Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (21 page)

Where else can you find a bunch of rampaging-bovine stories—each complete with its own pithy Beatles-related title? Only in
Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader
!

B
LACK COW RUNNING IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
Moo-Cow (described by police as “fat”) escaped from her pasture in Grafton, Massachusetts, in the middle of the night in February 2007 and ran five miles down Route 140. “She was mad,” said resident Paula Tripp. A local rancher lassoed Moo-Cow, but then “the man let go of the rope,” said Tripp, “and I grabbed it and got dragged up the street. There was no stopping this thing.” In the end, the numerous cops and residents in the posse just had to wait for the Scottish Highlander to get tired and take a rest. As dawn approached, Moo-Cow finally gave up and was returned home. (The following day, the barbed-wire fence around her pasture was fortified.)

The hills were alive with the sound of moo-sic in July 2005 when 10 members of a Bavarian family were attacked by a herd of 40 cows. The family members (who ranged from infant to elderly) were crossing a meadow in the foothills of the Austrian Alps when one of the children tried to pet a calf. Bad idea: The protective mother cow interpreted it as an attack and charged the family. Then her bovine companions charged, too—sending picnic supplies flying and the family scattering. An elderly member of the family suffered a heart attack, a seven-year-old was seriously injured, and many other scrapes and bruises were reported, but, thankfully, no one was killed.

After a cow escaped from a livestock market in Visalia, California, in 2008, she wandered into a nearby tire shop. “It seemed like a nice cow at first,” said employee Mario Sanchez, “but I knew something was wrong when it kept coming at me.” The cow picked up Sanchez and tossed him onto the tire changing
machine. Then another employee, Frank Bautista, tried to lure her away. “Come here, Betsy,” he said. But then she charged Bautista, too. He scrambled out of the way, and the cow ran back outside and head-butted a car. By that point, workers from the market had caught up and captured her as she trotted down Main Street. Neither of the tire shop employees were seriously injured, and the cow was later sold at an auction.

“I worked on a farm when I was a youngster and always told people that cows never attacked,” said 50-year-old British police inspector Chris Poole. But apparently he forgot to tell the cows. In 2007 Poole was walking his dog on a well-traveled footpath through a cow pasture. “All of a sudden, we were surrounded,” he recalled. “I wasn’t scared and waved and shooed them away.” But the cows wouldn’t be shooed. “I felt this cow butt me hard in the back. I fell to the ground and there were hooves all around me and I was being repeatedly head-butted.” Poole suffered four broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a gash on his head. Adding insult to injury: “One cow stood on my arm and broke my watch.” Poole recovered, but will now warn people to give cows a “wide berth.”

On the morning of her scheduled execution in January 2006, a 1,200-pound heifer made a break from the slaughterhouse line at Mickey’s Packing Plant in Great Falls, Montana. “I watched her do things that are just not possible for a cow,” said plant manager Del Morris. After jumping a five-foot fence, Molly (Morris’s name for the cow) led police and plant workers on a six-hour chase in which she nearly got hit by an SUV and a tractor trailer, darted across the tracks just in front of an oncoming train, and barreled through a fence when her pursuers cornered her. Even three tranquilizer darts failed to slow Molly down. But it was when she traversed the strong currents to the other side of the icy Missouri River that Morris realized this cow was too special to end up on a dinner plate. After Molly was finally coaxed into a trailer, Morris let Great Falls residents decide her fate. Their choice: a fenced-in field just out of town, where Molly will live out her days.

Next time you’re really bored, try this: Go to an Internet translation page, type a phrase in English and translate it into another language. Then translate the new phrase into another language and then back to English. The results can be quite amusing
.

English:
“Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader.”

Greek
→
English:
“Divine John, Reader of Baths.”

English:
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”

Russian
→
Japanese
→
English:
“I described and I have upadenny stand up!”

English:
“Who let the dogs out?”

Chinese
→
English:
“Who bleeds off the dog?”

English:
“Antidepressants may cause dry mouth due to decreased saliva, possibly contributing to the development of tooth decay.”

Greek
→
Japanese
→
English:
“You disagree the medicine with cause, for drying saliou reduction of the mouth contributes to the development of possibility, it is carious tooth.”

English:
“Rolling on the floor laughing.”

Russian
→
English:
“To roll up on to laugh above the sexes.”

English:
“Mama said knock you out.”

Spanish
→
English:
“The breast said eliminates to him.”

English:
“Let’s get ready to rumble!”

Russian
→
German
→
English:
“Leave ready zagromyhat to us!”

English:
“Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?”

Spanish
→
French
→
Dutch
→
English:
“He is seldom the done question, he is our education of the children.”

English:
“I’d like to buy a vowel, Pat.”

Russain
→
Danish
→
Japanese
→
English:
“It is to like to do the vowel which purchases, but it is the pad.”

English:
“You want fries with that?”

Japanese
→
Hindi
→
English:
“I desire to fritter?”

English:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Japanese
→
Korean
→
Greek
→
English:
“It is time the waistcoat was ugliest when.”

English:
“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

Japanese
→
Swedish
→
English:
“I am all for I ate them all, it is possible to believe what is not.”

