Are you a work toothbrusher? OK, so that's not a particularly elegant turn of phrase, but you know what I mean. Are you one of those people who make sure to get in a good brushing after lunch every day, even at the office?

Well, I'm not. I happen to be blessed with particularly strong tooth enamel, such that even though I only brush once a day (in the mornings), I'm still always lauded by my dentist for my good oral hygiene at my semi-annual checkups. So, I don't have a lot of motivation to brush more often.

I'll tell you what, though: I do kind of admire those mid-day toothbrushers. It seems like it must take a fair amount of dedication not to just remember to brush so often, but to be willing to put up with bad office toothbrushing conditions in order to do so.

I mean, at your typical office you've got one of two choices: the kitchen/break room or the public bathroom. The kitchen offers no privacy at all, since office kitchens tend to receive some of the heaviest traffic of the entire company. I don't know about you, but I prefer to be alone while I'm fighting plaque. It's bad enough that my son always seems to want to strike up a conversation in the middle of my morning routine. Having a grown up start talking to me when I've got a mouthful of toothpaste seems more awkward than I'm willing to deal with.

On the other hand, unless you happen to be blessed with a workplace with single-occupant restrooms, if you opt to brush your teeth in the office bathroom, you run a serious risk of having someone come in and start pooping while you're brushing. The idea of having to deal with someone else's bathroom stink while trying to clean my mouth just completely grosses me out.

I just don't have the fortitude of stomach or strength of self-confidence to cope with work toothbrushing, but I know a lot of others do. So here's to you, work toothbrushers of the world. You are better folk than I.

The gym is a fairly solitary place for me. There are always lots of other people around, and most of them seem to know each other and spend a lot of time chatting in the locker room or while taking turns on the weight machines. I, on the other hand, rarely talk to anybody, so I'm mostly left with my own thoughts.

This morning, my thoughts were mostly gripes. I had just finished my daily 500-meter swim--not a long distance for a real swimmer, but it wipes me out--and I was melodramatically questioning whether I had enough strength left in my arms to lift them to wash my hair. I was also thinking about how my rubber flip-flops had rubbed off a bit of skin on my big toe and how annoying that was, feeling sorry for myself that my new diet has meant that I haven't had a satisfying lunch all week, and obsessing about that expensive camera that I may never be able to afford. And, just to round it out, I remembered how annoyed I was that my self-winding watch stops in the middle of every night, and how much it bugs me that I get so much static I get when I try to use an FM transmitter with my iPod in the car.

So there I was, griping, griping, griping to myself, and I was just headed into the shower when I overheard two of the locker room attendants talking to each other. "I have fungus growing in my lungs," one of them said. "I'm going to die. I smoked so much, I guarantee in a year I'll be dead." He looked like he was in his mid-twenties.

Now, I don't know what the real story here is. Maybe the guy was just being a hypochondriac. Maybe he wasn't talking about himself at all, and was retelling a story about something he heard someone else said. I didn't ask--it felt rude enough that I had eavesdropped in the first place.

Afterwards, as I was getting dressed, I noticed that I had left my street shoes at home, and I would have to wear my ugly, uncomfortable gym shoes to work. But it just didn't seem important enough to care about right then.

The other day, my brother said to me, "Man, is there anything you're not good at when you put your mind to it?" When I gave him a short list of things I'm not good at, he responded, "I have a feeling you aren't actually putting your mind to some of the things on that list."

The thing is, I think it's important to understand your own limitations. I used to say that it was my goal to be good at everything, but while I do still love to learn and acquire new skills, there are some things that are beyond me, and very likely always will be. And that's OK. In fact, better than just being OK, it's both liberating and grounding.

