“Hello. This is your urine speaking.”

The state of New Mexico paid $21 each for talking urinal deodorizer cakes and has put them in men’s rooms in bars and restaurants across the state.

No, I am not kidding. Note: “When a man steps up, the motion-sensitive plastic device says, in a woman’s voice that is flirty, then stern: “Hey, big guy. Having a few drinks? Think you had one too many? Then it’s time to call a cab or call a sober friend for a ride home.”

Time out. Okay, is it just my peri-menopausal sensitivity that I am gaggingly outraged that a man is listening to a flirty woman’s voice coming from something that he is peeing on? And she’s calling him “big guy”?

The recorded message ends, but this time the woman’s voice is “stern”: “Remember, your future is in your hand.”

Let me think. No. What is in his hands is a part of his anatomy that too many men already think is the future for too many women.

The article posted on MSN news goes on, ” (New Mexico Transportation) Department spokesman S.U. Mahesh said the bathroom is a perfect place to get the message across. In the restroom, “guys don’t chitchat with other guys,” he said. “It’s all business. ”

So, while Mr. Drunk Man is holding his future in his hands, taking aim at a floating deodorized target, and squinting to read the message, he’s being nagged by some nameless woman about having too much to drink. Of course that will make him want to stop.

But, he is able to do all this because he is not, after all, “chitchatting” with other guys. Doing his business, according to Mahesh, is “all business.” Sure. Listening to a voice from the toilet is the epitome of Fortune 500.

Mahesh goes on to say, “We’ve got their total attention for 10 to 15 seconds.” Yes, the total attention of a man who is, wait, drunk. Baby Einstein DVDs hold my two-year-old granddaughter’s attention thirty times longer than that.

Can these devices distinguish between drunk pee and sober pee? Are they able to calculate the age of the person peeing? Some unsuspecting seven-year-old, out to dinner with the fam, may experience a lifetime of bladder control problems after one trip to the potty.

How about this instead? Drunk man goes to the bathroom. Floating in the urinal is a glob of mercury. He starts to pee which activates the glob of mercury, which then materializes into an outstretched arm with an open hand. He then hears the voice of Arnold Schwareznegger, a la The Terminator, say, “I have your future in my hands. Call a cab, get sober, or you won’t be back.”

Now that’s worth chitchatting about. Right, ladies?