Pris's Health Update (and Toilet Technology Proposal)

First of all, my mental state is frustrated. I'm using a public access computer with the loathsome "time minder" gadget, which forces everybody to get up and play musical chairs whether or not anyone else even wants to use a computer. The computer's supposed to block cookies, but it is accepting cookies that keep me logged in to Blogspot and Yahoo. It is not, however, holding my place at lis.virginia.gov, which doesn't even seem to have a mechanism for skipping through the pages of House Bills I've already read and going straight to the Senate Bills. No "go to page 14": you have to wait for each page to load, scroll down, and load the next page. Worraworraworra...

Physically, I'm feeling much less draggy and bleary-eyed than I was over the weekend. I had thought the dragginess and bleariness might have been part of an allergy reaction I was having last week, but at the public computer center I've learned that strep infections, featuring conjunctivitis or "pink eye," have been rampant at local schools. A school that announced a snow schedule yesterday (Gate City didn't get any snow, but some places did) ended up closing because 99% of the students had called in sick. I inherited resistance to these bacteria and rarely have any positive symptoms after exposure, but often get that draggy fighting-the-flu feeling for a few days.

However, needless to say, some nerd had gone to school and wanted to spend the rest of the day at the computer center, and plopped down three feet away from me. The nerd was sniffling. I inherited no resistance to rhinovirus. I don't know whether the nerd was shedding live virus, or was suffering from food or mold allergies. So now I don't know whether I'm carrying virus or not. I don't feel ill; I'm sharing this for the benefit of friends who are older and/or immune-compromised after having taken antibiotics.

Gross-out alert! Stop reading here if you feel squeamish...

Meanwhile, during this last round of musical chairs, I took a bathroom break. Public bathrooms do not provide adequate facilities for the actual baths some of us need. I feel a need to share this fact about being legally White. Asian-Americans say we stink because of our unclean habits, i.e. not Doing Number Three immediately after Doing Number Two. They are right. I've been smelling unwashed White bodies all week, and they're disgusting. Granted, it's not easy to leave the toilet stall, go to the sink, extract soap and water in such a way as to remove the odor-causing bacteria, go back into the toilet stall, and clean up, without getting odor-causing bacteria into our clothes, but it can be done if we make the effort.

Meanwhile, I was uncomfortably aware that yesterday a user of this bathroom allowed a key to drop out of a pocket into a public toilet. Well, evidently enough solids had already been flushed to show that the key hadn't blocked the pipes, despite the fact that this computer center is also used by some of those Sick Greens who try to save water by not flushing all liquids and flushing as many times as necessary to get rid of solids. I'm glad, of course. Water-flush toilets are very nasty but sometimes it's necessary to use one...

I'd like to share one modest proposal for improving the sanitary condition of the average American, who imagines that dry paper removes odors, is accustomed to his or her own personal odor, and goes around contentedly inflicting that odor on others. Most of the time, when a water-flush toilet is used, a very small amount of water is necessary to remove liquids from the toilet and deodorize the user. We don't want to go back to wasting gallons of water every time. However, sometimes extra water is necessary. How difficult would it be to build into toilets a little flexible hose that allowed some of this water, air-pressurized for maximal efficiency, to be directed over the hands and other parts of the user that need immediate washing? And then stick a little soap dispenser onto the wall?