Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  MICROCOSMOS (1996) Documentary

  Review: “What Winged Migration did for birds, this film does for the insect world. An astonishingly up-close and personal look at an infinitesimal world as alien as anything captured by the Hubble telescope—but also a world of strange and unexpected beauty.” (Decent Films Guide) Directors: Claude Nuridsany, Marie Perennou.

  The crew of the Enterprise under Captain Kirk’s command: 430. Under Picard: 1,012.

  WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1996) Comedy/Drama

  Review: “Intensely personal tragicomedy about an 11-year-old girl facing vicious ridicule in junior high is an often somber (and more often hilarious) look at pre-teen ‘society.’ Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.” (Filmcritic.com) Stars: Heather Matarazzo, Brendan Sexton, Jr. Director: Todd Solondz.

  HAPPY ACCIDENTS (2000) Romance

  Review: “Ruby is a magnet for men with issues. Just when she thinks Sam is normal and romantic, he drops a bombshell—he claims he’s a time-traveler from the year 2470. It’s fun to speculate all through the movie whether he’s crazy or telling the truth.” (themoviechicks.com) Stars: Marisa Tomei, Vincent D’Onofrio. Director: Brad Anderson.

  MY DOG SKIP (2000) Family

  Review: “Sweet (but not cloying) family film of author Willie Morris’ memoir of growing up in the 1940s with his beloved English fox terrier, who helps him through childhood and adolescence. Warm and winning for grownups as well as children...but have a handkerchief handy!” (Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide) Stars: Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, Kevin Bacon. Director: Jay Russell.

  HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994) Drama

  Review: “Two New Zealand schoolgirls conspire to murder one girl’s mother when parental concerns about their obsessive friendship threaten to separate them forever. Surreal scenes featuring unicorns, giant butterflies, castles, and claymation knights express the teens’ emotional slide into chilling actions.” (Video Movie Guide) Stars: Kate Winslet, Melanie Lynskey. Director: Peter Jackson.

  THE GAME (1997) Thriller

  Review: “A mysterious company specializes in a tailor-made game. The player doesn’t know its point, purpose, or overall design until it’s over. An unusually imaginative thriller that bends its offbeat plot into so many twists that you actually have to pay attention.” (Christian Science Monitor) Stars: Michael Douglas, Sean Penn. Director: David Fincher.

  On average, Hawaiian residents outlive those of all other U.S. states.

  BEST PRANKS EVER

  Don’t look now, but your fly is open. Ha ha—made you look!

  GIVE ME TACOS OR GIVE ME DEATH!

  Prank: In 1996 the fast-food chain Taco Bell issued a brief statement announcing its purchase of the Liberty Bell. According to the press release, Taco Bell was responding to an inquiry from the U.S. government about the possibility of reducing the national debt by selling off its national treasures to corporations. Taco Bell thought the Liberty Bell would make the ideal company logo. In fact, they planned to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell.

  Reaction: Then, just a few hours after the announcement, Taco Bell quietly issued a retraction, saying the whole thing had been a big joke. But by that time, the story had been widely reported by the news media. At a press briefing the next day, White House press secretary Mike McCurry was bombarded by hostile reporters who hadn’t yet heard the whole thing was a hoax. “We will also be selling the Lincoln Memorial to Ford Motor Company,” McCurry said, “and renaming it the Lincoln-Mercury Memorial.”

  PAPER TRAIL

  Prank #1: The English paper manufacturer Donside holds an annual contest for graphic design students. The theme of the contest in 2000 was “Tell a Lie Convincingly,” using paper in some way. After hundreds of entries had been sent in, the participating schools received a letter from Donside Paper stating that the contest had been called off. Disappointed design students all over England began calling Donside to complain. But it turned out Donside hadn’t cancelled the contest. The letter was a prank...or a very clever contest entry.

  Prank #2: Just as Donside scrambled to get the contest back underway, students received another notice: the final deadline had been moved up. Entrants rushed to get their projects in on time, completely unaware that they’d been fooled again. Who sent the letters? No one knows.

