Alright, let’s go into the weekend with something good and sappy—and we mean really good.
Eight-month-old Jonathan hears his mother’s voice for the very first time:
There are more (sniff) videos like this here.
Archive for May, 2010
May 28, 2010
This Week in Bathroom News
Someone wrote this bathroom-related story yesterday—and didn’t even mention the fact that the people involved are named “Mooney.” How lame is that? We would have never missed that.
You, too, can have your very own Bubble Wrap Bathroom.
Bathrooms…in Space. (Featuring Uncle John’s dream bathroom:)
Does this bathroom make me look spacey?
Hotel bathrooms are going green. (No, that is not a guacamole joke…)
He came in through the bathroom window. (He could steal—and he could rob!)
“I just went in the bathroom the other morning with a pair of scissors and cut it off.” (We knew we’d find a way to get Willie in this post.)
Gives a whole new meaning to “**** or get off the pot!”
And not from this week, but too good to pass up: ”Cop makes arrest in bathroom after smelling crack.” Ew.
May 25, 2010
Stop Everything: It’s Towel Day!
Holy Cow, we almost missed it. (Thanks, Ginger.)
“2001: Two weeks after the death of Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, fans get together and celebrate May 25 as “Towel Day” in his memory. The tradition continues each year since.”
Why towels, for the three non-Hitchhiker fans out there? Take it away, TowelDay.org:
From the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitchhiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet-weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Oh well dang, they even have a Towel Day 2010 video of people carrying their towels:
Happy Towel Day, everybody, from all of us here at the BRI, and a very special Cheers to the late great Douglas Adams.
May 25, 2010
Ninjas!
If there’s one thing we’re suckers for here at the BRI, it’s stories that have anything to do with ninjas. Or robots. Or zombies. Or Elvis sightings. Or stories involving sightings of ninja-robot-zombie-Elvises. Which is more common than you might think.
Where were we? Oh yeah: Ninjas!
A group of would-be muggers in a Sydney, Australia, met their match Tuesday night in the form of black-clad ninjas.
The three stalked and attacked a German exchange student, 27, in a dimly lit alley that fortunately for the victim ran behind the Ninja Senshi Ryu warrior school…
Ninja story short: The ninjas saw the muggers beating on the guy, and went after them. And the ninjas won. The ninjas always win.
May 24, 2010
The Mark Twain Century is Up
“The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.
That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.”
Parts of the writings have been published before, apparently, but most has never been seen by the public. Should be quite a read, if The War Prayer, also a postmortem publication, is any indication.
P.S. This means, of course, that come November you’ll have to get the new Twain biography along with the brand new Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader. Of course.
May 21, 2010
Update: George Washington’s Library Book Returned!
Back on April 20 we ran the story of our first president’s library book problem, and even ran an exclusive photo of the presidential delinquent:
Well the good people running George’s estate, Mount Vernon, have returned a copy of the same edition of the book to the library. (But not the fine—which would be in the neighborhood of $300,000.)
Good for them. Now if someone would return Dan Quayle’s The Great Potatoe Book then everything would be fine.
Note: Title edited to reflect the fact that only one of the books was returned.
May 21, 2010
Father’s Day Sale Now Until June 21!
EVERY DAD HAS HIS DAY!
Hello, faithful readers! As spring turns to summer, it is time once again for the BRI to gear up for our popular Father’s Day Sale. (Can you believe when we did the first Father’s Day Sale, the Monica Lewinsky scandal was the big news story?) One thing hasn’t changed: This sale is still the best Uncle John’s value of the year, and we have a great selection of new and classic releases to choose from. Here’s what you need to know:
- The Sale: From May 21st to June 21st, 2010, everything in our online store is 30% off! Plus, get FREE standard shipping for orders over $35! (Enter code FDSHIP when checking out to apply free shipping.)
- Shipping Reminder: Because standard shipping can take up to two weeks, order no later than Monday, June 7th, to make sure your books arrive in time for the big day. (But if you happen to forget, you can still order Express or Next Day shipping.)