Herewith, a non-exhaustive list of things I have thus far failed to become good at, despite having made a real effort to do so:

• Acting
• Waiting tables (really, anything involving customer service)
• Answering questions like a normal person
• Basketball
• Being pleasant first thing in the morning
• Grilling a steak to medium-rare (except by accident or miracle)
• Remembering the times and dates of most of the day-to-day events of my life, and the order in which they occurred
• Letting go of the past
• Not procrastinating
• Styling my hair
• Being consistently funny or witty
• Remembering things that people tell me (except for pointless trivia)
• Being charismatic
• Accepting compliments gracefully

Last night I went out for dinner with Juliette, Jason, and her parents and brother. It was a pretty nice restaurant, not particularly fancy and not outrageously expensive, but with pleasant, dark-wood decor; a relaxed, sophisticated ambience; and a menu that neither pedestrian nor pretentious. Most importantly for me, the ambient noise level was high enough that Jason's outbursts went mostly (but not completely) unnoticed by the tables around us. (They were all very understanding and forgiving, thankfully.)

So there we are, conversing and trying to keep Jason entertained while we wait for the food to arrive, when from the next table, I overhear someone loudly declare "Democrat means you want to pay people to sit around and do nothing." I look up, and I see this teenager--probably 18 or 19--passionately denouncing Democrats, unemployment, and the lazy people that rely on the welfare system instead of getting jobs like they ought to.

The first thought that popped into my head was "Has this kid ever even met a Democrat?" Because, honestly, I've never met anyone who actually wants to pay people to sit around and do nothing. But it's really none of my business what some kid says to his parents about welfare and I don't like to be nosy. Aside from which, right about then Jason was demanding that he be allowed to have all of the bread at the table, so I had more pressing things to occupy my attention.

I really wanted to mind my own business, but the kid had a strong voice and he was pointed right at me. So after he was done telling his parents and grandmother all of his thoughts on what was wrong with the unemployment system, he went on to talk about how awesome it is to have a fridge in his dorm room and how much fun he's having this summer and so on, and I found myself getting angry at him.

Now, look, that kid--whoever he is--is just as entitled to his opinion about unemployment benefits (or anything else, for that matter) as every other person is. If he wants to shout in a crowded restaurant about how Democrats facilitate laziness, it's certainly his right to be able to do so. Furthermore, I agree that the system as it exists now has flaws, and I've heard a lot of sound arguments from some very intelligent people that were substantively not much different from what this kid was saying.

Even so, sitting there in that nice restaurant in that nice strip mall in that nice, upper-middle-class neighborhood, listening to that nice-looking, clean-cut college freshman rant about Democrats and welfare, making his parents laugh about the misguided liberals, it just rubbed me the wrong way. I don't know that kid; I don't know what the sum of his life experience has been and how that's colored his opinions. But from where I was sitting, it didn't look like that kid had ever been poor, or had ever even known someone in any meaningful way who was poor. Or who was a Democrat, for that matter. He almost certainly has never had to financially support himself or anyone else. And I highly doubt he's ever had a family to support or a mortgage to pay, and it didn't sound like he knew anyone who'd ever been laid off.

Do you have to have been poor to be allowed an opinion on welfare? Is it required that you be financially responsible for others before you can talk about unemployment benefits? Of course not. Poor (or formerly poor) people do not and should not have the monopoly on discourse about that aspect of public policy. Nor does that having that kind of experience mean that your opinions are more valid, or that your ideas and observations are necessarily more astute.

In fact, there is no limitation on ignorance or insensitivity at all before we are qualified and entitled to our opinions. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try not to be ignorant or insensitive when we're spouting off about something, especially if we're doing so in public. And I've just known too many intelligent, hard-working, honest people who have had to deal with hard times through no fault of their own to be able to paint unemployment recipients as lazy or useless.

One of my best friends, for example, is a highly skilled and talented engineer who puts in long hours and genuinely enjoys the challenge and technical knowledge involved in his job. The company he was working for happened to be losing money in certain areas, and decided to cut its losses by closing down his division. So he found himself with a mortgage and a baby on the way, and short the major portion of his household income. What would you do in that situation? I'll tell you what he did: he spent eight hours every day finding companies with open hiring reqs, sending out applications, and lining up interviews, and he did that for weeks until he landed another job. And he collected unemployment benefits to help tide him over until he got that job. Is that irresponsible or lazy? Try telling him that to his face.

Fortunately, my friend and his wife are sensible about money and between their savings, unemployment, and tightening their belts a little, they were able to get through that rough patch. Even more fortunately, there were actually jobs to be had. Not everybody is that fortunate.

