Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  • If Bo Derek married Don Ho, she’d be Bo Ho.

  • If Yoko Ono had married Sonny Bono, she would have been Yoko Ono Bono.

  • If Dolly Parton had married Salvador Dali, she would have been Dolly Dali.

  • If Oprah Winfrey married Depak Chopra, she’d be Oprah Chopra.

  • If Olivia Newton-John married Wayne Newton, then divorced him to marry Elton John, she’d be Olivia Newton-John Newton John.

  • If Sondra Locke married Eliot Ness, then divorced him to marry Herman Munster, she’d become Sondra Locke Ness Munster.

  • If Bea Arthur married Sting, she’d be Bea Sting.

  • If Liv Ullman married Judge Lance Ito, then divorced him and married Billy Beaver (game show host), she’d be Liv Ito Beaver.

  • If Shirley Jones married Tom Ewell, then Johnny Rotten, then Nathan Hale, she’d be Shirley Ewell Rotten Hale.

  • If Ivana Trump married, in succession, actor Orson Bean, King Oscar of Norway, Louis B. Mayer (of MGM fame), and Norbert Wiener (mathematician), she would then be Ivana Bean Oscar Mayer Wiener.

  • If Javier Lopez married Keiko the whale, and Edith Piaf married Rose Tu the elephant, they would be Javier Keiko and Edith Tu.

  • If Tuesday Weld married Hal March III, she’d be Tuesday March 3.

  • If Snoop Doggy Dogg married Winnie the Pooh, he’d be Snoop Doggy Dogg Pooh.

  …their minds. That’s where the expression willy-nilly comes from.

  WORD ORIGINS

  Ever wonder where these words came from? Here are the interesting stories behind them.

  DOOZIE

  Meaning: Something wonderful, superior, or classy

  Origin: “The word comes from Duesenberg, an eminently desirable motor car of the 1920s and ’30s. The Duesenberg featured a chromed radiator shell, gold-plated emblem, hinged louvered hood, stainless-steel running boards, beveled crystal lenses on the instrument panel, Wilton wool carpet, and twin bugle horns. Magazine ads for the luxury car carried the slogan: ‘It’s a Duesie.’” (From The Secret Lives of Words, by Paul West)

  TO KOWTOW

  Meaning: To show servile deference

  Origin: “The word is Chinese and literally means ‘knock the head.’ It was an ancient Chinese custom to touch the ground with the forehead when worshiping or paying one’s respects to an illustrious personage.” (From Why Do We Say It?, by Frank Oppel)

  TO NAG

  Meaning: To annoy by constant urging or fault-finding

  Origin: “European households of the early Middle Ages had a problem—rats infested every nook and corner; squirrels nested in the roofs. Between the rats and squirrels, the noise of gnawing was very disturbing. The Germans developed the word nagen, from an old Scandinavian term meaning ‘to gnaw.’ Eventually a person who gnawed at another by constant fault-finding was said to nag, and the word soon lost its earlier meaning.” (From I’ve Got Goose Pimples, by Marvin Vanoni)

  MANURE

  Meaning: Animal excrement used to fertilize plants

  Origin: “From the Latin manu operati, ‘to work by hand.’ Farming was constant manual labor, especially the fertilizing, which required mixing by hand. Genteel folks who objected to the word dung, the excrement of animals, were responsible for its euphemistic displacement with the more ‘refined’ manure.

  How does an orangutan warn other orangutans that danger is near? He belches—loudly.

