When Ya Gotta Go, Ya Gotta Take A Zappin'

the city of Guelph where Carin and I live has been dealing for several years with the growing problem of the weekend bar crowd not bothering to find bathrooms and pissing or worse all over the downtown. One of the solutions, at least for a few weeks over the summer, was installing outdoor urinals or pissoirs as the media took to calling them in easy to find locations in the hopes that people would use them instead of the storefronts of local shop owners. I'm not sure how well it worked, but given that they were removed earlier than expected I'd guess not well. It's too bad, it was far from the worst idea I'd ever heard. it would have been nice if they were actual portable toilets so that women could use them too, but that seems neither here nor there at this point.

But if the city is looking for the next great weapon in the battle against bodily fluids, I have a suggestion. Do what Irish businessman John O'Connor is about to start doing.

Having had it up to here with cleaning urine and crap off of his sidewalk and out of the inside of his store on really bad nights, the owner of Custy's Traditional Music Shop is taking matters into his own hands and putting his electrical skills to good use.

Frustrated and angered by the flood of vandalism, a friend gave him an electric box with a cable coming from it and five wires.

They spread across the pavement immediately in front of his shop and will give anyone who comes near it an electric jolt.

"The wires are on the ground where I'm greeted every Monday morning with pools of their urine, mounds of their faeces," he said.

"You can see it (wires), it's pretty obvious what's there. There are signs everywhere.

"Last Monday morning the place was destroyed. Urine had seeped into the door jam. I was greeted by a flood of urine inside on the carpet and lino, I had to clean it up for about an hour."

This would be perfect for Guelph. Not only would it be fabulously entertaining for those of us with sense to watch, but the city wouldn't even have to spend the money on designing an expensive educational campaign. All they would have to do is licencethis.

Hopefully there will be updates on how O'Connor's little experiment is going, and they'd better not be updates that include the stupid government stepping in and ruining it on the grounds that we have to protect imbeciles from themselves.