Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (54 page)

—Merl Reagle

“The advantages of simple origami are twofold.”

—Tim Vine

“What did the carrot say to the wheat? Lettuce rest, I’m feeling beet.”

—Shel Silverstein

“My wife’s a water sign. I’m an earth sign. Together we make mud.”

—Rodney Dangerfield

“This concerto was written in four flats because Rachmaninoff had to move four times while he wrote it.”

—Victor Borge

“Double negatives are a no-no.”

—
Zac Hill

“The safest place in an earthquake is a stationary store.”

—George Carlin

“Why is a martini without an olive or lemon twist called a Charles Dickens? No olive or twist.”

—Martin Gardner

“I’ve always wanted to make an impact on the world. I’ve also always wanted to go sky diving. I just hope I don’t to both at the same time.”

—David Brandenburg

“It was so quiet, you could hear a pun drop.”

—Bugs Baer

Uncle John is a
paronomasiac
—one who is addicted to puns and wordplay.

THE #2 AMENDMENT

More examples of what can happen when a pistol-packin’ person makes a pit stop
.

G
UN OWNER:
Deputy Robert Greek of the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department in Massachusetts
ARMED & DANGEROUS:
In November 2005, nature called while Deputy Greek was at a Dunkin’ Donuts. He popped into the restroom and set down his service weapon while he attended to the matter at hand. Then, when it was time to leave, he forgot to take his gun with him. Nearly an hour passed before he realized his gun was missing. He immediately returned to Dunkin’ Donuts to get it, but by then, it was long gone.

WHAT HAPPENED:
Luckily for Deputy Greek, the gun was found by a responsible citizen, who dropped it into a Post Office letter box and then notified the police where they could find it. Deputy Greek’s carelessness cost him his firearm license, and that in turn cost him his job. “Because he was unable to be certified to carry a firearm, we were unable to retain him as a deputy,” a Sheriff’s Department spokesperson told reporters. (Greek did notify the department as soon as he realized his firearm was missing: “He deserves some credit for that,” said the spokesperson.)

GUN OWNER:
An unidentified 52-year-old woman living in Hoover, Alabama

ARMED & DANGEROUS:
On election day in June 2000. the woman went to her polling station to vote. Unfortunately for her, the polling station was located in the chambers of the Hoover City Council, and no handguns are allowed in there. (The woman was packing a loaded .45-caliber Beretta semiautomatic.) Apparently she didn’t realize that guns weren’t permitted until she saw the warning sign next to the metal detectors. Instead of leaving the premises, the woman simply hid the Beretta in the ladies’ room while she went in and voted. She couldn’t have hidden it very well, because by the time she got back, a city employee had already found the gun and turned it over to the police.

It takes a village: A nursing lioness will give milk to any of the pride’s cubs.

WHAT HAPPENED:
When the woman asked if anyone had seen her gun, the police arrested her…at which point the woman began complaining of chest pains. Rather than file charges, the police called paramedics. (She received a clean bill of health and was released from the hospital two hours later; the police did not attempt to file charges again.)

GUN OWNER:
Steve Schmulbach of Belleville, Missouri

ARMED & DANGEROUS:
In July 1990, Schmulbach, his wife, and another couple were visiting Union Station in St. Louis when Schmulbach had to use the restroom. Not long after he got down to “business,” he was confronted by two robbers who poked their heads over the bathroom stall and pointed a gun at him.

WHAT HAPPENED:
What are the odds that the robbers would have picked a bathroom stall occupied by an off-duty police officer? An
armed
off-duty police officer? Schmulbach, a 12-year veteran of the Belleville, Missouri, police department, grabbed for his .38-caliber service revolver and fired off a shot, missing both men but so startling them that the one with the gun dropped it (it didn’t go off) as he fled the restroom. At last report, a 19-year-old suspect was in custody and police were still looking for his 21-year-old accomplice.

GUN OWNER:
Sergeant Nicole Girardi of the Boca Raton, Florida, police department

ARMED & DANGEROUS:
In March 2006, the Secret Service asked the Boca PD to assist in securing a local country club in advance of a GOP fundraiser headlined by Vice President Dick Cheney. Sgt. Girardi was assigned to the detail. When she took a bathroom break at the country club, she put her gun down in the restroom and forgot to take it with her when she finished. Police officers conducting a security sweep found the gun a short time later.

WHAT HAPPENED:
Luckily for Girardi, the gun was found before Vice President Cheney arrived. That kept the incident a local police matter rather than a federal case. Girardi received an official reprimand, but no other disciplinary measures were taken. (Although she has been warned that if she misplaces her gun again, she could lose her job.)

The words “stereotype” and “cliche” both originated as French book-printing terms.

HOW ________
GOT TO JAPAN

See if you can guess the blank before the end of the article
.

C
lue #1:
In 1897 the German government was able to coerce the Chinese government into giving them a 99-year lease to the city of Tsingtao, on Kiautschou Bay in East China. The bay and surrounding region soon became a German colony, and a large naval fort was built in its harbor.

•
Clue #2:
In July 1914, World War I officially began. In August the British—and their allies, the Japanese—attacked Tsingtao, and by November they had taken it from the Germans. The Japanese captured about 4,000 German prisoners in Tsingtao and transported them to POW camps in Japan.

