Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader (65 page)

Don’t freak out, man. Part II of the story is on
page 503
.

Sigmund Freud suffered from
siderodromophobia
...a fear of trains.

You’re used to pounds, meters, and minutes, but how about parsecs or fathoms? Here are a few weights and measures you might find a little unfamiliar
.

B
TU:
A measure of heat energy, one BTU (British thermal unit) is the amount of energy needed to raise one pound of pure water by 1°F.

Fathom:
Originally equal to the distance between the tips of the left and right middle fingers with the arms outstretched. Today one fathom is equal to six feet.

Stone:
A British measure of weight equal to 14 pounds.

Light-year:
The distance a pulse of light travels in one year (about 5.88 trillion miles).

Parsec:
3.26 light-years.

Acre:
Originally described the amount of land that could be plowed by oxen in a single day. Today it is 4,840 square yards. There are 640 acres in a square mile.

Acre foot:
Amount of water needed to submerge one acre of land under one foot of water.

Skein:
A measure for yarn or thread. A skein is 360 feet long.

Dobson unit:
A measure of the concentration of ozone in the atmosphere.

Apgar score:
A number score between 1 and 10 given to newborn babies as a measure of health. The healthiest babies score a 10.

Barrel (petroleum):
42 gallons.

Section:
The U.S. term for one square mile of land (one mile wide by one mile long).

Furlong:
A measure of distance, used mainly in horse races. One furlong is equal to one-eighth of a mile.

Cord:
Measures quantities of chopped wood—the amount in a pile four feet high, four feet wide, and eight feet long.

Shake:
A measure of time. One shake is equal to one hundred-millionth of one second.

Work triangle:
An imaginary triangle connecting the kitchen sink, refrigerator, and stove. The ideal perimeter of such a triangle is no less than 12 feet; no more than 22 feet.

A Boeing 747 holds 57,285 gallons of fuel.

Some of the creepiest rumors and urban legends are the ones concerning the stuff we eat and drink. Are any of them true? Read on to find out
.

R
UMOR:
The skins of bananas from Costa Rica are infected with the bacteria that causes
necrotizing fasciitis—
flesh-eating diseases.

BACKGROUND:
In January 2000, an e-mail from the “Mannheim Research Institute” began making its way around the Internet. It claimed that the flesh-eating infection had recently decimated the Costa Rican monkey population, and that the bacteria were passed from one monkey to another via banana peels. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it claimed, estimated that 15,000 people would be maimed or killed by exposure to infected bananas...but that this was an “acceptable number,” so the FDA was holding off on issuing an alert because it didn’t want to start a panic. “Please forward this to as many of the people you care about as possible,” the e-mail pleads. “We do not feel 15,000 is an acceptable number.”

THE TRUTH:
Go ahead and eat your banana—the e-mail was a hoax. The monkeys are fine, and there is no “Mannheim Research Institute,” but this was one of the hottest food rumors of 2000. The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control received so many e-mails that they issued a public statement debunking the story and set up a special banana hotline.

RUMOR:
Red Bull gives you wings...and brain tumors.

BACKGROUND:
The Austrian energy drink first found its way to the United States in 1997. By 2000 e-mails were circulating about it, claiming that one of the drink’s ingredients, the ominous sounding
glucuronolactone
, is “an artificially manufactured stimulant developed in the early 1960s by the American Government.” It was first used “in the Vietnam conflict to boost morale amongst GIs who were suffering from stress and fatigue, but was banned after a few years following several deaths and hundreds of cases involving anything from severe migraines to brain tumors.” Another rumor claimed that Red Bull gets its “energy” from the private parts of bulls.

The traditional American “log cabin” style home originated in Sweden.

THE TRUTH:
Glucuronolactone is a naturally occurring carbohydrate, not an artificial stimulant. Every other claim in the e-mail is false, too. Red Bull is threatening to sue the person who started the rumor...if they ever track him down. And no, Red Bull does not contain the private parts of bulls. But is Red Bull fighting
that
rumor? Not a chance. It’s “one of our favorite rumors,” says company spokesperson Emmy Cortes. “It’s kind of fun.”

RUMOR:
Evian is
naive
spelled backward—it’s a backhanded slap at people who waste money on bottled water.

BACKGROUND:
Well...Evian really
is
naive spelled backward, isn’t it?

THE TRUTH:
It’s just a coincidence. Evian is bottled at a spring in the town of Evian-les-Bains in the French Alps near Lake Geneva. And it’s nothing new, either—Evian’s waters have been bottled and sold since 1826.

RUMOR:
French wine contains ox blood.

BACKGROUND:
When France opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in early 2003, some U.S. politicians started looking for ways to retaliate. House Speaker Dennis Hastert proposed putting “bright orange warning labels” on French wine bottles to warn consumers that they might contain ox blood. “People should know how the French make their wine,” his spokesperson told reporters.

THE TRUTH:
The claim is false but does contain a kernel of truth. Powdered ox blood was once used in France (and other countries, including the United States) to clarify cloudy wine. So were egg whites. The substances were introduced into the wine while it was still fermenting in barrels. Proteins floating in the wine, which caused much of the cloudiness, would then stick to the blood or egg whites, forming clumps that settled to the bottom of the barrel and could be easily removed from the wine. But the European Economic Union formally outlawed the practice of using dried ox blood in 1998. Modern wineries use clay filters to accomplish the same task.

Food tip: To make ketchup pour more quickly, shake the closed bottle vigorously.

Does your city, state, or province have some cool slang term named after it? If so, send it to us for next year’s
Bathroom Reader.

