Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® (10 page)

• Boxcars.
This is something that Uncle John can see right outside his window. A lot of freight is shipped by rail in the United States, and when the freight isn’t moving, the unused boxcars are parked on railroad spur lines (including the one across the street from the Bathroom Readers’ Institute) until the economy picks up and they’re needed again.

• Movie Tickets.
As expensive as a trip to the multiplex is nowadays, it’s still a lot cheaper than a weekend at the beach. People who can’t afford to take a vacation often compensate by going to the movies instead, causing ticket sales to rise in a recession.

• Donuts.
People who can’t afford a full breakfast in a restaurant will often trade down to a donut and coffee. Hot dog sales do well in hard times for the same reason: In the 1930s, they were known as “Depression sandwiches.”

• Laxatives.
When people are under stress and living on donuts and hot dogs...well, you figure it out.

• Lipstick.
Studies show that women who don’t have the money for a new dress or new shoes will spend $15 or $20 on lipstick instead. Belts, scarves, bracelets, and other fashion accessories that dress up old outfits also do well, as do home permanents and dye kits that offer a cheap alternative to hair salons.

• Alligators.
Most gators that end up as boots, handbags, and other designer goods are raised on farms. Sales of these items tend to crash during a recession (they’re too expensive
and
too flashy in hard times), and the alligator population on these farms explodes.

• Lightbulbs.
When Jack Welch took the helm at General Electric in 1981, the company made more than just lightbulbs, but he still swore by sales of bulbs as an indicator of where the economy was heading. “When people are affluent, they go to the store and buy what’s called ‘pantry inventory,’” he told an interviewer in 2001. “They’ll buy a pack of six or a pack of eight, and they’ll wait for the lights to go out. When times are tough, a light burns out, they’ll go buy one to replace the one went out. There are probably a thousand better indicators, but that one’s never been wrong.”

Banker slang for people who pay off their credit cards in full each month: “deadbeats.”

BEN THERE, DONE THAT

Where has this awesome quote page Ben all our lives?

“A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.”

—
Benjamin Franklin, statesman

“We have to try to score more points than they do.”

—
Ben Roethlisberger, QB, on how to win a Super Bowl

“We don’t point a pistol at our own forehead. That is not the way to conduct negotiations.”

—
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister

“Do unto others, then run.”

—
Benny Hill, comedian

“God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. You’ll know I’ve lost all my money.”

—
Ben Affleck, actor

“A fool may talk, but a wise man speaks.”

—
Ben Jonson, English poet

“If you do nothing long enough, something’s bound to happen.”

—
H. Jon Benjamin, comedian

“I’m not Jack Nicholson. I’m not Brando. But I do mumble.”

—
Benicio Del Toro, actor

“When a man recalls the good old days, he’s really thinking of his bad young days.”

—
Ben Stein, writer and actor

“Who is more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?”

—
Ben Kenobi, Jedi Master

“The magician and the politician have much in common: They both have to draw our attention away from what they are really doing.”

—
Ben Okri, Nigerian poet

“The disappointment of manhood succeeds the delusion of youth.”

—
Benjamin Disraeli, British prime minister

“Relax? How can you play golf and relax? You have to grip the club, don’t you?”

—
Ben Hogan, golf legend

“Bonnnnnnng!”

—
Big Ben, clock

Florida pharmacist Benjamin Green invented suntan lotion in 1944.

THERE’S A RECORD
FOR THAT?

Anybody can run fast or eat a bunch of hot dogs, but it takes true commitment to be the world-record prune-eater
.

•
BROOM-BALANCING.
Leo Bircher (Switzerland) holds the record for balancing a broom—on his nose—for a record time of two hours, one minute.

•
CHRISTMAS TREE-BALANCING.
David Downes (England) balanced a seven-foot-tall tree on his chin for 56.82 seconds.

•
TYPING.
In October 1987, Jens Seiler (Germany) typed 626 keystrokes, about 100 words, in a minute. More impressively, he typed the words backward.

