Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (38 page)

Meaning:
A sycophant or hanger-on. (Sometimes when a goldfish does its business, the business remains attached to its rear end for a while before falling off.)

Boob tube: In the average American home, the TV is on for 7 hours and 40 minutes every day.

THE BLACK PANTIES BANDIT STRIKES AGAIN

When it comes to disguises, crooks can be very creative. We once read about a guy who smeared his face with Vaseline before he robbed a bank, figuring the security cameras couldn’t photograph him through the hazy goop (they could; he was arrested). Yes, there are some odd and outlandish thieves out there. Like the ones dressed up…

…AS UTILITY WORKERS:
In 2005 the Associated Press reported that in Baltimore a group of thieves disguised as city utility workers had stolen more than 120 street light poles. They said the thieves put up orange traffic cones around their “work area” while they dismantled and made away with the 30-foot-tall, 250-pound aluminum poles. (Why would anyone steal a light pole? Police theorize that they were stealing them to sell as scrap metal.)

…AS PRIESTS:
Police in Serbia said three men disguised as Orthodox Christian priests, complete with fake beards and ankle-length cassocks, entered a bank in Serbia, gave the traditional “Christ is born” greeting, then pulled shotguns out of their robes. Within minutes they had made off with more than $300,000.

…AS A CHIMPANZEE:
A man walked into an EZ Mart in Garland, Texas, with a gun in his hand and a chimpanzee mask over his face. He fired one shot, took the money from the register, and fled. TV news programs in the area tried to help police by airing the surveillance video of the robbery, which clearly shows… a man in a chimpanzee mask robbing the store.

…AS SUPERHEROES:
A group of young “activists” in Hamburg, Germany, showed up at a high-priced food store in April 2006. They were dressed as comic book superheroes, and they made off with several cartloads of expensive food. Police said similar robberies had taken place at other high-end supermarkets over the years, and believed they were intended as protests against inequitable income distribution. Police also reported that the superhero robbers gave the cashier a bouquet of flowers and posed for a photograph before fleeing. Although 14 police cars and a helicopter were involved in the search, the bandits got away.

Cacao (chocolate) trees grow only in tropical climates, 20° north or south of the equator.

…AS COPS:
At 1:30 a.m. on the night of March 18, 1990, two men disguised as cops knocked on the door of the prestigious Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The security guards on duty let them in and were immediately overpowered by the thieves. The not-cops made off with several paintings—a Vermeer, a Manet, and three Rembrandts, among other masterpieces — worth about $300 million. It still ranks as the largest art theft in U.S. history and has never been solved.

…AS A PAIR OF UNDERWEAR:
Police in Calgary, Alberta, announced in June 2004 that they had finally caught the “Black Panties Bandit,” who had robbed at least five convenience stores while wearing a black pair of women’s underwear over his face as a disguise.

MORE MASKED ADVENTURERS

• In February 2006, a man in a tiger suit climbed to the top of the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida. Frank Feldmann, 35, an author of children’s books, was protesting against child pornography on the Internet. But police couldn’t understand him—the tiger suit muffled his voice. He eventually came down and was arrested.

• In December 2004, Lionel Arias, 47, of San Jose, Costa Rica, was “playing a practical joke” by wearing an Osama bin Laden mask, carrying a pellet rifle in his hand, and jumping out and scaring drivers on a narrow street near his home. He was shot twice in the stomach by a startled taxi driver. Arias recovered from his wounds; the taxi driver was not charged.

*        *        *

STORE-ZILLA

Wal-Mart has nearly 1.4 million employees worldwide. That’s roughly equivalent to 4% of the population of Canada. (Or the entire population of Phoenix, Arizona.)

Happy woof day! 70% of pet owners sign their pet’s name on greeting cards.

POWER OF THE PEN

Satire—writing that lampoons government politics or social conventions—has been around for centuries. But sometimes readers don’t get the joke. Here are some satirical writers who got a lot more reaction than they bargained for
.

