Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (25 page)

An elderly woman had just returned home from church and found a burglar in her home. “Stop! Acts 2:38!” she yelled at him. The burglar stopped in his tracks and sat down, allowing the woman to call the police. When the cops arrived to collect the man, one of the officers asked the burglar, “Why did you just stand there? All the old lady did was yell a scripture at you.” “Scripture?” replied the burglar. “She said she had an axe and two .38s!”

We offer these dumb and bizarre quotes from reality TV shows to save you the trouble of having to watch them yourself. You’re welcome
.

“I’ve got eyes and ears in the back of my head.”

—
Jo,
The Apprentice 2 (U.K.)

“The monkfish wasn’t technically raw because only a little part of it was raw.”

—
Matt,
Hell’s Kitchen

“Simon gave me advice—he always refers to a fortune cookie and says the moth who finds the melon…finds the cornflake always finds the melon, and one of you didn’t pick the right fortune.”

—
Paula Abdul,
American Idol

“Is there chicken in chick peas?”

—
Helen,
Celebrity Big Brother 2 (U.K.)

“I’m just trying to take in everything you’ve done, and then pepper it with a little Stevie B.”

—
Stephen Baldwin,
Celebrity Apprentice

“I’m not willing to alienate Giselle, because she’s the only one with a straightening iron.”

—
Elyse,
America’s Next Top Model

“Shut up! I really mean that, from the bottom of my heart.”

—
Chef Ramsay,
Hell’s Kitchen

“I think I’m pretty smart. My IQ’s probably about…500!”

—
Lauren,
Beauty and the Geek

“I’m so angry, I’m fuming! I’m fumigating!”

—
Nadia,
Celebrity Big Brother

“I backstabbed and lied a lot, but I feel like I’ve accomplished so much, and I’m so proud.”

—
Todd, winner of
Survivor: China

Five-time presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy said, “The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.” (Looks like our liberty is safe.)

S
ECRET TREASURE
Did you receive a piece of junk mail in the spring of 2008, addressed to “Resident” and labeled “National Household Travel Survey”? Don’t remember? Then you probably threw it away, as did thousands of others who received the mailer from the Department of Transportation requesting that you take part in a survey about your travel habits. If you’d opened the mailer, you would’ve found a crisp $5 bill inside (a “token of appreciation”). Had the DOT sent out
checks
for $5, they could have tracked how many people cashed them and cancelled all the checks that weren’t cashed. But because they sent out cash, there was no way to trace how many people got the money…or how many $5 bills ended up in the trash.

According to the book
Great Government Goofs
, compiled by Leland Gregory, “Members of the Georgia State Game Commission were fiercely debating the pros and cons of regulating ‘alligator rides’ when one alert member noticed a typographical error on the agenda—the commission was actually supposed to be discussing whether or not they should regulate ‘alligator hides.’”

From 1999 to 2005, the USDA awarded more than $1 billion to farmers who were no longer living. Farm families are eligible to receive money for two years after the head of the household dies in an effort to help them get back on their feet. After an investigation, however, the Government Accountability Office discovered that the USDA has no steps in place to
stop
the payments—families continue receiving payments until an heir of the deceased farmer informs the USDA to stop. According to the GAO’s findings, few of the dead farmers’ families have contacted the USDA…so most continue receiving checks to this day.

As part of the 2008 economic stimulus package, the IRS decided to inform citizens that their checks were coming, so they sent out letters to 130 million taxpayers. Cost of sending the letters: $42 million. A few weeks later the IRS spent that amount again to send the real checks.

In 2007 Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) requested funds for three construction projects at City College of New York. They include the “Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service,” the “Rangel Conference Center,” and the “Charles Rangel Library.” Cost to taxpayers: $2 million. When freshman Congressman John Campbell (R-CA) railed against the politician for naming buildings after himself while still in office, Rangel, who’s been in Congress since 1971, responded, “I would have a problem if you did it, because I don’t think that you’ve been around long enough to inspire a building.” The library, incidentally, will only display memorabilia that pertains to Rangel. According to a CBS news report, “It’s kind of like a presidential library, but without a president.”

As president, Ronald Reagan preached smaller government and less spending. So why not name one of the biggest and most expensive projects in government history after him? The Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center opened in Washington, D.C., in 1998, and it’s the largest federal building in the District. (The only larger federal building is the Pentagon, located in Virginia). And at the time, the Ronald Reagan Building boasted the heftiest price tag for a single structure in U.S. government history: $768 million. (Another ironic naming fact: In 1981 the nation’s air traffic controllers went on strike—and President Reagan fired them all. In 1998 National Airport in Washington was renamed…Ronald Reagan National Airport.)

