Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader (44 page)

“My advice to the public is this: Be alert to the dangers of Communism. Report your information immediately and fully to the FBI.”

INTERVIEWER:
“Where do you find Communists?”

HOOVER:
“Communists may be found in most sections of the United States. Of course, in some areas, the Communists are more thickly located than others. As a general rule, the Communists are less strong in agricultural areas. The Communists are strongest today in the industrial areas. The Communists, as a basic principle of infiltration, are interested in possessing strength in heavy industry, that is coal, steel, rubber, automobile, etc. It is here that, in event of an emergency, they can do their greatest harm to the country. That is one of the potential sabotage dangers facing America today.”

Per capita, North Carolinians drink more soda than people in any other state.

INTERVIEWER:
“Is the FBI interested in any Communist, or only those connected with espionage rings or possible sabotage?”

HOOVER:
“The FBI is interested in knowing the identity of all Communists in the United States, as any Communist, properly qualified, might be recruited into espionage. He may today be circulating peace petitions or selling Communist literature. Tomorrow he may be sabotaging American industry or serving as an espionage courier. Every member of this international conspiracy is a potential saboteur and espionage agent.”

INTERVIEWER:
“Don’t you draw a distinction between philosophical Communists and those who are tools of spy rings?”

HOOVER:
“Any person who subscribes to these teachings, regardless of his reason, is working against American democracy and for the benefit of Soviet Russia. Stalin is his omnipotent oracle from whom all wisdom flows. The Communist party is today a Trojan horse of disloyalty, coiled like a serpent in the very heart of America.

“It may mouth sweet words of ‘peace,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘equality,’ and flourish gay slogans of ‘international solidarity’ and ‘brotherhood of men,’ but its body and feet are from the Russian bear.”

INTERVIEWER:
“Are Communists trained to lie?”

HOOVER:
“The concept of morality and fair play, as practiced in our democracy, is alien and repugnant to him. Moreover, the Communists employ a purposeful double-talk, roundabout style, known as ‘Aesopian language,’ in their literature and speeches, designed to deceive and evade, to clothe their true thoughts. This technique, utilized by Lenin, is the very epitome of deceit.”

INTERVIEWER:
“Would you say it was a favorite Communist technique to belittle the amount of Communist activity here?”

HOOVER:
“Very definitely. As an illustration, a few years ago there was a Communist Action group which was hard pressed in a given area, primarily through the energetic efforts of a few individuals. So, to counteract these few anti-Communists, the Communists developed a technique: Whenever anybody would denounce Communists, they would say, ‘What’s wrong with being a Communist?’ And the average person had given little thought to the subject. They knew they didn’t like Communism, but were at a disadvantage with a trained Communist agitator.”

The fox uses its tail to balance when it runs.

INTERVIEWER:
“Do you have many Communists whom you are actually watching from day to day?”

HOOVER:
“We have a relatively small force when you take into consideration that there is approximately one special agent to every 29,000 inhabitants in this country. With some 43,217 members of the Communist Party and only 5,200 agents—it’s a physical impossibility to keep all of them under surveillance.”

INTERVIEWER:
“What would you say to the charge often made that we are engaging in ‘thought control’ with our constant watching of Communists?”

HOOVER:
“The FBI is concerned not with what Communists think, but with what they do—their actions, just as in any other field of its investigative activity. There is no scintilla of evidence to substantiate the charge that the FBI is engaged in ‘thought control’ activities.”

INTERVIEWER:
“Isn’t it possible that by asking citizens to report subversive activities, some may be encouraged to circulate gossip and rumor and engage in ‘witch hunts’?”

HOOVER:
“I think that citizens cooperating with the FBI provide the greatest barrier you could possibly have against ‘witch hunts’ and hysteria; because, if the citizen has a suspicion, it is his duty to turn it over to the FBI and from that time on do nothing unless he receives a request. A ‘Gestapo’ under the American system would be an impossibility. In addition to the protection of our courts and Congress, we have a free press, which would quickly spot injustices or any excesses on the part of any government agency.”

