Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy Read online

  Brought to you by KeVkRaY

  By the

  Bathroom Readers’

  Institute

  Bathroom Readers’ Press

  Ashland, Oregon

  Dedicated to the memory of Zephyr the cat, who was crazy in all the right ways.

  UNCLE JOHN’S BATHROOM READER®

  THE WORLD’S GONE CRAZY

  Copyright © 2010 by the Bathroom Readers’ Press (a division of Portable Press). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  “Bathroom Reader” and “Bathroom Readers’ Institute” are registered trademarks of Baker & Taylor. All rights reserved.

  For information, write:

  The Bathroom Readers’ Institute, P.O. Box 1117,

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.bathroomreader.com • 888-488-4642

  Cover design by Michael Brunsfeld, San Rafael, CA

  ([email protected])

  ISBN-13: 978-1-60710-616-6

  E-book edition: April 2012

  Created in the United States of America

  THANK YOU!

  The Bathroom Readers’ Institute sincerely thanks the people whose advice and assistance made this book possible.

  Gordon Javna

  Jay Newman

  Amy Miller

  Thom Little

  Brian Boone

  John Dollison

  Michael Brunsfeld

  Angela Kern

  Claudia Bauer

  Claire Breen

  Malcolm Hillgartner

  Jahnna Beacham

  Michael Kerr

  Paul Seaburn

  Sue Steiner

  Judy Plapinger

  Megan Todd

  John Scalzi

  William Dooling

  Mark Thorburne

  Kyle Coroneos

  Cam Dokey

  Jack Mingo

  James Greene Jr.

  Jef Fretwell

  Jodi Webb

  Les Weishar

  Sue Newman

  Adam Bolivar

  Christine DeGueron

  JoAnn Padgett

  Melinda Allman

  Dan Mansfield

  Lilian Nordland

  Pam Morlett

  Monica Maestas

  Lisa Meyers

  Amy Ly

  Ginger Winters

  Jennifer Frederick

  Sydney Stanley

  Tom Mustard

  R.R. Donnelley

  Media Masters

  Publishers Group West

  Raincoast Books

  Porter the Wonder Dog

  Thomas Crapper

  CONTENTS

  Because the BRI understands your reading needs, we’ve divided the contents by length as well as subject.

  Short—a quick read

  Medium—2 to 3 pages

  Long—for those extended visits, when something a little more involved is required

  * Extended—for those leg-numbing experiences

  DESTINATION: WEIRD

  Short

  Odd Theme Parks

  Medium

  Weird Tours

  Deadly Florida

  Long

  *The Year of Living Festively

  BAD BEHAVIOR

  Short

  Stop Talking

  I May Have Overreacted

  Medium

  Can We Please Have Our (Blank) Back?

  Oww! Oww!

  “That’s Awful!” Awards

  News from the Thrown Room

  OOPS

  Short

  Point & Shoot

  “Hey, Y’all, Watch This!”

  Try, Try Again

  Medium

  Newspaper Correkshuns

  Distracted Drivers

  Show Me the Stupid

  IN SEARCH OF…

  Short

  End Alien Mind Control Now!

  Medium

  Elf School

  Magical Mountain

  Mixed Nuts

  Out-of-This-World Religions

  Long

  Ghostology 101

  Ghostology, Part II

  The Haunting, Part I

  The Haunting, Part II

  TRUTHS & UNTRUTHS

  Short

  Bad Liars

  Medium

  Beat the Press

  Scammers & Scammees

  Politics as (Un)usual

  I Can Explain!

  Photoshopped

  Urban Legends

  Flight 297

  Pants on Fire

  Hoaxers

  Long

  The Right to Lie

  SURREAL WORLD

  Short

  You’re Sick? I’m Sick!

  Stairway to Weird

  Medium

  The One Million Guesses Quiz, Part I

  What’s in Your Pants?

  What Comes After Weird?

  The One Million Guesses Quiz, Part II

  Things You Didn’t Know

  Crazy Decisions for $200, Alex

  MY JOB DRIVES ME CRAZY

  Short

  It’s a Gross Job…

  Help Wanted: In Hell

  Medium

  Are You a “Dead Peasant”?

