousands.
1b. Whistling is acceptable so long as you keep it at a lower register and don’t modulate to anything too grandiose.
2. Elbow depress the lever. Even industrial strength Purell would be no match for whatever strain of globe-annihilating super flu resides on its handles.
3. Flush that handle as if you’re dynamiting an enemy base — full way down with an eye peeled to ensure it all goes down. Nobody wants two nostrils full of your asparagus lunch.
4. Aim for the middle cake. Much like an eye patch cures lazy eye, you can train your urethra for future snow John Hancocks.
5. The most absurd configuration in the history of pub/restaurant bathroom design is the combined toilet and urinal in the same room with no dividers. Protest against this aberration by using each facility in a manner typically associated with the other.
6. If there’s splash-back, treat the sink like a baptismal pool and explain away the wetness being too close to the road when a car went by (hint, this is much more effective if it’s rained in the past 12 hours).
7. Anyone who’ll eat a urinal cake on a bet for less than what it would cost to buy mid-sized sedan should be electronically tagged and set loose in the wilderness.
8. If you enter a bathroom in which another urinal is in use, pick your spot as strategically far away from the person using it as possible. To judge if you have left enough space, imagine whether you would be able to hit the individual if you decided to stop and turn midstream. If so, move further away.
Terrible Police Sketches
March 28, 2013 | Lists
One of the unsung perks of committing a felony in front of a witness is that you don’t have to shell out 10 bucks to have some guy who dropped out of art school sketch your likeness. The police will do it for free.
But as our friends over at List of the Day show the quality of police sketches can vary. First they depend on the reliability of witnesses’ memories. How reliable would your memory be after going through a traumatic event, such as an armed robbery at a bank or being flashed by someone who has let themselves go when it comes to personal fitness. (And in the latter case do the sketches get a bit more graphic?)
While some sketches may bear enough of a resemblance to the perpetrator to get Starbucks attendees to look twice at the guy with the false mustache sliding off and an “I Can’t Believe I Got Away With It” t-shirt, many are not much help. This one, for example, urges the public to be on the lookout for a guy who may or may not be represented by his 300 pound Samoan attorney once he’s apprehended.
Indeed these sketches show that after going through the trauma — or vicarious thrill if we’re talking about a misanthropic bastard — many people automatically think of someone in pop culture. For example, if we were witness to a liquor store heist, we probably would be more focused on what wine was best when paired with a weekend intended to focus on heavy alcohol consumption than whether the wild-eyed maniac waving around a gun had a mole on his neck or an overbite. As such the subsequent police sketch would likely show two perps who resemble Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis from Natural Born Killers regardless of the sex of the perpetrators or even whether there were actually two of them.
Here’ are some more Hilariously Bad Police Sketches.
