READ YOUR MOLE-O-SCOPE
Having your fortune told, like reading your horoscope in the newspaper, is fun
even if you don’t take it seriously. Here’s more of what your moles may
reveal about what fate has in store for you. (Part I is on page 193.)
YOUR LEGS AND FEET
• On either hip: You’re hard-working, content, and full of passion. You’re also abstemious and trustworthy. Yet for all your desirable traits, you will enjoy only moderate success in your business life. Your many children will suffer hardships in life, but they will prevail in the end and be the wiser for it.
• On your right thigh: Do not have this mole removed! You’re pleasant-natured, passionate, and courageous. You’ll be successful in your career, come into even more money by marriage, and have lots of children, the majority of whom will be girls.
• On your left thigh: You’re happy and generous. And you’re a hard worker. But none of this counts for much. Your love life will be a snooze, and you’ll experience poverty, misery, and betrayal by “friends,” one of whom will tell a lie that gets you arrested.
• On your left knee: You’re passionate, but too quick for your own good. You’re not particularly honest, either, and your generosity is often offset by insensitivity. You’re likely to be successful in your own right and marry into a wealthy family on top of it. Despite your inclination toward debauchery, the odds are against you having more than a single child.
• On the right knee: Another keeper—you’re honest, even-tempered, and passionate. You’ll work hard in life and love, and experience great fortune in both. Your few sorrows will be more than offset by the love of your children and the loyalty of your friends.
• On either leg: You’re thoughtless, lazy, corrupt, and overindulgent. These and other failings will cause great trouble, and yet somehow, you will overcome your problems…only to end up in prison at an early age. You’ll marry an agreeable person (no word on whether that’s in or out of prison), and they will outlive you. You’ll have four children (two will die young).
• On either ankle: You’re a slave to fashion and a snazzy dresser. If you’re a man, you’re a coward; if you’re a woman, you’re clever and brave. Both genders will have great success in love and life.
• On either foot: You’re sad. And you’re lazy, which only adds to your sadness. You lead a sedentary life and read lots of books (some of them in the bathroom). For you, life will always be a bumpy road, with at least one bad marriage made worse by troubled, ungrateful children.
YOUR HANDS AND ARMS
• On your wrist or hand: You’re an intelligent, serious person. You’re reliable, have a strong work ethic, and are in the habit of saving your money and resources rather than frittering them away on whims and passing fancies. You’ll likely marry well and have a happy family life, but you will hit a string of bad luck at about age 30 that could last for years. A man with a mole on his wrist or hand will marry twice in his lifetime; a woman, only once, and she will outlive her husband.
• Between your elbow and your wrist: You have a peaceful, cheerful personality, and you love hard work almost as much as you love to read a good book. Your life may start out a little rough
—including even an arrest or a major lawsuit of some kind—but as you reach middle age your past trials and tribulations will enable you to appreciate life that much more. If you have a son, he will go far in the world and marry a wealthy widow.
• Near either elbow: You are restless and unreliable. If you’re in a relationship, it’s an unhappy one. If you have children, they’re likely to cause you a lot of problems, too. You enjoy traveling and passing time idly, but your idleness can get in the way of travel. Getting off the couch has always been an unnatural act for you.
• On either arm: You’re strong, courageous, resolute, hard-working, and faithful to your friends. You’ll face plenty of battles in life but will prevail over adversity. If you’re male, you’ll be a widower by 40; if you’re female, your husband will outlive you. Either way, the good things will outweigh the bad, and your life will be happy and prosperous.
THE PANTS SUIT
It all started simply enough: A man goes to his dry cleaner
for a $10 alteration…and ends up suing for $54 million.
SUITING UP
In May 2005, Roy Pearson, a 55-year-old Washington, D.C. lawyer, landed a job as an administrative law judge. Pearson wanted to wear his nicest suit, but his pants needed to be let out, so he took them to his neighborhood dry cleaner, Custom Cleaners. When he returned two days later, the pants weren’t ready. Soo Chung, one of the owners, apologized and said she’d have them finished the next morning. But when Pearson returned, the pants couldn’t be found. Angry, he pointed to two signs on the wall—“Same-Day Service” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed”—and then stormed out. A few days later, Chung told Pearson she’d found his pants. He claimed they weren’t his. Chung insisted they were; his receipt was still attached. Pearson didn’t believe her and demanded $1,150 for a new suit. The Chungs offered to give him his pants back. “Those are not my pants!” Pearson reiterated. He threatened legal action and left.
A PRESSING MATTER
Soo and Jim Nam Chung, who owned Custom Cleaners as well as another dry cleaner, hired attorney Chris Manning to help them. He advised them to offer Pearson $3,000 to settle the whole matter. Pearson declined, as he did subsequent offers of $4,600 and $12,000. Pearson had been poring through law books and building a case, and ended up suing the Chungs for “mental suffering, inconvenience, and discomfort”—both for the loss of his pants and for the two signs in the shop, which he claimed were false advertising. The amount he wanted: $67 million.
