The Weight of a Talent

 You know when you're in a job interview and the cold, clammy hand of fear grips you as you realise you forgot - once again - to prepare a sane and reasonable answer to the question "What are your strengths and weaknesses?". You find yourself gaping, rather in the manner of a medium-sized cod, trout, or halibut, with a look on your face resembling that of Bertie Wooster realising he's got to marry - through no fault of his own - Honoria Glossop. This, as all civilised people agree, is a perverse and horrifying question, and asking it should absolutely be in the UN statues regulating crimes against humanity. Be that as it may - being moderately narcissistic, we tend not to focus on any flaws we might theoretically have here at the Privy Counsel, but swot up on our strengths whenever we get the chance. Such as they are. 

Having mostly misspent our youth and also our adult age, and being on track to largely squander our impending middle age, also, our talents might perhaps most honestly be described as "varied", "diverse", or "miscellaneous" rather than, say, "amazing" or "financially rewarding". However, one happy result of our having spent so much of our time writing a weird blog about toilets instead of, say, learning bookkeeping, crocheting street art, or networking with key players in the industry, is that we know a really good urinal when we see one. We don't remember ever consulting a career counsellor in our youth but if we had, now's the time we'd like to go back in time and triumphantly tell that smug adviser to their face that See? we know about urinals, so there. Anyway, Shewee Fiend Friend sent us these photos from a hotel in Canada:

We always find bars on the wall reassuring.

A beauty!

Yes, reader, that does read Twyfords Ltd., Hanley, England.

Our curt Canadian toilet photographer says:

I found a toilet for you

Actually the toilet itself is terrible

But the urinal was excellent

The hotel was founded 1926. The urinal could be from then?

But the rest of the bathroom is just old and grungy, not cute and antique at all

We shall of course be having a stern word with Shewee Fiend Friend about her use of the word "cute".

Meanwhile, Jonny - that splendid specimen of British manhood - has been to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant, causing us to ask ourselves whether Gordon Ramsay is the perfect representation of Orwell's Colonel Blimp? We have no idea, so instead here's a passage from "British Cookery":

 

When Voltaire made his often-quoted statement that the country of Britain has "a hundred religions and only one sauce", he was saying something which was untrue and which is equally untrue today, but which might still be echoed in good faith by a foreign visitor who made only a brief stay and drew his impressions from hotels and restaurants. For the first thing to be noticed about British cookery is that it is best studied in private houses, and more particularly in the homes of the middle-class and working-class masses who have not become Europeanised in their tastes. Cheap restaurants in Britain are almost invariably bad, while in expensive restaurants the cookery is almost always French, or imitation French. In the kind of food eaten, and even in the hours at which meals are taken and the names by which they are called, there is a definite cultural division between the upper-class minority and the big mass who have preserved the habits of their ancestors.

 

We're not sure what relevance this quote has, if any, for the below pictures but there's a time for quoting Orwell and that time is all the time.

"Nice urinal cake!", we commented. "I didn't sample it myself," quipped Jonny, laconically. "I stuck to the menu items."

This looks hygienic and well lit.

Yes, it's a Crapper crapper.

Here we go again with the cattle troughs.

Finally, here's a hot photo of Jonny and some air dryers.

Also, an important announcement: A friend of ours who recently visited Greece, and lived to tell the tale, brought us back an amusing soap called "Venus Secrets", which purports to contain ass's milk. Yes! Ass's milk! As a result of performing our ablutions with this miraculous beauty product, we expect to soon (the packaging doesn't specify a time frame, but reasonably within three to four weeks, surely?) be wielding the fascination of a Cleopatra and - who knows? - engaging in some festive naval battles and maybe destabilising an empire. Watch this space.

For our Festive Video we were naturally going to use Morrissey's Boy Racer ("He thinks he's got the whole world in his hands / Stood at the urinal / He thinks he's got the whole world in his hands / And I'm gonna kill him"), but Shewee Fiend Friend recently had an experience with this song and thought it had a profound significance in terms of the human condition, Weltschmerz, etc. 

Festive Video: Miley Cyrus, Used to Be Young

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 That time  Intellectual Friend used the word "cute" and we had conniptions

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A Startling Absence of Themes, Rhymes, and Reason

There are times in one's life that are clearly themed. There are, for instance, times when one gives up on learning Greek, times when one is dedicated to drinking large quantities of gin, and times when one rants more or less incessantly about the decline of literacy and how we're all hurtling back towards not just the seventeenth century but a pre-Reformation stage of not having standardised writing. 

