Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (52 page)

Meaning:
Animal excrement used to fertilize plants

Origin:
“From the Latin
manu operati
, ‘to work by hand.' Farming was constant manual labor, especially the fertilizing, which
required mixing by hand. Genteel folks who objected to the word
dung
, the excrement of animals, were responsible for its euphemistic displacement with the more ‘refined'
manure
.

“Even
manure
became objectionable to the squeamish; they preferred
fertilizer
. According to a famous story about Harry S Truman, the president was explaining that farming meant manure, manure, and more manure. At which point a lady said to the president's wife: ‘You should teach Harry to say “fertilizer,” not “manure.”' Mrs. Truman replied, ‘You don't know how long it took me to get him to say “manure.”'” (From
The Story Behind the Words
, by Morton S. Freeman)

Meaning:
High-ranking commissioned officer in a navy or coast guard

Origin:
“This is an artificial spelling of the French
amiral
. The Arabian word
amir
, commander, is commonly followed by
al
, as in
amir-al bahr
, ‘commander of the sea,' from which
amiral
resulted.” (From
More About Words
, by Margaret S. Ernst)

Meaning:
Pirate or adventurer

Origin:
“The literal sense of the word was based on a native West Indian word meaning ‘one who cures flesh on a barbecue.' Thus the name was initially applied to woodsmen in the West Indies in the 17th century. The word was transferred to pirates of the ‘Spanish Main' whose culinary habits were similar.” (From
Dunces, Gourmands & Petticoats,
by Adrian Room)

Meaning:
A Japanese dish of deep-fried vegetables or seafood

Origin:
“Neither a native Japanese dish, nor a Japanese name. When the Portuguese arrived in the 17th century, the Japanese noticed that at certain ‘times' (Portuguese,
tempora
), notably Lent, they switched from meat to fish. With typical subtlety the Japanese concluded that the word meant a variety of seafood.” (From
Remarkable Words with Astonishing Origins,
by John Train)

Here's another Indian fairy tale. This one deals with the beauty of instant karma, or as Uncle John says, “What you flush down comes back around.”

L
ong ago the Bodisat (the highest degree of saint, one incarnation below Buddha) was born to a forest life as the Genius of a tree standing near a certain lotus pond.

Now at that time the water used to run short during the dry season in that pond. It was not overlarge, but there were a good many fish. And a crane thought on seeing the fish: “I must outwit these fish somehow or other and make a prey of them.”

And he went and sat down at the edge of the water, thinking how he should do it.

When the fish saw him, they asked him, “What are you sitting there for, lost in thought?”

“I am sitting thinking about you,” said he.

“Oh, sir! What are you thinking about us?” said they.

“Why,” he replied, “There is very little water in this pond, and but little for you to eat; and the heat is so great! So I was thinking, ‘What in the world will these fish do now?'”

“Yes, indeed, sir! What
are
we to do?” said they.

“If you will only do as I bid you, I will take you in my beak to a fine large pond, covered with all the kinds of lotuses, and put you into it,” answered the crane.

“That a crane should take thought for the fishes is a thing unheard of, sir, since the world began. It's eating us, one after the other, that you're aiming at.”

“Not I! So long as you trust me, I won't eat you. But if you don't believe me that there is such a pond, send one of you with me to go and see it.”

Then they trusted him, and handed over to him one of their number—a big fellow, blind of one eye, whom they thought sharp enough in any emergency, afloat or ashore.

Him the crane took with
him, let him go in the pond, showed him the whole of it, brought him back, and let him go again close to the other fish. And he told them all the glories of the pond.

And when they heard what he said, they exclaimed, “All right, sir! You may take us with you.”

Then the crane took the old purblind fish first to the bank of the other pond, and alighted in a Varana tree growing on the bank there. But he threw it into a fork of the tree, struck it with his beak, and killed it; and then ate its flesh, and threw its bones away at the foot of the tree. Then he went back and called out: “I've thrown that fish in; let another one come.”

And in that manner he took all the fish, one by one, and ate them, till he came back and found no more!

But there was still a crab left behind there; and the crane thought he would eat him too, and called out: “I say, good crab, I've taken all the fish away, and put them into a fine large pond. Come along. I'll take you too!”

“But how will you take hold of me to carry me along?”

“I'll bite hold of you with my beak.”

“You'll let me fall if you carry me like that. I won't go with you!”

“Don't be afraid. I'll hold you quite tight all the way.”

Then said the crab to himself, “If this fellow once got hold of fish, he would never let them go in a pond! Now if he should really put me into the pond, it would be capital but if he doesn't—then I'll cut his throat, and kill him!” So he said to him:

“Look here, friend, you won't be able to hold me tight enough; but we crabs have a famous grip. If you let me catch hold of you round the neck with my claws, I shall be glad to go with you.”

