Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Disorder: Anosgnosia

  What is it? This is an unusual reaction some people have to hemiplegia—the left- or right-side paralysis that often accompanies strokes. Affected people appear to be unaware of and will deny—vehemently—the paralysis. They can see and speak and retain their normal mental abilities, but they are unable to accept that half their body can’t move. Some go so far as demonstrating that they can move by waving their arm around…except that it’s not really moving. And they aren’t trying to deceive anyone; they actually believe they’re moving. The weirdest part: Some even deny the disability in other anosgnosia sufferers, insisting they aren’t paralyzed, either.

  Why? By law, all Washington, D.C. taxis must carry a broom and a shovel.

  Disorder: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

  What is it? BIID could be the most bizarre disorder in the medical world. People affected by it feel that one of their limbs, or part of it, does not belong on their body—and actively seek to get rid of it. They often can identify an exact spot where the limb “stops being theirs,” and sometimes request needless amputations. But it’s nearly impossible to get a doctor to remove one of your limbs simply because you no longer want it, so many victims simulate amputation, binding and hiding the unwanted limb, even to the point of fooling neighbors and employers for years. In the worst cases, people actually try to amputate the limbs themselves, sometimes with guns. In the late 1990s, Dr. Robert Smith of the Falkirk Royal Infirmary in Scotland caused a worldwide controversy when he performed elective amputations on people with BIID. “We have a number of individuals who have deliberately injured themselves,” he said, “with train tracks and shotguns and have achieved amputation this way.” That, he said, is far worse than his operations. But after public outcry, the hospital announced that Smith would no longer be performing amputations on people with the disorder.

  * * *

  LOST IN PARIS

  In 2006 the British newspaper The Guardian reported that every year several Japanese tourists in France get what is called “Paris Syndrome.” What’s that? A severe psychological reaction to rude French people. “In Japanese shops, the customer is king,” explained Bernard Delage, who helps Japanese families settle in France, “whereas here, store clerks hardly look at them.” The symptoms can be extreme: In 2006 four people had to be “rescued” by the Japanese embassy in Paris and taken back home, including two women who locked themselves in their hotel room when they thought there was a plot against them. “Fragile travellers can lose their bearings,” says psychologist Herve Benhamou. “When the idea they have of the country meets the reality of what they discover, it can provoke an emotional crisis.”

  Studies show: Cats dislike men with long dark beards.

  HOW DO YOU

  SAY…“MULLET”?

  Remember the mullet? That quintessential ’80s haircut (think MacGyver, or Billy Ray Cyrus) was short on the top, long in the back…and ridiculed by people all over the world, as you’ll see here.

  • France: Coupe à la Waddle (named after a famous 1980s footballer who sported the ’do)

  • French Canadian: coupe Longueuil

  • Sweden: hockeyfrilla

  • Norway: hockeysveis

  • Czech Republic: colek (“newt”)

  • Poland: Czeski pi karz (“Czech football player hair”)

  • Romania: chica

  • Australia: Freddie Firedrill (as if the haircut was interrupted by a fire alarm)

  • Chile: chocopanda (referring to the typical haircuts of ice cream sellers)

  • Colombia: greña paisa

  • Turkey: aslan yelesi (“lion’s mane”)

  • Brazil: Chitãozinho e Xororó

  • Croatia: fudbalerka (referring to the soccer-player haircuts of the 1980s)

  • Denmark: bundesliga-hår

  • Finland: takatukka (“rear hair”)

  • Germany: vokuhila (short for vorne kurz, hinten lang “short in the front, long in the back”)

  • Greece: laspotiras (“mud-flap”)

  • Hebrew: vilon (“curtain”)

  • Argentina: Cubano

  • Japan: urufu hea (“wolf hair”)

  • Puerto Rico: playero (“beachcomber”)

  • Serbia: Tarzanka (“Tarzan”)

  • Italy: capelli alla tedesca (“German-style hair”), or alla MacGyver (hair that resembles Richard Dean Anderson’s from the TV show)

  • American terms: B&T (bridge and tunnel), ape drape, Tennessee top hat, Kentucky waterfall, Missouri compromise

  Egyptian shepherds made the first sunscreen from castor beans as early as 7800 B.C.

