Brought to you by KeVkRaY
By the
Bathroom Readers’
Institute
Bathroom Readers’ Press
Ashland, Oregon
Dedicated to the memory of Zephyr the cat, who was crazy in all the right ways.
UNCLE JOHN’S BATHROOM READER®
THE WORLD’S GONE CRAZY
Copyright © 2010 by the Bathroom Readers’ Press (a division of Portable Press). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
“Bathroom Reader” and “Bathroom Readers’ Institute” are registered trademarks of Baker & Taylor. All rights reserved.
For information, write:
The Bathroom Readers’ Institute, P.O. Box 1117,
Ashland, OR 97520
www.bathroomreader.com • 888-488-4642
Cover design by Michael Brunsfeld, San Rafael, CA
(Brunsfeldo@comcast.net)
ISBN-13: 978-1-60710-616-6
E-book edition: April 2012
Created in the United States of America
THANK YOU!
The Bathroom Readers’ Institute sincerely thanks the people whose advice and assistance made this book possible.
Gordon Javna
Jay Newman
Amy Miller
Thom Little
Brian Boone
John Dollison
Michael Brunsfeld
Angela Kern
Claudia Bauer
Claire Breen
Malcolm Hillgartner
Jahnna Beacham
Michael Kerr
Paul Seaburn
Sue Steiner
Judy Plapinger
Megan Todd
John Scalzi
William Dooling
Mark Thorburne
Kyle Coroneos
Cam Dokey
Jack Mingo
James Greene Jr.
Jef Fretwell
Jodi Webb
Les Weishar
Sue Newman
Adam Bolivar
Christine DeGueron
JoAnn Padgett
Melinda Allman
Dan Mansfield
Lilian Nordland
Pam Morlett
Monica Maestas
Lisa Meyers
Amy Ly
Ginger Winters
Jennifer Frederick
Sydney Stanley
Tom Mustard
R.R. Donnelley
Media Masters
Publishers Group West
Raincoast Books
Porter the Wonder Dog
Thomas Crapper
CONTENTS
Because the BRI understands your reading needs, we’ve divided the contents by length as well as subject.
Short—a quick read
Medium—2 to 3 pages
Long—for those extended visits, when something a little more involved is required
* Extended—for those leg-numbing experiences
DESTINATION: WEIRD
Short
Odd Theme Parks
Medium
Weird Tours
Deadly Florida
Long
*The Year of Living Festively
BAD BEHAVIOR
Short
Stop Talking
I May Have Overreacted
Medium
Can We Please Have Our (Blank) Back?
Oww! Oww!
“That’s Awful!” Awards
News from the Thrown Room
OOPS
Short
Point & Shoot
“Hey, Y’all, Watch This!”
Try, Try Again
Medium
Newspaper Correkshuns
Distracted Drivers
Show Me the Stupid
IN SEARCH OF…
Short
Medium
Elf School
Magical Mountain
Mixed Nuts
Out-of-This-World Religions
Long
Ghostology 101
Ghostology, Part II
The Haunting, Part I
The Haunting, Part II
TRUTHS & UNTRUTHS
Short
Bad Liars
Medium
Beat the Press
Scammers & Scammees
Politics as (Un)usual
I Can Explain!
Photoshopped
Urban Legends
Flight 297
Pants on Fire
Hoaxers
Long
The Right to Lie
SURREAL WORLD
Short
You’re Sick? I’m Sick!
Stairway to Weird
Medium
The One Million Guesses Quiz, Part I
What’s in Your Pants?
What Comes After Weird?
The One Million Guesses Quiz, Part II
Things You Didn’t Know
Crazy Decisions for $200, Alex
MY JOB DRIVES ME CRAZY
Short
It’s a Gross Job…
Help Wanted: In Hell
Medium
Are You a “Dead Peasant”?
Odd Jobs
FADS & FLOPS
Short
21st-Century Fads
Jungle Spa
Sexy Finding Nemo
Botox Your Armpits
Medium
Eyeball Bling
Tasteless Toys
The World’s Gone Lazy
DOOMSAYERS
Medium
The World’s Gone Crazy 2000
We’re Doomed!
Earth’s Gone Crazy
The Mayan Prophecy
Long
The End Is Nigh
*The Chemtrails Conspiracy
LIFE IS STRANGE
Medium
Terror in Toilet Town
Ahhhh!!!
Awww…
I Found a _____ in My _____
Loud Noises!!!
Holy Cr*p!
Just Plane Weird
Loud Noises!!!
IT’S ALL RELATIVE
Short
Mommies…
…and Daddies
Twin Town
Marryin’ Cousins
Medium
Nutty Nuptials
I Had My Baby in a…
DON’T EAT THAT!
Short
Bacon Floss
Turkey Time
Odd Eats
Crazy Cookbooks
Medium
Bananas!
