Archive for June, 2010

June 30, 2010

Scavenger Hunt Clues-Updated Daily.

To make it easier for everyone, we will be posting all the clues daily on this list. We will also send them out via Twitter and Facebook. Remember that you must email in all your answers by July 5. CLICK HERE for all the details. (No clues will be posted on Saturday or Sundays)

  1. Take a picture of your bathroom.
  2. Send us the headline and link of the 1st Neatorama blog post of 2010.
  3. What is the age of the woman who bungee jumped with her dad in one of our earlier blogs from this year?
  4. Take a friend or loved one to a home supply store, go to the bathroom department, and photograph the two of you having a “lightsaber fight” with plungers. (If you get in trouble, then we don’t know you.)
  5. The back cover of which Bathroom Reader has a wine glass?
  6. Go to your local bookstore and take a picture in front of the shelf of Uncle John’s books. If the store doesn’t carry the books, take a picture of yourself holding a sign saying “Bring Uncle John’s to this store.”
  7. What was the top grossing film of the year that the first edition of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader was published. Hint: It also won the Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.
  8. What is the 7th job listed in the “7 Jobs That Sound Like a Joke” blog post on WeirdWorm.com?
  9. List 5 famous ducks and the source of their fame.
  10. Find four actual town names that would make for good “bathroomy” puns. (Keep it clean, and make sure you send us the name of the town as well as the state or province it’s in, or just the country if it’s located outside of the U.S. or Canada.)
  11. What the running foot (fact on the bottom of the page) on page 354 of Uncle John’s Endlessly Engrossing Bathroom Reader?
  12. Arts and Crafts time: Get out your scissors and find some old newspapers and/or magazines. Cut out these four words: “Uncle” “John’s” “Bathroom” “Reader” (make sure all four words are in a different typeface). Paste them onto a piece of paper like a ransom note, and then either scan it or take a photo of it.
  13. Send us a link to your second favorite website. Of course, we already know that we are your first and most favorite. :)
  14. Happy Father’s Day! Celebrate this weekend by taking a picture of a dad. Yes, if you are a dad, a picture of yourself counts.
  15. Tell us what your favorite thing is about your city? It could be a restaurant, park, store, or even your own street. Send us a link or a picture (Google images are accepted).
  16. Wrap yourself in a roll of toilet paper (yes, you can have a friend or family member help you), take a picture, and send it to us with a caption.
  17. Draw a funny picture inspired by your favorite Bathroom Reader article. Make sure to tell us the book and the page number of the article. Scan or take a picture of it and send it in. (Note: Stick figures are OK. We are no judging you on your artistic ability.)
  18. Dress up your toilet and send us the photo—give it a crown, make it a ninja, do something that lets your toilet pretend to be something else for the day.
  19. Search the depths of the Internet for an image of your dream throne. Is it made of gold? Does it have a built-in radio? Send us a link.
  20. Other than the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series, what reading materials are a staple in your bathroom? Don’t worry, our feelings will not be hurt. We know you read a variety of things in there.
  21. Send us the name of the designer/architect of the Toilet House in South Korea. Remember this?
  22. Last clue. Warning: This is a hard one. Tell us which Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader is your favorite. Yes, you MUST narrow it down to one.

We can’t believe the month went by so quickly. Hope this was as fun for you all as it was for us. We are anxiously waiting for all the great submission that we know we will get. Also, we’ve decided to give away random prizes for some of our favorite answers/pictures. So, even if you were not able to get all the clues, enter what you have by July 5th. Send all entries to unclejohnsbathroomreader(at)gmail(dot com).

Thanks everyone for playing along and good luck to each and every one of you.

Best,

BRI

Posted by BRI

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June 29, 2010

Russian Spies and UVB-76—a Link?

A few weeks ago we posted on the mysterious Russian shortwave radio signal known as UVB-76:

Long story short: It’s a shortwave radio station broadcasting from near Moscow, Russia, that has emitted a pulsed buzzing sound every day, all day, for the past 28 years. Nobody knows why. Sometimes very faint voices can be heard behind the buzz, and twice in all those years it stopped for a few seconds…and a man could be heard saying something Russian.

And now…it has stopped.

And now we have yesterday’s news that eleven Russians have been arrested in the U.S. for spying:

The FBI has exposed a Russian spy ring, an 11-strong team of “deep cover” agents who are said to have spent almost 20 years integrating themsleves into American society.

A coincidence? We don’t think so. (We’ll keep you posted…)

Posted by Thom

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June 28, 2010

Great White Shark Spotted Off Massachusetts

Summer has begun—so bring on the shark stories.

And on that note, here’s a list of shark attack facts from Uncle John’s AHH-INSPIRING Bathroom Reader (p. 104), a book you may want to add to your bathroom reading library:

• Sharks can detect the heartbeats of other fish.

• Mako sharks have been known to jump into the very fishing boats that are pursuing them.

• Bull sharks have been known to kill hippopotamuses in African rivers.

• Approximately 10 times more men than women are attacked by sharks.

• While in a feeding frenzy, some sharks bite their own bodies as they twist and turn.

• A 730-pound mako shark caught off Bimini in the Bahamas contained in its stomach a 120-pound swordfish—with the sword still intact.

• Lemon sharks grow a whole new set of teeth every two weeks.

• Sharks have a sixth sense. They can navigate by sensing changes in the Earth’s magnetic field.

• Sharks will continue to attack even when disemboweled.

• Greenland sharks have been observed eating reindeer when they fall through ice.

• Three men who spent five days adrift in the Atlantic in 1980 had a shark to thank for their rescue. They fell asleep, but when the attacking shark nudged their raft, they woke  up…in time to flag down a passing freighter.

