Uncle John's Actual and Factual Bathroom Reader

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  “It was around 50/50 naked, with great respect and understanding.”

  ALL-TERRAIN, NO CLOTHES

  On February 25, a naked man stole an all-terrain vehicle and led police on a 90-minute chase through the streets and freeways of Kansas City, Missouri, including a wrong-way run down a stretch of I-435. The chase ended when he crashed his vehicle on some railroad tracks and was taken into custody while trying to run away. Johnathon A. Menth, 27, was charged with burglary, tampering, property damage, and sexual misconduct (his genitals were showing). In a statement to police, Menth admitted to being under the influence of drugs, and said he “freaked out” when the police spotted him. “Some elements of the incident, including the reason Menth had no clothes on, remain a mystery,” wrote the Kansas City Star. At last report, Menth was still being held in the Clay County Detention Center on a $50,000 bond. One of the terms of his release, if he ever makes bail, is that he “not go out in public unless fully dressed.” A video of the naked police chase was uploaded to Facebook; it was viewed 2.3 million times in two days.

  Calendar rule of thumb: If March starts on a Thursday, so will November.

  A video of the naked police chase was uploaded to Facebook; it was viewed 2.3 million times in two days.

  NEITHER SNOW, NOR RAIN…

  On February 26, the residents of the clothing-optional Eden RV Resort and City Retreat in Hudson, Florida, went public with their beef against the U.S. Postal Service. The problem: A substitute mail carrier, who fills in pretty regularly, refuses to deliver packages inside the resort because she is offended by the sight of naked people. The resort’s mail is usually delivered to a “centralized delivery unit”—a bank of curbside mailboxes and parcel lockers outside the resort, which is hidden behind a tall fence. But if a package is too big for the parcel lockers—or even if it isn’t, some residents complain—this mail carrier refuses to bring it inside the resort. “She marks it undeliverable, whether it fits in the box or it doesn’t, so we don’t get the mail that day,” resident Eileen Hudak told WFLA TV News. “And sometimes the mail is important. Like with our neighbor, it’s her medication sometimes.” In a statement, the U.S. Postal Service said the mail carrier was completely within her rights to stay outside the nudist resort. “Carriers are not required to deliver beyond the centralized delivery units. We can assure all customers that mail and packages are being delivered according to national centralized delivery requirements.”

  JUNK MAIL

  In December 2010, a Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, mail carrier was arrested and charged with lewd and lascivious behavior after he admitted to stripping naked to deliver mail to a law firm. According to the police report, when David A. Goodman, 52, observed one afternoon that a female employee at the firm seemed to be “stressed out,” he decided to “make her laugh” by delivering the law firm’s mail in the nude. But “after [the woman] let him in, he could immediately see that he had upset her and immediately felt bad and stupid. He apologized, left the office, and got dressed,” the report states. Police responded to the call of a naked postal carrier in the building, but Goodman was gone by the time they got there. They caught up with him about a week later. The citation carried a $681 fine, but Goodman faced no jail time for his “special delivery.”

  The western border of South Dakota was supposed to be a straight line, but it isn’t. The southern…

  PET TECH

  It used to be that all a pet needed was a bowl, a collar, and a toy or two. But pet products have become a $70 billion industry…so maybe it’s gotten a bit out of hand.

  Product: SmartPult

  Details: Dogs love playing “fetch,” and humans often get tired of the game long before the dog does. Enter the SmartPult, a pitching machine that shoots mini tennis balls a reasonable distance and low to the ground, allowing dogs to play fetch by themselves.

  Cost: $189

  Product: PetChatz

  Details: It’s a videophone…for pets. PetChatz is a box containing a camera, monitor, speaker, and treat dispenser, mounted on the wall—down low, at pet-eye-level. You activate a ring tone from your phone or computer and your dog or cat comes to the PetChatz, where it can see you on the built-in HD screen. (There’s even a wireless, paw-shaped floor pad that your pet can stomp on to “call” you.) Once you have the pet’s attention, you can use the PetChatz app to send dispense a treat or release calming aromatherapy scents. Bonus: you can stream DOGTV’s dog-oriented video on PetChatz, making it, according to the marketing team, a viable alternative to doggie daycare.

