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.

Silver Lake

I've safely arrived at my destination, and I am tired, but I still have more than half a country's worth of stalls about which to write (the unit to measure stall amounts is called the "country"). I will begin to finish this thankless task in the morning. There are no jokes is apparently one joke in this post.

More Thoughts on Cat Condoms

Another possibility demanding the urgency of condom use among cats is an outbreak of feline immunodeficiency virus, known best by its technical name, Kitty Cat AIDS. While sexual activity is one vector of transmission, the virus can also be spread through scratches, bite wounds, and snuggling. Such casual transmission would, of course, require the condom to cover not only the cat's genitals, but, in fact, the entire cat. While the enormous condoms that I personally require (but do not use, since pregnancy prevention is a woman's concern, and acquiring a fatal sexual disease could never happen to me) could easily fit a cat (and often do), not all men have been endowed with a cat-sized (and shaped) penis, so some men may need to purchase a different condom to protect their pussy. Cats native to Southern Indiana must be rather small because the condoms specifically indicated for cat use were advertised for their "Slimmer Fit."

Housekeeping III - Picture Cropping

This damned electric printing press is cropping the right sides of my pictures against my will. While several posts ago I bravely mustered a laissez-faire attitude towards the random formatting, shrugging it off as God's will, I naggingly worry that if I do not stop this atrocity in its tracks, before long it will be cropping my family. Thus, going forward, I will be attempting to correct it through such tried and true techniques as HTML troubleshooting, opium eating, and self-mutilation. Please bear with me through this difficult time.

Feline Prophylactics

If you look closely at this out-of-focus and unpostworthy photograph (which would indict me as a failure and a hack had that not already been made voluminously clear), you'll see that some thoughtful gentleman went to the trouble of blacking out several letters on the second and third Hygeia condom labels, altering the content of the message. The result: "1 Premium Cat Condom." Southern Indiana must be suffering quite the epic bout of feline promiscuity if men are depositing three quarters at a time to buy condoms for their cats. I did, however, notice a plethora of roadside billboards advertising vasectomy reversals, so perhaps neutered cats, having achieved financial independence through their unprecedented success in the theater, are taking advantage of those services. I should mention that I did not see a single cat during my visit to the Sunoco at exit 29 of Interstate 64 (where this picture was taken), but if I had, I would have demanded he use protection.

Kentucky Looks Outward

An industrious fellow named Howard Johnson built a two-story hotel on Route 66 in Flagstaff, Arizona, and I write to you from within it (room 205, to be exact). Several days ago (I have fallen tragically behind on the delivery of my findings), I drove through Kentucky, where all the grass is blue and the horses all play basketball. Considering the great variety and nonsensicality of the local culture, I was surprised to find such a worldly potpourri of issues discussed on the walls of the men's room stall at the rest stop at mile 63 of Interstate 70.

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This is quite possibly a remnant from the Revolutionary War, when anger at the Crown reached its zenith and impudent Colonial scribes penned fiery pamphlets bemoaning the immense suckitude of the United Kingdom of Britain.

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An ancient and sacred symbol dating from the Neolithic period, this particular image, called a swastika, denotes good luck. Mischievously appropriated for a short time by a pesky band of ne'er-do-wells, it has apparently reclaimed its rightful place as an emblem of peace and magnanimity in many parts of the rural American South.

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Not often do I receive the great honor of following an honest-to-Goodness celebrity into the stall, but such was clearly the case in Kentucky! As you can see from the above picture, I was obviously preceded by none other than Democratic presidential candidate and black separatist Muslim Barack Hussein Obama! Truly, hope springs eternal in the human bowel.

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Drunk with excitement from the Obama near-miss (and eager to report my findings to the Department of Homeland Security), I was in the process of leaving the stall when my good eye caught a familiar sight scrawled faintly into the pale yellow paint. Could it be? Yes! The initials of my most elusive quarry, KKK himself! What a rich yield had this stall provided me! I should have known when I saw the swastika that luck was on my side, and KKK would not be far behind, or ahead, as the case may have been. And as goes KKK, so go I. Onward!