  Odd Jobs

  FADS & FLOPS

  Short

  21st-Century Fads

  Jungle Spa

  Sexy Finding Nemo

  Botox Your Armpits

  Medium

  Eyeball Bling

  Tasteless Toys

  The World’s Gone Lazy

  DOOMSAYERS

  Medium

  The World’s Gone Crazy 2000

  We’re Doomed!

  Earth’s Gone Crazy

  The Mayan Prophecy

  Long

  The End Is Nigh

  *The Chemtrails Conspiracy

  LIFE IS STRANGE

  Medium

  Terror in Toilet Town

  Ahhhh!!!

  Awww…

  I Found a _____ in My _____

  Loud Noises!!!

  Holy Cr*p!

  Just Plane Weird

  Loud Noises!!!

  IT’S ALL RELATIVE

  Short

  Mommies…

  …and Daddies

  Twin Town

  Marryin’ Cousins

  Medium

  Nutty Nuptials

  I Had My Baby in a…

  DON’T EAT THAT!

  Short

  Bacon Floss

  Turkey Time

  Odd Eats

  Crazy Cookbooks

  Medium

  Bananas!

  How to “Dress” a Chicken

  Mmmm…Chemicals

  Celebrity Diets

  Long

  Franken-Food

  ODDBALLS

  Medium

  What a Very Strange Person

  Sittin’ in a Tree, Part I

  The Object of My Affection Is an Object

  The Blind Painter

  Long

  Abnormal Activitsts

  *Sittin’ in a Tree, Part II

  PLAY TIME

  Short

  Mighty Unicorns vs. Konkrete Kids

  (Over)Board Games

  Medium

  That Guy in the Upper Deck Is Gyrating

  BODY OF KNOWLEDGE

  Short

  Saved By Silicone

  Big News

  Members Only

  Medium

  Teeeeeeeeth!

  F
at City

  I Was Blind, but Now I See

  More Big News

  OUR CRAZY PAST

  Short

  Moonstruck

  Medium

  Mountain of the Dead

  Real Frankensteins

  Long

  11 Great Moments in the History of Madness

  *Father of the Paranormal

  CRAZY ONLINE

  Short

  The Skies Have Eyes

  Medium

  Social Nutworking

  The Tourist of Death

  Google Suggests…

  The Rickroll

  CREATURE FEATURES

  Short

  Zoo Attacks

  Medium

  Polly Wants a Lamb Chop

  Killer ’Roos

  The Weekly Wild News

  Monkeys Invade Texas!

  A Word from the Odd Animal Sex Dept.

  Animals Fight Back!

  Weird, with a Side of Animals

  Cowabunga!

  LAW & ORDER

  Short

  Fine, Just Fine

  Zero Tolerance

  Medium

  Ernie Chambers Sues God

  Going Through the Motions

  Cops Gone Crazy

  You’re Suing Me for What?

  Disorder in the Court

  Criminally Odd

  “Alcohol Was a Factor”

  BUSINE$$

  Short

  Overextended

  Pizza Huh?

  The Moolatte

  A Body of Cash

  Medium

  Insurance: Denied!

  Quick Fixes

  It’s a Recession!

  MUSICAL MADNESS

  Medium

  Sebastian Cabot Sings!

  The World’s Most Dangerous Band

  Weird British Hits

  Killer Karaoke

  INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

  Short

  British Breaches

  Medium

  Canadian Gangland

  Modern Piracy

  Japan Gone Crazy

  O Canada…

  ON THE SCREEN

  Short

  Reality Blights

  The da Vinci Treasure

  Disturbing PSAs

  Medium

  The Harsh Reality of Reality Shows

  The Crazy Bizarre Film Festival

  Monkey See, Monkey Do

  Reality Shows, Part II

  Jackasses

  Dark Comics

  LANGUAGE GONE CRAZY

  Short

  Dancing Baloney

  The Big Dump Continues

  Eccentric Writers

  Frog Suck, Wyoming

  Medium

  Crazy Word Origins

  Looney Word Origins

  Long

  Fabricated Memoirs

  CRAZY SCIENCE

  Short

  Plants Gone Crazy

  Not-So-Good Vibrations

  Medium

  Let’s Do A Study

  Do It Yourself

  Problem Solved!

