Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wonderful World of Odd

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  17th-century French Cardinal Mazarin never traveled without his personal chocolate-maker.

  THE DING-A-LINGS

  The Product: Tiny battery-powered robots

  The Pitch: “You’re witnessing the creation of an entire new world. A world of unbelievable excitement and fun. The world of the Ding-a-lings! Holy smokes, what’s going on? It’s Ding-a-ling Fireman coming to the rescue! He’s got his own built-in pumper to save the day. Ding-a-ling Shoeshine gives you the brightest shine you’ve ever seen! Ding-a-ling Answer Man’s got all the answers in his head. Push the lever, and he’ll tell your future. Ding-a-ling Chef salts your food, and Ding-a-ling gofer serves it to you!… Stand back, world—there’s a whole new one on the way. The wild, wonderful, wacky world of the Ding-a-lings!”

  ROY ROGERS QUICK SHOOTER HAT

  The Product: A cowboy hat with a hidden derringer cap gun that pops out when you push a hidden button

  The Pitch: “Hi fellas! Say, that’s a pretty tricky hat, isn’t it? Partners, how would you like to surprise your pals like that? Well you can with my new Roy Rogers Quick Shooter Hat. It’s by Ideal. And here’s how the Quick Shooter Hat works: Just press this secret button right here, and a replica of an authentic western pistol pops out and fires! It’s your secret weapon, even when they think you’re unarmed. So get Ideal’s new Roy Rogers Quick Shooter Hat at your favorite store today. And you’ll always be ready for anything!”

  SUPER HELMET SEVEN

  The Product: A plastic hardhat with a giant lighting apparatus on top

  The Pitch: “Jet pilots wear ’em! Skydivers wear ’em! Racing drivers wear ’em! And now you can join the men of action with the most amazing speed helmet ever made, the exciting new Super Helmet Seven! Afoot! Afloat! Racing! Driving! Bike riding! It helps keep you safe, even at night! Only Super Helmet Seven does all this: One—red flasher signals automatically! Two—tinted goggles protect your eyes! Three—left and right direction lights! Four—reflector shows you’re up ahead! Five—warning buzzer clears the way! Six—Super Helmet Seven absorbs the shock! Seven—powerful headlight flashlight: It’s removable! Boys who dare will want to wear new Super Helmet Seven! Super Helmet Seven! Super Helmet Seven!”

  Students at Stockport College in the U.K. built an 896-lb. fully operational yo-yo with a diameter of 10 feet, 5 inches. It was launched by crane from a height of 189 feet.

  TOMMY BURST DETECTIVE SET

  The Product: There’s not much here to help a young detective solve mysteries—the set doesn’t contain a single crime-detecting tool—but there’s plenty he can use to gun down suspects.

  The Pitch: “It’s some fun when Snubby Gun plays Private Eye, and you can have the same kind of fun with Mattel’s Tommy Burst Detective set. The Tommy Burst tommy gun has automatic bolt action—fire off a burst of ten shots. Pull the bolt again—you’re re-loaded! Or fire single shots like a rifle. The Tommy Burst alone is $3.00. In the detective set, you also get the snub-nosed .38 and snap-draw shoulder holster. The pistol fires Greenie Stickem Caps and shoots Safe Shootin’ Shells. The exciting new Tommy Burst Detective Set includes wallet, badge, and ID card. $7.00, wherever toys are sold. You can tell it’s Mattel—it’s swell!”

  MYSTERY DATE

  The Product: A blind-date fantasy board game for girls

  The Pitch: “Open the door for your mystery date! It’s Mystery Date! The thrilling new Milton Bradley game of romance and mystery that’s just for you! And you! And you! And you! Mystery Date! Will you be ready for swimming, or a dance? When you open the door, will your mystery date be a dream, or a dud? Fun and surprises! That’s Mystery Date! Open the door for your mystery date!”

  DICK TRACY POWER JET GUN

  The Product: The two-in-one gun you never knew you always wanted—a rifle that’s a squirt gun and a cap gun

  The Pitch: “Hey Tommy, what’s going on?” “I’m trying out my new Dick Tracy Power Jet Gun—it’s made by Mattel! It fires caps, and that’s not all, it fires water, too.” “Water?” “It shoots about 30 feet—single shots and rapid fire! You can fire about 30 shots before reloading. It’s the first gun EVER that shoots caps and water too! Or if you want, it shoots just caps or just water. You can tell it’s Mattel—it’s swell!”

