Uncle John’s 24-Karat Gold Bathroom Reader® (57 page)

When you’re born, your body contains only about one cup of blood.

MAN OF THE HOUR

On September 10, 2005, a
Progress
resupply ship blasted off from Kazakhstan bound for the International Space Station. Among its cargo were the walkie-talkie and other components for SuitSat-1. After
Progress
arrived at the ISS, the astronauts assembled the components and placed them inside the body of the spacesuit. They attached an antenna and a control panel to the suit’s helmet, then stuffed the suit full of dirty clothes to give it a more human form (and to get rid of the clothes).

Then on February 3, 2006, at the start of a six-hour spacewalk, Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarey eased SuitSat-1 out of the ISS airlock, switched it on, and gave it a final shove. “Goodbye Mr. Smith,” he said as the spacesuit slowly floated away. Footage of the launch of SuitSat-1 can be found online, as can photographs of SuitSat-1 floating above the earth. The images are beautiful, but they’re also kind of disturbing: SuitSat-1 looks like a dead astronaut drifting off into space.

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

SuitSat-1 only completed a couple of orbits around Earth before it started to malfunction. Tokarey and his partner on the spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bill McArthur, weren’t even back inside the space station before Mission Control in Houston reported that no more transmissions were being received from SuitSat-1.

It seemed like the satellite was dead...until ham radio enthusiasts all over the world began picking up faint signals. They were much weaker than expected, but the SuitSat-1 was still on the air. There are different theories to account for SuitSat’s troubles. The batteries may not have functioned properly in the intense cold of space. Or the radio might somehow have switched to a low power setting. Or the antenna, scrounged from parts on the ISS, may not have performed as well as expected, a problem made worse by the uncontrolled tumbling of the spacesuit.

Shortest U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice ever: Melville W. Fuller (1888–1910). He was 5’3”.

Amazingly, instead of dying out in two or three days as expected, SuitSat-1 stayed on the air for a full two weeks before finally falling silent on February 18 as it passed over North America. SuitSat-1 drifted in orbit for another seven months before burning up on re-entry on September 7, 2006.

EMPTY SUIT

SuitSat-1 was successful enough for ARISS to want to try the idea again. The group made plans for a much-improved SuitSat-2, this time with rechargeable batteries (powered by solar panels attached to the legs of the spacesuit), cameras transmitting live images to Earth instead of a single digital photograph, and a transponder that would allow ham radio enthusiasts in different parts of the world to talk to each other using SuitSat-2 as a relay.

But this was a SuitSat that would have no suit: In July 2009, the retired
Orlan
spacesuit that was set aside for the project had to be disposed of to free up room on the ISS for more important projects. Rather than wait for another suit to become available, ARISS built a metal box large enough to hold all of the SuitSat-2 components and used it instead. Renamed ARISSat-1, the satellite arrived at the ISS in January 2011 and was deployed during a spacewalk on August 3, 2011. It almost certainly won’t be the last such satellite tossed out the back of the International Space Station: ARISS has a few more ARISSats assembled and ready to go for the next time an opportunity arises; “tossing” may one day be a common (and cheap) method of putting satellites in orbit.

5 NON-HANDPRINTS IN
THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME

1.
Groucho Marx’s cigar

2.
John Wayne’s fist

3.
Al Jolson’s knee

4.
Jimmy Durante’s nose

5.
Whoopi Goldberg’s braids

Big mouth: The Australian Pelican’s bill can grow to 19 inches, the longest beak of any bird.

WHEN LIFE
WAS “SIMPLER”

We came across this piece in Barbara Swell’s book
Secrets of the Great Old-Timey Cooks
(shameless plug for the publisher:
nativeground.com
) and it made us think. The next time you think you’re too tired to cook dinner, consider a day in the life of Effie Price, who lived in a log cabin in a remote mountain cove in the Big Pine section of Madison County, North Carolina. Here’s her tale of a typical day as a 14-year-old in 1928
.

T
HE DAY BEGINS
“I got up at 5:00 a.m. to feed the hogs and chickens and gather the eggs by lantern-light. Then I helped my mother cook breakfast (in the wood cookstove). After eating, Mommy would wash the dishes while my brother Dewey and I milked the cows and put the milk in the spring box to cool. In spring, summer, and fall we’d go to the field with Poppy and work ’til dinner. We’d plant and hoe corn, dig ’taters (sweet and white), and tend the tobacco. We grew wheat and vegetables, too. After dinner and a 10-minute rest, we’d return to the fields and work ’til dark. Then it was time to milk the cows again by lantern-light. At night, we’d have a little supper, then quilt or sew before going to bed.

“Saturday was ‘washin’ day.’ We’d build a fire under the big iron pot that hung in the yard and haul water from the spring to heat. When the clothes dried we’d iron them with irons kept hot by the fire. Then we’d sweep the house and yard. (Back then, folks didn’t plant grass in their yards like they do now.) Sundays, we’d hitch up the horses to the wagon and give a ride to whomever we came across walking down the road to the Baptist church. If it was a school day, chores were done before and after school.

