2002-12-29 1:20 p.m.

Dave Marr and Andie and I went out to eat recently at a place called Pasta! in Palo Alto. The food was pretty good, and the waitstaff was actually all from Italy. Not that that is a good thing, as service in Italy moves at glacial speeds when compared with American service. But, I digress...

The food, decor, location, and even the waitstaff were all unspectacular when compared with the fantastically horrible smell in their restroom. It smelled like something that might have come out of someone's anus, if that person also happened to be a factory which specialized in the production of stink bombs, toxic waste, and lilac air freshener.

My first instinct was to sniff around the room and find the epicenter of the horrible odor. At first I thought that maybe the smell came from the garbage can. I stuck my face in the garbage can, and that was definitely not where the smell came from. It wasn't the sink or the drain in the floor, either.

Finally, I worked my way to the toilet. It had to be coming from the toilet. So, I did what any curious person would do: I got down on my hands and knees and stuck my face inside it and sniffed around.

It didn't exactly smell different from the rest of the restroom. And, it didn't smell worse. You must understand that the way this room smelled, It would not have been possible for any point in the room to actually smell worse. The inside of the toilet smelled stronger, though. Not much stronger, but enough for me to know that it was the epicenter of this cruel attack on my olfactory sense.

The toilet, and its surrounding restroom hell, was like an oracle into which one could see, well, smell the future. And, from what I could gather, in the future people only shoot gallons of rotting dog tumors and rancid goat meat out through their lilac�lubricated anuses like frothy garden�weasel ass fire�hoses of filth. And the future was here.

Once again, I did what I would like to think that anyone else would do in the same situation, even though I know quite well that I am probably the only one who would: I went back to my table and fetched my camera so I could go back and take a picture of it. How could I resist photographing such a powerful supernova of stench?

ATTENTION: Respirator recommended. The smell was sort of like having artificial lilac air freshener sprayed in your eyes a la "A Clockwork Orange" while bobbing for feces in a trough full of vomit.

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