How to “Dress” a Chicken
Mmmm…Chemicals
Celebrity Diets
Long
Franken-Food
ODDBALLS
Medium
What a Very Strange Person
Sittin’ in a Tree, Part I
The Object of My Affection Is an Object
The Blind Painter
Long
Abnormal Activitsts
*Sittin’ in a Tree, Part II
PLAY TIME
Short
Mighty Unicorns vs. Konkrete Kids
(Over)Board Games
Medium
That Guy in the Upper Deck Is Gyrating
BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
Short
Saved By Silicone
Big News
Members Only
Medium
Teeeeeeeeth!
F
at City
I Was Blind, but Now I See
More Big News
OUR CRAZY PAST
Short
Moonstruck
Medium
Mountain of the Dead
Real Frankensteins
Long
11 Great Moments in the History of Madness
*Father of the Paranormal
CRAZY ONLINE
Short
The Skies Have Eyes
Medium
Social Nutworking
The Tourist of Death
Google Suggests…
The Rickroll
CREATURE FEATURES
Short
Zoo Attacks
Medium
Polly Wants a Lamb Chop
Killer ’Roos
The Weekly Wild News
Monkeys Invade Texas!
A Word from the Odd Animal Sex Dept.
Animals Fight Back!
Weird, with a Side of Animals
Cowabunga!
LAW & ORDER
Short
Fine, Just Fine
Zero Tolerance
Medium
Ernie Chambers Sues God
Going Through the Motions
Cops Gone Crazy
You’re Suing Me for What?
Disorder in the Court
Criminally Odd
“Alcohol Was a Factor”
BUSINE$$
Short
Overextended
Pizza Huh?
The Moolatte
A Body of Cash
Medium
Insurance: Denied!
Quick Fixes
It’s a Recession!
MUSICAL MADNESS
Medium
Sebastian Cabot Sings!
The World’s Most Dangerous Band
Weird British Hits
Killer Karaoke
INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Short
British Breaches
Medium
Canadian Gangland
Modern Piracy
Japan Gone Crazy
O Canada…
ON THE SCREEN
Short
Reality Blights
The da Vinci Treasure
Disturbing PSAs
Medium
The Harsh Reality of Reality Shows
The Crazy Bizarre Film Festival
Monkey See, Monkey Do
Reality Shows, Part II
Jackasses
Dark Comics
LANGUAGE GONE CRAZY
Short
Dancing Baloney
The Big Dump Continues
Eccentric Writers
Frog Suck, Wyoming
Medium
Crazy Word Origins
Looney Word Origins
Long
Fabricated Memoirs
CRAZY SCIENCE
Short
Plants Gone Crazy
Not-So-Good Vibrations
Medium
Let’s Do A Study
Do It Yourself
Problem Solved!
Science on the Edge
Manimals!
Long
Space Junk
6EQUJ5
IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Short
Celebrity Issues
Medium
Madoff with the Goods
The Mayor with Two Names
Celebrity Flip-Outs
The Curse of Cristiano
Impulse Buys for the Rich & Famous
The Jackson 7
THE MEDICINE CABINET
Medium
New Diseases
Demented Dentists
Exploding Head Syndrome
The Worms Crawl In
Cutting-Edge Medicine
Doctor, No!
ODDS & ENDS
Short
A Year of Weird
Clappers, Snappers…
Happy Nothing Day!
Survey Says…
The Shipping News
It’s Too Late
Medium
RU OK, U.K.?
Odds and Ends
The World’s Gone…Sane?
PEOPLE ARE STRANGE
Short
Crazy World Records
Strange Folk
Don’t Do Drugs. Really.
Medium
Clergy Gone Wild
Miss Landmine
Lower Education
WHEN YOU GOTTA GO…
Short
The Great Beyond
Medium
Zombies in the News
RIP: Rest in Plastic
The Obits
Funeral Home Horrors
YOU ARE ENTERING
ANOTHER DIMENSION
CRAZY TOWN
It’s called “Planet Earth,” and it may be the strangest place in the entire universe. The dedicated team of trivia nuts at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute (led by yours truly, Uncle John) has spent more than 20 Earth years making Bathroom Readers. All our books are odd in their own special ways, but none has been odder than the one you hold in your hands right now (it’s even odder than a book we did a few years ago called The Wonderful World of Odd).
Quite simply, this book turns the crazy dial up to 11. We plunged deep into the depths of pop culture, current events, and all-around oddballery to bring you strange-but-true stories of everything weird under the sun…and over the moon. Just flip this book open to any page. You never know what you’ll find…
• VSPs (very strange people): Behold the man who thinks he’s a carpet, the woman who spent two years in a tree, the teenager who wants to be a zombie, and the celebrated painter who’s blind.
• Arts and entertainment: The Sinatra song to kill for, cheating on reality shows, Lady Gaga’s true gender, and that homeless bum called Superman.
