There are people in the world — dangerous people — who are drunk with power (cough, cough, Cheney) but most of them are harmless little weenies whose sole purpose is to drive you nuts with their arbitrary rules, plus the obvious ones now chiseled in stone, so they'll have something to point at when they catch you. I, for one, won't be returning to my latest coffeshop review, Rohr's, not because the decor wasn't my taste and the wireless wasn't free, but because of their Ten Commandments, helpfully posted on the wall. You're basically walking into a nanny state: "Feet off the sofa! We are not a maid service: clean up after yourselves! No cursing!"

Even better, there's a separate list of bathroom rules taped to the toilet, and if the standard Rohr's code of laws isn't patronizing enough, check out Rules and Regulations... I'm sorry, I mean General Bathroom Tips #3 and 4.

Gee, thanks for the "tips," but I'm fully toilet trained and confident in my ability to use a bathroom without any retarded rhyming advice. I would've taken a picture of the non-bathroom related rules, but it turns out "no photography" is on the list.

A Bathroom of One's Own

I'm so looking forward to the day I get my own place, because between the IKEA catalog and last night, I've got so many awesome decorating ideas for having the most pimped-out bathroom on the East Coast, I can't wait to start going all Top Design carte blanche on my shower. I was at happy hour at this trendy Brazilian sushi weird-fusion place last night and I faked having to pee — turned out to be a big mistake, by the way, when I had to pee for real later. I go out and I don't think I'm the only one with a weird fascination over bathroom aesthetics. Maybe the news hasn't been passed down to gas station attendants and convenience store clerks, but some of us like our clean, private spaces in the middle of the hubbub. Hence the uber-chic switch-foggy glass doors, expensive British soap, and old dude handing out paper towels (that last one seems kind of overboard to me). And I don't even know what sort of paradise the women's room — or, uh, ladies' lounge — is. Probably have free mud baths or shiatsu massages or something in there.

Someone thinks the bathrooms at Rio 22 are something special because there's a whole web page devoted to them. And yeah, they're nice. Like, I would totally not be pissed off if the hostess sat my party in the handicapped stall rather than at a table. So here's what I learned:

First, the bathroom doesn't have to be some bright, pastel color. I don't know why white, or coral, or turquoise because the standard bathroom colors; it's almost like designers were going, "Now, what color would best complement the urine that didn't quite make it into the toilet?" I have to say that the dark walls and floor and the spot-directed halogen lights provide both the illusion that the room is larger than it is, and that you're somewhat sophisticated performing your bodily functions. Also, the buffed rocks in the sink; I guess you need to start off with some neutral base colors to pull this off, but they really turn washing your hands into a total Zen experience. I'm so doing this when I get my own place and totally making my friends jealous with their Western, mundane and materialistic hand-washing. Try to compete with that, organic soap and recycled paper towels!

But the best thing in the bathroom was the automatic toilet seat cover dispenser. You just wave your hand over the device and this plastic sheet snakes across the toilet, and I could play with that thing for hours and not get bored. It's really the best bathroom invention since the bidet. God, all this bathroom needed was the sexy-lady talking urinal and I could live in there.