And the other did not see that he was trying to outwit him, and agreed. So the crab caught hold of his neck with his claws as securely as with a pair of blacksmith's pincers, and called out, “Off with you, now!”

And the crane took him and showed him the pond, and then turned off toward the Varana tree.

“Uncle!” cried the crab, “the pond lies that way, but you are taking me this way!”

“Oh, that's it, is it?” answered the crane. “Your dear little uncle, you very
sweet nephew, you call me! You mean me to understand, I suppose, that I am your slave, who has to lift you up and carry you about with him! Now cast your eye upon the heap of fish-bones lying at the root of yonder Varana tree. Just as I have eaten those fish, every one of them, just so I will devour you as well.”

“Ah! Those fishes got eaten through their own stupidity,” answered the crab, “But I'm not going to let you eat me. On the contrary, it is you that I am going to destroy. For you in your folly have not seen that I was outwitting you. If we die, we die both together; for I will cut off this head of yours, and cast it to the ground!” And so saying, he gave the crane's neck a grip with his claws, as with a vice.

Then gasping, and with tears trickling from his eyes, and trembling with the fear of death, the crane beseeched him, saying, “O my Lord! Indeed I did not intend to eat you. Grant me my life!”

“Well, well! Step down into the pond and put me in there.”

And he turned round and stepped down into the pond, and placed the crab on the mud at its edge. But the crab cut through its neck as clean as one would cut a lotus-stalk with a hunting-knife, and only then entered the water!

When the Genius who lived in the Varana tree saw this strange affair, he made the wood resound with his praise, uttering in a pleasant voice the verse:

“The villain, though exceeding clever, / Shall prosper not by his villainy. / He may win indeed, sharp-witted in deceit, / But only as the Crane has beaten the Crab!”

 

 

Calvin:
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

Hobbes:
Isn't your zipper supposed to be in the front of your pants?

More random questions, with answers from the nation's top trivia experts.

Q:
Who first faded out the music at the end of a record, rather than having a proper ending?

A:
“Fade-outs became widespread in the United States as the result of a trade survey in the early fifties. This showed that when records were played on jukeboxes, people felt more inclined to replay a record that faded out because it left a subconscious feeling that you hadn't completely heard it. The only other innovation to stimulate jukebox plays was pioneered by the Chess Record Company. They developed a groove-cutting technique which ensured that when played on jukeboxes, their records were one-third louder than all other records in the machine.” (From
The Best Ever Notes & Queries
, edited by Joseph Harker)

Q:
When spilled coffee dries on my kitchen counter, it forms a brown ring, with almost nothing inside. Why does all the coffee go to the edges to dry?

A:
“When a coffee puddle finds itself on a flat, level surface, it tends to spread out in all directions. The liquid will stop spreading when it hits a barrier, any slight irregularity in the surface that it can't cross, such as a microscopic ditch. Depending on where the barriers happen to be, the puddle will take on a certain shape: longer in this direction, shorter in that, like an amoeba.

“As evaporation takes place, the puddle will start to dry first where it's thinnest: at the edges. That has the effect of making the puddle shrink, pulling its edges back, but it can't do that because they're stuck in the ditches. So as water evaporates from the edges, it has to be replenished from somewhere, and the only place it can come from is the interior of the puddle.

“Thus, there's movement of water from the interior of the puddle
to the edges, where it evaporates. That water carries along with it the microscopic brown coffee particles which then find themselves stranded at the edges when the puddle finally runs out of water.” (From
What Einstein Told His Barber
, by Robert Wolke)

Q:
Why does hair turn gray?

A:
“Gray (or white) is the base color of hair. Pigment cells located at the base of each hair follicle produce the natural dominant color of our youth. However, as a person grows older, more and more of these pigment cells die and color is lost from individual hairs. The result is that a person's hair gradually begins to show more and more gray.

“The whole process may take between 10 and 20 years—rarely does a person's entire collection of individual hairs (which can number in the hundreds of thousands) go gray overnight.” (From
How Things Work
, by Louis Bloomfield)

Q:
There is a common scene on TV and in the movies where there has been a murder. The body has been removed, but its outline is preserved on the floor in white tape or chalk. Do the police really do this?

A:
“At one time, maybe, but according to investigators we surveyed, it's really not done anymore. Why? While chalk or tape might make for dramatic TV, they also contaminate the crime scene, and contamination is a major headache for crime scene investigators.” (From
The Straight Dope
, by Cecil Adams)