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

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  TOUGH BIRD

  Someday when you’re out walking through the alpine mountains on New Zealand’s South Island—with your pet sheep—you’d better watch out: A vicious parrot might rip out out your sheep’s guts while it’s still alive. The region is home to the kea, a species of parrot known as one of the smartest, most inquisitive—and most savage—on the planet. Keas normally eat things that wouldn’t surprise anyone: seeds, leaves, roots, insects, grubs, and the occasional chicks of other birds. But during the winter months, when food is scarce, the kea turns to something else: sheep. Groups of kea will swoop down on a herd of sheep, pick out one unlucky victim, and take turns jumping onto its rump. There they use their curved, strong beaks to tear away the wool, pierce through the skin, and bore into the sheep’s innards. (The bleating sheep is usually running around in terror at this point.) From there, the birds stick their heads inside the sheep and rip out chunks of succulent fat from around its kidneys. Given the chance, they’ll even eat its organs and intestines. Sheep that have been attacked by keas sometimes die during the attack; more often, they die later of infection.

  LOUSE GOT YOUR TONGUE?

  The tongue-eating louse (Cymothoa exigua) is a marine isopod, a type of crustacean related to woodlice that lives in ocean waters and grows to about two inches in length. Why is it called a “tongue-eating louse”? Because it crawls into the gills of a rose snapper fish, makes its way to the base of the fish’s tongue, sticks its claws into the tongue, and sucks the fluid out of it. The tongue eventually withers away completely, and the louse then attaches itself to the nub that’s left. Surprisingly, the fish is not harmed by this process. More surprisingly, the louse actually becomes the fish’s substitute tongue—the fish can even move it around using the muscles in the old tongue’s nub. Open the mouth of a fish infested by Cymothoa exigua, and you’ll see something you’d expect to see in a science-fiction film: a whitish creature with beady little black eyes looking out at you, wiggling its clawed legs. They’re normally found only in the waters of the Gulf of California, but one was recently spotted in the mouth of a snapper…in London, England.

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  Barbie dolls sold in Japan have their lips closed, with no teeth showing.

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  SOCIAL NUTWORKING

  Strange and crazy stories from the virtual worlds of Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace.

  TERRORISM IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS

  Twenty-six-year-old Paul Chambers of Ireland was trying to catch a plane home, but it was delayed due to heavy snow at Robin Hood Airport in South Yorkshire, England. Chambers logged on to his Twitter account (a blogging site that allows you to “tweet” updates in 140 characters or less) and wrote an “amusing” message for his friends:

  Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week to get your s*** together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

  Another Twitterer saw the tweet and alerted police, who deemed it a threat and arrested Chambers a week later under the U.K.’s Terrorism Act. He said that he spent seven hours trying to explain Twitter to detectives before they released him. He was banned from Robin Hood Airport for life, was suspended from his job, and his iPhone, laptop, and home computer were confiscated.

  @ THE ALTAR

  Tracy Page was surprised when her brand-new husband, Dana Hanna, pulled out his cell phone—while their wedding was still going on—and posted this update to Twitter:

  Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where, just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride.

  Before he kissed her, the groom updated his Facebook status to “married.” Then he pulled out Tracy’s cell phone (which he’d also brought to the altar) and updated her Twitter and Facebook accounts. Only then did Dana kiss the bride. Said the priest: “If it’s official on Facebook, it’s official in my book.”

  DUMB AS A POST

  A woman in Fort Loudoun, Pennsylvania, arrived home one afternoon in 2009 to find that someone had broken in to her house: A window was broken, cabinet doors were ajar, and her two diamond rings were gone. Then she noticed that her computer had been turned on, and there was a Facebook page on the screen—belonging to one of her neighbors, 19-year-old Jonathan Parker. The woman called police, and they arrested Parker and recovered the two rings. During the burglary, Parker had stopped to check his Facebook page…and forgot to log off. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

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  That’s all? A study by a U.S. research firm found that 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble.”

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  IT’S NOT JUST YOUR SPACE

  In 2009 a man robbed a bank in North Augusta, South Carolina. After a surveillance photo of the robber ran on the local news, police received a call from a viewer who said the suspect looked like his friend Joe Northington. On a tip, the cops checked Northington’s MySpace page and saw this message running across the top:

  On tha run for robbin a bank! Love all of yall.

  Northington’s status was listed as “wanted.” He was arrested and convicted.

  COME ONE, COME ALL

  In 2009 police were alerted to this invitation posted on Facebook by siblings Chris and Cassandra Phalen in Papillion, Nebraska:

  A History Making House Party!

  Liquor, six kegs of beer, a DJ, professional photographer, and shuttle service. P.S. Don’t worry about the cops, I have a police scanner so I will have the heads up if they come.

  Undercover cops showed up at the party and arrested nine underage guests, along with the Phalens.

  THIS THING DOES MORE THAN POST UPDATES?

