Author: Uncle John

Double-Rainbow Man

Hooo-oot! The internet has a new star. Paul “Yosemitebear Mountain Giant” Vasquez took a video of a double rainbow at his property in the vicinity of Yosemite National Park in California. And he talked about it. On the video. It has received more than 2 million viewers on YouTube in less than three days. It is, in a word, high-larious.

We should note that Vasquez insists he was not under the influence of any illegal substances at the time. He was just “happy.”

Somebody went on to add some music:

Here’s an Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader salute to Yosemitebear Mountain Giant, our brand new favorite practically famous person. Oh, and here’s a pic:

A Land Down Under, and a Coincidence

We thought you all might enjoy a morning wake up song. Or to put it another way: Get to work!

Holy cow! I had just put that bit of the post up, then went to look for an interesting bit of extra info about Men at Work—and found this:

Men at Work star Greg Ham fears he’ll be forced to “sell his house” to pay out royalties for their 1980s hit Down Under after the band lost a copyright battle over the song.

A judge in Australia has ruled that the flute solo in the track samples parts of Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree, a song written by an music teacher for the Girl Guides in 1934.

The song’s composers, Colin Hay and Ron Strykert, will have to pay bosses at Larrikin music publishers five per cent of the song’s proceeds dating back to 2002, as well as royalties from future earnings. […]

No one detected it – I didn’t detect it and I played the f***ing thing. I was looking for something that sounded Australiana – that’s what came out – it was never Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree.

I must be a bit psychic today.

Here’s the Kookaburra song, done with the Aussie dance that Aussie kids do to the song. Let us know what you think: Can you hear how the flute part in “Land Down Under” might have borrowed from it?

Happy Birthday, Ringo

Mr. Ringo Starr turns 70 today – yikes! – and he’s got a message for everyone about what he’d like for the occasion:

“Ringo Starr turns 70 on Wednesday, and he doesn’t want any presents.

Instead, the famous Beatles drummer is making it clear, via his website, that the ideal gift to him would be for everyone to throw up a ‘peace’ sign with their fingers and say aloud, ‘Peace and Love’ right at 12 p.m. on his birthday.”

We, uh, missed it. So let us here at the BRI say just a few hours late: Peace and Love! Woo hoo!

And a tidbit about one of Ringo’s most famous songs, from page 13 of Uncle John’s UNSINKABLE Bathroom Reader:

The Oil Spill Board Game

Someone has found a rare 1970s board game produced by British Petroleum – BP – now infamous for the still-gushing catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The goal of “BP Offshore Oil Strike” is to get filthy rich drilling for oil – but you have to watch out for the pesky hazards:

But BP Offshore Oil Strike players must also avoid the dreaded ‘hazard cards’, which state: ‘Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1 million.’

Goodbye to another great Bathroom Reading Month!

Another June is National Bathroom Reading Month is behind us. We hope you had a lot of fun with the scavenger hunt. Our fun is just beginning as we start to get your answers in our inbox. Thanks everyone for playing along.

Remember that you have till July 5th to send in your answers. If you are just seeing this, CLICK HERE to get the list of 22 clues. If you run out of time, or simply can’t do everything, send us what you have anyway. We plan on giving random prizes out for some of our favorite answers. Make sure to include your mailing address in the email.

Good luck!

BRI

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:

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.

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!

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.”

RIP Jimmy Dean

Mr. Jimmy Dean has gone to that great sausage maker in the sky:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Jimmy Dean, a country music star known for his hit about a workingman hero, ”Big Bad John,” and an entrepreneur known for his sausage brand, died on Sunday. He was 81.

His wife, Donna Meade Dean, said her husband died at their Henrico County, Va., home.

We always admired Mr. Dean hear at the BRI—and not just because of “Big Bad John.” We wrote a little something about him some years ago in an article about people who had made the Big Time—despite not having done a lot of schooling:

The singer-songwriter left school at 16 and joined the Merchant Marines. He knew that fame could be fleeting, so after his prime-time TV variety show ran its course, he founded the Jimmy Dean Sausage Company and kept his TV appearances to folksy sausage commercials. He sold the company to Sara Lee in 1991, but is still chairman of the board.

And oh man, check this out, Jimmy doing that great song must have been just a year ago or so:

Crocodiles Can Surf Ocean Currents

Great. first it was giant flying sharks, now it’s giant surfing crocodiles. What’s next: hyenas on motorcycles?

“Saltwater crocodiles enjoy catching a wave and can travel hundreds of kilometres by ‘surfing’ on ocean currents, a study suggests. […]

During the research, a team led by Dr Hamish Campbell, from the University of Queensland, captured 20 crocodiles living in the North Kennedy tidal river in Queensland, northern Australia, and tagged them with satellite transmitters.

They found that during the period of study, eight of them ventured out into the open ocean. One travelled from the river mouth all the way to the west coast of the Cape York Peninsula, in Queensland’s far north. That amounts to a total of 590km covered over 25 days.”

Not only that—they actually wait until the tide goes out so they can take advantage of the currents:

Tinfoil Hat Warning: Code Weird

Okay hold on to your tinfoil hats, BRI fans, you’re not going to believe this, but…UVB-76…has stopped…buzzing. I know, unbelievable, right?

What’s that? You’re not familiar with UVB-76? Well, don’t worry. Neither were we. So we did a little research. 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.

Here’s some video, and comments from shortwave radio fans:

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