Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (41 page)

Oldest continuously operating high school in America: Boston Latin, established in 1635.

• Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson of Benjamin Franklin and publisher of the
Philadelphia Democrat-Republican Aurora
. He had mercilessly and continually attacked the Federalists, at one point referring to the president as “old, querulous, bald, blind, crippled, toothless Adams.” Bache died before going to trial.

Ultimately, the Alien and Sedition Acts backfired on the Federalists. Public opinion turned against the oppressive laws, and in 1799 the Jeffersonians were able to pass resolutions in Kentucky and Virginia that made the Acts unenforceable in those states. That same year “Spitting” Lyon ran for reelection—from his jail cell—and won. The Acts helped to unite Republicans across the country, and Thomas Jefferson was able to win the presidency in 1800. He immediately pardoned every person convicted of sedition and ordered the government to pay back their fines…with interest. The Alien and Sedition Acts expired in 1801, and Jefferson did not reinstate them. No American would be charged with sedition again…for more than a century.

What events could lead American legislators to curtail one of the people’s basic freedoms? Turn to
page 469
to find out
.

*        *        *

REVENGE!

In a 1980s Far Side cartoon, two chimpanzees are grooming each other. One finds a human hair on the other and jealously says, “Doing a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” The Jane Goodall Institute cried foul and wrote a letter to Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, calling the cartoon an “atrocity.” But Goodall herself thought it was funny—she and Larson struck up a friendship, and all profits from sales of a T-shirt featuring the cartoon now go to the Goodall Institute. But was she
really
okay with it? Seems one of her chimp friends wasn’t. In 1988 Larson visited Gombe National Park with Goodall and was attacked by a chimp named Frodo. Goodall apologized to Larson, who suffered cuts and bruises, telling him Frodo was “a bully.” (Goodall had raised the 12-year-old chimp herself.)

Members of Congress don’t need postage stamps…

BATHROOM NEWS

All the latest from the news stream
.

L
AWN BOWLING
When the zoning board of Anderson Township, Ohio, turned down Alan and Robin Sutton’s request for permission to build a fence around their yard, the Suttons protested the decision by lining the perimeter of their yard with 15 flower-filled toilet bowls. And because their creation is technically not a “structure,” the zoning board can’t do anything about it.

THE ELECTION IS GOING DOWN THE TOILET

Candidates seeking election in India may soon have to fulfill an unusual condition to prove their viability as a leader: toilet ownership. The proposal, the brainchild of rural development minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, is intended to force the poor to take sanitation seriously. “If you cannot build a toilet in your own house, what use can you be to voters?” says Singh.

BATHROOM 101

The National Health Service of Scotland has distributed a pamphlet entitled “Good Defecation Dynamics” to thousands of people in the city of Dundee. Recent research by the department found that a third of Scotland’s population suffers from bowel or bladder problems, and the booklet offers many useful tips and techniques, including recommended breathing habits and “proper posture for effective evacuation.” (One tip: “Keep your mouth open as you bulge and widen.”)

PAY TOILET

A tax collector in Graz, Austria, took a black briefcase containing $28,000 in cash with him when he used the men’s room at a local restaurant. Somehow, when he exited the bathroom he forgot to take his case with him. An hour later he remembered and went back to retrieve it…but it was gone. Despite a formal plea from the Graz police, neither the case nor the money have been recovered.

…for official mail—their signature counts as a stamp.

BREAD BOWL

In April 2006, federal food safety investigators in Kuwait City shut down the Hawally Bakery because it was improperly storing its dough. Where? In a big clump in a toilet. The owner said the humidity and water in the toilet kept it fresh.

LIGHTS…CAMERA…FLUSH!

Toilets ruined a day of filming on the Indian movie
Keep At It, Munnabhai
. In one scene filmed in a suburban Mumbai (formerly Bombay) mall, two characters have a secret meeting in a bathroom and then walk out. The only problem: Every time actors Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi moved, the sensors on all the urinals in the bathroom were activated, making them all flush. The noise ruined every take, and the shoot had to be moved to another location.

LIKE A VIRGIN

When musicians agree to do a concert, they provide promoters and the concert hall with a list of demands called a “rider,” usually food and drink requests. Madonna has an unusual item on her rider: a brand-new toilet seat at every concert venue on every stop of her tour. (It must still be wrapped in plastic to prove it’s new.) After the concert, the seat is to be removed and destroyed to stop anybody from trying to sell it on eBay.

LOO WITH A VIEW

If you’re looking for a bathroom in the Irish coastal town of Lahinch, it’s going to cost you. A dilapidated shack containing a public toilet is on the market for the same price as the average home in Ireland—about 300,000 euros ($380,000). Three reasons: location, location, location. It overlooks a popular beach on Ireland’s Atlantic coast. But if that’s not in your price range, the Boston Red Sox offered the toilet from the clubhouse during their 2004 World Series winning season. Final price at auction: $624.47.

*        *        *

“There is so little difference between husbands you might as well keep the first.”

—
Adela Rogers St. Johns

In 1981 an L.A. man was arrested for hiding under tables and painting women’s toenails.

DEATH CUSTOMS

The treatment and disposal of a dead body is a sacred ritual in every culture, but each one does it a little bit differently
.

I
N INDIA,
custom calls for a body to be burned on a funeral pyre near a riverbank and a temple; the ashes are thrown into the river. Some adherents to Zoroastrianism place bodies atop towers; after the flesh is eaten by vultures, the bones are thrown into a pit at the center of the tower.

IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS
of the South Pacific, a body was traditionally placed on a reef where it would be eaten by sharks.

INUIT PEOPLE
constructed small igloos around a corpse (like an “ice tomb”). The cold protected and preserved the body (unless a polar bear found its way in).