  IN SEARCH OF

  NEW SPECIES

  It’s pretty amazing that after thousands of years of studying and keeping records of all the creatures with whom we share this planet, we still find new ones all the time. Here are some recent findings.

  BACKGROUND

  In December 2005, a team of scientists from the United States, Indonesia, and Australia launched an expedition into the Foja mountains in the west of New Guinea. “It’s as close to the Garden of Eden as you’re going to find on Earth,” said co-leader Bruce Beehler. “It’s beautiful, untouched, unpopulated forest. There’s no evidence of human impact or presence up in these mountains.” Not even the native New Guineans were familiar with the area. “The men from the local villages came with us,” Beehler said, “and they made it clear that no one they knew had been anywhere near this area—not even their ancestors.” The expedition discovered dozens of previously unknown plant and animal species, including 20 new frog species, one of which grows to only about 14 millimeters in length, four new butterfly species, and five new palm species. Some of the animal examples:

  THE SMOKY HONEYEATER. Just 10 minutes into the trip Beehler saw a small honeyeater, a common bird in Australia and New Guinea—but this one was different. It had bright orange patches on either side of its face, which at the bottom hung down in flaps, like a chicken’s “earlobes.” “And then I suddenly woke up and saw that it was a new species,” he said. “That’s something we’ve never seen before. So that was pretty darned exciting.” Though long known to locals, it was the first new bird species discovered by Western scientists in New Guinea in more than 60 years.

  BERLEPSCH’S SIX-WIRED BIRD OF PARADISE. Ornithologists only knew this bird existed from skins kept by the 19th-century German ornithologist Hans von Berlepsch. Several expeditions had been launched to find it, and not one had, so the bird’s habitat remained a mystery. But the second day into their trip Beehler and the other scientists watched in amazement as a male performed a mating dance for a female—right in their camp. That was another amazing thing about the trip: The area is so remote that many of the animals had likely never seen humans, and therefore were unafraid of them. The bird was named for Berlepsch, as well as the six wire-like feathers on the head of males which can be raised up for a mating display.

  A single gram of human feces contains 100,000,000,000 microbes.

  THE GOLDEN FRONTED BOWER BIRD. Famed scientist and author Jared Diamond rediscovered this species—also previously known only through late 19th century records—in 1979. But there were no photographs—until Beehler took one. And the photo showed it doing something odd: It was placing a blueberry on a stick protruding from a “bower” of sticks that it had made. Many other of the protruding sticks already had blueberries attached to them. Scientists concluded that the bird was decorating the bower to attract a mate.

  THE GOLDEN-MANTLED TREE KANGAROO. Yes, that says “Tree Kangaroo.” Believe it or not there are several species of these jungle-adapted, marsupial relatives of the kangaroo, some of which live in Northeast Australia and the rest in New Guinea. The newest—and rarest—member is the Golden Mantled, which was also found during the joint expedition. They have kangaroo-like faces, reddish-gold fur, and long, striped tails. And they jump from tree to tree…like kangaroos.

  LONG BEAKED ECHIDNA. The expedition also foun
d two new species of echidnas, or “spiny anteaters.” It was a remarkable find, because echidnas are monotremes, a primitive type of mammal that lays eggs—and there are only three other monotremes known on Earth: the platypus, and two other echidna species. Echidnas are small (10 to 15 pounds), have light or dark brown fur, and have sharp spines like porcupines. They also have long, hairless, tubular snouts, with which they dig in the ground to eat earthworms (this species doesn’t eat ants). Incredibly, when scientists found the first two specimens, they allowed the scientists to pick them up and carry them back to camp to study them, completely unafraid.

  Bertha Van der Merwe holds the record for staying awake: 282 hrs., 55 min. without sleep.