•
BALLOON-STUFFING.
Ralf Schuler (Germany) holds two records: 1) the most people stuffed inside a latex balloon—23, and 2) the fastest time to stuff someone (himself) into a latex balloon—37.1 seconds.

•
PRUNE-EATING.
In 1984 Alan Newbold (USA) ate 150 dried plums in 31 seconds. (And then, presumably, a few hours later, Newbold set
another
record.)

•
WAITING.
Jeff Tweiten and John Goth (USA) queued up to see
Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones
outside a Seattle movie theater on January 1, 2002...and stayed there until the film opened four and a half months later, on May 16.

•
BEAN-EATING.
Kerry White (England) holds the world record for eating baked beans, consuming 12,547 beans (in sauce) in a 24-hour period. Barry Kirk (England) sat in a cold bath of baked beans for 100 hours in September 1986.

•
GUM-WRAPPER CHAIN.
Gary Duschl (USA) has been purchasing gum and collecting wrappers since 1965, and in 2004 he claimed the record for the world’s longest gum-wrapper chain. He’s still adding to it, and as of March 2011, it consisted of 1,581,159 gum wrappers and measured 66,835 feet—more than 12 miles.

When you blush, so does the lining in your stomach.

•
EAR-WIGGLING.
Not many people can wiggle their ears at all. Jitendra Kumar (India) wiggled his 147 times in one minute.

•
EXTREME HULA-HOOPING.
In 2000 Roman Schedler (Austria) hula-hooped for 71 seconds straight. That may not seem very long, but he did it with a 53-pound tractor tire.

•
DRUMMING.
Tim Waterston (USA) is one the world’s fastest drummers. In January 2002, he set a speed record, playing 1,407 beats in one minute...with his feet.

•
NAILING.
In October 1999, Chu-Tang-Cuong (Vietnam) drove 116 nails into a wooden board in just 11 minutes. The twist: He did it with his bare hand. (Ouch!)

•
PROPOSING.
In 1976 Keith Redman (USA) asked his girlfriend Beverly to marry him. She said no, the first of 8,801 rejections, a world record. (Happy ending: In 1999 Beverly finally said “Yes” after receiving Redman’s proposals at a rate of more than one per day for 23 years.)

•
COTTAGE CHEESE-EATING.
In 1984 Peter Altman (England) shoveled down three pounds of cottage cheese in four minutes. Three years later, Altman set the 30-second record, consuming half a pound of it on a British talk show.

•
COCKROACH-EATING.
Ken Edwards (England) ate 36 in a minute in 2001. A more extreme record holder is Travis Fessler (USA), who held 11 live cockroaches (each at least 2.5 inches long) for 10 seconds...in his mouth.

•
BARF-BAG COLLECTION.
Niek Vermeulen (Netherlands) possesses the world’s largest collection of airsickness bags He’s a frequent flyer, and as of March 2008, owned 5,468 distinct bags from more than 1,065 different airlines, along with 10,000 duplicates. (Note: They are all unused.)

In 2009 Israeli bikers protested motorcycle insurance rate hikes by staging protest rides in which they wore only underwear. Their slogan: “Insurance Is Stripping Us.”

CANADA’S CAPTAIN
UNDERPANTS

You’ve heard of clothing drives; here’s the story of an underwear drive that involved a whole lot of underwear...and a whole lot of driving
.

M
AN ON A MISSION

Brent King is a mechanical engineer in Calgary, the largest city in the province of Alberta. Like many big cities, Calgary has a homelessness problem, and in the fall of 2008 King was curious to see how the city’s social service agencies were tackling the issue. He was particularly impressed by the work an organization called the Mustard Seed was doing to help the homeless find jobs and housing and re-enter society. After visiting their facility, he asked if there was a problem he could help them solve. “They showed me their wish list, and on the top of it was men’s underwear,” he told the Montreal
Gazette
.

