Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® (22 page)

And who is today’s biggest draw for Trek conventions? Not Captain Kirk, not Mr. Spock, not even Jean-Luc Picard. It’s Seven of Nine—the gorgeous young woman with a painted-on costume played by Jeri Ryan on
Voyager,
ensuring that Trekkies will continue to flock to
Star Trek
conventions for many years to come.

A Duck Raises Sheep.
In 1964 a freighter carrying 6,000 sheep capsized and sank in Kuwait’s harbor. With so many dead animals underwater, Kuwaitis worried that the rotting carcasses would pollute the water. A way had to be found to lift the ship and remove the sheep before the harbor was contaminated. Danish engineer Karl Kroyer remembered a comic book in which Donald Duck and his nephews raised a sunken ship by stuffing it full of ping pong balls. The idea was worth a try, so Kroyer had 27 million polystyrene balls injected into the hull. It worked—thanks in part to Donald Duck.

Moby’s Legacy.
Two Maori women were the only survivors of a canoe accident off New Zealand. As a dead whale floated by with the harpoon still stuck in it, they used the line from the harpoon to haul themselves aboard the carcass and then floated 80 miles to safety.

Horse Sense. In
1852 the British steamship H.M.S.
Birkenhead
sank three miles off the African coast. Captain Wright was one of the last to abandon ship, and when he finally made it to shore, he was greeted by another of the survivors…his horse.

The Japanese express grief and mourning after the death of a loved one by wearing white, not black.

In 1990, Douglas Coupland wrote a book called
Generation X,
a fictional account of world-weary 20-somethings in the 1990s. It was also a clever
—
and cynical
—
glossary of the experiences and people of that generation. Uncle John found it in the…uh…reading room the other day and loved it. He thought you might enjoy it, too.

McJob:
A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, no-future job in the service sector.

Historical Overdosing:
Living in a time when too much is happening. Symptoms include addiction to newspapers and TV news.

Occupational Slumming:
Taking a job beneath one’s skill or education level as a way of retreating from adult responsibilities and avoiding failure.

Knee-Jerk Irony:
The tendency to make flippant ironic comments in everyday conversation.

Derision Preemption:
A lifestyle tactic; the refusal to go out on any sort of emotional limb so as to avoid mockery from peers. The main goal of
Knee-Jerk Irony.

Personality Tithe:
A price paid for becoming a couple. Formerly amusing people become boring:
“Thanks for inviting us, but Judy and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight.”

Cult of Aloneness:
The

obsessive need for autonomy, usually at the expense of long-term relationships.

Bleeding Ponytail:
A Baby Boomer who pines for hippie or pre-sellout days.

Clique Maintenance:
The need of one generation to see the next generation as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego:
“Kids today do nothing. They’re so apathetic. We used to go out and protest. All they do is shop and complain.”

Earth Tones:
A youthful subgroup interested in vegetarianism, tie-dyed clothes, mild recreational drugs, and good stereo equipment. Earnest, often lacking in humor.

Safety Net-ism:
The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life’s hurts. Usually parents.

Divorce Assumption:
A form of
Safety Net-ism,
the belief that if a marriage doesn’t work out, there’s no problem because partners can simply seek a divorce.

Mid-Twenties Breakdown:
A period of mental collapse, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one’s essential aloneness in the world.

Foggiest place in America: Cape Disappointment, Washington.

Now Denial:
To tell oneself that the only time worth living in is the past and that the only time that may ever be interesting again is the future.

Lessness:
A philosophy whereby one reconciles oneself with diminishing expectations of material wealth:
“I’ve given up wanting to be a bigshot. I just want to find happiness and open up a little roadside cafe.”

Status Substitution:
Using an object with intellectual or fashionable cachet to substitute for an object that is merely pricey:
“Brian, you left your copy of Camus in your brother’s BMW.”

Poorochondria:
Hypochondria derived from not having medical insurance.

Personal Taboo:
A small rule for living, bordering on a superstition, that allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or religious dictums.

Voter’s Block:
The attempt, however futile, to register dissent with the current political system by simply not voting.

Musical Hairsplitting:
The act of classifying music and musicians into pathologically picayune categories:
“The Vienna Franks are a good example of urban white acid folk revivalism crossed with ska.”

101-ism:
The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.

