The endurance of nicturation (peein’ lots)

Went with the Wife to see This is 40 last weekend (great movie, by the way), but on the way out, I noticed something.

I pee a lot.

I don’t mean I urinate frequently. Though that does happen when I have a couple of cups of coffee. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Seriously, what coffee does to me isn’t fun. If you’re busting to find out how I turn into Michael friggin’ Flatley’s Lord of the Pee Pee Dance, click here. But I’m not talking about that.

And I’m not talking about stagefright. Stagefright, for those not in the know, is the inability to pee when someone else is in the room, like what happens when you’re in a public washroom.

I’m also not talking about stepping up to a toilet, then waiting several minutes to get in the flow. I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem.

No, I’m talking about the actual act of urination. For some reason, it seems to go on for quite a while.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ah, but Tobin, you said at the beginning that you’d gone to a movie theatre and that’s where you noticed you pee a lot. You likely ordered a Coke in what they laughing call “regular” size but could be fitted with a diving board and comfortably accommodate six.

Nope. Not the case. Had a very small drink, about the size of a kid’s sippy cup.

But still, when the movie finished and I hit the facilities, something happened that I’ve become increasingly aware of lately.

I went up my urinal of choice, always choosing one with a at least one empty one between me and the next dude. In this case, the row was empty, so I take the end one. That’s just courtesy and allows for comfortable breathing room. I hate those guys that come into a room with three urinals and take the middle one. Not cool, man. That means the next guy through the door either has to stand right beside you or choose the stall and make you wonder whether he suffers from stagefright (see above).

While I’m on the topic, can someone explain to me why a significant percentage of males have to get up there, unzip, whip it out, then, prior to letting fly, they have to lean forward a bit and spit straight down into the urinal first? Why do guys do that? Do women do that?

Anyway, I chose the end one, initiated nicturation and noticed someone else come up and grab a urinal. He stepped up after me, did what he needed to do. Then another guy came in, saw there was only one open urinal, made for the stall. Meanwhile, the first one zipped and left (without washing his hands, I might add…just gross…I know where your hand was last). I’m still peeing. Then the stall guy finishes, flushes and washes his hands and leaves.

I’m still peeing.

At this point, several things go through my head…

1. Are the other guys thinking that I’m standing there with stagefright?  Cuz I’m not.
2. Are the other guys thinking it’s a little weird that the dude on the end seems inordinately attached to his urinal? Cuz I’m not.
3. Is the guy on the end doing something other than peeing in that urinal? Cuz I’m not.
4. Do they think I’m recreating that Tom Hanks scene from A League of Their Own? Cuz I’m not.

And this event that I outlined above…this isn’t the first time this has happened. It kind of happens every damn time I’m in a public washroom. It probably would at home too if someone else were competing with me.

So, now I start to wonder…

1. Am I holding it too long? But I know I’m not.
2. Is the opening or piping extra small, meaning the same volume takes longer to travel the distance? Doesn’t seem to be, from what I can tell.
3. Is my bladder exceptionally large bladder? Looking it up, it seems the average bladder can hold about 700ml (about the size of a Tim Horton’s extra large coffee) to one full litre of fluid, but the average human usually gets the urge when it’s sitting around 150 – 200 ml full, or about half a regular can of pop. There’s times I wonder if I somehow got an extra stretchy bladder, or it got inadvertently super-sized at birth.

All I know is, I have a lot of time to think about it while I’m standing there at that damn urinal.

And, pardon the pun, it kind of pisses me off.

That video is not me, by the way…

A Thursday Collection of Random Thoughts

Mark Zuckerberg Kills What He Eats

Huh.  So the guy that created the biggest timewaster of the 21st Century has challenged himself to only eat what he kills himself.

Apparently his previous challenges were (two years ago) to wear a tie every day, and; (last year) to learn Mandarin.  No word on how either of those worked out for him.  So this year, after having a thought-provoking pig roast last year where some friends admitted to loving “eating port, [but] they really didn’t want to think about the fact that the pig used to be alive” he decided that sounded irresponsible.  So he decided to take responsibility and be thankful for what he eats.