Why so high? Pearson was taking advantage of a vaguely worded consumer protection law that provides for damages of $1,500 per violation per day. Pearson counted 12 violations taking place over 1,200 days, multiplied by three—one for each of the two owners and their son, who also worked there. Why so many days? Pearson didn’t own a car and claimed he’d have to rent one every week for the next four years to drive to the next closest dry cleaner. Having to do this, he concluded, was a violation of his rights. Pearson also sought damages for the time he would log as his own lawyer (at his regular rate).
CLASSLESS ACTION
The lawsuit made international headlines: On one side there was Pearson, a well-dressed African-American lawyer with a flair for the dramatic. And then there were the humble Chungs, Korean immigrants who spoke so little English that they needed an interpreter. The legal community took notice as well, concerned that Pearson was giving trial lawyers an even worse name. In fact, the American Tort Reform Association, whose goal is to end frivolous lawsuits, and the American Trial Lawyers Association—their sworn enemy—came to a rare agreement that Pearson had crossed the line. The Tort Reform Association even offered to buy “Judge Fancy Pants,” as some were calling him, a new suit if he dropped the case.
Instead, Pearson put up flyers in his neighborhood denouncing the Chungs and calling for other dissatisfied customers to join him in a class-action lawsuit. That case was dismissed when Pearson failed to gather enough signatures…so he pressed on with his civil suit. Meanwhile, business at Custom Cleaners had dropped off considerably after the flyers went up. But outside the neighborhood, public support helped the Chungs raise nearly $100,000 to pay (most of) their legal bills.
ALL RISE
The bench trial (one in which there is no jury) went before D.C. Judge Judith Bartnoff in June 2007. In his bizarre opening statement, Pearson spoke so softly that the fans had to be turned off so that everyone could hear him (and there was no air-conditioning). After spending a half-hour describing his childhood, he was interrupted by Judge Bartnoff, who said, “Why don’t we get to why we’re here?” When Pearson finally did, he explained that the case wasn’t really about the pants—it was about the sign that falsely advertised “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” (He also reduced his req
uest from $67 million to $54 million.)
Pearson kept using the term “we,” because in his mind, he was speaking for everyone who’d ever been taken advantage of by shady business tactics. Judge Bartnoff told him to stop it: “Mr. Pearson, you are not ‘we’. You are an ‘I.’” That was one of several exchanges that drew laughs from the spectators. At one point, a teary Pearson sobbed, “Never before in recorded history has a group of defendants engaged in such misleading and unfair business practices,” and then rushed out of the courtroom.
JUDGING THE JUDGE
When it was defense attorney Manning’s turn to speak, he painted Pearson as a “bitter man” who was still reeling from a divorce. Manning spoke of earlier disputes between Pearson and the Chungs. Three times he had been banned from their shop for being rude and had to beg them to let him back in. Manning also told the court that Pearson was desperate for money. Although he made $100,000 per year, he’d maxed out his credit cards in order to pay for legal fees from a previous lawsuit against his ex-wife (which was dismissed for being frivolous). “This case is very simple,” said Manning. “It’s about one sign and the plaintiff’s outlandish interpretation.”
Pearson called several witnesses to the stand who said they’d also had trouble at the Chungs’ laundromat. He even called a fellow administrative law judge, who testified that it is indeed important for a judge to wear a nice suit to work. When Pearson took the stand himself to be cross-examined by Manning, he started crying. “What if this had been…?” He never even finished the sentence and ran out of the courtroom. “This case shocks me on a daily basis,” Manning told reporters that night.
The next day, Soo Chung cried on the stand—twice—when describing the ordeal. And while many in the press made light of the proceedings, the Chungs weren’t laughing, “It’s not humorous, not funny, and nobody would have thought that something like this would have ever happened,” said Soo, who added that they were thinking about moving back to Korea.
THE VERDICT
Pearson lost. Judge Bartnoff wrote in her ruling, “I have significant concerns that the plaintiff is acting in bad faith because of the breathtaking magnitude of the expansion he seeks.” Pearson was ordered to pay the Chungs’ court costs, but not their legal fees.
He filed an appeal based on the assumption that the judge had made a “fundamental legal error” because she failed to comprehend the true nature of “Satisfaction Guaranteed.” The second judge dismissed the appeal. So Pearson filed another one. The third judge threw it out, ruling that Judge Bartnoff’s original decision showed “basic common sense.”
AFTERMATH
In 2008, after being denied reinstatement as a judge (thanks in part to the negative press he brought upon himself and his profession), Pearson sued the D.C. government for $1 million for wrongful termination. He lost. Pearson threatened to take his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the statute of limitations ran out before he had the chance. At last report, Pearson was still unemployed…but still has an active license to practice law.
Although the Chungs “won,” the three-year-long lawsuit put Custom Cleaners out of business. Today, they are focusing their attention on their original shop, Happy Cleaners. And there’s no sign on the wall that promises “Satisfaction Guaranteed.”
