BATTY
There are a few theories as to where this term came from. A popular one says that it was named for Fitzherbert Batty, a prominent English barrister known for being eccentric, who was certified insane in 1839. London’s newspapers widely publicized the diagnosis, and ever since, “batty” has been used to describe anyone who is harmlessly crazy. Another possible origin is that “batty” is short for “bats in the belfry” (or bell tower), an Americanism dating to at least 1899, when it appeared in William J. Kountz’s Billy Baxter’s Letters: “The leader tore out about $9.00 worth of hair, and acted generally as though he had bats in his belfry.”
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Sticky fingers? Ben & Jerry’s sells a combination lock for its ice cream containers.
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NUTS
“Nut” in its original sense—peanuts and cashews, for instance—is a very old word, most likely coming from the Indo-European root knu, which meant “lump.” The English word “nut” first appeared around A.D. 875, but wasn’t used to refer to a person’s head until the mid-1800s. Around the same time, anyone who acted a little off kilter was said to be “off his nut” or just “nuts.” However, referring to a crazy person as a “nut” wasn’t common until around 1903. (The British form, “nutter,” didn’t appear until the late 1950s.)
GIDDY
These days, we associate being giddy with being silly or in love. But at one time, being giddy could have gotten you locked up. It first appeared in Old English as the word gydig, meaning “insane” or “possessed.” The root of “giddy” is, in fact, the same Germanic root that gave us the English word “god”—and originally, to be giddy was to be possessed by a god or other supernatural being.
BERSERK
Thought to be a combination of the Icelandic ber (“bear”) and serkr (“shirt”), Berserkers were Norse warriors who wore bearskins into battle and were known for their terrifying, uncontrollable bloodlust. They were thought to have suffered actual fits of madness, referred to as bärsärkar-gång (“going berserk”), described here in Howard Frabing’s On Going Berserk: A Neurochemical Inquiry:
Men who were thus seized performed things which otherwise seemed impossible for human power…which at last gave over into a great rage, under which they howled as wild animals, bit the edge of their shields, and cut down everything they met without discriminating between friend or foe.
Today, we use “berserk” to describe out-of-control behavior.
Crazy for word origins? Go to page 226 for “bonkers,” “wacky,” “madcap,” and more.
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What do Fiji, Chile, and Egypt have in common? You can be jailed there for not voting.
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THE SKIES HAVE EYES
Google Earth is a downloadable computer program that lets you view the world via satellite images, aerial photography, and a close-up “Street View” feature. It’s great when you need to find a donut shop, but not so great when something unexpected gets caught in the photo.
• After photographing several U.K. cities for Street View, Google fielded hundreds of complaints from citizens who inadvertently wound up in photos—including a man caught exiting a sex shop, a man throwing up outside of a pub, and a group of teenagers getting arrested.
• Sharp-eyed Google Earth users noticed a collection of 40-year-old buildings in southern California that, from above, resembled a Nazi swastika. The owner of the structures: the U.S. Navy (the buildings were barracks on a military base). The Navy spent $600,000 to redesign the facility.
• While photographing for Street View in Melbourne, Australia, Google’s car-mounted cameras captured a man passed out in his mother’s front yard. The man, who’d had too much to drink after a funeral, later complained. Google removed the photos.
• Users scrolling through pictures of upstate New York on Street View noticed a deer fawn standing in the middle of a rural road. But in subsequent shots, the deer was lying in the road, dead, with blood-soaked tire tracks leading away from it. Google’s camera car, it turned out, had accidentally hit it. The company kept the images, but edited out the deer.
• If you look closely, you can spot hundreds of photos that caught people urinating in public, including one with a French bus driver photographed relieving himself on the side of his bus.
• One Google Earth user was looking at photos of a female friend’s house—and spotted her own husband’s Range Rover out front. Divorce proceedings followed.
• At least one person was ready for the cameras: At Google’s headquarters in California, a software engineer named Michael Weiss-Malik held up a large sign as the camera passed overhead. It read “Proposal 2.0: MARRY ME LESLIE!!” (Leslie said yes.)
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The FDA announced in 2008 that milk from cloned cows may already be in the nation’s food supply.
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TERROR IN TOILET TOWN
In the last episode of Terror in Toilet Town, we brought you “Snakes on a What?!,” the true story of a woman in China who was bitten by a snake hiding in her toilet. Now, sit back for some brand-new episodes about the scariest room in the house.
Episode: “Curses!”
Setup: One night in October 2007 in West Scranton, Pennsylvania, Dawn Herb was at home when her toilet started overflowing. As she tried to unclog it and clean up the mess, she let out a stream of bawdy curse words.
Terror! Herb’s neighbor, off-duty police officer Patrick Tillman, stuck his head out his window and told her to “shut the f*** up.” Not true, says Tillman; he simply told her to stop swearing, and Herb told him to “f*** off.” In any case, Officer Tillman called in some fellow police officers—and Herb was arrested for swearing inside her own house. She was told that she faced up to $300 in fines and 90 days in jail for disorderly conduct. But at the hearing the judge ordered the charges dropped, ruling that swearing at a toilet in your own house was not illegal. Afterward, Herb sued the city of West Scranton for improper arrest—and they ended up awarding her $19,000, plus her legal fees, to settle. (Hopefully she got a new toilet.)
