Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (56 page)

The United States produces (18%) and consumes (25%) the most energy in the world.

THE VERDICT:
A judge awarded Bowron $42,000 at the expense of the Jannali Inn, but ruled that Lucock wasn’t liable for Bowron’s legal bills. Why? Lucock “was so drunk that he didn’t even remember putting the pork chops on his feet.”

THE PLAINTIFF:
Suzanne Vasquez

THE DEFENDANT:
Wal-Mart

THE LAWSUIT:
Vasquez claimed to have developed epilepsy after a 13-pound ham came crashing down on her head as she reached up to check its label. She said the accident, which occurred in 1997, had caused her to “hear cement grinding in her head” and sued for $500,000. Wal-Mart attorneys said it was Vasquez’s fault—the ham hung on a peg out of customers’ reach, and was “accessible only to Wal-Mart employees...by ladder.”

THE VERDICT:
Wal-Mart won.

THE PLAINTIFFS:
Gregory Roach and Gordon Falkner

THE DEFENDANT:
Para-Chem Co.

THE LAWSUIT:
In 1998 the two plaintiffs, carpet installers for Callahan Carpet House, decided to use an all-weather outdoor adhesive inside a client’s home, ignoring the warning on the label: “Do not use indoors because of flammability.” Only when a hot water tank clicked on did they realize the severity of their goof. The fumes from the adhesive ignited, then the entire three and a half gallon container exploded, leaving Roach and Falkner burned over most of their bodies. Roach sued the adhesive manufacturer, Para-Chem, for $20 million; Falkner sought $15 million.

THE VERDICT:
Initially five of the eight jurors sided with Para-Chem. But the judge ordered deliberations to continue until at least six jurors agreed on the verdict. When the jury returned, to Para-Chem’s shock, the tally was 6–2 in favor of Roach and Falkner. They got $5 million and $3 million, respectively.

The official Boy Scout handshake is done with the left hand.

Why is Uncle John’s dog, Porter, so lucky? Because he gets to spend his days at the BRI. Here are some other fortunate animals
.

C
AT ON A...

Adria Bryan couldn’t figure out why people were flashing their lights at her as she was driving to work in Rhyl, Wales. “I thought I may have left my handbag on the roof but it was on the seat next to me so I carried on.” Finally one driver pulled up close and pointed to her roof. Turns out her 14-year-old cat, Joe, was up there. “I must have been doing 60,” she said, “but Joe clung on for dear life.” She said the cat had fallen asleep on top of the car, adding, “He’s a very heavy sleeper.”

Lucky Again:
Just days later a Bull Terrier attacked Joe. He suffered three cracked ribs and a punctured lung—but survived that, too. “It’s unbelievable he’s got through the week,” said a thankful Bryan.

FISH STORY

Leicestershire, England, police officers arrived at the scene of an auto accident and immediately noticed that the inside of the car was soaking wet. The driver, 23-year-old Sophia Underhill, told officers, “I think I’ve killed my fish.” (She had been transporting her pet goldfish, Bercy, from her family home in London.) Sergeant Mark Watling frantically searched the car for the pet, to no avail. A short time later, officers clearing glass from the road found the fish—15 feet from the car. They rushed the fish to paramedics, who were able to revive it in a cardboard box of water. “Thankfully,” Sergeant Watling told reporters, “this incident ended happily.”

NO TANKS

Somebody tossed the contents of a fish tank into a street drain in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. A passerby saw the plants and pebbles, along with some dead fish...but one small goldfish still seemed to be alive. A crowd gathered as local residents tried to remove the drain grate—but they couldn’t do it. So they called the RSPCA, but they couldn’t get it off, either. So
they
called the city’s council, and after a three-hour, 11-person rescue attempt, William—the name they gave the goldfish—was saved. RSPCA inspector Sue Craig was displeased with whoever dumped William. “Goldfish may not be as cute as cats or dogs,” she said, “but they still deserve our respect.”

Nothing to envy: A dog can recognize its own urine markings a year after making them.

NO QUIERO TACO BELL

In August 2003, a Chihuahua in a New York City park was attacked by a domesticated hawk, part of a program to keep the park pigeon- and rat-free. Bystanders rushed over to aid the dog, which was later treated for puncture wounds. Falconer Thomas Cullen, in charge of the park’s four hawks, defended his bird’s actions, saying, “I’m absolutely certain my bird mistook it for a rat.” The program has been grounded until further notice.

LEMME OUT!

In 2004 an Austrian man was involved in a car crash on an icy highway. When he got out he heard a hissing noise, so he opened the hood, expecting to see a leaky radiator. But what he saw was an angry cat stuck in the engine compartment. It had been there for the entire 40-mile car trip and the crash that ended it. Mechanics had to remove part of the engine to free the cat, but it survived the accident unharmed and was reunited with its surprised owner, the driver’s next-door neighbor.

THE HOSE KNOWS

In November 2003, 12-year-old Menelaos Fischer of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, lost his pet hamster, Jinny. He’d only had it for a month when it escaped from its cage. Then one day about six weeks later, his father heard a scratching sound in his shop vacuum. The hamster? Yes! Jinny must have crawled up the vacuum hose—which is similar to the hamster’s “tube” cage—and made itself at home. The animal probably foraged for food at night and brought it back to the shop vac. “My best Christmas present,” Menelaos wrote to the local paper, “is something money can’t buy.”

