Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (88 page)

The “first electronic computer” was built in 1889 for the U.S. Census Bureau.

A few thoughts from the man with the original “bad hair day” comedian Garry Shandling.

“The mirror over my bed reads, ‘Objects appear larger than they are.’”

“I’m dating a women who, evidently, is unaware of it.”

“I’m not kinky, but occasionally I like to put on a robe and stand in front of a tennis ball machine.”

“I once made love for an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was the night the clocks were set ahead.”

“Oysters are supposed to enhance your sexual performance, but they don’t work for me. Maybe I put them on too soon.”

“After making love I said to my girl, ‘Was it good for you, too?’ And she said, ‘I don’t think this was good for anybody.’”

“They should put expiration dates on clothes so we would know when they go out of style.”

“I’m not thrilled about flying....We don’t know how old the airplanes are and there’s really no way for us to tell, ’cause we’re laymen. But I figure if the plane smells like your grandmother’s house, get out. That’s where I draw the line.”

“I’m dating a homeless woman. It was easier to talk her into staying over.”

“I can’t believe I actually own my own house. I’m looking at a house and it’s two hundred grand. The realtor says, ‘It’s got a great view.’ For two hundred grand I better open up the curtains and see breasts against the window.”

“I’m very loyal in relationships. Even when I go out with my mom I don’t look at other moms.”

“The last girl I made love to, it was not going well. Anytime you make love and have to give her the Heimlich maneuver at the same time, it’s not a good thing.”

Sure, blame the kids: 9% of women and 4% of men say their divorce is the kids’ fault.

This title probably conjures up visions of leftover vegetables being hurled across a school cafeteria. But in at least two instances, people actually used food as a weapon in real wars. Here are the stories.

T
AKE THAT!

“The Uruguayan army once fought a sea battle using cheeses as cannonballs.

“It happened in the 1840s. The aggressive Argentine dictator Juan Manual de Rosas, in an attempt to annex Uruguay, ordered his navy to blockade Montevideo, the capital. The besieged Uruguayans held their own in battle until they ran out of conventional ammunition. In desperation, they raided the galleys of their ships and loaded their cannons with very old, hard Edam cheeses and fired them at the enemy.

“Contemporary chronicles record that the Uruguayans won the skirmish.”

—From
Significa
, by Irving Wallace, David Wallechinsky, and Amy Wallace

YOU SAY POTATO
...

“A World War II destroyer once defeated a submarine with the help of a seldom-used weapon of destruction: potatoes.

“The
USS O’Bannon
was on patrol off the Solomon Islands in April 1943 when it encountered a Japanese sub. The crew shot off the sub’s conning tower, preventing it from diving, but the captain of the sub brought it so close to the destroyer that the
O’Bannon’s
big guns couldn’t be aimed at it....When the Japanese came topside, the gallant
O’Bannon
crewmen pelted them with potatoes. The Japanese thought they were being showered with grenades, threw their guns overboard, then panicked, submerged the sub and sank it.

“When the
O’Bannon
was decommissioned in the early 1970s, a plaque was made to commemorate the event, and donated to the ship, by the Maine potato growers.”

— From
Beyond Belief!
, by Ron Lyon and Jenny Pacshall

Q: Which country drinks more Coke than any other nation on earth? A: Mexico.

Insurance companies are probably the last subject you’d expect to read about in the Bathroom Reader. But Lloyd’s of London is special. They insure stuff like people’s legs and performing insects and floating bathtubs. Here’s the story of Lloyd’s, courtesy of BRI alum Jack Mingo, author of
How the Cadillac Got Its Fins
and numerous other books.

O
RIGIN
. Today most business is conducted over the phone or in company offices, but in the 17th century the most popular place for businesses and their clients to meet was in coffeehouses—many of which were built specifically to the business trade. Lloyd’s Coffee House, opened by Edward Lloyd in London in 1688, was just such a place. Lloyd wanted to take advantage for the maritime insurance trade, so he built his coffeehouse near the London docks.

