#460 Drip Cake

So there was this story in the news. Seems this bar in New Mexico is putting talking urinal cakes in their men’s restroom. That’s right. The idea being that if the urinal cake reminds you not to drink and drive, that may be timely enough to be helpful. That and they get national news coverage for a wacky idea. Because it was all the rage on TV, in the newspaper, and on radio. Everyone was all a twitter over the talking urinal cakes. Being the empathetic fellow that I am, two things occurred to me. First, if I was the drunk in question, and at my first encounter with the urinal I was already three sheets to the wind, I’m imagining I would swear off drink forever. I mean, if you were plowed and a urinal starting talking to you, would that not qualify under the heading “harshing your buzz?” Paranoid fellow that I am, I’m already way too suspicious of the little camera thing that keeps track of my movements so it knows when to automatically flush. Add talking to the interactive scenario and we notched up the intrusiveness scale to “I’m not coming back to this place” levels. What next? Mechanical robot hands that reach out from the toilet and zip me up? So there I am and the urinal cake informs me that driving drunk is a bad idea. Fine. Then tell me if I actually am drunk. That’s what I thought the thing was when I first heard the story. I figured the chatty cake included some little chemical strip that detected blood alcohol, or urine alcohol in this case, and gave you a canned response based on your level of inebriation. Nope. The thing isn’t related to reality at all. It just sounds interactive. It’s like asking questions of the old Magic Eight Ball. It kept its answers vague enough it could have made a living as a telephone psychic. My other thought was: What was the inventor thinking when he decided to invent this? What the world really needs is a talking urinal cake? There’s a market niche waiting to be filled. And what was the guy doing when he thought of this? Standing at a urinal? Wishing it would talk to him? I’m sooooo lonely….But heck, as long as he’s opened up the market, I think we should whiz in and ramp up the spinoffs before word leaks out. Starbucks didn’t stop with coffee, they did chai and frappacinos. So head on entrepre-urine-eurs. How about instead of a urinal cake, we give a nod to health-conscious America and have a urinal bagel? Have ‘em for your home so you can help your little boy with advanced potty training. You got that whole target practice accuracy thing. Health Clubs could have urinal power bars that detected steroids and creatine. Coffee bars could have urinal biscotti. Just the thing for the caffeine urge and purge. Yeah I’ll have a grande drip please. Frankly I think it’s a good idea. We can fool a whole new generation. Urinal cakes always smell so nice-- pink peppermint and wintergreen-- but they always taste so terrible.
America, ya gotta love it