  Cost: $379

  Product: Petzi

  Details: Like PetChatz, Petzi is a way to see your dog or cat and give them a handful of treats when you’re away from home. Unlike PetChatz, this “treat cam” doesn’t have a video monitor built in, so your pet can hear you but not see you. And no DOGTV. But it does dispense treats, so your dog probably won’t miss the video.

  Cost: $170

  Product: WonderWoof

  Details: People use “activity trackers” like a FitBit or Apple Watch to count their steps, calculate calories burned, and gather other information to help them meet their fitness and weight-loss goals. The WonderWoof is exactly the same thing, only for dogs. It’s a collar (not a wristband) with a tracker in the shape of a bow tie (available in a wide array of fashionable colors!). The dog can go about its business and each day, a summary of its activity is sent to its master, who can use the data determine if Fido is getting enough exercise.

  Cost: $45–$65

  …portion jumps about a mile to the west at the Montana-Wyoming border, due to a surveyor’s error.

  Product: Soft Claws

  Details: One of the most annoying parts of pet ownership—for both human and pet—is nail trimming. The animal hates being held down and having its claws clipped, which makes the human hate it, too. But it has to be done, both for the animal’s health and to make sure floors and furniture don’t get all scratched up. Soft Claws purports to be a workaround—“nail caps” that slip over a dog or cat’s nails or claws (good luck getting those on) and prevent household damage. Bonus: they come in a variety of bright colors, making it look like your pet has painted fingernails.

  Cost: $19 a set

  Product: Hefty Cat

  Details: The obesity epidemic hasn’t affected just humans—our pets are getting heavier, too. More and more cats out there are becoming so Garfield-esque that they’re too big to use regular cat products, such as cat doors. Ideal Pet Products has come up with a solution. Diet food? No, Hefty Cat—an extra-large cat door for your extra-large cat.

  Cost: $30

  Product: Poop Tent

  Details: We humans take bathrooms for granted. When nature calls, we can retreat there and close the door and do what we need to do in privacy and peace. Dogs don’t have that luxury. We just take them outside, find a spot, and make them do their business in public for all the world to see. Apparently being on display like that is mortifying to dogs. That’s why the folks at Benji Ventures came up with the Poop Tent: to offer protection for the discreet doggy. Poop Tent is a “puppy port-a-potty” that gets set up over a patch of grass or dirt. Doggy simply goes inside…and relieves itself with dignity. Bonus: It’s waterproof, so it’s also great for dogs who don’t like to go in the rain.

  Cost: $10

  DID YOU KNOW?

  There are companies in New York, New Jersey, and Los Angeles that offer “bark mitzvah” services—like a bar mitzvah, the traditional Jewish coming-of-age ceremony…but for dogs. It is performed when a dog turns either 13 months or 13 years old (as is done for boys in the Jewish community). Dogs are outfitted in a ritual prayer shawl and a yarmulke.

  Random Fact: One of the most commonly misspelled words is “misspell.”

  In 1920 Missouri levied a “bachelor tax” on unmarried men aged 21 to 50.

  A LONG, STRANGE TRIP

  The earth’s oceans are connected to one another, so it’s actually possible to sail around the world
without ever setting foot on land. But the continents are not connected, and you can’t drive around the world…at least not in a conventional vehicle.

  ODD DUCK

  Ben Carlin was an Australian engineer who served in the Indian army during World War II. After the war ended, he was stationed at an air force base in the Indian state of West Bengal. It was there one day in March 1946 that he and a friend, British RAF officer Mac Bunting, stumbled across an odd-looking vehicle while walking through a military salvage yard. The vehicle they spotted was a Ford GPA, an amphibious version of a standard American army GP (General Purpose) vehicle, better known as a “jeep.”

