It says much about contemporary attitudes towards hygiene that those horribly ubiquitous germ-ridden rows of portable plastic toilet cabins - always so disturbingly evident at public events - are almost never equipped with portable basins in which the patron may wash his hands. Who can say that he has not stood in such a miserable cube staring into its murky, lumpy chemical depths and not felt the icy grip of Despair clutching at his vitals? If cleanliness is truly next to Godliness, then all of these disgusting latrine contraptions were surely kicked out of Heaven into the blackest pits of Hell along with Lucifer and all his cheap toilet tissue toting minions all those many years ago. Their appearance on Earth must undoubtedly herald the beginning of The End Times, even if nothing else does.
Meanwhile, while waiting in line recently, I was forced to overhear a large group of earnestly bearded young men equating the current situation in Iraq with the old situation in Vietnam. So I suppose we shall have to start calling this ancient desert country just plain old 'Raq from now on.
Probably not. You are a child of the hour. Just be glad you didn't live in the Old West. Ancient desert country? That's a gloss.
Posted by: Mortimer Shy | November 28, 2006 at 02:42