  LET’S PLAY STREETWARS!

  Adults can do some pretty odd things trying to recapture the carefree fun of a lost childhood.

  SHOOT ’EM UP

  Did you ever play “Assassin” in high school? That’s the game where every player gets a squirt gun and instructions to kill another participant. Your mission: Kill your target before the person who has you as a target finds and kills you. When you kill someone, their intended target becomes your target, and the game continues until only one person—the winner—is still standing.

  Assassin used to be limited to school yards, but that was until 2004, when a 29-year-old New York securities lawyer named Franz Aliquo got bored with his daily routine. “I began thinking I had a hell of a lot more fun when I was a kid,” Aliquo told an interviewer in 2005. “And I thought, ‘What is stopping me from having fun like that now?’” That year he and and a friend from high school, graphic designer Yutai Liao, decided to create a version of Assassin that adults could play on city streets during lunch breaks, after work, and on weekends. They called the game StreetWars and organized their first tournament on the streets of New York City.

  BE CAREFUL OUT THERE

  Having people run around New York waving (squirt) guns and blasting each other on city streets is a little bit much, especially after the 9/11 attacks. To avoid potential problems, Aliquo and Liao went to the New York police department to get permission to play the game, and also asked for help in drawing up the rules, to reduce the risk of public disturbances or being mistaken for real gun-toting thugs. On the advice of the police, Aliquo and Liao limited the number of participants and required players to use only brightly colored squirt guns and Super Soakers that look nothing like real firearms. (Water balloons are allowed, too.) They also declared subways, buses and bus stops, and other forms of public transportation off limits. And to prevent the risk of participants losing their jobs, they also declared the one-block radius around players’ workplaces as no-kill zones, too.

  A bird known as Antpitta avis canis Ridgley makes a “barking” noise that sounds like a dog.

  Getting the police department to sign off on the game was one thing; winning the approval of New York mayor Michael Bloom berg was another. “Aliquo could probably use some psychiatric help,” Bloomberg said when he learned about the game. “If he calls one of the public hospitals, we’ll try to arrange that. It is not funny in this day and age.” Aliquo and Liao felt exactly the opposite—people needed games like StreetWars as a temporary escape from the bad news they confront in the headlines day after day. They went ahead with the game.

  Seventy-five people signed up to play the first StreetWars, and it went off without a hitch. (Aliquo never did ask for psychiatric help.) Since then, Aliquo and Liao have organized tournaments in Vancouver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, and Vienna, with future games planned for Paris, Chicago, Rome, Tokyo, Montreal, Amsterdam, and even Reykjavik, Iceland.

  KILL…OR BE KILLED

  Here’s how the game works:

  • Each StreetWars tournament lasts for three weeks and is played 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It costs $50 to sign up and is open to anyone over the age of 18. When you sign up, you are required to submit a photograph of yourself as well as your home address, work address, and other contact information.

  • Shortly before the game begins, players receive an e-mail telling them where to pick up their “assassination packet,” containing the photo, addresses, and contact information of the player who has been designated their assassination target. Each player has a target and is the target for another player.

  • As with Assassin, each player’s mission is to kill their target and avoid being killed by the person who is targeting them. There are no restrictions on how the target can be hunted down. Stalk them on city streets? Ambush? A fake delivery to their front door? Anything goes. One assassin even staged a fake job interview and “killed” the target when they came to apply for the job.

  • Players are allowed to defend themselves from assassins by shooting back and by using an umbrella to block the spray from the assassin’s squirt gun. (Raincoats are not allowed.) If the assassin’s spray does not hit the target, the target survives the attack.

  • If you succeed in killing your target, your victim hands over their assassination packet and their target becomes your next target. How do you know when you’ve won? When you kill your target and the packet they give you has your picture and contact information inside.

  • If a winner is not determined at the end of three weeks, the game moves into a one-week sudden-death tournament where Aliquo, who calls himself “Supreme Commander,” becomes the target, and the prize goes to the first person who can kill him as he and his escort of bodyguards move by limousine from one safe house to another.

