Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (42 page)

Many were inspired to create entirely new games of their own:

• In 1913 H. G. Wells, author of
The War of the Worlds
, got in on the act: He wrote
Little Wars
, a set of rules for combat with toy soldiers and spring-loaded cannons.

• In the 1950s, an American war game enthusiast named Charles S. Roberts founded a game company called Avalon Hill, which remained the dominant war game publisher into the 1970s.

• Then in 1971, two war gamers named Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson came up with a game of their own that, if anything, was even more revolutionary than Kriegsspiel.

Even if you’ve never heard of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, you’ve almost certainly heard of the game they invented. Who knows—maybe you even played it
. That
story begins on page 318
.

Remember Jughead, the character from Archie comics who wears a cardboard crown and loves to eat cheeseburgers? In the French version of the comic he’s called
Doudingue
, in Spanish he’s
Torombolo
and in German he’s
Knallkopf
(literally “bang head”).

Great bathroom reading from real newspaper ads
.

WANT ADS

Painting Job This Summer?

Call for Free Estimates.

If I’m not at home, arrange a date with my wife.

Wanted:
Widower with school-age children requires person to assume general housekeeping duties. Must be capable of contributing to growth of family.

Cleaner Required
, must be contentious.

Wanted: Free Furniture.
Full bed, end table, working lamp, and a working floor model TV. You’ve got to haul it.

FOR SALE

One pair
hardly used dentures, only two teeth missing.

American flag
, 60 stars. Pole included, $100.

For sale.
Three canaries of undermined sex.

Toaster:
Great fun for the whole family. Automatically burns toast.

Wedding Dress.
Worn once by mistake. Call Stephanie.

15"-diameter, 3-speed fan.
It will oscillate if you walk in a circle around it.

Complete set
of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Excellent condition. No longer needed. Got married last month. Wife knows everything.

Solid oak funeral
handmade casket in good condition. Only used once.

Tombstone:
Standard gray. A good buy for someone named Grady.

Open house.
Body Shapers toning salon. Free coffee and donuts.

Sheer stockings.
Designed for fancy dress, but so serviceable that lots of women wear nothing else.

The hotel
has bowling alleys, tennis courts, comfortable beds, and other athletic facilities.

Auto Repair Service.
Free pick-up and delivery. Try us once, and you’ll never go anywhere again.

BLT
—$1.85 (lettuce and tomato $.10 extra)

Sliced bologna
, regular or tasty, save 30 cents on 2

I Can Believe It’s Not Butter!
8 oz. $1.38

Super G String Cheese
, $1.49

SWM
into chainsaws and hockey masks seeks likeminded SWF. No weirdos, please.

Don’t call me
if you are uneducated; unemployed; unhealthy smoker; felon; under 30 years old, 5'10"; over 40 years old, 6'8", 230 pounds; like cats, channel surfing; make less than $30,000 annually; or have body parts pierced. Others feel free.

Me—
trying to sleep on the bus station bench, pleading with you to give me a cigarette; you—choking on my odor, tripping over your purse trying to get away; at the last moment, our eyes meeting. Yours were blue. Can I have a dollar?

Good-looking
, athletic, Notting Hill-based movie star, millionaire, seeks gullible stunner.

Hideous-looking
, obese, smelly, ill-tempered, lazy, cowardly, chronic, and a complete liar seeks total opposite.

Minimalist
seeks woman.

I am spitting kitty.
Ftt Fttttttt.

I am angry bear. Grrrrr. I am large watermelon seed stuck in your nose. Zermmmmmmmm.

I am small biting spider in your underwear. Yub yub yub.

No mimes.

Mattie’s Restaurant
and Yogurt Palace: An Alternative to Good Eating

Bring in this coupon
and receive a FREE medium coffee for the price of a small.

Bogie’s Child’s Menu
Children 12 & under driver’s license required

It takes many ingredients
to make Burger King great…but the secret ingredient is our people!

“If you consider the contribution of plumbing to human life, the other sciences fade into insignificance.”

—
James Gorman

A small sampling of some of the many odd things you can find on the Internet
.

I
Hate Cilantro.
If you really dislike the herb cilantro and you feel the need to share with others, go to
ihatecilantro.com
. This anti-cilantro community of more than 1,700 members write about how much they hate “the most offensive food known to man.” (“It tastes like dish soap.”)

Ice Chewers Bulletin Board.
There are a lot of people out there who like to chew ice, apparently. If you’re one of them,
icechewing.
iswhaticrave.com
is where you can share your ice-chewing stories, your favorite ice-chewing recipes, or anything at all related to ice chewing, and join the community of more than 3,400 members.