Sometimes these times, stages and phases mix, mingle and flow into one another. Sometimes there is no theme at all - unless of course the theme is "a startling absence of themes". This feels unsettling. One has a sneaking suspicion that perhaps there is a theme lurking in a dark corner after all, but that either one missed the memo, meeting or rally at which it was announced, or one has been too distracted by the horror clowns capering around the potato field to pay attention. Perhaps there is actually a pattern, but said pattern will be revealed by a load of bricks which are currently in the air and are about to hit one on the head, with painful consequences, before sorting themselves into an attractive arrangement on the floor. 

 

Sometimes one simply has no idea what the hell is going on - literally, metaphorically, or on any other level. This is, in our experience, a time to harden the fuck up and keep on keeping on, but also, potentially, to prepare to explore new avenues. Sometimes, granted, what hits one is lyme disease. But sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the thing that hits one isn't a ton of painful bricks, but a delightful present, or a sudden realisation, or sunlight. Reader, it may be time to prepare for potential presents, realisations, and sunlight.

Not literal sunlight, obviously. Unless one happens to be in the southern hemisphere (in, for instance, just to pick example at random, Australia), the days are getting shorter and the nights longer and darker. As we mentioned in a previous post, a phenomenon which Jonny has termed the Twelve Days of Cistern is currently the only thing enabling us to view the darkening days and approaching winter, with its attendant emotional carnage and horror clowns, with anything resembling equanimity. Literal sunlight, at Privy Counsel HQ latitudes, is about to become as rare a commodity as electricity. However we received, just the other day, a terribly enticing present which wasn't - and we would like to emphasise this - gonorrhoea. We also received a delightful missive from Tudor Friend, which read:

History! Toilets! Death! All the things one loves.

Tudor Friend helpfully says, further:

My dad adds “that’s one fucking big latrine! But ‘dig her wide and dig her deep’!” That is a quote from “The Specialist”, one of his favourite books, which is all about the proper way to build an outhouse.

Have we mentioned that, although we have never met Tudor Friend's dad, he is an inspiration to us? Pondering the Erfurt latrine disaster is prone to making us contemplative and reticent. We believe, however, that Tudor Friend speaks for us all when she says:

It does kind of boggle the mind, doesn’t it. “Our royal family just all drowned in shit” is really awkward to represent on the family escutcheon….

Having pondered the unreliablility of floors, irrespective of the presence of brick patterns, and the propensity of Death to lurk in medieval outhouses, let us contemplate the fact that there is always Jonny.

Jonny's messages are admirably clear and informative.

Is there a more delightful sight, in the known universe, than Jonny doing the thumbs up in front of an outdoor urinal? Reader, there isn't

It is important to remember to aim.

It looks to us - though we're not experts in this field - as though there is adequate splash protection. Reader, do you feel safe?

We're still not quite over the delightful experience of hearing our favourite band in a weird sports bar in, of all places, Kristianstad.

Festive Video: Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, I Got This 

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The post featuring hearing our favourite band in a weird sports bar in, of all places, Kristianstad: Where East Meets West 

Crash! Boom! Banff! Are We All Stuck in a Giant Simulation?

Are we all stuck in a giant simulation? If we are to believe someone like David Chalmers, we can't prove that we're not. If, however, we have understood the main argument against the theory that we are all figments of a simulation (and we are not at all sure that we have), there would - if we were all stuck in a giant simulation - not only be glitches, leading to weirdness like gravity suddenly malfunctioning and pigs becoming airborne, there would also be no way that whoever made the simulation would omit leaving some sign to his or her or its creation that it existed in an artificial production. Simple smugness demands it. Being something of a virtuoso in the matter of smugness ourselves, this argument seems inexorably logical, and we see no reason to probe more deeply into the matter.

What caused us to reflect on the simulation problem is that it has recently dawned on us that Shewee Fiend Friend gives us advice not according to what she, on close reflection and with balanced judgement, considers to be the best course of action, but according to what would provide the best entertainment for her. In other words, Shewee Fiend Friend might potentially be a benevolent if capricious puppet-master, setting us off bumping hither and thither like a rather gorgeous dodgem car, then sitting back to enjoy the ensuing chaos and drama, spiced with the occasional distressing hangover and/or heartbreak. 

