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

  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.

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

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  CELEBRITY ISSUES

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

  EWW! 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.

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

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  END ALIEN MIND

  CONTROL NOW!

  Get out of my head, you damn dirty alien!

  PROTECTION

  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.”

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

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  WHAT A VERY

  STRANGE PERSON

  You may consider yourself a strange and unusual person. If so, see how you measure up against these oddballs.

  Strange Person: Nileen Namita of Brighton, England

  Background: In the late 1980s, Namita became convinced that she was a reincarnation of the ancient-Egyptian queen Nefertiti.

  Very Strange: Namita decided that being a reincarnation of Nefertiti wasn’t enough; she had to also look like her. So she started having plastic surgeries. Using the famous 3,300-year-old bust of Nefertiti, which sits in a Berlin’s Neues Museum, as a model, Namita has had eight nose jobs, three chin implants, nine facelifts, two lip surgeries, five eye surgeries, and several other facial procedures—adding up to 51 operations in all. She turned 49 in 2009, and so far has spent more than $330,000 in her quest to look like the ancient queen. Did it work? By all accounts, no. She looks like…well, someone who’s had a lot of plastic surgery.

  Strange Person: Japanese truck driver Yuuki Oshima

  Background: One day in August 2009, 22-year-old Oshima was driving through the city of Noda when he saw a woman walking…and fell instantly in love with her. He discreetly followed her to her apartment, and over the next couple of months, tried to get up the courage to tell her his feelings…but he was too shy to do it face to face. Then he got an idea.

  Very Strange: Oshima went to the woman’s house in the middle of the night…and peed through the mail slot in her door. That, not surprisingly, didn’t cause the woman to fall in love with him. She called police. Oshima was arrested, and explained, “I absolutely went crazy for her the first time I saw her, and just did it.” He was charged with property damage.

  Strange Person: Rick Murray, a teenager from Montreal, Canada

  Background: “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and live in the sewers,” said Murray, “But as I got older, I fell in love with zombies and wanted to become one.”

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  A heated jawbreaker can explode when bitten into.

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  Very Strange: Now Murray is known as “Zombie Boy.” His entire body is covered with tattoos that make him look like a zombie. Black ink surrounds Murray’s eyes; his “teeth” and “jawbones” can be seen beneath his cheeks, his “brain” appears from beneath his bald head; and his “guts,” “skeleton,” and several ghoulish designs are inked all over the rest of his body. When asked if people are bothered by his appearance, Murray said, “It’s like if you met someone with purple hair, after 10 minutes you’d think, ‘Oh yeah, they have purple hair. So what?’” He’s not done yet—Murray said that he’s planning on removing one of his ear lobes as well as the tip of his nose to complete the look of the undead.

  Strange Person: Melanie Renfrew of Burbank, California

  Background: In 2007 Renfrew, 54, saw local meteorologist Fritz Coleman on television. Renfrew, a geography professor at Los Angeles Harbor College, called the station to tell Coleman that he had confused “onshore” winds, which blow in from the sea, with “offshore” winds, which blow out. (She was right.)

  Very Strange: When she got no response, Renfrew called again, demanding an apology. When that didn’t work, Renfrew became obsessed—and over the next year called
and e-mailed Coleman thousands of times, trying to get him to apologize to her on the air. In March 2008, Coleman got a restraining order against Renfrew, preventing her from coming within 100 feet of him, e-mailing him, or calling him. Renfrew kept harassing him anyway, and in October 2009 was convicted of violating the restraining order. She was given a year to comply, after which time, if she is still harassing the weatherman, she could be sentenced to jail. “I don’t feel obsessive,” she said in an interview. “It’s about the truth.” (She added that she is currently working on a book, titled What It Took to Convince NBC the Winds are Coming From the West.)

  “You’re only given a little spark of madness; you mustn’t lose it.”

  —Robin Williams

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  Exhibits at Washington, DC’s Newseum include the Unabomber’s cabin & Saddam Hussein’s poetry.

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  DANCING BALONEY

  A few of the latest phrases that have made their way, mostly via office workers and the Internet, into the English language.

  GOOD Job: This acronym refers to a “Get Out Of Debt job”—a decent-paying job that you take just to pay down your debt, then quit.

  Social Jet Lag: The exhaustion felt after staying up too late doing social networking on sites like Facebook.

  PEBCAK: When your tech person grumbles this, the “Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.” And if the problem is an “ID-Ten-T,” they’re calling you an “ID10T.”

  Seagull Manager: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, poops on everything, and then leaves.

  Chips and Salsa: Nicknames for hardware (chips) and software (salsa), e.g., “Is the problem in the chips or the salsa?”

  Keyboard Plaque: The disgusting stuff that builds up on your computer keys.

  Chainsaw Consultant: Hired by a company to figure out the easiest way to reduce the number of employees.

  Telephone Number Salary: The kind of salary we all wish for: one with seven digits.

  Yuppie Food Stamps: The $20 bills that are spewed out of ATMs, as in “Oh dear! I didn’t know the Chard and brie were going to cost so much! Better go get some more yuppie food stamps.”

  Nomophobia: Short for “nomobile phobia,” this is the terror that takes hold when you’re without your mobile phone, or simply out of signal range.

  Assmosis: A way to soak up success—not by doing actual work, but by being very good at kissing the boss’s ass.

  Crapplet: An “applet” is a computer application written to perform one task. (Example: the QuickTime movie player.) A “crapplet” is a crappy applet.

  Dancing Baloney: Unnecessary and garish animation on a Web site, which amateur designers love—and the rest of the world hates.

  Uninstalled: Fired.

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  Studies show that covering a wart with duct tape is more effective than having a doctor remove it.