  In Sweden, cockroaches are called kackerlacka.

  WITH A TWIST

  • Aliquo and Liao have added a few more twists to the game, too: Players are free to form teams and work together to kill their targets. But then they, too, become a single target of sorts—if the team captain is killed, the entire team is out of the game.

  • There’s also a group within the game called the League of Rogue Assassins. These assassins are free to kill the players in the game, but since they are not players they cannot be killed themselves. Don’t feel like taking out your next target? You can hire a member of the League of Rogue Assassins to kill them for you.

  • Another departure from Assassin: If you successfully defend yourself against an assassination attempt by shooting your assassin, the attack is thwarted…but the assassin doesn’t die. They are free to attack you again at any time in the future.

  SEE FOR YOURSELF

  That’s about all Uncle John has been able to piece together about the game; if you want to know more, you’re just going to have to sign up and pay the $50. The official rules to StreetWars are a trade secret and are made available only to people who have signed up to play the game.

  A Fla. baby was named Truewilllaughinglifebuckyboomermanifestdestiny (middle name: George).

  IRONIC, ISN’T IT?

  There’s nothing like a good dose of irony to put the problems of day-to-day life into perspective.

  NAME YOUR IRONY

  In 1978, Giovanna D’Arco of Italy was sitting by her fireplace when a spark jumped out and ignited her clothes. Ironically, her name is Italian for “Joan of Arc.” Related irony: In 1979 a Texas man named Stanley Stillsmoking was jailed for trying to steal cigarettes.

  BREAKING WIND

  Corfe Castle in Dorset, England, is one of the windiest places in Great Britain. In 2003, researchers set out to measure the exact wind speed and what effect it had on the castle. The study had to be postponed because it was too windy to set up the wind-speed recording equipment.

  DID THEY YELL “THEATER”?

  In 2002 firefighters were called to put out the flames at a factory in Neuruppin, Germany. What did the factory make? Fire extinguishers. But the fire extinguishers were filled with flame retardant at another facility, so at the time of the fire none of them worked.

  DON’T FENCE ME OUT

  In the late 1990s Golden State Fence, a California company, was contracted to build a 14-mile fence in San Diego to prevent illegal immigrants from sneaking in.
In 2006 Golden State was fined $4.7 million when 10 of the people hired to build the fence were discovered to be illegal immigrants.

  LOOK IT UP—WAIT, YOU CAN’T

  The legendary library of ancient Alexandria, Egypt, was burned to the ground by the invading Roman army in the 4th century. In 2002, a new $150 million library opened on the exact same site. Five months later, a short-circuit started a fire that destroyed the fourth floor.

  There are no skunks in Newfoundland.

  CELEBRITY DEATH

  CONSPIRACIES

  Our biggest stars are so much larger than life that it’s hard for fans to comprehend their deaths. Maybe that’s why people invent bizarre conspiracy theories to explain them.

  THEORY: Comedian Andy Kaufman faked his own death.

  DETAILS: In addition to playing Latka on the sitcom Taxi, Kaufman was known for outlandish stunts, including pretending to be a confused foreigner in his stand-up act, starting a fight with a pro wrestler on Late Night With David Letterman, and showing up for performances as an obnoxious lounge singer named Tony Clifton. But Kaufman wanted to pull an even bigger stunt. So, in 1983, he told friends he was going to fake his death and re-emerge 20 years later. In May 1984, he “died” of a rare form of lung cancer. Then what? There are several theories: 1) He moved to a quiet New Mexico town; 2) He changed his name to Steve Rocco and won a seat on the Orange County, California, school board. Rocco, a recluse who rarely leaves home, strongly resembles Kaufman and runs a Web site called andykaufmanlives.com; 3) He underwent plastic surgery and is actually actor Jim Carrey (Carrey played Kaufman in the movie Man on the Moon).