Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (25 page)

IRONIC, ISN’T IT?

In 1976 Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. co-authored the landmark “Buckley Decision,” striking down all limits on spending for political campaigns. In 1995 a powerful group of lawyers and political players in New York began working to get the controversial law overturned. The group: The William J. Brennan, Jr. Center for Justice, made up of family, friends, and former law clerks of the late Justice Brennan.

Hidden meaning? A man’s brain is 2% of his body weight, a woman’s is 2.5%.

Like anyone with an e-mail address, we at the BRI get a lot of unsolicited e-mail that seems too good—or bad—to be true. We looked into claims made by some of them, and here’s what we found
.

E-MAIL MESSAGE:

ORIGIN:
This e-mail has been circulating at least since 2003 and probably longer than that.

THE TRUTH:
Relax. Yes, downloading copyrighted material is illegal, but the FBI didn’t send this e-mail. If you received it, your files haven’t really been scanned or confiscated, and you won’t really be indicted...at least not as a consequence of this e-mail.

E-MAIL MESSAGE:

ORIGIN:
This particular e-mail started circulating in 2004, but similar ones have been floating around the Internet for about as long as eBay has been in business.

The surface of Venus has been better mapped than the sea beds of Earth.

THE TRUTH:
E-mails like these are known as “phishing.” They imitate legitimate businesses to con people into revealing sensitive financial information, such as credit card and Social Security numbers. eBay gets hit so often, it has set up a special e-mail address,
[email protected]
, so that anyone who receives an eBay spoof can report it. Rule of thumb: Legitimate businesses will never e-mail you with a request to send them your personal information. No matter how legitimate the e-mail looks, ignore it.

E-MAIL MESSAGE:

ORIGIN:
This e-mail began circulating in April 2000. The full version claims that senators with the most seniority can expect to collect nearly $8 million over their lifetimes without contributing a cent of their own money. And when they die, their widows collect $275,000 per year until
they
die.

THE TRUTH:
Say what you want about elected officials, but nearly every “fact” cited in this e-mail is false. Senators and congressmen
do
pay Social Security taxes and are required to contribute to the Federal Employees Retirement System. At last report the average retired member of Congress collected just under $47,000 a year in retirement. At that rate, it would take them 160 years to collect the $8 million claimed here.

Favorite pizza toppings in Germany: sauerkraut and onions.

Great poetry must be considered art—It tickles the brain and stabs at the heart. Could there be a worse poet than Uncle John? It’s all in the story that follows; read on
.

A
LL FIRED UP

One afternoon in June 1877, an impoverished Scottish weaver named William McGonagall fell into a funk. McGonagall was depressed because he wanted to escape the gritty industrial city of Dundee for a few days in the countryside, but he couldn’t afford a train ticket. He was stuck at home, and to make matters worse, he was starting to feel a little funny. Was it a cold? The flu?

Hardly. As McGonagall later wrote in his autobiography, it was something else entirely: Divine Inspiration.

I seemed to feel as it were a strange kind of feeling stealing over me. A flame...seemed to kindle up my entire frame, along with a strong desire to write poetry. I began to pace backwards and forwards in the room, trying to shake off all thought of writing poetry; but the more I tried, the more strong the sensation became. It was so strong, I imagined that a pen was in my right hand, and a voice crying, “Write! Write!”

So McGonagall wrote. His first poem was a tribute to his friend, the Reverend George Gilfillan:

The first time I heard him speak,
’Twas in the Kinnaird Hall,
Lecturing on the Garibaldi movement,
As loud as he could bawl.

My blessing on his noble form,
and on his lofty head,
May all good angels guard him while he’s living,
And hereafter when he’s dead.

A female lobster is called a
hen
or a
chicken
.

A BARD IS BORN

McGonagall showed the poem to Reverend Gilfillan, who remarked diplomatically, “Shakespeare never wrote anything like this!” Encouraged, McGonagall dropped a copy into the mailbox of the
Weekly News
, hoping they might print it. They did...and he was off on a new career.

McGonagall already had a reputation for being an eccentric: His impromptu performances of Shakespeare’s plays at the factory where he worked were so bad they were funny, and his co-workers once rented a theater to watch him make a fool of himself alongside professional actors.