Q. Who invented swim fins? A. Benjamin Franklin.

Purists in the Land of the Rising Sun don’t like it, but the Japanese language is becoming more Westernized. A number of words that commonly appear in Japanese pop culture have been loosely adapted from English. Here are some of them, written phonetically. See if you can tell what they mean. Answers are at the bottom of the page
.

1.
Biiru

2.
Terebi

3.
Nyusu

4.
Supotsu

5.
Basu

6.
Rajio

7.
Gasu

8.
Hoteru

9.
Resutoran

10.
Sabisu

11.
Memba

12.
Peji

13.
Kappu

14.
Bata

15.
Sekkusu

16.
Bitami

17.
Dezain

18.
Pantsu

19.
Supu

20.
Dorama

21.
Sosu

22.
Burausu

23.
Sutecchi

24.
Bonasu

25.
Kado

26.
Pointo

27.
Makudonarudo

28.
Sungurasu

29.
Sunobbari

30.
Caresu

31.
Weta

32.
Tawa

33.
Sumato

34.
Boru

35.
Gorufu

36.
Sumoggu

ANSWERS

1. beer;
2. TV;
3. news;
4. sports;
5. bus;
6. radio;
7. gas;
8. hotel;
9. restaurant;
10. service;
11. member;
12. page;
13. cup;
14. butter;
15. sex;
16. vitamin;
17. design;
18. pants;
19. soup;
20. drama;
21. sauce;
22. blouse;
23. stitch;
24. bonus;
25. card;
26. point;
27. McDonald’s;
28. sunglasses;
29. snobbery;
30. caress;
31. waiter;
32. tower;
33. smart;
34. ball;
35. golf;
36. smog

Malaysians wash their babies in beer to protect them from disease.

In the
Second Bathroom Reader,
we did the origins of baseball and football names. Here’s what we could dig up about origins of pro basketball names
.

S
eattle Supersonics.
Named after a supersonic jet proposed by Seattle-based Boeing in the late ‘60s. (The jet was never built.)

Los Angeles Lakers.
There are no lakes in L.A. The team was originally the Minneapolis Lakers; Minnesota is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes.”

Detroit Pistons.
Not named for that city’s auto industry. The team’s founder, Fred Zollner, owned a piston factory in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In 1957 the Zollner Pistons moved to Detroit.

New Jersey Nets.
Originally called the New York Nets to rhyme with N.Y. Mets (baseball) and N.Y. Jets (football).

Houston Rockets.
Ironically, it has nothing to do with NASA. They began as the San Diego Rockets—a name inspired by the theme of a “city in motion” and its “space age industries.”

Orlando Magic.
Inspired by Disney’s Magic Kingdom.

New York Knicks.
Short for knickerbockers, the pants that Dutch settlers in New York wore in the 1600s.

Indiana Pacers.
Owners wanted to “set the pace” in the NBA.

Los Angeles Clippers.
Started out in San Diego, where great sailing boats known as clipper ships used to land 100 years ago.

Sacramento Kings.
When the Cincinnati Royals moved to the Kansas City-Omaha area in 1972, they realized
both
cities already had a Royals baseball team. They became the K.C. Kings, then Sacramento Kings.

Atlanta Hawks.
Started in 1948 as the Tri-Cities Blackhawks (Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport, Iowa), they were named after Sauk Indian chief Black Hawk, who fought settlers of the area in the 1831 Black Hawk Wars. In 1951 the team moved to Milwaukee and shortened the name to Hawks.

In case you were wondering: In general, frogs hop faster than toads.

Everyone’s amused by tales of outrageous blunders—probably because it’s comforting to know that someone’s screwing up even worse that we are. So here’s an ego-building page from the BRI. Go ahead and feel superior for a few minutes
.

A
PUBLISHING BOMB

“In 1978 Random House issued a cookbook that contained a potentially lethal mistake.
Woman’s Day Crockery Cuisine
offered a recipe for caramel slices that inadvertently left out one simple ingredient—water. It was soon discovered that if the recipe was followed exactly, a can of condensed milk called for in the book could explode. Random House had to recall 10,000 copies of the book” to correct the potentially lethal recipe.