  The GPA, sometimes called a “seep,” looked a little bit like a regular jeep with a boat built around it. The vehicles were pretty rare, and for good reason: they were lemons. Designed and thrown together in a hurry using as many standard jeep parts as possible, the vehicles weighed in at nearly 900 pounds more than military specifications called for. This made them very slow. It also caused them to sit low in the water, which made them prone to sinking, especially when overloaded. The army was so disappointed with the GPAs that it canceled production after one year.

  “You know, Mac, with a bit of titivation [upgrading], you could go around the world in one of these things.”

  EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

  As Carlin looked over the battered old jeep, he didn’t see a flop, he saw opportunity. He said to Bunting, “You know, Mac, with a bit of titivation [upgrading], you could go around the world in one of these things.”

  “Nuts!” Bunting replied.

  But months passed and Carlin could not get the idea out of his head. An around-the-world trip in an amphibious vehicle “would be difficult enough to be interesting,” he recalled years later, “a nice exercise in technology, masochism, and chance—a form of sport—and it might earn me a few bob.” He figured such a trip would take about a year.

  By the time Carlin was released from military service in 1946, he’d decided to attempt the around-the-world trip. He booked passage to the United States, where he planned to buy a surplus amphibious jeep. On his way there he passed through Hong Kong, where he renewed a romance with an American Red Cross nurse named Elinore Arone. Carlin had intended to make his around-the-world attempt by himself, but when he told Arone about it, she wanted to come along. Ben consented, and then he continued on to the United States alone, with Elinore to follow when she finished her work in Hong Kong.

  All in the family: Salvador Dalí believed he was his dead brother, reincarnated.

  CAR-BINGERS

  In January 1947, Carlin bought a battered old Ford GPA for $901 at a government auction near Washington, DC How battered was it? It took Carlin two days to drive the 70 miles to the boatyard where he planned to work on it, because it was literally falling to pieces. Undaunted (or maybe just unwilling to take the hint), he spent the next nine months preparing the jeep for its around-the-world voyage.

  Carlin added a new bow (front end), extending the vehicle’s length and creating extra room for fuel tanks. An additional “belly tank” was strapped to the bottom of the vehicle when it was in the water; the tank could be removed when the jeep drove on land. Carlin also built a 5-by-10-foot cabin, creating an enclosed living space about as long and wide as a prison cell, but not nearly as tall. There was enough room in the cabin for the two front seats and a single bench seat in the rear that served as a sleeping cot, though it wasn’t long enough to stretch out on. The only way in or out of the cramped cabin was via a watertight hatch in the ceiling.

  Near the ceiling above the cot, Carlin mounted a two-way radio. Beneath the passenger seat, he installed a marine toilet. It was accessed by lifting the passenger seat cushion, which served as a second toilet lid. When completed, the vehicle was 18 feet long, 5 feet wide, and had top speeds of about 3 knots (3.5 mph) at sea and 25 mph on land. Carlin named it the Half-Safe, after a slogan in an Arrid deodorant radio commercial: “Don’t be half-safe, use Arrid to be sure.”

  By October 1947, the vehicle was ready for its first sea trial. Carlin embarked on what he thought would be a trip of a few days, traveling up Chesapeake Bay from Annapolis, then overland across Delaware to Delaware Bay. From there he planned to sail along the New Jersey shoreline until he reached New York City. But on the fourth day of the trip, he was incapacitated when exhaust fumes filled the cabin, nearly killing him and causing him to run aground in Delaware Bay. That brought the sea trial to an abrupt end.

  IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…

  By now any sensible person would have thrown in the towel. But what sensible person would have attempted the trip in the first place? For the next ten months, Carlin lived in a Manhattan flophouse and scraped by on his meager savings as he fixed the problems that had arisen during the sea trial. Then when Elinore joined him in New York in June 1948, the two got married. “It was a formality that the press agent they’d hired to promote their forthcoming journey had suggested,” James Nestor writes in his book Half-Safe. “In the late 1940s, a pair of adventurous newlyweds setting out on a honeymoon across the Atlantic in a jeep would be an easy story to sell.”

  What are your arrector pili muscles for? They give you goose bumps and make your hair stand on end.

