Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader

by Michael Brunsfeld

  —Associated Press

  In the weightlessness of space, an astronaut’s heart actually shrinks.

  GANJA GRANNY

  “Meet Molly Williams. The 78-year-old West Virginia woman may have the distinction of being America’s oldest pot dealer. She was nabbed last week on felony drug charges after state police investigators executed a search warrant on the woman’s home and discovered two pounds of marijuana (divided for distribution in plastic baggies) stashed in a grocery bag at the ‘bottom of a deep freeze.’ Williams’s boyfriend, 72-year-old Jack White, told cops that the pot was his old lady’s. She now faces 15 years in prison.”

  —The Smoking Gun

  ORGAN-IZED CRIME

  “The boy thought his grandmother was taking him to Disneyland, but Russian police say she had other plans: to sell her grandson so his organs could be used for transplants. Police in Ryazan, 125 miles southeast of Moscow, said Saturday that they arrested a woman after they were tipped that she was trying to sell her grandson to a man who was going to take him to the West. There his organs were to be removed and sold, a Ryazan police officer said. After a surveillance operation, police moved in to arrest the woman, who was being aided in the scheme by the boy’s uncle. They expected to get about $70,000. When asked how he could sell his nephew, the uncle replied: ‘My mother said that it is none of my business, he is her grandson.’”

  —Washington Post

  GRANDMADAM

  “Lindenwold, New Jersey, police made a surprising discovery when they busted the alleged madam of a prostitution ring. The woman running the show was an 80-year-old grandmother.

  “Authorities arrested Vera Tursi last month during a sting operation to crack down on prostitution rings posing as legal escort services. Tursi admitted her role in the business, saying she took it over a few years ago from her daughter, who had died. Tursi said she needed money to subsidize her Social Security checks.

  “Undercover police first began to wonder about the age of their suspect when they called the escort service as part of their sting operation. They said she seemed to have difficulty breathing.”

  —CNN

  World’s largest active volcano: Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

  APOUJRAD

  Another Page of Uncle John’s Random Acronym Definitions.

  ISBN: International Standard Book Number. Every published book has a unique 10-or 13-digit number to identify it to librarians and book sellers. (It’s listed on the bar code.)

  NASCAR: National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing.

  SRO: If all the seats at a play or concert are sold out, the venue might let you stand in the back of the hall. That’s called Standing Room Only.

  Gestapo: Germany’s state police in World War II, it’s an abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, which means “secret state police.”

  XXX and OOO: Added at the end of a letter, the Xs symbolize kisses; the Os mean hugs. It probably originated in the Middle Ages, when illiterate people would sign an X for their name and then kiss the paper as a sign of good faith.

  A.M. and P.M.: Ante Meridiem, Latin for “before midday.” P.M. means Post Meridiem, or “after midday.”

  B.C.: Before Christ. Describes years before the modern era of history. B.C. has fallen out of favor in academic circles and has been replaced by the politically correct B.C.E., or “Before Common Era.”

  A.D.: Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of our Lord,” used to denote time after the life of Christ. The politically correct term now used is C.E., or “Common Era.”

  MiG: The name of the Cold War–era Soviet fighter jet is short for Mikoyan-Gurevich, the name of the manufacturer.

  C-SPAN: It stands for Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network. (C-SPAN broadcasts mostly Congress and Senate sessions.)

  VIN: Vehicle Identification Number. It’s a 17-digit code used to identify cars.

  3M: The consumer goods company (they make Post-Its and Scotch-Guard) used to be called Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company—three Ms became 3M.

  Number-one reason Americans visit the emergency room: Stomach pain.

  LEMONS

  Just about everyone has owned an unreliable car. Uncle John’s was a 1979 Triumph Spitfire that caught fire one time when he drove it home from the mechanic. But that piece of junk was nothing compared to these losers.

  THE STUTZ BLACKHAWK (1972–87)

  From 1911 through the early 1930s, the Stutz Motor Car company was one of the most exclusive automakers in the United States, but by 1935 it was bankrupt. In the late 1960s, an investment banker named James O’Donnell resurrected the Blackhawk name and began converting Pontiac Grand Prixs into ultra-luxury two-door coupes. It had running boards, fake chrome exhaust pipes along both sides of the car, and a spare tire sunk into the trunk lid. Leather luggage that matched the leather seats came standard; mink carpets and a mink-lined trunk were optional. The company also offered to build limousines, convertibles, and four-door sedans based on the same design. The Blackhawk debuted at $23,000 in 1972 and nearly doubled in price to $43,000 for 1973, when the average new car cost about $5,000.

  Fatal Flaw: The Blackhawk looked like a pimp-mobile designed by Liberace and was probably the ugliest ultra-luxury car ever made. Besides, how many people were dumb enough to pay Rolls Royce prices for a Pontiac Grand Prix, even if the trunk was lined with mink? Elvis Presley was: he bought the first production model (and later bought four more). Evel Knievel bought a Blackhawk; so did Robert Goulet, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr. With its goofy looks and customers like these, the Blackhawk was doomed to be ridiculed as a plaything of celebrities with more money than taste. Still, O’Donnell managed to build more than 500 cars before finally going out of business in 1987.

