Picking your wallet while you pinch a loaf

Back when video game demos were still on CD hot waxed to the cover of a games magazine, there was one for Theme Park from Bullfrog Productions. Similar to RollerCoaster Tycoon, you were the owner/proprietor of an amusement park. Rack up the cash money from the park patrons and you're on your way to winning in a game that didn't really have an endpoint, like most sims.

One simple tactic would be to price the chips and fries cheap and load them up with salt. But only enough as to make it taste better and not to smother them. Their mouth drying out, the customers would be in search of something to drink in order to quench their tricked thirsts. Of course, having turned off the bubblers, your other snacks stand would be selling soft drinks. At a very high price. Gouging like they do at cinemas back then and all through today.

If you're running a music or religious festival, or any gathering for that matter, the same kind of shady dealings apply.

Tired after fulfilling her vows to Lord Muruga at Batu Caves [during the Thaipusam festival], A. Jaya, 58, decided to use the toilet to freshen up. Little did she realise she would have to pay 50sen [roughly $0.15 AUD] to use the facilities.

Menon, Priya. "Devotees thronging Batu Caves put off by toilet fees"
The Star Online 19 January 2011

If you can't screw the money out of them before they hit the can, do what one council in Tampa Bay is trying and suck them dry after they've been.

The daughter of a Port Tampa woman who was socked with a $2,100 water bill doesn't agree with the city's explanation that a leaking toilet was at fault.

Johnson, Neil. "Daughter rejects city's theory behind high water bill"
The Tampa Tribune 19 January 2011

All cause and cash effect really. Lead the people to water and milk them for the privilege of using it.

If you're in the business of making anti-bacterial products, you do what the board and shareholders expect you to and run some study that will push people into looking toward your products for the cure. In this case, BioCote, makers of things anti-microbial.

It's probably not a bad idea to wash your hands after using an ATM. A recent British study found ATM pin pads were as contaminated as public toilets and the type of bacteria found was comparable.

Moos, Jeanne. "What do toilet seats and ATMs have in common?"
CNN/NECN 13 January 2011

Of course, use that stuff often enough and you create superbugs leaving all that anti-bacterial goop useless and in the end a little harmful. It's a good bet that any surface you don't own and don't keep to yourself will be smeared with germs and the like. Best walk into the world wearing a full body condom to be safe and sure.

Work the people long enough and you might just get all their money at every stage of play and pay.

No babies in the overhead compartments, please

The Mile High Club is that term for being "on the job" in mid-flight and leaving with a walk of shame as two people emerge tussled from the confines of the smaller than small toilet cubicle. That's all well and good for switching bodily fluids with another air traveller. And it's one thing to notice an elderly gent to walk into an airplane toilet and come out a skinny Asian man.

But then it gets really hairy altogether when it's another thing completely to see a pregnant woman go into the loo and walk out a whole lot lighter.

An aircraft cleaner found a fetus that was stuffed inside the trash bin of an Etihad Airways flight that arrived from Abu Dhabi late Monday evening. [...] [Aircraft cleaner Randy Ondo] was almost done with his cleaning chores and was collecting the garbage from the trash bin when he saw a big roll of tissue paper that was all bloodied up.

Becoming suspicious of its contents, Ondo inspected what was wrapped inside the tissue paper and discovered the lifeless male fetus.

Perez, Anjo. "Plane trash bin yields fetus"
Manila Bulletin 4 January 2011

Throw it back a week or so, the day after Boxing Day, another mother-don't-want-to-be does a very similar thing, but this time, before she ever boarded.

Dubai Police have called on the Interpol to help in arresting a woman from an African country on charges of strangling her newborn with the baby’s own umbilical cord at the Dubai Airport.

According to the police, the woman gave birth to the child in the toilet at Dubai International Airport early Thursday and proceeded to strangle the baby so the child wouldn’t cry, then dumped the body in a trash bin and left the country.

Al Sadafy, Mohammed. "Mother strangles baby with umbilical cord"
Emirates24|7 27 December 2010

What the second news item seems to elaborate on is the reason for strangling the child. It's very possible, given the outcome of it all, that the strangling was to kill the baby, getting rid of its only pathway to air.

That it couldn't cry was something you can only hint at. Without a woman sitting in the stall next, and who would most likely have egregiously ignored the goings-on, there's no telling what alternative reason behind the choking was.

Drunken blunders on the thunderbox

Watch enough old westerns and movies set around saloons and cowboys who wear only the smartest ironed clothes, you'll see the drunk tank pop up every now and then. Basically a holding cell in the local gaol where the inebriated and off their face get to spend the night to sober up. Free accommodation when the missus is having none of that.

Fine for the most part, but ramp it up to modern times and you have to make do and getting into a cell isn't as friendly an endeavour it was back then.

A drunk New Jersey man locked himself inside a portable toilet that required bolt cutters to free him, police said.

"Man locked in portable toilet overnight."
United Press International 4 December 2010

It might be cosy, but a porta-potty isn't the best place to fall asleep. Especially when you're drunk.

At least that drunk wasn't endangering anyone but the washing machine at the laundromat the next morning.

Nicholas Maday, 26, arrived intoxicated at a friend's house on A Street in South San Francisco just before midnight Sunday, grabbed the gun from a bedroom and fired it once while in the bathroom, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe.

Melvin, Joshua. "South San Francisco man pleads not guilty to bathroom shooting."
San Jose Mercury News 14 December 2010

Listening to a live round go off has got to be one of the more far out insta-sobering techniques. Doesn't work and you're left with a hole in the wall.

The metaphor is strong in the sober all the same as another man a month back squeezes one out of the same and not yet similar in a mood foreshadowing some other tight colon.

A 25-year-old Sheboygan man was charged Monday after allegedly firing a handgun into the floor of his upstairs apartment unit while seated on his toilet, sending a bullet into an occupied downstairs apartment.

"Man, 25, arrested after allegedly firing gun while on the toilet."
Sheboygan Press 29 November 2010

There's no need for wasting bullets, or water, when a fake courtesy flush will do.

Stakeouts are where the toilets all disappear

From the street, stuck in the car, keeping an eye on the place and the swishing is swilling a bottle of yellowing stuff. It's not long before the bottles in the car are all filled up.

There are times when it would be a nice and friendly gesture of insomnia if the people still up at 3am in the morning would be willing to allow you the use of their toilets. Washing your hands after going is a most pleasant feeling.