Weird, Wonderful World Weird, Wonderful World

Return of the Attack of the Pumpkin-Flavored Food Monsters!

The leaves are changing color, the air is getting crisp, and everything at the grocery store suddenly has pumpkin in it, whether it works or not. It must be fall!

pumpkin-flavored foodIf you’ve been inside a grocery store or restaurant in the last couple of weeks, you’ve probably noticed the proliferation of pumpkin-flavored items. It’s been slowly building to cultural phenomenon levels since 2003. That’s when Starbucks introduced the Pumpkin Spice Latte—coffee, milk, and a syrup flavored with pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. More than 200 million of the drinks have sold in the past 10 years, prompting other food manufacturers and sellers to unveil their own pumpkin-flavored concoctions. And it’s working: pumpkin products rake in more than $290 million every autumn.

The Better Soup and iPod You Didn’t Know You Needed

Stuff you didn’t think needed to be improved…just got a little bit better.

A better iPod

c8c7793dIntroduced in 2001, Apple’s iPod revolutionized the way people listen to music—thanks to this and other digital music players, thousands of songs are stored as computer files on a pocket-sized device. But there’s one group who doesn’t like the easy access to music offered by the iPod: audiophiles. In order to get that much music on an iPod, the files are compressed, leading to some loss of layers and nuances in recordings. But a new high-definition, high-sound-quality music player called Pono is on the way—and it was invented by legendary rock star Neil Young. “We’ve liberated the music of the artist from the digital file and restored it to is original artistic quality, as it was in the studio,” Young wrote on Pono’s facebook page. Young announced the Pono player on The Late Show With David Letterman in 2012, and recently said that the player will be for sale in early 2014.

More convenient soup

la-dd-k-cup-soup-20130905-001One of the most popular new kitchen appliances in the past new years is the single-cup coffeemaker—17 million American homes and offices now have them. Keurig is the industry leader in these devices, which brew one cup of coffee—or tea, or hot chocolate—at a time. Consumers buy packages of individual “K-cups” full of ground coffee, which is placed in a chamber in the machine, where it’s then steeped in hot water, producing a hot beverage in about a minute. In September 2013, Keurig owner Green Mountain Coffee Roasters announced that it had made a deal with Campbell’s to produce K-cups…of soup. In 2014, consumers will be able to buy the two-step soup kits: a K-cup full of dried broth is placed in the machine. Hot water turns the dried broth into liquid broth, which is then poured over an included pack of noodles.

Ironic, Isn’t It?

Nothing like a dose of irony to keep your day-to-day problems in perspective.

Ironic spokesman. The image of popular stand-up comedian Larry the Cable Guy adorns lots of products—he’s even got his own line of snack chips as well as boxed dinner mixes, including cheesy mashed potatoes, beer bread, cheeseburger macaroni, and fried chicken batter. These obviously aren’t health foods. More than that, overindulgence in these kinds of foods can lead to heartburn. Fortunately, you can take a pill for that, such as Prilosec OTC. What celebrity endorses Prilosec OTC in TV commercials? Larry the Cable Guy.

LarryCableGuy

Ironic refund. Beginning in 2001, the Walt Disney Company distributed a line of educational videos for babies called Baby Einstein. The 30-minute videos of puppet shows, abstract images, nature footage, and famous works of art, were scored to a classical music soundtrack and interspersed were vocabulary segments to help babies learn new words. In 2009, Disney offered refunds to parents who had purchased Baby Einstein videos after a 2007 study found that watching TV and videos as an infant may inhibit brain development. Another study showed that kids who regularly watched Baby Einstein videos actually learned fewer words by kindergarten that those who hadn’t watched the tapes.

6 More Weird Beers

You asked for another round of weird beers, so we’ll keep ‘em coming.

