I received an angry reader email this week, which for the first time in my life didn’t involve Viagra, my Superbowl predictions, or a time share in the Balkans, so I thought I’d grant it some precious column time here. Concerned reader Munay Dubutu of the Bronx recently moved to these friendly shores from the decidedly unfriendly shores of Namibia, and is pissed off that his toilet water is spinning the wrong way. Though he has attempted to remedy this problem by purchasing a special spinning toilet, Munay finds the fact that his water now just goes straight down to be vaguely unsatisfying. How, Munay asks, has the government managed to control his water and where can he buy a gun? After I explained to Munay that guns are readily available on most New York street corners, I realized there were probably other poor, huddled mass-like readers out there wondering why water drains counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, yet clockwise in the pagan Southern Hemisphere.

I’m glad somebody finally asked this question, because I’m sick as a dog of listening to well-meaning momos give the incorrect answer in bars and at science symposiums. The reason for the bathtub drain (or toilet, or record player for that matter) switcheroo is because the earth itself rotates counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, and clockwise in the Southern. The government has kept this mostly a secret for years, to keep people from flocking to the equator to check this shit out in person. But it is nevertheless truthy. For this reason, crossing the equator has proved a dangerous proposition for travelers since the beginning of time, challenging daring souls to leap across the equator with the hope that they timed their jump well enough to end up in the part of the Southern Hemisphere they wanted to get to.

Since the earth rotates at 1,000 miles an hour in the Northern Hemisphere, and 1,200 mph in the Southern (slightly faster due to the bottom half of the earth being lighter), crossing the equator is similar to attempting to jump onto a train going 2,200 miles an hour, a daunting task in itself that has produced more than a few hobo pancakes. To make matters worse, timing your jump is always a bit of a roulette gamble, since entire countries are only lined up for a few minutes out of the day, plus you don’t want to jump into some other-hemisphere-fleeing douchebag who’s trying to jump across the opposite way at the same time. Coconut-sounding skull collisions and severely bruised egos often result, much to the glee of the audiences that gather at the most-popular equator crossings.

Complex systems have developed in equatorial nations to cope with Earth’s geological quirk, including the brave mailmen who hand off letters and packages across the divide, often suffering decapitative papercuts and parcel burns in the process. And a special prayer must be said for the unlucky souls who live on one side of the equator and work on the other, making the dangerous commute twice daily. Few can forget the story of the Brazilian meter reader who was late to work one day and carelessly jumped across the equator into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Thankfully, someone in Indonesia was able to throw him a life preserver and a hot dog several minutes later, and some relatives with a hook grabbed him the next day. But others are not so lucky, leading to a booming casket and wall-scraping business in most equatorial towns.

This phenomena is especially challenging for ships at sea, since the unwary sailor can easily shipwreck on a beach that wasn’t there a second ago, or sometimes even into downtown Singapore. Even when they do manage to time it right and hit the fat part of the ocean, ships still have to contend with the sudden 2,200 mph change in velocity and direction, which all throughout history has led to the kind of rollover fatalities the world wouldn’t see again until the Suzuki Samurai. There’s a very slim margin for error in crossing the equator in a boat: either you get the timing and angle just right and hold on for the 2,200 mph ride of your life, or you die very, very suddenly.

Even in the modern era, planes have difficulty compensating for the equatorial rotation shift. Say you’re late taking off from Heathrow because some tit had an expired salami in his luggage, on a flight to Ecuador. You try to make up some time by cutting in line on the runway and burning your special reserve tank of Dave’s Insanity Fuel, but still, by the time you get to where Ecuador should be, it’s the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shit. Then your navigator’s got to figure out the best way to get to Ecuador from the Congo, if you should just turn right or if it would be faster to hop back across the equator and fly the other way until Ecuador comes back around again. Then your navigator and your copilot get in an argument over which half is spinning which way that you have to settle by drawing a diagram and twirling your hands in opposite directions, which makes you nauseous and you crash in the Congo and are eaten by bush people. Government scientists believe this to have been the fate of most of the vessels lost in the famous “Bermuda Triangle.”

Law enforcement is especially difficult near the equator, since villains on the run can always leap across the equator to safety, much like screen-side warp zones in Pac-Man. Unless the felon spends the next 24 hours sitting in that very spot gloating, or comes back the next day to show a friend exactly where he outsmarted the fuzz, the police are unlikely to ever see him again.

Television ratings, employment rates, and sporting event attendance are also especially poor near the equator, since people in equatorial towns spend most of their time sitting in lawn chairs, watching the world whiz by at incredible speeds, and pointing out people they recognize. Some have even developed friendships with “other-siders” over the years, in spite of the limitation of only being able to shout one word to each other every day, usually “Hi!”

Now you know why your toilet water spins the way it does. The only question that remains is why you spend so much time staring into the toilet. For that answer, I refer you to a licensed professional.