  THE CHRYSLER TC MASERATI (1989–91)

  In the mid-1980s, Chrysler was looking for a car that would help improve its stodgy image. So it bought part of the Italian auto manufacturer Maserati. The two companies then worked on a joint venture: the turbocharged TC Maserati convertible.

  Fatal Flaws: Timing was one problem—Chrysler announced the car in 1986, but production snafus kept it off the market for nearly three years, during which time many potential customers bought other cars. Image was another problem—the TC was touted as something new and different, but it was built on Chrysler’s K-car platform and was virtually indistinguishable from a regular Chrysler LeBaron convertible, even though it was hand-assembled in Milan and cost a lot more. About the only difference was that the TC had a faulty engine that blew its oil seals when it overheated. And it did that a lot, warping the poorly designed cylinder heads that were one of Maserati’s few contributions to the car. Faulty oil pressure gauges kept the problem from being detected until the engine had already been destroyed. Even if the engine hadn’t been such a dud, customers balked at the idea of paying Maserati prices for a car that looked just like a LeBaron. Chrysler sold only about 7,300 of the cars before it pulled the plug in 1991.

  The other city that never sleeps? Seattle, Washington, is home to some 600 coffee shops.

  THE JAGUAR XJ40 (1986–94)

  Jaguar began designing a replacement for its aging four-door XJ6 sedan way back in 1972, but the financial troubles of parent company British Leyland kept it from coming to market for 14 long years. Finally in 1986, the XJ40 hit the showroom floor. It was billed as the most advanced car in the world, complete with electronic self-leveling suspension, a dashboard computer that detected and diagnosed mechanical faults, and nearly two miles of wiring to support these and numerous other fancy electronic gadgets.

  Fatal Flaw: The fault detection system was supposed to alert owners to mechanical problems before they became serious (and expensive), but the system was the faultiest equipment of all. After a few trips to the dealership to service problems that turned out to be nothing, most owners ignored the system even when it detected real faults. Result: repair costs went up instead of down. The XJ40 was supposed to address Jaguar’s notorious reputation for unreliabil
ity, but all it did was make it worse. It wasn’t until Ford bought Jaguar in 1990 that the company’s image began to improve.

  THE ALFA ROMEO ALFASUD (1972–83)

  In the late 1960s, Alfa Romeo announced that instead of building its new mini car, the Alfasud, in Milan, where it had always built its cars, it was shifting production southward to Naples (sud is Italian for “south”). And they would manufacture Alfasuds at a rate of 1,000 cars a day, faster than the company had ever made cars before.

  Fatal Flaw: Alfa Romeos didn’t have a great reputation for quality to begin with, and when production moved south things got much worse. Few workers in Naples had ever built cars before, and they had trouble keeping up with the fast production pace. Even worse, they were building the cars using poor-quality recycled steel from the Soviet Union and sabotaged components made in Milan by workers upset about losing jobs to the south. Door handles and other plastic pieces broke off in owners’ hands as the metal rusted away around them; engines self-destructed if they were driven too hard. Alfasuds rotted away so quickly that few are still on the road today. But amazingly, the cheap little car stayed in production until 1983 and is actually considered a sales success.

  Technically speaking, lemons are berries.

  THE ASTON MARTIN LAGONDA (1976–89)

  The auto company famous for making James Bond’s sports cars was close to going under in the mid-1970s when the makers decided that building a four-door sedan—the company’s first—would be a good way to raise cash. Aston Martin didn’t have the money to engineer the new model from scratch, so the company just extended the chassis of one of its two-door sports cars and built a big sedan onto it. The Lagonda sold for nearly $50,000 when it was introduced in 1976; a decade later it sold for nearly $150,000. For a time it was marketed as the “World’s Most Expensive Sedan.”

  Fatal Flaws: The Lagonda was emblematic of everything that was wrong with automotive design in the 1970s. It was ugly—it had a long, pointy snout that was as angular as a piece of paper folded in half. And it was unreliable—the “futuristic” red LED instrument panels failed so often that they were eventually replaced with little cathode ray TV screens, which failed even more often. The wiring was buggy, the pop-up headlights didn’t pop up, the handling was squishy, and the paint job was so bad that the car became known as a rust bucket. That was a lot to put up with in the “World’s Most Expensive Sedan,” and although the company spent 15 years and untold millions of dollars trying to work out all the bugs, the Lagonda never did catch on with Aston Martin purists. Only about 600 Lagondas had been manufactured by the time the company ended production in 1989.

  Fungus humongous: The rare mushroom oxyporus nobilissimus grows to 3 feet in height.

  CARNEGIE’S WISDOM

  American industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) was known for both his ruthless business practices and his generous philanthropy. (He’s the man behind Carnegie Hall.)

  “As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.”

  “No man can become rich without himself enriching others.”