But it was McGonagall’s poetry that cemented his fame as a local nut. He sold his poems on the street and gave readings at local pubs. And as with his Shakespeare performances, his readings were so funny that people rented halls and subsidized his performances just so they could laugh at his work. Unfortunately, they also pelted him with pies, wet towels, rotten eggs, and garbage while he read his poems. It got so bad that McGonagall refused to perform unless a clergyman sat next to him onstage to keep people from throwing things.

OUCH!

How did McGonagall cope with the abuse? Though his poetry was awful, he never doubted his own talent and refused to believe that his audiences were there to laugh at him. But it was so unrelenting that, by the early 1890s, McGonagall began threatening (in verse) to leave the city forever. Would he really leave? In 1892 the
Scottish Leader
speculated that “...when he discovers the full value of the circumstance that Dundee rhymes with 1893, he may be induced to reconsider his decision and stay for yet a year.” McGonagall stayed until 1894, when he moved to Edinburgh. There he continued writing poetry until ill health forced him to lay down his pen forever. McGonagall passed away in 1902, at the age of 77, and was buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard. The grave remained unmarked until 1999, when the city of Edinburgh finally erected a plaque at the cemetery. The
Oxford Companion to English Literature
says he “enjoys a reputation as the world’s worst poet,” and more than a century after his death, his poems are still in print.

See for yourself: Virginia extends 95 miles further west than West Virginia.

A MCGONAGALL SAMPLER

So is William McGonagall the worst poet ever? Here are selections from his poetry to help you decide
.

ALAS! Sir John Ogilvy is dead, aged eighty-seven,

But I hope his soul is now in heaven;

He was a public benefactor in many ways,

Especially in erecting an asylum for imbecile children to spend their days.

—The Late Sir John Ogilvy

And from the British battleships a fierce cannonade did boom;

And continued from six in the morning till two o’clock in the afternoon.

And by the 26th of July the guns of Fort Moro were destroyed

And the French and Spaniards were greatly annoyed.

—The Capture of Havana

ALAS! Lord and Lady Dalhousie are dead, and buried at last,

Which causes many people to feel a little downcast.

—Death of Lord & Lady Dalhousie

Ye sons of Great Britain, I think no shame

To write in praise of brave General Graham!

Whose name will be handed down to posterity without any stigma,

Because, at the battle of El-Teb, he defeated Osman Digna.

—The Battle of El-Teb

Arabi’s army was about seventy thousand in all,

And, virtually speaking, it wasn’t very small.

—The Battle of Tel-el-Kebir

Beautiful city of Glasgow, I now conclude my muse,

And to write in praise of thee my pen does not refuse;

And, without fear of contradiction, I will venture to say

You are the second grandest city in Scotland at the present day!

—Glasgow

The New Yorkers boast about their Brooklyn Bridge,

But in comparison to thee it seems like a midge.

—To the New Tay Bridge

And when life’s prospects may at times appear dreary to ye,

Remember Alois Senefelder, the discoverer of Lithography.

—The Sprig of Moss

He told me at once what was ailing me;

He said I had been writing too much poetry,

And from writing poetry I would have to refrain,

Because I was suffering from inflammation of the brain.

—A Tribute to Dr. Murison

The Roman poet Virgil spent the equivalent of $92,000 on a funeral for his pet fly.

You know what these foods taste like, but have you ever wondered how they got their names? For that matter, how did the word
food
gets its name?

Whiskey.
This word is from the Gaelic
usquebaugh
, meaning “water of life.”

Lasagne.
Ancient Greeks used chamber pots called
lasanons
. So the Romans jokingly called any flat cooking pots
lasasum
. The food took on the name of its container.

Albacore.
From the Arabic
al-bakrah
(young camel). That’s how it tasted to some people.

Tutti-frutti.
Ice cream made with several fruits. “Tutti frutti” is Italian for “all fruits.”

Food.
The word was
foda
(“sustenance”) in Old English,
fode
in Middle English, and
food
in Modern English.

Pudding.
From
boudin
, a gooey French dish of sausage encased in the intestines of animals.

Pinto beans.
Pinto
is “paint” in Spanish. The beans were so named for their mottled skins.

Rutabaga.
The name comes from an Old Norse word meaning “baggy root.”

Crawfish (or crayfish).
Either way you pronounce it, this lobster-like critter got its name from the Old French word
crevisse
, meaning “crab.”