Michigan officials fight drunk driving with talking urinal cakes

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120629/OPINION03/206290341/Michigan-officials-fight-drunk-driving-talking-urinal-cakes?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE


Talk about your captive audiences!

In an effort to cut down on drunken driving, the state is distributing the totally awesome named Interactive Urinal Communicators to some bars, restaurants and other drinkaterias in Wayne, Bay, Ottawa and Delta counties.

Yup, talking urinal cakes.

Four hundred of the cakes will be distributed to 200 eateries prior to July Fourth, said Anne Readette, spokeswoman for the Office of Highway Safety Planning, a division of the Michigan State Police.

"We're doing this to draw attention to Fourth of July drunk driving enforcement," Readette said.

"We want people to be safe and make responsible decisions."

No joke: The company behind the product is Wizmark, a Crownsville, Md., outfit that bills itself as the only company in the world to produce interactive urinal cakes. Some sing and flash lights.

(Please resist the urge to envision a cake screaming: "I'm melting, I'm melting.")

Actually the cakes offer a message that is short, sweet and entirely nonjudgmental: "Listen up. That's right, I'm talking to you. Had a few drinks? Maybe a few too many?

"Then do yourself and everyone else a favor: Call a sober friend or a cab. Oh, and don't forget to wash your hands."

In a way the cakes, which are activate by motion and not moisture, are a brilliant move due to "Guy Rules," the unwritten but unalterable codes that guide men's social behavior for every event in life.

Really, really high on the list is that dudes never, ever look or talk to the guy on either side of the urinal.

Guys are limited to looking down or staring straight ahead (never up, if you're really hammered you might fall over backward, which would break another important GR.)

The state also took into account that the last stop most guys make before leaving a bar is to the men's room.

The cakes run about $21 each, last for about three months (man, that is a lot of rain) with the tab picked up by federal traffic safety funds.

First prediction: Somebody, somewhere will inevitably reach in and (ewwww) steal one of the cakes.

Second prediction: You won't find this in any "Pure Michigan" advertisement.