Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (30 page)

STAIRS:
In 2009 an exercise promotion team sponsored by Volkswagen installed pressure sensors—to produce musical notes—on a staircase next to the escalator in a subway station in Stockholm, Sweden. They also painted the steps black and white to make them look like piano keys. Result: the number of people who used the musical stairs rather than the escalator increased by 66 percent. (And the number of “chopsticks” related homicides increased by 400 percent. Kidding.)

STAIRS:
Chinese media reported in 2006 that an elderly couple was discovered living in a cave in a mountain range in south-central China. They’d lived there in almost complete seclusion for more than 50 years. The husband had carved a staircase into the mountainside, the story said, to make it easier for his wife to get up and down the mountain. There are more than 6,000 steps in it. It had taken him decades to construct.

Annual cost of untreated mental illness in the United States: more than $100 billion
.

CLERGY GONE WILD

Five priests, two pastors, a nun, and a rabbi all walk into a
Bathroom Reader
article…and bring shame to their respective faiths
.

H
EY, BIG SPENDER
Whenever Reverend Gregory Malia walks into one of his favorite New York strip clubs, the waitresses and dancers all flock to him. Why? “He’s a great tipper,” said one of the dancers. The Episcopal priest at St. James Parish drives all the way from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and lavishly spends the money he makes from running a pharmacy dedicated to blood disorders. He once bought a $35,000 bottle of wine and left a $17,000 tip. “I work hard. I make good money. How I spend it is my business.”

NAUGHTY HABITS

Father Antonio Rungi (of the Passionist order) announced the “Miss Sister 2008” online beauty pageant in the hopes of enticing more women to join the church. Nuns would post photos wearing their habits, along with “vital statistics” about their spirituality and social awareness. “We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits,” Rungi explained. “But being ugly is not a requirement for becoming a nun. External beauty is gift from God, and we mustn’t hide it.” (The Vatican would have nun of it and shut the pageant down before it began.)

MR. POPULARITY

Students at the University of Illinois got more than spiritual guidance from Father Christopher Layden; he also sold them cocaine. After cops found three grams of the drug in his office in 2008, he was arrested for dealing, but stayed out of court by pleading guilty to possession. The Diocese of Peoria suspended Father Layden, despite reports that he’s a “very popular priest.”

EM-BEELZEBUB-MENT

Parishioners at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, were shocked when auditors reported that $8.7 million was missing from the church’s account. They were even more shocked to learn that Fathers John Skehan and Francis Guinan were skimming donations to buy gambling trips, rare coins, a condo in Florida, and a pub in Ireland. Skehan was sentenced to 14 months in prison; Guinan got four years. Judge Krista Marx called their crimes “unmitigated greed and unmitigated gall.”

According to one poll, 1 in 20 British kids thinks Adolf Hitler was a German soccer manager
.

THE PARTYIN’ RABBI

Rabbi Baruch Chalomish told police he’d rented an apartment in Manchester, England, so he could “relax and have a party.” However, his parties caught the attention of the cops, who raided the apartment and arrested Chalomish for dealing cocaine and hiring prostitutes. At his 2009 trial, Chalomish told the jury he was a just a wealthy guy who liked to assist people less fortunate than himself, and he only used cocaine when he couldn’t sleep. (He later admitted to spending $1,600 a week on the drug.) The rabbi was cleared of distribution charges but found guilty of possession.

REVEREND JOHN

LifePrint Church’s Rev. John Kameron Erbele, of Burnsville, Minnesota, “looks nothing like a traditional pastor,” wrote the
Missoula Independent
. “He has pierced ears, a long, blond, shaggy mop, and is only seen wearing a tie if someone’s getting married or buried.” Erbele’s flock adored him, which is why they were crushed when he was one of 16 men lured to a hotel room to pay for sex in a 2009 police sting. Erbele pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation and “John School,” an educational program for men who solicit prostitutes. At last report, LifePrint Church officials hadn’t decided whether to allow him back on the pulpit.

UNHOLY TRINITY

Father Carmelo Mantarro, a 70-year-old priest from Roccalumera, Italy, was having an affair with a married woman, but his biggest mistake was getting caught in bed with her by Sister Silvia Gomes De Sousa, a 39-year-old nun with whom Father Mantarro was
also
having an affair. De Sousa went into a fit of rage: She set fire to his house and then threatened him with a machete. In court, she explained that she “just flipped” because “we had been together four years and I had even had two abortions because of him.” Sister De Sousa was released on bond. Whatever became of Father Mantarro wasn’t released to the press.

63-year-old Capuchin monk Cesare Bonizzi spreads the gospel by singing in a heavy-metal band
.

THE END IS NIGH

“Nigh” means “near,” and when we’re talking about the end of planet Earth, nigh can be anywhere from this evening to millions of years from now. Doomsayers have been predicting the imminent end of the world for centuries. Here are a few of the more interesting predictions
.