  “Even manure became objectionable to the squeamish; they preferred fertilizer. According to a famous story about Harry S Truman, the president was explaining that farming meant manure, manure, and more manure. At which point a lady said to the president’s wife: ‘You should teach Harry to say “fertilizer,” not “manure.”’ Mrs. Truman replied, ‘You don’t know how long it took me to get him to say “manure.”’” (From The Story Behind the Words, by Morton S. Freeman)

  ADMIRAL

  Meaning: High-ranking commissioned officer in a navy or coast guard

  Origin: “This is an artificial spelling of the French amiral. The Arabian word amir, commander, is commonly followed by al, as in amir-al bahr, ‘commander of the sea,’ from which amiral resulted.” (From More About Words, by Margaret S. Ernst)

  BUCCANEER

  Meaning: Pirate or adventurer

  Origin: “The literal sense of the word was based on a native West Indian word meaning ‘one who cures flesh on a barbecue.’ Thus the name was initially applied to woodsmen in the West Indies in the 17th century. The word was transferred to pirates of the ‘Spanish Main’ whose culinary habits were similar.” (From Dunces, Gourmands & Petticoats, by Adrian Room)

  TEMPURA

  Meaning: A Japanese dish of deep-fried vegetables or seafood

  Origin: “Neither a native Japanese dish, nor a Japanese name. When the Portuguese arrived in the 17th century, the Japanese noticed that at certain ‘times’ (Portuguese, tempora), notably Lent, they switched from meat to fish. With typical subtlety the Japanese concluded that the word meant a variety of seafood.” (From Remarkable Words with Astonishing Origins, by John Train)

  How big would the Earth be if it had no room between its atoms? About as big as a baseball.

  CRUEL CRANE OUTWITTED

  Here’s another Indian fairy tale. This one deals with the beauty of instant karma, or as Uncle John says, “What you flush down comes back around.”

  Long ago the Bodisat (the highest degree of saint, one incarnation below Buddha) was born to a forest life as the Genius of a tree standing near a certain lotus pond.

  Now at that time the water used to run short during the dry season in that pond. It was not overlarge, but there were a good many fish. And a crane thought on seeing the fish: “I must outwit these fish somehow or other and make a prey of them.”

  And he went and sat down at the edge of the water, thinking how he should do it.

  When the fish saw him, they asked him, “What are you sitting there for, lost in thought?”

  “I am sitting thinking about you,” said he.

  “Oh, sir! What are you thinking about us?” said they.

  “Why,” he replied, “There is very little water in this pond, and but little for you to eat; and the heat is so great! So I was thinking, ‘What in the world will these fish do now?’”

  “Yes, indeed, sir! What are we to do?” said they.

  “If you will only do as I bid you, I will take you in my beak to a fine large pond, covered with all the kinds of lotuses, and put you into it,” answered the crane.

  “That a crane should take thought for the fishes is a thing unheard of, sir, since the world began. It’s eating us, one after the other, that you’re aiming at.”

  “Not I! So long as you trust me, I won’t eat you. But if you don’t believe me that there is such a pond, send one of you with me to go and see it.”

  Then they trusted him, and handed over to him one of their number—a big fellow, blind of one eye, whom they thought sharp enough in any emergency, afloat or ashore.

  Him the crane took with him, let him go in the pond, showed him the whole of it, brought him back, and let him go again close to the other fish. And he told them all the glories of the pond.

  World leader: One out of five pieces of the world’s garbage was generated in the U.S.

  And when they heard what he said, they exclaimed, “All right, sir! You may take us with you.”

  Then the crane took the old purblind fish first to the bank of the other pond, and alighted in a Varana tree growing on the bank there. But he threw it into a fork of the tree, struck it with his beak, and killed it; and then ate its flesh, and threw its bones away at the foot of the tree. Then he went back and called out: “I’ve thrown that fish in; let another one come.”

  And in that manner he took all the fish, one by one, and ate them, till he came back and found no more!

  But there was still a crab left behind there; and the crane thought he would eat him too, and called out: “I say, good crab, I’ve taken all the
fish away, and put them into a fine large pond. Come along. I’ll take you too!”

  “But how will you take hold of me to carry me along?”

  “I’ll bite hold of you with my beak.”

  “You’ll let me fall if you carry me like that. I won’t go with you!”

  “Don’t be afraid. I’ll hold you quite tight all the way.”

