Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader (26 page)

IT’S A MALL WORLD AFTER ALL

Fearing they might be losing business from women whose husbands hated to shop, the Braehead Shopping Centre in Glasgow, Scotland, came up with an unusual idea in 2002: “The Shopping Boyfriend,” a real-life person who acts as a temporary boyfriend or husband to be dragged along from store to store. “The Shopping Boyfriend is the ultimate retail therapist,” said a mall spokesperson. They are “enthusiastic, attentive, admiring, and complimentary,” and, if necessary, they’ll even say “her bum looks small.”

GHOST WRITER

Do you live in a haunted house? Ultraviolet, a company in England, offers “Spooksafe” insurance policies that will pay up to $100,000 for “death, injury or damage to personal effects caused by a ghost or poltergeist.” (Or aliens.) And if you can prove medically that you’ve been transformed into a vampire or werewolf, the policy pays $1 million. According to Simon Burgess, chief underwriter, the company has already paid out on one ghost-related murder. “We had a firm of investigators look into it,” he said, “and they were convinced that a ghost was responsible.”

More children are accidentally poisoned by toxic houseplants than by household chemicals.

THEY JUST CALLED TO SAY I’M SORRY

It’s difficult for some people to say “I’m sorry” (see
pages 83
and
325
). So for the equivalent of $2.50, the Apology and Gift Center in Tianjin, China, will send someone to apologize for you. The company claims to be thriving; in Chinese culture many people fear that making an apology will make them “lose face.” And for anyone who can’t afford $2.50, there’s another alternative: saying “I’m sorry” live on the popular Beijing People’s Radio show
Apologize in Public Tonight
.

URINE THE MONEY

Kenneth Curtis, a pipefitter in Marietta, South Carolina, got fed up with having to submit to regular urinalysis drug tests at his worksites. He didn’t use drugs and saw the tests an invasion of his privacy. So in 1996 he decided to get even with the testers—he started an online company, Privacy Protection Services, to sell his “clean” urine. For $69, Curtis offers 5.5 ounces of drug-free urine, a tube, and a small heated pouch to strap to your leg. “Use our kit in a natural urinating position,” ads boast. “You cannot be detected even if directly observed.” Curtis claims to have sold more than 100,000 kits.

Update:
When South Carolina made selling urine illegal in 1999, Curtis appealed it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court…but finally lost in 2001. Undaunted, Curtis found a way around the law—he moved to North Carolina, where he continued to sell drug-free pee. “If you can’t sell urine, what can you sell?” he asks.

HE CHARGES AN ARM AND A LEG

The
South China Morning Post
reported in 2003 that a 19-year-old security guard from Changsha, Hunan province, was selling himself—one piece at a time. The young man put posters up advertising his body parts for sale to the highest bidder: $18,000 for a kidney, the same amount for one testicle, and $9,000 for an eye. He said he hadn’t had any offers yet, but did have some inquiries. Why was he doing it? According to the news reports, he wanted to “get rich.”

*        *        *

“A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.”

—
Henry Ford

Mr. Loaf? Nope—The singer Meatloaf’s real name is Marvin Lee Aday.

BEFORE THEY WERE INFAMOUS

Great leaders make choices early in life that pave the way for their illustrious careers. But what about the world’s worst tyrants? Here’s a look at the early lives of some rotten apples in the history barrel.

J
OSEPH STALIN (1879–1953)

Place in History:
Soviet ruler from 1924 to 1953. Fueled by a mad paranoia, Stalin is responsible for the murder and mass starvation of millions of Soviet citizens. His forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture starved as many as 5 million people from 1932 to 1933; the political purges that followed from 1936 to 1938 may have killed as many as 7 million more. His diplomatic and military blunders leading up to World War II contributed mightily to the 20 million Soviet military and civilian casualties during the war.

Before He Was Infamous:
Born Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, young Joseph entered a Russian Orthodox seminary in 1894, but he was kicked out at the age of 20. He went underground, became a Bolshevik revolutionary, and later adopted the pseudonym Stalin, which means “Man of Steel.” Between 1902 and 1913, the man of steel was arrested and jailed seven times, and sent to Siberia twice. In 1917, he became the editor of
Pravda
, the Communist Party newspaper. Stalin did not play a prominent role in the communist revolution of November 1917, but in 1922 he was elected general secretary of Communist Party, a post that became his power base. Vladimir Lenin died in 1924, but it wasn’t until after six years of maneuvering against opponents that Stalin emerged as Lenin’s unrivaled successor in 1930.

MAO TSE-TUNG (1893–1976)

Place in History:
Leader of the Chinese Communist Party (1935) and founder of the People’s Republic of China, which he ruled from 1949 until his death in 1976. Under such disastrous programs as The Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and The Cultural Revolution (1966-76), more than 30 million people starved to death or were murdered outright by Mao’s government and its policies.

Snot funny: The Japanese have been blowing their noses on tissue paper for over 300 years.

Before He Was Infamous:
At 13, this child of peasant farmers left home to get an education. He tried police school, soap-making school, law school, and economics before settling on becoming a teacher. He attended the University of Beijing, where he became a Marxist and in 1921, at the age of 27, a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1927 he alienated orthodox Marxists by arguing that peasants, not workers, would be the main force in the communist revolution. It wasn’t until 1935, following the 6,000 mile “Long March” to escape the Chinese government’s brutal campaign against the communists, that he emerged as the party’s leader.

ADOLF HITLER (1889–1945)

Place in History:
Elected German Chancellor in 1933 and ruled Nazi Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. The Nazis murdered an estimated 6 million Jews and other people it considered inferior, including Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists and homosexuals. Hitler also started World War II, which killed as many as 55 million people.

