Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader)

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  In 1849 a 20-foot chunk of ice fell out of the sky over Scotland. No one knows why.

  Movie: Armageddon

  Song: “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”

  Story: Aerosmith was huge in the 1970s, had a massive comeback in the late 1980s, and was bigger than ever in the mid-1990s thanks to hits like “Cryin’” and “Crazy,” whose videos starred Liv Tyler, daughter of Aerosmith’s lead singer, Steven Tyler. When producers of the 1998 asteroid movie Armageddon approached Aerosmith with an opportunity to record the movie’s love ballad, written by soundtrack song queen Diane Warren, Tyler said no. He feared the band would lose its hard-won rock cred if they recorded a sappy ballad. However, Armageddon co-starred Liv Tyler, really wanted her father’s band to be involved. So she set up a screening of a rough-cut of the movie for him. He later reported that one scene in the movie changed his mind—when Bruce Willis’s character gets lost in space, and his image disappears from a monitor as its being hugged by his daughter (played by Liv). The daughter-daddy stuff got to him—he admits he cried, and agreed to have Aerosmith perform the song. Good move: The song became the first and only #1 hit of the group’s career.

  * * *

  THE LONG-TERM PLAN

  Hermann Dörnemann was the oldest man in the world until he died in March 2005, just two months before his 112th birthday. He said he lived so long for two reasons: He drank the water left over after cooking potatoes and his only form of exercise was “walking to the corner shop to buy beer and cigars.”

  Arsenic is an FDA-approved additive in chicken feed.

  UNCLE JOHN’S STALL OF FAME

  Uncle John is amazed—and pleased—by the unusual ways people get involved with bathrooms, toilets, and so on. That’s why he created the “Stall of Fame.”

  Honoree: British Prime Minister David Cameron

  Notable Achievement: Conducting important negotiations using the “full-bladder technique”

  True Story: Not long after Cameron walked out of a summit on the future of the euro in December 2011, word leaked out that he had engaged in the marathon nine-hour negotiating session without once taking a bathroom break. The Prime Minister reportedly did it on purpose, in the belief that the urgent need to pee would sharpen his focus. He got the idea a decade earlier while watching a documentary about a Conservative Party politician, Enoch Powell. In the film, Powell explains to an interviewer that he gave all his important speeches with a full bladder. “You should do nothing to decrease the tension before a big speech,” he says. “If anything, you should seek to increase it.” So does the technique really work? Not according to a study published in the journal Neurourology and Urodynamics in 2011 which states “an extreme urge to void (urinate) is associated with impaired cognition” that’s worse than having a blood alcohol level of 0.05 or going without sleep for 24 hours.

  Honoree: Mee Yan Leong, a woman living in Singapore

  Notable Achievement: Taking history’s longest pit stop

  True Story: On March 25, 2009, Leong, 55, had to use the bathroom. When she finished her business and tried to get up to leave, she felt, as she put it, “a force” holding her down and was powerless to leave. There she sat…for the next two-and-a-half years. On rare occasions, she got off the pot long enough use the shower, but she spent nearly all of her time seated on the toilet as if she was glued to it. She even slept and ate there, dining on bread, porridge, and biscuits that her long-suffering husband passed in to her. Leong might still be sitting there today, had he not finally decided in January 2012 that enough was enough. He called paramedics; they were able to coax Leong out of the bathroom and take her to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. At last report, she was doing better, but she still has no idea why she couldn’t leave the bathroom. In addition to the unseen force that held her down, she says she was terrified that she would be sprayed with water or pelted with rocks if she tried to leave.

  Angry birds? Woodpeckers once pecked holes in the space shuttle.

  Honoree: Li Maizi, 22, a college student in Beijing, China

  Notable Achievement: Taking a stand for “potty parity”

  True Story: Because women—who can’t use urinals—may take a little longer to use the facilities, it’s common in many parts of the world for women’s restrooms to have more toilets than men’s rooms do. The ratio can be 2:1 (two women’s toilets for every one for men) or even higher. Not so in China, where the ratio is typically 1:1. Result: There are often long lines outside of women’s restrooms.

  Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement, in February 2012, Li founded Occupy Men’s Toilets. One Sunday, she and six other activists took over a men’s room at a busy park in the city of Guangzhou. For three minutes at a time, they’d let women use the facilities, then they’d let the men in for ten minutes, then repeat. Similar occupations took place in Zhengzhou and Beijing. The protests lasted only an hour, but they provoked a huge response from the Chinese public in support of the issue. By Wednesday, officials in Guangzhou were calling for legislation increasing the number of toilets for women. “I do think the right to go to the bathroom is a basic right,” Li says.

  * * *

  ALLEY OOPS

  “Naked ten-pin bowling fans have been ordered to cover up. Bowling in the nude will be one of the top attractions for 200 members of British Naturism when they gather in Blackpool at the weekend. But bosses at the ten-pin alley have told them they’ll have to wear bowling shoes like everyone else.”

  —The Daily Record (UK), February 2012

  The Internet’s most visited website: Google. Number two: Facebook.

  FUNNY PAPERS

  In past Bathroom Readers we’ve told you the stories of some of our favorite humor magazines—Cracked!, National Lampoon, and Mad. Here are the origins of some more of the best satire rags, including a few you may not have heard of…but really should look for.

  THE ONION

  Founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1988 as a free, note-book-sized weekly newspaper, The Onion was the brainchild of University of Wisconsin juniors Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson. They published articles parodying sensational news stories, satirizing college life, and mocking the city of Madison. After 18 months, Keck and Johnson sold the paper (the exact price isn’t known—but it was under $20,000) to staff members Scott Dikkers and Peter Haise. Over the next few years Dikkers and Haise expanded distribution to cities around the United States, and The Onion grew to the single-fold tabloid format it still uses today. Then, in 1996, they launched a Web edition, and by 2000 The Onion had a worldwide audience.

  In 2007 the Onion News Network, a daily web-based parody of television news, debuted—and in 2009 it won the prestigious Peabody Award. The judges said, “The satirical tabloid’s online send-up of twenty-four-hour cable-TV news was hilarious, trenchant and not infrequently hard to distinguish from the real thing.” The Onion is still published as a paper—and it’s still given away free in major cities around the U.S. and Canada…including Madison, Wisconsin.

  Sample Headlines: “Expert on Anteaters Wasted Entire Life Studying Anteaters”; “‘I Am Under 18’ Button Clicked for First Time in History of Internet”; “Rest of U2 Perfectly Fine with Africans Starving”

  FUNNY TIMES

  In 1984 husband and wife Raymond Lesser and Susan Wolpert were living in a trailer on a farm in Athens, Ohio, when their first child was stillborn. “After Rose died we didn’t know what we were going to do,” Wolpert says in a self-interview on the paper’s website. “We were so brokenhearted. We decided to take a trip across the country to try to figure out what to do next.” They headed back to their old stomping grounds in Santa Cruz, California, where they stumbled upon a new weekly paper—filled mostly with political cartoons—called The Santa Cruz Comic News. “I said, ‘This is such a great idea.’” recalled Lesser. “This would probably be a fun thing to do.” So they moved back to Cleveland and started the Funny Times. The paper became a national success, and nearly 30 years later Wolpert and L
esser are still at the helm. Every issue offers around 100 cartoons, as well as syndicated features by some of the world’s best comedy writers. Regular cartoons include This Modern World (Tom Tomorrow), Zippy the Pinhead (Bill Griffith), and Slowpoke (Jen Sorensen); regular contributors include Rita Rudner, Dave Barry, and Garrison Keillor.

  Looney law: It’s not legal to “own” pets in Boulder, Colorado, but you may “caretake” them.

