Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (23 page)

Within a span of 3½ years, Grover Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo, NY; governor of New York State; and president of the U.S.

The metric time system was even more confusing than the calendar. Each day was divided into 10 decimal hours, each hour split into 100 minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. A decimal second was shorter than a traditional second, but a decimal minute was longer than a traditional minute.

The new names for the months and the days were invented by poet Philippe Fabre d’Eglantine. He named the months according to the natural events occurring at that time of year and then rhymed them by season. They were
Vendemiaire
(vintage),
Brumaire
(mist),
Frimaire
(frost),
Nivose
(snow),
Pluviose
(rain),
Ventose
(wind),
Germinal
(sprouting),
Floreal
(blossoming),
Prairial
(meadow),
Moissidor
(harvest),
Thermidor
(heat), and
Fructidor
(fruit). The British press lampooned these as Wheezy, Sneezy, Freezy, Slippy, Drippy, Nippy, Showery, Flowery, Bowery, Wheaty, Heaty, Sweety.

In contrast, d’Eglantine gave the days of the week bland names:
Primidi, Duodi, Tridi, Quartidi, Quintidi, Sextidi, Septidi, Octidi, Non-didi,
and
Decadi.
Translation: “First Day,” “Second Day,” “Third Day,” etc. But every day of the year was named individually, too. D’Eglantine named them for plants, animals, and tools—for example, Olive Day, Goat Day, or Plow Day—but no days were named for saints, popes, or kings.

Despite its nationalistic imagery and scientific convenience, the new calendar was rejected by the common people it was designed to benefit… it was just too confusing.

First strike: The calendar was designed to count from September 22, 1792, the date of the foundation of the French Republic and the abolition of the monarchy. By the time the new calendar was adopted, however, the Republic was already well into the second year, prompting immediate confusion.

Second strike: French workers detested the new calendar because it allotted only 1 rest day in a 10-day week instead of 1 per 7 days. And, to the Terror’s chagrin, most people still kept track of Sundays for church.

Third strike: The rest of Europe was still using the Gregorian calendar, which made business increasingly difficult to conduct between French merchants and those in other countries. On top of that, the new metric clocks had faces that included markings for both traditional and metric time, which was confusing even for people who wanted to use decimal hours and minutes.

As passion for the Revolution faded, aspects of the calendar were slowly abolished. By 1795 the metric clock and the year-end feast days—celebrated only once—were swept away. Napoléon Bonaparte pushed the French senate to reinstate the old calendar as soon as he was crowned emperor. At the beginning of 1806, after only reaching year 13, the French Republican calendar completely disappeared from use.

Here are a few items Roto-Rooter claims they’ve found in clogged pipes:

Home and Garden:
Broom handles, doorknobs, garden hoses, bungee cords, and a hummingbird feeder.

Health and Beauty Aids:
Glass eyes, gold teeth, dentures, contact lenses, toothbrushes, hearing aides, and toupees.

Clothing and Linens:
Women’s lingerie, long johns, towels, robes, a complete bedspread, and, of course, a multitude of missing socks.

Electronics:
TV remotes, pagers, an alarm clock, a Timex that took a licking and kept on ticking, and a Rolex that took a licking and died.

Sporting Goods and Toys:
An eight ball, golf balls (30 in one drain), a shrimp net, a tear gas projectile, and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle doll.

Pets:
Birds, bats, beavers, cats, ducks, fish, frogs, possums, skunks, a piranha, a 2½-pound trout, and lots of snakes—including a 6-foot rattlesnake.

Valuables:
$400 in coins, $58 in change in a laundromat pipe, cancelled checks, a $4,000 diamond, and $50,000.

Groceries:
A Cornish game hen and a six-pack of Budweiser.

Tool time: Marlene Dietrich played the musical saw.

Here’s
our cheesy tabloid section—a bunch of gossip about famous people.

When Pavarotti performs for the public, he only does so under very strict conditions. His contract states that during sound check, “there must be no distinct smells anywhere near the artist.” In his dressing room, he demands that all sofas be mounted on six-inch risers and that “soft toilet paper” be provided. As for his hotel accommodations, he insists that “the master bedroom must always be kept in total darkness.” He refuses to go onstage for a performance before he finds a bent nail somewhere on the stage and pulls it out.

While filming the 2001 movie The
Score,
Brando refused to be on the set at the same time as director Frank Oz. Brando referred to Oz as “Miss Piggy” (Oz provided the voice of Muppet Miss Piggy many years ago) and teased him with lines like “Don’t you wish I was a puppet, so you could control me.” Robert De Niro was forced to direct Brando instead, with Oz giving him instructions via headset.