Considering that Shewee Fiend Friend has been our close friend for over a decade, this gives rise to some rather curious, not to say nervous, reflections. Has Shewee Fiend Friend been manipulating us for her own amusement for twelve years? What about that time when we had three near-death experiences (at least - it is quite possible that we lost count due to alcohol and terror) in the course of twenty-four hours? Or has an unsettling symbiosis developed, in a manner that would be slightly worrying if one were a Freudian, where we ask advice in the knowledge that we will be told what we want to hear (except of course in the case of looking at pictures of Justin Trudeau), meaning we are likely to soon be doing something unwise but entertaining? Possibly we will never know. But bear this possibility in mind, as we take a disconcerting virtual stroll through an ancient prairie hotel.

Does this remind us of something? Why, yes, it reminds us of the Sinister Gurglings Toilet Tale. (If you perk up at the thought of charging across the steppe on a noble steed, nostrils flaring, while roaring "Bij, morduj!" and attempting to decapitate your enemies with a sabre, you should definitely click on the link.)

Does your heart swell with pride at this dedication to the Privy Counsel Standards of Source Criticism (PCSSC)? Ours does.

Mmm. Who doesn't!

Shouts from the gallery: "Boo!"

 It is perhaps lucky, all things considered, that one's hopes never really lifted off the ground. At best they flapped about for a bit then crashed drunkenly.

Speaking of crashing drunkenly after flapping, we've had communications from Jonny (who counts as a friend for administrative reasons). What follows below are photos from the gents' toilets at the Hereford Rowing Club. You heard it here first!

 

Are the sinks and taps weirdly reminiscent of those in the Banff Springs Hotel? Are we too distracted by Jonny's essential hunka-hunka-ness to commit to any deep reflection on this topic? Yes, yes, and yes.

This, according to Jonny, is a "fancy James Bond-style keypad".

Don't you love this avant-garde angle of these urinals? Does it remind you of something? Of course it does.

We don't know where this is and do not want to know, but Jonny calls it a "Tetris toilet". As you were.

 We will not of course let you go before we have foisted a Festive Video on your already fragile state of mind.

 

 Festive Video: Caitlin Rose, Pink Rabbits

 

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The Girl Bartenders Hate

The Sinister Gurglings Toilet Tale - a hearty vampire story

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Brownian Motion, or, Brownout, or, A Brown Study - Semi-Intellectual Friend's Shower

 

Going with the Flow

 Panta, as someone in our near vicinity is fond of saying, rei. Everything flows; sometimes in the direction of the sewer, sometimes in the direction of your favourite intellectual toilet blog. Some rather exciting photos flowed our way recently from Tudor Friend, who says:

Hark! A creative urinal! Apparently in a Ford garage in Florida (friends are wintering there)

How delightful to a) be wintering in Florida and b) come across this amusing and innovative urinal!

Tudor Friend continues:

The sinks that go with the keg/barrel urinal.

We've made our views on airdryers clear and that view is not a vista of mountains on a sunny day with goats frolicking in the valley, but rather a postmodernist industrial hellscape with machines that can tell when you're feeling sad and report you to the authorities. However, these sinks and also taps - which we assume are mixer-taps - are to be applauded. At length. With a da capo.

We would also like to take this opportunity of alerting our readers to the existence of this article from CNN about a 2,700-year-old luxury toilet in Israel which Tudor Friend sent us with her usual intellectually stimulating kindness.

In an effort to expand our horizons we recently went to a Thai restaurant and, in an effort to save time while there, used the gents' toilet. Did we regret this decision? Reader, we did.

 

Does this sticky spot remind us of anything? It absolutely does: it reminds us of the SCREAMING BLOODY HORROR British workplace post.

We lack the skills to read this sign, but are assuming that it is informative and helpful. We are also intrigued by what is either a  mini radiator or a radiator cunningly hidden behind a wall. Unfortunately we were too horrified by the sticky spot on the floor to want to touch or explore anything in this loo, or we would most likely have investigated this for the benefit of our regular, and also less regular, readers.

Perhaps we were not in an ideal place, physically, intellectually, or alcoholically, to take useful and productive toilet pictures at this point, but it seems that we thought the hand-washing and -drying arrangements at least satisfactory.

We would like to take this opportunity of reminding everyone of Semi-Intellectual Friend's reporting from the dreamy, hyper-realistic plains of a post-post-modernist Thai shower.

