Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  THE CHOSEN ONE

  Over 20 years’ time, Icke had gone from poor kid on welfare to professional athlete to sportscaster to politician. That would qualify as a full life for anybody. But then Icke’s entire world made a really bizarre shift. In March 1990, Icke claims a female “spirit” spoke to him. What did she say? She told Icke that he was “the chosen one,” a man blessed with a gift to heal and was put on Earth in order to save it. The spirit further informed him that his meandering life had been predestined: soccer had taught him discipline and journalism gave him the ability to communicate with large groups of people. According to the spirit, all of it was preparation for his new role…as a prophet. One other thing Icke claims the spirit told him: within a few years, a massive earthquake would destroy the entire world, and the oceans would overtake the land as a punishment to humankind for transgressions against nature.

  There is a type of fly that only lives in a crack at the top of Ukazzi Hill in Kenya.

  OUT OF LINE

  Icke reported his experience to the Green Party leaders, who thought he was crazy and would make the party look bad. They immediately fired him. Now jobless and convinced he was a prophet, Icke made a “spiritual journey” to Peru in 1991. When he returned to England, he began to wear only turquoise-colored clothes and held a press conference to announce that not only was he “chosen,” he was the chosen one—a “channel for the Christ spirit.” He received the news, he said, during another encounter with a supernatural entity. “The title was given to me very recently by the Godhead,” meaning Icke believed the Holy Spirit—the spiritual essence of God—told him that he was, essentially, the second coming of Jesus Christ.

  Icke hadn’t been a major public figure for several years, so the press conference wasn’t widely attended or reported. So a few months later Icke went on Terry Wogan’s popular BBC talk show to announce once again that he was Christ incarnate, as well as to warn England that planet-devastating earthquakes and tidal waves were scheduled to hit soon, with the British Isles the first to be destroyed. How did England react to this mind-blowing information? Wogan’s studio audience roared with laughter. The next day, newspaper columnists and TV comedians suggested that Icke was mentally ill. Few people, if any, took him seriously.

  NUTTERS

  “As a television presenter, I’d been respected. And overnight, it was transformed into ‘Icke’s a nutter,’” he told one reporter. Icke went into seclusion and became a prolific writer. At first he wrote mainly about his “prophecies” and “special powers,” but then something in Icke snapped. No longer a peaceful “nutter,” he turned dark and paranoid. Icke became obsessed with exposing “The Brotherhood,” a massive network of secret societies that he claimed runs the world and everything in it.

  Keanu Reeves is reportedly afraid of the dark.

  Icke’s main source for his theories is his “psychic link to the spirit world,” (which conveniently clears him of the burden of having to actually prove any of his theories), but he also consults The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a 90-year-old book that supposedly details a plan by Jewish leaders to achieve world domination through media and financial control. The book is an infamous anti-Semitic hoax, originally written as propaganda by the Tsarist secret police in Russia in 1916.

  ALL HAIL THE OVERLORDS!

  Yet despite being debunked, Icke trusts the book, claiming the secret society wants you to believe their insidious plan is a hoax. Here’s how he says the world really works: At the top of the Brotherhood are the “Prison Warders,” a group of Satan-worshippers with a single goal—absolute world domination. They use mind control to manipulate the world’s economies, banks, military, schools, media, religion, drug companies, organized crime, and spy agencies. They also stage massive catastrophes which cause people to react emotionally, then unwittingly do the Brotherhood’s bidding. For instance, according to Icke’s book Infinite Love Is the Only Truth, Everything Else is Illusion, religions are a creation of the Brotherhood. They create conflicts which make humans easier to divide and conquer. Another example: The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were staged by the Brotherhood to encourage anti-Muslim feelings and gain support for a war in the Middle East.

  Icke offers an even stranger twist: the Prison Warders aren’t human—they are descended from a race of reptiles who came to conquer Earth from a planet in a distant constellation called Draco. Icke says they live in subterranean caves. Further, the most powerful members of the Brotherhood, the Prison Warders, can gain the ability to shapeshift and assume the appearance of normal human beings…by drinking human blood.