Okay, on paper, that’s great, I guess.  Actually, I’m fairly ambivalent toward it.   Really don’t think I’d enjoy killing an animal to eat it, but if I needed to, sure, I would.  And apparently so will Zuckerberg.  Earlier in May, he tweeted, “I just killed a pig and a goat.”  He cut the goat’s throat with a knife, “the most kind way to do it,” according to Chef Jesse Cool (no, I’m not making that name up).

So, lovely, he offed to animals.  My question is, is he responsible enough, or thankful enough to wade in and gut and skin and bleed and dismember those animals?  Yeah, I doubt it too.

Still, it’s good to challenge yourself, I guess.  And when you have more money than virtually anyone on the planet, I guess you can be a little silly.

I just hope he doesn’t hit a raccoon while driving.  I wouldn’t want to eat that.  Maybe he can invite some of his irresponsible thankless friends over for a raccoon roast.  Nope, there ain’t a “Like” button on that one!

Canada’s Spectrum Auction

Sigh.

Here we go again.  As Canadians use more cell phones and cell phones have more and more data streaming into and out of them, the need for more spectrum becomes a necessity.  The last one was in 2008.  That’s the one that held back the Big 3 (Bell, TELUS, Rogers) so the little guys like Wind, Mobilicity, Public Mobile, Videotron, and Shaw could come in and get some bandwidth first.  Since then, Shaw hasn’t been able to get their act together to get any phones out there.  Wind basically flew in the face of the rules about ownership and somehow managed to get going.  Okay, lovely, more competition.

Canadians rejoice and all that.

Now, the next auction is coming up in 2012.  And all those little guys are still yelling to get first kick at bellying up to the trough.  They need more, they say.  The Big 3 are hogging it all, they say.  If you don’t like the landscape, don’t get into the business, I say.  Don’t go crying to Dad to change the rules.

One exec at Wind is quoted as saying caps and limits “are perfectly reasonable options for consumers.”  Yeah, until Wind gets a million or two subscribers, then needs to build up or build out its network and stop crawling on the backs of those nasty Big 3 that have spent decades and billions of dollars on network footprints so you can come in and get it at a bargain price because the government says so.  Let’s see what happens when you get big and some other incumbent comes along wanting special treatment.

And while we’re at it, I’m sorry, I have to say this.  Canadians are always quoting that we have the highest cell phone rates in the world.  So, do me a favour.  Pull up a map of Canada that shows population.  Now do that for the U.S.  Now do that for Europe.  Now back to Canada.  Now back to Europe.  Now back to Canada.  Sadly, Canada isn’t Europe where you have small countries that would easily fit into one of our provinces with room for a jacuzzi and in ground pool.  We have a lot of freaking land to cover!  And that means building out a ton of network.  It’s not cheap.  It’s not easy.

So, please.  Stop whining.  If you don’t like it, use Skype, or your home phone, or Zuckerbutcher’s Facebook or something.  Jeez.

Stephen King & Mick Garris

Mick Garris is about to butcher film another Stephen King novel, BAG OF BONES.

My question is, who keeps throwing money at this loser to destroy one good King story after another?  Let’s look at his non-King work.  Critters 2.  It stank.  The Fly II.  It stank.  Hocus Pocus.  Please!  Psycho IV: The Beginning.  Really?

Then there’s Stephen King’s stuff.  Okay, Garris is not the first, nor will he be the last to bugger up a good King story.  Hell, King did it himself with Maximum Overdrive.  But at least we got a great AC/DC song out of it.

But Garris just seems to keep coming back to King stuff.  It’s like he can’t quite screw it up bad enough that someone finally says enough.  So, instead, we’ve suffered through Sleepwalkers, The Stand (this was a TV mini-series and, though still bad, was at least tolerable), The Shining, Quicksilver Highway (in which he butchered both Stephen King and Clive Barker), Riding the Bullet, and finally, Desperation (another mini-series).  Now another will fall prey to his evil lens.  Why?  All of these movies suck from boring cinematography through wooden acting (though he seems to attract great actors) through horrid script revisions (done, at times, by King himself) to the ultimate no-no…making a compelling story boring as hell on the screen.

Maybe Stephen King should write a horror novel about a hack writer/director taking a great horror author’s work and sucking the life out of it.