Uncle John's Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (Uncle John's Bathroom Reader)

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • Scandinavia. Immigrants from northern Europe settled in the Upper Midwest, and many aspects of their Old World accents persist to this day. Referred to as both the Minnesota accent and the Great Lakes accent, it is most notable for the overpronunciation of vowels, especially the long “o” sound, as in “dontcha know.” If you’ve seen the 1996 dark comedy Fargo, that’s a good example of the Minnesota accent (although most native speakers claim that it’s a bit exaggerated in the film).

  • France. Much of the French influence on the American accent ended up in Louisiana. Cajuns were originally French settlers who had moved down from Acadia in the eastern part of Canada. In 1765 the British took over, and loyal Acadians fled and resettled in New Orleans, still French territory. Cajun French is very old, dating from the 1600s. It might be understood by someone in Paris today, but only with some effort. The Cajun accent (like the food) has a very distinctive flavor—“un-YON,” “ve-HIC-le,” and “gay-RON-tee,” and “LOO-ziana.”

  • Africa. The speech of slaves brought over from West Africa had a strong effect on American English. However, its exact origin is hard to trace. There are a number of West African languages, and slaves were intentionally separated from members of their own groups to make it difficult for them to conspire. That led to what are called pidgins—simple languages with few rules that were cobbled together from two or more languages. According to some theories, this was the origin of what is now called African American Vernacular English (AAVE). It has been called ebonics, but use of that term is controversial. Many linguists now believe that West African languages had little if any influence on AAVE, and that its origin can be traced to early Southern dialects brought over from England. Nevertheless, some of the cadence and lilt of the Southern accent—spoken by both blacks and whites—probably comes from African slaves. Some linguists believe this could be because black women served as nannies to white children, and those relationships helped blend the two speaking styles.

  Almost 80% of Europe’s forests are located in Russia.

  BARN IN THE USA

  Not all accents were brought over from other countries. A few are as American as apple pie.

  • In a small section of southern Utah, there is an accent in which “ar” sounds are transposed with “or” sounds. It’s uncertain how this way of speaking came about, but people who live in this region don’t say “born in a barn,” rather, “barn in a born.”

  • A relatively young accent, Valley Girl, or “Valspeak,” began in the 1980s. The most defining characteristic: Raising the intonation at the end of a sentence as if it were a question. Originating in the San Fernando Valley of southern California, Valspeak may be one of the most uniquely American accents. Some linguists speculate its roots may be traced to refugees from the Ozarks who moved to California during the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s.

  HOMOGENIZATION

  U.S. regional accents are in danger of being lost. Because of TV, movies, video games, and YouTube, kids learn less about speaking from their parents and their grandparents than they do from the likes of the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Pixar. These entities tend to make the main characters speak with standard Midwestern American accents. Result: A young boy in Boston might pretend to “park the car,” and a teenage girl in Georgia might roll her eyes when her mother says “y’all.” If this trend continues, then perhaps some day there will be just one American accent.

  * * *

  “Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that he sometimes has to eat them.”

  —Adlai Stevenson

  Elvis owned a chimpanzee named Scatter.

  THE #2 REPORT

  Warning: Toilet talk ahead!

  • First major world city to ban doing your business in the streets: Athens, in 320 B.C.

  • A few centuries earlier in Rome, Emperor Claudius legalized farting at official state banquets.

  • The average person eliminates nearly a pound a day, or about 360 pounds a year.

  • Vegans poop more—and more often—than meat-eaters.

  • It is not uncommon for long-distance runners to experience a bout of peristalsis during a marathon—in other words, going in their pants. (Grete Waitz did it in her running shorts en route to winning both the London and New York City Marathons in the early 1980s.)

  • Where does it go when you flush? Human sewage can be re-pooposed into fertilizer, bio-fuel, and bricks. (They don’t smell.)

  • Maternal instinct: Studies show that mothers find the smell of their own baby’s dirty diaper relatively more pleasant than one from another baby.