- New Releases: We’ve got some great new titles to choose from: Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Canada, Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader The World’s Gone Crazy, and Uncle John’s Bathroom Puzzler: Genius Sudoku.
Bonus sale: We’ve tacked on additional discounts to two of our most treasured puzzle books!
During our Father’s Day Sale, we’re offering an even bigger discount on two of our fun game/trivia titles!
Uncle John’s Presents The Ultimate Challenge Trivia Quiz
© 2007, 406 pages
Retail Price: $16.95
Sale Price: $10.17 (40% discount)
Uncle John’s Bathroom Puzzler: Pop Culture Puzzle-pedia
© 2008, 264 pages
Retail Price: $9.95
Sale Price: $6.47
So there you have it—some great deals for a great day. Dad wouldn’t have it any other way! (And it’s better than some spotty necktie.) Thanks for your ongoing support of our quirky book series.
As always,
Go with the Flow!
Uncle John and the BRI staff
THE BOTTOM LINE
Fathers of the Rich and Famous
- Will Ferrell’s dad was a keyboard player for the Righteous Brothers.
- Alfred Nobel (of Nobel Prize fame) invented dynamite. His father invented modern plywood.
- Singer Carly Simon’s pop is the Simon of publishing giant Simon & Schuster.
- Astronomer Galileo’s father, Vincenzo Galilei, was an important Italian composer in the Baroque era.
- Desi Arnaz (Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy) was the son of the mayor of Santiago, Cuba.
- John Aniston, father of Jennifer Aniston, plays the villainous Victor Kiriakis on Days of Our Lives.
- Jackie Chan’s father was a spy for Taiwan.
- In the 1980s, John Wilson, a PBS station manager in Dallas, Texas, was instrumental in bringing Monty Python’s Flying Circus to American television. Two of his sons have gone on to spread a lot of laughs themselves: Owen and Luke Wilson.
May 20, 2010
Welcome to the United States of British Petroleum
Ignore that man behind the oil slick:
Last night CBS Evening News aired a segment on the oil spill and included a clip of BP contractors turning the CBS crew away from investigating part of the oil-drenched Louisiana shoreline under threat of being arrested if they proceeded. The contractor, or a Coast Guard…it’s not quite clear, told CBS that they were merely enforcing BP’s rules.
BP’s rules? That was a public beach! Unbelievable!
Here’s the video:
Here’s a NASA pic of the slick from two days ago:
You can see many more fascinating images at NASA.
May 19, 2010
Wednesday Wrap
Our irregular “Wednesday Wrap” let’s you quickly look at what’s been going on for the last week (and a half) at Uncle John’s Blog. Right to it:
Saturday, May 8: The Vending Machine Skirt!, and video of a mama bear Shaking the Tree.
Monday, May 10: Toilet Paper Bandit Collared.
Tuesday, May 11: The Gulf oil spill By the Numbers. (And it’s “Top Hat.”)
Wednesday, May 12: The Gulf oil spill – How You Can Help.
Thursday, May 13: Jupiter Has Lost a Stripe.
Friday, May 14: The Last of the Ziegfeld Girls.
Monday, May 17: The Newfoundland Newfoundland that became a sergeant in the Canadian Army.
Tuesday, May 18: that post is right below this one—so linking to it would be silly.
• That’s a Wrap!
(Got a tip on a great story, photograph, or video? Leave a link in the comments, send them to the contact page, or send an email to thom@bathroomreader.com. Thanks!)
May 18, 2010
Dave Barry Speaks, We Listen
Every great journey begins with one little joke:
“The other thing is that I write very slowly—painfully slowly—and while yes, I really want it to look spontaneous and random, generally I’ll spend a lot of time just on the first joke, till it seems right, and then I’ll think, OK, what would be a good one to go after that. At that point I’m really not thinking about how it’s going to end or how it’s going to be structured—only about what the next joke will be. And then the next joke after that.”
This has been another episode of “Dave Barry Speaks, We Listen.”
P.S. Dave’s got a new book out.
* (photo)
