Blog Posts

Help the BRI With a Story!

Howdy, BRI fans, we’re busy working on our next book, Uncle John’s Tunes Into TV, and I’ve got a request: I’m working on an article about the history of closed captioning—the subtitle-like text that allow’s you to read, rather than listen to, a show’s dialogue. It’s a surprisingly fascinating subject. Just imagine, for example, that millions of deaf or hard-of-hearing people were not able to fully enjoy that most ubiquitous of modern life experiences—watching the television—until the 1970s, and that it didn’t become truly widely available until the 1980s.

Fish Regurgitation Banned at Sydney Circus

The Aussies just say no to Puke My Fish Up:

Circus-goers in Australia hoping to see a woman swallow and then regurgitate a live fish will be disappointed, as authorities decided it was cruel to the fish.

Now just what the heck is going on in the world when a person can’t get the kids together, put ’em in the station wagon, and take them down to the circus to watch a lady swallow a live fish and then throw it back up again, still alive? What kind of a world? Next we’ll hear you can’t throw kittens in trash bins! “It was fun,” for goodness sake!

Mens Rooms and Hens Rooms?

Mana the Magnificentand BRI fan Ken Lerner send us to The Society Pages, where we get a look at how male and female are symbolized on public restroom doors around the world:

As such, washroom signs are very telling of the way societies construct gender. They identify the male as the universal and the female as the variation.

An example we all recognize:

The most common type of washroom sign, pictured at the top of this post, is another example. Typically, these signs depict men as people, and women as people in skirts.

Or men as naked and women as dressed?

Anyway, do go give it a look. It’s a thought-provoking post, and there are a bunch of examples, many funny and some just strange. One more:

We’re Running Out of Helium

This story almost has the feel of a hoax:

“It is the second-lightest element in the Universe, has the lowest boiling-point of any gas and is commonly used through the world to inflate party balloons. But helium is also a non-renewable resource and the world’s reserves of the precious gas are about to run out, a shortage that is likely to have far-reaching repercussions.

“Field Book of Surgery. The Wounded Man.”

We’re deep on deadline here at BRI headquarters, and I’m just polishing up a page on fascinating brain facts—”Your brain is so soft it can be cut with a butter knife” is a fun one. I just came across this bit of info: The earliest known realistic depiction of a human brain was made just 500 or so years ago. Imagine that. Of all the tens of thousands of years that modern humans have been around, we didn’t, at least according to the article linked, get a good drawing of that most vital of organs—the brain—until just a few centuries ago. Almost makes you feel young, doesn’t it?

Introducing: “Uncle John’s Briefs” and giveaway!

Inside Uncle John’s Briefs are the most entertaining, myth-busting, and thought-provoking brief articles from Uncle John’s enormous Bathroom Reader library. So plunge in and see for yourself why the Bathroom Reader series has sold more than 10 million books.

Here is a bit of what awaits you…

  • Corn Crackos and other cereal flops
  • Baseball’s most bizarre injuries
  • The timeless wisdom of Mr. T
  • The origins of the warerbed, tarter sauce, and the polka
  • How to talk like a mobster
  • The anatomy of a hiccup

…and much, much more!

Now to the fun part—Giveaway!!!

J.D. Salinger’s Porcelein “Throne” For Sale

If we didn’t already have a toilet at the office, we might have all pitched in to buy J.D. Salinger’s “Throne.”

The description reads: “Here’s an item you won’t come across everyday! This is the toilet that was personally owned AND used by J.D. Salinger for many years! It sat in his home in Cornish, New Hampshire, and was installed in the ‘new wing’ of his house. When he died, his wife inherited all of his manuscripts with plans to eventually release some of them! Who knows how many of these stories were thought up and written while Salinger sat on this throne!”

But, we’re not sure $1 million is a fair price. What do you think?

Water Striders’ Mating Blackmail

A creepy yet fascinating insect story from Discover:

“Hyper-violent males can sometimes wear the female down but some opt for a subtler approach – they tap intricate rhythms on the water with their legs. When Han and Jablonski discovered these rituals last year, they suggested that the males might be trying to demonstrate their quality, by tapping out the most consistent rhythms. Now, they have another explanation – the tapping is a form of blackmail, a way of coercing sex from the female with the threat of death.

The duo studied the preferences of the backswimmer – a predatory bug that floats upside-down at the water’s surface and listens out for the vibrations of potential prey. When given a choice between a silent male water strider and a mating pair with a tapping male, the backswimmer always headed towards the vibrating duo. And since these predators attack from below, the female was always the one who was injured while the male strode off to tap another day.”

Headline Writing, Part Eleventy Million

There’s a headline over at GrindTV right now that says this:

“Marlin goes berserk, attacks press boat during Hawaii tournament”

We here at the BRI enjoy taking our luxury yachts on fishing trips to exotic locales around the world as much as anyone—but can you give a fish a break here? It had a hook in its face. Does reacting to that qualify as going “beserk,” and “attack[ing]” a boat? It may have just wanted to, you know, get the hook out of its face.

And now for some interesting internet comments…

Someone at Yahoo hit their head and put up a REALLY DUMB ARTICLE about “money habits” you didn’t know were illegal. Did you know, for instance, that it is illegal to lie on a home loan application? Of that you can’t make copies of U.S. currency? I know, it’s crazy!

Hey, it happens—but we still get to laugh at it. And read the comments. And there are over 4,700 of them. A few of our favorites:

These comments are way more interesting and accurate than the the stupid article.

I’m sure everyone that read this already knew you weren’t allowed to copy money. It is called “counterfeiting”, Marcie.

well no @#$% sherlock

Ohh.. Can’t I make my own money? *facepalm* -.-

Giveaway Time: Ready, Set, Go!

It’s been a few weeks since we introduced our brand new website, and we thought it was time to give you, our loyal fans, something to thank you for hanging around. So…it’s giveaway time! That’s right, five lucky fans will get 1 free book of their choice from our store, simply for being our readers! All you have to do to enter our giveaway is leave us a comment on THIS blog post, with the answer to this question: Do you fold or bunch your tp? Make sure you comment with a working email address so that we have a way to contact you if you win! (You can answer the question once per contest). Continue reading for 6 additional ways to win.

Thank You, C-SPAN

Have you ever found yourself thinking, “Dang, it sure is a good thing that we have C-SPAN”? Well, it’s a good thing to remember that before 1979 we didn’t have anything like it—and it took one person, Brian Lamb, a lot of work over a lot of years to get it on the air. We wrote about it in Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Bathroom Reader (page 243). Here’s an excerpt:

Mr. Lamb goes to Washington
During the Vietnam War, a young navy lieutenant from Indiana named Brian Lamb was assigned to the Pentagon press office to report troop deaths to the media. The amount of information either omitted or censored in order to paint a rosier picture of the war appalled him. “The government lied to us,” he later recalled. “We just weren’t getting the straight scoop.”

During that time, Lamb also served as an aide in the Johnson White House. Once again he saw a huge gap between what the American people knew and what was really happening. “I got a firsthand education about how the media interacts with the government, and it led me to think that there could be a better way.”

That better way was a news outlet that would report what was happening in politics—with two major differences: 1) no censorship from government; and 2) no commentary from media pundits.

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