•
Clue #3:
In 1915 several hundred of those prisoners were transferred to the newly built Narashino camp, east of Tokyo. Among those prisoners was one Karl Jahn, an expert in a field that had been mastered by Germans centuries earlier.

•
Clue #4:
In 1918 Jahn and a handful of other POWs taught the secrets of their skill to Yoshifusa Iida, a Japanese government official. Yoshifusa, who happened to be in the midst of experiments with the processing of a certain kind of food, was impressed.

•
Clue #5:
Yoshifusa subsequently taught the process to manufacturers all across Japan, marking the beginning of a new industry in the country.

•
Clue #6:
As the years passed, the story of how the Japanese learned to produce this product was almost completely forgotten. Then, in 2008, a collection of photos of Narashino camp was discovered—including images of Yoshifusa Iida, Karl Jahn, and the other prisoners making it.

Have you guessed the mystery German product? Turn to
page 534
for the answer
.

Los Angeles has 24-hour vending machines for marijuana.

READY…SET…HURL!

We’ve done hundreds of “weird world” articles over the past two decades. This, we believe, is the first one that’s focused on vomiting. (Warning: not for the squeamish.)

R
eady:
Police in Winona, Minnesota, were called to the scene of an automobile accident in April 2010.
Set:
They found a car that had been driven into a utility pole. Witnesses said they saw a young man walking a dog leave the scene. Four hours later, 18-year-old Michael Allen Butler called police and confessed.

HURL!
Butler told police he had crashed into the pole…because his dog had puked on him. Deputy Police Chief Tom Williams was skeptical at first, but after investigating the scene said he believed the young man…because they found dog puke all over the inside of the car. Butler was ticketed for driving without a license.

Ready:
Matthew Clemmens, 21, of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and a friend were at a Philadelphia Phillies-Washington Nationals baseball game in 2010. They were both drinking. They started yelling obscenities and acting like jerks.

Set:
Clemmens and his friend were sitting behind off-duty Police Captain Michael Vangelo. When the two wouldn’t stop swearing, Vangelo asked an usher to call the cops. Result: Clemmens and his friend were expelled.

HURL!
As they were being escorted out of the stadium, Clemmens leaned over the railing between the seat rows, stuck his finger down his throat, and purposely puked on Vangelo…and his 11-year-old daughter. He also managed to puke on a security officer. Bad idea: Clemmens was arrested on charges of aggravated assault, harassment, resisting arrest, and other offenses. “It was the most vile, disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” Vangelo said. “And I’ve been a cop for 20 years.” Clemmens was sentenced to a month in jail, two years’ probation, and 50 hours of community service…and he had to reimburse the Vangelo family for their tickets to the game.

Ready:
Twenty-six-year-old Justin Krohmer, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy in Fargo, North Dakota, was at a Kenny Chesney concert in the Fargodome in June 2009. (He was with his mom.)
Set:
He was drinking. (So was his mom.)

Cloudiest city in the U.S.: Astoria, Oregon, which averages 240 cloudy days a year.

HURL!
At one point during the show, Krohmer—now drunk—threw up on the people in front of him. Then he was told by Fargodome security that he had to leave—but he refused. Police were called, and Deputy Krohmer was arrested for disorderly conduct.

Extra:
Krohmer’s mother, 47-year-old Susan Krohmer, was also arrested and taken to jail, after allegedly screaming profanities at the officers and trying to prevent them from removing her son. Mrs. Krohmer is the wife of the local police chief.

Ready:
In July 2008, the town of Builth Wells, Wales, hosted their annual Mountain Bike Marathon race. More than 650 showed up to participate.

Set:
The starter fired the starting gun…the race began…and the bikers finished the race without incident.

HURL!
Then they all started puking. Well, not all of them, but over the next few days more than 160 of the racers suffered severe bouts of vomiting. The U.K.’s National Public Health Service issued a report and England’s
Sunderland Echo
newspaper ran a story about it. Headline: “Sheep poo caused mountain bike vomit carnage.” Explanation: Some of the mud that the racers had ridden through was contaminated with
Campylobacter
—a bacteria found in sheep feces—which caused the bikers to become ill. The situation had been exacerbated, the report said, by heavy rain before the races, which made for an abundance of liquid mud that could easily fly into the participants’ mouths. (Yum!)

PRIORITIES?

A 2010 poll asked British adults to rank the 100 greatest inventions of all time. Coming in at #1 and #2: the wheel and the airplane. Coming in at #8 was the Apple iPhone, which is apparently a more important invention than the flush toilet (#9), the internal combustion engine (#10), hot tap water (#29), and the wristwatch (#59).

First millionaire pro athlete: Ty Cobb. (He made it in the stock market, not baseball.)

“9-1-DUMB, WHAT’S
YOUR EMERGENCY?”

More real stories of ill-conceived 911 calls
.

M
ULTITASKING
In 2008 two Sarasota, Florida, police cars were following a suspicious vehicle when they received a 911 call that an armed robbery was in progress a few blocks away. The lead cop went to check it out, but the other one kept following the vehicle until it stopped in a parking lot, at which point the officer ordered the driver to exit the vehicle. It turned out that the 28-year-old driver had a gun, and he was a convicted felon and, therefore, not allowed to own a gun. After the robbery call turned out to be bogus, the cops checked the felon’s phone records and their suspicions proved correct: He’d made the fake 911 call about the robbery while the cops were following him. His ruse almost worked.