In 2008 an accused thief named Mark Bailey was being arraigned in Northampton, England. After a brief hearing, the judge ordered that Bailey be sent to the magistrate’s courtroom—located in a
building across the street—to plead his case. One problem: The prisoner transport van wasn’t available (it had “gone on to do other things”). So police officers offered to escort Bailey to the courthouse, about 200 yards away, on foot. Court officials said that the public walk would “violate Bailey’s human rights,” so they were forced to call for another van…the closest one being in Cambridge, nearly
60 miles away
. Two and a half hours later, the van showed up, and Bailey took the 30-second trip to the courthouse. The van then drove the 60 miles back to Cambridge. “I’ve never heard such nonsense,” said Conservative MP Brian Binley. “Why we should have to suffer such ludicrous incompetence, and pay for it, is beyond me.”

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) purchased 112,000 tons of ice for $24 million. Unfortunately, they were unable to distribute all of it to those in need, so they stored the unused ice in cold warehouses. Two years later, the ice was still in storage—and the cost to keep it cold all that time totaled more than $11 million, nearly half of what it cost to purchase. Even more embarrassing, it was announced that because FEMA didn’t know the “shelf life” for ice, the stockpile couldn’t be reused and had to be melted. The cost of the melting operation: another $3.4 million. (FEMA subsequently announced that they are no longer in the business of buying and storing ice for disasters.)

Golf:
Tiger Woods, $127.9 million

Basketball:
LeBron James, $40.5 million

Boxing:
Floyd Mayweather, $40.3 million

Baseball:
Alex Rodriguez, $35 million

Football:
Peyton Manning, $30.5 million

NASCAR
: Dale Earnhardt, Jr., $27.2 million

You never know when you’re about to breathe your last. Here are some strange tales of folks who died in bizarre ways
.

I
’VE GOT A LOT OF LIVER TO DO
The pufferfish, or
fugu
, is a well-known ingredient in Japanese sushi. But trained chefs must be very careful to cut it just right so as not to serve the liver, which is full of deadly neurotoxins. In 1975 Mitsugoro Bando VIII, one of Japan’s most famous kabuki actors and a man officially designated as one of Japan’s “living national treasures,” went to a sushi bar with friends and demanded to be served
four
whole fugu livers, which he promptly ate, believing himself immune to the poison. He wasn’t (he died), and the sushi chef who knowingly served poison to a living national treasure wasn’t immune to losing his restaurant license, either.

Garry Hoy was a lawyer who had an office in the Dominion Centre, an upscale, state-of-the-art office complex in Toronto. In 1993 Hoy set out to impress some visiting law students by throwing himself with great force against the “unbreakable” windows of his 24-floor office, a trick he’d performed repeatedly at office parties and after-hours drinking sessions in the past. On this occasion he demonstrated the stunt twice: The first attempt went off without a hitch, and it was during was the second attempt that Hoy learned the hard way that “unbreakable” does not necessarily mean “the pane of glass won’t pop out of its frame if you throw yourself against it with great force.” Hoy, who until that moment was considered to be one of the “best and brightest” members of his firm, was 38.

In 2006 Mariesa Weber of St. Petersburg, Florida, was reported missing by her family, who feared she’d been kidnapped from the house they shared. As it turned out, she’d never even left the house. Two weeks after she disappeared, Weber’s sister spotted a foot sticking out from behind a bookcase in Mariesa’s bedroom,
which somehow had gone unnoticed the entire two weeks. (And that funny smell coming from the bedroom? The family attributed it to rats.) Authorities speculate Weber was standing on a dresser next to the bookcase to adjust a TV plug when she fell behind the bookcase and died.

Betty Stobbs operated a sheep farm in Durham, England. She didn’t have a tractor, so to feed her sheep she carried bales of hay on the back of her all-terrain vehicle. One day in 1999, the hungry flock was so excited to see her (or the food) that they charged, shoving Stobbs and her ATV off a 100' cliff.

After the 1985 summer season, the New Orleans Recreation Department threw a party for the city’s lifeguards to celebrate the fact that there had been no deaths at any of the city’s public swimming pools all summer. More than 100 lifeguards attended the pool party, and it was only when the party was winding down that someone noticed the body of 31-year-old Jerome Moody at the bottom of the pool. Somehow he’d managed to drown without being noticed either by the scores of lifeguards who were in the pool with him, or by the four lifeguards who were on duty at the time.

Former NFL football coach George Allen came out of retirement to coach Long Beach State, and in 1990 he led the team to a season-ending victory over rival Las Vegas at the end of the 1990 season. In keeping with football tradition, Allen’s players dumped a cooler of ice water on him. (“We couldn’t afford Gatorade,” the 72-year-old Allen joked after the incident.) For more than an hour after the game, Allen braved low temperatures and gusting winds in his soaking-wet clothes to talk with reporters; then he jumped on the team bus and rode all the way back to Long Beach without changing out of them. Big mistake: Allen’s health deteriorated rapidly in the days that followed; he contracted pneumonia and died of heart failure only a month after the game.