Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (21 page)

Fuel for thought: About 1 in 6 pregnant women get a craving to chew on coal
.

STOP TALKING

We’re just going to let these folks’ words speak for themselves
.

“There are many dying children out there whose last wish is to meet me.”

—David Hasselhoff

“I don’t like any female comedians. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world.”

—Jerry Lewis

“My notion of a wife at 40 is that a man should be able to change her, like a banknote, for two 20s.”

—Warren Beatty

“Out getting a taco.”

—sportscaster Bob Griese, on the absence of NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya

“My music isn’t just music—it’s medicine.”

—Kanye West

“I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility.”

—John Wayne

“A woman’s place is in the wrong.”

—James Thurber

“I’m blacker than Barack Obama. I shined shoes. I grew up in a five-room apartment. My father had a little laundromat in a black community not far from where we lived.”

—Rod Blagojevich

“I’ll fight any man, any animal. If Jesus were here, I’d fight him, too.”

—Mike Tyson

“The Romanians, they’ll stick a knife in you as soon as look at you. There might be some good ones. Forgive me if there are any here, and hopefully that’s a ‘no’ because I wouldn’t get out of here.”

—English city councilor Robert Fraser

“Boy, they were big on crematoriums, weren’t they?”

—George H.W. Bush, visiting Auschwitz

“Old people should just die and know when it’s time to move over and leave the future for the young.”

—Roseanne Barr

Worldwide, the average child receives $32 worth of toys per year. The average American kid: $328
.

STRANGE FOLK

Just a few strange entries about strange people who do strange things in this strange world
.

C
ARPET BAGGER

A 48-year-old man identified only as “Georgio T.” goes to New York City bars and lies down on his stomach on the floor, because he likes it when people step on him. He even carries around a rug he can attach to his back, along with a sign that says “Step on Carpet.” Georgio explains, “When we were kids, one friend wanted to be the doctor, another wanted to be the carpenter. I wanted to be the carpet.”

THAT SUCKS

“Some people like baseball better than football,” says Michigan teenager Kyle Krichbaum, “but I like vacuum cleaners better than anything.” Kyle loves the sound, feel, and look of vacuum cleaners, as well as the act of vacuuming. Kyle’s love of vacuum cleaners is purely platonic, he says, but he just can’t get enough of vacuum cleaners. In fact, he has more than 200 vacuum cleaners…and vacuums his parents’ house five times a day.

EEK!

A 37-year-old woman in Stockholm, Sweden, suffered from
musophobia
, an unreasonable fear of mice. Her 59-year-old ex-husband knew that, and wanted revenge after their bitter divorce—so he went to her apartment and pushed 19 mice through her mail slot. “She is now being cared for in a hospital,” said police. The man was arrested on harassment and animal-cruelty charges (and has demanded that all 19 mice be returned to him).

STUCK ON YOU

Thomas Borkman was arrested in Cook, Australia, after he broke into a woman’s apartment. The woman woke up to discover that Borkman had glued his face to the sole of her foot. It took surgeons three hours to separate foot from face. Police said that the act had “some sexual significance.”

The city of Kobe, Japan, built a 60-foot statue of the cartoon robot Gigantor. Cost: $1.5 million U.S
.

BEAT THE PRESS

You’d think that in this world of Internet searches and instant fact-checking, it would be hard to slip a fake story into the news stream. But actually, it’s pretty easy
.

T
HIS JUST IN!
“VP guns for shootout with Hillary”

THE STORY:
In the early days of the 2008 presidential campaign, the
Boston Herald
published an odd news story: Vice President Dick Cheney had challenged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to a hunting contest. According to the
Herald
, Cheney had issued the challenge during an appearance on NBC’s
Meet the Press
. Then, the story went on, Clinton declined the offer, saying, “I fired a gun once, but I didn’t like it, and I didn’t recoil” (a joke referring to her husband’s infamous “I smoked marijuana, but I didn’t inhale” remark). The
Herald
story was picked up by Google News…and then by everyone else.

NEVER MIND:
Apparently the editors at the
Herald
didn’t bother to verify whether Cheney had recently appeared on
Meet the Press
(he hadn’t). Nor did they notice that the writer listed as the original source was Andy Borowitz—a well-known comedian and satirist. Borowitz had posted the story on his blog as a joke, and was as surprised as anyone when he saw it had been picked up by the
Herald
as a real story. The
Herald
’s publisher, Kevin Convey, admitted, “We were bamboozled.”

THIS JUST IN!
“Stunning photos of underwater North Pole”

THE STORY:
In August 2007, news sites around the globe ran a Reuters news-service story about how a crew of Russian deep-sea explorers had planted their flag on the seabed under the ice of the North Pole. The accompanying pictures showed the Russian submersible they’d used to find the pole.

NEVER MIND:
No one in the dozens of news organizations that reran the Reuters story noticed that the photos were actually images from the movie
Titanic
. Who did notice? A 13-year-old boy from Finland, who contacted his local newspaper to inform them of the mistake. Reuters later apologized and claimed that they’d pulled the images from a Russian television broadcast that showed how such an expedition
might
look. Reuters had incorrectly captioned the photos and sent them out to the world. The good news: A Russian submarine did actually find the underwater North Pole—just not the one in the photos.

Bernd Eilts, a German artist, turns dried cow manure into wall clocks and wristwatches
.

THIS JUST IN!
“Chinese rocket makes historic launch”
THE STORY:
On September 25, 2008, China’s official state-run news Web site,
Xinhua.org
, posted a story about the much-anticipated launch of the manned
Shenzhou 7
rocket—a mission that would feature China’s first-ever space walk. The story described the launch in great detail: “The firm voice of the controller broke the silence of the whole ship. Now the target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time.” The article concluded, “Warm clapping and excited cheering breaks the night sky, echoing across the silent Pacific Ocean.”

NEVER MIND:
Astute viewers noticed one mistake: The report was posted two days
before
the launch occurred. When pressed for an explanation,
Xinhua.org
blamed it on a “technical error.”

THIS JUST IN!
“United Airlines files for bankruptcy”
THE STORY:
This headline flashed across the financial news site
Bloomberg.com
in September 2008. Almost immediately, United’s stock began to plummet—from $12 per share down to $10, then to $8, to $3, eventually down to a penny—wiping out more than 99% of the stock’s nearly $1 billion value. In short, the headline nearly put the already-struggling airline out of business.
NEVER MIND:
The headline wasn’t from that day; it was from a story that had run in 2002—six years earlier, when United
did
file for bankruptcy. (The company had since regained some of its financial footing.) The
New York Times
tried to piece together the chain of blunders: “An old
Chicago Tribune
article was posted on the website of the
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
. That article was picked up by a research firm, which then posted a link to it on a page on
Bloomberg.com
, which sent out a news alert.” The timing couldn’t have been worse. The country was in the grip of the 2008 economic crisis, and investors were jittery. When the goof was discovered, trading was temporarily halted. United’s shares soon returned to their pre-panic price of $12.