CUT THE WETTING CAKE

New Mexico is pissed off about drinking and driving, so they came up with a sweet idea to send a message: Cake. But not just any cake. Urinal cake - the talking kind.

At $21 a pop, the state has ordered 500 urinal cakes that deliver a pre-recorded message designed to warn bar and restaurant patrons against drinking and driving. And on top of each cake is the state DWI slogan, "You drink, you drive, you lose."

NOW - Imagine for just a moment, if you will. Some drunk dude staggers into the bathroom to give the porcelain wall ornament one more shot when suddenly, from out of no where, a man's voice starts lecturing him on the perils of piloting while intoxicated.

The man freaks out, loses balance, and starts leaking all over the wall and floor. He presumes he is hallucinating, or perhaps even hearing the voice of the Almighty himself, which prompts him to head back to the bar for another drink. This, in turn, leads him right back into the bathroom for another round at the stand'n'go.

He enters slowly, peers around nervously, and swings in each stall door to be sure he is alone before finally unzipping for his final stream of consciousness. Confident in complete solitude, he stumbles up to the wall again and shoots a hot laser into the white dish, cutting sloppily into his wetting cake.

Again the voice mocks him, detailing the consequences of navigating buzzed. Alarmed, the man turns completely around, urinating wildly all over the slick tile floor and shouting for the menace to make himself known.

But now the voice is behind him.

He spins back around and eyes up the cake in the basin at his waist. He reaches in and angrily pries the preachy culprit from its foamy warm nest and hurls it hard at the opposite wall.

Just then, another patron swings open the rickety wooden door and catches a face-full of piss icing, spun in a flickering stream off a flying, talking plastic urinal cake. Tasting twice-filtered special export dribbling down his cheek, the surprise guest assumes an immediate state of rage and flies across the room at our would-be Olympic discus champ.

The two collapse in a puddle of tepid waste, rolling about heatedly, their clothes soaking up that evening's sterile chemical stew like a hungry sponge. A third patron steps through the threshhold in time to spy two men writhing about on the floor. He's so loaded he completely disregards the fracas and steps over to the nearest urinal to make a deposit. As he does so, a voice begins discussing the dangers of drinking and driving. The attacker on the floor hears this voice and thinks the guy at the urinal is lecturing him.

He scrambles to his feet, steps to the third man and runs his elbow hard in the back of the man's head. The original drunk, meanwhile, spies his opportunity to escape and bounds out the bathroom door. The aggressor hastily follows him out. The third man, dazed from the sudden blow he just received at the hands of a complete stranger, gains his faculties, zips up, and races out the door after the others. The first man jumps into his car and fishtails off. The second man drops his keys, recovers, unlocks his door and flies off down the road after the first. The third man stumbles out into the parking lot and sees the taillights heading off into the distance, so he hops into his car and joins pursuit.

Now we've got three dangerous drunkards ripping at insane speeds around curvy dark roads instead of responsibly weaving at 10MPH below the speed limit.

So I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury - is this conversational urinal cake a good idea?