  Two girls, aged 10 and 12, got stuck in a storm drain in Australia in 2009. Despite their yells for help, no one came to their rescue. Finally, one of the girls had an idea—she took out her cell phone and used it to update her Facebook status:

  We’re stuck in the storm drain! Call for help!

  More than an hour later, firefighters showed up and freed the girls. Said one of the rescuers: “They could have just called us directly and we could have gotten there quicker than relying on someone being online and replying to them and eventually having to call us anyway.”

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  World’s oldest paraglider: Peggy McAlpine. She was 100 when she flew for the first time.

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  MIGHTY UNICORNS

  VS. KONKRETE KIDS

  Actual high-school team names.

  PUNS

  • Poca Dots (Poca High School, West Virginia)

  • Hot Dogs (Frankfort, Indiana)

  • Deaf Leopards (Arkansas School for the Deaf)

  • Fightin’ Planets (Mars, Pennsylvania)

  SOUNDS DIRTY, BUT ISN’T (OR IS IT?)

  • Butte Pirates (Arco, Idaho)

  • Cornjerkers (Hoopeston, Illinois)

  • Purple Pounders (Harrison, Tennessee)

  NOT THAT INTIMIDATING

  • Pretzels (New Berlin, Illinois)

  • Nimrods (Watersmeet, Michigan)

  • Syrupmakers (Cairo, Georgia)

  • Jugglers (Utica, New York)

  • Bumblebees (Little River, Texas)

  • Tractors (Dearborn, MI)

  • Kewpies (Columbia, Missouri)

  • Poets (Montgomery, Alabama)

  • Mighty Unicorns (New Braunfels, Texas)

  • Orphans (Centralia, Illinois)

  JUST ODD

  • Wooden Shoes (Teutopolis, Illinois)

  • Sugar Beeters (Chinook, Montana)

  • Golden Goblins (Harrison, Arkansas)

  • Konkrete Kids (Northampton, Pennsylvania)

  • Millionaires (Williamsport, Pennsylvania)

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  In 2008 South Africa passed a law making it illegal for kids under the age of 16 to kiss.

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  ECCENTRIC WRITERS

  We don’t think it’s so weird to do this stuff. But then, we’re writers.

  • Poet John Donne (1572–1631)
kept a coffin in the office where he wrote. Occasionally, he’d climb inside it to remind himself how fleeting life can be, a major theme in his poetry.

  • Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), author of Gulliver’s Travels, always walked around his house while he ate because he believed that moving around while eating would cancel out the food and help him keep weight off.

  • In 2009 Sotheby’s of London auctioned off a series of largely unpublished letters of the famous Romantic poet Lord Byron (1788–1824). In them, Byron criticizes the Portuguese, who he says have “few vices except lice and sodomy.” And, in a display of bathroom humor well ahead of his time, he calls his rival William Wordsworth “Turdsworth.”

  • The Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) suffered from chronic sexual dysfunctions. After dealing with the problem for many years, he did something about it—he had the “Steinach operation,” a surgery that claimed to provide a “reactivation” of the male organs. It was basically just a vasectomy, but Yeats claimed that both his sex life and literary output greatly improved.

  • American poet James Russell Lowell (1819–91), founding editor of The Atlantic Monthly, once attended a dinner party where he carefully removed each flower from a bouquet centerpiece and, with a knife and fork, ate every single one.

  • Novelist John Cheever (1912–82) owned only one suit. He put it on each morning, then took an elevator down to the basement of his New York apartment building, where he rented an office. Once there, he took off the suit, hung it up, and wrote all day sitting in his underwear. At the end of the day, he’d put the suit back on and take the elevator home.

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  It is illegal to die in the U.K.’s Houses of Parliament, or to enter wearing a suit of armor.

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  ARE YOU A

  “DEAD PEASANT”?

  Even if you don’t think you have life insurance, a policy may have been taken out in your name. So is that good news? Probably not. Here’s a look at one of the craziest tax-avoidance schemes in U.S. history. It’s still legal and still in widespread use.

  PAPER TRAIL

  Not many people realized it at the time, but by the early 1990s it had become a common practice in many American corporations for the company to contact the estate of any employee who died and request a copy of the death certificate.

  It made no difference if the death was work related or not. The deceased didn’t even have to be a current employee—so what if they’d quit two years earlier, after only a few weeks on the job? The company wanted a copy of the death certificate just the same. Few companies bothered to explain why they needed the death certificates, and considering what they were up to, it’s no wonder they kept it a secret. Not many bereaved families had the presence of mind to ask; those few families who learned what was going on usually found out by accident.

  In the case of a banker named Dan Johnson, who died of brain cancer in 2008, that accident came when a letter addressed to Amegy Bank, his former employer, was damaged while being sorted at the post office. Johnson’s name was listed on the letter, and the post office mistakenly forwarded it to his widow.

  The letter contained a check for nearly $1.6 million. But it was payable to Amegy Bank, not to Johnson’s heirs. The check was just one installment in a $4.7 million life insurance policy that Johnson’s former employer had taken out on him—the company was cashing in on his death.