Lasagna Cat.
You’re familiar with the
Garfield
comic strip. Well,
lasagnacat.com
has a few dozen videos of three people—one playing John, one in a dog costume playing Odie, and one in a cat costume playing Garfield—acting out actual
Garfield
comics as they appeared in newspapers. They even give the dates on which the comics originally appeared.

Nothing.
Blanksite.com
has absolutely nothing on it. It’s just a blank white screen. (Its companion site,
Something.com
, does have something on it—the word “something.” That’s all.)

Men’s Long Hair Hyperboard.
This site (
mlhh.org
) is a forum for long-haired men about long hair on men. Does your long hair cause friction at work? How do you handle your long hair while riding a motorcycle? How many inches has your hair grown since your last post? If you feel like chatting about it, this is the place for you.

Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle.com
.
This works just like google. Really. (But it has to have exactly 59
o
’s in it.)

The Big Button That Doesn’t Do Anything.
It’s a Web site with a really big button on it. It doesn’t do anything. It hasn’t done anything for the millions of people that have pushed it since 1994. Go ahead: Go to
pixelscapes.com/spatulacity/button.htm
…and push the button. We did. (It didn’t do anything.)

Grab your snorkel and flippers and get yourself to these amazing subaquatic locations before you slip and slide off this mortal coil
.

1.
THE GREAT BLUE HOLE.
It’s off the coast of Belize in the Caribbean Sea. If you fly over it what you’ll see is the Caribbean’s emerald-green water interrupted by a narrow, ring-shaped blue “island.” Inside the ring is an almost perfectly circular, darker blue spot, more than 1,000 feet in diameter. It’s a sinkhole, and it’s about 400 feet deep. During the last ice age, when sea levels were much lower than they are today, it was a dry, limestone cave system. When the water level rose, the cave filled and its roof collapsed, creating the hole. Put on your flippers and you can explore the tunnels below the surface. Jacques Cousteau studied the site in the 1970s, and called it one of the 10 best places on the planet to go scuba diving.

2. THE GALAPAGOS ISLANDS.
These islands in the Pacific Ocean, 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador in South America, are remarkable for many reasons, high among them the fact that for millions of years they were isolated from other areas on the planet. Result: The Galapagos Islands are home to some of the most diverse and unique animal life in the world. Aside from the more than 450 species of fish, about 20% of which are found nowhere else, it’s the only place in the world where you can see the marine iguana (the world’s only oceangoing lizard), Pacific green sea turtles, Galapagos sharks, and Galapagos penguins, the northernmost of the penguin species. You might even see whale sharks, the largest fish in the ocean, which grow up to 40 feet long and can weigh more than 40,000 pounds. (Don’t be afraid: They eat plankton.) You may also find yourself in the middle of a school of hundreds of hammerhead sharks. (Go ahead, be afraid now.) Hammerheads can be dangerous to humans, but
attacks are rare and no human deaths from hammerheads have occurred in recorded history. The best time to go is from December to June, when warm ocean currents keep the water between 75° and 80°F.

3. THE
YONGALA
.
On March 23, 1911, a 350-foot passenger ship sailing from Melbourne to Cairns, Australia, ran into a cyclone off the coast of Queensland. It sank, and all 122 people aboard perished. The ship was the SS
Yongala
, and its wreckage was discovered in 1958 about 13 miles off the coast, resting about 100 feet below the surface. It’s now officially part of the largest coral reef system in the world, the Great Barrier Reef. The ship is remarkably intact—and is considered by many expert divers to be the best place to go diving in the world today. It is described as “like swimming in a huge aquarium,” with the ship itself being encrusted in many kinds of very colorful soft and hard coral species. On any given dive you may encounter bull sharks, tiger sharks, dolphins, giant groupers (weighing hundreds of pounds), sea turtles, octopi, manta rays, sea snakes, and much, much more. And the water’s warm, from 70° to 80°F.

Warning:
Do not go inside the ship! It’s a protected heritage site, and you can be arrested and heavily fined for disturbing it.

4. THE BIMINI ROAD.
It’s Atlantis! Well, that’s what some people say, anyway. It’s actually a half-mile-long succession of large, rectangular limestone rocks configured in an almost rectangular shape about 20 feet beneath the ocean’s surface near North Bimini Island in the Bahamas. The shape and layout of the rocks lead many people to believe they’re the remains of a manmade structure, possibly a wall, a foundation, or a road. It was discovered only recently, in 1968, by pilots flying over the area, and has since been studied intensely. Most geologists and archaeologists believe it’s a naturally occurring, if unique, phenomenon, but others disagree. In any case, you can snorkel or scuba dive in the clear, blue-green waters and check out the sight for yourself.