• Conspiracy theories: Is the government poisoning our skies? Is there a secret “Planet X” about to lay waste to our existence? Is the food in your refrigerator riddled with deadly chemicals?
• Animal oddities: A snake with a foot, gay penguins, a bear that ate an airplane, and a doctor’s dose of medicinal parasitic worms.
• Professionals gone crazy: Lawyers, police officers, teachers, scientists, doctors, politicians, and the clergy. (No one gets a free pass.)
• Science on the edge: Human-animal hybrids, a human-caused earthquake, and a remote-control sphincter.
• Myths and legends: An elf school in Iceland, the Lemurians of Mt. Shasta, the Mayan Prophecy, alien deities, and how to capture irrefutable evidence of the paranormal. (Good luck.)
• Looking crazy good: Botox for your armpits, jewelry for your eyeballs, and bagels for your forehead.
There’s so much more we could tell you about, but you’ll have to dive in to see for yourself. And a word of warning: Some of what you’ll read may make you feel a bit…squeamish. Don’t worry—it made us feel squeamish, too. But our goal was to seek out really weird stuff and then share what we found. So have fun, but read with caution.
As we’re now mere hours away from sending this behemoth of a book off to the printer, I’d like to send a gigantic thank-you to my barely sane team of writers and editors for all of their hard work. (They were barely sane when we started. Now that we’re finished, forget it.)
But as always, I save my last and biggest thanks for all of you. It is because of your quirky dedication and support of such a bizarre book series that we get to keep coming up with new ways to entertain you. We hope we’ve succeeded!
Happy reading and…
Go with the Flow!
—Uncle John, the BRI Staff, and Porter the Wonder Dog
* * *
You’d be crazy not to visit us on the Web at www.bathroomreader.com.
* * *
A YEAR OF WEIRD
Real (and really odd) wall calendars we’ve spotted.
Naked Clowns Calendar: Good news: It’s published by San Francisco Clown College,
and proceeds go to multiple sclerosis research. Bad news: It’s pictures of naked clowns, with their faces painted and their naughty parts obscured.
Odd-Eyed Cats Calendar: Each month features a cat with crossed eyes, strange-looking eyes, or eyes that are different colors.
My Zombie Pin-Up: Dressed in vintage 1940s and ’50s clothing, blood-covered, gore-oozing men and women pretend to be happy zombies posing with their dead victims.
Pets Rock: Dogs and cats are dressed in costumes and makeup to look like famous rock stars, such as Elvis Presley and KISS.
From Girls Calendar: Association Fromages de Terroirs is a French organization devoted to “cheese awareness.” This annual calendar is part of their campaign and depicts female dairy farm workers and farmers’ wives in revealing outfits, holding their favorite kinds of cheese.
Men on a Mission: This calendar features young, male Mormons who have gone on their required religious mission and have now returned home…to pose shirtless.
Credit Crunch Calendar: Produced in England, this one features photos that symbolize the economic recession, including abandoned factories, jobless people, and boarded-up businesses.
The Lindner Calendar: Lindner is a Polish casket manufacturer. Each year they put out a promotional calendar featuring young women in swimsuits or underwear posing on top of the year’s hottest new coffins.
Toilets of the World: Just johns—modern, primitive, and exotic.
Pointless Calendar: Indeed, it’s completely nonfunctional. Each month has 40 days, each week consists of 10 days, and no days of the week are listed. For each month, there’s a photo of a random object, like a peeling wooden wall or a pile of bricks.
* * *
Every hour of every day, gamblers lose $696,000 in Las Vegas casinos.
* * *
21st-CENTURY FADS
Uncle John told us he just doesn’t get all these new fads, so we told him to go pet his pet rock.
BAGEL HEADS
This “beauty treatment” fad got its start in Tokyo dance clubs in 2009. Using disposable syringes, teenagers inject saline solution (a common hydrating fluid) into their foreheads. A few moments later, the saline disfigures the forehead, creating a large, bulbous growth with an indentation in the middle. In other words, it looks like a giant bagel (or possibly a tumor) growing out of the forehead. Food coloring is sometimes added to the saline to turn the “bagel” green or blue. Thankfully, it’s not permanent—the bulge deflates in about a day.
IKEA DINNER PARTIES
IKEA sells modern-looking furniture that’s very popular with the young and hip. So popular, in fact, that some can’t wait to get home to enjoy IKEA merchandise. In Sacramento in 2008, a small group of young people began holding “dinner parties” inside an IKEA store, and the fad has since caught on at locations around the U.S. After dining on lingonberry jam and meatballs in the store’s Swedish-themed cafeteria, partiers retire to the living-room furniture displays to play board games. IKEA managers don’t seem to mind—the partygoers are paying customers, after all, and the publicity doesn’t hurt.