The point here isn't to say that we do or don't need unemployment benefits or other kinds of social welfare programs, nor to say what forms those benefits should take. There is a lot of room for discussion there, and I'm certain that there are many valid points of view and many good solutions to the underlying problems. No, the point is that I'm sick and tired of hearing ignorant people say things like "Democrats want people to be lazy" and "Republicans hate black people."

We're all entitled to our opinions. But sometimes your opinion makes you an asshole, damn it.

Have you seen the double rainbow video yet? It seems to be making the rounds; in the past few days I've seen it mentioned at least six or seven times on Twitter, Facebook, and various blogs. You've seen it, right?

OK, if you haven't seen it, take three and a half minutes and watch this:

If you're like, well, just about everybody, your immediate reaction is to laugh. The phrase "rainbow-gasm" might come to mind. You might idly wonder whether the guy is on drugs. And, yeah, it is funny, and I was thinking all the same things, but I'd like to take a second here and ask you a serious question.

Have you ever, in your entire life, been that happy about anything?

I have known some truly joyous moments. I remember the swell in my chest when I saw Juliette walking down the aisle toward me. And sometimes when I look at Jason, I'm so happy it feels like light is going to shoot out of my torso like a weird, Japanese-man version of a Care Bear Stare. For the life of me, though, I can't recall a time when I was so overwhelmed with excitement and beauty that I completely lost my shit. It strikes me as kind of sad.

For that matter, I don't think I've ever seen anyone I know be that happy, or even heard anyone talk about having been that happy. It's not even surprising to me, either. Being so thoroughly overjoyed and effusive just isn't socially normal. That's why it's funny. And even at that, we're only able to laugh at it because of the separation provided by the fact that it's a video. If you saw someone freak out like that in real life, you'd probably be uncomfortable. I know I would be.

Stop and think about that for a second. What does it say about our collective priorities and values that we'd feel weird about someone being really, really happy near us? Isn't that at least a little bit messed up?

I wish I were the kind of person who could get so worked up over a rainbow. I'd love to know what that feels like. I don't know if I ever will, but it seems like the kind of thing that might be worth working toward.

4:26 PM, June 17th. Roger Ebert says via Twitter: "Find me a person who would value any video game above 'Huckleberry Finn,' and I'll show you a fool.'

4:28 PM, June 17th. I respond: "So tell me, which movie should I value higher than Beethoven's Ninth? Or higher than 'Huckleberry Finn,' for that matter?"

Ebert doesn't respond.

6:37 AM, June 22nd. Ebert quotes a Morning news article: "Video games don't yet (and maybe never will) replicate the experience of reading a good book."

9:37 AM, June 22nd. I respond: "Movies also don't replicate the experience of reading a good book. You of all people should know that."

Ebert doesn't respond.

9:41 PM, June 22nd. Ebert links to a survey he created, asking people whether they value Huckleberry Finn or a great video game more.

10:06 PM, June 22nd. I ask him: "Which do you value higher, Huckleberry Finn or a great movie?"

Feeling frustrated and pissy and degenerating into passive-aggressiveness, I follow that with: "I'm not really sure why I bother asking, since you clearly aren't interested in a dialogue. Or even intellectual honesty."

Obviously, Ebert doesn't respond.

Why on Earth am I talking to Roger Ebert? Why do I even care what he thinks about video games? Why is it so difficult for me to just accept that he's more or less being a troll at this point, and then move on with my life? Why am I becoming the kind of guy that people feel the need to throw that XKCD link at? I don't know, but for whatever reason, this whole Ebert/video game thing really has my panties in a bunch.

Well, that's not entirely true. I know why. Here's a man who can write a sensitive and honest appraisal of race and racism, who is willing to share a wonderful and personal remembrance of his father. A man who can produce writings that are familiar, insightful, and that inspire me to be a better writer. That he can also be pigheaded and unreasonable frustrates me.

Maybe I'm looking for someone to idolize. I don't have a lot of heroes, so maybe that's a void that I want to fill. Maybe I just want people (and, by extension, the world) to make sense. Maybe this is just the family tendency toward obsession and compulsive behavior coming out. I don't know.