T
O THE PILLORY!
Long before he wrote
Robinson Crusoe
, English author Daniel Defoe often ruffled feathers by writing satirical essays about Britain’s bitter politics. In 1702 the nation’s ruling Tory party was imposing tighter and tighter restrictions on their opponents, the Dissenters—Protestants who refused to join the Tories’ Anglican Church—a critical issue at the time. When the Tories tried to pass a new law requiring all Dissenters in public office to convert to Anglicanism—a strategy designed to drive them out of politics—Defoe, a Dissenter, was infuriated. So he decided to lampoon the Tories in an anonymously authored pamphlet called
The Shortest Way with Dissenters
, suggesting that the Tories weren’t going far enough—why not just execute all the Dissenters? The pamphlet was meant to be sarcastic, but many took it seriously, including some Tories who actually thought it was a good idea, and panicked Dissenters who showed up in droves at Anglican church services to avoid the death sentence.

When it was revealed that Defoe had duped everyone, he was arrested for “seditious libel” and sentenced to three days in the pillory—a public stockade where citizens were free to pelt him with rocks and garbage. But before the sentence could be carried out, Defoe composed a poem called “Hymn to the Pillory,” another satirical spoof of the Tories. His friends smuggled it out of jail and distributed copies to the mob as they gathered to stone him. The crowd loved the poem—so much that they threw flowers at him instead of rocks. The incident turned out to be a turning point in Defoe’s career, bringing him fame and backfiring on the Tory government, which was unable to pass the law against the Dissenters.

DIRTY
DANCE

Ambrose Bierce, an American author best known for his macabre short stories, such as “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” was also a journalist known for his scathing wit. In 1877 he and two friends teamed up to write a satirical book,
The Dance of Death
, under the pseudonym “William Herman,” attacking what they called a dance of “intolerable nastiness.” What was the dance? The waltz. The book overflowed with descriptions of lecherous men luring weak-willed women into a “shameless gratification of sexual desire” by…waltzing.

Top three cat breeds in the U.S.: Persian, Maine Coon, and Exotic.

Though it started out as a joke, the book began to sell because of its titillating content. Religious leaders weren’t sure what to make of its racy scenes mixed with righteous morality. Then Bierce decided to up the ante by reviewing the book—unfavorably—in his own newspaper column. His criticism of the book only made it more popular, especially with the Methodist church, which formally endorsed it—to Bierce’s delight. In spite of being released through a small publisher, the book sold a more-than-respectable 18,000 copies.

ACTUALLY, IT’S A CURVEBALL

In 1985
Sports Illustrated
ran a 14-page cover article on a young baseball phenomenon, pitcher Sidd Finch. Orphaned as a child, the article said, Finch grew up in Tibet, where he learned the rudiments of baseball by throwing rocks. Photos showed the youngster’s odd, straight-armed windup that resulted in a jaw-dropping 168-mph fastball—60 mph faster than any ever recorded. He’d recently arrived in the United States carrying his only possessions—a French horn, a rug, and a food bowl—and was immediately drafted by the New York Mets. Finch, it was claimed, was on the verge of revolutionizing baseball. Excited fans wanted to know more; newspapers clamored to interview him. Baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth fielded phone calls from major-league managers who were concerned that Finch’s blistering fastball might injure batters.

But alert readers smelled something fishy when they saw the issue’s cover date: April 1. And if they looked carefully, the first letters of every word in the article’s first paragraph spelled out “Happy April Fools’ Day.” Two weeks later,
Sports Illustrated
admitted that the story was a hoax dreamed up by writer George Plimpton and a handful of editors, who’d hired an Illinois middle-school teacher to pose as Finch.
SI
received 7,000 letters from readers—some angry, some applauding Plimpton for the elaborate practical joke. Seven of them were so disgusted that they cancelled their subscriptions—all, reportedly, Mets fans.

A good pitcher can make a baseball curve as much as 17½ inches from a straight path.

WHAT’S IN YOUR…

Some reasons to start—or stop—reading ingredient lists
.