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  BACON FLOSS

  Even though we’re told it’s bad for us, bacon seems to be more popular than ever.

  • Bacon salt. This is the product that launched the fad in 2007: flavored salt crystals that “make everything taste like bacon.”

  • Gummy bacon. It’s just like gummy bears or gummy worms, but it looks like bacon (and, fortunately, tastes like candy).

  • Bacon vodka. For years, vodka has been available in berry- and vanilla-flavored versions. But now there’s Bakon: premium vodka infused with the flavor of bacon. Maybe it’s not such a stretch—vodka is often made from potatoes, which do taste great with bacon.

  • Bacon-flavored envelopes. Instead of getting a taste of glue whenever you lick the flap of one of these pink-and-white-swirled envelopes, you get a mouthful of artificial bacon flavor.

  • Bacon-flavored dental floss and toothpicks. Because bacon tastes better than string and wood.

  • Bacon wristbands. A parody of the yellow Lance Armstrong “Livestrong” cancer-awareness bracelets, these are marbled pink and white, and emblazoned with the word “bacon” to promote awareness of…bacon.

  • Bacon soap. At one time, most soap was made from animal fat, and bacon is just salted pork fat and meat. Fragrances and chemicals are added, so you shouldn’t eat it, but it’s still bacon you can wash with.

  • Baconnaise. Two of the world’s unhealthiest foods—bacon and mayonnaise—combined into one fatty concoction.

  • Bacon action figures. These come in a set of two: the heroic, all-American, strip-shaped “Mr. Bacon” and his nemesis, the evil, cube-shaped “Monsieur Tofu.”

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  France’s Villa Hamster hotel lets guests live as hamsters: They eat grain run on a wheel, and sleep on hay.

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  NEW DISEASES

  Just when you think you’ve got a handle on swine flu or E. coli, the medical community discovers a new bug. Great—something else to worry about!

  New Disease: Progressive inflammatory neuropathy

  Symptoms: Numbness, tingling, and/or burning in the arms and legs; fatigue; weakness in the limbs; temporary paralysis.

  Discovery: In February 2008, a translator at a medical clinic in southeastern Minnesota noticed that three different Spanish-speaking workers at a nearby pig slaughterhouse had recently come in complaining of fatigue and strange sensations in their arms and legs. She told a doctor, and the resulting investigation found that 12 people at the slaughterhouse had similar symptoms, and a few others at a pig slaughterhouse in Indiana did as well. All of the victims worked in similar locations in the plants: near the “head table”…where the pigs’ brains are removed from the carcasses with high-pressure air hoses. (The brains are then sold to food markets in Asia.) Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta are still conducting studies on the disease, but they believe it may be a brand-new illness. How do they think people catch it? By inhaling tiny pieces of pig brain, like those floating in the air at slaughterhouses. The body produces antibodies against the foreign brain bits, and the antibodies then attack the body’s own nerve fibers—resulting in this neurological illness.

  New Disease: Yet to be named

  Symptoms: Fever, malaise, lack of appetite, muscle aches, headache, nausea, vomiting, stiff neck, joint pain, chest pain, testicular pain, propensity to infection, enlarged heart, bleeding in the brain, and death

  Discovery: In December 2006, three people in two hospitals in Melbourne, Australia, received organ transplants from the same man, a 57-year-old who died of a brain hemorrhage after returning from a long stay in Europe. Within weeks, all three transplant patients were dead. Local testing found nothing linking the deaths of the three victims to the organ donor, so samples were sent to the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University in New York. There, in 2007, using the latest in gene sequencing technology, researchers found a previously unknown virus in each of the transplanted organs. It’s related to a well-known virus called lymphocytic choreomeningitis (LCMV), which is tested for in organ transplant cases, but the new virus is genetically distinct enough that it had never been detected. The researchers say the virus may explain why many organ transplants have failed in the past, and the unfortunate deaths of the three Australians may help prevent more fatalities in the future.

  New Disease: Chapare virus hemorrhagic fever

  Symptoms: Fever, headache, muscle and joint pain, bleeding disorders, shock, and death

  Discovery: In 2003 a young man in a small village in Bolivia became sick. Over the next few days, his condition worsened, and a few other people in the area came down with the same illness. Two weeks later, the man was dead. Every test for known diseases came up negative, so a local doctor, Simon Delgado, sent specimens from the man’s body to the CDC. Researchers in the CDC’s most secure lab studied them, and five years later they announced that the man had been killed by an arenavirus—a strain of virus that causes hemorrhagic fever (the Ebola virus is another). But it was one they’d never seen before. Only that one death occurred, and it’s still the
only known outbreak of what came to be known as the Chapare virus illness (after the young victim’s home province), but CDC doctors say it’s probably only a matter of time before it spreads. “There are lot of arenaviruses we don’t know,” Dr. Pierre Rollin said. “Are they going to be the new pandemic virus that’s going to wipe out the planet? I don’t think so.” (How reassuring.)

  HE WAS NEITHER

  In July 2008, police in Tampa, Florida, arrested a man for selling cocaine within 1,000 feet of a church, a first-class felony. The man’s name: God Lucky Howard.

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  You are more likely to die on your way to buy a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery.

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  BRITISH BREACHES

  And here we thought “breaches” were really nice pants. Turns out that in the secretive world of British Intelligence, it’s something completely different…and it’s not nice at all.

  DOWN THE TUBE

  A British cabinet member (name withheld) often commuted on the London Underground subway and passed the time by reading work documents. One day in June 2008, he was going over the latest version of the government’s top-secret Al-Qaeda profile…and left it on the train. A passenger turned it in, not to the authorities, but to the BBC. The news agency reported the find online, and added that it would be “tragic” if the documents had fallen into the wrong hands.