Horror Babies and Urinal Phones

This blog is designed to find the meaning of life by examining the human condition. I'm not saying the meaning of life is necessarily explained through the human condition, but I am not qualified nor adept at analyzing amoebas and I can not contribute intriguing observations on The Big Bang Theory unless we're discussing the CBS sitcom.

But human interaction? Generally, I think there is a lot to learn from there.

The problem with learning from the human condition is that occasionally people will do something so stupid, so unconscionable, so maddeningly irrational and random that you have to scrap any breakthroughs you've had on human thought and start all over.

Two of these instances happened over the weekend. But instead of curling up into the fetal position, I'm going to do my best to make sense of the madness by analyzing the events from various angles in the hope that maybe a helpful pattern will emerge from the insanity.


Incident #1: After playing a game of basketball at the gym, I head to the locker room to shower. Before showering, I head to the bathroom to relieve myself. As I do, I hear someone carrying on a loud conversation. Sure enough, a man is standing at a urinal, talking loudly on his cell phone as he is pissing.

Why This Makes Me Wish Hell Existed: Cell phone use has gotten out of hand, and it has not contributed positively to common decency in America. It's bad enough that we now have to listen to other people's loud phone conversations on the bus, in restaurants, and in movie theatres, but now the bathroom too? To make matters worse, this guy transitioned from the restroom to the gym without ending his call...or washing his hands.

Possible Excuses: This behavior is completely indefensible unless this man had one of the following excuses:

+ He works for the department of defense and the man in the nearby stall is a suspected terrorist.

+ He is in the middle of one of those bad action movies where if the hero hangs up or drops the call, New York City blows up.

+ Due to a rare disease, he has to pee approximately eighty times a day to survive, and he just wouldn't be able to get anything done during the day if he didn't multitask.

Judging by his demeanor, none of these were the case.

What This Means in the Bigger Picture: If one guy is doing this, it means others are too, with even more to follow in the future. Before you know it, half of society will be carrying on conversations while using the toilet. As shared urination becomes increasingly acceptable, public urination will start to lose its stigma. By the year 2025, it will be commonplace for a guy to whip it out in the middle of a job interview and start pissing in the trash can. This will continue until 2034, when the Great Urinal Flood destroys the city of Albuquerque.


Incident #2: After a long day, I decide to see a movie at a nearby theater. Since I was tired and wanted to be mindlessly entertained, I decided on Friday the 13th. Ten minutes into the movie, right as Jason is burning a naked coed alive, I hear an unusual scream. It's not coming from the characters onscreen, but rather from a baby crying in the audience.

Why This Makes Me Wish Hell Existed: Not only did these parents bring their kid to a horror movie, but they refused to leave even after the kid started crying. The crying continued throughout the movie at various intervals. If you have a baby, and you can't afford a babysitter, you lose the right to see movies in public. If you absolutely can't lose that right, pick a better movie for your child than Friday the 13th. If that is too difficult to do, you probably should not have reproduced in the first place.

Possible Excuses: This behavior is completely indefensible unless these parents had one of the following excuses:

+ They went to a town hall meeting where Barack Obama specifically asked them to go out and see more movies to help stimulate the economy.

+ One of them directed the movie.

+ Their child is the spawn of Satan and can only be soothed by visuals of abnormally attractive young adults being brutally murdered in oddly creative ways. (Even then, you could always go to Blockbuster.)

What This Means in the Bigger Picture: If parents continue to bring their children to wildly inappropriate movies and let them cry throughout in direct defiance of common courtesy, they will inevitably produce offspring who will no doubt continue learned behavior. Eventually, so many children will be attending R-rated movies that the ratings system will slowly fade away. In September of 2034, just months after The Great Urinal Flood destroys Albuquerque, the country will be captivated by the story of Freddy Krueger Horowitz, the first two-year-old to be tried for murder as an adult.