  THE JOURNAL OF IRREPRODUCIBLE RESULTS

  On April 1, 1955, Alexander Kohn, a biophysicist at the Biological Institute in Ness Ziona, Israel, published a fake newsletter he called The Journal of Irreproducible Results, Volume II to amuse his friends. It contained one article: “The Inactivation Kinetics of Glassware”—about a phenomenon in which glass objects in a scientist’s laboratory have a tendency to break—with numerous references to “Volume I”…which did not exist. A year later Kohn was introduced to Harry J. Lipkin, an American physicist who had recently moved to Israel. Lipkin had a reputation as a top-notch scientist and would go on to become one of the world’s leading nuclear theorists, and he was a funny guy. In July 1956, he and Kohn decided to make The Journal of Irreproducible Results (JIR) a bimonthly parody of science journals. The first public issue was dedicated to the zipper. (In true geek fashion, it paid special attention to the behavior of a zipper as it moves over “the paraboloid curves of the substance under the modern female bathing suit.”) By 1957 the JIR was known to scientists around the world, and has become known to the wider public in the decades since. And while it has changed hands several times (present headquarters are in San Mateo, California), the JIR still runs six issues a year.

  Sample headlines: “Impure Mathematics: The Adventures of Polly Nomial”; “The Triple Blind Test”; “Global Average Temperature vs. Number of Pirates”

  It was once believed that malaria could be cured by eating live spiders.

  Extra: In 1990 Marc Abrahams, a mathematician at MIT as well as a writer, took over as editor. In 1994 the JIR was sold—and Abrahams and his entire editorial staff left to start The Annals of Improbable Research, where Abrahams began the annual awarding of the Ig Nobel Prizes for discoveries “that cannot, or should not, be reproduced.”

  EXTRA HUMOROUS

  There aren’t a lot of new comedy magazines appearing in print these days…but there are a lot coming online. Here are a few you may want to check out.

  • The Toque. A Canadian-based parody website. Sample headline: “Conspiracy Theory: Vancouver Riot Funded by Big Glass”

  • Bongo News. A parody news site. Sample headline: “Whitney Houston’s Songs Will Live On…in Torture Chambers”

  • Bean Soup Times. Parody site geared toward African Americans. Sample headline: “Father of Six Girls Suffers from ‘Player’s Curse’”

  • All Day Coffee. Website of writer G. Xavier Robillard. Sample: “Arizona to Cover Up Grand Canyon’s Unseemly Lady Parts”

  • The Borowitz Report. In the late 1970s, Andy Borowitz was president of National Lampoon magazine at Harvard. He went on to write for TV, and in 1990 created the hit show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, starring rapper Will Smith. In 2001 he created The Borowitz Report, a website featuring satirical news stories. Sample headlines: “Greece Buys Mega Millions Ticket,” “Bush Publishes ‘I Can Has Prezidensy,” “Decision to Stop Making Hummers Saddens A**holes,” and “BREAKING: CNN Viewers Severely Burned by Fire from Nancy Grace’s Nostrils”

  * * *

  WHAT, NO FARTY?

  Who are Awful, Tubby, Burpy, Baldy, Chesty, Deafy, Hickey, and Gabby? Considered and rejected names for the dwarfs in Walt Disney’s 1937 filmed adaptation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

  Napoleon plotted his battles in a sandbox.

  THEY WENT THATAWAY

  Think an impressive invention leads to riches and fame? Think again.

  PHILO T. FARNSWORTH (1906–1971)

  Claim to Fame: Inventor of television

  How He Died: The stress of being spurned by the industry he helped create

  Background: As we told you in Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV, Farnsworth battled the RCA corporation for more than a decade to stop it from infringing his television patents. He won the legal battle in 1939, but RCA, which owned the NBC television network, used its media and public relations power to steal the credit for inventing TV, effectively erasing Farnsworth from the industry’s history even as it paid him royalties on his patents. (His one appearance on national television was in 1957, as a mystery guest on the game show I’ve Got A Secret. The contestants were asked to guess his “secret,” which was that he’d invented TV. None of them could; they’d never heard of him.)

  Farnsworth owned his own TV company for a time, but he couldn’t compete against RCA and was forced to exit the industry. He continued inventing for the rest of his life and did have some successes, but nothing as big as television.

  Details: The years of fighting RCA broke him physically and psychologically. He suffered from stomach ulcers and depression, and spent time in a sanatorium following a nervous breakdown. He was hospitalized repeatedly for alcoholism and also battled an addiction to the drugs that doctors prescribed to calm his nerves. Farnsworth never regained his health, and he died a forgotten man in 1971 at the age of 64.