What I do know is that trying to get anybody to be what I want them to be is a waste of both my time and theirs. Roger Ebert doesn't know me and has no reason at all to care whether I read his blog or follow him on Twitter. It's time for me to stop acting any other way.

What about you folks? Do bloggers and Twitterers ever get under your skin this way? What do you do about it?

Dear Ms. Alkon,

I had the pleasure of reading your op-ed piece "Screaming kids and airplanes: Mayday! Mayday!" last week and I just wanted to write and let you know how refreshing it was to finally hear from a kindred spirit. This country has been overtaken by rude and selfish people and seeing someone tell it like it is was a welcome breath of fresh air.

Like you, I have never been loud in a public place. Just as you described for yourself, my parents instilled in me a strong sense of propriety, which is why the occasion of my birth was an calm, orderly affair, without any of that obnoxious crying and mewling that you so often hear about. I have no idea why newborns these days are so self-centered and ignorant of our vital social conventions but it is simply unacceptable. Parents, take note: just because your child doesn't have the ability to speak or understand language or control their limbs or bodily functions is no excuse for them not to know and follow the rules of polite society. And don't bother trying to tell me about cognitive development or any of that nonsense--we both know it's just a ruse to try to distract from the obvious fact that you're a failure as a parent. Am I right, Amy? (May I call you Amy? I don't want to presume.)

I also applaud your exhortation of people to take responsibility for their own life choices. If you are thinking about having a child then you need to consider the possibility that your little Johnny might inconvenience other people for a few hours. And if there's even the slightest possibility that that could happen, you had damn well better keep little Johnny away from them, even if that means that he doesn't get to meet Granny until he's 17. I don't care if Granny can't get the time off work to come to you, or if you don't have the money to fly your whole family across the country for the holidays, you should have thought of that beforehand.

I am a bit concerned, though, Amy, that you might be bowing to pressure from the unwashed masses in limiting the scope of your article. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you're willing to put Mr. Cell Phone and Ms. Unruly Child in their places, but there is so much that you've left out. I mean, I can hardly go into a Starbucks or Panera Bread or even the grocery store without having to hear people talking. And I don't mean on the phone--thankfully, you already covered that. No, I'm talking about those oblivious, obnoxious jerks who have the audacity to have face-to-face conversations in public places. Don't they know that every time they open their mouths, I have to hear them? If their parents had done their jobs, maybe, but that must not have happened because it's getting to where I can't go anywhere without having my ears raped by their noise-pollutive talking. (People have told me before that I shouldn't used the term "rape" that way because it's hyperbolic and downplays the seriousness of the crime, but fortunately I know you haven't been infected by that ridiculous PC nonsense. I bet you even had people complaining about your having used phrases like "social thuggery" and "stealing" and "victims" in your piece. The nerve of those people...)

Along those lines, why do people think it's OK to wear ugly clothing in public? For that matter, why do they think it's OK to be ugly? I shouldn't have to pay the cost just because someone chooses not to have plastic surgery. Ugly people should stop being so selfish and keep themselves in the basement where they belong. And I don't want to hear "Oh, but plastic surgery is so expensive." Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you decided to be poor.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know as a like-minded individual how much I much I value your writing. People are always telling me that what we really need is patience and tolerance, and that if these are the worst of my problems that I'm pretty well off. You and I know, of course, that all that is a bunch of nonsense. Because, after all, it really does come down to this: I should never have to experience anything that I dislike in the slightest, and anyone who makes me do so is nothing better than a terrorist.

I recently received an email forward that really bothered me. Now, I'm not a big fan of email forwards in general but, for the most part, they're relatively harmless. However, rather than the normal message detailing some fictional email tracking system or inspirational (but also usually fictional) story about a cancer survivor, this one was all about spreading, in my opinion, xenophobia and bigotry. Now, before I say anything else, I need to make it clear to anyone who may know the particulars of this situation that I do not think that the sender is xenophobic or bigoted. On the contrary, he's one of the most generous and empathetic people I've ever met. Really, that made the forward all the more shocking.

The email describes an incident between a Michigan State University professor and a Muslim student group at that same school. Apparently, the student group had protested some political cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. In response, the professor in question sent the following email to the student group:

As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest. I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey ), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called "whores" in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France .

