Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (34 page)

• As annoying as these problems are, only about a third of Americans say they’re willing to tackle a plumbing problem that requires anything more than a plunger. 17% of respondents call their plumber so often that they know them on a first name basis.

• 47% of Americans who own pets say they bathe them in the bathroom, according to a survey by Moen International, a faucet manufacturer. Another 22% of pet owners bathe them in the driveway or the yard. 6% take their pets to a professional groomer.

• One third of pet bathers bathe their pets at least once a month, and 21% bathe them at least once a week.

• Fewer than 5% of pet owners say they have ever bathed a bird, guinea pig, rabbit, lizard, or snake, and fewer than 1% have ever bathed a ferret, turtle, pig, or horse. (Horses are almost never bathed in the bathroom.)

• 25% of Americans who work in offices say their office is the “germiest” place they visit all day, according to a 2007 study by the polling company Booth Research. That’s more than the 19% who said that public restrooms are the germiest places they visit.

• In another survey, nearly 50% of cubicle workers say their cubicle is smaller than their bathroom at home.

OPEN WIDE.
Claiming trademark infringement, in 2009 the Austria-based PEZ Candy Company ordered Gary Doss, who runs the PEZ Museum in Burlingame, California, to destroy “The World’s Largest PEZ Dispenser,” an eight-foot-tall replica he built. “It’s just a piece of art that draws people into our store so we can sell PEZ!” argued Doss. Not only that, even though he’s provided PEZ with sales and free advertising for 14 years, the company wants Doss to turn over all profits from the museum.

 

AN OFFER THEY SHOULD HAVE REFUSED.
In 2009 video-game company Electronic Arts sent out promotional materials for their “The Godfather Part II” game to journalists and reviewers. Included in the promo pack: brass knuckles. But then EA learned that brass knuckles are illegal in most of the states they’d been shipped to, so they had to send out requests for the weapons to be sent back. That created another problem: It turns out that it’s not only illegal to
own
brass knuckles, it’s also illegal to
ship
them. So EA sent out one more notice requesting that anyone who received the illegal brass knuckles please “dispose of them immediately.”

 

GOING GREEN THE HARD WAY.
Toronto’s Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) issued a one-page press release in 2009 about incentives for builders who utilize eco-friendly practices. Proving they’re green themselves, the one-page release was printed on recycled paper. But it came inside a nonrecycled paper envelope that included plastic bubble wrap, a cardboard box, nonrecycled tissue paper, a plastic building made of green LEGOs, and a color photo of the LEGO building. “Maybe the packaging could have been a little bit better,” said a BBP spokesperson.

 

THE AGONY OF DEFEATS.
The Detroit Lions ran a banner-ad campaign on several football Web sites in summer 2009 inviting fans to “Relive the exciting ’08 season!” by watching streamed videos of all 16 games. The campaign was widely criticized, however, because the Lions had lost every one of their games.

A 58-year-old man went out to dinner at a St. John’s,

Newfoundland, steakhouse in February 2009, but when his meal arrived, he was unhappy with what was on the plate. The man complained to his waiter that his steak was “too meaty.” The waiter and restaurant manager tried to figure out exactly what the man meant, or how a piece of meat could have too much meat on it, but the man would not elaborate, and he only got angrier. The man paid his bill, and as he left he pushed his waiter, then punched him in the face. The man faces assault charges.

In early 2007, Antonio Batista, 75, got fed up with the many potholes in his home town of Mississauga, Ontario. So he wrote a letter to his city councilmember, Pat Saito. Batista never received a response, so he kept writing letters—no response to those, either. In frustration about the lack of action, he wrote a protest poem called “Parked Cars and Pot Holes” and posted it on telephone poles and bulletin boards around town. One part reads,

For seeming to suggest the live burial of Saito, Batista was arrested for making a death threat. The conviction was overturned on appeal in November 2008 on the grounds that the poem was not a stated intent to murder, but “literary expression.”

Derek Boogaard plays in the National Hockey League. His position is left wing, but he’s primarily an “enforcer,” which in hockey is a player who responds to aggressive or violent action by the
opposite team by slamming the offending party into the boards or starting a fight. (Boogaard once hit an opponent so hard he required reconstructive facial surgery.) In 2007 Boogaard teamed up with his brother Aaron to put his distinct abilities to use—they opened the Derek and Aaron Boogaard Fighting Camp in Saskatchewan, the only training facility in the world that exists specifically to teach teenage hockey players how to fight properly.

Jarrett Loft was one of the most notorious—and strangest—criminals on the loose in Guelph, Ontario. At least seven times, the 28-year-old approached women on the street and politely asked them to kick him in the groin. Every time, fearing attack if they refused, the women complied, kicking him repeatedly in the groin. Loft would then thank the woman and ride away on his bicycle. Arrested and sentenced to 60 days in jail in March 2008, Loft said he did it because he was “curious.”

Elanie Larabie of Ottawa was trying to get her terrier, Missy, to eat some dog food, but Missy just wouldn’t touch it. So Larabie thought the dog might learn by example—Larabie nibbled a mouthful of the kibble. It worked. Missy finished off the bowl. The next day, Larabie and Missy were in a hospital and veterinarian’s office (respectively) with stomach pain, vomiting, and foaming at the mouth. Doctors believe that both dog and master ate food that was tainted with rat poison.

