Wrapped Urinals

Now I know you're probably thinking, "What the heck is this about, urinals for crying out loud... of all the idiot things to post on a blog"... but bear with me for a moment, there may be a bit of method to my madness.

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When I first walked into this restroom at a chateau in France heavily frequented by tourists, I was thinking, wow, if a tour bus shows up, there's going to be a long line outside the one hole turkish toilet in a stall in here, given that the urinals were all out of order. And then I thought, boy, someone went to alot of trouble here, putting up the red and white barriers, and then black plastic bags draped over each condemned porcelain receptacle... I mean, really, were they afraid people might try to pee from beyond the barriers to test their distance accuracy aptitude?

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But then it struck me... this is a work of art. There have been some well known artists who have had a penchant for wrapping up a variety of objects, from small to vast, and calling it art... which it may well be in general, who am I to judge, it certainly gets publicity in any case. One such artist is Christo Javacheff , who has done some simply amazing and wonderful wrappings along the line, which you can see some of by following the link here. His "Gates" in Central Park, New York was out of this world.

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I'm sure Christo had nothing to do with this men's restroom in France, but maybe some like-minded artist, decided to create a work called "Wrapped Urinals"... and here they are. Sometimes decorum deserves to be thrown to the four winds... and think how lucky you are to have seen them, thanks to the wonders of blogging. I'm quite sure no one else in France besides your demented blog host would have taken this photo ... Well ok, so it's not as photogenic as the Orange Gates in Central Park, NYC... but hey, sometimes in life you take what you get...

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And one other footnote to all this, if anyone is still reading here, a funny coincidence, I was talking to my friend Homer Stern just the other day, and he was saying to me, "You know, Owen, the way I see it, the human race is just about on its last gasp. The 20th century saw more monstrosities than any other period in history, on a giant, industrial scale in many cases, and collective humanity , at 7 billion and counting cannot continue raping the Earth indefinitely, before the entire business self destructs by imploding. We are already seeing many of the precursor warning signs. If there was an intelligent God out there somewhere, he would say, if you had an apple with a worm in it, you'd cut out the part with the worm. But if the whole apple was riddled with maggots and rotting through and through, well, you would put it in the trash and throw it out. Same thing with the Earth, Owen", he said. "It's nigh time for God to do a job on the entire Earth like Christo did on the Reichstag in Berlin, wrap the whole thing up in a big black plastic bag, and toss it out by that brick wall at the far end of the universe; let the inter-stellar trash truckers haul it away." This is what it might look like :

I said, "Jeez, Homer, don't you think that's a little drastic?" He said, "Well, maybe you're right, but I can't help starting to think that we have done some major damage to this poor old planet already, and if we don't find a way to curb our collective horrendous appetite soon, it's all going down the tubes to the proverbial toilet at the end of the line... Just like WH Auden said so beautifully some seventy years ago, in that poem quoted in the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral :

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"The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good."

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