Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (65 page)

6.
His Accidency

7.
Uncle Jumbo

Origins of 4 Native American tribal names:

1.
Apache:
the Zuni word for “enemy.”

2.
Cherokee:
the Creek word for “people of different speech.”

3.
Hopi:
from
hopituh,
or “peaceful ones”

4.
Sioux:
Chippewa name for a kind of snake.

State with the most pollution:

Texas

5 Most-Read U.S. Newspapers

1.
Wall St. Journal

2.
USA
Today

3.
L.A.
Times

4.
New York Times

5.
Washington Post

26 Things Elvis demanded be kept at Graceland at all times

Fresh ground beef, Hamburger buns, Case of Pepsi, Case of orange soda, Brownies, Milk, half & half, 6 cans of biscuits, Chocolate ice cream, Hot dogs, Sauerkraut, Potatoes, Onions, Bacon, Fresh fruit, Peanut butter, Banana pudding, Meat loaf, 3 packs each of Spearmint, Juicy Fruit, Double-mint gum, Cigarettes, Dristan, Super Anahist, Contac, Sucrets

Only female ducks quack; the males coo, hoot, honk, and grunt, but they don’t quack.

Better living through bathroom technology.

Inventor:
Brooke Pattee of Lake Forest, California

Product:
Toilet “landing lights”—a lighting system that illuminates the inside of your toilet bowl so you can see it in the dark.

How It Works:
A transparent tube containing wiring and several lights is positioned beneath the upper rim of the toilet bowl. When you lift or lower the lid, the lights come on, bathing the inside of the bowl in light so that you can take care of business without blinding yourself in the middle of the night by turning on the bathroom light. An automatic timer turns the lights off after several minutes.

Inventor:
Japanese electronics giant Matsushita

Product:
An electric toilet seat that uses gold dust to filter out unpleasant smells.

How It Works:
When a person sits on the toilet seat, an electric fan begins blowing the air in the toilet bowl into a “deodorization device” containing the gold dust and zeolite; they act as a catalyst to oxidize and deodorize ammonia and other compounds. Another filter containing manganese removes compounds containing sulfur. Toilet seat air filters are popular in Japan, where “lavatories at home are often so small and airless that smells hang around for some time.”

Inventor:
Karel Dvorak of Toronto, Ontario

Product:
A disposable diaper with a moisture sensor that sets off a flashing LED light when wetness is detected.

How It Works:
A clothespin-like moisture sensor is clipped to the baby’s diaper in such a way that it makes contact with the baby’s skin. The sensor compares the electrical conductivity of the
skin to that of a special layer of material inside the diaper. When the diaper becomes wet, the voltage changes and the LED light begins to flash, notifying mom that it’s time for a new diaper.

Half of all coffee drinkers drink it black.

Inventor:
Twyford, a toilet manufacturer in Cheshire, England

Product:
The Versatile Interactive Pan (VIP), a toilet that analyzes your urine and stool samples for dietary deficiencies, compiles a shopping list of needed nutritional items, then e-mails your local supermarket to order the foods.

How It Works:
“If, for example, a person is short on roughage one day,” says Twyford spokesperson Terry Wooliscroft, “an order of beans or lentils will be sent from the VIP to the supermarket and delivered the same day.” The toilet can also e-mail a doctor if it detects health problems. Added bonuses: The seat is voice activated and the toilet flushes automatically. About the only thing you can’t do with the VIP is buy one—it’s still in development. Twyford expects to have it ready for market by 2006.

Inventor:
UltraTech Products of Houston, Texas

Product:
The Flatulence Filter Seat Cushion—a foam seat cushion that doubles as a rear-end odor eater.

How It Works:
The foam cushion contains a hidden “super-activated” carbon filter that absorbs unfortunate odors as soon as they are created. The filter is hidden inside the cushion’s gray tweed fabric, so no one has to know it’s there—for all anyone knows, it’s just another seat cushion. The company also makes a smaller filter pad that you can wear inside your underpants, “for protection when you are not at your seat.”

By Any Other Name:
“Originally the seat cushion was named the TooT TrappeR. At the time, it seemed like the perfect name. In time, doctors became interested in the cushion, but felt that some would think it was a joke. For this reason, we changed the name to the Flatulence Filter Seat Cushion. This resulted in a more clinical-sounding name.”

George H. W. Bush was the youngest Navy pilot of World War II. (He got shot down.)

People do some ridiculous things—even when they call 911. Here are some more of our favorite transcripts of 911 calls, from Leland Gregory’s book, What’s the Number for 911?

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one, what’s the nature of your emergency, please?”

Caller:
“I’m trying to reach nine-eleven, but my phone doesn’t have an eleven on it.”

Dispatcher:
“This is nine-eleven.”

Caller:
“I thought you just said it was nine-one-one.”

Dispatcher:
“Yes, ma’am. Nine-one-one and nine-eleven are the same thing.”

Caller:
“Honey, I may be old, but I’m not stupid.”

