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

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  You are more likely get rabies from a bat than from any other animal.

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  Gang: Mad Cowz

  Base: Winnipeg, Manitoba

  History: This gang formed in the early 2000s around crack dealing in Winnipeg’s crime-ridden west end. Members are African Canadians, most of them refugees from nations ruined by decades of civil war, such as Somalia and Sudan. New members are recruited from recently arrived immigrants, mostly teenagers already accustomed to violence. The gang quickly became a successful, wealthy, and dangerous force in the city. In late 2005, their success led to a split, and a new rival gang, the African Mafia, was born. That same year, the son of a prominent Manitoba surgeon was shot and killed in the streets by battling Mad Cowz and African Mafia members. His death dominated local news for weeks, and a resulting police crackdown put most of the Mad Cowz’ leadership behind bars. Still, they continue to operate in the city and in prisons.

  Gang: Ace Crew

  Base: Ottawa, Ontario

  History: Formed sometime in the early 1990s, the Ace Crew was involved in activities common to most gangs, including drug dealing and extortion, but they became infamous all over Canada in August 1995 when they abducted four teenagers in retaliation for a perceived slight to the gang by one of the teens. They tortured all four and murdered 17-year-old Sylvain Leduc. Ace Crew member John Wartley Richardson was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, with an additional 73 years added for other crimes. The gang faded, but some members are still active in Ottawa.

  Gang: The Independent Soldiers, or IS

  Base: Vancouver, British Columbia

  History: IS became an organized gang in the early 2000s and is now one of Canada’s most well-known gangs. The membership is multiracial, but the leaders are Indo-Canadians; the gang grew up out of Vancouver’s large Punjabi Sikh community. Dealing in drugs, prostitution, gun-running, and money laundering, the gang has spread across British Columbia and into several towns in neighboring Alberta. IS has been linked to hundreds of shootings and dozens of murders, mostly in Vancouver, since 2005. In January 2009, a crackdown on Mexican drug cartels led to a brutal war between the IS and other Vancouver gangs over dwindling drug supplies, with more than 100 shootings and stabbings and more than a dozen murders in just two months.

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  The 9/11 attacks in New York and the 2004 train bombings in Madrid were 911 days apart.

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  EXTRAS

  • A 2008 report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that gang members involved in international drug smuggling had infiltrated airports in major cities around the country. Most were working as baggage handlers.

  • More than 130 gangs are based in Vancouver alone, vying for a drug business estimated to be worth more than $6 billion per year.

  • In the late 1990s, Toronto police arrested four members of the Spadina Girls, a short-lived, all-female gang led by a 16-year-old girl. The gang consisted entirely of high schoolers, who, among other things, charged other students for protection. The arrests came after gang members brutally assaulted a fellow student at a billiard hall.

  • A much more dangerous all-female gang has formed in recent years: the Indian Posse Girls, an offshoot of Indian Posse. They’re believed to be in control of the sex trade in Winnipeg and Edmonton.

  • Canada’s Criminal Intelligence Service estimates that more than 11,000 Canadians are members of street gangs.

  WE’RE IN THE WRONG BUSINESS

  Most cell-phone carriers charge customers 20 cents for each text message. Actual cost to the provider: about a third of a cent. That’s a markup of 6,000 percent.

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  Philips Design sells an emotion-sensing bracelet. It lights up when you’re stressed.

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  CAN WE PLEASE HAVE

  OUR (BLANK) BACK?

  If you guessed the missing word was “lung,” you’re on the right track.

  Can We Please Have Our ROAD SIGNS Back? Police in Lincoln, Nebraska, went to a garage sale in May 2009 at the home of 42-year-old Bradley Hillhouse. And they arrested him. Why? Because he was selling road signs, 47 of them, that were owned by either local cities or the state of Nebraska. Possession of road signs is a Class II misdemeanor in Nebraska, punishable by up to six months in jail and $1,000 in fines (for each sign). Police had learned about the signs because Hillhouse had posted photos of them, and himself, on the Web site Craigslist to advertise the garage sale.

