Regulatory flow invites national "pee" party!

I'm pissed.

Earlier tonight I heard about a wonderful new drug-law aid called the Whizzinator:

The WHIZZINATOR© is an easy to conceal, easy to use urinating device with a very realistic prosthetic penis. It has been extensively tested and proven to work under real-life conditions!

The WHIZZINATOR© is designed to be comfortably worn as an undergarment for extended periods of time!

Used with our organic heat pads, it is GUARANTEED to maintain body temperature for EIGHT HOURS! And our quality production and materials assures you that the WHIZZINATOR© will let it flow, again and again, anytime, anywhere you need it!

How wonderful (I thought) to live in a still relatively free country, where willing sellers can still sell even zany contraptions like these to willing buyers.

The-Whole-Kit.jpg

But just as I learned about this wonderful new technology, I discovered that our nation's lawmen have gotten themselves quite lathered over prosthetic penises:

WASHINGTON, May 11 (Reuters) - A life-like prosthetic penis called the Whizzinator and other products promising to help illegal drug users pass urine tests provoked U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday to take legal action with subpoenas of manufacturers.

Lawmakers objected to attempts to circumvent drug tests with products such as The Whizzinator, a fake penis that can provide a flow of clean urine "again and again, anytime, anywhere you need it!" according to the Web site www.whizzinator.com.

A congressional subcommittee voted to subpoena the owner of Puck Technology of Signal Hill, California, the company that makes the Whizzinator. The panel also voted to subpoena the owners of Health Choice of New York City and Spectrum Labs of Cincinnati, two companies that lawmakers said also were suspected of selling products aimed at circumventing workplace drug tests.

The owners were required to provide financial and operational records by Monday and to appear at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

"These companies seek through deception to make a buck by violating our trust and compromising our security," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight and investigations panel.

"It is a risk we simply cannot tolerate. This panel will uncover how widespread these products are and recommend the necessary steps to end their use," Whitfield said in a statement.

A Republican? Why do they always seem to be Republicans?

Where are the good South Park Republicans when we need them?

All this is is a glorified dildo with a harness and a tube. If dildos can be sold for the purpose of sexual gratification, I don't see why they can't be sold for other reasons:

  • 1. To help pee-shy men pee in public places;
  • 2. To help a variety of men and women achieve the fulfillment of their sexual fantasies, by helping them overcome sexual pee-shyness.
  • 3. To help women make a political statement by challenging the traditionalist view that they are incapable of using urinals.
  • 4. As a teaching aid for parents and teachers.
  • 5. As a way of protesting the nation's ever encroaching drug laws by deliberately making a mockery of them -- especially by drug free citizens with clean urine.
  • 6. As a constitutionally protected penis parody device. (It should be noted that political parody and mockery are protected by the First Amendment.)
  • (As for the owner of the company, he's invoked the Fifth Amendment.)

    For what it's worth, I have long been on record against penis control of any kind -- especially federal penis control. This is even worse, because it's federal control of virtual penises! (I'm reminded of a term I used in this blog not terribly long ago: "facsimiles of archaic penises.")

    How would we explain this situation to the founding fathers? Well.....

    First the Congress passed laws purporting (under powers hitherto unknown) to grant federal government jurisdiction over the physical and chemical substances Americans could put in their very bodies. But not enough people obeyed them so eventually the Congress, in incremental stages, made these laws ever more draconian. But still people did not obey. So the Congress encouraged and started a national campaign consisting of the coercion of citizens to share with the government their natural fluids (by the addition of same into paper cups) so that in this way, tests could be performed to determine whether or not those substances which Congress disapproved could be found in the people's fluids. The people were not keen on allowing that with which their creator had endowed them to be probed and monitored by swarms of officers sent hither and yon to harass our people and drain out their substance! So the various entrepreneurs among them offered for modest fees a way to protect the peoples' natural endowments by means of devices to disguise and hide them and their bodily fluids from the prying eyes of the bureaucrats who had been sent hither -- instead substituting for their natural endowments certain man-made devices quite cleverly contrived to resemble that with which they'd been Endowed by their Creator, and which, by Disguising the people's Natural Fluids, did imitate cunningly the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God so as to thwart and evade the evil whims of aforesaid bureaucratic swarms employed by the usurpers and tyrants now engaged in the disgraceful plundering of those remnants of Republican freedom once considered the People's Birthright.....