Episode: “Out with the Train Water”
Setup: In October 2009, a crowded train was rolling through the countryside of West Bengal, India. A pregnant passenger, Rinku Roy, felt a sudden pang that she thought might be a labor pain. She left her husband, Bhola, in his seat, went to the restroom…and had her baby.
Terror! In the cramped restroom, and in an awkward position, Roy had trouble grasping the slippery newborn and dropped it—straight down the toilet and onto the tracks below. She ran out of the toilet screaming for help, dashed to the closest exit, and jumped off the moving train. Quick-thinking passengers pulled emergency cords, stopping the train—and allowing Roy and her husband to retrieve the baby. Mother and child were taken to a hospital, and, amazingly, both of them were fine.
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Designer Amigo Zhou invented a Love Seat Toilet—attached potties for two to use at the same time.
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Episode: “Toilet May be Armful to Your Health”
Setup: This story took place on a high-speed train traveling between the French cities of La Rochelle and Paris. But instead of a baby being dropped into a toilet, a 26-year-old Frenchman dropped his cell phone into one of the train’s commodes. And he reached into the toilet to get the phone back.
Terror! The ultramodern train had an ultramodern toilet, equipped with a powerful, ultramodern, automatic suction system—and it pulled the man’s arm into the drain nearly up to his shoulder. He yelled for help, attendants quickly arrived, and the train was stopped in order to shut off the suction system. But the man’s arm had been pulled into the toilet with such force that he was still stuck. EMTs worked for two hours to remove the toilet from the floor, then took it—along with the man—to a hospital. It took several more hours to saw the toilet off the man’s arm. (No word on whether he ever got his phone back.)
Episode: “(Cork)Screwed Again”
Setup: It was a dar
k and drinky night in Vershire, Vermont, in October 2009. Nazeih Hammouri, 53, was at home, drinking. Late in the evening, his 19-year-old son came home. Then someone used the toilet.
Terror! The toilet became clogged, and the intoxicated Hammourt and his son got into an argument about it. The fight escalated and finally ended with the elder Hammourt stabbing his son in the stomach…with a corkscrew. Hammourt was arrested on charges of first-degree assault. His son was treated and released at a nearby hospital.
Episode: “The Man Under the Moon”
Setup: In September 2009, a boy on a family camping trip in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest ran off to use the park’s restroom, a rustic “pit toilet” with a large sewage container under the seat.
Terror! As the boy approached the toilet, he was amazed to see a soaking-wet man climbing up out of the pit. The boy ran back to his parents, who called police. They easily caught Gary Moody, 49, (presumably by the smell). Moody told police that he put his shirt on the toilet seat for sanitary reasons before sitting down, and it had fallen in. He’d climbed down into the pit, he said, simply to get his shirt back. Police had trouble believing that—especially since the man had been arrested in the same park in 2005 for doing the same thing. Moody eventually admitted to having a pit-toilet fetish. He was arrested. (Bonus: Moody is from the town of Pittston, Maine.)
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The Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India, where thousands died in a gas leak in 1984 has been reopened as a tourist attraction.
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Episode: “’That’s Cold!”
Setup: One day in July 2008, Martin Bierbauer of the Austrian city of Eisenstadt was sitting on the toilet in his apartment. Everything was fine until…
Terror! …Bierbauer was blasted off the toilet by huge hailstones that came shooting out of it. “I heard the pipes rumbling a bit,” he said later, “and suddenly hailstones the size of golf balls started exploding out of the toilet like it was a popcorn machine.” The ice balls eventually covered the bathroom floor, then the entire apartment. The same thing, it turned out, was happening all over the building. The region had been recently struck by unusually high temperatures followed by a sudden cold snap, which resulted in violent hailstorms. City officials said the hailstones had clogged local drain systems, a heavy rain had followed, and pressure in the sewer system had built up. The hailstones had to go somewhere, so they started flying up out of toilets. Bierbauer and other residents demanded that the city pay for the extensive damage the toilet-stones had caused to their apartments.
FOR THE LOVE OF ANIMALS
In 2009 the Florida state senate was debating enforcement of bestiality laws, and the subject turned to animal husbandry—which simply means the breeding and raising of livestock. Senator Larcenia Bullard, however, thought it meant something else, and blurted out, “People are actually taking these animals as husbands?”
JUNGLE SPA
Animals—they’re not just for petting. They can help you relax and make you pretty, too!
SNAKES. For about $80, a California king snake will massage your shoulders at Ada Barak’s health spa in Talmey El’ Azar, Israel. At the same time, a corn snake will crawl all over your lower back, providing a deep-tissue massage. Then turn over, and small garter snakes will massage your face muscles. According to Madame Barak, “People either like having snakes slither around all over them, or they hate it.”
