Uncle John's Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader (30 page)

James Robert “Beef” Ward,
39, will be sadly and sorely missed by his loving family. Jimmy, who his family affectionately called “Pork” or “Bubba,” was preceded in death by his mother, Barbara Jean “Buffalo Butt” Ward. Survived by his fiancée, Annie “Red” Callahan; father, J. Richard “Old Fart” Ward; sisters, Cathy “Funny Face” Graf, Karen “Turtle” Ward, and “Hamburger” Patty Ward.

—
Columbus Dispatch

 

Edward “Bruce” Merritt.
Born April 3, 1951 in North Carolina. His older sisters regularly beat him up, put him in dresses, and then forced him to walk to the drugstore to buy their cigarettes. Bruce never met a stranger, and in many ways was stranger than most. He is survived by one daughter, two grandchildren, two ex-wives, unpaid taxes, and many loyal loving friends.

—
Dallas Morning News

 

Chuck P. Dimmick
passed away suddenly on April 18, 2009 while attending a NASCAR race to watch his favorite driver, Jeff Gordon. Chuck was the Director of Marketing for the Lund Cadillac Group. We are sure he would still want all to know that 0.9% financing is still available on all new 2008 Hummer H2’s.

—
Arizona Republic

 

Theodore Roosevelt Heller,
88, was discharged from the U.S. Army during WWII due to service-related injuries, and then forced his way back into the Illinois National Guard insisting no one tells him when to serve his country. In lieu of flowers, please send acerbic letters to Republicans.

—
Chicago Tribune

 

Arthur (Fred) Clark,
who had tired of reading obituaries noting others’ courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle as a result of an automobile accident on June 18, 2006. During his life he excelled at mediocrity. He had lifelong love affairs with bacon, butter, cigars, and
bourbon. His sons said of Fred, “He was often wrong, but never in doubt.” When his family was asked what they remembered about Fred, they fondly recalled how Fred never peed in the shower—on purpose.

—
Richmond Times Dispatch

 

Ruth E. Rencevicz,
born on August 28, 1927, passed away on September 7, 2008, due to complications resulting from her children making her old before her time. Ruth served her country as a covert spy for the CIA, where during the Cold War she was largely responsible for the breakup of the Soviet Union. At least, that’s the way she told it. Ruth was also very active as a volunteer known to selflessly give of her time by standing on her balcony yelling at kids for “playing that rap music” at all hours of the day and night.

—
Akron Beacon Journal

 

Louis J. Casimir Jr.
bought the farm Thursday, Feb. 5, 2004, having lived more than twice as long as he had expected and probably three or four times as long as he deserved. Although he was born into an impecunious family, in a backward and benighted part of the country at the beginning of the Great Depression, he never in his life suffered any real hardships. For more than six decades, he smoked, drank, and ate lots of animal fat, but never had a serious illness or injury. His last wish was that everyone could be as lucky as he had been, even though his demise was probably iatrogenic. Lou was a daredevil: his last words were “Watch this!”

—
The Daily Item
(Pa.)

 

Jack Balmer.
As this is my auto-obituary, I’d like to write it in my own fashion! I was born in Vancouver on All Saints day, 1931. Apart from practicing dentistry for 30 years, I have also at one time or another been fairly adept as a skier, private pilot, race car driver, vintner, mechanic, model builder, marine aquar-ist, carpenter, photographer, plumber, scuba diver, writer, boat builder, Olympic team member (coach for a bronze medal), and a Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary member. Since I’ve had a ball in life, with no regrets and nothing left still undone, and since our world seems to be quickly deteriorating, it’s a good time for me to cash in. Goodbye, and good luck!

—
Vancouver Sun

When Uncle John read about this Taiwanese restaurant chain, he laughed
a little, recoiled a little, and then wondered, “Why didn’t
I
think of
that?” (Then again, it’s probably better that he didn’t.)

You’ve probably never heard of the Japanese comic-book character
Arale Norimaki
. She’s a purple-haired robot teenager whose favorite hobby is “poking poop with a stick.” Arale Norimaki has a huge following not just in Japan, but in other parts of Asia as well, including Taiwan. That’s where, in 2004, a 26-year-old banker named Wang Zi-wei was inspired by Norimaki’s poop-poking example to go into the soft-serve ice cream business.

(If you’re at all squeamish, you should probably stop reading
right now
and turn to another page.)

Somehow, Wang came to the conclusion that if people liked watching cartoon robots poking at poop, they’d probably love eating soft-serve ice cream that looks like poop, served in paper dishes that look like tiny toilets.

