Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Role Model: Dennis O’Neil, a priest in southern California

  Setting an Example: A Los Angeles jury awarded more than $950,000 to Maria Vega, a Sunday school teacher who accused Father Dennis of punching her in the head because he disapproved of the way she was teaching catechism. “Mrs. Vega is Catholic and shouldn’t be punched by a priest, particularly in front of her students,” Vega’s attorney told reporters.

  Roll of a lifetime: Vivien Leigh used her Oscar as a toilet paper holder.

  Role Model: Pastor Jerry Hayes, 53, a Pentecostal minister in Hartford, Maine

  Setting an Example: Pastor Hayes was sentenced to six and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to robbing five banks during a three-month crime spree. (Total haul: $13,309.) Prosecutors say he laundered the money through church bank accounts, then spent it on things like a camper, a car, and the .38-caliber revolver used in some of the heists. Pastor Hayes was literally caught red-handed during the fifth robbery, when an anti-theft dye pack exploded in his bag of money as he was fleeing the scene.

  Role Model: Bob Bateman, a councilman in Weston-super-Mare, England

  Setting an Example: Bateman racked up the equivalent of $460 in traffic fines in a single day in early 2004 after traffic cameras photographed him breaking the speed limit four times in two hours on the same stretch of road. Bateman blames the cameras, which he says serve no public safety purpose. “If these cameras are used in areas where there’s a history of accidents, that’s fine, but otherwise they are just there to create revenue,” he says. Incidentally, Bateman sits on the council that decides where the traffic cameras should be placed.

  Role Models: Bishop William Ellis of the Apostolic Pentecostal Church of Morgan Park, Illinois; and Father Arthur LaPore of St. Anthony’s Catholic Church in Joliet, Illinois

  Setting an Example: Federal prosecutors charged Bishop Ellis with skimming $1,000 a week from Sunday offerings, as well as using church credit cards and bank accounts for personal reasons. Total haul: Hundreds of thousands of dollars over a four-year period. Prosecutors say he blew the money on trips, clothes, and a second Mercedes to go with the one his church had already bought him.

  That same month, they charged Father LaPore with misappropriating $24,860 of church funds, plus skimming an additional $100 a week from collection plates and $2,700 from parish spaghetti dinner fundraisers. Father LaPore used the money to buy a $537,000 house. When suspicious parishioners couldn’t figure out how he could afford such an expensive home on his priestly salary, they called the police. Prosecutors say the two cases are unrelated.

  Loud noise, aspirin, caffeine, and quinine can all cause tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

  A DAY IN PALINDROMIA

  Our readers seem to love palindromes, words or phrases that are spelled the same forward and backward. So, on a recent trip to the BRI archives, we pulled out some of our favorite palindromes and used them to create this silly story. There are 52 hidden here (not including doubles). Can you find them all? (Answers are on page 518.) Good luck!

  OTTO

  One day a zoologist named Otto paddled his kayak to Los Angeles, eating a banana sandwich. He had heard there was something amiss with the animals there and wanted to help. When Otto reached the shore, a familiar voice called out, “Yo, Banana Boy, what’s happening?” Otto looked up and saw his old friend Ed, a general, a renegade who had left the military. General Ed was standing next to his new race car—a Toyota with attitude.

  “Wow!” said Otto. “Nice wheels!”

  “Yeah, but if I had a hi-fi stereo with a DVD player, it would be perfect,” replied Ed. “Hey, want a ride?”

  “Sure,” said Otto, and the two friends headed downtown.

  “Pull up, pull up!” yelled Otto as they passed a newsstand. Ed got out and bought the afternoon edition. The headline read “L.A. Ocelots Stole Coal.” Otto read aloud: “Authorities believe the ocelots are being controlled by a giant mutant rat who calls himself King Ognik. Injected with a ‘pure evil’ gene, Ognik had grown to the size of a yak and escaped the lab. Whereabouts: unknown.”

  GNU DUNG

  The two men were pondering the story when Ed caught something out of the corner of his eye. “Was it a rat I saw?” he asked. Sure enough, there was a yak-sized rat waddling into the L.A. Zoo. “You’re on your own, Otto,” said Ed. “I’m outta here.”

  Even though Ed is on no side, thought Otto, his military experience could help. “You have to stay. We must capture that oozy rat in a sanitary zoo and stop him before he infects the other animals!”