A
PARTIAL HISTORY OF THE LAST DAYS
The book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, is the source of many doomsday predictions. The book, attributed to John the Apostle and written toward the end of the first century, has been interpreted wildly throughout its history. It was almost left out of the biblical canon when fourth-century bishops feared it was too susceptible to misinterpretation and abuse. (Thomas Jefferson called it “the ravings of a maniac.”) Its vivid imagery, including the Beast (and its corresponding number, 666), the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Conquest, War, Famine, and Death), and the Second Coming of Christ, have provided a bounty for doomsayers ever since.

• An early doomsday sect known as the “Lotharingian computists” deduced that the world would end on Friday, March 25, 970 (the same day as Good Friday). When the world didn’t end that day, they said the end would come in the year 1000—a millennium from the birth of Christ. When that date passed as well, it was revised to 1033, the anniversary of the Crucifixion.

• A 1184 English document called the “Letter of Toledo” said the end would occur on September 23, 1186. The Archbishop of Canterbury took it so seriously that he ordered a three-day fast in advance of Judgement Day. The date came and went without incident, but the letter continued on—true believers kept passing it around, adjusting the date as each successive prediction proved incorrect. The practice continued for centuries.

• By adding 666 to the year of the inception of Islam (618), Pope Innocent III calculated that the Second Coming would occur in 1284.

• In the 1490s, Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola became the leader of Florence, Italy. Believing the end was near, Savonarola sent boys door to door to collect items associated with sin—mirrors, cosmetics, perfumes, poetry, paintings—which he burned in his infamous “Bonfire of the Vanities.” When Judgement Day didn’t come in 1498, Savonarola was overthrown, excommunicated, tortured on the rack, and finally hanged.

A rare species of tree snail is named
Crikey steveirwini
in honor of “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin
.

• In 1814 Joanna Southcott convinced her followers that she was pregnant with a second “Christ-child,” who would be born on Christmas Day that year—despite the fact she was in her sixties. Christmas came and Southcott failed to give birth, but she did die that day, so her followers carried on. More than a century later, in 1927, they presented a sealed box to the Bishop of Grantham that, they said, contained an important message from the late prophetess. Inside was a worthless lottery ticket.

• Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, predicted in 1835 that Jesus would return within 56 years, by 1891.

• Jehovah’s Witnesses have set the date for Armageddon no less than seven times—1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, and 1994. They are not currently making predictions.

• Hal Lindsay, author of the bestselling 1970 book
The Late, Great Planet Earth
, used Revelation to calculate that the end would come in 1988 (the founding of Israel in 1948 + a biblical generation of 40 years). He later revised it to 2007 (Israel’s 1967 land acquisition + 40 years). When that prediction failed as well, he revised the definition of a biblical generation to be 60 to 80 years rather than 40. He now puts the End at 2047.

• As the year 2000 approached, Armageddon Books, “the world’s largest Bible prophesy bookstore,” predicted…huge sales: “We’re about to enter what should be the most opportune time ever for marketing items related to the end times,” they told investors. “We expect sales to rise sharply in the coming months. Sales for the first quarter of 1999 were up nearly 400% over the same period in 1998.” That prediction, at least, came true.

Y2K AND BEYOND

The year 2000 inspired a slew of end-of-the-world predictions from a disparate group of modern prophets.

Because it bears the King’s image, it is a crime to step on money in Thailand
.

•
Edgar Cayce
. The spiritual founder of the modern New Age movement predicted that the north and south poles would “flop” that year, causing apocalyptic floods and earthquakes.

•
Michael Drosnin
, former
Wall Street Journal
reporter. In his bestselling book,
The Bible Code
, Drosnin used computer analysis of the Torah to conclude that World War III would begin at the turn of the new millennium…or maybe in 2006.

•
Yisrayl Hawkins
, a former Texas cop and rockabilly singer. He told his followers in the House of Yahweh that nuclear weapons would “block out the sun” on October 13, 2000. He later revised the date to September 12, 2006. And then in June 2007, he said that 80% of humans would be dead from a nuclear war by October 13 of that year. When that didn’t happen, Hawkins adjusted the date again—to June 12, 2008, the same year he was charged with bigamy for allegedly having 30 wives. The charges were dropped. Hawkins currently has no pending predictions.

•
Prince Charles
. In July 2009, the heir to the British throne said that we humans had just 96 months (6.4 years) to change our ways or face economic and environmental doom. Charles claimed that unfettered consumerism was contributing to “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it. The age of convenience is over.” The prince, who has been criticized for his own carbon footprint (he owns several homes and travels extensively) didn’t say how he came up with the 96-month figure.

SIX MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

In 1947 former Manhattan Project physicists working on “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” created the Doomsday Clock. It’s updated every few years to represent how close they think we are to nuclear war, or “midnight.” That first year, they set the clock at 11:53 p.m.—7 minutes to midnight. In 1953 it got as close as 2 minutes to midnight because of an increase in the number of thermonuclear tests conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union. A series of test-ban treaties and improved relations between the major nuclear powers pushed the clock all the way back to 11:43 p.m. in 1991. But as more countries have either acquired nuclear weapons (India and Pakistan) or announced nuclear ambitions (North Korea and Iran), the clock has ticked steadily forward. In January 2010, the scientists set the Doomsday Clock to 11:54 p.m.