  “He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave.”

  “The ‘morality of compromise’ sounds contradictory. Compromise is usually a sign of weakness. Strong men don’t compromise, it is said, and principles should never be compromised. I shall argue that strong men, conversely, know when to compromise and that all principles can be compromised to serve a greater principle.”

  “All honor’s wounds are self-inflicted.”

  “Pioneering doesn’t pay.”

  “Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole, clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve!”

  “There is little success where there is little laughter.”

  “You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb.”

  “People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.”

  “The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.”

  “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain—and most fools do.”

  “Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”

  “One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.”

  Most-performed plastic surgery in the U.S.: Breast augmentation (followed by nose jobs).

  AMAZING GRACE

  It’s one of the most famous hymns in history—so famous that even if you’re not religious you probably know the first stanza by heart. Here’s the story that once was lost, but now is found.

  THE WRETCH

  On May 10, 1748, John Newton, a sailor in the English slave trade, was heading home to England when his ship ran into a severe storm in the North Atlantic. So much seawater poured into the cabin that it seemed the ship was about to sink; Newton pumped water for nine hours straight and then, as his energy finally gave out, he shouted, “Lord have mercy on us!”

  Not long afterward, the weather began to clear and the battered ship was able to limp into port. Newton had never been a religious man—in addition to working in the slave trade, he was a gambler, a heavy drinker, and he cursed such a blue streak that even other slave traders were shocked by the foulness of his language. “Not content with common oaths and imprecations, I daily invented new ones,” he recalled in his memoirs many years later. But his deliverance from the storm changed him.

  A NEW MAN

  Convinced that his prayers had been answered in his moment of need, Newton became an Evangelical Christian and gave up gambling, drinking, and swearing on the spot. Seven years later, when an illness forced him to give up the seafaring life, he returned to England and worked for several years as the surveyor of tides in Liverpool. There he met many of the most prominent Christians of the day, including John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. Inspired by their example, he became a minister in the Church of England and was assigned to a church in the village of Olney, west of London.

  It was in Olney that Newton met William Cowper (pronounced “Cooper”), one of the most popular poets of the 18th century. Cowper, too, was a religious man, and he helped Newton organize a weekly prayer meeting in the village. The two men set a goal of writing a new hymn for every prayer meeting and took turns doing it, each man writing one every other week.

  It takes an hour and a half to cremate an average adult.

  In December 1772 Newton composed a hymn, which he titled “Faith’s Review and Expectation,” better known today by the first two words of the first stanza:

  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

  That saved a wretch like me!

  I once was lost, but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  AMAZING FACTS

  • Newton wrote the words to the original seven stanzas; over the years other contributors have added their own words to the hymn.

  • No one knows who composed the melody; the hymn was sung to a number of other tunes before the current one became popular.

  • In the more than 200 years since “Amazing Grace” was written, it has gone on to become arguably the most popular hymn of all time. It has become an anthem for all sorts of people struggling against injustice, even if they aren’t Christians. Both sides sang it during the American Civil War; both sides sang it during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, too. Cherokee Indians sang it on the Trail of Tears in the late 1830s.

  • To date, “Amazing Grace” has been recorded more than 1,000 times; it is so popular with contemporary black recording artists that it is commonly mistaken to be an old Negro spiritual.

  MYTH-UNDERSTOOD

  It’s common
for people to assume, when they learn that the author of this hymn of redemption was not a black man, but rather a former slave trader, that the song is addressing the issue of slavery. When Newton converted to Christianity, he must have left the slave trade and then written “Amazing Grace” to atone for his deeds, the logic goes. He’s a “wretch” because he was a former slaver, and he “once was blind but now can see” because after he embraced religion he was finally able to see slavery for the evil that it was. There are even tales that when Newton experienced his religious conversion in 1748, he turned his ship around, sailed back to Africa, and set his slaves free.

  Hoppy holidays! In Australia, Santa’s sleigh is pulled by kangaroos.

  STILL BLIND

  Nothing could be further from the truth. Newton may have grown quickly as a composer of hymns—he composed 280, many of which are still sung today—but his spiritual growth took longer. After converting to Christianity, Newton returned to slave trading and spent the next five years buying slaves on the African coast and transporting them in bondage to British colonies in North America and the Caribbean. He worked his way up to captain of his own slave ship in the process, all the while devoting his free time to study and prayer.

  According to historian Adam Hochschild, Newton and another Evangelical Christian slave ship captain once visited one another each evening for nearly a month. “A strange scene to imagine,” he writes in his book, Bury the Chains, “the two captains in their tri-cornered hats pacing the deck, earnestly talking of God and sin through the night, while slaves lie in shackles below them.”

  BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

  Between 1764 and 1788 Newton wrote several books and delivered thousands of sermons, many of which were published and survive to this day. In them he frequently condemns adultery, usury, blasphemy, dishonesty, the size of the English national debt, and just about every kind of sin one can imagine. Except slavery—he doesn’t condemn that even once.