The people at Mustard Seed explained that while it’s common for people to give used clothing to homeless shelters and thrift shops, used underwear isn’t really the kind of thing that gets donated. And not many people think of donating new underwear, so homeless shelters rarely have enough.

ONE STRING ATTACHED

King formed a charity called Got Ginch (“ginch” is a slang term for men’s briefs) and funded it with thousands of dollars of his own money, plus thousands more raised from friends. Rather than buy underwear at retail prices, he asked a business associate in China to help him work directly with a textile mill overseas to save money. The associate, a native of Vancouver, B.C., agreed...on one condition. “He said, ‘I’ll do it only if you do Vancouver next.’” That was fine with King, but why stop there? He decided to fill an RV full of underwear and spend his summer vacation driving 3,600 miles across Canada from Vancouver to Halifax, Nova Scotia, distributing underwear to homeless shelters in 10 different cities as he went. He hit the road in June 2009, and by the time he finished his Cross-Canada Underwear Drive a few weeks later, he’d given away more than 25,000 pairs of men’s briefs. He did it again the following summer, this time raising enough money to give 30,000 pairs of underwear away. His goal for 2011: 35,000 pairs.

The cross-country tours have helped raise awareness of the issue, and many Canadian homeless shelters have reported increased underwear donations. King hopes to distribute even more in future Underwear Drives...and after years of prodding about why he doesn’t distribute underwear for
women
, he says he’s working on that too. “I acknowledge that the need exists and that it is at least as important as the need for men’s underwear,” he writes in his blog, “but I maintain that two guys traveling cross country with a truck load of women’s underwear is a little creepy. We are working to find a couple of like-minded ladies to take up the challenge.”

OTHER CANADIAN UNDERWEAR CRUSADERS

• The Underwear Affair.
The Underwear Affair is a charity race held by a number of Canadian charities to raise awareness for cancers that occur below the waist—including prostate, ovarian, testicular, bladder, and colorectal cancers—which make up 40 percent of all cancers. Weeks ahead of the race, volunteers promote the event by wearing skivvies over their clothing. On race day, participants run the 10k race or walk the 5k walk in their underwear or in underwear-themed costumes. “There’s absolutely no shame in bringing a little awareness to down there-ness,” says the website for the B.C. Cancer Foundation.

• Mark McIntyre, a.k.a.
GuyAtHome.com
.
Who says you’ve gotta run a race in order to raise money for a good cause? In October 2010, McIntyre, a two-year survivor of testicular cancer (the most common cancer in males aged 15 to 29), fired up some webcams in a rented Toronto loft and spent 25 days lounging around in his underpants. That’s it. For every “like” he received on Facebook during those 25 days, underwear maker Stanfield’s agreed to donate $1 to the Canadian Cancer Society. “Since they’re an underwear company, they’re about as close to testicles as any company is,” McIntyre says. He scored 50,000 “likes” and raised $50,000 for the charity.

Jon Stewart’s older brother, Larry Leibowitz, is the COO of the New York Stock Exchange.

IRONIC, ISN’T IT?

There’s nothing like a good dose of irony to put the problems of day-to-day life into proper perspective
.

L
OW-GRADE IRONY
In 2011 the U.S. National Council on Teacher Quality announced that it would begin using letter grades to evaluate teaching instructors. The teachers objected to the plan, claiming letter grades are too simplistic to accurately measure anyone’s achievements.

A FISTFUL OF IRONY

• In January 2007, Pakistan’s
Daily Times
reported on violence at Dawood Engineering College in Karachi. “What started as an exchange of words,” said the
Times
, “snowballed into a fistfight. At issue was a poster urging students not to fight on campus. The fight was over who would put up the poster.”

• Inside the Erie County (New York) Correctional Facility, James Conlin and Lawrence Mule began arguing over a bag of potato chips. Before long, fists were flying...until a man standing nearby stepped in to break up the fight. What’s ironic about that? Conlin and Mule are veteran prison guards; the man who broke up the fight was an inmate. (Both guards were suspended.)

HIS ©UNNING PLAN FAILED