  Ed paused, then remembered his duty. “I will help you, but we need a battle cry.” So Otto made Ed a motto: “Now, sir, a war is won.” The two warriors then followed the giant rat into the zoo.

  Has it happened yet? The pages of this book will eventually turn brown, due to oxidation.

  When they were near the entrance, Otto warned, “Make very sure that you step on no pets.” Too late—General Ed walked into a pile of irradiated gnu dung. It started creeping up his leg. Ed screamed but could not move.

  “Can’t go on,” Ed said, frothing at the mouth and babbling incoherently. “I am lonely. Tylenol won’t help me now.”

  KING OGNIK

  Otto, not knowing what else to do, left his friend and entered the zoo. It was the strangest place he’d ever been. Completely devoid of humans, the animals had free reign. To Otto’s right, there was a pride of senile felines fighting over a bird rib. One of the crazy cats looked at him and then ran away. To his left, he saw a llama mall complete with llama stores and llama customers. And down a dark pathway, Otto spotted King Ognik. It looked like some sort of laminated E.T. animal as it ran into a building marked “DNA Land.” Otto followed Ognik into a large room, where the rat sat regally on a throne made of stack cats. Behind Ognik were lots of ocelots holding stolen coal, fueling a cauldron.

  “Aha!” said King Ognik, “I knew there would be at least one human brave—and stupid—enough to confront me. I have infected these animals to do my evil bidding. Now you are all that I need to enslave the human race!”

  “You dirty rat,” said Otto. “You’ll never get away with it!” “Oh yes I will. Meet my sergeant at arms, Sara Sim.” Out walked an armor-clad ewe with one giant eye. She was pointing a gun at Otto. “Now,” the king continued, “You will take this bar crab to the llama mall and go to a store called Strapgod’s Dog Parts. Then swap for I, a pair of paws. You either borrow or rob it, I don’t care. You see, after the dog paws touch human DNA, they will mix in with this lion oil, thus completing the creation of my vile virus, which will end your insignificant reign on this planet! Miss Sim will accompany you while I prepare a huge party to celebrate the end of humanity. Now go!”

  STRAPGOD’S DOG PARTS

  They left DNA Land just as all of the animals were gathering for the party. “Don’t make a peep,” ordered Miss Sim. Otto was led into the llama mall, past a store called the Tangy Gnat, and then into Strapgod’s Dog Parts. Once Otto’s hands touched the paws, he knew it would be all over for humanity. Dammit, I’m mad!, he thought. He tried to run, but Miss Sim seized him, and Strapgod the llama trotted down from his top spot. Miss Sim told Otto to place the bar crab on the counter, as Strapgod pulled a pair of dog paws from a barrel labeled “Tons o’ Snot.”

  The light put out by the sun is equal to that of 4 trillion trillion light bulbs.

  Just as the paws were about to touch Otto’s skin, a familiar voice shouted in from the store’s entrance: “Yo, Banana Boy, need some help?” Otto and Miss Sim spun around. It was General Ed, and he had a huge shopping cart full of TNT! It was not a ton of dynamite, but more than enough to blow the zoo sky high. “Let him go, you ewe. If you refuse, I’ll light this fuse right now!”

  MAPS, DNA, AND SPAM

  Miss Sim released Otto and ran toward the exit to warn the rat king, but General Ed captured her and tied her to the cart. Then Otto stepped up and said to her, “Go deliver a dare, vile dog. Tell your deifie
d demigod that his diseased days of diabolical destruction are done! Not even a rat can live forever of evil.”

  Otto lit the fuse on the TNT, and General Ed pushed the party booby-trap into DNA Land as the two heroes ran out of the zoo. Just as they reached safety, a huge explosion rang out, ending the evil reign of King Ognik and his insane animal army.

  “Wow! Thanks a lot, Ed!” said Otto. “But how? I thought you were finished when you stepped in that evil poop.”

  “Yes, my palindromic friend, it seemed I was done for, but then this senile cat came out of the zoo and gave me a strange gift: a shopping cart full of dynamite, maps, DNA, and Spam.”

  “He did, eh?”

  “Yes. So I ate the Spam to give me strength, injected the DNA to counter the effects of the gnu dung, used the maps to find you in the llama mall, and you know what I did with the TNT.”

  Otto was so relieved. He could name no one man as brave as General Ed. Thanks to them, the world was safe again for both humans and animals. And so, their civic duty done, Otto and General Ed turned to more urgent matters—they were famished. With a hankering for banana sandwiches, they hopped into Ed’s Toyota and drove off to the Yreka Bakery.