  “CRAZY” EDWIN DRAKE (1819–1880)

  Claim to Fame: Father of the petroleum industry

  How He Died: Broke

  Background: Before Drake came along in the late 1850s, “rock oil” (so called to distinguish it from vegetable oil) was collected where it seeped to the surface of the Earth naturally, in small quantities. Since the oil oozed to the surface in such tiny amounts, people assumed that there couldn’t be much oil underground, either. Drake believed otherwise; that’s why everyone thought he was crazy. In 1859 he started drilling for oil in the sleepy lumber town of Titusville, Pennsylvania, where the Seneca Oil Company owned a valuable oil seep—valuable because it produced four gallons of crude oil a day. Others had tried drilling for oil before Drake, but had failed because water from the surrounding soil invariably leaked into the drill hole and caused cave-ins. That happened to Drake too, after he’d drilled just 16 feet down. Rather than give up as the others had, he had the idea of shoving a length of cast-iron pipe, soon to be called a “drive pipe,” down into the drill hole to keep the water out and prevent cave-ins. Drake expected to have to drill down 1,000 feet before he struck oil, but he hit it at 70 feet. Production at the site soared from four gallons a day to 35 barrels— or nearly 1,500 gallons. At that moment, the modern petroleum industry was born.

  The gases that make up Earth’s atmosphere are slowly leaking away into space.

  Details: Drake never patented his drilling technique; anyone could drill for oil using his method without paying him. That was his first mistake. His second was speculating in oil-industry stocks with the little money he did have. His drilling process increased oil production so dramatically that the price of petroleum crashed, wiping out the oil companies he’d invested in. Just seven years after he changed the world, Drake was flat broke and his health was failing. “If you have any of the milk of human kindness left in your bosom for me or my family, send me some money,” he begged in a letter to a friend, “I am in want of it sadly and am sick.” When associates in the booming oil town of Titusville learned of Drake’s plight they raised $4,000 (around $60,000 today) in assistance, and in 1873 the Pennsylvania legislature voted to pay him a pension of $1,500 a year ($29,000), which his widow continued to receive after he died in 1880 at the age of 61.

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  YOU’RE MY INSPIRATION

  In 1967 John Lennon received a letter from a young fan who said his teacher was having the class analyze Beatles songs. That inspired Lennon to write “I Am The Walrus”—a nonsensical song with bizarre imagery—“just to mess with their heads.”

  Makes sense: The German word for skunk is stinktier.

  LIVING LIGHTBULBS

  Random fact
s about living things that glow in the dark.

  SIMPLY LUMINOUS

  From insects and fish to fungi and worms, scientists have catalogued thousands of species of creatures with a unique trait in common: They’re all bioluminescent, or fluorescent, meaning they emanate a visible glow. The trait is used for a variety of purposes—to communicate, to help in reproduction, to keep away predators, and to lure prey, to name a few. Here we shine a light on these glowing misfits of nature.

  • FIREFLIES. In the summer, kids like to catch lightning bugs and keep them in jars. That light is vital to the insects’ survival. Courting male and female fireflies flash signals back and forth, and when their flickering code is in sync, they mate. Their glow also alerts bats and other predators to stay away, (which is good because fireflies taste awful). This bright warning signal, also used by some colorful, toxic amphibians, is called aposematism. When daring frogs do eat lightning bugs, they temporarily take on the golden glow of their dinner.

  • EARTHWORMS. A species of glowing earthworm found in sandy soil in parts of the Southern U.S., Diplocardia longa can grow to a length of 18 inches. Its blue glow is caused by slime secretions.

  • GLOWWORMS. A type of glowworm native to Australia, Arachnocampa begins life as a glowing, carnivorous larva. It drops sticky mucous-coated lines from cave ceilings, then more or less poops out bioluminescent stuff to attract insects. When the prey gets stuck, the larva pulls up the line and feasts.

  • DRAGONFISH. The majority of the world’s bioluminescent organisms live in the oceans and glow blue or green. One exception: the dragonfish, which uses its red glow as “night vision” to locate prey in the dark ocean depths.