Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (3 page)

But as always, I save my last and biggest thanks for all of you. It is because of your quirky dedication and support of such a bizarre book series that we get to keep coming up with new ways to entertain you. We hope we’ve succeeded!

Happy reading and
…

Go with the Flow!

—Uncle John, the BRI Staff, and Porter the Wonder Dog

You’d be crazy not to visit us on the Web at
www.bathroomreader.com
.

A YEAR OF WEIRD

Real (and really odd) wall calendars we’ve spotted
.

Naked Clowns Calendar:
Good news: It’s published by San Francisco Clown College, and proceeds go to multiple sclerosis research. Bad news: It’s pictures of naked clowns, with their faces painted and their naughty parts obscured.

Odd-Eyed Cats Calendar:
Each month features a cat with crossed eyes, strange-looking eyes, or eyes that are different colors.

My Zombie Pin-Up:
Dressed in vintage 1940s and ’50s clothing, blood-covered, gore-oozing men and women pretend to be happy zombies posing with their dead victims.

Pets Rock:
Dogs and cats are dressed in costumes and makeup to look like famous rock stars, such as Elvis Presley and KISS.

From Girls Calendar:
Association Fromages de Terroirs
is a French organization devoted to “cheese awareness.” This annual calendar is part of their campaign and depicts female dairy farm workers and farmers’ wives in revealing outfits, holding their favorite kinds of cheese.

Men on a Mission:
This calendar features young, male Mormons who have gone on their required religious mission and have now returned home…to pose shirtless.

Credit Crunch Calendar:
Produced in England, this one features photos that symbolize the economic recession, including abandoned factories, jobless people, and boarded-up businesses.

The Lindner Calendar:
Lindner is a Polish casket manufacturer. Each year they put out a promotional calendar featuring young women in swimsuits or underwear posing on top of the year’s hottest new coffins.

Toilets of the World:
Just johns—modern, primitive, and exotic.

Pointless Calendar:
Indeed, it’s completely nonfunctional. Each month has 40 days, each week consists of 10 days, and no days of the week are listed. For each month, there’s a photo of a random object, like a peeling wooden wall or a pile of bricks.

Every hour of every day, gamblers lose $696,000 in Las Vegas casinos
.

21st-CENTURY FADS

Uncle John told us he just doesn’t get all these new fads, so we told him to go pet his pet rock
.

B
AGEL HEADS
This “beauty treatment” fad got its start in Tokyo dance clubs in 2009. Using disposable syringes, teenagers inject saline solution (a common hydrating fluid) into their foreheads. A few moments later, the saline disfigures the forehead, creating a large, bulbous growth with an indentation in the middle. In other words, it looks like a giant bagel (or possibly a tumor) growing out of the forehead. Food coloring is sometimes added to the saline to turn the “bagel” green or blue. Thankfully, it’s not permanent—the bulge deflates in about a day.

IKEA DINNER PARTIES

IKEA sells modern-looking furniture that’s very popular with the young and hip. So popular, in fact, that some can’t wait to get home to enjoy IKEA merchandise. In Sacramento in 2008, a small group of young people began holding “dinner parties” inside an IKEA store, and the fad has since caught on at locations around the U.S. After dining on lingonberry jam and meatballs in the store’s Swedish-themed cafeteria, partiers retire to the living-room furniture displays to play board games. IKEA managers don’t seem to mind—the partygoers are paying customers, after all, and the publicity doesn’t hurt.

FINGER MUSTACHE TATTOOS

In a trend that’s taken off around Brooklyn, New York, college-age men and women get a permanent tattoo of a tiny handlebar mustache on one side of their index finger. Why? When they hold it up to their face, above the lip, it looks like they have a tiny, silly mustache. (
Superbad
star Jonah Hill showed his off on
Saturday Night Live
.) The one drawback to a finger mustache tattoo (other than actually having a finger mustache tattoo) is that the joke doesn’t work if you’re wearing gloves. Problem solved: You can now buy gloves preprinted with a mustache.

