Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Czech Republic: Raising your voice damages your credibility. You will be considered a buffoon.

  Denmark: Never compliment other people’s clothing. It’s considered too intimate.

  Australia: Don’t say “g’day, mate” to an Australian. Avoid the temptation to talk about convicts (Australia was founded as a penal colony) or mention Crocodile Dundee. It’s condescending.

  Egypt: Don’t add salt to a meal. It’s insulting to the cook, implying that the food is unpalatable.

  France: Bread will be waiting for you on the table in restaurants, but don’t eat it until the main course arrives. It’s not an appetizer—it’s meant to accompany meals.

  Singapore: Chewing gum, jaywalking, spitting, littering, and not flushing a public toilet are not only considered rude, they’re also illegal…and you can be fined $500 per offense.

  South Korea: If you want to get someone’s attention, don’t point and do the “come here” thing. Instead, extend your arm, palm down, and wiggle your fingers downward.

  Hats off! Wearing a hat is considered disrespectful in Fiji.

  Japan: It’s considered rude to eat food on the street, especially if you’re walking. Sit down to eat, even if it’s a cup of coffee or an ice cream cone.

  Italy: It’s rude to get up to use the bathroom during a meal. Wait until the meal’s over.

  The Netherlands: Cafés and coffee shops aren’t the same thing. Both sell food and both sell coffee, but “coffee shops” are also places where marijuana is sold and consumed.

  Hungary: Never clink glasses. According to legend, 13 Hungarian generals were jailed by Austria in the 1848 revolution. Their Austrian captors clinked glasses at every meal, so Hungarians unofficially vowed to ban the practice for 150 years. Technically, the ban is now over, but it’s still honored.

  Finland: It’s the home of Nokia, so cell phones are universal. But in public places, you must set your phone to “vibrate.” If it rings in a theater, restaurant, library, or even at a sporting event, you will be asked to leave.

  Poland: When dining at someone’s home, thank them by saying dziekuje (jen-koo-yeh). But don’t say it to a waiter in a restaurant unless you really mean it; in that context, it means “keep the change.”

  Sweden: If you touch something in a store or market, you’re expected to buy it.

  Thailand: Thailand is a Buddhist country, so all life is deemed precious there. Be careful not to step on spiders, and never swat at insects.

  * * *

  A RANDOM ORIGIN

  On a 1976 Lynyrd Skynyrd live album, singer Ronnie Van Zant asks the audience, “What song is it you want to hear?” The audience demands “Free Bird!” and the band plays it. The tradition of shouting it at non-Skynyrd concerts started in Chicago in 1988. Disc jockey (and Lynyrd Skynyrd fan) Kevin Matthews instructed listeners to attend a Florence Henderson concert and shout out requests for “Free Bird” to torment the singer. Fans then started yelling the song at other unhip concerts, then at any concert at all.

  Equal rights: By law, all tombstones in Norway must be the same height.

  HE SLUD INTO THIRD

  Verbal gems actually uttered on the air by sports announcers.

  “If only faces could talk.”

  —Pat Summerall,

  NFL announcer

  “Hector Torres, how can you communicate with Enzo Hernandez when he speaks Spanish and you speak Mexican?”

  —Jerry Coleman,

  San Diego Padres announcer

  “A lot of good ballgames on tomorrow, but we’re going to be right here with the Cubs and the Mets.”

  —Thom Brennaman,

  Chicago Cubs announcer

  “Lance Armstrong is about to join a list which includes only himself.”

  —Mark Brown,

  ESPN sports analyst

  “I don’t think anywhere is there a symbiotic relationship between caddie and player like there is in golf.”

  —Johnny Miller,

  golf analyst

  “Referee Richie Powers called the loose bowel foul on Johnson.”

  —Frank Herzog, Washington

  Bullets basketball announcer

  “It’s a great advantage to be able to hurdle with both legs.”