  Can We Please Have Our TWO-HEADED TURTLE Back?

  Sean Casey, owner of the Hamilton Dog House pet shop in Brooklyn, New York, reported in August 2008 that the store’s pet turtle, which had two heads, had disappeared from the shop. Casey had gotten the yellow-bellied cooter turtle from someone in Florida, he said, who had hatched it from rescued eggs after the mother turtle was killed by a car. Two-headedness is very rare in turtles, Casey said, adding that he’d take the turtle back without asking any questions because he was worried that it wouldn’t get the special care it needed. It had to be kept in shallow water, for example, and because the two independently thinking heads didn’t work together, it was unable to right itself if it flipped over. And it had to be fed by hand, one head at a time—otherwise the two heads would fight over the food. Casey offered a $1,000 reward for the turtle, and at last report, it was still missing.

  Can We Please Have Our ALMOST EVERYTHING Back?

  One day in March 2008, an ad appeared on the Craigslist Web site saying that a man in Jacksonville, Oregon, needed to move away suddenly and was leaving all of his possessions behind. Everything he owned, it said—including a horse—would be left at his house, free to anyone who wanted it. The problem was that the owner of the house, Robert Salisbury, didn’t place the ad. And he wasn’t moving. He was staying at a worksite about 50 miles away when he got a call from a local woman who tracked him down because she thought the ad seemed suspicious. As he rushed home, Salisbury flagged down a truck that was full of stuff he recognized—ladders, a lawn mower, and work gear from his job as a contractor. The truck got away, but when Salisbury got home, he found 30 people ransacking his house. After subpoenaing Craigslist for posting records, police located and arrested Brandon and Amber Herbert, who had posted the ad to cover up the fact that they’d stolen some saddles and other materials from Salisbury’s property at an earlier date.

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  How about you? About 15,000 Americans are currently in a coma.

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  Can We Please Have Our LUNG Back? In October 2009, “Bodies: The Exhibition,” a traveling science exhibit featuring human cadavers, was visiting Lima, Peru, when they announced that a lung had been stolen while it was on display. The Atlanta-based owners of the show offered a $2,000 reward for the return of the stolen organ. A few days later, an anonymous tipster called and said they could find it outside the exhibit in a plastic bag. No one tried to collect the reward. “In the whole world,” an exhibition spokeswoman said, “this has never happened.”

  Can We Please Have Our TOILET SEAT Back? In August 2009, Trev Inwood, owner of the Belfast Tavern in Christchurch, New Zealand, called police to tell them that someone had stolen a “very significant” 20-year-old plastic toilet seat from the pub’s restroom. Why was it so important? The Belfast Tavern is a regular watering hole for celebrities, he said, and the butts of many famous people had sat on the seat. “It’s got a lot of history,” he said. “Prime ministers have sat on that thing.” Inwood offered a $100 reward for information leading to the return of the toilet seat, which he described as “well-used, with a few burn marks and stains.”

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  Washday worries: Dryers cause about 15,000 house fires each year, more than any other appliance.

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  POINT & SHOOT

  Three stories to reinforce the fact: Guns are not toys!

  NOT QUITE SUPERMAN

  In 2009 a Falmouth, Massachusetts, man bragged to a friend that if the fr
iend shot a BB gun at him from across the room…he’d catch the pellet with his bare hand. So the friend picked up the gun and pulled the trigger. Good news: The man actually did snatch the BB out of the air with his hand. Bad news: The BB ended up lodged in his hand. He later explained to police at the hospital that the whole incident was just an “accident gone wrong.”

