2011 May | Uncle John's Bathroom Reader

Archive for May, 2011

May 31, 2011

Boogers! Caption Contest Winner…

It’s not often you get to say you picked a winner in a Boogers! caption contest—but we’re lucky like that.

Your job in this contest was to caption this photo:

Ladies and geeeee-entlemen, the winner of the latest Uncle John’s Bathrom Reader caption contest, and recipient of the UJBR publication of his or her cchoosing, is…

Warren Mills

For his caption

I don’t care how well the ball game is coming in when I hold this pose, we still need to get a regular antenna!

And Uncle John remembers standing just like that for hours on family camping trips! (I mean everyone takes TVs on camping trips, right?) Congratulations, Warren, and thanks for playing. We’ll be in touch shortly. And thanks to everybody else, too.

Honorable mention goes to: Mike Holmes, for this:

im trying to watch the damn hockey game but i keep thinking about how the hell someone would make this funny. Good work uncle john.

Funny. You don’t know how close that was to winning.

Oh, and to Don Yerger, too, for getting creative. Thanks, both of you.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Contest

May 27, 2011

Boogers! Caption Contest

I woke up this morning and I thought to myself, “We haven’t done a caption contest in ages. So gosh darn it, we’re going to do one today.”

“But what image will you use?” a voice suddenly asked. “Don’t you normally do a caption contest when, in the midst of researching a clever and captivating article, you come across an image that just begs for a humorous caption? Isn’t that the honest way caption contests are born? Hmm?”

And I thought, “Who is this person asking me questions? And why does he sound like Niles Crane?” And I went to Wikimedia Commons and entered “boogers” into the search box. I got this:

I mean is that a photo asking for a caption, or what? (What does it have to do with “boogers”? See below.)

Rules: Think up a brilliant, gut-busting, guffaw-producing caption for this photo, enter it here, or on our FaceBook or Twitter pages, as many times as you like, and wait until it’s announced that someone else has won the contest. (I mean that’s true for most of you, right? Only one person can win. Have I said to much? Should I stop talking now? …) Winner gets an Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader of his or her very own choosing. (Woo hoo!)

Sample caption:

Betsy said karate-chopping a keyboard did wonders for her skin.

You have until midnight Monday night, PDT. Ready? Set? GO!

(The photo is of Belgian pop star An Pierlé. It was taken by Chantall Boogers.)

Posted by Thom

Tags: Contest

May 26, 2011

Conjoined Minds?

This is a really fascinating story about two four-year-old conjoined twins:

“Twins joined at the head — the medical term is craniopagus — are one in 2.5 million, of which only a fraction survive. The way the girls’ brains formed beneath the surface of their fused skulls, however, makes them beyond rare: their neural anatomy is unique, at least in the annals of recorded scientific literature. Their brain images reveal what looks like an attenuated line stretching between the two organs, a piece of anatomy their neurosurgeon, Douglas Cochrane of British Columbia Children’s Hospital, has called a thalamic bridge, because he believes it links the thalamus of one girl to the thalamus of her sister. The thalamus is a kind of switchboard, a two-lobed organ that filters most sensory input and has long been thought to be essential in the neural loops that create consciousness. Because the thalamus functions as a relay station, the girls’ doctors believe it is entirely possible that the sensory input that one girl receives could somehow cross that bridge into the brain of the other. One girl drinks, another girl feels it.“

It’s a ten-page story: give it a read if you find the time. Truly fascinating. That these two little sweeties are so healthy is a wonderful wonder in itself.

Posted by Thom

Tags: News, Science

May 26, 2011

Because Friday Makes Us Feel Like Dancing…

Come on, everybody, put on your dancing eyes and ears and check out what, according to the Youtube page, Fred Astaire called “the greatest dance number ever filmed.”

The stair splits. Around 2:40. Un-be-liev-able. (Ha. Just went to their Wikipedia page – and the photo is from that scene.)

This is the Nicolas Brothers, from the film Stormy Weather.

P.S. BRI Thom here, on my secret mission in Australia. I just realized that it’s not Friday in North America. Oops. Well, Happy Thursday – no reason you can’t dance today, too! (And: Thanks for the video tip, Joyce!)

[Order of post edited for clarity.]

Posted by Thom

Tags: Film, Hollywood, Videos

May 24, 2011

Happy Birthday, Bob

Seems like pretty much the whole world is going out of their way to send a birthday wish to The Most Interesting Man In the World, Mr. Bob Dylan, today.

We hate to do what everyone else is doing, but we can’t help it this time: Happy Birthday, Bob. If the only song you ever wrote was “Desolation Row” you’d still be one of the best songwriters in history. (And we hear you actually wrote some other songs, too…) Happy Birthday, and many, many more to you, from all of us at the BRI.

Now here’s a little tune for you. (Substitute the “50″ for a “70,” in this song, if you will.)

Posted by Thom

Tags: People, Pop culture

May 24, 2011

White Kiwi Chick Born [updated]

Look at this little cutie:

The story:

The first white kiwi chick to hatch in captivity is being looked after at a wildlife centre in the Wairarapa.

The chick, called Manukura, is an offspring of kiwi transferred from Hauturu/Little Barrier this year.