THE NAVAJO
feared being haunted by the dead, so the body was burned and the deceased’s house was destroyed. On the way back from the funeral, relatives took a long, circuitous route to confuse the spirit into not following them.

A VIKING FUNERAL:
At sunset, the dead man was placed on a small boat. As it drifted out to sea, it was lit on fire. If the color of the sunset was the same as that of the fire, it meant the deceased was bound for Valhalla (Viking heaven).

MUSLIMS
do not use caskets (unless required by law). The body is washed three times, wrapped in a white shroud, and placed directly in the ground with the head pointed toward Mecca.

THE IROQUOIS
buried corpses in shallow graves, but exhumed them after a few months. Relatives then placed the bones in a community burial plot.

IN MODERN JAPAN,
bodies are washed in a Buddhist temple, dressed (men in suits, women in kimonos), and put in a casket with a white kimono, sandals, and six coins, all for the spirit’s crossing into the afterlife. After a funeral, the body is cremated. Relatives pick bones out of the ash, put them in an urn, and bury it.

Longest-running play in history:
The Mouse Trap
, by Agatha Christie.

HONK IF ANYTHING FALLS OFF

We keep thinking that we’ve seen every clever bumper sticker that exists, but every year readers send us new ones. Have you seen the one that says…

If you lived in your car you’d be home by now.

OVER 50. BEEN THERE. DONE THAT. CAN’T REMEMBER.

Watch out! I’m late for Driver’s Ed class.

I child-proofed my house but they still get in.

This car is a status symbol. It symbolizes me being poor.

Yes, this is my truck. No, I won’t help you move.

The Earth is full. Go home.

I have the body of a god: Buddha.

EAT RIGHT, EXERCISE, DIE ANYWAY.

Honk if anything falls off.

He who hesitates not only is lost, but is miles from the next exit.

End hunger: Eat a little snack
.

THINK THIS CAR’S TOO DIRTY? THEN
YOU
WASH IT.

Am I living happily ever after yet?

Don’t believe everything you think.

My child was inmate of the month at the county jail
.

4 out of 3 people have trouble with fractions.

Blessed are the flexible. They never get bent out of shape.

Don’t make me release the flying monkeys!

Don’t tailgate me or I’ll flick a booger on your windshield.

I have no idea where I’m going.

Carrot-toon character: The variety of carrot that Bugs Bunny munches is a “Danvers.”

TAKING THE LOW ROAD

What makes people do the sleazy things they do? Beats us. Here’s our non-salute to some really bad behavior
.

N
AME:
Matthew Shaner of Rostraver, Pennsylvania
BACKGROUND:
Shaner, 21, was driving down Route 981 when he struck 15-year-old Sean Cossell, who was riding his bike along the road.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?
According to witnesses, Shaner got out of the car and started yelling profanities at the kid he’d just hit—telling him to get off the hood of his car. When the injured Cossell rolled off the hood, Shaner jumped into his car and sped off. He was arrested a short time later. Cossell was treated for multiple (but not life-threatening) injuries at a local hospital and released.

NAME:
Julie E. Hunt of North New Portland, Maine

BACKGROUND:
Three middle-school girls brought some homemade cookies to their teacher.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?
They were suspended from school because the cookies had Ex-Lax in them. The teacher didn’t eat them—she gave the cookies to other students, four of whom became ill. Where does Julie E. Hunt fit in the picture? She’s the mother of one of the girls who gave the “treats” to the teacher, and, according to her affidavit, actually taught the girls how to make them. She was arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault.

NAME:
Gary C. Jones of Missouri

BACKGROUND:
In October 2004, Jones, a Hazard Mitigation Counselor for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), was sent to Brevard County, Florida, to assist with hurricane relief. While there, 72-year-old Diane Greco called Jones’s office for help with her home in Melbourne Beach, which had a damaged roof as well as a mildew problem.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?
Instead of helping Greco fix the problems, Jones bought the house—for $250,000 (its true value was estimated at nearly $1 million). In March 2005, Tony Pipitone, an investigative reporter from Orlando’s Local 6 News, got a tip about the sale and questioned Jones at his home in Missouri, but Jones denied working for FEMA. When the station confirmed his employment, Jones said that Greco had set the price. When Pipitone contacted Greco, she confirmed setting the $250,000 price, based on a scant memory of an appraisal years earlier. “I thought it was fair,” she told Local 6. “Now I guess I’m finding out otherwise.” She filed a civil suit against Jones—who by then had moved into the house with his family—demanding he void the contract and return her house, which she and her husband had built in 1971. Her son, Marcus Greco, said Jones “100 percent took advantage” of his mother. The lawsuit is still pending.

Shouldn’t this be in Marrrrrrch? September 19 is National Talk Like a Pirate Day.

NAME:
Anthony Mesa, 22, of Deland, Florida

BACKGROUND:
In 2006 Mesa was “playing practical jokes” with a co-worker in the Pix convenient store where he worked.

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?
One of the “jokes” Mesa played: he urinated in a bottle of Mountain Dew and put it back in the refrigerator. An unsuspecting customer…well, let’s just say he later sued the store for an undisclosed amount of money. Mesa was arrested and sentenced to six months in prison.

NAME:
Nicholas Buckalew, 18, of Morrisville, Vermont

BACKGROUND:
In April 2005, Buckalew wanted to make himself a creative and unusual “bong” (large marijuana pipe).

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?
Buckalew went to a cemetery, broke into an above-ground tomb, and took the skull from an interred body, along with the eyeglasses and bow tie that were with it. Police said he told friends he was going to bleach the skull and make a pipe out of it. In 2006 Buckalew pleaded guilty to “intentionally removing a tombstone and intentionally carrying away the remains of a human body.” He was sentenced to one to seven years in prison.