  THE ZEROIDS

  The Product: A set of three plastic robots

  The Pitch: “The Zeroids are here—from the planet Zero. The Zeroids! Zerac, the Zeroid commander, frees himself from his own Zeroid capsule. Advance! Zobor, the Zeroid transporter. Change his Zeroid capsule into a cosmobile for hauling! Zintar, the Zeroid explorer. Change his Zeroid capsule into a lunar sled! Command the Zeroids to defend, move forward, backward, and transport! Command the Zeroids from Ideal!” Zzzzzzzz.

  GUNG HO COMMANDO OUTFIT

  The Product: This Vietnam-era set lets a boy nation-build right in his own backyard.

  The Pitch: “All the equipment you need for fun and excitement in the Gung Ho Commando Outfit, by Marx! There’s a battle map and direction-finding compass. A cap-shooting automatic pistol with gun belt and holster. A helmet, a canteen, complete mess kit, and poncho! You get a cap-firing Gung Ho hand grenade! And look here—this flashing, battery-powered machine gun with moving ammo belt shoots rapid-fire bullets! There’s a real-looking walkie-talkie, too, and a field pack. You get medals and battle ribbons, even dog tags! It’s all for fun and excitement! Get the outfit with all the equipment you need. The Gung Ho Commando Outfit, by Marx!”

  * * *

  THEY PICKED THE WRONG BODY

  In the 19th century, raiding freshly dug graves to supply medical schools with cadavers was a lucrative business. But a national outcry was raised in 1878 when someone recognized a corpse lying in the dissecting room of the Ohio Medical College as that of Congressman John Scott Harrison. Harrison, the son of one American president (William Henry Harrison) and father of another (Benjamin Harrison), had died a few days earlier, and the medical school had unwittingly purchased his body from thieves who had exhumed it during a nighttime cemetery raid. The Harrison family returned the body to its tomb, and the state of Ohio soon passed strict penalties for graverobbing.

  A type of flea found in Germany lives and breeds almost exclusively in beer mats.

  MMM…CHICKEN HEADS

  We thought we were adventurous when we first tried sushi. But when it comes to weird food, it turns out raw fish is only the tip of the iceberg. Here are some local “delicacies” to sample the next time you’re in these countries.

  NANKOTSU. Normally you take the hard, bony stuff out of chicken before you eat it, but this Japanese snack is the bony stuff. It’s bits of chicken cartilage from the leg joints and not surprisingly, it’s described by one food critic as “kind of hard and chewy.” You can get it fried or on a shish kabob stick, and it’s a favorite with cold beer.

  JELLIED EELS. Still a favorite streetside food in the east of London. The eel is boned and cooked in simmering water for about a half hour, then gelatin is added to the water and the whole thing is allowed to cool and harden. Served with meat pies, mashed potatoes, and beer, jellied eel is often doused with chili-flavored vinegar.

  DUCK FEET. This is a Chinese favorite. The webbed duck feet are usually braised and then eaten as a snack with soy sauce.

  COD TONGUE. Everybody’s heard of cod liver oil, which is made from the fish’s liver (it’s an excellent source of vitamins A and D and omega-3 fatty acids). If that isn’t strange enough for you, how about a cod’s tongue? It’s a favorite in Newfoundland, Canada. The tongues, served battered and fried, are said to be “chewy.”

  HELMET. This can be purchased from street vendors in the Philippines. What is it? Barbecued chicken heads. (Before they’re barbecued, the beaks are removed.)

  SURSTROMMING. In May and June, Swedish fishermen catch huge numbers of Baltic herring. To make this dish, the herring are soaked in a brine solution for a day, then cleaned, then packed into wooden barrels, and put in the sun for 24 hours to induce fermentation. The n
ext day, the barrels are placed in a cool room…where they remain for several months. Then the fish is canned. The raw fish continues to ferment in the can, so the cans in the store actually bulge out. You have to cover them with a cloth before opening, because they will spurt out juice. (Most people open them outside.) The smell is described as exceedingly powerful and exceedingly offensive. Comparisons range from extremely rotten fish to horribly rotten eggs to dirty feet to garbage that’s been left out in the sun. Surstromming is eaten—by many people in Sweden—with thin, hard bread and boiled potatoes, and accompanied with milk and distilled alcohol.

