Uncle John’s Giant 10th Anniversary Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  The surface gravity on the sun is 28 times that of Earth. If you weigh 120 pounds on Earth, on the sun you would weigh 3,360 pounds.

  The sun rotates once every 26.8 days.

  With every passing day, the sun is losing energy—but it still has about 5 billion years of life left in it.

  The most widely used surname in the world is Li. About 87 million people have it.

  CELEBRITY GOSSIP

  Here’s the BRI’s cheesy tabloid section—a bunch of gossip about famous people.

  A LBERT EINSTEIN

  • He applied to the Federal Polytechnic Academy in Zurich, but flunked the entrance exam. When his father asked his headmaster what profession Albert should adopt, he got the answer, “It doesn’t matter, he’ll never amount to anything.”

  • For many years, Einstein thought of his work in physics as something of a hobby. He regarded himself as a failure because what he really wanted to do was play concert violin. Einstein was uncharacteristically intense when he played his violin, cussing a blue streak whenever he made a mistake. One evening, while playing violin duets with Queen Elizabeth, Einstein suddenly stopped in the middle of the piece and unceremoniously told her she was playing too loudly.

  MUHAMMAD ALI

  • For some reason, as a child, he always walked on his tiptoes. When he got older, he played touch football, but wouldn’t play tackle because he thought it was too rough.

  • Because he was afraid to fly, Ali (then going by his original name, Cassius Clay) almost didn’t make it to the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he won the gold medal that launched his career.

  JANIS JOPLIN

  • In 1965, when she was on the verge of becoming a blues star, strung out on heavy drugs, hanging out with Hells Angels, Joplin wrote to her parents and asked them to send her one present for Christmas: “a Betty Crocker or Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.”

  • She once went on a blind date with William Bennett. He was apparently so traumatized that he eventually became drug czar under Ronald Reagan, and a conservative “family values” advocate.

  Most-performed rock song in history: “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.”

  GENERAL GEORGE PATTON

  • On the way through Europe during World War II with his troops, Patton was continuously in danger from shelling, strafing, and bombing. In the middle of one scorched, scarred, and burning landscape, with the sound of explosions around him, he threw out his arms and looked to the skies as if bathing in a warm spring rain. “Could anything be more magnificent?” he shouted to the soldiers all around him. “Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God, how I love it!”

  MICHAEL JACKSON

  • Jackson’s favorite song? He told a group of reporters that it was “My Favorite Things,” performed by Julie Andrews.

  • His opinion of other singers: Paul McCartney? Okay writer, not much of an entertainer. “I do better box office than he does.” Frank Sinatra? “I don’t know what people see in the guy. He’s a legend, but he isn’t much of a singer. He doesn’t even have hits anymore.” Mick Jagger? “He sings flat. How did he ever get to be a star? I just don’t get it. He doesn’t sell as many records as I do.” Madonna? “She just isn’t that good…. She can’t sing. She’s just an OK dancer…. She knows how to market herself. That’s about it.”

  FIDEL CASTRO

  • For Castro’s first revolutionary attack on a military post, he forgot his glasses. As a result, he could barely drive to the post, much less aim his gun accurately.

  • Castro fancies himself quite a lady’s man. In fact, there are dozens of children in Cuba who claim him as father. His technique? One purported lover, a dancer at the Tropicana Hotel, said he read while making love. A French actress complained that he “smoked his damned cigar.” An American woman said he never took his boots off. Other women said he took them to romantic spots and then talked for hours on end about things like agricultural reform.

  ALFRED HITCHCOCK

  • When he sat on a public toilet and another man entered the room, he’d quickly raise his legs in the stall “so that no one could tell anyone was there.”

  Inventions Americans feel they can’t live without: #1, car; #2, lightbulb; #3, telephone.

  LUCKY FINDS

  In our last Bathroom Reader, we included a section about valuable things people have found. Since then we’ve found many more stories. Hey—maybe it’s not such a rare occurrence. It could happen to you!