  —David Coleman,

  British sports announcer

  “The Minutemen are not tall in terms of height.”

  —Dan Bonner,

  college basketball analyst

  “Jose Canseco leads off the 3rd inning with a grand slam.”

  —John Gordon,

  Minnesota Twins announcer

  “The offensive linemen are the biggest guys on the field, they’re bigger than everybody else, and that’s what makes them the biggest guys on the field.”

  —John Madden,

  NFL announcer

  “Watch the expression on his mask.”

  —Harry Neale,

  hockey analyst

  “The game’s in the refrigerator, folks. The door’s closed, the light’s out, the eggs are cooling, the butter’s gettin’ hard, and the Jell-O’s a-jigglin’.”

  —Chick Hearn,

  L.A. Lakers announcer

  Lou Gehrig’s only film role was as himself, in the movie Rawhide.

  ACTS OF SEDITION!

  Political arguments about one of America’s most cherished freedoms, the right to free speech, have been going on since the United States was founded. And they continue to this day.

  PARDON ME

  In May 2006, Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana officially pardoned 78 people who had been convicted of crimes in 1918, almost 90 years earlier. The crimes: sedition—“incitement of insurrection against lawful authority,” or, in the case of these 78 Montanans, criticizing the government. Three of the people convicted had written something critical, and the rest had simply said something aloud in public and had been turned in by neighbors or townspeople. Forty-one of the 78 convicted—40 men and one woman—served prison sentences for their words. “I’m going to say what Governor Sam Stewart should have said,” Schweitzer said, referring to the governor who signed the sedition law in 1918. “I’m sorry, forgive me, and God bless America, because we can criticize our government.”

  THE ACTS

  It wasn’t the first time that people’s words had landed them in prison in the United States.

  In 1798, just nine years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, America’s first two political parties—Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists, and Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans—were struggling for power. The Federalists controlled Congress and the White House with John Adams, and they used their power to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts. War with France was looming, they said, and these laws were necessary to thwart French immigrants within our own borders who might side with France. The Republicans saw the Acts as an attempt to crush the Republican Party. The Acts themselves, and how the Federalists prosecuted them, supported the Republicans’ views. Four laws made up the Alien and Sedition Acts:

  • The Naturalization Act extended the period an immigrant had to wait to become a resident from 5 to 14 years. (Most immigrants at the time, particularly the French and the Irish, supported Jefferson and the Republicans, so the law made fewer of them eligible to vote.)

  The horse pictured on Wyoming’s license plates has a name: “Old Steamboat.”

  • The Alien Act and the Alien Enemies Act gave the president the power to imprison or deport any aliens he deemed dangerous to the United States. (This would allow the Federalists to silence any foreign-born critics, whether they were dangerous or not.)

  • The Sedition Act, the most controversial of the statutes, made it illegal for anyone to criticize the government, the Congress, or the president, orally or through writing. (The only people who went to prison for violating the Sedition Act were Republicans.)

  WRONGING THE RIGHTS

  The Republicans were outraged, calling the Alien and Sedition Acts an “unconstitutional reign of terror.” And
not just because the Sedition legislation didn’t make it illegal to criticize the vice president, a position which was currently held by Thomas Jefferson. (Criticism of Jefferson continued to flow unabated.) The Republicans claimed that the Sedition Act was in direct violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.

  Twenty-five people were arrested under the Sedition Act (the Federalists never charged anyone with violating the Alien Acts), most of them editors of Republican newspapers who had publicly lambasted the president. Some of them:

  • Republican congressman (and Irish American) Matthew Lyon of Vermont. Lyon, known as “Spitting” Lyon for spitting in the face of another congressman on the floor of the House some years earlier, had published an article in a newspaper he owned criticizing President Adams and opposing going to war with France, which the Federalists supported. Lyon blasted the Adams administration for, among other things, its “unbounded thirst for ridiculous pomp, foolish adulation and selfish avarice.” For that he was charged with sedition and found guilty—most historians say by a jury packed with Federalist supporters—receiving a fine of $1,060.96 and a sentence of four months in prison.