  • On average, human solid waste is made up of

  2–3 percent proteins (both undigested and body-made)

  10–20 percent inorganic matter

  10–20 percent fats and cholesterols

  30 percent undigested (or undigestible) food

  30 percent dead bacteria that the body is getting rid of

  • It takes time to get things going down there. Your next three movements are already inside you, waiting “on deck.”

  • The New World’s oldest human stool sample—or coprolite (fossilized excrement—was discovered in 2002 in Oregon’s Paisley Caves. Date of the “deposit”: around 12000 B.C.

  A quarter for your thoughts? In 1912 a penny was worth what a quarter is worth now.

  JUST PLANE WEIRD:

  “OPEN MIC” EDITION

  Two stories of what can happen when the pilot or the air traffic controller forgets that they are wearing a microphone connected to a radio.

  THE BACHELOR

  Pilots operating in the airspace over Texas one day in June 2011 were treated to an obscenity-laden diatribe by Southwest Airlines pilot James Taylor, who didn’t realize that his radio microphone was on. Taylor was upset that the flight attendants he worked with were either too gay, too old, or too fat for him to hit on. “Eleven [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] homosexuals and a granny. Eleven! I mean, think of the odds of that. It was a continuous stream of gays and grannies and grandes,” the pilot complained (unknowingly) to air traffic control and anyone else listening on the tower frequency. He was two minutes into his rant when an air traffic controller broke in and advised him that he had an “open” microphone. Taylor was suspended without pay and given diversity training, after which he was allowed to return to work. “From now on,” he wrote in an apology e-mailed to Southwest workers, “I will show nothing but the utmost respect during my interactions with all employees.”

  AS SEEN ON TV

  Captain Taylor wasn’t the only person plagued by an open mic in 2011: That April, an unnamed controller working the night shift at the Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center got caught watching a DVD in the tower when he should have been watching the airplanes. Pilots tuned to the center’s frequency heard more than three minutes of dialogue from Cleaner, a 2007 film about an ex-cop who works as a crime scene cleaner. They might have gotten to hear the entire movie, had an Air Force pilot not called in on a separate military frequency and told the controller that his microphone was open. (At last report, the controller and his supervisor were suspended pending a review.)

  Martin Luther King, Jr. graduated from high school at age 15.

  TOWNS FOR SALE

  We recently read about an entire town that was up for sale on eBay. That started us wondering: How frequently does that happen? Turns out it’s not as rare as you’d think.

  BRIDGEVILLE, CALIFORNIA (Population: 25)

  Includes: Eight houses, four cabins, a machine shop, a cemetery, 1½ miles of riverfront and a post office, all on 83 acres of land. Bridgeville has its own zip code: 95526.

  Asking Price: In 2002 Bridgeville made headlines when its owners, the Lapple family, put it up for sale on eBay with a minimum starting bid of $750,000. It was the first town ever listed for sale on the online auction site.

  Details: The town, formerly a stagecoach stop on the road to Eureka on the northern California coast, attracted a high bi
d of $1.77 million…but that bidder backed out. The Lapples put it up for sale again (not on eBay) and an Orange County banker named Bruce Krall bought it. Price: $700,000. Krall planned to fix up the town, but that proved to be much more costly than he’d planned. In 2006 he re-listed Bridgeville on eBay and sold it to Thomas La Paille, a Los Angeles entertainment manager, for $1.25 million. La Paille also planned to fix up the town, but three months after buying Bridgeville he committed suicide in Los Angeles for reasons that his family says are unrelated to the purchase of the town.

  Update: Since La Paille’s death, his family has repeatedly tried to sell Bridgeville but have been unable to find a buyer. The latest attempt that made headlines was a sale to a group that wanted to turn Bridgeville into a homeless rehabilitation center. That sale fell through in February 2010. At last report Bridgeville was back on the market, this time for $995,000.