Last, but not least, let there be Jonny toilet selfies. Jonny says:

It was at a Dog Disco in Vodka Revolution!

We're not sure we understand a single word of that sentence, but trust that whatever was happening, Jonny remained hygienic throughout.

There is, apparently, a dog disco - whatever that might be - happening on the premises.

For our less discerning readers, here is an amusing photo of Jonny appearing to be wearing a Tin Man-style hat.
 

Jonny: cultural icon and babe.

  Today's Festive Video is an amusing excerpt from the kind of high-brow cultural expressions we cherish here at the Privy Counsel.

Festive Video

 Festive Video: An uplifting excerpt from the Barber of Seville.

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The Girl Bartenders Hate

There are certain situations in this life where you and your travelling partner end up looking at each other in horror and saying "our mothers must never find out about this" then shaking your heads vigorously only to wince violently, because you had forgotten that you were in no fit state to shake, nod or move your head in any direction.

We experienced one of the above-mentioned situations recently, on our sojourn to Canada. In our last post we predicted that it "is a story that is definitely not safe for work and is, perhaps, best not told at all. We suspect it will seep out gradually over the years, in moments of inebriation. You may as well lock any children in a dark cupboard and duct tape the cat's ears together now, saving you time later".

We stand by these words and will defend them come hell, high water or large amounts of really delicious rosé. However, we have reached the point where we have recovered enough to show you some cheerful pictures from just before our metaphorical train derailed and crashed into a large rock surrounded by bears, broken bottles, and horror clowns.

One thing that never leaves us, no matter how many weird pink shots we have unwisely accepted from strangers, is our constant gender analysis. We simply never stop scanning our surroundings and analysing the amount of sexism visible. (Before you ask: yes, this is obviously exhausting. But once you've seen the ever-present misogyny, you can't un-see it. Read more about what it is like in this article by the arse-kicking Emer O'Toole.) For example, though we had an amazing time in the bar of the Westwinds Motor Hotel in the wonderfully named town of Biggar, Saskatchewan, and enjoyed our conversations with the locals immensely, we couldn't help but notice the rampant injustice in the niceness of the men's toilets compared to the women's.

The urinal in the men's toilet in the motel bar in Biggar, Saskatchewan

Nice sinks, nice soap, recycled hand towels, hygienic aluminium surfaces.

We take no responsibility for anything that happened after this photo was taken.

Your Privy Counsellor bravely venturing into the gents' to record the state of the facilities.

In contrast: The ladies'. Old formica, tatty beige tiles. On the plus side: a new-looking paper towel dispenser.

Ruin and despair!

THIS IS NOT ON!

At least the coat hook was good.

Let us quickly have a picture of Jonny to cheer ourselves up.
Jonny wrote to us, some time ago:

I’ve got about 90 pictures of toilets to send you.
Including one from the spa Kiera Knightly was at

Rugged, on so many levels! Woof!

We replied, quite reasonably, with the single word "HUBBA!" Jonny, being a self-deprecating kind of gentleman, responded with "I assume that’s at the mixer taps?", to which we replied, in turn,

WHAT MIXER TAPS?
THERE'S MIXER TAPS? #DidntEvenNotice

Before we move on to today's Festive Video, we would just like to say one thing, and that thing is

WE'RE REALLY SORRY ABOUT THE VOMIT IN THE PARKING LOT.

Cheers.

Festive Video: Miranda Lambert, Ugly Lights


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Our previous post mentioning our Canadian Adventure

New Year's Eve 2017: "A Truly Awful Toilet"

Last New Year's Eve, we were incandescent with rage. This year, we are still angry, but are too exhausted to work up any proper fury, preferring instead to recline on our chaise-longue with a drink or four in our hand, feebly waving our hunting crop in the air and muttering "Tally-ho" into the darkness. 

We still think, however, that people should complain less and do more.

Which leads us to our next point. We have been of the opinion, for a long time, that PEOPLE SHOULD FUCK OFF MORE. We stand by this.

We'd better move on to today's toilet pictures before our grumpiness goes supernova and someone ends up injured.

Jonny, that handsome young scallywag, says:

Christmas treat
A truly awful toilet
2/10

ARGH NO THE BLURRINESS WE CANNOT DISCERN JONNY'S CHISELLED FEATURES

The stains on the floor aren't even the worst thing about this toilet.