  • James Callender, editor of the Republican Richmond Examiner, who said Adams was “mentally deranged” and a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” For that he was fined and sent to prison for nine months.

  Oldest continuously operating high school in America: Boston Latin, established in 1635.

  • Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin and publisher of the Philadelphia Democrat-Republican Aurora. He had mercilessly and continually attacked the Federalists, at one point referring to the president as “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” Bache died before going to trial.

  Ultimately, the Alien and Sedition Acts backfired on the Federalists. Public opinion turned against the oppressive laws, and in 1799 the Jeffersonians were able to pass resolutions in Kentucky and Virginia that made the Acts unenforceable in those states. That same year “Spitting” Lyon ran for reelection—from his jail cell—and won. The Acts helped to unite Republicans across the country, and Thomas Jefferson was able to win the presidency in 1800. He immediately pardoned every person convicted of sedition and ordered the government to pay back their fines…with interest. The Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1801, and Jefferson did not reinstate them. No American would be charged with sedition again…for more than a century.

  What events could lead American legislators to curtail one of the people’s basic freedoms? Turn to page 469 to find out.

  * * *

  REVENGE!

  In a 1980s Far Side cartoon, two chimpanzees are grooming each other. One finds a human hair on the other and jealously says, “Doing a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” The Jane Goodall Institute cried foul and wrote a letter to Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, calling the cartoon an “atrocity.” But Goodall herself thought it was funny—she and Larson struck up a friendship, and all profits from sales of a T-shirt featuring the cartoon now go to the Goodall Institute. But was she really okay with it? Seems one of her chimp friends wasn’t. In 1988 Larson visited Gombe National Park with Goodall and was attacked by a chimp named Frodo. Goodall apologized to Larson, who suffered cuts and bruises, telling him Frodo was “a bully.” (Goodall had raised the 12-year-old chimp herself.)

  Members of Congress don’t need postage stamps…

  BATHROOM NEWS

  All the latest from the news stream.

  LAWN BOWLING

  When the zoning board of Anderson Township, Ohio, turned down Alan and Robin Sutton’s request for permission to build a fence around their yard, the Suttons protested the decision by lining the perimeter of their yard with 15 flower-filled toilet bowls. And because their creation is technically not a “structure,” the zoning board can’t do anything about it.

  THE ELECTION IS GOING DOWN THE TOILET

  Candidates seeking election in India may soon have to fulfill an unusual condition to prove their viability as a leader: toilet ownership. The proposal, the brainchild of rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, is intended to force the poor to take sanitation seriously. “If you cannot build a toilet in your own house, what use can you be to voters?” says Singh.

  BATHROOM 101

  The National Health Service of Scotland has distributed a pamphlet entitled “Good Defecation Dynamics” to thousands of people in the city of Dundee. Recent research by the department found that a third of Scotland’s population suffers from bowel or bladder problems, and the booklet offers many useful tips and techniques, including recommended breathing habits and “proper posture for effective evacuation.” (One tip: “Keep your mouth open as you bulge and widen.”)

  PAY TOILET

  A tax collector in Graz, Austria, took a black briefcase containing $28,000 in cash with him when he used the men’s room at a local restaurant. Somehow, when he exited the bathroom he forgot to take his case with him. An hour later he remembered and went back to retrieve it…but it was gone. Despite a formal plea from the Graz police, neither the case nor the money have been recovered.

  …for official mail—their signature counts as a stamp.

  BREAD BOWL

  In April 2006, federal food safety investigators in Kuwait City shut down the Hawally Bakery because it was improperly storing its dough. Where? In a big clump in a toilet. The owner said the humidity and water in the toilet kept it fresh.

  LIGHTS…CAMERA…FLUSH!