  Then said the crab to himself, “If this fellow once got hold of fish, he would never let them go in a pond! Now if he should really put me into the pond, it would be capital but if he doesn’t—then I’ll cut his throat, and kill him!” So he said to him:

  “Look here, friend, you won’t be able to hold me tight enough; but we crabs have a famous grip. If you let me catch hold of you round the neck with my claws, I shall be glad to go with you.”

  And the other did not see that he was trying to outwit him, and agreed. So the crab caught hold of his neck with his claws as securely as with a pair of blacksmith’s pincers, and called out, “Off with you, now!”

  And the crane took him and showed him the pond, and then turned off toward the Varana tree.

  “Uncle!” cried the crab, “the pond lies that way, but you are taking me this way!”

  “Oh, that’s it, is it?” answered the crane. “Your dear little uncle, you very sweet nephew, you call me! You mean me to understand, I suppose, that I am your slave, who has to lift you up and carry you about with him! Now cast your eye upon the heap of fish-bones lying at the root of yonder Varana tree. Just as I have eaten those fish, every one of them, just so I will devour you as well.”

  Q: What weighs more, a hamster or a Goliath beetle? A: They weigh about the same.

  “Ah! Those fishes got eaten through their own stupidity,” answered the crab, “But I’m not going to let you eat me. On the contrary, it is you that I am going to destroy. For you in your folly have not seen that I was outwitting you. If we die, we die both together; for I will cut off this head of yours, and cast it to the ground!” And so saying, he gave the crane’s neck a grip with his claws, as with a vice.

  Then gasping, and with tears trickling from his eyes, and trembling with the fear of death, the crane beseeched him, saying, “O my Lord! Indeed I did not intend to eat you. Grant me my life!”

  “Well, well! Step down into the pond and put me in there.”

  And he turned round and stepped down into the pond, and placed the crab on the mud at its edge. But the crab cut through its neck as clean as one would cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife, and only then entered the water!

  When the Genius who lived in the Varana tree saw this strange affair, he made the wood resound with his praise, uttering in a pleasant voice the verse:

  “The villain, though exceeding clever, / Shall prosper not by his villainy. / He may win indeed, sharp-witted in deceit, / But only as the Crane has beaten the Crab!”

  COMIC STRIP WISDOM

  Calvin: People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

  Hobbes: Isn’t your zipper supposed to be in the front of your pants?

  Nevada is the name of a town in Missouri.

  Q&A: ASK THE EXPERTS

  More random questions, with answers from the nation’s top trivia experts.

  FEELIN’ GROOVY

  Q: Who first faded out the music at the end of a record, rather than having a proper ending?

  A: “Fade-outs became widespread in the United States as the result of a trade survey in the early fifties. This showed that when records were played on jukeboxes, people felt more inclined to replay a record that faded out because it left a subconscious feeling that you hadn’t completely heard it. The only other innovation to stimulate jukebox plays was pioneered by the Chess Record Company. They developed a groove-cutting technique which ensured that when played on jukeboxes, their records were one-third louder than all other records in the machine.” (From The Best Ever Notes & Queries, edited by Joseph Harker)

  COUNTER CULTURE

  Q: When spilled coffee dries on my kitchen counter, it forms a brown ring, with almost nothing inside. Why does all the coffee go to the edges to dry?

  A: “When a coffee puddle finds itself on a flat, level surface, it tends to spread out in all directions. The liquid will stop spreading when it hits a barrier, any slight irregularity in the surface that it can’t cross, such as a microscopic ditch. Depending on where the barriers happen to be, the puddle will take on a certain shape: longer in this direction, shorter in that, like an amoeba.

  “As evaporation takes place, the puddle will start to dry first where it’s thinnest: at the edges. That has the effect of making the puddle shrink, pulling its edges back, but it can’t do that because they’re stuck in the ditches. So as water evaporates from the edges, it has to be replenished from somewhere, and the only place it can come from is the interior of the puddle.