  Reaction: Despite the fact that the Donside Paper Company announced that they wouldn’t punish the culprits and even offered to judge the pranks as contest entries, nobody ever came forward to claim responsibility for them.

  A newborn baby’s heart has the same number of cells as an adult’s.

  A MONUMENTAL HOAX

  Prank: Every student election seems to have a joke candidate, and the 1979 student body president election at the University of Wisconsin was no exception. Jim Mallon and Leon Varjian campaigned on a unique platform: to purchase and relocate the Statue of Liberty to Madison, Wisconsin.

  Amazingly, they won. But voters didn’t take the pledge seriously—Mallon and Varjian couldn’t actually pull the stunt off. Or could they?

  One winter morning, the instantly recognizable head and torch of the Statue of Liberty appeared, poking out from nearby Lake Mendota. Varjian told the UW student paper that he and Mallon tried to fulfill their campaign promise—but the cable transporting the statue via helicopter broke and, tragically, dropped the statue, partially submerging it. It wasn’t the real statue, of course—it was plywood papier-mâché and chicken wire; Mallon and Varjian had been secretly overseeing its construction for months. (The two insisted that it was the real Statue of Liberty.)

  Aftermath: The student newspaper later revealed that $4,500 of student money had been used to make the statue. Mallon and Varjian’s response: they offered to write a check to any interested student for their individual share of wasted funds—10¢ each. The statue was destroyed by unknown arsonists three weeks later, but the prankster duo won again next year and rebuilt the statue (this time they spent $6,000). That one was removed by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It now lives in a shed on campus.

  IRONIC, ISN’T IT?

  In 1976 Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. co-authored the landmark “Buckley Decision,” striking down all limits on spending for political campaigns. In 1995 a powerful group of lawyers and political players in New York began working to get the controversial law overturned. The group: The William J. Brennan, Jr. Center for Justice, made up of family, friends, and former law clerks of the late Justice Brennan.

  Hidden meaning? A man’s brain is 2% of his body weight, a woman’s is 2.5%.

  YOU’VE GOT MAIL!

  Like anyone with an e-mail address, we at the BRI get a lot of unsolicited e-mail that seems too good—or bad—to be true. We looked into claims made by some of them, and here’s what we found.

  E-MAIL MESSAGE:

  To: YOU

  From: Illegal_Downloads_Division@FBI.GOV

  Subject: Illegal File Downloading

  Ladies and Gentlemen: Downloading of Movies, MP3s and Software is illegal and punishable by law. We hereby inform you that your computer was scanned and the contents have been confiscated as evidence. You will be indicted. In the next few days you will receive the charge in writing.—Illegal Downloads Division, FBI

  ORIGIN: This e-mail has been circulating at least since 2003 and probably longer than that.

  THE TRUTH: Relax. Yes, downloading copyrighted material is illegal, but the FBI didn’t send this e-mail. If you received it, your files haven’t really been scanned or confiscated, and you won’t really be indicted...at least not as a consequence of this e-mail.

  E-MAIL MESSAGE:

  To: eBay user

  From: eBay Accounts Management@ebay.com

  Subject: Your Billing Information

  We at eBay are sorry to inform you that we are having problems with the billing information of your account. We would appreciate it if you would visit our website, eBay Billing Center, and fill out the proper information that w
e need to keep you as an eBay member.

  ORIGIN: This particular e-mail started circulating in 2004, but similar ones have been floating around the Internet for about as long as eBay has been in business.

  The surface of Venus has been better mapped than the sea beds of Earth.

  THE TRUTH: E-mails like these are known as “phishing.” They imitate legitimate businesses to con people into revealing sensitive financial information, such as credit card and Social Security numbers. eBay gets hit so often, it has set up a special e-mail address, spoof@ebay.com, so that anyone who receives an eBay spoof can report it. Rule of thumb: Legitimate businesses will never e-mail you with a request to send them your personal information. No matter how legitimate the e-mail looks, ignore it.