A Groaner:
What kind of coffee was served on the
Titanic
? Sanka.

Franklin Roosevelt had White House matches stamped “Stolen From the White House.”

On
page 56
we told you about a British company’s poll of the world’s most difficult-to-translate words. Here’s their list of the 10 English words voted most difficult to translate:

A
ND THE WINNERS ARE:

10. Kitsch.
“An item, usually of poor quality, that appeals to common or lowbrow tastes.” (Need examples? Stop by Uncle John’s house.)

9. Chuffed.
A British word. Comes from
chuff
(“puffed with fat”) and means “proud, satisfied, or pleased.”

8. Bumf.
More Brit-speak. A shortened version of
bumfodder
, it once meant “toilet paper,” but now refers to paperwork in general.

7. Whimsy.
“A quaint or fanciful quality.”

6. Spam.
The luncheon meat, not the junk e-mail.

5. Googly.
A term from cricket, a sport played in England and its former colonies. Means “an off-breaking ball with an apparent leg-break action on the part of the bowler.” To explain the meaning of googly, you first have to explain the game of cricket—that’s what makes this word so difficult to translate. “I am from Lithuania,” says translator Jurga Zilinskiene. “We simply do not have googlies in Lithuania.”

4. Poppycock.
“Nonsense; empty writing or talk.” From the Dutch word
pappekak
, which translates literally as “soft dung.”

3. Serendipity.
Finding valuable, useful, or pleasant things that you haven’t been searching for; happy accidents.

2. Gobbledygook.
Wordy, unintelligible nonsense.

...and the most difficult-to-translate word in English is:

1. Plenipotentiary.
“A special ambassador or envoy, invested with full powers to negotiate or transact business.”

In an average year, 13 Americans are killed by vending machines that fall on them.

They say that the desert can play tricks on you. If that’s the case, then California’s Death Valley is the trickiest of them all
.

M
OVE ON OVER

While traveling through the hot California desert in 1915, a mining prospector named Joseph Crook made a startling discovery: the rocks had trails behind them—as if they had slid across the desert floor all by themselves. That portion of desert is now known as Racetrack Playa in northwestern Death Valley National Park, and curious people travel from great distances to witness one of nature’s most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley.

Happy Trails

These otherwise ordinary rocks are somehow transported across a flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them. The stones come in every size and shape, from pebbles to half-ton boulders. The tracks they leave also vary. Some rocks travel only a few feet; others go for hundreds of yards, although they may have started right next to each other. The trails go every which way, crossing and looping, even doubling back on themselves. Many rocks carve zigzag paths along the
playa
(Spanish for “beach”), and some have even made complete circles. But nowhere is there a trace of what propelled the rocks—no footprints or tire tracks, nothing to reveal what force pushed the hundreds of pounds of rock.

Weird Science

Although geologists have yet to prove their method of movement, they’ve offered quite a few theories—most of them having to do with wind, rain, and in some cases, ice. (Some people contend that aliens are to blame.) Even recent GPS studies of the rocks fail to give a concrete explanation. The fact of the matter is that Death Valley is the deepest hole in the Western Hemisphere and one of the warmest places on Earth—a veritable “hotbed” of strange phenomena. All scientists know for sure is that yes, the rocks move—a lot. But to this day, no one has ever seen one in motion.

Makes sense: The Vietnamese call it the American War.

Here’s a batty bit of World War II history you may not have heard before
.

B
AT MAN

In the days and weeks following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, a lot of people wrote letters to President Roosevelt. Some wrote to express their sympathy with the victims or their outrage at the attack; others made suggestions about how to fight back against Japan.

One man, a dentist from Irwin, Pennsylvania, wanted to talk about bats. His name was Lytle S. Adams, and he had recently been to the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, home to one of the largest bat colonies in North America. When Adams learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, his thoughts returned to the bats he’d seen—could they be useful to the war effort? He was convinced they could.

COM-BAT

In his letter to the president, Adams explained that bats are capable of carrying more than their own weight in flight. In many species, for example, the mother bat carries two or even three of her young as she searches for food. If bats could carry their children, Adams reasoned, why couldn’t they carry tiny bombs?

The dentist’s plan went further: Bats hate sunlight, so if bats carrying time-delayed incendiary devices could be released over a Japanese city shortly before dawn, as the sun rose, the bats would seek refuge from the light. Many would roost in the eaves and attics of buildings—a great number of which were made of flammable materials like wood, bamboo, and paper soaked in fish oil. When the firebombs detonated, thousands of tiny fires would start in buildings all over the city.

Not only that, bats typically hide out of sight in hard-to-reach places, and that would make the fires difficult to detect. By the time they were discovered, the fires would be well established but still small enough at first (each bat would weigh less than half an ounce, so the bombs would have to be small, too) that people would have a fighting chance to escape. Casualties would be lower than with conventional firebombs, which weighed hundreds of pounds and engulfed entire buildings on impact, giving occupants no warning and no chance to escape. For all their destructive power, Adams believed that “bat bombs” could be a more humane weapon of war than regular firebombs.

Why not
moronology
?
Morology
is the study of ridiculous conversation.