  RUSSIAN TO THE HOSPITAL

  Two teenage boys—William Rafferty, 18, and a 16-year-old friend (not named in press reports)—were at a girl’s house in Norwell, Massachusetts. The boys decided to go back to Rafferty’s house, but before they did, they stole a snub-nosed revolver from her father’s safe. Then they decided to play a game of Russian roulette. Rafferty pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He handed it to his friend. Showing a little more sense, the boy aimed the gun at his thigh…and shot himself. Louellyn Lambros, Rafferty’s mom, drove him to the hospital, where she covered up for the boys, telling police that an intruder shot her son’s friend. When the girl’s father showed up to report the stolen gun, police arrested mom and son on a long list of charges.

  BIG SHOT

  Lukas Neuhardt, 27, of Saarbruecken, Germany, wanted to impress his friends with “something big.” He thought carrying a loaded pistol would be pretty impressive, so he hid a gun in his pants pocket. Only problem: He forgot to put the safety catch on. Sure enough, the pistol went off, blasting a hole in Lukas’ pocket (and his “manhood”). To avoid embarrassment, he told paramedics that he’d been shot by a masked attacker. But the cops noticed that Lukas had a bullet hole inside his pocket and not on his pants. Doctors got his parts back in working order, but now he’s facing three years in prison for breaking Germany’s strict gun laws.

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  The International Pole Dancing Fitness Association is trying to make pole dancing an Olympic sport.

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  THAT GUY IN THE UPPER

  DECK IS GYRATING

  He entertains most of the fans in the stands—and frightens a few. And he’s everywhere. Just who is this mysterious sports nut?

  FAN-SPASTIC

  When Cameron Hughes attends a sporting event, he never goes unnoticed. It’s not just that he’s a husky, six-foot-tall man with fiery red hair sitting in the cheap seats. No matter how well or badly the home team is doing, he cheers into his megaphone, jumps up and down, pumps his fists—whatever it takes to get the fans around him excited. And in really desperate times—like when the home team is getting shellacked—Hughes does his infamous “stripper dance”: Slowly, he removes one of his 10 or so layered T-shirts, holds it up over his head, twirls it in the air, and then throws it. Then he starts gyrating. “I’m that guy,” he says, “the funny, happy, dancing, possibly very drunk guy you’ve seen at the ballpark at least once.”

  Is he crazy? You might think so—and you might think he owns his own jet if you’ve noticed him cheering wildly at a Los Angeles Lakers game one night, a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game a few days later, and a Detroit Red Wings hockey game a few days after that. And then he’s off to do his thing at a high-school football game in Duluth. And at every venue, it’s always the same schtick: Cheer, jump, and dance.

  And he never has to buy a ticket.

  ALL THE STADIUM’S A STAGE

  For 15 years, Hughes has been a “fan for hire”—teams pay him anywhere from $1,000 to $2,500 just to show up and be himself. It adds up to a lucrative career: Working more than 80 games per year, Hughes earns somewhere in the “six figures” (he won’t say how much).

  It all began, quite humbly, when Hughes didn’t make it onto his high-school basketball squad in 1989. Still wanting to help the team, he played his part from the bleachers by painting the school’s colors on his face, waving homemade signs, and cheering louder than anyone else. Later, at Bishop’s University in Quebec, Hughes took the job of “Melonhead,” the team’s mascot.

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  Oregon, New Mexico, and Alabama all have annual UFO festivals.

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  And then destiny found him at an Ottawa Senators hockey game in 1994. More than a little drunk at the time, Hughes recalls, “I started dancing to ‘We Are Family,’ and everyone was like, ‘What is he doing?’ Then they all started clapping and cheering, and I thought, ‘Uh-oh, what did I just do?’ After the game, the team communications guy came up to me and said, ‘We want to hire you.’” Hughes took the gig, and then got another job (at $300 per game) cheering for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Hughes knew he’d found his true vocation—a professional sports nutcase.

  The theory goes this way: If the fans sitting around him start acting a little nuttier, then the fans near them might get more excited as well. And hopefully that energy will transfer down to the home team and will translate into more wins. That’s what the teams who employ him hope, anyway.