The picture quality is execrable, but the sign says "Out of order". Philosophical!

Jonny managed to find that elusive thing: toilet graffiti!
"Communism will win."
"Yeah, right!"
Personally we are not in favour of any ideology that is responsible for the deaths of millions of people, and are rather prone to agreeing with the "Yeah right" retort.

Unable to understand why this toilet, which is, to all appearances, tremendously shit, was awarded two whole points, we posed the question to Jonny, who replied:

Oh, lol
It had a nice mirror
And a coat hook

We move swiftly from the wet, slippery floor of whatever pub Jonny spent Christmas Eve in, and hurry towards the rarefied air of Kulturen, a museum in Lund, Sweden. We located these toilets on the first floor, and found them immensely encouraging.

Mixer tap, nice soap, paper towels (recycled), bin - SCHWING!

All present and correct: the toilet roll is hygienically covered

HUNKA HUNKA COAT HOOK! Also, the door is sturdy and goes all the way down to the floor and all the way up to the ceiling. (That odd noise was a huge sigh of contentment erupting from our chest cavity.)

Let us review some of the highlights from 2017, shall we? The year started off with the Women's March in January. There was a fuckload of resistance:

Rampant Murderous Nazis Are Taking Over the World, But Here Is a Picture of Jonny In a Toilet, for Your Convenience and Comfort

 

 

In March we concluded that rampant murderous Nazis were STILL in charge, and exhorted everyone to stop being a dick:

No Man (Or Woman) Is an Island 

 

 In April, we went to York. The title rather says it all:

Castles in the Air: Dreaming of Better Plumbing, or, Bitches Love Pemberleys, or, Bottling Up of Incomprehension and Rage

 

Luckily, pictures of Jonny appeared regularly throughout the year, for instance in June:

Feeling Single, Seeing 1.5: In Which Things Are Insanely Bleak, But Luckily There Are Pictures of Jonny

 

We ranted, of course, about Brexit, and the NHS, which made everyone very tired. Thankfully, there were pictures of Shewee Fiend Friend loading a cannon:

Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes, and Knees

 

We really did go on and on and on about politics. Luckily, there was also cake, and runes:

If You Are a Medievalist in Your Mid- to Late Thirties, and/or Want to Save the World, This Is for You

 

In July, we went to York - again! - and a feud between Jonny and Shewee Fiend Friend, based on pictures of cannon, almost developed:

In Which the Privy Counsel Goes Ballistic

 

In August, we indulged in nostalgia, stating that,

We would hate to be the age we were during the nineties again, and are supremely grateful for our current level of comparative maturity and relative wisdom, but some nineties phenomena, like the widely held stance that Hitler was insane and that a murderous government propagating a gibberish racist doctrine was about as welcome as herpes, are prone to make us feel ever so slightly maudlin after the third gin and tonic.

 Ah.

À la Recherche du Temps Perdu

 

In September, we enjoyed some exciting toilet pictures from Lithuanian Friend, and lamented the lack of public toilets for women:

Piss-Poor Performance

 

And also reiterated the need for female-only spaces in a deeply sexist world which is extremely dangerous to women:

"Let Them Eat Cake" - Could It Be Any More Obvious That a Man Designed These Toilets?

 

Several people claimed to enjoy our Halloween special in October, which says more about them than about us:

Halloween Special: The Mystery of the Sticky Spot on the Floor, or, The Telltale Splash, or, Scared Shitless!

 

We succumbed to philosophy in November:

What a Thing Is and What It Is Not Are Identical In Form. Or So We've Been Told.

 

Argh, we find ourselves overwhelmed by retrospection. Let us finish rather hurriedly with some wise words we wrote in 2016:

Remember that ultimately, everything you do is futile. The universe is a vast and terrifying void, containing one tiny speck of dust to which we are clinging, and ultimately destroying. We are, essentially, short-sighted monkeys with computers. Now relax, and stop giving a fuck. Have a drink, maybe.

On that note, let's have a Festive Video. As everyone knows, both women and men experience a perceived female dominance when women contribute 30-40 % of any conversation or discussion. Hence, women tend to be silenced before they've even taken up half the speaking space. Let's hear some women, shall we?

Festive video: Song Suffragettes, cover of Keith Urban's Female

Happy new year!

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Last year's New Year's Eve rant: 2016 in Summary: Holding on to Hope, or, We're Really Cunting Angry, or, Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!