  Toilets ruined a day of filming on the Indian movie Keep At It, Munnabhai. In one scene filmed in a suburban Mumbai (formerly Bombay) mall, two characters have a secret meeting in a bathroom and then walk out. The only problem: Every time actors Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi moved, the sensors on all the urinals in the bathroom were activated, making them all flush. The noise ruined every take, and the shoot had to be moved to another location.

  LIKE A VIRGIN

  When musicians agree to do a concert, they provide promoters and the concert hall with a list of demands called a “rider,” usually food and drink requests. Madonna has an unusual item on her rider: a brand-new toilet seat at every concert venue on every stop of her tour. (It must still be wrapped in plastic to prove it’s new.) After the concert, the seat is to be removed and destroyed to stop anybody from trying to sell it on eBay.

  LOO WITH A VIEW

  If you’re looking for a bathroom in the Irish coastal town of Lahinch, it’s going to cost you. A dilapidated shack containing a public toilet is on the market for the same price as the average home in Ireland—about 300,000 euros ($380,000). Three reasons: location, location, location. It overlooks a popular beach on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. But if that’s not in your price range, the Boston Red Sox offered the toilet from the clubhouse during their 2004 World Series winning season. Final price at auction: $624.47.

  * * *

  “There is so little difference between husbands you might as well keep the first.”

  —Adela Rogers St. Johns

  In 1981 an L.A. man was arrested for hiding under tables and painting women’s toenails.

  DEATH CUSTOMS

  The treatment and disposal of a dead body is a sacred ritual in every culture, but each one does it a little bit differently.

  IN INDIA, custom calls for a body to be burned on a funeral pyre near a riverbank and a temple; the ashes are thrown into the river. Some adherents to Zoroastrianism place bodies atop towers; after the flesh is eaten by vultures, the bones are thrown into a pit at the center of the tower.

  IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS of the South Pacific, a body was traditionally placed on a reef where it would be eaten by sharks.

  INUIT PEOPLE constructed small igloos around a corpse (like an “ice tomb”). The cold protected and preserved the body (unless a polar bear found its way in).

  THE NAVAJO feared being haunted by the dead, so the body was burned
and the deceased’s house was destroyed. On the way back from the funeral, relatives took a long, circuitous route to confuse the spirit into not following them.

  A VIKING FUNERAL: At sunset, the dead man was placed on a small boat. As it drifted out to sea, it was lit on fire. If the color of the sunset was the same as that of the fire, it meant the deceased was bound for Valhalla (Viking heaven).

  MUSLIMS do not use caskets (unless required by law). The body is washed three times, wrapped in a white shroud, and placed directly in the ground with the head pointed toward Mecca.

  THE IROQUOIS buried corpses in shallow graves, but exhumed them after a few months. Relatives then placed the bones in a community burial plot.

  IN MODERN JAPAN, bodies are washed in a Buddhist temple, dressed (men in suits, women in kimonos), and put in a casket with a white kimono, sandals, and six coins, all for the spirit’s crossing into the afterlife. After a funeral, the body is cremated. Relatives pick bones out of the ash, put them in an urn, and bury it.

  Longest-running play in history: The Mouse Trap, by Agatha Christie.

  HONK IF ANYTHING FALLS OFF

  We keep thinking that we’ve seen every clever bumper sticker that exists, but every year readers send us new ones. Have you seen the one that says…

  If you lived in your car you’d be home by now.

  OVER 50. BEEN THERE. DONE THAT. CAN’T REMEMBER.

  Watch out! I’m late for Driver’s Ed class.

  I child-proofed my house but they still get in.

  This car is a status symbol. It symbolizes me being poor.

  Yes, this is my truck. No, I won’t help you move.

  The Earth is full. Go home.

  I have the body of a god: Buddha.

  EAT RIGHT, EXERCISE, DIE ANYWAY.

  Honk if anything falls off.

  He who hesitates not only is lost, but is miles from the next exit.