Month: May 2004

[ via Metafilter ] Here’s something that ought to spark a lot of heated debate — a chart titled Average IQ by state and how they voted. The chart’s makers claim that the average state IQ was taken from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations. I don’t have access to the book, so I have no idea how they came to derive that data.

Any good statistician (or a half-decent math guy such as myself) will

tell you that the correlation between the average IQ and the electoral

result is loose, and any good political humorist (or a half-decent wag

such as myself) will say that the connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda

is much, much looser, but that was good enough to mobilize, no?

The average IQ in Mississippi can’t be that low, can it?

(If you must know: I was unconvinced of the worthiness of an attack on

Iraq based on the speciousness of the WMD and 9/11 arguments, but now

that the forces are there, I think that backing out is a bad idea. I

think it would have been better by far to devote more attention to

Afghanistan and Pakistan. You could sell me on a joint

military/economic attack on Saudi Arabia — rat-bastard central, where

the funding for radicalized Islam happens — with reasonable ease.)

What started as a “Hey, I need a break. I wonder what funny stories are on Fark today?” moment has turned into a descent into porcelain madness.

Perhaps it’s the recent adventure in plumbing I had or the girlfriend’s occasional bouts of gastric distress (The Redhead and I have a favourite catchphrase: “Toilet time is private time!”), but lately toilets have been a recurring theme in my life.

Fark points to an Associated Press story on Singapore’s initiative to make sure that you always know the answer to Steve Buscemi’s question in Reservoir Dogs: “Where’s the commode in this dungeon? I gotta take a squirt”…

It may seem like yet another symptom of Singapore’s obsession with the

control over the minutae of life; after all, they cracked down on

gum-chewing and spitting as a measure to keep city streets clean.

However, anyone who’s had to use a public restroom in China and Hong

Kong knows how difficult they are to find — the Chinese take “toilet

shame” to a Woody Allen-esque degrees of neurosis. Once you find them,

you wish you hadn’t. Imagine “the worst bathroom in Scotland” from the

movie Trainspotting, and you’ve got a good picture of what many toilet stalls there are like.

(That’s one thing I have to say in favour of McDonald’s restaurants and

globalization: their worldwide presence, coupled with their

three-ring-binder of procedure, has raised public toilet standards worldwide.)

I was intrigued by the fact that there were not one, but two

restroom-related organizations in Singapore. “Restroom Association of

Singapore”? And even better, the “World Toilet Organization”, whose

initials must annoy the hell out of the better-known WTO.

I did a little Googling, and it turned out that the World Toilet

Organization not only has a web site, but this “toilet seat from the

future” logo:

Even better, they’re having a summit in November! No word of a lie, here’s the promo blurb from their site:

Yes, the emphasis on the phrase “movers and shakers” is mine, but they did

use that phrase without any trace of irony, and put in all caps. I’m

still wondering what sort of person becomes a KEY DECISION MAKER or a

KEY OFFICIAL for toilets, and what kind of qualifications one needs.

CNN covered the 2001 summit, and the World Toilet Organization has a review, as well as photos from the 2003 summit.

The World Toilet Organization has toilet campaign posters which you can download.

If you want the high-resolution files from which you can generate

poster-size prints, be advised that they’re charging the ridiculous

price of US$50 for them.

The fun doesn’t stop there: the World Toilet Organization commissioned an anthem. In keeping with Chinese Toilet Shame, it’s titled The Secret Garden, and you can download a .zip archive containing an MP3 recording and some explanatory notes.

It’s rather unlike an anthem, as it’s a lounge-y number done in jazz

waltz time and sung by a chorus. Imagine a Sergio Mendez/Brazil ’66

cover band waxing poetic about the commode.

Here’s the full text of the notes that came with the song:

Believe you me, it’s not my heart that runs free when I’m on the crapper. And don’t even get me started on the “deep down burning / forever yearning” couplet.

It’s all like a highway accident — I want to look away, but I can’t!