Lloyd never personally got involved in the insurance business, but he provided a congenial business atmosphere, semi-enclosed booths, and even writing materials for his patrons. The cafe developed a reputation as a source of accurate shipping news and quickly became the hub of London’s maritime insurance industry.

Long after Lloyd’s death in 1723, his coffeehouse remained an important business meeting place.

A GROWING BUSINESS

In the 17th and 18th centuries, merchants with a ship or cargo to insure didn’t buy insurance from companies—they hired a broker to go from one wealthy person to another, selling a share of the risk in exchange for a share of the insurance premium.

This was considered a respectable profession. But covering wagers on things like who would win a particular sports contest or war, or when the current king would die, was not. These less respectable brokers began frequenting Lloyd’s, too.

In 1769, a number of “high-class” brokers decided they didn’t want to be associated with their seamier brethren anymore. So they set up their own coffee house and called it the “New Lloyd’s Coffee House.” They allowed business dealings in maritime insurance only. The new building soon proved too small, so 79 brokers, underwriters, and merchants each chipped in £100 to finance new headquarters. When they moved this time, they left the coffee business behind. Over the following century, the Lloyd’s society of underwriters evolved into its modern incarnation, expanding to all forms of insurance except life insurance. As one broker put it, “Everybody dies, so what’s the fun of writing life insurance?”

Crocodiles kill more people in the jungle than any other animal.

RISKY BUSINESS

Lloyd’s will insure just about anything. Here are some of the weirder items:

•
Celebrity anatomy
. Bruce Springsteen has insured his voice for £3.5 million; Marlene Dietrich had a $500,000 policy on her legs; and supermodel Suzanne Mizzi was insured for £10 million against any “serious injury” that left her unable to model underwear. During filming of the movie Superman, man of steel Christopher Reeves was insured for $20 million.

•
Whiskers
. Forty members of the Derbyshire, England, “Whiskers Club” insured their facial hair “against fire and theft.” Cost: £20 a head.

•
Laughter
. One theater group took out a policy “against the risk of a member of their audience dying from laughter.”

•
Space debris
. Before Skylab, the space laboratory, crashed to earth, Lloyd’s offered coverage of up to £2.5 million for property damage and £500,000 for death coverage to anyone who wanted it. (No takers.)

•
The weather
. Lloyd’s insures the opera festival of Verona, Italy, for £1 million against bad weather. Reason: When outdoor performances get cancelled due to rain, the festival has to refund ticket holders.

•
Souvenirs
. When Charles and Diana announced they were tying the knot, Lloyd’s insured commemorative souvenir makers...just in case the wedding got called off.

•
A floating bathtub
. When a 20-year-old merchant navy officer sailed from Dover, England, to Cap Gris Nez, France, in a bathtub, Lloyd’s insured it for £100,000 on one condition: that the tub’s drain plug “remain in position at all times.”

•
Dead rats
. Lloyd’s once insured an entire boatload of dead rats (which were en route to a Greek research lab) for £110,000 against their condition deteriorating any further.

Nearly 75% of all U.S. Congress staff members suffer from heartburn.

•
A tiny portrait
. A grain of rice with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip engraved on it was insured for £20,000.

•
Nessie
. Cutty Sark Whiskey once offered £1 million to anyone who could capture the Loch Ness monster alive, and took out two £1 million policies with Lloyd’s...just in case.

•
The King
. When a Memphis radio station offered $1 million to anyone who could prove Elvis was really alive, Lloyd’s backed them up 100 percent.

THE NAME GAME

How Lloyd’s works.
Lloyd’s of London isn’t a company at all: It’s a “society” of thousands of members (called Names because they put their “name,” or full reputation and worth, behind the risk), who underwrite insurance policies with their personal assets. As was the case three centuries ago, each Name is personally liable for claims. The Name never has to turn over the money he “invests” with Lloyd’s—he just has to prove that he
has
it and can surrender it on demand to pay claims.

