Male Restroom Etiquette made the front page of Digg today (Thank you, R.L.!). Just hit 500 diggs; I confess I’m a digg noob… is 500 good? Seems to be leaderboard levels today, could just be a slow weekend.

Fortunately for my bandwidth, the link which was dugg was the YouTube page, though I imagine a good number of folks will be over here to snatch up the much crisper high quality DivX version. So to those of you who have found your way here via Digg and YouTube… welcome!

The vast majority of the feedback has been positive; while some are puzzling over a restroom scenario that could turn violent, most are just getting a good laugh out of the whole thing, which of course was the purpose. But a couple disturbing things have come up in the comments threads.

First, I had a bit of an embarrassment which I’d taken great pains to avoid: a custom content creator was apparently left out of the credits. The fantastic custom grafitti you see near the restroom entryway was created by fw190a8, an accomplished designer who is part of the TSR Artists Alliance over at The Sims Resource. I inadvertently attributed his grafitti as part of a different TSR collection. I’ve contacted him privately to apologize and make things right. Check out his custom content if you get a chance; some really terrific stuff including an amazing looking Community Library lot.

On the YouTube comment thread, someone made a vague comment that the film’s ideas were “stolen from MADDOX.” And over on the Digg thread, someone insists the second half of the film is lifted, “almost word for word,” from Dave Barry’s Complete Guide To Guys. The Maddox comment is annoying in its ambiguity, but I researched it. I’m kind of surprised I’d never heard of Maddox, given how well-known he is. His book, published in 2006, is called The Alphabet of Manliness, and sounds rather funny. I’ve never read it, nor have I read Dave Barry’s book, though I’ve always enjoyed reading his columns.

In any case, the source material which inspired this screenplay is from two nodes at Everything2.com, written by Andy Emmerich (the urinal choices bit) and someone with the handle of Goat Attack (the other rules). Andy’s node was published at E2 in June of 2000… Dave Barry’s book was published in September of that year (2000), so unless the content was part of a column before that book publication, there’s no way anything was stolen there. Goat Attack’s node, however, was written in November of 2000. So it’s conceivable that he bought Barry’s book right when it came out, and then went to the trouble of putting that text online claiming it as his own. I find this hard to believe, and impossible to verify without seeing Barry’s book. But I concede it is possible.

In any case, my screenplay was based on this E2 source material, and apart from a catchy phrase here and there, nothing was transcribed without modification. The screenplay was revised multiple times to convey a more consistent voice, and was completed in about February of 2006. So it’s not “lifted word for word” from anything.

Now the ideas in general certainly existed before I presented them. I don’t see anything controversial about that. Maybe, yes, if the point of the film was to establish myself as the Ayatollah of Bathroom Behavior. I am seeking no such title.

I wanted to present the ideas in an original way, and to that end I think I succeeded. I guess I’ll leave it at that.