Amidst my normal beer blog reading list, I encountered some information about public enemy number one in England: urinating on private property.

This great article describes the issue pretty well. As it turns out, public facilities are in short supply in areas, and public venues that are open late, like pubs, don’t allow non-customers to walk in and use toilets. So the casual pub-crawler may get stuck in a situation where the only way to relieve themselves without making a mess of their outfit is to meander to the nearest unlit alley, doorstop, etc…

Amusingly, in the comments of that article lies a link to this genius idea: the Urilift. From the brief article, it sounds like it is a big urinal (like found in sports venues) that is open to the air, discretely located behind a wall (so as not to be public), and coming up out of the ground (so it can be “stowed away” under the street when not in use). I think I might be intimidated by a public bathroom like this, but less so than by a porta-john.

Interestingly, if you search for the title of this post, “piss drunk”, in Google, the first link is to a demented little Flash game. It isn’t quite as addictive as this one, but is still kind of fun.

The latter game, Home Run 2004, circled via e-mail around my office for a bit. Someone told me the record was 82 meters. I found that hard to believe as it only took a couple of casual tries for me to reach 87 (which means someone out there has probably gotten 8000…).