  “Thus, there’s movement of water from the interior of the puddle to the edges, where it evaporates. That water carries along with it the microscopic brown coffee particles which then find themselves stranded at the edges when the puddle finally runs out of water.” (From What Einstein Told His Barber, by Robert Wolke)

  The trunk of the African baobab tree can grow as large as 100 feet in circumference.

  A HAIR OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

  Q: Why does hair turn gray?

  A: “Gray (or white) is the base color of hair. Pigment cells located at the base of each hair follicle produce the natural dominant color of our youth. However, as a person grows older, more and more of these pigment cells die and color is lost from individual hairs. The result is that a person’s hair gradually begins to show more and more gray.

  “The whole process may take between 10 and 20 years—rarely does a person’s entire collection of individual hairs (which can number in the hundreds of thousands) go gray overnight.” (From How Things Work, by Louis Bloomfield)

  CHALK IT UP TO EXPERIENCE

  Q: There is a common scene on TV and in the movies where there has been a murder. The body has been removed, but its outline is preserved on the floor in white tape or chalk. Do the police really do this?

  A: “At one time, maybe, but according to investigators we surveyed, it’s really not done anymore. Why? While chalk or tape might make for dramatic TV, they also contaminate the crime scene, and contamination is a major headache for crime scene investigators.” (From The Straight Dope, by Cecil Adams)

  W-A-A-A-H!

  Q: Besides humans, do any other animals cry?

  A: “Only one other land animal cries: the elephant. Marine animals that cry include seals, sea otters, and saltwater crocodiles (the so-called ‘crocodile tears’). All of these animals cry only to get rid of salt. However, one scientist, Dr. G. W. Steller, a zoologist at Harvard University, thinks that sea otters are capable of crying emotional tears. According to Dr. Steller, ‘I have sometimes deprived females of their young on purpose, sparing the lives of their mothers, and they would weep over their affliction just like human beings.’” (From The Odd Body, by Dr. Stephen Juan)

  YOUR FOOD PERSONA

  Here are the results of studies that explore our eating habits and how they relate to our behavior. You may think that it’s all a bunch of baloney, that we’ve had one helping too many, but it is something interesting to chew on.

  SOUP’S ON

  “The foods we eat do say a lot about who we are as people,” says Brian Wansink, head of the Food & Brand Lab at the University of Illinois. He conducted a study comparing subjects’ soup preferences to their personality types. Here’s what he found:

  If you prefer…

  • Chicken noodle soup, you are more likely to be a churchgoing pet owner. You are stubborn and prefer to stay indoors.

  • Minestrone, you pay attention to nutrition as well as your waistline. Your family is very important to you, your pets are not.

  • Vegetable soup, you don’t get out much. You’re
not very spontaneous and you’d rather read Family Circle than Time or Newsweek.

  • Tomato soup, you live life to its fullest. You seek adventure and love to party, but also find time to curl up with your dog or cat and a good book.

  Wansink’s conclusion: No matter which kind you prefer, soup is the ultimate “comfort food.” It’s a guilt-free, easy-to-prepare snack that reminds you of Mom. In fact, two-thirds of the test subjects claimed they felt better about themselves after they slurped their soup.

  WHICH SPOON DO I USE?

  But wait, there’s more. According to a separate study conducted by Food Processing magazine in 1996, your personality can also be determined by how you eat your soup.

  • If you drink your soup straight from the bowl, then you’re a “free-spirited enthusiast.” Never needing to please others, the path you follow in life is your own, and you couldn’t be happier.

  • If you eat your soup with a large soup spoon, then you’re a “purposeful traditionalist.” You know exactly what you want out of life. When traveling from A to B, you don’t meander—you take the direct route to obtain what you desire.

  • If you drink your soup from a mug, then you’re a “care-free independent.” No one can tell you how to live your life because you already know what’s best for you. You are the master of your world—you are all you need.