  BUFORD, WYOMING (Population: 1)

  Includes: The Buford Trading Post (gas station and convenience store), a three-bedroom home, a schoolhouse, ten acres and its own zip code (82052), on I-80 between Laramie and Cheyenne

  Asking Price: The town was put up for auction in April 2012 with an opening bid of $100,000

  Your lips are 100 times more sensitive than your fingertips.

  Details: Buford got its start in 1866 as a fort to protect workers building the Transcontinental Railroad. The population had dwindled from 2,000 residents down to only three when “Mayor” Don Sammons, his wife and their son moved there from Los Angeles in 1980. By 2007 Sammons’ wife had passed on and his son had moved on, leaving him as the town’s lone resident. After five years of that he decided to sell out and move closer to his son. The auction took place outside the Buford Trading Post.

  Sold! Winning bid: $900,000 by Pham Dinh Nguyen of Vietnam. He learned about the sale on the internet and made his first visit to the United States just to bid on the town. When the check cleared he became the new honorary mayor of Buford…and the only mayor of an American town who is not a U.S. citizen.

  GOLFVIEW, FLORIDA (Population: 175)

  Includes: 63 houses, 64 acres of land and the town hall

  Asking Price: $35 million

  Details: Famous in Florida real estate circles as “the town that killed itself,” Golfview was built next to a golf course and a small airport, Morrison Field, in 1937. During World War II the U.S. government seized the golf course and used the land to turn Morrison Field into the much larger Morrison Air Force Base…which grew further to become Palm Beach International Airport in 1948, and it’s still growing. The golf—and Golfview’s views—having been ruined by progress, in 1990 the citizens voted to combine their homes into one huge lot and sell it for development. “Rather than get angry, people here said, ‘We’ll just zone commercial and sell out,’” town manager Pinky Yount told the Associated Press.

  Sold! The residents wanted $35 million, but they didn’t get it. In fact, they didn’t find a buyer until 1998, when the county bought up all but three of the homes for $15.9 million.

  COURBEFY, FRANCE (Population: 0)

  Includes: Nineteen houses, a village hall, stables, tennis court, swimming pool, and the ruins of a 13th-century castle

  Asking Price: € 330,000 (about $436,000)

  Details: Like many rural French villages, this one in the Limousin region began to empty out in the 1970s. By 2008 it was completely abandoned save for “thieves, drunks and squatters.” Three attempts to turn Courbefy into a resort failed. When the last owners of the town defaulted on their mortgage in early 2012 the lender, Crédit Aricole, put the town up for sale through ordinary real estate channels.

  Scientists say: Most people will fall in love 7 times before they get married.

  Sold! There were no takers…until the bank issued a press release. Then the story of the entire French village for sale made international headlines. Within days the village was swarming with investors from all over the world. Winning bidder: Ahae, a Korean-born American photographer, who bid €200,000 ($665,000) for Courbefy in May 2012.

  ASKHAM RICHARD, ENGLAND (Population: 273)

  Includes: Fourteen houses and three farms on 800 acres

  Asking Price: £6.5 million ($10 million)

  Details: This picturesque North Yorkshire village, part of an estate that was put up for sale in November 2011, was marketed with a glossy brochure explaining that the original manor house “was sold off some years ago by a previous owner.” In a classic case of caveat emptor, or “let the buyer beware,” the brochure neglected to inform readers that the manor house was still standing and is now Her Majesty’s Prison Askham Grange, a women’s correctional facility. One further surprise: Because it’s an “open prison,” the inmates, including some murderers, are let out during the day and are free to wander the community. “Prisoners are a frequent sight pushing prams through the village, feeding the ducks, waiting for a bus to take them to a nearby supermarket or to work,” the Scottish Express reported. Not that it bothers the locals: “I’ve just been into the prison to get my hair done,” one 86-year-old woman told the paper. “They let you do that if they know you. It’s £1.75 for a wash, blow dry and a set. You can’t beat that.”