  In France, parents may not legally name their daughters Prune, Vanilla, or Cherry.

  DUCK TONGUE. Pink, fleshy, and six to eight inches long, they’re considered a delicacy in parts of China, and reportedly have a soft, chewy bonelike center.

  FRIED PIG BLOOD. A common food in rural Hungary. After slaughter, the pig’s blood is collected and usually fried with scrambled eggs.

  BETAMAX. No, no one eats video cassette tapes. But in the Philippines they eat blocks of cooked chicken blood that look like video cassette tapes. Really. And that’s really what they’re called on the street.

  CHICKEN SASHIMI. It’s raw chicken, served like sushi with rice, soy sauce, and wasabi. Scary—but it’s supposedly very good.

  * * *

  ALL HAIL THE GIANT CABBAGE

  Officials in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka announced plans in 2006 to build an enormous monument to the town’s most important product: cabbage. “Our region is famous for cabbage,” said tourism director Goran Peric. “We very much appreciate this vegetable.” Local artists were called on to help design the giant cabbage; Peric said construction should start sometime in 2007.

  The average bout of sleepwalking lasts six minutes.

  STRANGE OBSESSIONS

  Here’s to the people who live life on their own unusual terms.

  TRY TO WORM YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS!

  William Lyttle, a 71-year-old retiree in Hackney, East London, has an odd hobby: He likes to dig tunnels in his yard. In 2001 he made news around the world when a huge crater formed in the street in front of his home because of one of his tunnels. That was just a small part of a vast underground network that “The Mole Man,” as neighbors called him, had been digging for more than 40 years. The tunnels are more than 25 feet deep and spread out in every direction from his basement. In 2006 Lyttle made the news again when he was evicted from his home and officially barred from any more digging. Engineers said they feared the entire street and several nearby homes, as well as Lyttle’s own 20-room house, were in danger of disappearing into the ground. Lyttle was put up in a hotel room while city engineers began filling the holes with cement. The Mole Man has never said much about his life’s work, once telling the Guardian, “I just have a big basement.”

  OBSESSION: THE FRAGRANCE (OF SOCKS)

  A 41-year-old Toronto engineer who goes only by his internet alias, “Witesock,” has been secretly collecting professional athletic socks for 20 years, most of them used. He says that he bought his first pair at the age of 10. “Nothing else about the uniforms impressed me,” he told Toronto’s National Post. “Just the socks.” He now has more than 800 pairs from pro sports teams from around the world, ranging from football to rugby, hockey, and soccer (but not baseball—he doesn’t like baseball socks). Most of them come through dealings on the internet, and that, Witesock says, makes it weird sometimes. “One of the most interesting requests I’ve had came from a guy in Australia. He offered to send me five pairs of Australian rugby socks if I would take pictures of myself wearing the socks, while at the same time throwing a pie in my own face.” If that wasn’t weird enough, he did it. “It was kind of fun,” he said. He added that his wife (yes, he’s married) doesn’t know about his sock obsession.

  A baby oyster is called a spat.

  THE BETTER TO BITE YOU WITH

  What are the oddest creatures on the planet? (Besides Uncle John’s cousins in Pittsburgh, that is?) Insects. There are far more of them than there are of us, and we thought you should know something about their very weird mouths.

  MAN!-DIBLE

  Chewers, Spongers, and Suckers isn’t the name of Uncle John’s latest rock band—they’re different types of insect mouthparts. There are more, but to become familiar with them, it helps to know that all of the eating, chewing, grabbing, and biting devices on all the millions of insect species in the world fall into two main categories: mandibulate, or chewing, mouthparts, which are the most primitive; and haustellate mouthparts, like piercing-sucking blood feeders and siphoners. (Yum!)

  THE CHEWERS

  Mandibulate mouths are found on ants, caterpillars, beetles, grasshoppers, and cockroaches. These mouths all consist of four main features:

  • Labrum: a single, plate-like “upper lip” that is usually moveable and helps put food in the mouth.

  • Mandibles: the first pair of mouthparts, “jaws” that are used to cut, tear, grasp, fight, and chew, among other things.

  • Maxillae: the second pair of mouthparts, which sit below the mandibles and are used to sense, taste, and handle food.