  JANITOR INSURANCE

  For decades it has been common for companies large and small to take out “key-person” life insurance policies on company presidents and other valuable employees who are difficult to replace. Dan Johnson was hardly indispensable: The bank proved that when it demoted and then fired him after he got sick. By then, it was too late for him to buy his own insurance. But it wasn’t too late for Amegy Bank: By pooling him with 40 other executives, the bank was able to take out a multimillion-dollar policy on him after he’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

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  No Longer Lonely is an online dating site specifically for people with a history of mental illness.

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  In years past, it would not have even been possible for Amegy to take out a policy on Johnson because the bank had no “insurable interest” in him: It didn’t stand to lose much if he died. But thanks to years of intensive lobbying by insurance companies, all that began to change in the late 1980s. In many states, regulations were loosened to allow companies to take out policies on any employee, no matter how lowly or unimportant, often without their knowledge or consent. Such policies became known inside the insurance industry as “janitor insurance” or “dead peasant insurance.”

  DEATH AND (NO) TAXES

  Dead peasant policies had a lot to offer: The payment balance grew, tax-free, until the insured party died, and the after-death payout to the company was also tax-free, just as if it had gone to a widow or an orphan. If the company borrowed money to buy the policy, or borrowed against the policy’s cash value, the loan payments were tax deductible. Under certain circumstances, a corporation could reduce its taxes by more than a dollar for every dollar it spent on dead peasant insurance.

  With no requirements for disclosure, either to the employee or to corporate shareholders, it’s difficult to know how many policies were taken out by the time the practice peaked in the mid-1990s. According to one insurance industry estimate, as many as six million American workers may have had policies taken out in their name.

  Keeping track of employees after they quit or were fired was not a problem; all a company had to do was conduct quarterly “death runs” of insured employees’ Social Security numbers to see if anyone had died, then collect death certificates from the next of kin and forward them to the insurance companies to cash out the policies.

  ARE YOU DEAD YET?

  Dead peasant policies created some appalling and cynical conflicts of interest: What’s the incentive to provide a safe work environment if you collect a $400,000 payout every time one of your hourly employees falls off a creaky ladder or drops dead from a heart attack loading a big-screen TV into a customer’s car? Why should a company improve its prescription drug coverage if doing so would make its insured employees live longer?

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  According to the Texas Restaurant Association, 800,000 orders of chicken-fried steak are served in Texas every day.

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  Dead peasant policies may actually have cost some workers their lives. In the early 1990s, Texas’ Diamond Shamrock convenience-store chain upgraded security at its stores with bulletproof glass and other improvements, while a competing chain took money that could have been used for such upgrades and insured its store clerks for $250,000 each instead. Between 1991 and 1995, Diamond Shamrock had one on-the-job fatality; the competitor had nine.

  THE PARTY’S OVER?

  The IRS began to disallow some dead peasant tax deductions in the late 1990s, and Congress and state legislatures began closing the loopholes. And in many states, the next of kin retained some legal claim to life insurance policies where the purchaser of the policy had no insurable interest in the deceased. That wasn’t much of a problem when the policies were a well-kept secret, but as the publicity generated by one horror story after another brought the policies out into the open, more families of the deceased began to sue. So did many “peasants” who weren’t dead yet: Because life insurance policies have a cash value even while the insured is alive, many employees who’d had policies taken out against them without their consent filed suit to claim some of the cash for themselves.

  FREEING THE SERFS

  For many companies who held them, dead peasant policies became a nightmare. The publicity was devastating, and when all the closed loopholes and lawsuits were tallied up, many policies were now money losers. Wal-Mart alone lost $150 million on the 350,000 dead peasant policies it purchased between 1993 and 1995.

  Dead peasant policies are still alive and well in the states that allow them. But federal law now requires companie
s to obtain the written consent of the insured; in all, it’s estimated that today companies hold policies on as many as five million workers. At least these dead peasants have been informed that they’re dead peasants, and have given their consent.

  But does it really make them feel any better?

  CRAZY WORD ORIGINS

  You’d be insane not to want to know where all these nutty words for “crazy” came from—and how to properly use them, so people don’t think you’re batty.

  CRAZY / CRACKED / CRACKPOT

  The verb “to craze” originally meant “to violently shatter,” and most likely came from an Old Norse word. It was first applied to people in 1555 to describe one who was “in ill health.” The use of “crazed” and “crazy” to describe the mentally impaired came about 40 years later. The term “cracked,” from the same root, was first applied to mental derangement around 1611. “Crackpot” is more recent, first appearing in the late 1800s. Often used to describe people with unusual ideas, it was short for “cracked pot”—“pot” having been a common slang term for “head” since the 16th century.

  INSANE

  The Latin word sanus means “healthy,” but in English, the term “sane” wasn’t attributed to a “healthy mind” until about 1600. About the same time, its opposite, “insane,” also came into use. The term is no longer used by the medical establishment, who instead refer to a patient’s specific mental illness (such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or schizophrenia). So, technically, no one can be clinically diagnosed as “insane.”