South Africa fad: Some boys in Cape Town have their upper front teeth extracted to look cool
.

CELEBRITY ISSUES

1. Become famous. 2. Act weird. 3. Get mentioned in a
Bathroom Reader.

E
WW!
Actor Ryan O’Neal was the longtime companion of Farrah Fawcett. Moments after Fawcett’s burial service in 2009, O’Neal was taken aback when “a beautiful blond woman” came up and hugged him. Despite having just put the love of his life in the ground, O’Neal asked the woman if she wanted to go get a drink. She did not. “Daddy, it’s me,” replied actress Tatum O’Neal, his estranged daughter.

UNCAGED
. Nicolas Cage once collected rare and exotic animals, including an octopus, a saltwater shark, and two king cobras named Moby and Sheba. He would probably still own them today had he not mentioned his collection during an appearance on
The Tonight Show
. Cage’s neighbors saw the interview and notified animal control, who came and took his pets away.

HEY, BABY
. In 2010 workers at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles reported that one of the strangest guests they’d ever had was Britney Spears. While living in the penthouse, she watched the DVD box set of the Fox cartoon
Family Guy
. For days, Spears would speak only in the voice of Stewie, the sarcastic, football-headed, English-accented baby. “It’s a bit weird,” said a hotel worker, “especially when she’s in the gym speaking like a Brit.”

HAAW MINNY RUADS MUSS AMANN WAWK DEWN?

Two homeowners in Long Branch, New Jersey, called police during an August 2009 rainstorm after spotting a ratty-haired, disheveled man peeking in through the windows of a home for sale across the street. Cops questioned the drifter, who turned out to be Bob Dylan. He said he was just “looking around.”

HE COULD PLAY CENTAUR FIELD
. New York Yankees shortstop Alex Rodriguez has two paintings of himself hanging on the wall over his bed. In both, Rodriguez is depicted as a centaur—the half-man, half-horse creature from Greek mythology.

At last count, the U.S. had 612,020 fast-food cooks and only 393,730 farm workers
.

END ALIEN MIND
CONTROL NOW!

Get out of my head, you damn dirty alien!

P
ROTECTION
In 1998 Michael Menkin, a former technical writer for NASA, invented the “Thought Screen Helmet,” a hat made out of Velostat, a kind of metallized plastic produced by 3M. On his “public service, nonprofit website,”
www.stopabductions.com
, Menkin offers instructions for building your own helmet. Here are a few excerpts from the site.

THE THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET STOPS ALIENS FROM ABDUCTING HUMANS. IT’S A TESTED DEVICE THAT WORKS
.

• Aliens cannot immobilize people wearing thought screens nor can they control their minds or communicate with them using their telepathy. When aliens can’t communicate or control humans, they do not take them.

• Adults and children all over America, all over Australia, in Canada, the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of South Africa are wearing thought screen helmets to stop alien abductions.

• Only four failures from standard thought screen helmets have been reported since 1998. A third failure in 2005 was from a cloth helmet with a smaller square area of Velostat and a Velcro strap which was easily removed by an alien-human hybrid.

• Other shielding material was tried in previous models with less success. Only thought screen helmets using Velostat are effective. Large leather aviator hats lined with Velostat with secure straps are recommended for making effective helmets.

• You can make a thought screen helmet (or thought screen baseball cap) for $30 if you purchase Velostat by the yard.

Here’s a customer testimonial from John Locke, alien abductee:
“Since trying Michael Menkin’s helmet, I have not been bothered by alien mind control. Now my thoughts are my own. I have achieved meaningful work and am contributing to society. My life is better than ever before. Thank you, Michael, for the work you are doing to save all humanity.”

Did they tank the Academy? Sean Connery and Lionel Richie both keep their Oscars in the bathroom
.

WHAT A VERY
STRANGE PERSON