Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (16 page)

Taking Care of Business:
Yasumasa didn't even hear his first Elvis song until he was 18, but quickly made up for lost time. It wasn't long before he had perfected an Elvis imitation and was performing on U.S. Army bases all over Japan. In 1992 he made the trip of a lifetime when he traveled to Memphis, entered the International Elvis Impersonator Contest…and won. The victory has only deepened his appreciation of the King. “Although he didn't compose or write his songs and leave any deep messages, I believe that he himself is the message,” Yasumasa says. “He was using his own body and soul to convey the message of freedom to the world. This to me is really incredible.”

KIWI ELVIS
(Brian Childs, New Zealand)

Claim to Fame:
He's living the life of Elvis…in reverse

Taking Care of Business:
Elvis was a singer who collected police badges and always wanted to be in law enforcement—and Brian Childs was a New Zealand police constable who always wanted to be the King. He started out impersonating Elvis in his spare time, but his chief didn't like it and in January 2002, told him he'd have to quit his hobby. Constable Childs quit his job instead. Today he is the reigning champion Elvis Presley impersonator in neighboring Australia and is considering suing the force for wrongful dismissal.

FILIPINO ELVIS
(Rene Escharcha, a.k.a. “Renelvis”, Philippines)

Claim to Fame:
He takes care of business—by telephone

Taking Care of Business:
It's not easy to stand out from the crowd when you're an Elvis impersonator—even if you're a Filipino Elvis living in North Carolina. One of the ways Escharcha makes his mark is by whipping out his long-distance phone card in the middle of a performance and calling his cousin in the Philippines (also an Elvis impersonator) so that they can belt out Elvis tunes together, a cappella, over a speakerphone. Escharcha also keeps the King's legacy fresh by writing his own songs. In “Elvis on Terrorism,” Escharcha sings, “I wonder if Elvis were here today, what would he do? I can assure you, he would do something.”

Why is he so dedicated to being the King? “If you want to be somebody, you have to work at it,” Renelvis explains.

Here are more origins of some common phrases.

Meaning:
An overly anxious or stressed person who can't function normally (yup, that's Uncle John)

Origin:
“First appeared as a slang term in WWI meaning ‘a quadruple amputee.' Soldiers who had lost all their limbs actually were carried in baskets, because if they were carried on stretchers, they'd be too likely to fall out.” (From
Jesse's Word of the Day,
by Jesse Sheidlower)

Meaning:
To refuse to give up; to stick with it

Origin:
“This hails from the world of boxing, where managers exhort exhausted fighters to clinch their opponents, or hang on to the ropes, to finish a round or a bout. In recent years the expression has come to be used as common parting words to someone in trouble since everyone in this life is usually up against the ropes in one way or another.” (From
Grand Slams, Hat Tricks, and Alleyoops,
by Robert Hendrickson)

Meaning:
To be yourself

Origin:
“
To sail under false colors
was to disguise a pirate ship by flying the flag of a friendly nation. Camouflaged in this way, pirates could usually sail fairly close to the ship he wanted to attack without raising an alarm. When the moment was right, he'd
show his true colors
by raising his own flag.” (From
Scuttlebutt…& Other Expressions of Nautical Origin,
by Teri Degler)

Meaning:
To have the upper hand

Origin:
“In the days before mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, lifeguards placed drowning victims over a barrel, which was rolled back and forth while the lifeguard tried to revive them. The person ‘over the barrel' is in the other person's power or at his
mercy.” (From
The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins,
by Robert Hendrickson)

Meaning:
The action of a dead person, as if appalled by something that has happened or been proposed

Origin:
“The first-known reference to this phrase is in Mark Twain's 1894 novel,
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
. Twain says: ‘You has disgraced yo' birth. What would yo' pa think o' you? It's enough to make him turn in his grave.'” (From
The Phrase That Launched 1,000 Ships
, by Nigel Rees)

Meaning:
A run-down part of town

Origin:
“Seattle swells with pride in the well-documented knowledge that
skid row
had its origins there. In the mid-19th century a logging road along which logs were skidded led from the forest to Yesler's Mill. The
Skid Road
became a road populated by lumber-jacks, sailors, prostitutes, and panhandlers. It soon became known as
Skid Row
, but today is always spelled with small letters.” (From
Cassell Everyday Phrases,
by Neil Ewart)

Meaning:
To give up

Origin:
“From the 17th-century expression,
throw in the sponge
, which was the practice of throwing up the sponge used to cleanse a boxer's face at a prize-fight, a signal that the fighter had had enough—that the sponge is no longer required. In today's pugilistic encounters one is more likely to hear that the manager of one contestant throws in a towel, rather than a sponge, but the original occasion for the expression still stands.” (From
Heavens to Betsy!
, by Charles Earle Funk)

“Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.”