  BUSH, BLAIR, AND…BOXCAR WILLIE?

  But there’s a bright side: the Prison Warders are not a secret, shadow government of unknown figures operating from a secret location. Many are history and modern day’s most well-known and powerful leaders, including the British royal family, the Bush family, Hillary (but not Bill) Clinton, British prime ministers Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, the Rockefellers, and, Icke inexplicably insists, 1970s country music singer Boxcar Willie. In a 1999 interview, Christine Fitzgerald, a friend of the late Princess Diana, reportedly told Icke that Diana had witnessed Queen Elizabeth II change from a reptile into a humanoid.

  Red scare: Most of the villains in the Bible have red hair.

  The view that all humans are under the control of hideous vampire lizards isn’t even Icke’s most controversial theory: He says the reptiles are Jewish. But Icke insists allegations that he’s anti-Semitic are “friggin’ nonsense.” Icke says his qualm is with Jewish reptiles, not Jewish people. Yet it’s hard not to think Icke has racist motives when he claims that “the white race” is most susceptible to getting their blood consumed by the lizards because they consider white people with blue eyes to be the peak of sexual desirability. (Note: David Icke is a white man with blue eyes.)

  WHAT’S REAL?

  In January 2003, Icke’s theories took another turn during a visit to Brazil, where a shaman gave him heavy doses of Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic rainforest plant with mind-altering effects similar to peyote. While one might consider Icke to be spouting the rambling nonsense of someone on drugs before he went to Brazil, Icke says the experience “completely transformed my view of life. What it did was take my intellectual understanding that the world is an illusion into the realms of knowing it’s an illusion and there’s a difference between intellectually understanding it’s an illusion and this level of knowing it because you’ve experienced it.”

  In other words, no need to worry about the reptile overlords… because, according to Icke, the man who said they exist, they don’t actually exist. They’re just an illusion.

  * * *

  Popular new snack food in Quebec: communion wafers. People in the traditionally Catholic area buy them by the bagful. They are reportedly low in fat and calories.

  The tip of the hour-hand on a wristwatch travels at 0.00000275 miles per hour.

  ODD BATHROOM NEWS

  Is this series of Bathroom News stories really any odder than what we put in our regular books? Perhaps not, but when you think about it…all bathroom news is kind of odd, isn’t it?

  FLUSH BEFORE YOU FLY!

  China Southern Airlines was losing money. Watching their profits dwindle while fuel prices rose, the airline needed to find new ways to save fuel. They found one, but its success was entirely dependent on their customers’ cooperation. Passengers are given a simple request at the airport: “Please go to the bathroom before you board the plane.” Why? Because every time an airplane toilet flushes, it uses up to a liter of fuel. “The energy used in one flush is enough for an economical car to run at least 10 kilometers,” says pilot Liu Zhiyuan, who always makes sure that he does his business on the ground before doing it in the air.

  SPLISH SPLASH I WAS TAKING A BATH

  A Russian couple were relaxing in the living room of their apartment after dinner one evening. At the same time, in the apartment directly above, a woman was relaxing in her bathtub, soaking i
n the warm water, her head back, eyes closed, thoughts meandering, starting to doze offffffff.......creeeeeeak .......CRACK! (crumble crumble) CRASH! “EEEEE-Ahhhhggh!” THUD! After the tub and ceiling plaster landed on the floor below, the dazed woman looked up out of the tub to see the couple staring at her in bewilderment. She later told reporters, “They seemed as shocked as I was when they saw me lying there. Naked. In the bath. In the middle of their living room.”

  THE GREAT BATHROOM BARBIE MYSTERY

  In late 2005, seemingly out of nowhere and without explanation, Barbie dolls suddenly began appearing in the ladies’ bathrooms of coffee shops in the Lincoln, Nebraska, area. The first sighting occurred at The Mill, when a barista walked into the ladies’ room one morning and found a Malibu Barbie standing on the paper towel holder. A few days later, another was found perched on top of a stall wall. Then more Barbies began showing up at other coffee shops…and it creeped out the staff. “You go to clean and there’s a Barbie doll staring up at you. It’s scary. I won’t go in there anymore,” said barista Jamie Yost. All of the Barbies were in pristine condition and came on stands (which pointed toward a collector as the culprit). Shop owners tried everything short of installing video cameras in the bathrooms to catch the woman responsible. But then, a few months after they first appeared, the Barbie visits abruptly stopped (most likely because whoever was putting them there ran out of the dolls). The mystery was never solved.

