Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (5 page)

At a Belgrade hotel:

“Restauroom open daily.”

Outside an Athens shop:

“Park one hour. Later dick dock goes the money clock.”

In a Rome hotel room:
“Please dial 7 to retrieve your auto from the garbage.”

In menu in Nepal:
“Complimentary glass wine or bear.”

In a Paris guidebook:
“To call a broad from France, first dial 00, then the country’s code and then your number.”

In a Tokyo rental car:
“When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.”

Detour sign in Japan:
“Stop: Drive Sideways”

At a Seoul hotel desk:
“Choose twin bed or marriage size; we regret no King Kong size.”

In a Chinese menu:
“Cold Shredded Children and Sea Blubber in Spicy Sauce”

On packaging for a kitchen knife in Korea:
“Warning: Keep out of children.”

On an Italian train:
“Water not potatoble.”

Good start: A one-day-old antelope can run 23 mph.

Ever wonder where these words come from? Here are the interesting stories behind them.

Meaning:
A distress signal

Origin:
“Mayday!—the international radio distress signal—has nothing to do with the first of May. It represents the pronunciation of the French
m’aider,
‘help me,’ or the latter part of the phrase
venez m’aider,
‘come help me.’” (From
Word Mysteries & Histories,
by the editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries)

Meaning:
A large building, usually of the medieval period, fortified as a stronghold

Origin:
“Castle was one of the earliest words adopted by the British from their Norman conquerors. Originally hailing from the Latin
castellum
(diminutive of
castrum,
‘fort’), it reminds us that Old English also acquired
castrum,
still present in such place-names as Doncaster and Winchester. From Old French’s
chastel
(a version of
castel)
came the word
château
(circumflex accent marking the lost ‘s’).” (From
The Secret Lives of Words,
by Paul West)

Meaning:
A combination of businesses formed to regulate prices, or of political interest groups in order to promote a particular cause or legislation

Origin:
“The word comes from the Italian
cartello.
In the 16th century it meant a written challenge to a duel. In the 17th century it came to mean an agreement between warring nations concerning the exchange of prisoners of war. In the 20th century it acquired its meaning of an association of producers who seek to obtain monopoly advantages for their members.

“Today the term refers chiefly to international associations seeking to control a world market by setting prices, restricting production, or allocating sales territories among their members.” (From
Fighting Words,
by Christine Ammer)

Men of few words: 20 of the first 30 U.S. presidents did not have middle names.

Meaning:
Gigantic, colossal

Origin:
“The legend of a giant named
Gargantua
had existed in French folklore for at least a century before François Rabelais wrote his masterpiece,
Gargantua and Pantagruel,
in 1532. Just before the giantess Gargamelle gave birth to Gargantua she consumed sixteen large casks, two barrels, and six jugs full of tripe. Emerging from his mother’s left ear, he proceeded to cry, ‘Give me a drink! a drink! a drink!’ Given the enormous size of Gargantua and everything that surrounds him, it is no wonder that from his name the adjective was formed.” (From
Inventing English: The Imaginative Origins of Everyday Expressions,
by Dale Corey)

Meaning:
A short, memorable phrase

Origin:
“All slogans, whether they be catchy advertising phrases or the rallying cries of political parties, are direct descendants of Gaelic battle cries. The word itself derives from the
sluagh-ghairm
(the battle cry of the Gaels). Gaelic soldiers repeated these cries, usually the name of their clan or clan leader, in unison as they advanced against an enemy. Over the years the word came to describe any catchy phrase inducing people to support a cause or a commercial product.” (From
The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins,
by Robert Hendrickson)

Meaning:
A severe recurring headache

Origin:
“Migraine had its beginning as a word in the Greco-Latin parts
hemi-,
‘half,’ and
cranium,
‘skull,’ which is descriptive of the violent headache that attacks one-half of the head.” (From
Word Origins,
by Wilfred Funk)

Meaning:
An official residence of royalty or a high dignitary

Origin:
“The word comes through Old French from the Latin
Palatium,
the name of the Palatine hill in Rome, where the house of the emperor (Augustus) was situated.” (From
The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable)

Ukulele
means “jumping flea” in Hawaiian.

Here’s proof that Andy Warhol was right when he said that “in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

T
HE
STAR: Steven Thoburn, a greengrocer in Sunderland, England

THE HEADLINE:
In for a Penny, In for a Pound: Brits Chip in to Help Greengrocer Fight the System
—The Metric System

WHAT HAPPENED:
In July 2001, a woman walked into Thoburn’s market stall and asked for a pound of bananas, so Thoburn sold her a pound of bananas. Not long afterward, his stall was raided by agents of the Sunderland city council, who charged him with refusing to convert from pounds and ounces to the metric system as required by the European Union. He was later convicted of two counts of violating the Weights and Measures Act of 1985 and sentenced to six months’ probation.

By that point the court costs had climbed to more than £75,000. The Sunderland council promised not to sue for court costs unless Thoburn appealed his conviction and lost. Fearing bankruptcy, he agreed to give up the fight.

THE AFTERMATH:
Thoburn’s case resonated with British citizens who feared losing their autonomy—not to mention their their traditional pints of ale, pints of milk, and even the country mile—to unelected bureaucrats in the European Union. Supporters raised more than £100,000 for a defense fund, prompting Thoburn to resume his appeal. At last report, he’s still fighting his conviction. “All I did was sell a pound of bananas to a woman who asked for a pound of bananas,” he says. “What’s wrong with that?”

