Wee frees

I was struck by a particular phenomenon the other day while browsing through flickr and encountering this delightful-looking chap engaging free-spiritedly in his ablutions:


It was the appearance of signs such as this positioned above toilets:


At first I assumed it was some weird, one-off occurrence, but then I saw more -- and of different designs, too:


There is clearly a growing global conspiracy to stop men from peeing while standing up and, instead, to make us pee like a girl...


Here's yet another design of sign -- I love the artful variations (how much should I show of the bollocks? How far into the U-bend should the pee be shown flowing?):


This may be related to another annoyance commonly expressed by women, about men peeing on the seat:


I confess that men do sometimes do this, but that makes it all the more strange that women also insist that men put the seat down on the toilet. Surely if men always left the seat up, women would be assured that we had not peed on it?

Then again, I can understand women's apprehension given the exuberant self-absorption with which some men approach this simple task:


But, as this next sign shows, toilet etiquette appears to be becoming ever more rule-bound:


Personally I long for the days when men can pee free, when we can take pleasure in waggling our willies around in the breeze and comparing the strength of our flow with our other manly chums:


God, I must have been so bored when browsing through flickr.

Sorry about all that.


PS: Ha! Here's another one I found this morning -- from Germany:


I think this is very clear evidence indeed of the existence of a vast conspiracy...