  Between 800 and 1500 A.D., English law decreed that every male must practice archery daily.

  NEWS OF THE WILD

  Tired of reading about politics? Has the international news got you down? Take a break from humanity...and have a look at some animals that have been in the news lately.

  BAD CHOICE

  Thieves broke into the Australian Reptile Park north of Sydney. They had to climb over two barbed-wire fences to get in but they made off with a four-foot-long alligator, worth nearly $5,000 on the black market. The crooks had six alligators to choose from, so which one did they steal? The one named Mr. Cranky Pants. A few days later, the alligator was recovered unharmed from a nearby creek, where he’d apparently been abandoned by the thieves. “They messed with the wrong alligator. Mr. Cranky Pants is a cranky pants,” says Al Mucci, who works at the park. “He gets moody. That’s probably why they dumped him.”

  DO NOT ADJUST YOUR SET

  In February 2004, Sheba and Inuka, two polar bears at the Singapore Zoo, suddenly turned bright green. Why? Because polar bear fur has hollow hair shafts. The white you see in their fur is actually sunlight reflecting off the shafts. But these shafts can fill with algae, and when they do, the polar bears can turn green. “The harmless algae is the result of Singapore’s warm and humid tropical conditions,” said, a spokesperson for the zoo. The bears got a bleach job a few weeks later, and now they’re back to normal.

  NUMBER, PLEASE

  Someone at the Oslo, Norway, home of Aleksander Elden dialed 113 (the Norwegian equivalent of 911) at 1:00 a.m. on May 9, 2004. Emergency operators couldn’t make sense of the distressed caller’s whimpering, but they were afraid someone needed help so they called in the police. Elden was the only person home, but he was sleeping and couldn’t have made the call. When they searched the house, they found Raia, Elden’s four-month-old Norwegian Elkhound puppy, lying on the floor next to a telephone covered in saliva and chew marks. “It could only have been her that called,” Elden said. “She was the only one there.”

  Pig in a blanket: The blonde Mangalitza pig has thick fleece like a sheep.

  REGISTERED DE-MOO-CRATS

  Brenda Gould of Newmarket, England, has run afoul of the law by registering her cows to vote. Gould and her husband cooked up the stunt after the town council sent a registration form addressed to the occupants of their barn, and then refused to believe that nobody lived there. “We ignored it until someone came around to ask why we hadn’t filled it in. My husband said, ‘If they want to know who’s living in the barn, we’ll tell them.’” Soon “Henry and Sophie Bull” were registered to vote. The council was not amused and fined the Goulds £100 (about $189). “We never thought it would come to this,” Brenda says. “I don’t suppose we’ll be doing it again.”

  HE STOLE HER HEART...AND HER FROOT LOOPS

  “Bandit,” listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s fattest pet raccoon, passed away at age 10 in May 2004. Most adult raccoons weigh about 20 pounds; some males grow as large as 40 pounds—Bandit weighed nearly 75. His owner, Deborah Klitsch of Palmerton, Pennsylvania, attributes his girth to: 1) a bad thyroid gland, and 2) Bandit’s penchant for breaking into the kitchen cabinets in the middle of the night to feast on potato chips, Froot Loops, cheese curls, cookies, and other treats. In the last year of his life, Bandit developed cancer, and in the end Klitsch decided to have him euthanized. “I could see he was suffering, because he stopped eating,” she says. “In the entire world, he was my best friend.”

  MAN’S BEST FRIEND

  A Bristol, Pennsylvania, man named Ed Crossan passed away at the age of 73. He’d always been close to his daughter’s dog, Polo, but family members never realized just how close until after his death. A few days after Ed died, his daughter, Donna, let the dog out, and he disappeared. Donna didn’t see Polo again until she went to the Wade Funeral Home to finalize the funeral arrangements...and there was Polo, pacing back and forth in front of the building. “It was just a dog looking for his pal,” says veterinarian Dr. Eric Meihofer. “It’s an amazing story. It shows that the dog was very loyal and loving.”

  Route 46 in North Dakota is America’s longest straight stretch of highway (110 miles).

  USED-LESS INVENTIONS

  These real inventions might inspire two other inventions: a Stupefied Head-Scratcher and a Mocking-Laugh Suppressor.