  WORKPLACE HAZARDS

  The job may look like nothing but fun, but it isn’t easy. To stay in shape, Hughes trains by doing high-intensity aerobic workouts. And though he appears drunk when he’s doing his routine, he isn’t; his klutzy moves are all carefully choreographed, and three Red Bull energy drinks are usually enough to get him through the game. And with all the gyrating, Hughes gets his share of blisters, bleeding palms, bruises, sprains, and twisted ankles. At one game, he had to be rushed to the hospital suffering from dehydration. He’s also been known to upset grumpy fans, who have retaliated with hot popcorn, boos, and, in some cases, violence. Once, security didn’t get to him in time and Hughes was pushed down a flight of stairs.

  So does all this effort actually help the home team play better? Hughes believes it does. So does Amanda Greco, a team official for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers: “Having Cameron there adds just a little extra energy to the crowd, and it definitely gives the players an extra advantage.”

  “It’s not just a job,” Hughes insists, “It’s something I live to do.”

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  Anton-Babinski Syndrome is a rare condition in which a blind person doesn’t realize they are blind.

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  MODERN PIRACY

  The Somali pirates that we see on the news are a far cry from the peg-legged, parrot-shouldered, arrrr-sayin’ marauders of yesteryear. Instead of swords and periscopes, these new pirates carry assault rifles and satellite phones. And, as twisted as it may seem, they’ve become folk heroes to a nation in turmoil.

  THE MOST DANGEROUS PLACE ON EARTH

  Few countries are more unstable and chaotic than Somalia. Located on the Horn of Africa, the continent’s easternmost point, Somalia lies right next to the Gulf of Aden and its busy shipping lanes, carrying passengers and cargo from all over the world.

  In 1991 Somalia’s government collapsed, leaving its nine million citizens to endure two decades of insurgencies, civil war, genocide, famine, drought, corruption, and crime. In 2008 more than 1,800 civilians were killed in violent clashes, and by the next year, more than 1.3 million people were displaced within Somalia and another 330,000 had fled to neighboring countries. Thousands more died from starvation and disease. Although there’s now a U.N.-backed government in power, it’s spending most of its resources fighting a fringe Islamic insurgency. And with no navy patrolling Somalia’s waters, other nations have taken the opportunity to overfish the waters and dump their toxic waste there. But it’s in those same waters that many Somalis see their salvation.

  SEEKING NEW OPPORTUNITIES

  With little hope at home and few prospects if they flee, some young Somali men have taken to a life of piracy. It’s not much more dangerous than trying to survive on the war-torn streets, and the pay is a lot better: A pirate can make $10,000 for a successful raid. (Somalia’s average wage is below $650 per year.)

  Attacking from speedboats and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, pirates stop ships and rob them of cash and equipment. The real prize, however, comes from taking hostages and collecting ransom for their release. The practice has become so profitable that at any giv
en time, there are at least 200 hostages being held in the Gulf of Aden by Somali pirates. “They have a great business model,” according to Admiral Rick Gurnon, head of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. “See ships, take ransom, and make millions.” Says one young pirate, “Foreign navies can do nothing to stop piracy.”

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  Chinese gym coach Xiao Lin rents himself out as a punching bag for stressed women.

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  DAVID VS. GOLIATH

  Just how brash are Somali pirates? No ship is too big to take on, and no ransom demand is too high. But that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes bite off more than they can chew:

  • In 2005 the U.S. cruise ship Seabourn Spirit was carrying 311 crew and passengers through the Gulf of Aden. Two speedboats carrying 10 pirates raced up and started firing machine guns and grenades at the liner. The Spirit’s security team blasted the pirates with a high-pressure water cannon and then pierced their eardrums with an LRAD, or Long Range Acoustic Device, which emits a debilitating sound wave. The confrontation ended when the massive cruise ship simply ran over one of the speedboats.