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one. Please state your emergency.”

Caller:
“Yeah, okay. Bill got hurt.”

Dispatcher:
“Who is Bill?”

Caller:
“Just some dude I know. We were tossing the Nerf around, and the TV fell and cut up his leg…like.”

Dispatcher:
“We’ll send someone right over.”

Caller (to someone in the room):
“Get the keg outta here, dude!”

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one. What’s the nature of your emergency?”

Caller:
“My wife is pregnant, and her contractions are only two minutes apart!”

Dispatcher:
“Is this her first child?”

Caller:
“No, you idiot! This is her husband!”

Dispatcher:
“Nine-one-one.”

Caller:
“Yeah, I’m having trouble breathing. I’m all out of breath. Damn…I think I’m going to pass out.”

Dispatcher:
“Sir, where are you calling from?”

Caller:
“I’m at a pay phone. North and Foster. Damn…”

Dispatcher:
“Sir, an ambulance is on the way. Are you an asthmatic?”

Caller:
“No…”

Dispatcher:
“What were you doing before you started having trouble breathing?”

Caller:
“Running from the police.”

Composer Irving Berlin is the only Academy Award presenter to give an Oscar to himself.

More proof that politicians don’t deserve much respect these days.

“We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.”

—Al Gore

“Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25.”

—Sen. Mary Anne Tebedo (R-CO)

“I can’t believe that we are going to let a majority of people decide what’s best for this state.”

—Rep. John Travis (D-LA)

“What is the state of North Carolina going to do about its bludgeoning prison population?”

—Sen. Maggie Tinsman (R-IA)

“We don’t want to open a box of Pandoras.”

—Gov. Bruce King (D-NM)

“What right does Congress have to go around making laws just because they deem it necessary?”

—Marion Barry

“She’s a wonderful, wonderful person, and we’re looking to a happy and wonderful night…uh, life.”

—Sen. Ted Kennedy, about his then-fiancee

“It’s like an Alcatraz around my neck.”

—Thomas Menino, Boston mayor on the shortage of city parking

“Our cabinet is always unanimous—except when we disagree.”

—British Columbia premier William Vander Zalm

“I don’t know anyone here that’s been killed by a handgun.”

—Rep. Avery Alexander (R-LA)

“What’s a man got to do to get in the top fifty?”

—President Bill Clinton, on a survey ranking the Lewinsky scandal as the 53rd most significant story of the century

John Quincy Adams and Dwight D. Eisenhower were the only bald presidents (so far).

Here’s a sports trivia question for you: Which U.S. president threatened to ban college football, on the grounds that it was becoming too violent?
Answer:
Theodore Roosevelt. Here’s the story of how football nearly pummeled itself into extinction.

By the late 1880s, American football was beginning to spread from the original handful of eastern colleges to schools in other parts of the country. Notre Dame started its football program in 1887, and the University of Southern California followed a year later; Stanford and the University of California both launched programs in 1893. By 1897 teams were popping up all over the country.

Yale University remained the dominant force in American football—it lost only three games in the first 10 years of intercollegiate play. And because coach Walter Camp dominated Yale’s program and had been so influential in shaping the modern game, his authority at the center of American football was unchallenged.

But football was too much fun to remain the exclusive preserve of pampered “college boys.” As the sport caught on in universities across the nation, athletic clubs in the surrounding communities began to form their own football leagues. So did church parishes, community groups, businesses, and small towns itching to earn big reputations. Regular play between such teams soon led to the same kinds of traditional rivalries and fierce grudge matches that by now were an entrenched part of the college game.

As the violence of these “semi-pro” leagues escalated beyond even that of college football, the sport returned ever closer to the anarchy of its medieval roots. In some areas of the country, Stephen Fox writes in Big
Leagues,
semi-pro football became little more than “a formalized excuse for beating up men from other communities.”

Honeybees are not native to North America. They were introduced by explorers and colonists.

Twenty-one people died playing football during the 1904 season; another 23 would die the following year. Only a handful of those killed had been playing on college teams—the majority had been playing on semi-pro teams. But the college teams were still the organizing force behind football, and in the middle of the 1905 season, President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a football fan, summoned representatives from three of the major football powers—Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—to the White House and ordered them to clean up the sport. “Brutality and foul play,” he told them, “should receive the same summary punishment given to a man who cheats at cards.”

Roosevelt was no shrinking violet when it came to physical contests: The president broke his right arm while “stick fighting” and would eventually lose the sight in his left eye from a boxing injury. And he resumed stick fighting and boxing as soon as these injuries “healed.” So if
he
was concerned about violence in football, there really was a problem.

Harvard, Yale, and Princeton left the White House meeting promising to do better, but football didn’t really change. And football’s image was so tattered that some colleges were ready to ban the game with or without presidential support: Columbia abolished its football program in 1905 and did not reinstate it until 1915. Stanford and the University of California replaced their programs with rugby the same year. “The game of football,” U.C.’s president Benjamin Wheeler declared, “must be made over or go.”