Mr. Complainy Pants

I hate urinals. I love the IDEA of urinals but in practice I cannot stand them. The reason? Most guys don't use them correctly and end up splashing all over the goddamn place, so in order to use the thing I have to stand in someone else's piss. It seems to me that this can't just be due to dudes being revolting (ok, maybe it's 90% due to that factor) but perhaps it's a design flaw with the urinal itself. The ones here at work are of a design that seems to favor piss spray. I have abandoned them altogether have and started using the toilets instead (lifting the seat with my foot of course...I'm not an animal).

I don't know what the solution to this vexing problem (that's right: VEXING) might be. Is it a complete redesign of the urinal? Fuck yea it is! Check it:

Look at this thing! Do I pee in it or ask it to marry me? I guess the idea is that if you can increase the surface area the principles of fluid dynamics will ... oh fuck it. It looks like a giant ladies, uh...area! Wheeeeeee! This is leaps and bounds beyond the urinals I am used to and light years past the dreaded piss-trough that you can still find at some of the shittier sporting venues around the country (another reason to shun sports IMHO). Look people: we need new urinals. Get on it. I'm tired of standing in your dirty dirty pee leftovers.

I don't even want to get into the whole flushing issue. Why are people not flushing? There are those waterless/flushless units (hee. units) that look good on paper but in practice just end up smelling like a subway station. They had those installed at my last office and while I understand the environmental concern of having all that water dedicated to just rinsing a load of someone's pee down the drain, but at least the pee wasn't allowed to just hang out in the thing and dry up. God, I'm gonna retch just thinking about it. The next best thing would be the motion sensor flushing ones, but until those are improved so that they don't flush while you're using the damn thing, then I'm going to have to dismiss the technology.

I dunno what the answer is but basically, guys are gross and therefore so are our bathrooms.

I Don't Care About My Birthday

I turned 39 recently and while that's not a terrible thing it certainly isn't something that I think needs to be celebrated either. I think that 39 is just a boring number and I'd much rather have a big to-do for my 40th next year. As I sit here teetering on the edge of my 40's I am just amazed at how many people were surprised when they asked me what I did for my birthday and my response was "Nothing". Actually that's not entirely true. I shovelled. And I actually paid two teenage hooligans to shovel for me. They did a kick-ass job (as if I had raised them myself) and only wanted $10 to do the work. I gave them $20 cuz I'm a frickin' philanthropist. But honestly, to paraphrase Patton Oswalt, it is ridiculous to give a shit about this birthday. I just wish the people I work with had gotten this message.

See, I've actually created my own monster. There was this dude Andy that worked here and he made the mistake of telling me that he ABSOLUTELY did not want anyone to know about his birthday. But I found out what day it was and since I'm a dickhead I planned a whole thing designed to embarrass and irritate him. It worked wonderfully. However I hadn't thought that maybe he'd get his own revenge when my birthday rolled around. Oh crap. It was awful and even more elaborate and embarrassing. Then Andy got a job somewhere else so I figured the bullshit with the birthdays would leave with him. Nope. Now, today is January what? 14th? My birthday was 3 frickin' days ago and on a Sunday to boot. When I came in on Monday I was confronted with this spectacle:

(forgive the shitty quality but all I had was my cell phone)

That's Sad Sam sitting on my keyboard

Funny enough right? I mean I had to do some manuevering to actually get INTO my cube and it certainly looked like it took them a lot of time to fuck up decorate my cube. So fair enough, you got me. Let's leave it at that ok? Nope. Cue all the nozzles who came by during the day to first gawk at the mess decorations then ask me if it was my birthday. Did you know that sarcasm is lost on most people? Well, it totally is.

But I endured this and slowly removed most of the stuff by the end of Monday. Yesterday my head felt like it was trying to birth Mothra so I stayed home. Today being now several days AFTER my birthday I figured it was over and we could all move on. Nope. The peeps in my group tricked me into a surprise cake thing. I hesitate to call it a party because I generally associate parties with things that are fun and not awkward and ill advised. Luckily the cake was awesome (hooray Lyndell's!!). Look, I don't want to sound like a grumpy old grouch but fucking hell people THAT'S WHAT I AM! So blah blah blah it was a nice gesture and I appreciate it but please cut it out. Seriously.