  FALSE START(S)

  In June of 1948, everything was ready…or so Ben and Elinore thought. Over the next two months they made four attempts to cross the Atlantic, and suffered mechanical failures each time. The fourth attempt, in early August, ended after eight days when the propeller shaft jammed and Ben was unable to fix it. By then the Half-Safe was nearly 300 miles out into the Atlantic; they drifted helplessly for ten days until an oil tanker saw them signaling SOS with a flashlight and came to the rescue.

  At that point, the Carlins were completely broke. It took them another 13 months to earn enough money to make their fifth try at crossing the Atlantic, which they attempted in September 1949. In the intervening months, Ben had realized that the Half-Safe’s fuel tanks weren’t large enough to carry all the fuel they would need to cross the Atlantic. His solution to this problem wasn’t to give up—never!—nor would he look for a bigger vehicle with more room for fuel. Instead, he decided to drag two bulky 500-liter fuel tanks (about 130 gallons each) behind the Half-Safe. Bad idea: When the Carlins set sail from New York that September, they made it just 35 miles out to sea before the tanks smashed against each other with such force that one tank ruptured and the other was lost at sea. Without the extra fuel, there was no point in continuing, so they turned around and headed back to port again.

  SIXTH SENSE

  Ten more months passed before the Carlins were ready to try again; by now they’d spent more than two years trying—and failing—to complete the first leg of an around-the-world trip that they had assumed would, in its entirety, take them about a year to complete.

  Ben Carlin reasoned that the fifth attempt had failed because he’d towed two tanks behind the Half-Safe; if he dragged just one larger tank behind the Half-Safe, it would have nothing to bang into. So that’s what he did. Starting the trip on land in Montreal, he and Elinore drove to Halifax, Nova Scotia. There, on July 19, 1950, they drove the Half-Safe into the water and set sail across the Atlantic towing a 280-gallon fuel tank behind them on a rope, as a crowd of onlookers gawked in amazement. (“Grizzled waterfront veterans eyed the jeep and said it should have been called Unsafe,” the Calgary Herald reported.) Their first stop: the Azores, an island chain in the North Atlantic, some 2,000 miles away.

  If you’ve ever been on an ocean trip—on a cruise ship, a sailboat, or a motor yacht—rest assured your experience was nothing like the Carlins’ as they suffered through what they assumed would be about a two-week trip across the Atlantic in their jury-rigged, amphibious jeep. For one thing, the tight confines of the cabin were made even tighter by the six weeks’ worth of food (mostly canned), water, beer, and other supplies that they jammed into the tiny space. There was no view to speak of, because Ben decided it would be saf
er to travel with the windows covered with canvas to keep out the seawater and the rain. The only time they could see much of anything at all was when they poked their heads out of the hatch.

  It pays to live in paradise: Hawaii is the state with the longest life expectancy, at 82.4 years.

  RATTLE TRAP

  The Half-Safe’s engine was noisy and it caused the entire boat to rattle like it was going to shake apart. The air inside the claustrophobic cabin stank with a foul mixture of gasoline, exhaust fumes, and human sweat, not to mention vomit whenever Ben or Elinore were seasick, which was often. Add to that the smell of human waste whenever rough seas caused the marine toilet to spill its contents. And if you value privacy, remember that the toilet was located underneath the passenger seat, so whenever Ben or Elinore had to relieve themselves, they did so in full view of the other person, who was usually sitting in the driver’s seat. There was no place for either of them to escape to—after all, they were crossing the Atlantic in a jeep.

  While one person peeked through an opening in the canvas and drove, the other person kept watch or napped. Naps were about all Ben and Elinore ever got. They lost so much sleep during the journey that both of them hallucinated frequently. The food they ate didn’t help: their diet was limited mostly to the canned goods they’d brought with them, plus the single fish they caught during the crossing. As Life magazine reported in 1950, the Carlins “were accompanied almost all the way by some dolphins, one of which they caught and ate. They cooked it by wrapping it around the Half-Safe’s exhaust pipe. Part was burned, part uncooked. Only [a] sliver in the middle was edible.” (The magazine described their voyage as “certainly the most foolhardy and possibly the most difficult transatlantic voyage ever made.”)