Brief Update from Albuquerque

I write you from a Starbucks in Albuquerque, New Mexico, daintily sipping an iced coffee, which, I must admit, tastes terrible, and I loathe myself for drinking it. The mo-tel in which I slept last night (room 111, Americana Motel, Tucumcari, NM) had not yet been connected via a series of tubes to any of the Internets, thus I was unable to continue my blogtastic journey into the heart of the American stallmonger. I have, however, continued to accumulate stunning photographic evidence, and I pledge to share it with you this coming eve. Take heart, pitiable cyberdenizens, for your bottomless appetites for trivial pseudo-anthropology shall soon be temporarily satiated once again.

Housekeeping II - Format Wars

My technical ineptitude is not limited to photography. As you can see from this web-log, formatting problems abound. Line spacing rejiggers itself willy-nilly. Pictures are reframed and occasionally embiggened or consmallered. As I have neither the time nor the inclination nor the wherewithal nor the interest nor the humility to delve into the weeds and figure out why these published blog posts don't match their previews, let's assume for the sake of expediency that it is all happening this way for a Reason, and that this format is the best of all possible formats. I should no more concern myself with my line spacing than a leopard should concern himself with my spots. Internets, I submit myself to thee.

Fuck You, Ace Was Here

Well, I never! Interstate 68, exit 23, West Virginia. A BP gas station with a Go-Mart attached. A Hygeia condom machine. I entered the bathroom to do God's business and, my dear, was I in for a rude awakening! Apparently Ace had been there before me, and had left me a message, and what a message it was! My indignancy knew no bounds, peeved as I was at his insouciance. But, hey, that's Ace, he just doesn't give a fuck.

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Not only do these condoms glow in the dark, they do so "literally." Whether you're actually fucking a book, or just reading a book by the light of your penis, you can't beat Hygeia for prevention of disease and pregnancy. At least not in West Virginia.

Housekeeping

With all the media attention this blog has been receiving, I'd like to clear a few things up that I neglected to mention in my original post. As a rule, I am not "searching" for messages, I am "finding" them.

Therefore:

1. This is not an exhaustive survey of every men's room stall in America.
2. I only stop at a rest area when my body indicates through certain familiar sensations that it is necessary or wise to do so.
3. If I find myself at a filling station or restaurant, and use the bathroom, I will of course examine the stall if I find myself consciously within one.
4. I do not presume to change existing messages or add my own (I will leave that to the experts).
5. In writing the accompanying text, I am, of course, as any great writer would, attempting to use every word in the English language, and to use each particular word only once. This has unfortunately been less successful than I had expected for reasons I can only begin to successfully contemplate, unfortunately. As no less a wordsmith than William Shakespeare put forward, "Redundancy is a rapscallion's knave, verily! Forsooth."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Literally. Which leads me to the next post...

Clean Sheets

I resume my travelogue from a king-size bed in room 210 of the Ozark Inn in Springfield, Missouri. This entry takes us back to a state-run rest area just west of Frederick, Maryland, on Interstate 70, a highway known for its unique ability to allow a driver to travel from near Baltimore to points west of Baltimore.

This particular stall, as a medium, suffers from its construction (surely intended to thwart messaging), consisting of a flat and shiny metal on which it is very difficult for a man to inscribe his initials (and for a novice photographer to capture such an image). But as you can see from the picture above, a hardy traveler named "KKK" managed it. I enhanced the image as best I could, and strangely the result resembles what looks to be a ghostly white sheet. Mysterious indeed. I would like nothing more than to discover the identity of this "KKK" fellow (perhaps it is Kevin from the Maryland House?) and hope beyond hope that my journey will eventually allow me to cross paths with this "KKK" and engage in a spirited and rousing conversation between like-minded gentlemen.