  * * *

  SPIDER GOAT

  Spider silk is stronger than steel, but scientists can’t recreate it in the lab, so they’re attempting to add spider silk to goat’s milk via DNA splicing. If successful, the extracted “goat silk” could be used to make bridges and body armor, and maybe even to replace damaged ligaments—which might just create an actual…spider man.

  Sweet dreams: Mayan emperors were often buried with jars of chocolate.

  GOLD RUSH GIRLS

  During the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s, thousands of men headed west with gold dust in their eyes. But what about women? For many of them, the untamed West wasn’t just about gold—it was about finding a place where they could loosen their corsets and call their own shots.

  THE INSIDE TRADER

  Mary Ellen “Mammy” Pleasant started life as a slave in Georgia, but her lively intelligence—not to mention her beauty—caught the plantation owner’s attention. He sent her to Boston to be educated, and he was right, she was smart—smart enough not to return. Instead, she married a wealthy black businessman. When he died, Pleasant took her $50,000 inheritance—an unheard of sum at a time when few black women saw $15 in a month—and headed to San Francisco.

  Pleasant shrewdly invested in “swank boarding houses for bachelors” and brought in women with looks and class to keep the men company. Her houses attracted the wealthy and powerful, including senators, judges, and—most importantly—financiers. While she poured brandies for guests, Pleasant listened for insider information on stock investments. Before long, she had accumulated a hefty portfolio and was sharing tips as often as she received them. “The best way to get rich in San Francisco,” said one wealthy patron, “is to know Mammy.”

  THE STAGE MOTHER

  Mary Ann Crabtree always wanted to be an actress, but like most women of her time, she abandoned her dreams in favor of marriage. In 1852 she followed her gold-hungry husband, John, to California. When their daughter Lotta was born, Mary Ann put her energies into turning the little girl into a star. She enrolled Lotta in dancing classes, first in San Francisco and then in Grass Valley, but her hopes didn’t get traction until a seasoned (and world-famous) entertainer named Lola Montez moved in next door and taught little Lotta the Irish jig.

  It was the right dance to learn. In the 1850s, half of California’s foreign-born population was Irish. Lotta’s first job: Dancing for Irish miners gathered at Flippin’s Blacksmith Shop. She kicked up her heels, red curls bouncing, while hammers pounded on anvils in the background. The miners adored the little girl—she reminded many of them of daughters they’d left behind in their quest for gold. They showed their appreciation by throwing sacks of gold dust at her feet. After Lotta’s successful premiere, Mary Ann dragged her daughter from one mining camp to anoth
er. Pretty soon little Lotta was bringing in $13 in gold every night—far more than her luckless father had ever found. By age 12, Lotta had become a famous actress and the sole support of her parents and two brothers, and by age 23 she was reportedly earning $80,000 per year.

  Kitchen fact: Boiling your food can dry it out faster than dry methods like baking.

  Mom kept track of every cent Lotta earned or spent. She gave Lotta an allowance to live on, but invested the bulk her earnings in real estate. She was so obsessed with tracking her daughter’s money that when her own husband “borrowed” a few coins, she had him arrested for theft. In the end, Mom’s money minding paid off big. When Mary Ann died, Lotta discovered that her investments had made her a fortune. At age 45, with $2 million in assets, Lotta retired.

  THE CARD SHARK

  Historical records say that Eleanor Dumont was a gorgeous young woman when she left her New Orleans home for the California gold fields. She moved to San Francisco in the early 1850s chasing the love of her life. “Not a man,” said Dumont, “but that glittery rock lying among the foothills of the Gold Country.” But the backbreaking life of a miner wasn’t in the cards for Dumont. What was? Cards! In 1854 she opened a gambling den in Nevada City, California, and created a scandal when she started dealing blackjack. The townswomen saw the lovely female dealer with the French accent as a threat to their marriages, while the men happily lost the gold they dug trying to win the dealer’s heart. None of them succeeded. At the end of every winning game of vingt-et-un (“21”), Dumont sat the loser down and had the bartender pour him a glass of milk. “Any man silly enough to lose his last cent to a woman deserves a milk diet,” she liked to say.