In 2007 the city government of Toronto launched a campaign urging voters to approve a 1-cent tax increase to pay for civic and municipal projects, such as buildings and roads. The bill passed, but the money didn’t go to funding any projects right away. Instead, it had to be diverted to pay a licensing bill sent by the Royal Canadian Mint. Posters and Web sites created to promote the tax campaign used a photograph of a Canadian penny and the words “one cent,” which the mint says are registered trademarks. Total bill: $47,000.

In September 2007, Amir Blumenfeld learned that his friend Streeter Seidell was going to attend a New York Yankees game with his girlfriend, Sharon. So Blumenfeld called Yankee Stadium and paid $500 for a marriage proposal to be displayed on the stadium’s Jumbotron—Seidell’s proposal to Sharon. In the middle of the fifth inning, this message appeared on the huge screen in front of 57,000 people: “Dear Sharon, I love you forever. Will you marry me? Streety Bird.” Sharon immediately burst into happy tears and jumped to her feet, shouting, “Yes!” Seidell, however, went into a panic. He denied he’d actually proposed, insisting it was a hoax. And when he said, “I don’t wanna f***ing marry you,” Sharon slapped him across the face and stormed out of the game. Blumenfeld, meanwhile, had enlisted some friends to sit near Seidell to videotape the proposal and its aftermath, and that video wound up being viewed by hundreds of thousands of people…because Blumenfeld and Seidell both worked for the Internet comedy site
CollegeHumor.com
.

Robin Goldstein is a wine critic and food writer. He’s dined at many restaurants whose menus boasted the Award of Excellence from
Wine Spectator
magazine, despite having wine lists that Goldstein knew were populated with mediocre wines. Suspicious, he decided to try an experiment. In 2009 he invented a restaurant called Osteria l’Intrepido (Italian for “the fearless tavern”) and typed up a menu of ordinary Italian dishes. Goldstein also included a wine list—the lowest-rated wines from the last 20 years of
Wine Spectator
magazine. Then he submitted his menu, along with the $250 fee, to
Wine Spectator
to apply for their Award of Excellence. Despite a list of wines
Wine Spectator
itself said were terrible, and despite the fact that his restaurant wasn’t real, Osteria l’Intrepido was awarded the
Wine Spectator
Award of Excellence. Goldstein posted the story on his Web site, published it in a magazine,
and shared it with the attendees of a wine conference. (And
Wine Spectator
’s reputation will never be the same.)

A New York-based group called Improv Everywhere stages good-natured pranks with hundreds of volunteer operatives. Past pranks include a book signing at a Barnes and Noble with Russian playwright Anton Chekov (who died in 1904), a morning subway commute in which hundreds of people didn’t wear pants, and another subway prank in which eight sets of twins rode around and performed every action in perfect unison. In April 2006, IE staged “Operation Best Buy.” Eighty volunteers simultaneously entered a Best Buy electronics store, all wearing the same outfit—blue polo shirt and khaki pants. The goal: to look like Best Buy employees, who wear the same clothes (only with nametags and company logos). IE instructed the pranksters to be kind and even help customers find what they were looking for. The only motive behind the prank was silly amusement—to create, if only for an hour, a comically overstaffed electronics store.

The 1956 Olympics were held in Melbourne, Australia. Nine University of Sydney students thought it was appalling that the Olympic torch relay—created by the Nazis for the 1936 Berlin Games—was elevating the torch to the level of a religious icon, with thousands of Australians lining the streets of Sydney wherever the relay passed through. So they devised a plan to protest the torch with a phony relay. In the real relay, cross-country athlete Harry Dillon was supposed to run through downtown Sydney and hand the torch to mayor Pat Hills, who would then make a speech and give the torch to another runner. Moments before Dillon was to arrive, however, one of the protesters began running in the streets with a “torch”—a silver-painted chair leg topped with a flaming pair of underpants. The crowd laughed at the prank, but then the underwear fell off and the runner panicked and ran away. Another student took up the torch with a relit pair of underpants and continued to run the route…and police thought he was the real deal. They escorted him all the way to town hall, where he presented the flaming underpants to Mayor Hills.

Possibly the earliest example of literature made specifically for children,
The Colloquy
was written and distributed in England around A.D. 1005 by a Benedictine monk named Aelfric. At the time, the Benedictines were trying to use education to help Europe emerge from centuries of social decline, and this playful textbook was meant to teach kids about both careers and Latin grammar. The book is written in the form of dialogue between a teacher and several pupils (
colloquy
means “dialogue” in Latin), the pupils taking on the roles of several professions. An example:

This collection of witty proverbs for adults was written in Rome by Dionysius Cato around A.D. 300. Rediscovered in Europe in the 1200s, it was translated into many languages and used to teach children grammar and morals.
Distich
means “couplet,” which was the form of the writing. Example: “Be stupid when the time or situation demands / To fake stupidity is at times the highest prudence.”
The Distichs of Cato
remained one of the most popular Latin textbooks for several centuries—and even made its way to the American colonies, where it was published by Benjamin Franklin in 1735.

In 1371 French aristocrat Geoffroy IV de la Tour Landry wrote this collection of fables to teach his two daughters proper behavior in royal society. The moral of one story: Do not have sex with a knight, because you might get pregnant, and then your father
would have to drown you in a well in the dark and the knight would be “flayed alive.”
The Book of the Knight of the Tower
was translated into German and English and was very popular for two decades.