 

This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile "protests."

If you do not like the values of the West - see the 1st Amendment - you are free to leave. I hope for God's sake that most of you choose that option.

Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.

The originators of the email then go on to complain about the predictably outraged response by the student group and ends, as is usual for forwards, by requesting that you pass it on:

Send this to your friends, and ask them to do the same. Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it. We are in a war. This political correctness is getting old and killing us.

Now, at first glance you might be tempted to agree with some of the things this professor is saying. Most people do, after all, think rape, murder, and terrorism are awful things, and rightly so. And I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who are tired of what may seem like endless frivolous protesting. But this is exactly why this sort of thinking is so pernicious and problematic.

Let's take a closer look at the situation being presented. First of all, let's notice that the group in question is a student group at an American university. Now, chances are that a fair number of this student group are not American citizens. But I would find it extremely surprising if I were to find out that there is not also a large portion of the group that are citizens. So, right off the bat, telling them to stop "troubling Americans" is at the very least narrow-minded. What does it take to be considered an American these days? Does practicing a different religion now mean that you're not an American? Or having a different ethnic background? What about being foreign-born or having foreign-born parents? Sounds like bad news for all the Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus out there. Heck, it's bad news for just about everyone--how many of us have no other "ancestral homeland," whether it's in the Middle East or Asia or Africa or Europe?

What about the issue that started the whole thing off in the first place, the offense taken at the cartoon. Well, there's certainly an argument that can be made that it was an overreaction. After all, political cartoons are supposed to be inflammatory and controversial, and maybe we should all be a little more thick-skinned about these things. But what if the situation were reversed? What if it weren't Muhammad but, say, Jesus that were being defamed? Maybe it wouldn't bother you, and in that case, more power to you. But, let's be honest, most people probably would be offended. Back in 1999 people were up in arms about a portrait of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant feces. If that was out of bounds, why isn't something like this? I'm all for the idea of people letting stuff like this go but only if it goes both ways.

Now let's take this line: "I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile 'protests.'" Here I might be slipping into the unreasonable realm of "political correctness," but if I'm wrong for thinking it's unacceptable to paint whole religions or races with the same brush, I'm fine with that. I mean, consider what your reaction would be if he said something like, "you greedy, money-grubbing Jews" or "you ignorant, dirty, violent, criminal blacks." Would that be OK? There are over 900 million Muslims in the world, more 3 million in the United States alone, it is clearly not possible to call them all terrorists and slave traders. More to the point, how many of the individuals in that student group--again, I remind you, a student group at an American university--have ever planted an explosive, raped a woman, or bought a slave? If we can really hold these students accountable for things that other members of their religion have done then nobody is safe--horrible injustices and atrocities have been committed in the name of every religion. (In the name of secular ideals, too, lest anyone think I'm just picking on religion.) By this professor's logic, I guess that makes us all rapists, slavers, and murderers.

Finally, there's this line: "This political correctness is getting old and killing us." Is it really the political correctness that's killing us, or is it the fact that we can't seem to get along with people and ideas that are different? Obviously, my opinion is the latter. I understand that political correctness may seem stupid or aggravating to many people, that it's a lot of work to retrain yourself to treat people the way they want to be treated instead of the way you're used to treating them. I understand that it's tiring and sometimes annoying to have to always put yourself in the other guy's shoes. But, really, isn't it worth it? Sure, maybe it's a bother to have to watch what you say and do, but don't you want people to look out for your feelings, too? Tolerance, ideally, is a two-way street--what's good for me is good for you, too.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to say what's on their minds. Just because I happen to think that this professor is small-minded doesn't mean that I think he shouldn't be allowed to express his opinions. But if more people spent some effort trying to understand each other instead of pounding their fists on the First Amendment, I think the world would be a much better place.

I broke down and registered a MySpace account a few days ago. I had formerly resisted the idea because all of what I'd seen and heard about the place made it seem like a club for illiterates. I know that sounds condescending. I suppose, when you get right down to it, it is. But I've been on the Internet now for a long time, and I've long since passed the point where "omg lol ur so funy!!1!!!1! kthxbye" constitutes stimulating conversation.

