from the 1920s. Read them, and all will be revealed.
Beggars: If you refused a beggar, your life will be miserable; if you gave freely to a beggar, you will have a long and happy life.
Coffins: You will soon marry and have a house of your own.
Gambling: If you won, a friend will die. If you lost, you will move to a new residence.
Falling snow: There will be obstacles in your path.
Umbrella: Good luck is near.
Watching a ball game: Money will soon come to you.
Sleeping dog: Relax—you have nothing to worry about.
Police officer: Beware of false friends!
Saving a drowning woman: You will marry someone famous.
Climbing a ladder: If you’re climbing up the ladder, wealth is coming your way. If you’re climbing down, you’re headed for the poorhouse.
Killing a spider: Bad luck.
Warts: If it’s summertime, you’ll have good luck. If you dream of warts in the winter, you’ll have bad luck.
You, hiding in the forest: You are in danger.
You, on a deserted island: A friend will turn against you.
Pigeons: Good news is coming your way.
Running, barking dog: Pay attention to your personal affairs; someone could be taking advantage of you.
The gallows: You will soon have an opportunity to make lots of money.
Balloons: Something you’re planning for the future may seem likely to succeed, but like a balloon, it will burst into nothing.
Mirror: Someone will betray you.
Riding a train: You and your mate will soon separate.
A large building: You’ll meet someone who will become an intimate acquaintance.
An angel approaching: Good news is coming your way. But if the angel is avoiding you, watch out! Your life is on the wrong track—change your ways before it’s too late!
Laughter: You will soon be in tears.
Sweeping: If you’re sweeping your own room, you’ll have good luck in business. If you’re sweeping out the cellar, you’re headed for misfortune.
White rabbit: Success is in your future.
Black rabbit: Watch out! You’ll soon have an accident.
Rabbit meat for dinner: You will have good health.
A storm: For a rich person, it’s a sign that things will get worse. For a poor person, it’s a sign that things will get better.
You, at a picnic: You will fall in love with a vain person and it will end badly.
Blood: The sight of blood means you will inherit an estate, provided that it’s someone else’s blood. If it’s your blood, disappointment and sorrow will soon be upon you.
Eating a salad: Sickness is coming your way.
Jewels: If the jewels belong to you, you will lose something of value. Tempted to steal someone else’s jewels? You’re at risk of disgracing yourself.
A naked lady: A relative of yours will die soon.
Riding on the back of a lion: Someone powerful is protecting you.
Medicine: If you’re taking medicine, you will soon know poverty. If you’re dispensing the medicine, you will come into some money.
Thirst: Represents ambition. If you quench your thirst, your ambition will be realized.
A bell: Can you hear the bell ringing? Bad luck’s in store for whom the bell tolls.
SUIT UP
The town of Dunedin, New Zealand, holds a “Nude Rugby Invitational” every two years. During a match in 2009, play was briefly interrupted when a fully clothed streaker ran out onto the field.
TWUNGE TISTERS
Er, ting twusters. No, twing testers. Oh, you know what me wean.
I wish to wash my Irish wristwatch.
If Stu chews shoes, should Stu choose his shoes?
The soldiers shouldered shooters on their shoulders.
A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk.
Plague-bearing prairie dogs.
Let’s listen to the local yokel yodel.
Six sick hicks pick six slick bricks.
Betty bought some bitter butter and it made her batter bitter, so Betty bought some better butter to make her bitter batter better.
Sheena leads, Sheila needs.
Knapsack strap.
I’m not the fig plucker, nor the fig plucker’s son, but I’ll pluck figs till the fig plucker comes.
Cows graze in groves on grass that grows in grooves.
She sits in her slip and sips Schlitz.
A black bug bled blue blood.
An anesthetist’s nurse unearthed a nest.
No need to light a night-light on a light night like tonight.
The quick-witted cricket critic cried quietly.
THE INVENTIONS OF PROFESSOR LUCIFER GORGONZOLA BUTTS
Who? That’s the name cartoonist Rube Goldberg gave to a character who
came up with crazy contraptions that took simple jobs (like fishing an
olive out of a jar) and made them as complicated as possible.
A MAN CALLED RUBE
From 1907 to 1964, Rube Goldberg regularly drew cartoons and comic strips for newspapers. He’d started out with an engineering degree from the University of California, but his first job—designing sewer systems for the city of San Francisco—depressed him so much that he quit after a few months. Drawing was what he really loved, but in 1904, where could he make a living by drawing? At a newspaper, doing cartoons. It took Goldberg a couple of years to establish himself as a cartoonist in San Francisco, and then he moved to New York and hit his stride, drawing daily and Sunday strips for several newspapers. By 1915 his work went into syndication and became nationally known.
THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS
His most famous comic strips were Mike and Ike (They Look Alike), Boob McNutt, and Lala Palooza, but his most enduring creations are the outlandish machines invented by a character called Professor Lucifer Gorgonzola Butts. These cartoon machines did everything from lighting a cigar (Goldberg was a cigar smoker) to putting toothpaste on a toothbrush, and each machine accomplished its task by means of an absurd chain reaction. Goldberg used wheels, pulleys, springs, pipes, weights, bells, household items, and usually an animal or two to “build” the machines, although he never actually built a single one of them. The machines were so complicated and distinctive that the phrase “Rube Goldberg device” entered the American vocabulary: If you call something a “Rube Goldberg,” you’re talking about a contraption that is weird-looking, made up of unlikely components, precariously constructed, and guaranteed to turn a simple task into a needlessly and hopelessly complicated one. Here are a few examples:
THE “AUTOMATIC” BACK-SCRATCHER
1. The sequence starts with a small kerosene lamp placed beside a curtained window.
2. The flame from the lamp catches on the window curtain.
3. The fire department sends a stream of water through the window to douse the flame.
4. The stream of water lands on the head of a bearded man.
5. The bearded man thinks it’s raining and reaches for an umbrella, which is attached to a string looped over a pair of pulleys.
6. When the bearded man grabs the umbrella, the string lifts the end of a small platform.
7. An iron ball on the end of the platform rolls off, pulling another string, which is attached to a hammer.
8. The hammer hits a glass plate.
9. The sound of breaking glass wakes a puppy sleeping in a cradle that has a back-scratcher attached to one of its rockers.
10. As the puppy’s mother rocks the cradle to quiet the puppy, the back-scratcher moves up and down against a man’s back.
GETTING AN OLIVE OUT OF A BOTTLE
1. The sequence starts with a clock attached high on a wall with a cylindrical weight hanging from it.
2. At 6:30, as the clock’s hands are both pointing down, the weight drops onto the head of a man sitting in a chair, smoking a cigar.
3. The man yells in pain and the cigar drops fr
om his mouth.
4. The cigar falls onto a pile of paper, setting it on fire.
5. The heat from the fire enrages the man’s wife, who’s sitting in a chair suspended above the pile of paper.
6. The angry wife sharpens a knife on a grindstone, which sits on a small platform before her.
7. The grindstone is attached to a wheel. When the grindstone turns, the wheel also starts to turn.
8. A handle on the wheel has a string tied to it, and the string is looped over a pulley. The other end of the string is tied to a spoon, which dangles at the mouth of a tall jar of olives. When the wheel turns, the spoon descends into the jar and fishes out an olive.
9. If the spoon can’t grab an olive, 15 minutes later another clock (on the floor) automatically runs a glass cutter against the jar and breaks out a piece of glass large enough to accommodate a finger.
SHARPENING A PENCIL
1. The sequence starts at a window. A pulley is attached to the windowsill; the string of a kite is looped around the pulley.
2. The window is opened and the kite flies outside.
3. When the kite is aloft, the string—which runs under one pulley and over two pulleys attached to the ceiling—becomes taut and raises a small door in a cage sitting on top of a pole.
4. Moths escape from the cage and eat a flannel shirt hanging from the end of another string looped over another pair of pulleys.
5. As the shirt gets lighter (from being eaten), a shoe that’s dangling from the other end of that string drops and steps on a switch.
6. The switch turns on an electric iron that’s resting flat on a pair of pants on an ironing board. The iron burns a hole in the pants.
7. The smoke from the pants funnels through a tube into the trunk of a hollow tree and smokes out an opossum living in the tree.
8. The opossum jumps out of the tree into a basket hanging from one of the branches. A string attached to the basket is looped over the branch and tied to the top of a birdcage.
9. When the opossum lands in the basket, the string lifts the cover of the birdcage and a woodpecker inside the cage leans forward and chews the end of a pencil attached to short clamp. The pencil is sharpened. (If the opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can’t do his job, there’s an emergency penknife nearby.)
GOLDBERG VARIATIONS
Purdue University holds an annual Rube Goldberg Machine Contest where teams of college students build Rube Goldberg-style contraptions no larger than 5’ high, 6’ wide, and 6’ deep. The devices must complete simple tasks like replacing a light bulb, making a hamburger, or screwing a lid on a jar in 20 or more separate steps.
UNHEARD ALBUMS
These albums were announced, promised, started, and at least partially—if not
completely—finished. And while some have been leaked or bootlegged, for
whatever reason, they’ve never officially been released to the public.
MC HAMMER, TOO TIGHT
MC Hammer presented rap music in a way that made it accessible to mainstream pop audiences with hits like “U Can’t Touch This” and “2 Legit 2 Quit.” But just five years later, rap had evolved into hard-edged, profanity- and violence-laden “gangsta rap.” Result: MC Hammer, with his smiling face, Saturday morning cartoon show, and shiny parachute pants, was passé. So he decided to make a gangsta rap album. In 1995 he signed with Death Row Records—the biggest rap label of the day and home to 2Pac, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg—and recorded Too Tight, with contributions from Death Row staff writers and a cameo from 2Pac. When 2Pac was murdered in 1996 (possibly by people connected to a rival rap label), MC Hammer realized that his new label was a dangerous place to be. He left Death Row and shortly after filed for bankruptcy. He became a minister, which inspired a series of reflective, spiritually based albums. Death Row has since gone out of business, and gangsta rap itself is now becoming passé, so Too Tight will probably never see the light of day.