What’s even stranger than the way Wang’s mind works is the fact that his business instincts were dead-on. His human-waste ice cream stand was a big hit—customers not only lapped up all the “diarrhea with dried droppings” (chocolate ice cream with chocolate sprinkles), “bloody poop” (strawberry ice cream), and “green dysentery” (kiwi ice cream) he served, they pestered him to come up with more similarly themed treats.

After four months of working in the bank by day and selling his frozen fecal confections by night, Wang decided to expand. “The success with ‘toilet ice cream’ was a leap of faith for me to quit the stable, but boring, banking job and start my business, despite strong objections from my family,” Wang says. In May 2004, he opened what would become the first location in the Modern Toilet restaurant chain.

If you’ve never had an opportunity to dine in a Modern Toilet, it’s pretty easy to conjure up a mental image of what one looks like. Picture a large public restroom, say one at an airport or a shopping mall. See all those bathroom stalls? Take the
stalls
out…but leave the toilets, and then keep adding more toilets until you have about 100. Now arrange them tastefully around bathtubs and sinks that have been covered with glass tabletops. Now hang some showerheads and shower curtains from the ceiling, and install some urinals on the tiled walls to serve as light fixtures. Need a napkin? Help yourself to the toilet paper dispenser on your bathtub /table. That’s pretty much what Modern Toilet restaurants look like—and as of early 2009, there were seven of them in Taiwan, an eighth in Hong Kong, and many more planned for cities in Macao, Malaysia, and mainland China.

“Go Pee-Pee or Go Poo-Poo?” That’s the Modern Toilet way of directing you to the beverage (Pee-Pee) and food (Poo-Poo) sections of the menu. There are plenty of entrées to choose from; if Modern Toilet Beef Curry (served in a toilet-shaped bowl) doesn’t strike your fancy, there’s always the Japanese Milk Hot Pot, the Texan Chicken, or the No. 2 Double Surprise Banquet Combo (Korean beef and German smoked chicken with cream sauce), also served in little toilets. Appetizers, such as the Fun Platter (California potato fries, onion rings, and popcorn chicken), are served in tiny bathtubs.

Wash your meal down with your choice of 18 different tea drinks, including Ice Cream Black Tea, Pudding Milk Tea, or Coffee Jelly Milk Tea, plus plenty of non-tea beverages, including Plum-and-Cola and Honey Lemon Juice. If you’re feeling homesick (as opposed to just plain sick), Modern Toilet also serves Ovaltine.

If you prefer your beverage hot, it will be served in a plain mug. Too boring? Order your drink cold, and it will be served in your choice of either a plastic “urinal bottle” similar to those used by bedridden hospital patients, or in a miniature plastic urinal that looks disturbingly like the porcelain fixtures in the Modern Toilet
men’s room. Bonus: When you’re finished with your meal, the urinal (or the urinal bottle) is yours to keep!

Did you manage to keep your dinner down? Is there still room for dessert? The dessert menu has been expanded from soft-serve ice cream to include a dozen varieties of shaved ice.

Yes, they even serve yellow snow.

As with any well-designed restaurant, the restrooms at Modern Toilet are clearly marked. But since the entire restaurant looks like a restroom, if nature calls be sure to ask for directions to the restroom and listen
very carefully
when they are given. If you have any doubts as to whether you really are in the restroom, as a courtesy to other diners, please confirm that you are where you think you are before using the toilet for its intended purpose.

Meaning:
It’s my mistake; it’s my fault.

Origin:
“This slang term originated in about 1970. The first citation in print is the 1986 book
Back-in-Your-Face Guide to Pick-up Basketball
: ‘My bad: an expression of contrition uttered after making a bad pass or missing an opponent.’ It came into widespread popularity thanks to the 1995 movie
Clueless
.” (From “The Phrase Finder” at
phrases.org.uk
,
by Gary Martin)

 

Meaning:
Don’t look beyond the obvious when trying to determine someone’s true nature.

Origin:
“Usually ascribed to Walter Reuther, the American labor leader during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950s. He came up with it as a test of whether someone was a Communist.” (From
The Phrase That Launched 1,000 Ships
, by Nigel Rees)

Five centuries ago, deep in the mountainous jungles of what is now Peru, the Spanish conqueror Pedro Cieza de León encountered a tribe of people who were different from the ruling Incas. “They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen,” he wrote, “and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness, many of them deserved to be the Incas’ wives and to also be taken to the Sun Temple.” In addition to being lighter-skinned than the Incas, these people were said to be much taller—and they had blond hair and blue eyes.