B
READ?
Many bread products, from pizza to bagels to pastries, contain
l-cysteine
, an amino acid that adds stretchiness to dough, making it easier to mass produce in a variety of shapes. L-cysteine can be made from feathers, cow horn, or petroleum, but experts say that some of it comes from human hair. That’s because it’s the cheapest source. Several factories in China buy hair from the poor to make the product.

JELLY BEANS?
Most jelly beans get their hard, shiny surface from shellac—which is made from insect secretions. The insects,
Laccifer lacca
, live in trees, and their secretions coat the branches. The branches are cut and the shellac is refined from the coating. (It’s also sometimes used in processing coffee beans.)

SKIN CREAM?
Many “anti-aging” skin-care products contain afterbirth—human placentas—said to “rejuvenate” skin and help get rid of wrinkles. Cosmetic makers actually have deals with hospitals, and one Beverly Hills–based company gets its supply from Russian maternity wards. (Some use cow placentas.)

CHEWING GUM?
Some chewing gums still use
castoreum
, which is used to enhance flavors. Produced in the anal glands of beavers, it’s also used in perfumes and incense.

TOOTHPASTE?
Many toothpaste varieties contain
dicalcium phosphate
, an abrasive agent. It’s made from the bones of ruminants (mammals that “chew their cud”), such as cattle, sheep, and goats.

BEER AND WINE?
Many European and some American producers use
isinglass
to speed the fining, or clarification, process. It’s made by cleaning and drying the bladders of fish like sturgeon, cod, and hake, and is also used to make glue and cement.

PERFUME?
Skatole
is commonly used as a “fixative”—something added to make other ingredients stick to your skin and last longer. What is it? A white crystalline organic compound found in beets, coal tar…and feces. It’s what gives poop its distinctive smell.

The first archaeological evidence of soup dates back to 6000 B.C. Main ingredient: hippopotamus.

WEIRD ANIMAL NEWS

Strange tales of creatures great and small
.

B
ETWEEN A CROC AND A HARD PLACE
“A crocodile agitated by a chainsaw’s noise chased the man operating the machine and snatched it from him. Freddy Buckland was at a Northern Territory, Australia, roadhouse cutting a dead tree that had fallen against a crocodile pen when the 14-foot reptile struck. ‘The croc jumped out of the water and sped along the tree about 20 feet and actually grabbed the chainsaw out of his hands,’ said Peter Shappert, the owner of the Corroboree Park Tavern. Buckland was not injured, nor was the crocodile, named Brutus. ‘He chewed on the chainsaw for about an hour and a half. It’s still in one piece but, yeah, it’s buggered.’”

—
Australian Associated Press

THE GRASS
IS
GREENER

“Russia’s long winter will just fly by for a herd of Russian cows which will be fed confiscated marijuana over the cold months of 2005. Drug workers said they adopted the unusual form of animal husbandry after they were forced to destroy the sunflowers and maize crops among which the 40 tons of marijuana had been planted,
Novye Izvestia
daily reported. ‘There is simply no other way out,’ a government spokesman told the paper. ‘You see, the fields are planted with feed crops and if we remove it all the cows will have nothing to eat.’ He then added, ‘I don’t know what the milk will be like after this.’”

—
MSNBC

DE BEAR IS NO MATCH FOR DE-CLAWED

“At least one bear in West Milford, New Jersey, doesn’t want to know Jack. Jack is a 10-year-old orange-and-white tabby. And when the cat spotted the bear in a neighbor’s yard, the clawless kitty sprang into action. The bear scurried up a tree and eyed the cat for 10 minutes while Jack hissed from the ground. The bruin inched its way down before jumping off and running away.

“But then Jack chased the bear into the brush and up another tree. That’s when Jack’s owner realized what was happening and called her cat. The bear took off as Jack rubbed up against his owner, Donna Dickey, who told the Newark
Star-Ledger
that Jack considers the area his turf and doesn’t want anyone in his yard.”

Fish don’t have it:
Helminthophobia
is the fear of worms.