  Statistics show that when men are having a heart attack in a public place, they often run outside. When women are having a heart attack, they’re more likely to run to the bathroom.

  QUEEN OF POP

  Michael Jackson made a pitstop in a Dubai shopping mall to touch up his make-up…in the women’s bathroom. The pop star said it was a mistake (after all, the signs are in Arabic), but that doesn’t mean it didn’t enrage the Dubai citizens—especially women. For one thing, Jackson was wearing a headdress that, by Arab custom, is only be worn by females. For another, a woman who emerged from her stall was startled to see the King of Pop applying make-up to a face that has been described as “disconcerting.” Recognizing the star, the woman used her cell-phone camera to take pictures of him. That’s when Jackson screamed. His body guards rushed into the bathroom and forcefully confiscated the woman’s cell phone and deleted the pictures. They spilled out of the bathroom, causing a melee between Jackson’s bodyguards and mall cops. The ordeal culminated with the confused pop star being rushed into his heavily fortified SUV. Jackson was not charged, which further angered Muslim women. “Michael Jackson might be a big name,” said one. “But it does not give him the right to go into a ladies’ washroom!”

  * * *

  “It’s better to have a relationship with someone who cheats on you than someone who doesn’t flush the toilet.”

  —Uma Thurman

  LOONEY LORDS

  Noblemen are usually dignified people who act with grace. Just as often, they’re fools made insane by generations of blue-blooded inbreeding.

  THE HERMIT OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE

  William John Cavendish Scott-Bentinck (1800–1879) was a member of England’s parliament before he was 30, and seemed destined for a serious career in politics. Then his uncle died in 1854 and Scott-Bentinck inherited the title of fifth Duke of Portland. Almost immediately, the new duke rejected public life, preferring to be alone—very alone. He moved into his newly inherited estate in Nottinghamshire and quickly rid the house of everything in it, tossing most of his family’s priceless treasures into a huge pile in one empty room. Scott-Bentinck then dedicated five empty rooms of the house for his living quarters, and had the rest of the empty house painted pink. But apparently that wasn’t secluded enough, so the duke commissioned the construction of a series of underground rooms connected by 15 miles of tunnels. Among the subterranean rooms were a 11,000-square foot ballroom and a billiard room large enough to house 12 pool tables. But nobody ever saw them; no visitors were ever permitted. In fact, from 1854 until his death in 1879, Scott-Bentinck saw only one person—his valet.

  THE AQUAMAN OF KENT

  Matthew Robinson, the second Baron Rokeby (1713–1800), was from a Scottish noble family that lived in Kent, England. He inherited the title in his 40s and served in the House of Lords. Then Robinson took a vacation in the German spa-resort town of Aachen. When he returned to Kent, Robinson was suddenly and permanently obsessed with water. He started skipping work and spent most of his days swimming in the ocean at a private beach in Kent. Every day Robinson walked to and from the beach wearing tattered peasant clothes, and would then swim for so long and so strenuously that he’d faint, requiring a servant to drag him out of the sea. Robinson drank lots of water, too, and he had drinking fountains installed along the path to the beach. If commoners were caught using them, Robinson didn’t punish them—he gave them a gold coin to reward “their good taste.” Robinson’s embarrassed family eventually talked him into installing a swimming pool at his home. He still spent most of the day swimming, but now tried to prevent fainting by eating a roast leg of veal… underwater.

  In poker, a card combination of a 9 and 5 is called a “Dolly Parton.”