  GARAGE SALE TREASURE

  The Find: Two Shaker “gift” paintings

  Where They Were Found: Inside a picture frame

  The Story: In 1994, a retired couple from New England bought an old picture frame for a few dollars at a garage sale. When they took the frame apart to restore it, two watercolor drawings—dated 1845 and 1854—fell out.

  A few months later, the couple was traveling in Massachusetts and noticed a watercolor on a poster advertising the Hancock Shaker Village Museum. It was similar to the two they’d found. Curious, they did some research and found out the works were called “gift paintings.”

  It turns out that the Shakers, a New England religious sect of the 1800s, did not allow decorations on their walls; Shaker sisters, however, were permitted to paint “trees, flowers, fruits and birds…to depict the glory of heaven.” The paintings were then “gifted” to other sisters and put away as holy relics. And one of the couple’s paintings was signed by the most famous of all “gift” artists, Hannah Cohoon.

  They called a curator of the Hancock Museum with the news, but he didn’t believe them. Only 200 Shaker “gift” paintings still exist…and very few are of the quality they described. Moreover, all known paintings were in museums—none in private hands. Nonetheless, in January 1996, the couple brought the paintings to the museum, where they were examined and declared authentic. A year later, in January 1997, Sotheby’s sold them for $473,000.

  BIZARRE BITE

  The Find: A diamond

  Where It Was Found: In a plate of pasta

  The Story: In October 1996, Liliana Parodi of Genoa, Italy, went to her favorite restaurant for some pasta. The meal was uneventful…until she bit down on something hard and it wedged painfully between her teeth. She complained to the management, then left. The next morning, she went to a dentist, who extracted the object—a one-carat, uncut diamond worth about $3,000. Parodi took it to a jeweller and had it set in a ring. How it got into the pasta is still a mystery.

  The market value of the raw materials in a 170-lb. man’s body, at 1997 prices; About $25.

  A BEATLF’S LEGACY

  The Find: Dozens of sketches by John Lennon

  Where They Were Found: In a notebook

  The Story: In 1996, a man named John Dunbar—who’d been married to British singer Marianne Faithfull in the 1960s—was going through some old belongings and came across a notebook he hadn’t seen in over 25 years. He’d had it with him at a London party in 1967, on a night when he and his friend John Lennon were taking LSD together. But he’d stashed it away and forgotten about it.

  During that week in 1967, Lennon had seen an ad in the newspaper offering “an island off Ireland,” for about $2,000. At the party, the drugged-out Beatle suddenly decided to buy it. He and Dunbar immediately flew to Dublin, traveled across Ireland in a limousine, and hired a boat to get there. “The island was more like a couple of small hills joined by a gravelly bar with a cottage on it,” Dunbar recalled. “When we got there, John sat down and started drawing.” The pair stayed on the island for a few days. Lennon did buy it, but never lived there. (In fact, he gave it away a few years later, to a stranger who showed up at Apple Records.)

  Dunbar kept the notebook as a memento of the trip, and today, experts estimate the drawings at about $165,000. The incredulous Dunbar can always look at it as a belated “thank you”—he was the fellow, it turns out, who introduced Lennon to Yoko Ono.

  LOTTERY TICKET

  The Find:
A wallet with $224.

  Where It Was Found: On a street in Adelaide, Australia

  The Story: In the 1970s, Joan Campbell found a wallet and tracked down the owner, hoping for a nice reward. She was disappointed—all the man gave her was a 55¢ lottery ticket. Later, she cheered up: the ticket paid $45,000.

  Gadsby, a 50,000-word novel by Ernest Wright, contains no words with the letter “e.”

  PARLEZ-VOUS PENTAGONESE?

  The phrases in the left column are actual terms used by the Pentagon (as reported in Williams Lutz’s book, The New DoubleSpeak). The words in the right column are plain English. Can you understand Pentagonese well enough to match the military term to its meaning?