PRINCE & THE REVOLUTION, DREAM FACTORY
Prince is well known for being a prolific songwriter and recording artist who supposedly has a vault full of thousands of unreleased songs. Dream Factory was a planned project that was completed but never released. On breaks from his 1985 Hit & Run Tour, Prince popped into recording studios around the world to record the Dream Factory tracks, which included an instrumental piano piece, a 10-minute hard-rocking anti-war song, a song built around train sound effects, and a 1930s-style jazz number (Prince even sang it through a megaphone). It was the most avant-garde album Prince had recorded to that point. By June 1986, he had a polished 18-track double LP, containing some songs recorded with his band, the Revolution, and others recorded solo. But in October, the temperamental star suddenly fired the Revolution and removed the band members’ contributions from Dream Factory. Combining his solo tracks with songs from a half-finished project called Camille, in which he sang like a woman with the aid of voice software, Prince assembled an even longer triple album called Crystal Ball. Prince’s label, Warner Bros., balked at an experimental triple LP and refused to release it. So, he dropped a third of the songs and called it Sign ‘O’ the Times, a double album that went on to critical and commercial success.
NEIL YOUNG, HOMEGROWN
In 1973, Young recorded Tonight’s the Night, a sad, mournful album recorded in reaction to the drug-overdose deaths of two friends. His label, RCA, refused to release it, claiming it was “uncommercial.” Young made and released On the Beach instead before delving into another dark, highly personal album called Homegrown, about the breakup of his relationship with actress Carrie Snodgress. He then held a listening party for Homegrown and found a copy of Tonight’s the Night on the same reel. Young’s guests were ambivalent about Homegrown but loved Tonight’s the Night. Young agreed. (Apparently the album about drug overdoses was less depressing than the one about the end of the love affair.) So, he convinced RCA to shelve Homegrown—even though a cover had already been designed and printed—and release Tonight’s the Night instead. Many of the songs on Homegrown turned up on later Young albums, but the album in whole form remains locked away.
BEASTIE BOYS, WHITE HOUSE
For rabid fans of the rap/rock group, this shelved dance-music album is their most coveted and controversial recording. In 1988 the Beastie Boys left their longtime label Def Jam Records for Capitol Records, where they recorded the hit album Paul’s Boutique. Def Jam president Russell Simmons was furious at the band for jumping ship. So he hired Public Enemy rapper/producer Chuck D to craft a new Beastie Boys album to compete with Paul’s Boutique…without the Beastie Boys. Simmons gave Chuck D unused vocal outtakes from old Beastie Boys sessions with instructions to set them to dance beats. When Chuck D found out that White House was being done against the band’s wishes, he backed out, and the nearly completed project was abandoned.
CRUNCHY LOGGS
Breakfast cereals are as much a part of pop culture as movies, video games, or TV. And like those products, the cereal industry has had its share of bizarre ideas.
GREEN SLIME. In the 1980s, Nickelodeon aired a show called You Can’t Do That on Television in which cast members got “slimed”—dumped with buckets of green slime. Cashing in on the fad, General Mills came out with Green Slime Cereal, chunky, green-colored “slime-shaped” cornmeal puffs (almost as bad as slime) that consisted of a whopping 47% sugar.
EAT MY SHORTS. What’s less appetizing than green slime? Used underwear. Based on the catchphrase made famous by Bart Simpson, with this underwear-shaped cereal, produced in 2003, you could literally eat Bart’s (sugar and cornmeal) shorts.
OJ’s. Orange and milk flavors go together nicely in a Creamsicle, but evidently not in a breakfast cereal. Orange-flavored OJ’s were released in 1984 and gone by the end of the year.
ADDAMS FAMILY CEREAL. Ralston-Purina released this as a tie-in for the Addams Family movie in 1991. Ads called it “the weird part of a complete breakfast,” and it was: The cereal and marshmallow bits were shaped like skulls and severed han
ds.
CRUNCHY LOGGS. Possibly the most aptly named—and least appetizing—breakfast food ever produced. The 1978 cereal was little brown “logs” made out of corn and oats. And they were crunchy. (Although little brown “logs” makes Uncle John think of something besides cereal.)
BIGG MIXX. It seems as if Kellogg’s took whatever Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran, Rice Krispies, and other cereals were left at the end of the day, mixed them up, and threw them in a single box. The advertising character concocted to match the cereal was “Bigg Mixx,” a weird, mutated combination of a chicken, a wolf, a moose, and a pig. The cereal was released with a huge advertising campaign in 1990…and quickly disappeared into obscurity.
USED COWS FOR SALE
Actual signs from roadsides, stores, and restaurants.
STOP
No Stopping Anytime
Slow Children
No Hunting
LODGING NEXT EXIT
STATE PRISON
NO SOCCER—May Only Be Played On Archery Range
MIDNIGHT BOWLING SATURDAY AT 9 P.M.
Village of Crestwood
ENGLISH IS OUR
LANGUAGE
NO EXECTIONS
LEARN IT
POO PING Chinese and Thai Cuisine
HO-MADE SOUPS
Anyone Caught Collecting
Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader Page 31