  Science on the Edge

  Manimals!

  Long

  Space Junk

  6EQUJ5

  IN THE SPOTLIGHT

  Short

  Celebrity Issues

  Medium

  Madoff with the Goods

  The Mayor with Two Names

  Celebrity Flip-Outs

  The Curse of Cristiano

  Impulse Buys for the Rich & Famous

  The Jackson 7

  THE MEDICINE CABINET

  Medium

  New Diseases

  Demented Dentists

  Exploding Head Syndrome

  The Worms Crawl In

  Cutting-Edge Medicine

  Doctor, No!

  ODDS & ENDS

  Short

  A Year of Weird

  Clappers, Snappers…

  Happy Nothing Day!

  Survey Says…

  The Shipping News

  It’s Too Late

  Medium

  RU OK, U.K.?

  Odds and Ends

  The World’s Gone…Sane?

  PEOPLE ARE STRANGE

  Short

  Crazy World Records

  Strange Folk

  Don’t Do Drugs. Really.

  Medium

  Clergy Gone Wild

  Miss Landmine

  Lower Education

  WHEN YOU GOTTA GO…

  Short

  The Great Beyond

  Medium

  Zombies in the News

  RIP: Rest in Plastic

  The Obits

  Funeral Home Horrors

  YOU ARE ENTERING

  ANOTHER DIMENSION

  CRAZY TOWN

  It’s called “Planet Earth,” and it may be the strangest place in the entire universe. The dedicated team of trivia nuts at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute (led by yours truly, Uncle John) has spent more than 20 Earth years making Bathroom Readers. All our books are odd in their own special ways, but none has been odder than the one you hold in your hands right now (it’s even odder than a book we did a few years ago called The Wonderful World of Odd).

  Quite simply, this book turns the crazy dial up to 11. We plunged deep into the depths of pop culture, current events, and all-around oddballery to bring you strange-but-true stories of everything weird under the sun…and over the moon. Just flip this book open to any page. You never know what you’ll find…

  • VSPs (very strange people): Behold the man who thinks he’s a carpet, the woman who spent two years in a tree, the teenager who wants to be a zombie, and the celebrated painter who’s blind.

  • Arts and entertainment: The Sinatra song to kill for, cheating on reality shows, Lady Gaga’s true gender, and that homeless bum called Superman.

  • Conspiracy theories: Is the government poisoning our skies? Is there a secret “Planet X” about to lay waste to our existence? Is the food in your refrigerator riddled with deadly chemicals?

  • Animal oddities: A snake with a foot, gay penguins, a bear that ate an airplane, and a doctor’s dose of medicinal parasitic worms.

  • Professionals gone crazy: Lawyers, police officers, teachers, scientists, doctors, politicians, and the clergy. (No one gets a free pass.)

  • Science on the edge: Human-animal hybrids, a human-caused earthquake, and a remote-control sphincter.

  • Myths and legends: An elf school in Iceland, the Lemurians of Mt. Shasta, the Mayan Prophecy, alien deities, and how to capture irrefutable evidence of the paranormal. (Good luck.)

  • Looking crazy good: Botox for your armpits, jewelry for your eyeballs, and bagels for your forehead.

  There’s so much more we could tell you about, but you’ll have to dive in to see for yourself. And a word of warning: Some of what you’ll read may make you feel a bit…squeamish. Don’t worry—it made us feel squeamish, too. But our goal was to seek out really weird stuff and then share what we found. So have fun, but read with caution.

  As we’re now mere hours away from sending this behemoth of a book off to the printer, I’d like to send a gigantic thank-you to my barely sane team of writers and editors for all of their hard work. (They were barely sane when we started. Now that we’re finished, forget it.)

  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.

  BAGEL 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.