OUR SUGGESTIONS FOR 10 HONEST MOVIE TITLES
Not-So-Goodfellas
Sort of Dirty Dancing
Gone With the War
The Neverending Story That’s
About 90 Minutes Long
Mission: Possible
Indiana Jones and the
Second-to-Last Crusade
Home Alone, but Not Really
Because There Are Burglars
Kill Lots of People, Then Bill
Earth
(Trying Not to) Die (Is) Hard
CAUTION: SLOW CHILDREN
Kids just “act”—they often don’t know any better. Sometimes
this can lead to trouble…for the rest of us.
SHE’S GOT GAME
In 2009 two-year-old Natalie Jasmer was playing hide-and-seek with her two older siblings at their Greenville, Pennsylvania, home. And it turns out that Natalie is really good at the game—her family looked and looked, but couldn’t find her. They called police and friends, and for an hour, a crowd of people searched all over town for her, fearing the worst. Natalie was eventually found—safe and sound—by the family dog. She’d hidden in a drawer underneath the washing machine in the laundry room and then fallen asleep. “I’m sorry,” said Natalie.
ON A ROLL
A four-year-old girl was visiting her father at the oil refinery in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, where he worked. While he was briefly distracted with a work matter, the little girl climbed onto a forklift and released the brake, which started the machine rolling. It went only about 20 feet…because it was stopped by a 400-gallon tank of heating oil. The forklift rammed the oil tank with such force that it punctured the hull, spilling about 130 gallons of heating oil onto the ground and into a sewer. “We’re still not sure how the little girl released the brake. Four-year-olds don’t have the kind of strength it takes to do that on a forklift,” said a police spokesman.
WATERING HOLE
In May 2009, four-year-old Daniel Blair of London decided that his one-week-old Cocker Spaniel puppy needed his first bath. So he put the dog into the smallest pool of water he could find—the toilet. Once Daniel washed all the mud off the dog, he flushed the toilet…with the puppy still in it. Daniel immediately told his mother what he’d done, and she called a plumber who was able to locate the dog in an underground pipe 20 yards from the house. Amazingly, the dog survived.
MO MONEY, MO PROBLEMS
Madeline Hill runs a pub attached to her house in Sittingbourne, England. One night she was sitting in her kitchen counting up the night’s cash earnings when she heard a knock at the door. She went to answer it, but first did what she always does with her cash if she’s interrupted while counting it—she put it in the microwave. While Hill was out of the room, her 20-month-old son, Jordan, toddled into the room and pressed a bunch of buttons on the microwave, turning it on. The money, about $1,500, was burned to a crisp. (Hill doesn’t put her money in the microwave anymore.)
AN AMAZING FIND
In 2008 Bill Waters of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was traveling through Texas and stopped at an antique store in the small town of Shamrock. Underneath a wooden crate full of old medicine bottles, Waters found an old leather-bound ledger that looked like it must have been 100 years old. On the front, in fading letters, was written “Castles Formulas.” Waters paid $200 for the book, intending to sell it for at least that on eBay. But when he began preparing it for sale, he starting thumbing through it and found prescription sheets from “W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store, Waco, Texas.” He did some research and found out that a man named John Castles was a pharmacist at Morrison’s in the 1880s. The formulas were for things like piano polish, hair restorer, cough syrup, and a stomach-pain remedy…called D Peppers Pepsin Bitters. More research revealed that Morrison’s is where, in 1885, pharmacist Charles Alderton invented Dr Pepper, based on Castles’s D Peppers Pepsin Bitters. In other words, Waters had discovered the original recipe for Dr Pepper. (Today, the company that makes the soda is secretive about its flavor blend, but if they’re still using Castles’s instructions, the secret ingredient is mandrake root.) Waters plans to sell the book at auction, where it’s expected to fetch as much as $75,000.
THE WORLD’S WORST ACCIDENT
The International Atomic Energy Agency ranks nuclear accidents on
a scale of 1 to 7. So far only one accident has received the worst
classification, Level 7: the 1986 nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.
RADIOACTIVE WIND
On April 26, 1986, a safety test gone terribly wrong destroyed one of the four nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl power station in the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Notoriously secretive—particularly wher
e issues of nuclear technology were involved—the Soviet government instituted a news blackout and tried to prevent any information about the accident from leaving the country. It didn’t work. A large plume of radioactive debris entered the atmosphere and crossed Soviet borders, where it set off radiation detectors at several European nuclear power plants. By studying weather patterns and satellite photographs, western countries were able to determine the approximate source of the nuclear fallout.
Under international pressure, Soviet officials eventually admitted that there had been an accident. But that’s about all they said. As radiation continued to spew from the damaged reactor, scientists in the West could only speculate about the extent of the damage—and the danger it posed to the rest of the world.
DON’T PANIC!
As the cloud of radioactive debris spread across Europe, western governments scrambled to implement safety measures. Many banned food imports from all points east. Polish officials prohibited the sale of milk from grass-fed cows, and Sweden warned its citizens not to drink water from open wells. West Germans were advised to stay inside and out of the rain. Most of these governments distributed iodine tablets, which were taken to prevent the thyroid gland from absorbing radiation from contaminated food.
Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader Page 47