  E-MAIL MESSAGE:

  To: The American Taxpayer

  From: Outraged Citizen@yahoo

  Subject: Politicians’ Golden Retirement Plan

  Our Senators and Congressmen don’t pay into Social Security, and, of course, they don’t collect from it. The reason is that they have a special retirement plan that they voted for themselves many years ago. It works like this: When they retire, they continue to draw their full pay until they die, and they get cost-of-living adjustments too. This would be well and good, except that they paid nothing in on any kind of retirement. This money comes right out of the General Fund—in other words, our tax money.

  ORIGIN: This e-mail began circulating in April 2000. The full version claims that senators with the most seniority can expect to collect nearly $8 million over their lifetimes without contributing a cent of their own money. And when they die, their widows collect $275,000 per year until they die.

  THE TRUTH: Say what you want about elected officials, but nearly every “fact” cited in this e-mail is false. Senators and congressmen do pay Social Security taxes and are required to contribute to the Federal Employees Retirement System. At last report the average retired member of Congress collected just under $47,000 a year in retirement. At that rate, it would take them 160 years to collect the $8 million claimed here.

  Favorite pizza toppings in Germany: sauerkraut and onions.

  THE WORLD’S WORST POET

  Great poetry must be considered art—It tickles the brain and stabs at the heart. Could there be a worse poet than Uncle John? It’s all in the story that follows; read on.

  ALL FIRED UP

  One afternoon in June 1877, an impoverished Scottish weaver named William McGonagall fell into a funk. McGonagall was depressed because he wanted to escape the gritty industrial city of Dundee for a few days in the countryside, but he couldn’t afford a train ticket. He was stuck at home, and to make matters worse, he was starting to feel a little funny. Was it a cold? The flu?

  Hardly. As McGonagall later wrote in his autobiography, it was something else entirely: Divine Inspiration.

  I seemed to feel as it were a strange kind of feeling stealing over me. A flame...seemed to kindle up my entire frame, along with a strong desire to write poetry. I began to pace backwards and forwards in the room, trying to shake off all thought of writing poetry; but the more I tried, the more strong the sensation became. It was so strong, I imagined that a pen was in my right hand, and a voice crying, “Write! Write!”

  So McGonagall wrote. His first poem was a tribute to his friend, the Reverend George Gilfillan:

  The first time I heard him speak,

  ’Twas in the Kinnaird Hall,

  Lecturing on the Garibaldi movement,

  As loud as he could bawl.

  My blessing on his noble form,

  and on his lofty head,

  May all good angels guard him while he’s living,

  And hereafter when he’s dead.

  A female lobster is called a hen or a chicken.

  A BARD IS BORN

  McGonagall showed the poem to Reverend Gilfillan, who remarked diplomatically, “Shakespeare never wrote anything like this!” Encouraged, McGonagall dropped a copy into the mailbox of the Weekly News, hoping they might print it. They did...and he was off on a new career.

  McGonagall already had a reputation for being an eccentric: His impromptu performances of Shakespeare’s plays at the factory where he worked were so bad they were funny, and his co-workers once rented a theater to watch him make a fool of himself alongside professional actors.

  But it was McGonagall’s poetry that cemented his fame as a local nut. He sold his poems on the street and gave readings at local pubs. And as with his Shakespeare performances, his readings were so funny that people rented halls and subsidized his performances just so they could laugh at his work. Unfortunately, they also pelted him with pies, wet towels, rotten eggs, and garbage while he read his poems. It got so bad that McGonagall refused to perform unless a clergyman sat next to him onstage to keep people from throwing things.

  OUCH!