But I digress. I've been on Friendster and orkut for quite a while now, but those places seem to have more or less dried up in competition with MySpace. So, I told myself that if I really am interested in social networking, I have to go where the people are. Hence, MySpace. (If I'm being honest, though, I do have to admit that the social outcast side of my personality still hasn't completely died and that the validation inherent in getting friend requests is the sort of ego stroking that really soothes that part of me. So I guess I am shallow, after all.)

The experience has been somewhat strange. For a couple of reasons. Of course the first thing I did was look up various friends from college and high school as well as some relatives. That, in turn, brought me to browsing through their friend networks to see if I knew anyone. I also eventually poked through the alumni lists of the schools I attended. It was the high school list that really threw me.

See, I've been out of high school now for about nine years. For the most part, I haven't seen anyone from back then except for a few of my closer friends. Everyone else exists to me only as a memory. And, of course, since those memories are necessarily of the last time I saw them, they're all still kids. So it was kind of strange to see how these people I grew up with kept on growing up. The one that really made me do a double take was this girl I knew from chorus. I was only in chorus for my last semester and she was a freshman at the time. She must have been about 15 and she was small to boot, so when I looked at her profile and saw that she's 24 I had kind of a hard time digesting it. She looks older. Everybody looks older. Which is to be expected, of course, but somehow I just wasn't prepared to see all of these people in their mid-twenties when in my head they're still in their mid-teens.

And even seeing all of these people I knew, many of whom I was either friends or friendly with, I wasn't sure I really wanted to contact them. On the one hand it felt like a regression, and on the other, I didn't know if they'd want to hear from me. After all, if I wasn't close enough with them to keep in touch over the past nine years, why would they care to talk to me now?

I did contact a few of them, and some were even excited to hear from me. And I also got a few friend requests from some other people, some of whose lives I am really interested to hear about. It's a little exciting, in a way.

I think I'm coming to realize that I'm kind of lonely. Obviously, I'm not alone--I have my wife as well as a few friends in town. But when I got back from visiting my mom and stepdad I was in something of a funk for days afterwards. In fact, I'm not sure I'm completely out of it yet. It was just so nice to have other people in my life, people who I could really connect with and who I knew and who knew me. You know, family. I think I've been missing that for a long time, that I've been feeling isolated. It's been much better since I came to San Diego because at least here I do have friends. Back in Orange County it was just me and Juliette. But it's still not the same connection I had back home or even in college, where I was part of a bigger group. Maybe this explains why I've been so active on forums here and elsewhere on the 'Net--because I want that feeling of belonging and connection.

I haven't gotten to the other weirdness that has come out of my experience with MySpace but I've gotten rather long-winded in this bit, so I think I'll save it for another time.

There are certain things that everyone should just know as a member of society. These aren't big, complicated things. You don't need to know how to solve differential equations or write sonnets. Little things. Like knowing how to use cutlery, or remembering to wear pants. It's come to my attention that there is one area that many people seem to think is exempt from these little courtesies: public restrooms. So I'm just going to take this opportunity for a friendly little reminder. Maybe this doesn't apply to you, but you may at least be able to sympathize with my frustration.

First, and I can't stress this enough, flush. Enough said.

Second, wash your hands afterwards. It's good for you, and it's good for the rest of us. There are so many germs that you pick up on your hands throughout the day, especially in the bathroom. Stop spreading them.

When you're done washing your hands and drying them, put your paper towels in the trash. Not on the floor. Not in the drain. Not stuck to the ceiling. In the trash.

Alright, guys, this one is just to you. I know exactly how much work it takes to aim properly, and it's not much. Make the effort. And make sure you're aiming where you're supposed to, i.e. not the floor.

If you happen to clog up the toilet, take responsibility for what you've done and inform the management. Don't leave an out of order toilet for whoever might come along next. It's not their fault. It's yours. Deal with it.

I don't know why some people turn into total slobs when using public facilities. Maybe they don't have to deal with the consequences of their actions, but do they not realize that the rest of us do? The bottom line is: if you wouldn't do it in your own bathroom, don't do it in the public restroom either.