Uncle John's Great Big Bathroom Reader (20 page)

“Yari Bar-El, the psychiatrist who has treated 470 of the tourists for the syndrome, chalks it up to the approach of the year 2000. ‘We know that every millennium there’s an increase of religious feelings,’ he explains, adding that ‘most patients recover in a week.’”

SEINFELD SYNCOPE

Diagnosed In:
United States, 1998

Medical Report:
According to
TV Guide
: “This newly identified medical condition caused a 62-year-old man to laugh so hard while watching
Seinfeld
that he became unconscious and fell face first into his dinner.”

We both speak English, but we don’t necessarily use the same words. For instance, the British call trucks “lorries.” See if you can match the British words to their American counterparts. These words came from
I Hear America Talking,
by Stuart Berg Flexner.

BRITISH

1) Tower Block

2) Hooter

3) Note

4) Fringe

5) Draughts

6) Caravan

7) Track

8) Cash Desk

9) Polka Dots

10) Candy Floss

11) Hoarding

12) Motion

13) Accumulator

14) Fascia (panel)

15) Cubbyhole

16) Pantechnicon

17) Lay-by

18) Verge

19) Chucker Out

20) Push Chair

21) Wing

22) Patience

23) Sponge Bag

24) Braces

25) Spanner

AMERICAN

a) Cotton Candy

b) Checkout Counter

c) Moving Van

d) Dash (board)

e) Battery

f) Tread

g) Shaving kit

h) Stroller

i) Fender

j) Bangs (of hair)

k) Bill (paper money)

l) Billboard

m) Bouncer

n) Shoulder (of a road)

o) High-rise Apartment

p) Chocolate Chips

q) Horn, Siren

r) Trailer

s) Rest Area

t) Bowel Movement

u) Glove Compartment

v) Suspenders

w) Checkers

x) Wrench (tightening tool)

z) Solitaire (a card game)

Answers

1-o, 2-q, 3-k, 4-j, 5-w, 6-r, 7-f, 8-b, 9-p, 10-a, 11-l, 12-t, 13-e, 14-d, 15-u, 16-c, 17-s, 18-n, 19-m, 20-h, 21-i, 22-z, 23-g, 24-v, 25-x

Sandie Timco sent in a review of book called
Going Abroad,
by Eva Newman. When we read the review, we knew it was perfect for us. Why? It’s about using the bathroom in other countries. Here are few excerpts from it.

T
HE SQUAT TOILET

Toilet facilities fall into two general categories, squat and sit. Surprisingly to many Westerners, a large part of the world actually prefers the position of squatting.

Just what is a squat toilet and how is it used? The example illustrated is the kind of squat toilet frequently encountered.

[Editor’s note: To cleanse after using a squat toilet, many people splash water on their rear (a water basin is often provided). If there is no water nearby, use toilet paper, but dispose of it in a trash can.]

SQUATTING IN TURKEY

My own first encounter with an unfamiliar toilet was in Turkey, when I saw my first squat toilet. What a mystery! How do you manage? It seemed apparent from the faucet and pitcher next to the toilet that water was involved, but how was it used? Since there was no handle for flushing, what did you do?

I was much too embarrassed to ask a local person and even too embarrassed to mention the problem to my traveling companions. They, knowing no more than I, never alluded to the problem. So we muddled through, so to speak.

When I used toilet paper, I was chagrined to find the toilet was clogged on my next visit. Since it appeared that my use of paper was causing the problem, sometimes I’d throw water at my private parts, hoping for the best and thoroughly wetting my clothing. But nothing seemed to work! And I very likely left behind a path of clogged toilets and distressed toilet owners.

INDIA MYSTERY

It was not until a few years later in India that the mystery of
squat toilets was solved for me. After a thirty-five hour airplane ride, my friend and I arrived in Bangalore with a good case of jet lag and exhaustion. Our gracious Indian hosts showed us to our room and bath.

Waiting for us in the bathroom was a half-and-half toilet. I ventured to try it first. Sitting was too uncomfortable for me because there is no seat and the facility was too high for my feet to touch the ground. Amazingly, it seemed apparent to me that my standing on the “feet part” of the toilet and squatting would be more appropriate.

My shoes, with their slippery soles, allowed one of my feet to slide into the toilet. When I came out of the toilet with a soggy foot, my friend screamed with laughter.

Her turn was to come. My friend emerged from the same toilet mumbling that she needed to practice her aim as she dried her feet.

THE MYSTERY SOLVED

Our hysterics caused our host to inquire the next morning if we were having a problem. I think that since he had entertained Americans before, he suspected the truth. He was so concerned and kind we confessed our errors and ignorance. He explained all; the remainder of our six weeks’ visit was spent in complete confidence. We had overcome the major obstacle to a happy stay in the real India. In fact, we came to like using squat toilets and to use water for cleansing afterward.