CARP. $45 will buy you 15 minutes of “doctor-fish therapy” in a Tokyo spa. Here’s how it works: You dangle your feet in a tank full of tiny carp called chinchin yu, or “doctor fish.” They eat the dead skin flakes and calluses, leaving your feet soft and beautiful. But don’t worry; these fish have no teeth and only dine on dead cells. The most common complaint about the therapy is that it tickles.
“VENOM.” The poison of the Malaysian temple viper paralyzes its victims by blocking the nerve signals that cause muscles to contract. A new anti-wrinkle cream called BioVen is a “gently synthesized” version of the venom. Marketed as an alternative to Botox injections, BioVen does basically the same thing: It prevents your face muscles from contracting when you laugh, smile, or frown. “No wonder Hollywood celebrities are waiting in line for it!” says the commercial.
LEECHES. Hirudo medicinalis, the “medicinal leech,” is black and slimy, measures four inches long, and has three jaws, each of them containing more than 100 tiny teeth. When attached to your skin, the leeches are said to suck out toxins, leaving you feeling fresh and revitalized. Leech therapy, which costs up to $600 and dates back to Ancient Egypt, was given a big boost in the U.S. after actress Demi Moore appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman in 2008 and bragged about having leech treatment in Austria. “It really detoxifies your blood,” said Moore. “I’m feeling very detoxified right now.”
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In competitive eating contests, anyone who vomits on the plate or table is disqualified.
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ERNIE CHAMBERS
SUES GOD
Only someone totally crazy would try to sue the Lord Almighty, right? Certainly not a state senator with nearly 40 years’ experience.
THE “ANGRIEST BLACK MAN IN NEBRASKA”
That’s a label Ernie Chambers has worn proudly since he was first elected in 1970 to represent Nebraska’s 11th district in the state legislature. Never one to shy away from controversy, Chambers, an Independent, once called the U.S. a “hypocritical society,” saying, “The public doesn’t look for politicians to tell the truth or to deliver on their promises, and politicians know this.” Another favorite target was the Catholic Church, which Chambers once said was “more effective as a criminal enterprise than the mafia.” Yet he still managed to get reelected eight times.
In the 2000s, Chambers didn’t let up. But after the Nebraska legislature voted to limit state senators to two terms, Chambers was disqualified from running again in 2008. “They had to change the constitution to get rid of me,” he said.
SUFFERING THE WRATH
But Chambers had one more big fight in him: In September 2007, he filed a lawsuit against “God Almighty,” which sought a permanent injunction against the Lord from creating “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.” Chambers claimed these horrors affected his constituents, thus making it harder for the senator to do his job.
Case dismissed, right? Not so fast. Courts must take all lawsuits seriously, however ridiculous they seem. Dismissing it by denying the existence of God would have obvious PR ramifications in a deeply religious state. With this in mind, the judge needed a good reason to toss it out. The reason seemed clear enough: God was not a resident of Douglas County, so the court had no power to compel God to appear, and the case could be dismissed. So the case was dismissed, right? Not so fast.
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A woman in France married her boyfriend in 2009. What’s so odd about that? He died in 2008.
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SEEKING THE LORD
Chambers refused to give up. He argued that God exists in all places, so it stood to reason that He should be considered a resident of Douglas County. The court countered that since God had no address, there was no way to send Him papers informing him the lawsuit had been filed. “As an all-knowing being,” said Chambers, “God should already know that the lawsuit had been filed against Him.” This back-and-forth continued as the courts tried every trick in the book to shut down the lawsuit: Did Chambers and God first attempt to resolve the issue out of court? Chambers said he’d tried to contact God on several occasions, and met with failure each time: “Despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service on Defendant, God has been unable to do so.” Did God even exist? Chambers drew attention to the fact that in Nebraska, few state employees would be willing to deny the existence of God outright.
Was anyone taking this case seriously? Chambers said he was: “This is a lawsui
t against a Defendant who has perpetrated much harm on the human race.” Ironically, he said he actually wanted to bring attention to all of the frivolous lawsuits that were currently bottlenecking the judicial system. “Anybody can sue anybody, even God,” he said. But both his proponents and his critics were unsure if Chambers was saying that was a good thing or not.
JUDGMENT DAY
The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that God could not be located and compelled to appear. Chambers, of course, appealed—and the arguments continued. Finally, in February 2008, Nebraska’s Court of Appeals tossed out the lawsuit a second time, ruling that courts decide “real controversies, not abstract questions or issues that might arise in a hypothetical or fictitious situation or setting.”
Chambers let the matter go, believing that he had successfully made his point. However, a few days later, a mysterious piece of paper appeared on a desk at the Douglas County courthouse. It contained a neatly typed, two-point response to Chambers’ suit: 1) “God is currently outside the jurisdiction of a Nebraska state court.” 2) “God is not subject to earthly laws.” The document was reportedly signed by the almighty Himself, and witnessed by one “St. Michael the Archangel.”
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