Squires:
The most common X generation subgroup; the only one given to breeding.
Squires
exist almost exclusively in couples and are recognizable by their frantic attempts to recreate Eisenhowerera plenitude.

Ultra-Short-Term Nostalgia:
Homesickness for the extremely recent past: “God,
things seemed so much better in the world last week.”

Cafe Minimalism:
To espouse a philosophy of minimalism without actually putting into practice any of its tenets.

Down-Nesting:
The tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free houses after the children have moved away so as to avoid children aged 20 to 30 who have boomeranged home.

Tele-parablizing:
Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots:
“That’s just like the episode where Jan lost her glasses!”

Yuppie Wannabe’s:
An X generation subgroup that believes the myth of a yuppie lifestyle is both satisfying and viable. Tend to be highly in debt, involved in substance abuse, and show a willingness to talk about Armageddon after three drinks.

Dorian Graying:
The unwillingness to gracefully allow one’s body to show signs of aging.

Option Paralysis:
The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none.

It can take up to 12 hours for snails to mate. They mate only once in their lives.

Ever wonder where the names of certain foods or eating utensils come from? At the BRI, it’s our job to wonder. Here are some origins for you to chew on:

PLATE.
Comes from the Old French
plat,
meaning “flat.”

CUP.
From the Sanskrit word
kupa,
meaning “water well.”

MUSHROOM.
An English mispronounciation of
moisseron,
the Old French word for “fungus.”

CABBAGE.
From the French word for “head,”
caboche.

HORS D’OEUVRE.
In French,
hors
means “outside” and
oeuvre
means “work;” literally “apart from the main work.”

SALAD.
From the Latin
salsus,
meaning “salted.”

COLESLAW.
Comes from the Dutch terms
kool,
meaning “cabbage,” and
sla,
meaning “salad.”

SPAGHETTI.
From
spago,
the Italian word for “cord” or “string.”

CANTALOUPE.
From the place it was first grown—Cantalupo, Italy.

GELATIN.
Comes from the Latin
gelo,
meaning “to freeze or congeal.” So does
jelly.

DESSERT.
Desservir
is the French word for “to clear (the table),” and that’s what you do before dessert is served.

BOWL.
Comes from the Anglo-Saxon word
bolla,
meaning “round.”

SPOON.
From the Anglo-Saxon
spon,
meaning “chip”—a curved chip of wood dipped into a bowl.

Put a pot of chili on the stove to simmer.

Let it simmer. Meanwhile, broil a good steak.

Eat the steak. Let the chili simmer. Ignore it.

—Recipe for chili from Allan Shivers, former governor of Texas

The peanut is one of the most concentrated sources of nourishment.

Uncle John stumbled on a strange-looking timepiece in an antique store. When the dealer told him it was a “metric clock,” he just had to find out the story behind it. Here it is.

Most of the world uses the metric system. But you probably don’t know that it was invented by the French and came about as a result of the French Revolution.

After the bloody triumph over the French monarchy in 1792, the French Revolutionary government, known as “the Terror,” was intent on cleansing citizens’ lives of all influence of the aristocracy and the Church. They were going to create a new society based on reason and rationality.

For many years, French scientists had been trying to replace the traditional arbitrary system of weights and measures with a decimal system. This climate of reform and reason was perfect for implementing their ideas.

In 1793 the Committee of Public Instruction approved a bold proposal: that the basic unit of distance, the foot, be replaced with the “meter”—a unit equal to one ten-millionth of the length of the arc from the equator to the North Pole. Distance henceforth was measured in multiples of 10: centimeters, millimeters, and kilometers. The quart was replaced with the liter, and the ounce with the gram. And it opened the door for another innovation: metric time.

Under the guidance of mathematician Charles Gilbert Romme, the Committee set about the task of creating a metric clock and calendar that would reflect their belief in science over religion. After a year of tinkering by France’s most distinguished poets, scientists, and mathematicians, the French Republican Calendar was officially adopted on October 5, 1793.

The new calendar still had 12 months in a year, but every month had three 10-day weeks, called
decades.
That accounted for only 360 days. The remaining 5 days of the year were celebrated as feast days for the common man: Virtue Day, Genius Day, Labor Day, Reason Day, Rewards Day, and, in leap years, Revolution Day.