—Emo Phillips

These sentences may have made sense at the time they were handed down…but we doubt it.

• Leah Marie Fairbanks of Duluth, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault charges and was sentenced to 14 months probation…plus she had to read seven classic novels and the Declaration of Independence and then write reports on each one.

• Anna Mae Leach of Castle Shannon, Pennsylvania, was jailed for a week for not returning three videotapes. (The charges turned out to be false.)

• Gloria Cisternas of Santiago, Chile, was sentenced to seven days in jail for failing to pay a $63 (U.S.) fine. She had been fined for failing to keep her lawn green.

•
USA Today
reported that Utah's Tom Green had been convicted for polygamy and criminal nonsupport. Sentence: “0–5 years in prison.”

• Tony and Angelica Flores spent a night in jail after failing to appear for their court date. Criminal charges had been filed against them in Peoria, Arizona, for keeping their Christmas lights up too long.

• In Louisville, Kentucky, Luther Crawford, father of 12 kids by 11 different women, was $33,000 behind on child support payments. He avoided going to prison by accepting the judge's offer that he refrain from sex until he has paid up.

• A wealthy Finnish man was fined $103,000—for a speeding ticket. In Finland, traffic fines are levied in proportion to the driver's income.

• Four Swedish teenagers were convicted of high treason for their plot against King Carl Gustaf. Their plot: to throw a strawberry cream pie at him.

Politicians aren't getting much respect these days—but then, it sounds like they don't deserve much, either.

“Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans.”

—Alf Landon (R-KS)

“We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement.”

—Richard J. Daley (D),
mayor of Chicago

“I hope I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, anti-racism.”

—George H. W. Bush

“This is the worst disaster in California since I was elected.”

—Gov. Pat Brown (D-CA),
discussing a flood

“Mr. Nixon was the thirty-seventh president of the United States. He had been preceded by thirty-six others.”

—Gerald Ford

“If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had ten apostles.”

—Jesse Helms (R-NC)

“This legislation has far-reaching ramifistations.”

—Gib Lewis (D-TX)

“I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs.”

—Nancy Reagan,
asked a political question during a “Just Say No” rally

“I am not a chauvinist, obviously.…I believe in women's rights for every woman but my own.”

—Harold Washington (D),
mayor of Chicago, 1984–87

“Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ‘Thank God, I'm still alive.' But, of course, those who died—their lives will never be the same again.”

—Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

“The state of California has no business subsidizing intellectual curiosity.”

—Gov. Ronald Reagan, (R-CA),
responding to student protests on college campuses

“Politics would be a helluva good business if it weren't for the goddamned people.”

—Richard Nixon

When you hear the name Eli Whitney, you probably think of his invention, the cotton gin. But you may not realize how profoundly it (and his other inventions) changed the world. Here's the history they never taught you in school.

In 1792 a 27-year-old Massachusetts Yankee named Eli Whitney graduated from Yale University and landed a tutoring job in South Carolina. He was glad to get it—he needed the money to pay off his school debts. But when he arrived there he discovered that the job paid half of what he'd been promised, which meant he'd never be able to save any money. He turned the job down.

Suddenly he was jobless, penniless, and stranded in the South, hundreds of miles from home. But he'd made the trip from New York with a friend named Phineas Miller, who was escorting
his
employer, a widow named Mrs. Greene, back to Georgia. When Greene invited Whitney to spend a week at her plantation outside of Savannah, he gladly accepted. He had no place else to go.

Whitney repaid Mrs. Greene's generosity by designing an embroidery frame for her. Greene was impressed by the cleverness of the design, and it got her thinking. If Whitney was this clever, maybe he could solve a problem that plagued her and other planters—how to “gin,” or remove the seeds from, cotton…without doing it by hand.

Upland cotton, the only kind that grew in the interior regions of the South, had seeds that were “covered with a kind of green coat resembling velvet,” as Whitney put it. These fuzzy seeds stuck to the cotton fibers like Velcro. Removing them by hand required so much labor—one person could clean only about a pound of cotton per day—that upland cotton was essentially worthless.