  How did McGonagall cope with the abuse? Though his poetry was awful, he never doubted his own talent and refused to believe that his audiences were there to laugh at him. But it was so unrelenting that, by the early 1890s, McGonagall began threatening (in verse) to leave the city forever. Would he really leave? In 1892 the Scottish Leader speculated that “...when he discovers the full value of the circumstance that Dundee rhymes with 1893, he may be induced to reconsider his decision and stay for yet a year.” McGonagall stayed until 1894, when he moved to Edinburgh. There he continued writing poetry until ill health forced him to lay down his pen forever. McGonagall passed away in 1902, at the age of 77, and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The grave remained unmarked until 1999, when the city of Edinburgh finally erected a plaque at the cemetery. The Oxford Companion to English Literature says he “enjoys a reputation as the world’s worst poet,” and more than a century after his death, his poems are still in print.

  See for yourself: Virginia extends 95 miles further west than West Virginia.

  A MCGONAGALL SAMPLER

  So is William McGonagall the worst poet ever? Here are selections from his poetry to help you decide.

  ALAS! Sir John Ogilvy is dead, aged eighty-seven,

  But I hope his soul is now in heaven;

  He was a public benefactor in many ways,

  Especially in erecting an asylum for imbecile children to spend their days.

  —The Late Sir John Ogilvy

  And from the British battleships a fierce cannonade did boom;

  And continued from six in the morning till two o’clock in the afternoon.

  And by the 26th of July the guns of Fort Moro were destroyed

  And the French and Spaniards were greatly annoyed.

  —The Capture of Havana

  ALAS! Lord and Lady Dalhousie are dead, and buried at last,

  Which causes many people to feel a little downcast.

  —Death of Lord & Lady Dalhousie

  Ye sons of Great Britain, I think no shame

  To write in praise of brave General Graham!

  Whose name will be handed down to posterity without any stigma,

  Because, at the battle of El-Teb, he defeated Osman Digna.

  —The Battle of El-Teb

  Arabi’s army was about seventy thousand in all,

  And, virtually speaking, it wasn’t very small.

  —The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir

  Beautiful city of Glasgow, I now conclude my muse,

  And to write in praise of thee my pen does not refuse;

  And, without fear of contradiction, I will venture to say

  You are the second grandest city in Scotland at the present day!

  —Glasgow

  The New Yorkers boast about their Brooklyn Bridge,

  But in comparison to thee it seems like a midge.

  —To the New Tay Bridge

  And when life’s prospects may at times appear dreary to ye,

  Remember Alois Senefelder, the discoverer of Lithography.

  —The Sprig of Moss

  He told me at once what was ailing
me;

  He said I had been writing too much poetry,

  And from writing poetry I would have to refrain,

  Because I was suffering from inflammation of the brain.

  —A Tribute to Dr. Murison

  The Roman poet Virgil spent the equivalent of $92,000 on a funeral for his pet fly.

  FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  You know what these foods taste like, but have you ever wondered how they got their names? For that matter, how did the word food gets its name?

  Whiskey. This word is from the Gaelic usquebaugh, meaning “water of life.”

  Lasagne. Ancient Greeks used chamber pots called lasanons. So the Romans jokingly called any flat cooking pots lasasum. The food took on the name of its container.

  Albacore. From the Arabic al-bakrah (young camel). That’s how it tasted to some people.

  Tutti-frutti. Ice cream made with several fruits. “Tutti frutti” is Italian for “all fruits.”

  Food. The word was foda (“sustenance”) in Old English, fode in Middle English, and food in Modern English.

  Pudding. From boudin, a gooey French dish of sausage encased in the intestines of animals.

  Pinto beans. Pinto is “paint” in Spanish. The beans were so named for their mottled skins.

  Rutabaga. The name comes from an Old Norse word meaning “baggy root.”

  Crawfish (or crayfish). Either way you pronounce it, this lobster-like critter got its name from the Old French word crevisse, meaning “crab.”

  Butterscotch. It doesn’t contain any scotch or have any affiliation with Scotland—while the candy is cooling, it is “scotched” into squares. (To “scotch” something used to mean to “score” it.)

  Corned beef. The “corn” in this dish refers to the corns of salt used to make salted beef.