Sew What Else Is New

“My mother sewed all our clothes from cloth she bought on her monthly outing to Marshall, the nearest town. As a kid I tried
sewing, but my mother thought I’d tear up the machine running it backwards and didn’t want me to mess with it. So when she’d go to town, I’d have Dewey be lookout, and I learned to sew on my own. I stashed fabric under the bed, and one day I took out a pretty dress I’d sewed and sure surprised my mother. I sewed my first quilt at 13, made of feed sacks. The quilt I sleep under now is one my mother made from smoking-tobacco sacks. She’d keep some white, and dye some red, then sew them up. We made all our own sheets; we’d embroider the edges at night.

Phil Gilbert’s claim to fame: His shoe parlor in Vicksburg, Mississippi was the first to sell left and right shoes, as a pair, in a box (1884).

It Chore Was Fun

“Life wasn’t all work. If it snowed, Dewey and I would take our guitars and head over the mountain to play music at my Uncle’s in Spring Creek. In the fall, we’d have bean shellings, quilting bees, and corn husking parties. The first person to find a red ear of corn would get $5.00.

“Those were the good days. I was happy as a lark. We all were. Life was simpler then; you just worked hard and slept sound. We all got along and worked together. I don’t even remember being tired. I wouldn’t trade those days for anything in the world!”

REAL (FUNNY) FLYERS

You see them on telephone poles and bulletin boards at the grocery store. Here are some lines we’ve collected from actual flyers
.

“Do not take this flyer down. There is a very angry hornet hiding behind it who will sting you in the neck. See that bulge right there? That’s him.”

“Found: a nice pile of dog poop. If you’ve lost a pile of dog poop and this photo looks like your dog’s poop, then please come by and get it.”

“Lost cloud. Last seen in the sky above my house. Looks white, fluffy, drifty. May or may not repond to ‘Mr. Wispies.’”

“Missing unicorn. If you see it, you are probably high.”

“Missing: my imaginary friend Steve.”

SURREAL VIDEO GAMES

Not all video games are about scoring points or saving princesses
.

S
uper PSTW Action RPG
(2009).
The player controls a knight as he runs through the countryside, fighting enemies and collecting gold. But you have to do it fast—you’ll lose points the longer you wait. But how do you get the knight to do all those things? It’s ridiculously simple: Press the space bar. In fact, the “PSTW” in the title stands for “press space to win.”

Don’t Shoot the Puppy
(2006).
Unlike most games, where the object is to
do
something, the object of this game is to
not
do something. On one end of the screen is a huge gun; on the other is an animated puppy. If the player presses a key or moves the mouse even slightly, the cannon fires and blows off the puppy’s head, killing it. Game over. But if the player can go 10 seconds without lifting a finger, the puppy lives, and the game is won.

Desert Bus
(1995).
Created by the comedy duo Penn and Teller, this game has the player drive a tour bus through the uneventful desert from Tucson to Las Vegas. In real time. That takes eight continuous hours. (You can’t pause the game.) If you veer off the road, you crash, and the bus gets towed back to Tucson, also in real time. Each successful trip earns the player...one point.

4 Minutes and 33 Seconds of Uniqueness
(2009).
The object is to be the only person on the Internet playing the game for 4 minutes, 33 seconds. The actual “game” consists of a black-and-white screen counting up to 4:33.

You Only Live Once
(2009).
It’s not very realistic that video game characters get to come back and try again over and over after they “die.” This game takes death more seriously. If “Jemaine,” the game’s lead character, dies trying to rescue his girlfriend from the evil lizard who kidnapped her, he stays dead. The girlfriend mourns the death, the lizard is arrested, and a memorial is built. The game then places a data file on the player’s computer that prevents them from ever playing it again.

Pilot slang: The moment it becomes too dark to see the horizon is called “the twilight zone.”

THE _____ OF CANADA

Everyone compares themselves to something. Whether it’s the “Paris of the South” or the “Beethoven of TV Jingles,” it’s an easy way to communicate who you are
.

“The California of Canada”:
Okanagan Valley is located in the interior of British Columbia. Like California, the days there are warm and dry, and the nights are cool. Like California, there’s a desert to the south, skiing to the north. And like California, it has dozens of vineyards and wineries.

“The Provence of Canada”:
Provence is a coastal region of France known for its food and wine. Cowichan Valley (45 minutes north of Victoria, British Columbia) is home to lots of farm-to-table restaurants, wineries, and artisan cheesemakers, attracting food tourists and earning its nickname.

“The Thomas Edison of Canada”:
In 1882 Thomas Ahearn, a 27-year-old inventor and a native of Ottawa, founded a company to experiment with electricity and manufacture electric products when the technology was still in its infancy. Ahearn brought electric lights and electric street cars to Ottawa, and he invented the electric water heater, flatiron, and range.

“The Manchester of Canada”:
Galt, Ontario, was an agricultural community until the 1830s, when it switched to industrial production. That’s when it earned its nickname, borrowed from the smog-choked English city that boomed in the Industrial Revolution. (Unlike Manchester, Galt is no longer an independent city. In 1973 it was absorbed into the city of Cambridge, Ontario.)