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"Beware of Homos"
(this message proved too elusive to successfully photograph but too poignant to ignore)

Feared and reviled throughout history, jumping from boxcar to boxcar with his bindle in hand, the free-spirited homo is unwelcome in the stalls of the American men's room and must continue to wander the land in search of a warm meal and a place to lay his weary head.

Update from Below

Grim and trenchant apologies, devoted audience, for my absence. Upon reaching Kentucky I promptly fell down one of its fabled glory holes, resurfacing only now to pen this quick note as a holdover. I am still several stalls behind, but will catch up tomorrow with multiple posts bulging with massive pictorial evidence of the quick wit and strange obsessions of the Appalachian mind.

Harford County, Maryland

Maryland is an apartheid state with a crab majority ruled by a human minority. This contradiction produces the Maryland House, which is a rest area that rests (get it? this will not be the only pun) at mile 82 of Interstate 95, easily one of the largest and most picturesque roads in the East, if not the nation. There are mile markers at every tenth of a mile, for instance, keeping a high level of interest and whimsy in driver and passengers alike. The Maryland House serves both northbound and southbound drivers, so there are frequent duels officiated by crabs in which the winner receives, you guessed it, a free slice at Sbarro. Other restaurants include a Burger King and a confectionary known for its crab cream cones.

Unfortunately, as we'll probably see many times this trip, the men's room stalls in the Maryland House are crafted by Puritans of a material intended to discourage messaging, rendering a meager yield of worthy specimens (although this is clearly not the case for the toilets). Hardy travelers are not deterred, though; they use their God-given claws to scratch out cryptic messages, such as:

Who was this "Kevin?" When was he here? More importantly, why? What transcendent muse inspires a man to enter a stall in a public restroom? As he refused to submit to an interview, I guess we'll never know. But nevertheless he obviously felt compelled to leave his mark for future travelers to know the glory that is Kevin. Godspeed.

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This is code which I could not penetrate. Fascinating nonetheless. Did it reach its intended target? You be the judge.

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While it is difficult to make out, having been scratched over by those that did not share the author's bold and timely views, this message reads "Nazis Suck." A poignant statement indeed, and one can only imagine how things may have turned out differently if this artist was transported to the late Weimar Republic to spread his elegant and defiant slogan.

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And, finally, a statement so pure, so direct in its implication and intent, that I shall allow it to speak for itself. I had difficulty capturing its true beauty, but its power is unarguably undiminished. If only I could have met the artist whose imaginative mind created this masterpiece!

Next: I-70!

Mission Statement

As I journey across these United States, I shall endeavour to capture some of the deliciously pithy scribblings that adorn the partitioned walls of men's toilet stalls. From Maryland to California, I will be presenting photographic evidence of the primacy of the communicative desire among the male of the species homo sapiens. These men clearly have something to say, and what better place to make a statement than the inside of a metal door in a malodorous box containing a receptacle temporarily yet repeatedly filled with human excrement!

Topics discussed in these missives include politics, race, and sexuality in all its various guises. Some take the form of artistic renderings that seem to exist solely for the pleasure of the viewer and, naturally, the expression of the artist. Others include contact information and instructions, presumably in the hopes of finding a like-minded friend to meet up for an invigorating chat over a cup of chamomile tea. While issues will likely vary by locale and the interests of the residents and travelers therein, I suspect that many themes will prove universal.

I should note that I am not a professional photographer, and the stealthy nature of this mission requires much discretion and haste, resulting in less-than-perfect conditions for setting up shots. In addition, not all surfaces are particularly photogenic, and my meager skills may not being able to compensate to a satisfactory degree. Further complicating matters, some Philistines are continually removing this folk art for reasons I will not venture to guess but are presumably related to sexual inadequacy. I will, however, attempt to provide some context, and capture to the best of my ability the messages conveyed in this most ancient manner, which can only be compared to cave painting or medieval illumination. Without further ado.....To the stalls!