Afton State Park Beach/Picnic Area

Afton State Park Beach/Picnic Area

Afton, MN

Reviewed April 10th, 2005

Any inventor of a new cultural paradigm must face the inevitable struggle over how to effectively communicate a new idea to the masses. One wonders if any members of the top secret research and development team that designed the urinal understood their kindred relationship to Leonardo De Vinci, of if they immediately foresaw the non-military applications. This "dream team" must have argued over many fine points of their project in an attempt to focus their collective genius to anticipate any possible problems. Will it flush? Should we design it for efficiency alone, so that many can go at once? Shall we emphasize its kinship to the toilet or so we highlight its higher place on the waste elimination evolutionary ladder? How about a name? We can't keep calling it the DRIPPY (Drainage Receptacle Initiating Prolific Pissing Yeah)?

Most important of all, how will people know they're not supposed to crap in it? "Nonsense!" says one scientist. "There is no place to sit, and there is no toilet paper. No one will do that." Another researcher says, "I know. We'll draw a pitcher of a little icon of a guy hunched over the DRIPPY about to take a dump, and we'll put one of them circle thingys around it with a line through it. How about that? Or, or uh, we can draw another pitcher, 'cept this-a one gots a dude with his wiener out, pointing at the DRIPPY and, and, uh we put a another circle thingy around this pitcher, but WITH NO LINE THROUGH THE MIDDLE."

Finally, after much more debate over how to draw an iconographic wiener without being graphic, a frustrated scientist, the one no one ever listened to because he was so small reached his limit. "Enough you goons! Forget about wieners! Just call it a urin-al, that way dudes will understand that they're only supposed to urin-ate in it, get it? Geez!" There was silence. Then someone said, "Yeah Bob but what does U.R.I.N.A.L. stand for? We gots to have it stand for something?" The first scientist stands up and throws the table over.

His eyes roll back in his head and a voice, a voice that is not his own is heard emanating from his mouth. "It shall be called urinal and it shall not be an acronym because the root of urinal is urine, and thus it is, and thus it shall ever be. And there shall be wide models, and there shall be narrow models, and there shall be those that offer pleasing aesthetics and there shall be those that are not aesthetically pleasing, and there shall even be the trough urinal, Satan's handiwork. At the time of the end of the world, when the angel pours out the third toilet bowl, a plague of trough urinals will be upon you. They shall fall, fully loaded, from the sky. They shall splatter everywhere, devouring your crops as they go. They shall have the talons of the eagle, the wings of the condor, and the head of Carrot Top - whom you already fear."

And the clouds parted, and the voice of God was heard and there was light, and from that light came the Holy Angel of Restroom Wisdom. And from her lips came a truth so powerful, so inspiring that it caused the strong to weep and the weak to rise up. "The problem has now been solved. Every time the sacred word URINAL is used, no one will ever, ever think to go number two in there."

"Trippy! I mean f***ing trippy!" said the scientists.

Evidently, with no disrespect to the Holy Angel of Restroom Wisdom or the fore thinking scientists she inspired, the problem was not solved. At least not at Afton State Park, where someone did an unmentionable deed in a upstanding porcelain place. Was excessive alcohol imbibery involved? Too much testosterone? Is the concept of "urinal" too obtuse? Who cares why the deed was done. It was nasty. It stank in there. Friends, the notion of trying to cram a urinal in the standard state park outhouse with a toilet is just stupid, and it invites stupidity. It takes a restroom that was barely wheelchair accessible in the first place, and forces some poor bastard to rub up against the urinal while he tries the maneuver his chair over to the toilet. To be fair, I'm not sure the restroom is intended to be wheelchair accessible, but it looks like it is trying hard to be, with wooden railings around the toilet. The women's outhouse was a little cleaner and it had no urinal.

- Justin Teerlinck

RESTROOM RATING: 2
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