THE STAR:
Lisa Gebhart, a 25-year-old fundraiser for the Democratic Party

THE HEADLINE:
Pushy White House Intern Proves a Picture is Worth a Thousand Words and Then Some

WHAT HAPPENED:
In 1996 Gebhart went to a fundraiser for then-President Bill Clinton. She wanted to shake hands with the president, so she made her way up to the front of the rope line just as he was approaching. “I was all beaming,” she says, “just ten feet away from him. Then someone pushed me from behind, trying to get in there, very rude….I had seen Monica Lewinsky around, but I didn’t know her. She couldn’t wait to get to Clinton.” Lewinsky got a hug; all Gebhart got was a handshake.

Odds that a phone number in L.A. is unlisted: 1 in 3.

When news of Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky broke in 1998, footage of the 1996 hug, with a smiling Gebhart standing next to Lewinsky, became one of the most famous images of the Clinton presidency.

THE AFTERMATH:
By the time the scandal broke, Gebhart had met a Welshman named Dean Longhurst over the Internet and was communicating with him by e-mail. Longhurst asked what Gebhart looked like. “I e-mailed him, ‘Watch the news.’”

“When I saw her in real life,” Longhurst told reporters in April 2001, “I thought she was even more beautiful.” The two eventually met, fell in love, and got married.

THE STAR:
Clint Hallam, a 48-year-old New Zealand man who lost his right hand in an “industrial accident”

THE HEADLINE:
Man
Takes Hands-Off Approach to Hands-On Surgery; Still, You’ve Got to Hand It to Doctors for Trying

WHAT HAPPENED:
Hallam made medical history in September 1998 when a team of microsurgeons in Lyons, France, successfully attached the right forearm of a dead Frenchman to his right arm, replacing the forearm he claimed to have lost in an industrial accident a few years earlier. It was the world’s first successful hand transplant. Bonus: Because the surgery was so experimental, the surgery and a lifetime supply of anti-rejection drugs were provided free.

Hallam qualified for the groundbreaking surgery following months of interviews and psychological testing. He was evaluated to determine not just whether he was emotionally capable of living with another man’s hand attached to his body, but also whether he was likely to stick to the rigorous physical and drug regimens necessary to prevent his body from rejecting the forearm.

But the battery of tests failed to reveal that Hallam was lying about his “industrial job accident”—he was actually an ex-con and lost the limb in a chainsaw accident he suffered while serving time for fraud. He also turned out to be spectacularly unsuited for the surgery.

The diamond is the only gem composed of a single element (carbon).

Hallam’s new hand progressed to the point that he could write with it, hold a fork, and feel temperatures and pain. But then he went off his anti-rejection drugs and stopped coming in for checkups.

THE AFTERMATH:
Hallam’s body rejected his hand, and on February 2, 2001, he had to have it surgically removed. (The second surgery wasn’t free: Hallum had to pay $4,000.) Says Dr. Nadey Hakim, “We gave him the chance of a lifetime and he ruined it.”

THE STAR:
“Two-Ton” Tony Galento, a saloon bouncer and professional boxer who lived in Orange, New Jersey, in the late 1930s

THE HEADLINE:
Two-Ton Tony Flattens the Champ

WHAT HAPPENED:
Two-Ton Tony wasn’t much of a boxer; at 5'9", 240 pounds with a shape like a beer barrel, about all he was good at was throwing clumsy—but powerful—left hooks. His training technique consisted of sitting in the bar of New York’s Plaza Hotel with his girlfriend and consuming huge quantities of beer, pasta, and cigars while his sparring partners jogged the footpaths of Central Park without him. “Why should I pay dem punks all dat money,” he explained, “and then go out and run in the rain myself?”

His brush with the big time came in 1939, when he was inexplicably signed to fight Joe Louis in a championship bout at Yankee Stadium. “I’ll moider da bum,” Two-Ton Tony predicted. Needless to say, Louis was as shocked as everybody else when Two-Ton Tony clocked him with a haymaker early in the fight and laid him out flat on the canvas. The blow turned out to be little more than a wakeup call, however: Louis quickly made it back to his feet and proceeded to beat Two-Ton Tony so savagely that frightened ringsiders begged the referee to stop the fight, which he finally did in the fourth round. It took 23 stitches to close the cuts on Galento’s face and healing his wounded pride took even more effort. For years afterward he blamed the referee for ending the fight “just when tings was goin’ my way.”

THE AFTERMATH:
Two-Ton Tony fought 114 fights between 1929 and 1944 and won 82 of them. In 1947, by then up to 275 pounds, he turned to professional wrestling. His fans had not forgotten him—he sold out his first wrestling fight, and more than 2,000 people had to be turned away. He died in 1979.

The first person to wear silk stockings: England’s Queen Elizabeth I. They were a gift.

Wry observations from Gore Vidal, one of America’s greatest authors and most savvy satirists.

“A good deed never goes unpunished.”

“Since no one can ever know for certain whether or not his own view of life is the correct one, it is absolutely impossible for him to know if someone else’s is the wrong one.”

“Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half.”

“ ‘I just sort of drifted into it.’ That’s almost always the explanation for everything.”