  “HIGH FIVE” SIMULATOR

  Patent Number: 5,356,330

  Invented in: 1994

  Description: Essentially a spring-loaded arm mounted on a wall, the “High Five” Simulator is always ready for a good slap. A fake hand attached to a forearm piece is connected to a lower arm section with an elbow joint for pivoting. When the hand is struck, the raised arm bends backward briefly before returning to the ready position. This invention is perfect for the lonely and excessive high-fiver.

  GRAVITY-POWERED SHOE AIR CONDITIONER

  Patent Number: 5,375,430

  Invented in: 1994

  Description: The air-conditioned shoe can either cool your foot or warm it up, depending on your preference. Hidden inside the shoe’s heel are expanding and compressing chambers powered by the natural pressures that occur while walking. With each step, networks of heat exchange coils work with the chambers to alter the temperature of the air surrounding your foot. End result: A sweat-free (but bulky and cumbersome) shoe.

  GREENHOUSE HELMET

  Patent Number: 4,605,000

  Invented in: 1986

  Description: Why go to the country for fresh air when you can get it at home? Like a cross between a space suit and an indoor garden, the greenhouse helmet fits securely over a person’s head and houses at least one plant. The transparent dome contains the carbon dioxide exhaled by its user while the plants convert the waste into oxygen. (Note: If you make one of these for yourself, be sure to poke some holes in it so you can breathe!)

  Over 125 women are known to have fought in the Civil War...dressed as men.

  BIRD TRAP AND CAT FEEDER

  Patent Number: 4,150,505

  Invented in: 1979

  Description: For the crippled cat or the sparrow hater, this invention promises to “continuously supply neighborhood cats with plenty to eat.” The trap lures birds with what appears to be an appealing perch and house, but once the feathered creature climbs through the entrance, it’s caught in a pivoting plastic tube. The tube then lowers, dumping the bird into a wire mesh cage. Specifically designed for sparrows, the mesh is just big enough for the bird’s head to poke through, which draws the cat’s attention. A feeding frenzy presumably follows.

  ANTI-EATING FACE MASK

  Patent Number: 4,344,424

  Invented in: 1982

  Description: The anti-eating device fits to the shape of a person’s head wi
th a series of flexible straps, rods, and hoops, while a grate-like mask covers the user’s mouth from chin to nose, completely preventing the intake of food—except in liquid form. It’s also fitted with a small padlock for insurance. Instead of locking the whole family out of fridge, dieters can lock up their own mouths.

  THE INITIATIOR

  Patent Number: 819,814

  Invented in: 1906

  Description: Before fraternities relied heavily on alcohol to enhance the initiation process, this electric shock treatment helped spark the fun. The apparatus, described as “entirely harmless in its action and results,” was specifically “designed for use in lodges and secret societies.” Two metal rails about an inch wide are laid down as tracks and hooked up to a battery or generator. The victim—pledge or inductee—then walks down the track wearing a pair of shoes with metallic soles, heels, and interior contact plates. Every time the subject takes a step, the electric circuit is opened and closed, continuously shocking whoever dons the metal slippers.

  The last time it was possible to see six of the Seven Ancient Wonders was in 224 B.C. (It was never possible to see all seven.)

  OFFENDERS OF THE FAITH

  Religion is a cornerstone of civilization. So when people take pot shots at it, it’s just bad taste...but sometimes kind of funny.

  OFFENDED FAITH: Hinduism

  INSULT: In 2000 Hindu groups were outraged by Sittin’ Pretty, a Seattle company that makes toilet seats—with images of Hindu gods on them. The brightly colored seats featured Lord Ganesh and the goddess Kali beneath the lids. “They should stop doing this at once,” said Vijay Pallod, a spokesman for the Hindu Anti-Defamation Coalition. “It’s absolutely the wrong place to put our gods.”

  WHAT HAPPENED: The company apologized and ceased selling the seats.

  OFFENDED FAITH: Baptists

  INSULT: Landover Baptist Church has a Web site. But the church isn’t really Baptist; it’s not even a church—it’s a parody of Christian fundamentalism started by two former students of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University (they were expelled). Landover gets volumes of hate mail every month, testimonials to its ability to offend even people who know it’s a parody. The site’s “news stories” feature such headlines as Demon-Possessed Baby Bites Off Pastor’s Thumb in Baptismal Pool, St. Patrick's Day: Another Excuse for Catholics to Get Drunk, and Can Star Trek Help Us Understand Muslims?