1,001 Facts That Will Scare the S#*t Out of You: The Ultimate Bathroom Reader (81 page)

606

FACT :
Vermont women must get
written permission from their husbands
before they get false teeth.
Some men prefer their women toothless, if you know what I mean (wink wink).

Alex Wade, “The World’s Strangest Laws,” Times Online, August 15, 2007,
www.business.timesonline.co.uk
.

607

FACT :
Famed American comedian
Groucho Marx took LSD and smoked pot
in the late 1960s.
That explains the elephant in his pajamas.

Russell Kick, Disinformation Book of Lists: Subversive Facts and Hidden Information in Rapid-Fire Format (The Disinformation Company, 2004).

608

FACT : Average Americans watch over four hours of TV per day
: that’s twenty-eight hours each week, two months each year. That accounts for nine years for the average sixty-five-year-old person.
And he still won’t finish Ken Burns’
Baseball
.

“Television & Health: Television Statistics,” Compiled by TV-Free America,
www.csun.edu
.

609

FACT :
Collectively, Americans spend
250 billion hours watching television every year
.

If spent working for a $5 per hour wage, this time would be worth $1.25 trillion.
I don’t think five bucks an hour is enough to pull anybody away from the TV.

“Television & Health: Television Statistics,” Compiled by TV-Free America,
www.csun.edu
.

610

FACT :
When polled, more than half of four- to six-year-olds pick
watching television over spending time
with their fathers.
Probably because spending time with your dad usually involves being put to work in some way.

“Television & Health: Television Statistics,” Compiled by TV-Free America,
www.csun.edu
.

611

FACT :
By the time they finish elementary school,
American children have seen 8,000 murders on TV
.

By the time they graduate high school, they witness 200,000 violent acts and 40,000 murders.
Or you can just save him some time and let him watch the movie
300
.

“Television & Health: Television Statistics,” Compiled by TV-Free America,
www.csun
.edu.

612

FACT :
One-third of American adults are overweight. According to a study by the American Journal of Public Health, adults who watch three hours of TV a day are
more likely to be obese
than those who watch less than sixty minutes a day.
Who can watch TV without a few chips? I know I can’t.

L. A. Tucker and G. M. Friedman, “Television Viewing and Obesity in Adult Males,” American Journal of Public Health, April 1989, 516–518.

613

FACT :
Almost 60 percent of Americans know the Three Stooges by name, but
just 17 percent
are able to name three U.S. Supreme Court justices.
Luckily, three of the justices are the Stooges.

“Television & Health: Television Statistics,” Compiled by TV-Free America,
www.csun.edu
.

614

FACT :
75 percent of American women think they are fat, perhaps owing to the fact that American actresses and models are
thinner than 95 percent
of the female population.
Which is why they are models and actresses. If we wanted to see fat people, we’d go to a family reunion, not the movies.

“Television & Health: Television Statistics,” Compiled by TV-Free America,
www.csun.edu
.

615

FACT :
In a poll conducted by
Newsweek
in 2007,
41 percent of Americans
continued to believe that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime planned, financed, or carried out the September iith, 2001 terrorist attacks. The majority of people polled did not know most of the 9/11 hijackers hailed from Saudi Arabia.
I would expect no less from people who believe that pork is the “other white meat” and Budweiser is “premium” beer.