  Pentagonese

  Real English

  1. “Civilian irregular defense soldiers”

  A. Bombs

  2. “Ambient noncombat personnel”

  B. Cluster bombs

  3. “Interdictional nonsuccumbers”

  C. Mercenaries

  4. “Force packages”

  D. Jamming enemy radar and radio, blowing up antiaircraft weapons, and shooting down enemy planes

  5. “Visit the site”

  E. Refugees

  6. “Revisit the site”

  F. Bombing attack

  7. “Accidental delivery of ordnance equipment”

  G. Enemy troops who survive bombing attacks

  8. “Suppression of assets”

  H. Bombs that miss the target (hitting instead children, hospitals, schools, and so on)

  9. “Airborne sanitation”

  I. Bombing

  10. “Disruption”

  J. Bombing everything from enemy soldiers to sewage plants

  11. “Area denial weapons”

  K. Killing the enemy

  12. “Sanitizing the area”

  L. Bomb it

  13. “Servicing the target”

  M. Bomb it again

  Answers

  1. C, 2. E, 3. G, 4. A, 5. L, 6. M, 7. H,

  8. D, 9. F, 10. I, 11. B, 12. J, 13. K

  Highest price ever paid for a movie prop: $275,000, for 007’s Aston Martin from Goldfinger.

  A CLEAN FIGHT: BATH VS. SHOWER

  Which is a better way to stay clean—a bath or a shower? Everyone’s got an opinion. This article by Jay Stuller originally appeared in InHealth magazine.

  PRE-FIGHT

  INFORMATION

  First, you should know that whatever their chosen method, Americans bathe zealously. A study conducted for the Colgate-Palmolive Company found that women who preferred the tub took an average of 4.5 baths per week, while those who preferred the spray showered 7.5 times each week. Male bathers averaged 3.2 a week; shower-lovers averaged nearly 8.

  It’s no wonder, then, that in the ranks of nonedible items purchased by grocery store customers, bar soap ranks second, right after toilet paper. We spend more than $700 million annually on the stuff.

  CHOOSE YOUR WEAPON

  There are, of course, many kinds of soaps. Some contain abrasives, others deodorants, and some, ostensibly, a whiff of springtime in Ireland. But all work the same way to remove the dirt, oil, and bacteria that collect upon the human skin. (The latter is why the unwashed masses are so massively unpleasant—the bacteria feed off the fat in sweat. It’s their waste products—bacteria poop, if you will—that make us stink.) Soap is composed of molecules that at one end attract water and at the other end attract oil and dirt, while repelling water. With a kind of pushing and pulling action, the soap loosens the bonds holding dirt to the skin, and lifts it from the body.

  “Unless you’re using a germicidal soap, it usually doesn’t kill the bacteria,” says Shyam Gupta, the Dial Corporation’s manager for new technology. “For the most part, soap simply removes bacteria along with dirt and oil.”

  ROUND 1

  Rank and fetid armpits notwithstanding, neither baths nor showers are all that necessary for one’s physical health. Or so says University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Albert Kligman. “The skin doesn’t give the slightest damn whether or not it’s clean,” he says. “Unless you’re in a Third World country where infectious diseases are common, or you have open sores on your skin, the dirt and bacteria aren’t going to hurt. In fact, soap can irritate and sometimes do more damage than good, especially with elderly people who have dry skin. The only reason for showering or bathing is to feel clean and refreshed.”

  Poll results: In 1997 TV viewers named the Cryptkeeper in “Tales from the Crypt” TV’s most frightening character. Second place: Geraldo Rivera.

  ROUND 2

  Baths, on the other hand, have enormous psychological benefits, Kligman insists. “Everyone is in such a hurry with showers. If a person just took an hour every day to listen to nice music, read a book, or do whatever while floating in a tub of water, he or she would be lot better off.”

