Clean Like China

WARNING: do NOT read this blog if you are eating, driving, or praying. Do NOT read this blog if you are prone to sickness, including motion sickness, sleeping sickness, morning sickness, or if you are sick at heart.

Seriously, I have warned you. I do NOT want a bunch of vomit spattered emails asking why I can't write about things like daisies and funny things to do with chopsticks.

So, since we are on the subject of chopsticks, I've been doing some consulting in a lab. Without going into too much detail let's just say it's a lab that does scary things with radioactive materials. Needless to say, you need a lot of bright people to work at this lab to make sure there isn't a bad boom boom that might cause blight on the West Coast. So the lab is full of Chinese people, the second most intelligent race in the world, with the Jews being first of course.

So, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. My doctor TOLD me to brush my teeth after I eat and I am not being OCD so nip it all you climber guys who avoid the bristles like they cause plague. This Chinese woman walked in to the bathroom. I know she is Chinese because we talked earlier in the lunchroom (she was impressed with my pearls of jasmine tea, which she immediately recognized as coming from China, although, full disclosure, I was pulling them out of a tin that had Chinese writing on it).

The past few weeks I've been trying to figure out how the Chinese manage to trash a bathroom so badly. At my company kickoff in Paris I would walk into the bathroom and immediately be able to tell which stalls the Chis had been in. There would be toilet paper all over the floor. The seat would be up. There would usually be water (hope it was water) spattered on the walls. While talking to a UK consultant I was like "dude, wtf?" and he said "well, they are trying".

Back to the lab, where I noticed the same problems in the stalls, I couldn't help but glance over as this Chi woman walked into a stall. She didn't close the door. I saw her make a huge wad of toilet paper which she threw into the toilet. Then she flushed. This was repeated 3 times. Then she pulled a toddler sized wad of toilet paper off the spool.

NOTE: this is your LAST warning to stop reading

She then dipped the wad of toilet paper into the toilet water and proceeded to scrub the toilet seat and the bowl with it. I couldn't see how much of the inside of the bowl she was "cleaning" because of the angle of where I was standing compared to where she was. I did mention that this was a public restroom, didn't I?

I suddenly flashed back to this lovely Italian movie called Bread and Tulips (recommended by Nini, thanks Nini!) where the main character drops something in the toilet and is afraid to reach in and grab it. This leads to her being left by her bitch ass husband at a rest stop, and then her creating a new life for herself sans kids and aforementioned human tumor, oops, I meant to say "spouse".

Anyway, after scrubbing the toilet "clean" with toilet water, the Chi closed the stall door. I heard two more flushes. God only knows what happened in there. And then the Chi walked out without washing her hands. There was toilet paper all over the floor in her stall, some of which was accumulation from the cleaning, and some of which collected on the floor after the stall door closed.

A mystery that provided some answers, but that still leaves questions...

Three Snow Whites Offend in Paris

I swear this story is true. If my friend John J. sends the picture I will find a way to post it on this blog...

I was at Disney in Paris the past week for a company kickoff. As part of the kick off we had a night where people dressed in costume (referred to as "fancy dress" on our invite, not to be confused with "costume", which is black tie - no wonder why we went to war with UK - we probably just had a semantic mis-understanding with them). One of my new company friends, a kid named Duncan, dressed up as snow white, along with two of his mates. They formed the Snow White trio and they ended up winning an award for their costumes.

The co-winner was a team of two guys dressed as babies. I found the costumes extremely disturbing. Maybe it was the adult sized pacifiers, or seeing two guys who were over 6 feet tall dressed in pink pajamas and bonnets. But apparently it was fine for these guys to later frequent the bar in their getups. Not so the Snow White trio.

Apparently, as they were leaving their hotel to go to the costume dinner, they caused some children to be traumatized. Someone complained. Management at Disney decided that the trio was "besmirching the image of Snow White". They were forced to go back to their hotel and change before going anywhere else in the Disney park. Disney management later said they had an existing policy about not allowing people to dress up as Snow White for any reason. Which seems weird since the boys bought their costumes at the park...

You Think You're Free?????

I know I will be getting hated on for this posting but someone had to say it...

The other night I was flying into Washington state. There were two Marines on the flight. They sat in front of me. It was an evening flight. Through the two hours neither of them said a word. I was stuck next to the window and I could see through the space between the plane window and the seat that tears were running down the Marine's face. When we landed at the airport there was a huge group of people waiting to welcome the Marines.

They were blasting patriotic songs and waving flags. As we came up to the crowd the Marine that had been crying turned to the other and said "I can't wait to take this fucking thing off", referring to his uniform.

I went to the rental car counter to pick up my car and they started blasting this country song, the name of which is unknown, but the words go "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free". I found it ironic that they would play that song in an airport. These soldiers went to Iraq and did whatever they were assigned to do under the auspices of maintaining freedom in the US. It hasn't made a damn bit of difference here, and it's made things worse in a lot of ways. And the current administration and policies are taking away more freedoms every day.

If you don't believe me, spend the next week flying. I have seen the following at airports in the past three months:

-A woman was arrested at a security checkpoint for "arguing" with the TSA guy checking IDs. She did not understand that she couldn't board a plane with a printed itinerary and that she needed a boarding card. Rather than helping the woman the TSA guy kept telling her "You can't get on a plane with that. You need to go over there," pointing vaguely towards the checkin counter. When the woman said in a louder voice "But this is an e-ticket" the TSA guy called security and had her arrested. She was kind of an idiot, but he wasn't helping her and I don't blame her for raising her voice.
-I was stopped and harassed by immigration because, coming from Paris to the US, I lost my re-embarkation card but didn't realize until I got to the immigration counter. Having been awake for almost two days at that point I was fumbling to explain to the immigration guy why I walked up to his counter without having the card filled out. He started yelling at me and accusing me of trying to pull something funny. I was like asspipe, I spent 17 years of my fucking life working with the government and now I am being accused of being a terrorist? Because I lost my re-embarkation card? Are you fucking serious?
-I had all of my clothes taken out of my suitcase because I had nail clippers in a side pocket of the suit case. They didn't take them away from me, just made a mess of my clothes. I asked if it was now illegal to carry nail clippers on a plane and was told that if I was making a threat I would not be allowed to fly that day, even though I'm not sure how "So are nail clippers now illegal?" could be considered a threat.
-I was told to take a sweater off before walking through an x-ray, even after explaining to the idiot at security that I didn't have anything on under the sweater. They made me roll the sweater up to prove this before letting me through the x-ray.

Security is being run by a bunch of fucking gerbils. I fly every Monday and every Friday, and I would be happy to have all those assholes just go away. They aren't doing anything but annoying frequent flyers like myself. If you go to any other foreign country they don't do any extra security checks for flights not going to the US and guess what, they aren't getting hijacked or blown up.

I will take my chances that some idiot from Al Quaeda is going to try to blow up my plane. Also, for anyone who thinks those security checks are doing any good, guess what. I know how to get three ounces of liquid through security. I've even gotten an unopened can of Coke through. I carried an orange through the x-ray machine that could have contained an explosive.

I wish we as Americans would stop buying in to the fear mongering of the Bush administration/Fox News. If someone wants to kill you, they will. So get over it and stop thinking that some guy x-raying your 1.7 ounce shampoo bottle saved your life...