In Europe there is an 'anti-sprinkle' movement, the goal of which is to encourage men to sit down when they pee, and thus avoid the sprinkle effect. Restrooms in all the countries across the continent have signs urging men to be thoughtful gentlemen and sit down when they do their business. My brother-in-law, a German lawyer, as with many European men, now sits down when he conducts his business. Because he's always been a thoughtful gentleman.

Ladies, don't get your hopes up because that's never going to happen in America. Men in the states are going to continue to stand, and they're going to continue to sprinkle, and you - I'm sorry to say - are going to continue to clean up these sprinkles. Because they won't do it themselves.

It's certainly a cultural thing as we see in the above example of my brother-in-law and all those other European men. Part of being a man here in America is that you stand when you urinate, since you are not a woman and women, we know, pee sitting down. Indeed there is something intrinsically powerful about peeing standing up and the more elevated you are the more powerful you feel. In fact, nothing feels more powerful than peeing off of a roof ... um, I've been told.

In the war of the toilet seat lids I have finally decided that toilet lids should both be down when the toilet is not being used. Wait, here me out, guys. I'm not betraying my gender - much. There are very good reasons to have the lids down, and none of them have to do with being nagged to death if you don't.

Number One: You don't want the dog drinking out of the toilet bowl. Don't have a dog? You might get one and it's good practice for you in the meantime so that you get into the habit. Or you might have a friend with a dog visit you unannounced, and you want to be prepared for that. By the way, if you have a really big dog, it should be both lids down with a brick on top of them. They find the cool water, perfectly positioned for them to drink from, irresistable - especially when their lazy master has forgotten to refill their water bowl.

Number Two: You can accidentally drop things into an open toilet. Do you like fishing your tooth-brush out of the toilet? Or for that matter, do you like fishing anything out of it at all?

Thought not.

Number Three: It's bad Feng Shui. Okay. I'm a little bit out of my element on this one, but as I understand it, Chi energy or the life force naturally flows towards water and you just don't want all of your Chi energy going down the toilet. It's bad, believe me. To counteract this you need to either have a growing plant on the back of your toilet (draws the life force up), or you need a bowl of rice. My choice was the plant, because if you have a bowl of rice on your crapper people think you've been eating rice in your bathroom, and that's kind of hard to explain away.

Number Four: Maybe this is just me, but I've always found an open bowl of toilet water kind of scary looking. Alligators or Norwegian Sewer rats could jump out of it at any time. And the water itself leads directly to the dark depths of the underworld and I'd just rather see it covered and not have to think about that.

Number Five: It actually is a polite thing to do for a woman, you know like holding a door for her, or pulling out a chair for her at a restaurant, or helping her put on her coat, or other polite things like that. Don't want to be polite? Fine. I just gave you four other perfectly sound reasons why you should do this, anyways.

If you do happen to be a man who lives alone and has no friends or dogs or visitor and never plans on having any of those ... well, I feel sorry for you. None of the above applies to you. But in that case, you really should get a dog because, Buddy, you really need a little companionship. Just make sure you get a small dog that can't get it's head into to that open toilet of yours.

Steve Sommers is the author of Breakfast with the Antichrist. Visit his Website at http://www.breakfastwiththeantichrist.com

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