  Dedicated bathers know well that shower-takers are missing out on a relaxing ritual, akin to a vodka martini without the liver damage.…There is a physiological basis for this relaxed feeling. For one thing, your limbs become slightly bouyant in bathwater, which takes a load off muscles and triggers a drop in muscular tension. Moreover, if the water is hotter than normal body temperature, the body attempts to shed heat by expanding the blood vessels near the surface of the skin. This lessens the circulatory system’s resistance to blood flow, and blood pressure gently drops.

  (However, when all that blood goes to the skin, it limits the oxygen going to vital organs such as the heart. For this reason, people with heart trouble should take cool or warm baths.)

  ROUND 3

  In a shower, only part of your body is exposed to hot water, and the rest to cooler air. This temperature disparity, and the fact that you’re still on your feet instead of reclining, is likely what makes a shower more invigorating. Indeed, in the Colgate-Palmolive survey, only 58% of the tubbers felt that bathing was “an invigorating experience.” But about 75% of the shower-takers felt exhilarated after standing under the nozzle.

  ROUND 4

  A bath is also the most effective way to hydrate the skin, says Gupta.

  “The longer you soak, the more water gets into the skin,” he says. “And because soap lowers the surface tension of the water, it helps you hydrate more rapidly.” The slippery water, in other words, more easily seeps into the skin.

  “The big advantage with a bath over a shower is that you can add oils to the water,” says Peter Elias, a dermatologist with the University of California at San Francisco. The oil traps all that water you’ve soaked up.

  “But the real key after either a bath or a shower is to partially dry yourself and then seal in the moisture with a cream or ointment that contains a lot of oil, which doesn’t have to be expensive to be good.” He adds that one should avoid lotions that contain mostly water, which tend to dry the skin.

  AND THE WINNER IS…

  But back to the core question in the debate: Which method—a bath or a shower—gets you the cleanest? “When you’re washing,” says Gupta, “you’re not only trying to remove dirt and oil, but also flakes of dead skin. And the best way to remove them is to get your skin extremely hydrated in a tub of water so that the flakes float away.” Of course, one can [scrub] the hell out of one’s skin in a shower, but Gupta explains that the mechanical process is simply not as effective as a deep soak.

  [So] the bath wins.

  “But just a minute,” Gupta adds. “In a bath, all the dirt and grime and the soap in which it’s suspended float on the surface. So when you stand up, it covers your body like a film.”

  “The real solution,” he concludes, “is to take a bath and then rinse off with a shower.”

  THE REAL CHAMPION

  So there you have it—except for one more thing. After leaving a tub or shower, that freshly exposed skin becomes a playground for microbes. In two hours, says Gupta, you probably have as many bacteria on certain parts of the body, such as the armpits, as before the bath or shower—a bu
nch of little stinkers.

  ***

  A POEM TO TOMATO KETCHUP

  If you shake the bottle,

  None’ll come…and then a lot’ll.

  Chef’s tip: Is your soup too salty? Slice up two potatoes and boil them in it for a short time.

  BOND…JAMES BOND

  Here’s a shaken—not stirred—history of the most popular (and profitable) British secret agent in Hollywood history…and of the former World War II intelligence officer who brought the character to life.

  SPY STORY

  Even before World War II started, Great Britain knew it would never be able to patrol the entire northern Atlantic and defend all its ships against the German Navy. But the British also knew that if they could learn the locations of Nazi ships and submarines by deciphering coded German radio communications, they’d be able to reroute convoys of food and weapons around German patrols. In 1939 they launched a massive effort, codenamed Ultra, to do just that.

  The Enigma. The Germans sent coded messages using an encryption machine called the “Enigma.” By September 1940 the British had managed to put together a working model of the Enigma using parts captured in several raids on German ships. But the Enigma was so sophisticated that even when the British had one in their possession, they couldn’t crack the German codes. They needed a copy of the Nazis’ special codebook.

  FLEMING…IAN FLEMING

  How were they going to get one? The wildest suggestion came from the assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence, a man named Ian Fleming. On September 12,1940, Fleming wrote the following memo to his boss:

  Director of Naval Intelligence: