You're not telling time. Time's telling you!

I've been in the same stall for longer than I can remember. When I get out, I'll resume posting.

Update (12/29/08): That headline was subsequently updated by the aforementioned Edward to "you're not killing time, time's killing you," which is a better line, for which of said friend "Edward" I am envious.

Colossus! Lochness. Facer.

Via beverage enthusiast and Kiwi photoblogger Ed Wozniak:

Apparently this excellent picture was taken in one of the many Greco-Scottish bars that populate the Boston area. Ed has provided few details, and is only able to communicate via yes-or-no button, so my professional interpretation of this message is mostly conjecture drawn from my extensive history of stall study.

The first element that intrigues me is "Dead Arm" in the top left corner. If that were truly the case, then with what was the author writing? The script is quite stylized, suggesting a level of marker control beyond the ability of the mouth or anus, so I can only deduce that the man with the dead arm employed a second gentleman to create his plaintive message (and probably help him with wiping).

The main attraction here, though, is, of course, "Colossus! Lochness. Facer." This cryptic inscription contains multitudes. Colossus is both a wonder of the ancient world and a character from the X-Men. Lochness may refer to the Scottish lake ("Loch Ness," or "Lake Noose") rumored to harbor a cartoon dinosaur (named Barney), but it's more likely that, in this case, it's being used as an adjective describing a person or object's level of similarity to a generic Scottish lake. Facer is a Navajo code word that translates to "the previous two words are obviously related in a way that totally makes sense but doesn't need to be explicitly explained."

So thank you, Mr. Wozniak, for providing such a compelling picture on which to train my expert stallographic eye. This experience has been so invigorating that it is therefore, with an open mind and a heavy heart, that I welcome and encourage other amateur stall-0-nauts to submit photos for collaborative interpretation. You tell me what you think is going on in the message, and I'll tell you why you're wrong. Welcome to academia!

Churchill

To paraphrase the great American war hero Winston Churchill, reports of the death of this blog have been greatly exaggerated, but you'll still be ugly tomorrow. Also, I'm drunk.

I've been unable to provide consistent posting due to several factors:

1. I'm exceptionally lazy.
2. I've been staying with a Luddite friend who prohibits the use of electronic equipment in his makeshift hovel.
3. When I use the intertubes at Starbucks, by the time I'm halfway through my iced coffee (my all-time least favorite drink (which I now drink several times a day)), I'm too jittery and argumentative to type correctly or not be escorted out of the building.
4. I lost both typing hands in two separate but consecutive hand-shaking accidents (apparently not as uncommon as the Bureau of Statistics would have you believe!).

Problems 2-4 will be rectified within the next few days, as I have secured inexpensive prosthetics as well a domicile in the flats of East Hollywood, and will soon hole myself up hermitlike to pen angry screeds from my darkened bungalow. If you can hang on until then, I promise to continue the travelogue to its logical completion in a porta-potty in the Hollywood Hills.

Comments

I just wanted to point out that leaving a comment on this blog does not automatically infect you with SARS, as recent urban legends seem to suggest. If you leave a signed comment, you're automatically entered in the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes, and if you leave an anonymous comment, you will be exposed to nothing more infectious than chlamydia, which, as you surely know, is often treatable.

Update 9:35 PM - I just realized that anonymous comments weren't actually enabled (until now), making the above plea for attention all the more pathetic.

Glory

I am aware that this is not a picture of a message, but I found it potentially interesting enough to post nonetheless. Feel free to disagree. Despite my confusion in Kentucky, I actually have no personal experience with the phenomenon of the so-called "glory hole," but my pseudoarchaeological education leads me to believe that I may have encountered the remains of one in this stall at mile 111 of Interstate 44 in Missouri. It is clear that a roundish hole in the wall has been patched with some sort of whitish putty (or some other organic or inorganic substance). This hole, in its heyday, could have served many purposes. It was most likely created by a fellow pseudoanthropologist to secretly observe the stall habits of the human male. Another possibility is that it functioned as a release valve if the stall was to fill with liquid beyond a designated level, like in a bathtub. A third option is the likelihood that men who suspected they suffered from STDs could be examined through the hole by a licensed medical professional in true anonymity, much like a Catholic confessional (minus all the tawdry sex).

Whether it was one or a combination of these functions that this mysterious hole provided during its era of operation we can only guess. But I hope my exploration of these possibilities has proven enlightening in some manner.

Now please excuse me, as I have to go stick my cock through a hole in a wall to get sucked off by some random dude.

Tease

New post in the morning. I shall now rest my weary head and dream of men, toilets, and the glorious intersection of the twain.

Jesus is Lord of Aid Fuckers

"Jesus" presumably refers to the fictional antihero of the 1977 British miniseries entitled Jesus of Nazareth, shown on American television every year around the time of Passover. The "Deleted Scenes" section of the DVD release indicates that the "Aid Fuckers" reference comes from a riveting segment of the Sermon on the Mount as originally performed by Robert Powell (as "Jesus") that director Franco Zeffirelli inexplicably left on the cutting-room floor. Therefore I think it's reasonable to assume that a savvy cinephile scratched this message in protest against what he felt were Zeffirelli's timid editing decisions. If these stirring words, written in the stall of a men's room at mile 111 of Interstate 44 in Missouri, do not fall on deaf eyes, perhaps a future "Director's Cut" will provide Powell's performance of the full Sermon as originally written by Zeffirelli collaborator and A Clockwork Orange author Anthony Burgess.