• Some sharks can detect one part of blood in 100 million parts of water.

• Bull sharks have been known to pursue their victims onto land.

• The jaws of an eight-foot shark exert a force of 20 tons per square inch.

• The average shark can swallow anything half its size in one gulp.

• The original idea for steak knives derived from shark teeth.

• Approximately 100 shark attacks on humans occur worldwide each year.

Happy swimming everybody!

I got yer shark fin soup right here...

(photo)

Posted by Thom

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June 24, 2010

Ants!

We’re delving into amazing, mind-boggling, supercool, and largely unknown by most people facts about ants. Not ones like “Ants can lift over ten gajillion times their body weight”—because everyone knows that!

Anybody out there have some amazing ant facts we might (heavens forfend!) miss?

Posted by Thom

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June 23, 2010

A Smart Thought From a Funny Person

“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” —Jerry Seinfeld

This has been “A Smart Thought From a Funny Person.”

Posted by Thom

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June 21, 2010

Happy Summer, Everyone

It is the Summer Solstice, the day with the most hours of sunlight in the year (in the Northern Hemisphere), and the very first day of summer. Bring on the sun, the heat, the bbqs, the parades, the camping trips, the ants, the snakes, the scraped knees and the burnt skin – and don’t forget the swimming!

To get us all in the mood, here’s the great Loudon Wainwright III, with “The Swimming Song.”

Here’s the lyrics, if you feel like swimming along:

This summer I went swimming,
This summer I might have drowned
But I held my breath and I kicked my feet
And I moved my arms around, I moved my arms around.

This summer I swam in the ocean,
And I swam in a swimming pool,
Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes,
I’m a self-destructive fool, a self-destructive fool.

This summer I swam in a public place
And a reservoir, to boot,
At the latter I was informal,
At the former I wore my suit, I wore my swimming suit.

This summer I did the backstroke
And you know that’s not all
I did the breast stroke and the butterfly
And the old Australian crawl, the old Australian crawl.

This summer I did swan dives
And jackknifes for you all
And once when you weren’t looking
I did a cannonball, I did a cannonball.

Happy summer, everyone. Enjoy.

Posted by Thom

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June 17, 2010

Ledes We Love

In journalism a lede (also spelled “lead”; rhymes with “need”) is the first sentence or paragraph of a newspaper story, and they’re commonly used to give the major facts or mood of the story to come. And sometimes they can be more fun than the story itself. Like this one:

A German student “mooned” a group of Hell’s Angels and hurled a puppy at them before escaping on a stolen bulldozer, police have said.

We’re no fans of puppy-hurling, of course, but ay carumba, that’s funny.

Posted by Thom

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June 17, 2010

Shipment of Human Heads Found on Plane

And they won’t even let us take a bottle of shampoo!

A Southwest Airlines employee called police after finding human heads in a package set to be transported to a Fort Worth medical research company, the airline said.

“It wasn’t labeled or packaged properly,” said Ashley Rogers, a Southwest spokeswoman. “They called the local authorities.”

Now look, people—if you’re going to be shipping “40 to 60 human heads” on an airplane, which is what we’ve got here—you have got to label the package properly! Write “Handle With Zombies!” on it or something, for goodness sake!

Posted by Thom

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June 15, 2010

Guess What They’re Talking About: Answered!

Here’s another installment of the regular Uncle John’s Blog quiz that we just made up, “Guess What They’re Talking About.” In this week’s episode you’ll have to determine the subject of one paragraph from a recent BBC article.

Ready?

Okay, here’s the paragraph:

That sound has been unflatteringly compared to a swarm of wasps, even an elephant passing wind.

Okay, UJBRers, Guess what they’re talking about! (Put your answer in the comments below. Answer at 4 p.m. PST today. Winner gets a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.)

Answer: Our three commenters, and few more over at our Facebook page, were correct—it’s the vuvuzelas, the long, plastic horns that make you wonder where the one million wasps are when you turn on a World Cup game. From Wikipedia:

The vuvuzela, sometimes called a “lepatata” (its Tswana name) or “stadium horn,” is a blowing horn up to approximately 1 m (3 ft 3 in) in length. It is commonly blown by fan at football matches in South Africa. The instrument is played using a simple brass instrument technique of blowing through compressed lips to create a buzz, and emits (from the standard shorter horn of about 60–65 cm) a loud monotone.

The horns have been the source of much controversy as they are extremely loud. We here at the BRI personally love them—when they’re played by one person, preferably in Antarctica.

Winners: Please enjoy that warm, fuzzy feeling. And our advice to you World Cup fans: Go with the blow!

Posted by Thom

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June 14, 2010

Australia’s Suicide-Spot Angel

This is one of those stories where the heartwarming rises up and beats the canoles out of the heartbreaking:

For almost 50 years, Don Ritchie has lived across the street from Australia’s most notorious suicide spot, a rocky cliff at the entrance to Sydney Harbour called The Gap. And in that time, the man widely regarded as a guardian angel has shepherded countless people away from the edge.

What some consider grim, Ritchie considers a gift. How wonderful, the former life insurance salesman says, to save so many. How wonderful to sell them life. “You can’t just sit there and watch them,” says Ritchie, now 84, perched on his beloved green leather chair, from which he keeps a watchful eye on the cliff outside. “You gotta try and save them. It’s pretty simple.”

Australian authorities estimate that as many as 50 people a year commit suicide at the spot—but that Ritchie may have stopped as many as 160 of them.

Some people make the world a better place just by waking up in the morning.

Posted by Thom

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