  THE DOG LOVER OF BRIDGEWATER

  Francis Henry Egerton, the eighth earl of Bridgewater (1756–1829), wasn’t a hermit, but he didn’t care much for the company of people. He liked dogs. Throughout his life he always had 12 of them, and he liked to dress them in tiny, specially made leather boots to protect their paws. Every day, six of the dogs would join him on a carriage ride, then the menagerie would return home for dinner. At a long dinner table, all 12 dogs—and Egerton—would eat off of silver with white linen napkins tied around their necks. Egerton liked the dinners for the lively conversations he imagined he was having with the dogs. Egerton also liked his own shoes, wearing a new pair everyday. At night he hung the used shoes on the wall as a makeshift calendar.

  THE DUKE, DUKE, DUKE, DUKE OF GIRL

  Edward Hyde (1661–1723) was the third Earl of Clarendon and a cousin of Queen Anne of England. In 1701, Anne appointed Hyde to the position of governor of the American colonies of New York and New Jersey. Hyde took the task seriously and literally: He said that if he was governing the colonies on behalf of a woman, he should dress the part. So at the opening of the New York Assembly in 1702, Hyde attended wearing a blue silk gown and satin shoes, waving his face with a fan. Outside of work, he was often spotted on the streets wearing a hoop skirt. By 1708, Hyde was forced to relinquish the governorship and return to England because he was deeply in debt from spending too much money on women’s clothes.

  * * *

  “Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard?”

  —George Carlin

  A large swarm of desert locusts can consume 20,000 tons of vegetation a day.

  WEIRD JAPAN

  Godzilla. Mothra. Rodan. Polite gangs, sewage sausage, and stolen pants. Konichiwa!

  NEVER A-SUMO YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH IT

  In March 2006, Konoshin Kawabata, 48, snuck into a Buddhist temple in Osaka, planning to rob it. After gathering some antiques and other valuables, he was looking for an exit and opened an unmarked door. Behind the door was the last thing he’d expected: 20 sumo wrestlers. Kawabata tried to make a getaway, but was quickly stopped by the wrestlers.

  AT LEAST IT WAS IN A BAG

  In 2001, a 25-year-old woman was arrested for multiple violations of the Waste Disposal Act. Her crime: Every week for a year, the Toyoda resident, who was being treated for bulimia, went to forests, streams, and other wilderness areas and dumped plastic bags filled with her own vomit. More than 60 pounds of it was discovered. The woman said she dumped it in remote places because if she disposed of it at home, she might get caught and then she’d be embarrassed.

  YOU MAKE ME SICK. REALLY.

  Japanese men tend to work extremely long hours. Result: They’re never home. The difficult work schedule has created a new medical condition called Retired Husband Syndrome. But it doesn’t affect the men; it aff
licts their wives. As men in Japan reach retirement age, more and more of them stay home and boss around their wives, who are used to being alone all day and doing things their own way. Doctors have linked the resulting stress to an increase in the occurrence of skin rashes and ulcers in women.

  NICE PANTS. ARE THOSE MINE?

  In 2004, Kobe police caught Kenji Hishida stealing railway employee uniform pants from a train station office. Police searched Hishida’s home and discovered pants from dozens of different transportation companies. Hishida later admitted that he’d been stealing pants for 15 years and had accumulated more than 10,000 pairs.

  World record bubblegum bubble: 23" in diameter, blown by Susan Montgomery Williams.

  COURTESY OF THE YAKUZA

  Japanese culture places a high value on politeness and cleanliness. Even the criminals adhere. In 1992, the Yamaguchi-gumi, one of Japan’s biggest organized-crime syndicates, publicly announced a new honor code. Group members were advised not to throw cigarette butts on the ground or hand out business cards with their gang’s logo in between criminal acts so as “to not inconvenience the public.”

  MMMM...SH*T!

  In 1993, the Environmental Assessment Center of Okayama debuted a new kind of sausage. It’s made out of a mixture of soy protein, steak flavoring…and processed sewage. The soy and steak flavor are supposed to cover up the taste of human waste. And in 2006, a team of food scientists at Japan’s International Medical Center announced that they had successfully developed a process to extract vanilla from cow dung. The scientists promised to use the flavoring only in nonfood items such as shampoo.