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Apparently, this plaque was posted above the urinal in the bathroom of a store selling diamond engagement rings, reportedly a Spence Diamonds store in Vancouver:

Nice little bit of reverse psychology?

See at BoingBoing

Each year, Charmin sponsors a free public bathroom for New York City holidaygoers (previously). This year’s bathrooms at 142 West 42nd St feature a national theme, representing different iconic US locations (good luck figuring out what those locations are!).

But the big story this year and the big coup for Charmin is the grand opening was presided over by none other than Kim Kardashian, who may just be the most beautiful woman to ever preside over a bathroom grand opening. Sorry Kim, but that was totally meant to be a compliment!

Check out more pics of Kim and some fuzzy bears at The Superficial

Also look for Charmin to crown a King and Queen for the last few days of the year to welcome and/or creep out visitors to these bathrooms. More on that as it develops…

I have talked about BikeSnobNYC and his numerous contributions to bathroom etiquette previously (here, here and here). Today I have a good news/bad news situation.

Good News: BikeSnobNYC is at it again, using cycling as a metaphor to describe bathroom etiquette (Or is it the reverse? His blogging priorities are becoming increasingly unclear). He describes wheelsucking (aka sucking the wheel) thusly:

… it’s just rude–it’s like sidling up behind someone at a urinal and putting your hand on his shoulder, or even joining in uninvited and “crossing the streams.” … I said something along the lines of, “You shouldn’t sit on wheels like that” (in the same way you might say to the guy at the urinal, “Hey, you mind backing up a little bit?”)

Bad News: If he keeps it up, the immense popularity of BikeSnobNYC’s blog is likely to drive the IBCE right out of business.

PS: He’s 100% correct – you shouldn’t be doing any of those things!

The wonderful GigaG submitted an interesting story about some Excite employees meeting Bill Gates at a urinal while visiting Microsoft way back in 1995.

what is the appropriate bathroom etiquette? I had a massive internal struggle. Do I reach over the urinal barriers to extend a handshake to Bill? What would he do if I did?

Augh, no! It’s bad enough that a conversation with poor Bill was started, but shaking hands at a urinal? Come on, is there anybody that thinks this is a good idea?

I had complete urinal performance anxiety. I had not been able to pee up to this point. Nothing was happening in the presence of the man who brought us greatness like Microsoft Decathlon and the Blue Screen of Death.

I’ll bet! I hope Bill had better luck peeing after being interrupted this way. At least Microsoft apparently has the bathroom savvy to install urinal partitions…

Betsy writes the following:

And what about port-a-potties? Is it okay for random passersby to use the one in your front yard while your house is under construction? What is the protocol for evicting same passerby (timing is an issue here). Seriously, what about those guys who eat lunch right after using one?

That’s a tricky question. My immediate reaction was that using someone else’s construction port-a-potty is bad etiquette. The thing is though, bathroom etiquette is always a two way street. We’ve all been out and about when the sudden and desperate urge to go sets in. If it’s urgent, and if there are no other public bathrooms around, I think it’s okay to use that port-a-potty. But you’d better keep it clean! This is somebody else’s workplace bathroom after all.

Think of the alternatives – would you rather these passerby knock on your door for access to your guest bathroom? Oh, and the lunch thing? As long as they wash their hands Betsy, as long as they wash their hands…

As mouthpiece for the ICBE I’ve had the pleasure of appearing on the radio, in print, and even once on television over the last 15 years. It’s extremely rare that I actually get to sit down to a face-to-face interview though, but I was lucky enough to do just that with Randy Dotinga of The Voice of San Diego recently.

Over the course of the interview we covered a lot of ground. I think this is one of my favorite answers, in regards to why I originally started the ICBE:

What were you hoping to accomplish?

Obviously if I wanted to get rich or pick up chicks, it was a really bad idea. There was no reason it was a good idea, and it’s still probably not a good idea. But I can’t let go. I can’t stop.

Go there right now and read the whole thing. Seriously, it’s quite possibly my favorite interview ever.

I’d say don’t forget to check out the photo, but you can’t exactly miss it. And no, I don’t know what I was doing at the time.

A big thanks to Randy for looking me up, and thanks to Sam Hodgson who spent 30 hot, sweaty minutes with me in a bathroom in Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. (Don’t look at me that way, he was taking my picture, on the hottest November day on record in San Diego.)

If you are like me, then you’re fully aware that the New York Times exists, and is a reasonably well-regarded publication. However, if you’re like me you also don’t exactly read the New York Times on a regular basis, and so you may in fact, like me, have missed Bruce Feiler’s Family Matters column The Corner Stall where he featured none other than yours truly as part of a discussion on bathroom etiquette.

This is what I said:

Short of your wife going into labor, there’s really no good reason to be answering the phone in a public bathroom. Bathroom etiquette is about other people, and nobody wants to listen to your phone conversation.

Then there’s Dr. Richard Ling, professor of sociology at the IT University of Copenhagen and author of some book, which is presumably what merited his opinion here:

If I slip into the boys’ room at a dinner party to text my wife that I’ll be late or to check whether my daughter has returned from the movies, Dr. Ling said, I deserve credit for not disrupting my hosts’ dinner party, while also reinforcing my own family ties. In this situation, my latrine correspondence has clearly improved society, not harmed it.

A true modern-day hero if there’s ever been one.

Don’t forget to read the full column here

Jim makes incredible pancakes for his daughter, and because this is the year 2010 he documents them on a blog. You could probably already have guessed that this one was our favorite here at the ICBE…

Awesome Toilet Pancake

If you’re a man, then you’ve probably seen, but never really thought about, urinal screens dozens and dozens of times. Urinal screens, in case you are unfamiliar, are those little plastic things that go over the drain in a urinal and serve to prevent large items from going down the drain and/or keep a urinal cake in place.

Well your lack of though on the matter of urinal screens is what separates you from Carlos Segura, founder of Segura Inc. and designer of a series of urinal screen dingbats. In the artist’s own words:

The idea came from a simple glance at the obvious. With nothing to do while taking care of “business,” being aware of my surroundings has always turned into a positive. In this case, looking at the urinal filters gave birth to a set of dingbats.

What’s more, thanks to the fine folks at Nonsek, you can now create and purchase a fine t-shirt of your very own covered with these urinal filter dingbats!

That’s right – why walk around in a plain old boring t-shirt when you can sport something like this?!

$18 for a custom urinal screen shirt – not bad! Want to make your own? Just look over there on the left, select Peepod by Carlos Segura and fire away!

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Allow me to be the first to confess: I don’t really get a lot of art. But I do know a cool picture of a bathroom when I see one…

Woman Undone – Urinal by Michael Meyersfeld