What is the attraction? One well-traveled leader of adventure tours summed up his feelings this way: The beauty of squatting is that your anatomy never has to touch places where many other anatomies have traveled.

PIG’S DELIGHT

After a delicious lunch of pork vindaloo in Goa, India, a traveler sought and found very clean stalls of squat toilets nearby. They were so spotless he was reluctant to use them.

But use them he must. He readied himself and as he was about to squat, to his horror, a pig’s snout appeared in the toilet hole’s opening. It seems the toilet’s drain was a cement chute that ran to the ground in back of the facility, and pigs disposed of the refuse. This pig had become overly anxious.

As he exited, the traveler thought again about his lunch of pork vindaloo.

Here are a few thoughts from Marlene Dietrich, the great actress from the 1930s and 1940s.

“If there is a supreme being, he’s crazy.”

“My legs aren’t so beautiful, I just know what to do with them.”

“Tenderness is greater proof of love than the most passionate of vows.”

“In America sex is an obsession. In other parts of the world, it’s a fact.”

“The average man is more interested in a woman who is interested in him than he is in a woman with beautiful legs.”

“A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman.”

“Once a woman has forgiven a man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.”

“It’s the friends you can call up at 4:00 a.m. who matter.”

“They thought of us glamour girls as they used to think of color photography. When the story was weak, they shot it in color as a cover-up. If the feminine lead was a weak role, they cast a glamour girl in it. But if you tried to find the girl’s part on paper, it wasn’t there.”

“Most women set out to change a man, and when they have changed him, they do not like him.”

“It is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed by someone wiser than oneself.”

“How do you know when love is gone? If you said that you would be there at seven and you get there by nine, and he or she has not called the police yet—it’s gone.”

“Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.”

“Victory is joyful only back home. Up at the front it is joyless.”

Is the truth really out there? Our investigation into the TV phenomenon
The X-Files
has turned up some fascinating pieces of information.

H
OW IT STARTED

Inspiration:
The highest-rated TV movie of the 1972–73 season was a low-budget thriller called
The Night Stalker.
In it, a wise-cracking Las Vegas reporter named Carl Kolchak discovers that the serial killer terrorizing his city is really a vampire. Of course, no one believes him...and when he finally defeats the killer, all evidence vanishes. Only
he
realizes the dark truth—everyone else thinks he’s a kook.

A year later, Kolchak returned in a film called
The Night Strangler
—this time chasing a killer zombie in Seattle. Once again, Neilsen ratings were high, and ABC commissioned a series for the 1974–75 season:
Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
It wasn’t a huge success, but it did attract a cult following. One avid fan was a California teenager named Chris Carter. “It really shook me up to think there might be a twilight world of blood-sucking creatures,” he recalls. “It made a big impression on me.”

The TV Experience
Ten years later, Carter was in the TV biz himself. After kicking around for awhile, he finally signed a deal to develop new programs for the fledgling Fox Network. “When I got to Fox in 1992,” he explains, “I had the luxury of being asked what I would like to do. So I said I wanted to create a scary show, something as dark and mysterious as I remember
Kolchak
was when I was a kid.”

Two other influences played into his work:

•
The Avengers
, an English spy program of the mid-1960s that featured a bantering man/woman team. They had an extraordinary chemistry that never turned into romance. Carter loved them.

• America’s growing obsession with UFOs and the supernatural. Carter wasn’t a “believer,” but in 1991 he’d had a conversation with a Yale professor who claimed that as many as 3% of the American population actually thought they’d been abducted by aliens. Carter was
shocked. “I realized there was a topicality to this theme of the unknown,” he says, “and
The X-Files
grew out of that fascination.”

THE STARS

David Duchovny
(Agent Fox Mulder) planned to be an English Lit. professor, but while working on his doctorate in English Literature at Yale in 1985, he got a part in a Löwenbraü beer commercial. He made $9000—twice the annual salary of his teaching assistantship—and was hooked.

• After that, he had a variety of small roles in TV and films. He figured he was a break or two away from movie stardom when the X-
Files
pilot script showed up. He wasn’t interested in more TV, but thought he’d get a free trip and a few weeks of work from it. He was so uninterested in the part that when producer Chris Carter told him to wear a tie to the audition, he wore one covered with pink pigs. Carter jokes, “I think that got him the job.”

Gillian Anderson
(Agent Dana Scully) landed a role in the off-Broadway play
Absent Friends six
months after graduating from college in 1990...and won the Theatre World Award as the “outstanding new talent of 1990–91” for it.