Before Walt Disney’s 35th birthday, his brother Roy encouraged employees to throw the boss a surprise party. Two of the animators thought it would be hilarious to make a short movie of Mickey and Minnie Mouse “consummating their relationship.” When Disney saw the animation at the party, he feigned laughter and playfully asked who made it. As soon as the two animators came forward, he fired them on the spot and left.

According to London’s Metro newspaper, tennis star Serena Williams claims to have a six-hour-a-day online shopping addiction. Even while competing in the French Open, she was “stuck” online buying things she didn’t need. The source of her compulsion: fame has forced her to avoid shopping in public.

During WWII, the Oscar statue was made of plaster—metal was an essential wartime material.

Have you ever thought about someone: “How could anybody so stupid be so successful?” If not, you will after you read this story from
Zanies: The World’s Greatest Eccentrics,
by Jay Robert Nash.

Born in Malden, Massachusetts, on January 22, 1747, Timothy Dexter worked first as a farmer, and then, in Boston, became an apprentice leather tanner. At age 20, with his life’s savings in his pocket, all of nine dollars, he moved on to the thriving town of Newburyport, where he met and married a wealthy widow, 31-year-old Elizabeth Frothingham.

Dexter fancied himself a shrewd businessman. Using his wife’s money, he copied what other businessmen were doing—he bought stocks. With no understanding of which stocks to buy, he simply bought cheap ones. Somehow, their values rose and Dexter was able to sell at a profit.

Competitors laughed at the semi-illiterate Dexter and amused themselves by giving him lunatic business tips. One merchant told Dexter that the West Indies, where colonization was booming, was sorely in need of warming pans, mittens and Bibles.

Having no idea of the extremely hot weather in the West Indies, Dexter took the tip and proceeded to buy more than 40,000 warming pans, 40,000 pairs of mittens, and 40,000 Bibles and shipped them out. He then waited for fortune to smile on him.

By incredible luck, when Dexter’s shipments arrived in the West Indies, there was a religious movement beginning, and his Bibles were purchased at a 100% profit. More luck: A fleet of Russian trading ships visiting ports in the West Indies had their agents immediately buy up the mittens to the last pair. The warming pans sat idly in a warehouse until some inventive planter discovered that they made ideal skimmers with which molasses could be ladled into vats—each and every pan was sold for a profit. These incredible sales brought Dexter an estimated $150,000, making him enormously wealthy.

What did Christopher Columbus look like? No one knows—his portrait was never painted.

Jealous of Dexter’s dumb luck, merchants in his town purposely sought to ruin him by urging him to invest every dime he possessed in shipping coal to Newcastle, England. The unschooled Dexter, not knowing that Newcastle was the center of England’s coal-mining industry, hired scores of sailing ships, filled their holds with soft Virginia coal and sent the cargoes to England.

But instead of becoming an international laughingstock, Dexter’s amazing good fortune held; a massive strike in Newcastle had left mines empty and there was a shortage of coal in the area. When Dexter’s ships arrived, his coal was purchased at enormous profits, making him twice as rich as he had been.

As he grew older, Dexter became more and more eccentric. His wife, Elizabeth, constantly nagged him about his foolish ways. Instead of arguing with her, Dexter pretended that she had died and that her presence in his sprawling mansion was no more than an apparition. When visitors arrived, Dexter would point to her and say: “This is Mrs. Dexter, the ghost that was my wife.”

The zenith of Dexter’s eccentricities was reached when he decided to publish his memoirs, entitled A
Pickle for the Knowing Ones, or Plain Truths in a Homespun Dress.
The book was, from beginning to end, one long, incoherent sentence, without a single punctuation mark.

Dexter ordered the printing of thousands of copies and had them widely distributed. Few read the book and those who did ridiculed Dexter as a rich buffoon, a self-indulgent idiot who naively destroyed the English language in an expensive fit of egomania. The lack of punctuation in the memoirs was repeatedly pointed out to Dexter as the crowning glory of his moronic gestures.

Dexter answered his critics in a revised edition of A
Pickle for the Knowing Ones
some years later. He had the following page reproduced in the second edition:

The average adult has 4 dreams a night and 1 nightmare a year.

mister printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may peper and solt it as they plese

As a final display of Dexter’s golden touch, the book is now considered a valuable collector’s item.