The name means “of chiefly status”.

That story doesn’t give any real details about how common or uncommon a white kiwi is, but you’re at the Bathroom Reader now—and we don’t mess around. We did just a bit of digging:

Here’s a story about an albino kiwi found in the wild in 2004:

As the name suggests the North Island brown kiwi [same kind as our white one today] is typically a brown colour but Rod, who is partially albino, has surprised scientists.

They named it Rod. Funny. The interesting bit:

The last sighting of an albino kiwi was in 1850 near Otorohanga and it was recorded in a oil sketch.

1850?! Wow! That’s pretty darn rare. Now, “albino” might not mean the same as “white” in this context – it could though. We’ll try to find out. Back soon…

Update: Scientific American tells us it’s not an albino:

The bird, named Manukura by elders from the local Maori tribe, is not an albino. It just has white feathers.

But it is, they say, still “extremely rare.” So there.

Posted by Thom

Tags: Animals

May 23, 2011

Hunger-Killing Veggies

Well, one of them is actually a fruit:

“Today, Nourishing the Planet introduces a new series featuring the four vegetables—and one fruit that acts like a vegetable— that you have likely never heard of that are helping to alleviate hunger and poverty.”

Here’s one. First, it looks like this:

3. Spider plant (Cleome gynandra)—also known as African cabbage, spider wisp, and cat’s whiskers—is a wild green leafy vegetable that grows all over tropical Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It is not formally cultivated, but among poor rural communities—especially in the Kalahari and Namib regions of Southern Africa—young leaves are collected, cooked, and eaten like spinach. Spider plant is generally considered a weed, plaguing maize and bean fields in Kenya and other countries. But called mwangani in Swahili, spider plant is highly nutritious and is well adapted to many African ecosystems.

You can read about the rest, including the best ways to prepare each of these foods, over at the link at the top of the page. Bon apppetit!

[pic]

Posted by Thom

Tags: Food, News, Science

May 22, 2011

Danny DeVito’s “Trollfoot”

If you’re not on Twitter, you are missing the modern digital media phenomenon that is Danny Devito’s “Trollfoot.”

Here’s how it works:

1. Super-mega-Hollywood-movie-star Danny DeVito takes a picture of something – say a vegan sandwich, just for example – with his barefoot (or just a toe) in the picture.

2. Danny DeVito puts a post up on Twitter announcing that he has taken a picture of something – along with his bare foot, or toe – and provides a link to said image.

3. That’s it.

We don’t know about you-all – but we think that’s just funny. Funny as in, “Sociologists in the future will find these photos and study them to determine just what the heck was going on on Earth in 2011. And…they’ll find something. Something we don’t want to know.”

Trollfooot!

[pic]

Posted by Thom

Tags: People, Pop culture

May 21, 2011

Free-Range Planets

Kids, forget about all those planets that are stuffed into tiny solar systems their whole lives, be a responsible astronomer and find yourself some free-range planets:

Drifting through space far from any star, a new class of free-floating Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered that could have been ejected from growing planetary systems.

[...]

The astronomers think that these planets were likely ejected from the chaotic whirlpool of early solar system formation, perhaps flung out of the system after a close encounter with another planet or star, and left to wander through the Galaxy alone.

Don’t you just picture a dust-covered planet riding the lonely plains of interstellar space, a pair of billion-caliber six-shooters hanging from his equator, just looking for someone to shoot it out with? No? No, us neither.

................drifting along with a tumbling tumble-planet................

Furthermore, although the present survey is not sensitive to planets smaller than Jupiter, theories suggest lower-mass planets – perhaps even Earth-mass planets – would be ejected from their stars more often than large Jupiter-sized planets.

Hmm. If there’s that many of them floating round all willy-nilly out there, maybe that’s what this Rapture business is all about. I guess we’ll find out in a few hours…

P.S. Do free-range planets have moons?

[pic]

Posted by Thom

Tags: Astronomy, Science

May 20, 2011

RIP Macho Man

Pro wrestling legend Randy “Macho Man” Savage has died:

“Professional wrestling and the entertainment community in general has lost a legend.

Randall Mario Poffo, better known to the world as Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage, died today after reportedly crashing his car into a tree subsequent losing control of the vehicle. His wife also was in the car, but only suffered minor injuries. He was a young 58 years old.”

Fellow wrestler Dusty Rhodes:

“There’s probably five or six of us, with Andre (the Giant) and (Hulk) Hogan and thankfully myself and (Ric) Flair, that, when their names pop up, even if you’re not a fan, you know who in the hell these people are,” Rhodes said.

High school baseball coach (Savage was a minor league baseballl player before he was a wrestler):

George Feuerschwenger was Poffo’s baseball coach in high school. Now living in South Carolina, Feuerschwenger had not yet heard the news about his former student’s death and was shocked when told.

“He was a very nice boy,” Feuerschwenger said. “He… was very polite. I knew his mom and dad and was at their house several times and he and his brother (Lanny) were both very nice kids. You would be proud to have them as your own.”

A nice tribute from TV Geek Army.

More here, and here.

Condolences to his family and his friends and his fans from all of us at the BRI.