    Who among our founders would have believed such a thing possible?


    UPDATE: In other urine news, a prisoner was strapped down and repeatedly subjected to 50,000 volt shocks because of his refusal to give a urine sample:

    ORLANDO, Fla. - A police officer twice used a Taser stun device on a drug suspect who was restrained to a hospital bed because the man refused to give a urine sample to medical staff, authorities said.

    Antonio Wheeler, 18, was arrested Friday on a drug charge and taken to an emergency room after telling officers he had consumed cocaine, police said.

    Because Wheeler said he had used the drugs, Florida Hospital officials wanted a urine sample. A police affidavit said Wheeler wouldn't provide a sample on his own, so workers tried to catheterize him to get one.

    The police document said Wheeler was handcuffed to a hospital bed and then secured with leather straps after he refused to urinate in a cup. When medical staff tried to insert a catheter to get the sample, Wheeler refused and began thrashing around, the affidavit said.

    At one point, police officer Peter Linnenkamp reported, he jumped on the bed with his knees on Wheeler's chest to restrain him. When Wheeler still refused to let the catheter be inserted, Linnenkamp said he twice used his Taser, which sends 50,000 volts into a target.

    "After the second shock (Wheeler) stated he would urinate and calmed down enough to be given the portable urinal," Linnenkamp wrote.

    Apparently, Amnesty International is investigating:
    Said Amnesty International USA spokesman Edward Jackson: "If this had taken place in China, it would be an egregious violation of human rights, and the public would be outraged.

    "I hope that they don't allow the fact that it happened on U.S. soil deter from the fact that this may very well be a case of torture." (Via G. Gordon Liddy.)

    Well, at least it was Orlando Florida, and not Abu Ghraib....

    posted by Eric on 05.19.05 at 10:28 PM





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    Comments

    Poor Tom Sizemore got busted using the Whizzinator a few months ago. A spokesman gig could be on the horizon.

    Logical Meme   ·  May 20, 2005 01:25 AM

    In all seriousness (well, sort of) ... aren't these really the equivalent of radar detectors ... well, a sexy radar detector ... in that they are a now-lawful device that exists solely to perpetrate and disguise an illegal activity. In which case, the correct response to those who would ban these items is:

    SO FREAKIN' WHAT??

    Or, alternatively: WHAT'S THE BIG FREAKIN' DEAL???

    Free society, y'know. There's a great line from the U.S. Supreme Court in Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Association, 489 U.S. 602 (1989): "Urination is among the most private of activities." Yes, our Supreme Court said this, albeit in a dissenting opinion. My favorite Thurgood Marshall quote.

    This should include private use of the Whizzinator, don't you think?

    retrofuturistic   ·  May 20, 2005 02:26 AM

    I agree completely that urination is among the most private of activities.

    But I'm sure that sooner or later, some modernist will say something about the stream of commerce.

    If they do ban these things, I predict an outsourcing of virtual penises. But I'll say this: when fake penises are outlawed, only outlaws will have fake penises!

    Eric Scheie   ·  May 20, 2005 07:29 AM

    ...and life descends one step further down the tunnels of pure farce...

    Beck   ·  May 20, 2005 09:35 PM

    Unbelieveable.

    It would never have occurred to me that they actually stood in the same room with you while you filled the cup. What about those with shy bladders?

    (Re: the update... is there any reading by which Officer Linnenkamp didn't admit to aggravated assault? So very many other things wrong as well -- when he did give the urine sample, surely the result is priviliged, no? Without an explicit court order, how could any hospital worker attempt to catheterize a patient against that patient's explicitly stated wishes?)

    Clint   ·  May 21, 2005 04:06 AM

    They will never get my precious bodily fluids.

    Urinalysis defies review!

    Eric Scheie   ·  May 24, 2005 08:00 AM

    Remember that old adage about success in business?

    "Find a need. Then fill it."

    J. Case   ·  May 26, 2005 09:04 PM


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