HARD TIMES

The system worked great for hundreds of years, but disaster struck in the late 1980s, after more than a decade of excessive policy writing in which Lloyd’s Names insured asbestos manufacturers, the Exxon
Valdez
, and the San Francisco earthquake of 1989. Between 1988 and 1990 the company had to pay out more than $10 billion in claims, which meant that by 1991 each of the company’s 32,000 Names owed more than $312,500 to policyholders, with the total expected to climb still further. More than 21,000 of the Names sued Lloyd’s, claiming that Lloyd’s underwriters were negligent in writing insurance contracts. Lloyd’s admitted as much in 1994, and offered a $1.3 billion settlement to the Names, but, at the time this was written, the lawsuits were still pending.

Family attachment: eight times more women than men buy Father’s Day cards.

This is a tough game—very few people can solve more than a few of these equations on the first try. But don’t look at the answers in the back of the book right away. People often come up with them later, when their minds are relaxed. And you can work on this page for a number of “sittings.” It was sent to us by BRI member Peter Wing. Answers are on
page 670
.

INSTRUCTIONS

Each equation contains the initials of words that will make it a correct statement. Your job is to finish the missing words. For example:

26 =
L. of the A.
would be 26 =
Letters of the Alphabet.
Good luck.

1.
    7 = W. of the A. W.

2.
    1001 = A. N.

3.
    12 = S. of the Z.

4.
    54 = C. in a D. (with the J.)

5.
    9 = P. in the S. S.

6.
    88 = P. K.

7.
    13 = S. on the A. F.

8.
    32 = D. F. at which W. F.

9.
    90 = D. in a R. A.

10.
  99 = B. of B. on the W.

11.
  18 = H. on a G. C.

12.
  8 = S. on a S. S.

13.
  3 = B. M. (S. H. T. R.)

14.
  4 = Q. in a G.

15.
  l = W. on a U.

16.
  5 = D. in a Z. C.

17.
  24 = H. in a D.

18.
  57 = H.V.

19.
  11 = P. on a F. T.

20.
  1000 = W. that a P. is W.

21.
  29 = D. in F. in a L. Y.

22.
  64 = S. on a C.

23.
  40 = D. and N. of the G. F.

24.
  2 = T. T.

25.
  76 = T. in a B. P.

26.
  8 = G.T. in a L. B. C.

27.
  101 = D.

28.
  23 = S.

29.
  4 = H. a J. G.F.

30.
  16 = M. on a D. M. C.

31.
  12 = D. of C.

32.
  5 = G. L.

33.
  7 = D. S.

34.
  2.5 = C. in a T. A. F.

35.
  1, 2, 3 = S. Y. O. at the O. B. G.

36.
  3 = M. in a T.

37.
  13 = B. D.

Thirty-three percent of Americans say being an hour late still counts as being “fashionably late.”

Mongo teep robinek. Pargo meep, kiga lorb. Squarp? Neegah! Sheerik sot morbo. Pid rintu...guira—gop fibge. More nonsense that seems perfectly understandable to the person who’s speaking. For the first batch see
page 483
.

P
ARDON ME
...

“I once observed a foreign gentleman with halting English at a subway station asking for the correct time,” author Roger Axtell recalls in his book
Do’s and Taboos of Hosting International Visitors.
“He was repeatedly rebuffed by brusque New Yorkers. Edging closer, I heard the patient but tiring visitor finally say to the fifth or sixth passerby, ‘Pardon me, sir, but do
you
have the correct time...or should I go screw myself, as the others have suggested?’”

ADVENTURES IN THE EAST

• In China, Kentucky Fried Chicken’s slogan “finger-lickin’ good” was translated as “eat your fingers off” and a phonetic adaptation of Coca-Cola came out as “Bite the Wax Tadpole.”

• In Taiwan, Pepsi’s “Come Alive with Pepsi” came out as “Pepsi Will Bring Your Ancestors Back from the Dead.”

• Japan’s second-largest tourist agency, Kinki Nippon Tourist Co., had to change the name of its overseas division because the word “Kinki” was too close to the English word “kinky.” The company was worried about attracting the “wrong kind of customer.”

NO HABLO ESPANOL

• Many of the T-shirts made for Pope John Paul II’s visit to Miami were in Spanish. They were supposed to say “I saw the Pope.” Instead, they said, “I saw the potato.”