—From
The Blunder Book
, by M. L. Ginsberg

TAKE THAT!

“In 1941 the British warship
Trinidad
sighted a German destroyer and fired a torpedo at it. The icy Arctic waters apparently affected the torpedo’s steering mechanism—it began to curve in a slow arc As the crew watched in horror, it continued curving slowly around until it was speeding right back at them at forty knots. The
Trinidad’s
torpedo slammed into the
Trinidad
and caused so much damage that it put the warship out of action for the rest of the war.”

—From
The Emperor Who Ate the Bible
, by Scott Morris

SOLID PLANNING

“In 1974 the Nigerian government decided to initiate a ‘Third National Nigerian Development Plan,’ intended to bring the country in a single leap into line with most developed Western nations.

“The planners calculated that to build the new roads, airfields, and military buildings which the plan required would call for some 20 million tons of cement. This was duly ordered and shipped by freighters from all over the world, to be unloaded at Lagos docks.

“Unfortunately, the Nigerian planners had not considered the fact that the docks were only capable of handling two thousand tons a day. Working every day, it would have taken 27 years to unload just the ships that were at one point waiting at sea off Lagos. These contained a third of the world’s supply of cement—much of it showing its fine quality by setting in the hold of the freighters.”

—From
David Frost’s Book of the World’s Worst Decisions

The big chill: The South Pole is colder than the North Pole.

CALLING ALL CARS

In 1977 American carmakers actually recalled more vehicles than they produced: 9.3 million cars were made in the United States that year; 10.4 million were recalled.

RAISING THE DEAD

“A mixup at a company that makes compact disks resulted in rock music with lines like ‘God told me to skin you alive’ being shipped to radio stations labeled as religious music.

“The Southern Baptist Radio-TV Commission, which markets a weekly religious radio program called “Powerline,” is calling more than 1,200 radio stations across the country to warn them that some CDs it sent out for religious broadcasts are mislabeled.

“The CDs are supposed to contain inspirational talks and music. They are actually the alternative rock band Dead Kennedys’ album, ‘Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables.’”

—Reported in the
Chicago Tribune
, June 22, 1993

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

“Festivities marking the centennial of organized soccer in Hereford, England, were canceled abruptly when officials discovered the league was only 90 years old.”

—From
News of the Weird

USING HIS HEAD

“On May 26, 1993, Texas Rangers outfielder Jose Canseco went back for a fly ball hit by Carlos Martinez of the Cleveland Indians. It missed his glove, bounced off his head, and ricocheted into the stands for a home run. ‘I thought I had it,’ Canseco explained later. ‘Now I’ll be on ESPN for a month.’”

—From the
San Francisco Chronicle

A restaurant in Mississippi called Hello, I’m...Jello served over 400 dishes made from Jell-O.

Next time you see the hype for some amazing “can’t miss” phenomenon, hold on to a healthy sense of skepticism by remembering these duds
.

E
SPERANTO

Glorious Prediction:
“Where will Esperanto be tomorrow as a world language? 1) Everyone will
learn
Esperanto; 2) Everyone will
use
Esperanto; 3) It will be the international
neutral
language; and 4) It will be a major step toward
world peace and prosperity
.”

Background:
Esperanto was created in 1887 by Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof, an idealistic 28-year-old Polish ophthalmologist. According to one account, “Zamenhof’s neighbors—Poles, Russians, Estonians, Latvians, and Germans—profoundly misunderstood and mistrusted each other in a multitude of tongues. It was his dream to fashion a new language they could share, and through which they could learn to coexist.” Drawing on nearly all the romance languages, Zamenhof created a simplified, hybrid version with only 16 rules of grammar, no irregular verbs (English has 728), and words that could be changed from nouns to adjectives, adverbs, or verbs by changing the vowel at the end of the word. He published his language under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, which translates as “one who hopes.”