Kansas sheep dip.
Whiskey

Michigan bankroll.
A big wad of small-denomination bills with a large bill on the outside

Chicago violin.
A Thompson submachine gun

Vermont charity.
Sympathy, but little else

Cincinnati oysters.
Pickled pigs’ feet

California banknote.
A cowhide

Bronx cheer.
Sound made by sticking out one’s tongue and blowing to express disapproval

Arkansas wedding cake.
Corn-bread

Albany beef.
Sturgeon. The fish was so plentiful in the Hudson River during the 19th century that it got this nickname

Boston strawberries.
Baked beans

West Virginia coleslaw.
Chewing tobacco

Missouri featherbed.
A straw mattress

Cape Cod turkey.
Codfish

Tennessee toothpick.
A raccoon bone

Arizona nightingale.
A burro

California collar.
Hangman’s noose

Mississippi marbles.
Dice (for craps)

Full Cleveland.
A ’70s-style leisure outfit: loud pants and shirt, white belt, white loafers

Texas turkey.
An armadillo

Missouri hummingbird.
A mule

Tucson bed.
Sleeping on the ground without cover

Colorado Kool-Aid.
Coors beer

Arizona paint job.
No paint at all

Arkansas fire extinguisher.
A chamber pot

Alabama Kleenex.
Toilet paper

Oklahoma rain.
A sandstorm

Kentucky breakfast.
Steak and bourbon (and a dog to eat the steak)

First non-royal to be portrayed on a British stamp? William Shakespeare (in 1964).

Could there actually be a world’s worst novelist? According to the
Oxford Companion to English Literature,
it’s Amanda McKittrick Ros. We were skeptical, so we read some of her work. They were right
.

P
EN OF PERSUASION

If you spent all your spare time reading romance novels and then decided to try writing one yourself, how good would it be? That’s what an Irish schoolteacher named Amanda McKittrick Ros wanted to find out: in 1895 she wrote
Irene Iddesleigh
. Two years later, her husband paid to have it published as a gift for their 10th wedding anniversary.

The novels that inspired Ros weren’t very good to begin with, and when she tried to imitate them she did even worse. Her prose is wordy and alliterative (“frivolous, frittery fraternity of fragiles flitting round and about” reads one passage), her grammar is quirky, and she embellishes insignificant details for no particular purpose. Her characters don’t cry—instead, tears “fall from their sorrow-laden orbs.” They don’t sweat, they “shed globules of liquid lava.” And they don’t go crazy, either—they become “berthed in the boat of insanity.” It isn’t enough for the character Lady Gifford to simply clear her throat, she has to clear it “of any little mucus that perchance would serve to obstruct the tone of her resolute explanation,” while Lord Gifford’s body shakes “as if electrically tampered with.”

INFLICTING PAIN

Ros’s work would probably have gone unnoticed and be completely forgotten today had a satirist named Barry Pain not read a copy of
Irene Iddesleigh
. He found the bad writing so funny that he wrote a mocking review in
Black in White
, a popular literary magazine.
Irene Iddesleigh
is “the book of the century,” he raved. “
Irene
is enormous. It makes the Eiffel Tower look short...never has there been anything like it. I tremble.”

Time of the week you’re at greatest risk of getting bitten by someone: Saturday, 3 to 5 p.m.

Overnight, Pain’s review turned Ros into the talk of London literary society. People snapped up copies of
Irene Iddesleigh
by the thousands, formed Amanda Ros clubs, and threw Amanda Ros dinners and parties at which they took turns reading the worst passages aloud. People wrote fawning letters to the Great Lady in the hope that she might write back in her own hand, and many admirers made the trek to Larne in Northern Ireland to meet her in person. Even Mark Twain read
Irene Iddesleigh
; he pronounced it one of the great works of “Hogwash Literature.”

DISTURBING THE BOWELS

As flattered as Ros may have been by the attention, she was deeply hurt by the bad reviews and lashed out at critics for the rest of her life. Ros never doubted her own abilities. The negative reviews only steeled her determination to continue writing, or as she put it, “disturbing the bowels of millions” with her work.

•
In 1898 she published her second novel,
Delina Delaney—
twice as long as
Irene Iddesleigh
and every bit as bad.

•
A decade later, Ros published her third work, a book of verse called
Poems of Puncture
. By then she’d spent more than five years in court fighting over an inheritance. She wrote
Poems of Puncture
to lash out at her enemies (first critics, now lawyers), and then used the proceeds from book sales to pay her legal bills.

END OF THE ROAD

After
Poems of Puncture
, Ros began work on a third novel,
Helen Huddleson
. Inexplicably, she named many of the characters in the book after fruit—Madam Pear, the Earl of Grape, Sir Christopher Currant, Sir Peter Plum, Lord Raspberry, and his sister Cherry Raspberry among them. (Years later, biographer Jack Loudan asked her why she gave Lord Raspberry that name. “What else would I call him?” she snapped back.) The cast of characters is rounded out by a servant named after a flower and a legume, Lily Lentil.

Helen Huddleson
promised to be a doozy, but Ros was not able to finish it. Getting on in years, she had terrible arthritis in her hands, which prevented her from writing the last chapter. She did, however, manage to complete a final book of poems, titled
Fumes of Formation
. Published in 1933, it would be the last of her works published in her lifetime.

Sherlock Holmes
author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was an ophthalmologist.

In 1939 Ros fractured her hip in a fall and died a few days later. After her death, relatives sorting through her personal effects were preparing to burn all of her papers but were stopped at the last minute by William Yeates, a neighbor and admirer who managed to fill a potato sack full of memorabilia, including the unfinished manuscript for
Helen Huddleson
. It remained unpublished for 30 years, until Ros’s biographer Jack Loudan edited the manuscript, added a final chapter, and had the book published in 1969.