Algae beer

Ever had green beer at St. Patrick’s Day? That’s just everyday beer with green food coloring added to it. But this green beer is green because it’s made with spirulina—a living organism that’s found in blue-green algae. Freetail Brewing in San Antonio says the algae infuses the beer with not only color, but vitamins and a “tropical fruit” taste.

Pizza BeerPizza beer

Mamma Mia! Pizza Beer is brewed with basil, oregano—the same spices found in or on a pizza, along with garlic and the same kind of wheat commonly used to make pizza crust, and tomatoes. The result is a meal in a glass…sort of.

Peanut butter and chocolate beer

There are lots of nutty beers out there, with hazelnuts, chestnuts, and pecans adding flavor to everything from light ales to thick stouts. Porter is a kind of beer characterized with notes of chocolate and coffee. Willoughby Brewing adds peanuts to the brewing process, which results in a beer that tastes like coffee, chocolate, and peanut butter.

A Crappy Cup of Joe

If you think these coffees taste crappy, you wouldn’t be wrong. They literally came from poop. They are coffee from feces.

coffee from fecesIn one of the most inexplicable, perplexing, and kind of gross fads of all time, the hottest thing going in the world of coffee are beans that have passed through the digestive tracts of exotic animals. Adherents claim that the premium coffee that results is better than regular coffee. Why? The animals eat only the tastiest, ripest berries from coffee plants, then digest the outer berries, allowing the beans inside pass through their stomachs unharmed, but left coated with amino acids and enzymes. The animals’ feces is collected, with the beans removed, cleaned, and roasted, then ground into a beverage that fans claim is smoother and less bitter than other coffees because of those amino acids and enzymes from an animal’s digestive tract.

The most popular berries-to-butts-to-baristas blend is kopi luwak coffee, made from beans that have passed through the digestive system of the civet, an exotic mammal native to Asia and Africa, also known as a luwak or toddy cat. In 1991 British coffee importer Tony Wild became the first European to offer coffee made from pre-digested beans. The kopi luwak became so popular in Europe that its production is being industrialized, leading to widespread mistreatment of civets. Recently, Wild launched a campaign to end the production and consumption of the special coffee.

8 Household Uses for Vodka

It’s more than just the basis of a great martini! Vodka doesn’t have a lot more to it than grain alcohol (or potato alcohol). That makes it a great, cheap household cleaner,
germ killer, wound healer…(NOTE: try these at your own risk.)

household uses for vodka• For your hair. Add an ounce or two to a mostly-full bottle of shampoo, and shake it to mix in. The vodka is effective at preventing oily buildup on the hair and scalp.

• For removing goo. Have any hard surfaces where the price-tag or other sticker glue just will not go away no matter how much you scrape and peel? Saturate the price-tag residue with vodka. The alcohol will dissolve the adhesive.

• For bandages. Vodka can also dissolve the extremely sticky adhesive on bandages. Simply soak a cotton ball in the spirit and apply liberally to the bandage, which will fall off and save you the agony of ripping it off. NOTE: Only do this if you’re sure the wound beneath is healed—the alcohol can kill all living cells in a wound, the germs and the germ-fighters.

• For a better pie. Substitute a third of the water in pie crust recipes with vodka for a flakier result. This prevents the gluten, a protein found in flour, from making the crust rubbery and dry.

• For weeds. Many gardeners use vodka as the basis of a chemical-free, environmentally-safe herbicide. Mix an ounce of vodka with two cups of water and a few drops of liquid dish detergent in a spray bottle, and spray.

The Search for the National Geographic Afghan Girl

This October marks the 125th anniversary of National Geographic. To celebrate, we take a look at the most famous photographs of the 20th century: the National Geographic Afghan Girl. This story was originally published in Uncle John’s Slightly Irregular Bathroom Reader.

national geographic Afghan girlSNAPSHOT

In December 1984, a National Geographic photographer named Steve McCurry visited the Nasir Bagh refugee camp on the Afghan/Pakistan border while covering the war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. While there he snapped a photograph of a 12-year-old girl with haunting blue-green eyes. The girl had been living in the camp ever since Soviet helicopters had bombed her village five years earlier, killing both her parents.