  • Labium: a third pair of mouthparts that basically make up the “lower lip.” They’re used to close the insect’s mouth.

  These parts can vary slightly or greatly depending on the type of insect, their diet, and other needs. Example: ants’ labrums are hard plates that are extensions of the head and move up and down to help manipulate the food. The mandibles are like a pair of horizontal left and right pincers that meet in a vertical line at the front of the head; they have teeth or serrated ends where they meet, and are used for carrying food, digging, nest building, cutting, and fighting, and biting you, among many other things. The maxillae are an adapted pair of limbs, used as lower jaws; located between the mandibles and labium (the lower lip), they help handle and taste the food, and extract liquids from it. Ants also have a hypopharynx—a tongue—for sucking up liquid.

  In Russia, Santa Claus wears a blue suit.

  HAUSTELLATE

  Nearly all the insects in this category have the same four parts that the chewers do, but they have evolved over eons into very different devices like stylets and proboscises. The haustellate insects are broken down into seven main groups:

  Piercing-sucking plant feeders: This includes bugs like aphids, leafhoppers, lacebugs, aphids, and spider mites. Their mouths have changed into a hypodermic needlelike structure, used to pierce plant membranes and suck fluids out of them. Example: On the cicada, the labium has become a tubular beak called a proboscis; the mandibles are sharp stylets inside the tube that cut into the plant tissue; the maxillae are now two tubes—one to send in salivary secretions that keep the other tube flowing—and one that sucks the liquid out of the plant. The labrum serves basically to stabilize the whole tube structure.

  Siphoners: Butterflies and some moths fall in this category. They don’t need stylets because they don’t have to pierce anything; they drink from puddles of water or plant nectar. If you look closely at a moth or butterfly you’ll see a long, curled-up tube. That’s the proboscis, which they can extend straight into a flower or drinking water.

  Sponger: Houseflies have this configuration. These bugs have basically lost their mandibles and maxillae. The labium is modified into a bendable proboscis that is lowered onto a food source. On the bottom are spongelike organs called labella. They basically vomit salivary secretions onto the food source, be it feces or steak, that causes the food to liquefy. The labella then soak up the liquid. (Yum! Yum!)

  Piercing-sucking blood feeders: You know these—fleas and mosquitoes. When a mosquito bites you, a pair of pointed, barbed maxillary stylets emerge from the sheathlike labium and stick into your skin. These are used to anchor the bug and provide leverage for the insertion of the remaining parts. Once anchored, the labium slides back and the two mandibular stylets pierce through your skin into a vein. The mosquito then injects anticoagulant sal
iva into your tissue, and the labrum is used like a tongue to lap up your blood.

  The frequency of twin births has almost doubled since 1980.

  ODDITIES

  Rasping-sucking mouthparts: Of the more than one million species of insects known on Earth today, only thrips have these asymmetrical mouthparts, and they are weird. The left mandible and the two maxillae have been modified into a piercing stylet, and the right one is nonexistent. Thrips are tiny—only 1.5 to 3 millimeters long—and they use their stylets to scrape or rasp at the surface of plants, fungi, and sometimes animals, then drink the fluids within.

  Chewing-lapping: Only honeybees use this system, which is basically a combination of chewing and sucking. They have the same flaplike mandibles that ants and other chewers do, but they also have specialized mouthparts adapted perfectly to their diet. They need to chew—they use the mandibles for things like gnawing holes in your porch for nests, manipulating wax, and biting—and they need to be able to consume fluids such as water, nectar, and honey. For that, the labium has evolved into a long tonguelike proboscis that can reach into flowers.

  * * *

  YOU SAY TOMATO, I TASTE BANANAS

  Do you taste words? Some people do—people with Lexical-gustatory synesthesia, which was first recorded in 1907. When hearing certain words, people with this rare disorder get an acute sense of tasting something that goes along with the word. Neuropsychologist Julia Simner of the University of Edinburgh, in a study called “The Taste of Words on the Tip of the Tongue,” said that only 10 people in all of Europe and the U.S. have the condition. One of the subjects she studied, upon hearing the word “castanets,” suddenly tasted tuna fish. Another only experienced tastes when hearing people’s names: “John” tasted like cornbread; “William” like potatoes. The cause of the condition is still unknown.