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Wrong: Gents’ restrooms with a urinal and a toilet in the same room

First, you must see a picture.

Restroom of confusion
Restroom of the damned

Taking this picture, I need you to know, turned out to be one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do recently in the name of art. There was no lock on the door, and just as I had squeezed into the corner with my camera and was framing up the shot, a gentleman burst in. We stood frozen, each as surprised as the other, for several seconds. He held the door open so that I could leave, and so I left. We exchanged no words. I came back later.

So, here we have a urinal and a toilet, sat next to each other in the restroom. There is a lock on the door. Perhaps a helpful American can fill me in on the etiquette here. Do I lock the door if I’m intending having a number two in the toilet, but leave it open if I’m having a number one in the urinal? If I walk in and someone is using the urinal, am I allowed to pee in the toilet, or is it strictly reserved for number twos? Is it acceptable for me to drop my trousers, mutter a cheery “good evening” and sit down for a crap? May I sing?

Of the various possible situations that this special restroom configuration offers, I have so far only come across one instance of dual occupancy, and that was when I was having a pee in the urinal (having left the door unlocked) and someone else came in and had a pee in the toilet. This, I have to admit, was something of a relief. Oh, and there was that time when I was taking the photo.

Wrong: Impossible banking transfers

America, as we all know, is a country which loves technology. When internet access came through the telephone, America had free local phone calls and a permanently connected population. Some years passed, the rest of the world got free local calls and so America got broadband. The entire country was alive with clever wires beaming pictures of naked ladies to countless dimly-lit homes.

Americans do everything online. The coke dealer who hangs around at the end of the road probably has a web site. You can pre-order your wrap, request how much you’d like it cut with baking powder, pay via a credit card and probably have the stuff delivered via Twitter.

Well, my furry friend, one thing Americans do not do online is transfer money from their bank account to someone else’s goddamned account with a different bloody bank. I wasted a good hour of my life faffing around on First Tech Credit Union‘s internet banking site trying to find where it was I clicked to send money to other people, only to eventually discover that this is impossible. Impossible, you hear. It’s impossible to transfer money from one bank to another. Perhaps I should send a cheque, they said. A cheque! What is this, 1860? And I suppose you expect me to write on it using a pen? I’d have to buy one especially! I don’t even know how to draw letters any more!

Right: Landing on the moon

If I could put this one in bold, I would, as it’s possibly the most spectacular thing the Americans have ever done.

To me, landing on the moon was always something humans had done ages ago, and barely even in colour. I knew my parents had lived through the event but they never implied that it was an important part of their lives – it wasn’t nearly as important as, say, that time my great-grandfather drove his car through the back of the garage by mistake.

A while back I read Andy Chaikin’s splendid book, A Man on the Moon. The book is an amazing account of the Apollo programme and the moon landings – Andy Chaikin is British, so it’s pleasantly devoid of chants of “USA! USA!” and trite tales of how Neil Armstrong’s dog fell in love as soon as he landed, or similar such Independence Day-esque bollocks. It’s just an honest account of an extraordinary feat of mankind.

The extraordinary feat, if it can be summarised, was this. In 1959, America had no rockets other than missiles. In 1969, they landed someone on the moon, had them potter around for a while poking at stuff and brought them back again. Of course there are all sorts of technological wonders going on here, but perhaps the most interesting part of this is in the numbers. The moon is 385,000km from earth. That is one fuck of a long way, whether you have a rocket or not. In 2005-dollars, this programme cost the taxpayer $140bn. That is the entire GDP of Pakistan and represents a thousand dollars for every American citizen. One fifth of the world population watched the live transmission of the first moonwalk. At its peak, 400,000 people were directly employed by the Apollo programme.

Every so often, we as human beings need these sort of dangerous, expensive, unjustifiable follies to be brought down upon our country by those in power. We need this to feel like we’re progressing as a species, even if on most days we are more worried about traffic and healthcare. Responsibility to the people through democracy makes things like this harder – my ancestors will sadly not be touring Castle Obama a thousand years down the line – but Kennedy proved that it doesn’t make it impossible. When the people have a genuinely inspirational common goal, a nation can unite behind it and enjoy a collective euphoria and sense of purpose so splendid that they hadn’t realised it existed.

It strikes me that the Kennedy-esque aura that surrounds Obama right now and the downturn of the economy is going to leave a situation ripe for a “grand plan” when America’s finances start to pick up.Once he’s pulled out of Iraq and turned it into a new bloody dictatorship, the American people are going to be clamouring for something less horrific and more exciting to pull together and spend money on. Ten years seems like a good watermark (it worked for Kennedy) but what to do? Tallest building? Man on Mars? Zero dependence on fossil fuel?