Before He Was Infamous:
As a small boy, Hitler dreamed of becoming a priest, but by age 14 he’d lost his interest in religion. As a young man he enjoyed architecture and art and dreamed of becoming a great artist, but when he applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, he was turned down—twice—for lack of talent. He bummed around Vienna until 1913, living off an orphan’s pension and what little money he made from odd jobs like beating carpets, and from selling paintings and drawings of Viennese landmarks. When World War I broke out in 1914 he was living in Munich, where he volunteered for the Bavarian Army and was later awarded the Iron Cross.

Germany lost the war in 1918; the following year Hitler joined the German Workers Party at a time when it had only about 25 members. He soon became its leader, and in 1920 the party changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—better known as the Nazis.

POL POT (1925–1998)

Place in History:
Leader of the Cambodian
Khmer Rouge
guerrilla movement, which seized control of the Cambodian government in 1975 and ruled the country until January 1979. On Pol Pot’s orders the cities were emptied and the urban population forced out into the countryside to work on collective farms that became known as “killing fields.” Nearly 1.7 million Cambodians—20% of the entire population—were starved, worked to death or murdered by the Khmer Rouge.

Burger King’s Whopper cost $.37 when it was introduced in 1957.

Before He Was Infamous:
Born Saloth Sar, Pol Pot lived in a Buddhist monastery for six years, and was a practicing monk. He worked briefly as a carpenter before moving to Paris at the age of 24 to study radio electronics on a full scholarship. While there he joined the French Communist Party. He later lost his scholarship and returned home in 1953, the same year that Cambodia won independence from France. Over the next decade Sar rose through the ranks of the Cambodian Communist Party (the Khmer Rouge), and in 1963 he became its head. In the mid 1970s he adopted the pseudonym, Pol Pot.

IDI AMIN DADA (ca. 1924–2003)

Place in History:
Ugandan dictator from 1971 to 1979. In those years he expelled the entire Asian population of Uganda (more than 70,000 people) and is believed to have murdered as many as 400,000 people during his eight-year reign of terror. In 1979 he invaded the neighboring country of Tanzania; when the invasion failed and the Tanzanians counterattacked he fled into exile, eventually settling in Saudi Arabia. He died there in August 2003.

Before He Was Infamous:
Amin, a member of the small Kakwa tribe of northwestern Uganda, was born in 1925 and raised by his mother, a self-proclaimed sorceress. As a child he sold doughnuts (
mandazi
) in the streets. In 1943 he joined the King’s African Rifles of the British colonial army and went on to serve in the Allied Forces’ Burma campaign during World War II. After the war he became a boxer and was the heavyweight champion of Uganda for nine years (1951–1960).

Amin continued his rise through the ranks of the military, and by the time Uganda became independent from England in 1962 he was one of only two African officers in the entire Ugandan armed forces. President Milton Obote appointed him head of the army and navy in 1966; five years later Amin seized power in a coup and declared himself president for life.

The phrase “the sky’s the limit” comes from Cervantes’
Don Quixote
.

MANEKI NEKO

There are countless superstitions involving cats, most of them focused on the bad luck that they supposedly bring. In Japan and other Asian countries, however, the cat is a symbol of good fortune.

T
HE BECKONING CAT

If you’ve ever walked into a Chinese or Japanese business and noticed a figure of a cat with an upraised paw, you’ve met Maneki Neko (pronounced MAH-ne-key NEH-ko). “The Beckoning Cat” is displayed to invite good fortune, a tradition that began with a legendary Japanese cat many centuries ago.

According to legend, that cat, called Tama, lived in a poverty-stricken temple in 17th-century Tokyo. The temple priest often scolded Tama for contributing nothing to the upkeep of the temple. Then one day, a powerful feudal lord named Naotaka Ii was caught in a rainstorm near the temple while returning home from a hunting trip. As the lord took refuge under a big tree, he noticed Tama with her paw raised, beckoning to him, inviting him to enter the temple’s front gate. Intrigued, the lord decided to get a closer look at this remarkable cat. Suddenly, the tree was struck by lightning and fell on the exact spot where Naotaka had just been standing. Tama had saved his life! In gratitude, Naotaka made the little temple his family temple and became its benefactor. Tama and the priest never went hungry again. After a long life, Tama was buried with great respect at the renamed Goutokuji temple. Goutokuji still exists, housing dozens of statues of the Beckoning Cat.

LUCKY CHARMS

Figures of Maneki Neko became popular in Japan under shogun rule in the 19th century. At that time, most “houses of amusement” (brothels) and many private homes had a good-luck shelf filled with lucky charms, many in the shape of male sexual organs. When Japan began to associate with Western countries in the 1860s, the charms began to be seen as vulgar. In an effort to modernize Japan and improve its image, Emperor Meiji outlawed the production, sale, and display of phallic talismans in 1872. People still wanted lucky objects, however, so the less controversial Maneki Neko figures became popular.

There are more than 40,000 characters in Chinese script.

Eventually the image of the lucky cat spread to China and then to Southeast Asia. How popular did the Beckoning Cat become? In Thailand, the ancient goddess of prosperity, Nang Kwak, was traditionally shown kneeling with a money bag on her lap. Now she’s usually shown making the cat’s raised-hand gesture and occasionally sporting a cat’s tail.

In Europe and North America, images of Maneki Neko can be found in Asian-owned businesses, such as Chinese restaurants. And back in Japan, a new cat icon adorns clothing, toys, and various objects: Hello Kitty—a literal translation of Maneki Neko, or “Beckoning Cat.”

MANEKI NEKO FACTS

• Sometimes Maneki Neko has his left paw up, sometimes the right. The left paw signifies that the business owner is inviting in customers. The right invites in money or good fortune.