English:
“Don’t mess with Texas.”

Japanese
→
Bulgarian
→
Polish
→
Korean
→
English:
“Texas which goes round and is confused.”

English:
“Pardon me, sir, but do you have any Grey Poupon?”

French
→
German
→
Chinese
→
English:
“Please forgive me, Mr. Chairman, but have you established your gray poupon?”

English:
“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Korean
→
English:
“Makes boldmakes bold and also anyone man not going before where in order to go.”

English:
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

German
→
French
→
English:
“Sincerely, my expensive, I do not give swore.”

English:
“Rubber Ducky, you’re my very best friend, it’s true!”

Russian
→
Korean
→
Swedish
→
Japanese
→
English:
“Duck of rubber make, as for you my very bosom buddy, as for that truth!”

English:
“Elvis has left the building.”

Dutch
→
French
→
Chinese
→
English:
“The electronic export license material system departed the construction.”

Fast food is such a huge industry that there’s bound to be a flop or two. Here are some of the weirdest business decisions in fast food history
.

H
AVE IT OUR WAY
To stand out from the competition, in 1992 Burger King briefly converted its restaurants from fast food into sit-down restaurants with table service, but only during dinner hours. Customers would continue to order at the counter, but after placing their order they would find a table, and then an employee would bring them their food—up to 15 minutes later (to help customers pass the time while they were waiting for their food, there was a free basket of popcorn on every table…right next to the burning candle). Special “dinner baskets” offered new items such as fried shrimp, fried chicken, fried clams, and baked potatoes. Many locations even put out white tablecloths. The concept was a complete disaster. It slowed down Burger King’s customer turnover rate so much that the company estimates that in the two months it tried table service, it lost $10 million.

Fried chicken may be delicious, but like anything that’s deep-fried, it’s loaded with fat, which makes it pretty unhealthy to eat. But that’s never stopped Kentucky Fried Chicken from trying to convince the public (several times) that
its
fried chicken is healthier than other fried chicken.

• In 1991 the restaurant introduced Lite N’ Crispy—fried chicken without the skin. But it was still breaded and fried, so it had almost the same amount of fat as its Original Recipe chicken. (A Lite N’ Crispy breast had 22 grams of fat; an Original Recipe breast has 27.) Lite? Hardly. The FDA quickly levied a $25,000 fine against Kentucky Fried Chicken for misleading the public… which led to the chain’s renaming the product “Skinfree Crispy.” A few months later, it was gone from the menu.

• At the same time, the chain changed its name to “KFC” to downplay the word “fried.” In 2004 the chain began an ad campaign
that claimed the “F” in KFC stood for “fresh.” Neither plan worked—sales were flat.

Ralston Purina, the corporate parent of Jack in the Box, wasn’t satisfied that they were only the fifth most popular hamburger chain in the United States, and decided that the way to carve out a larger niche was to appeal to an underserved audience: adults who don’t eat fast food because they see it as “too juvenile.” So in 1985 the chain was renamed Monterey Jack’s. More than 800 locations were remodeled at a cost of $3 million each, the majority of which was paid for by franchisees. Brightly colored restaurants were repainted stark white, and the burgers and chicken nuggets were replaced with “higher-quality” fare like steak sandwiches and fajitas. It didn’t work. Most stores actually
lost
business. And within a year, all the Monterey Jack’s were converted back into Jack in the Boxes. In 1986 Ralston Purina sold Jack in the Box to an investment group for $450 million. (Before the Monterey Jack’s conversion, the chain had been valued at $500 million.)

In 1989 pizza was a $21 billion business and growing at a rate of 10% per year, but sales at McDonald’s were stagnant, especially in the dinner hours. McSolution: Sell pizza. McDonald’s invented a special fast-cook oven that used superhot air streams to cook a pizza in just over five minutes. Then it spent millions to remodel test restaurants—fitting kitchens with the new ovens and expanding drive-through windows so they were large enough for a pizza box to pass through. In 1990 they began the test, selling 14" pizzas (four styles: cheese, pepperoni, sausage, and deluxe) in Evansville, Indiana. The pizzas cost from $6 to $9.50, making them the most expensive items on the McDonald’s menu, and the same price as Pizza Hut or Dominos. And while it took only five minutes to cook a pizza, it took more than 10 minutes for it to get to the customer’s table—not bad for a pizza, but too slow for superfast McDonald’s. Pizza flopped in Evansville. Was that the end? No. McDonald’s had made such a huge investment in developing the ovens (reportedly more than $10 million), that they continued to test market pizza in the U.S. and Canada as late as 1997. It never caught on.

For outstanding performance in teaching our children to be strange and unusual people
.

S
UBJECT
: Human development
WINNER
: Paul Tappan
CREATIVE TEACHING
: In May 2008, science teacher Paul Tappan of Anderson High School in Indiana wrote a disciplinary referral for one of his students. It read: “No need for her to come back to my class. Please banish her from the human race and exile accordingly.” Not surprisingly, the student’s parents were upset. “Why,” the student’s mother asked, “do we have a teacher in the school system who has that much anger?” Tappan apologized, saying that he’d had a bad day.