McCurry didn’t have a translator with him that day, so he never got the girl’s name. But the photograph, which appeared on the cover of the June 1985 issue, went on to become the single most recognized photograph in National Geographic’s 125-year history and one of the most reproduced images in the world.

Restaurant Firsts

We’re becoming more and more of a restaurant culture.

Retro Eat Sign ThunderstormFirst restaurant to note GMOs: In 2013, the Mexican fast-food chain Chipotle became the first chain to adopt a policy to note on its menu what of its ingredients were of “genetically modified origin.” The only ingredient, so far: soybean oil, used to cook meat.

First green salad: The prime rib restaurant Lawry’s opened in Beverly Hills in 1938. One of the their hallmarks was, and still is, tableside service—an employee wheels a cart to your table and carves off a slab of prime rib (as that was once the only entrée offered). But before the meal, another employee wheels another cart around, table to table, and tosses fresh green salads for guests. Included in the price of the meal, this was the first time an American restaurant offered a salad course.

First restaurant to accept bitcoin: “Bitcoin” is an electronic currency, invented in 2010 by Satoshi Nakamoto, used exclusively over the Internet. And now, at least one place in the “real world.” In 2013, Bubba’s Firehouse Barbecue in Salt Lake City, Utah, started accepting bitcoin as a form of payment. (The owner is a big fan and online user of bitcoin.)

Weird Beer Flavors: One Curry-Flavored Brewsky Coming Up!

With thousands of microbreweries around the world taking beer to strange new heights and creating weird beer flavors – “Pumpkin Pie”-flavored beer in particular being ubiquitous at the moment – there’s hardly such thing as “beer”-flavored beer anymore.

weird beer flavors• Crème Brulee. There are dessert wines, and how there’s a dessert beer. Southern Tier Brewing in New York makes their stout with lots of vanilla, so much that they think it tastes like the classic dessert, crème brulee. The brewery suggests serving it with another classic dessert, Bananas Foster, or pouring it directly on top of ice cream.

• Oysters. “Hog Island Sweetwater” are a particularly tasty type of oyster caught in the waters around San Francisco. Local beermaker 21st Amendement Brewery (named for the piece of legislation that repealed Prohibition) makes a stout with water that’s been used to soak the shells from those Hog Island Sweetwaters.

• Rocky Mountain Oysters. Another oyster stout? Not exactly. Wynkoop Brewing in Denver makes this one-of-a-kind beer with “Rocky Mountain oysters,” otherwise known as bull testicles.

Poet James McIntyre: The Chaucer of Cheese

Raise your hand if you like cheese! Wow…if we are counting correctly, that’s millions and millions of people. Poet James McIntyre loved cheese. Here is his story, as published in Uncle John’s Funniest Ever Bathroom Reader.

The Chaucer of Cheese

Have you heard of one James McIntyre?
His unusual verses set the world afire.
Think of this while eating your Cheerios:
In the 1800s, he was the bard of southwestern Ontario. His work is published this day still,
If you read his poems, they’ll make you ill.

The Chaucer of Cheese: Poet James McIntyreABARD IS BORN

James McIntyre (1827–1906), known to his admirers as the “Chaucer of Cheese,” was born in the Scottish village of Forres. He moved to Canada when he was 14 and lived most of his life in Ingersoll, a small town in Ontario, where he worked as a furniture and coffin maker. But what earned him his reputation was his hobby—writing poetry. McIntyre wrote poems on a variety of topics: He described Ontario towns, saluted his favorite authors, and sang the praises of farming and country life. He even composed tributes to his furniture.

Themed Restaurants

Dining out can get kind of boring. After all, how many times can you have the same old burger at the same old coffee shop? Fortunately, in the last 20 years, themed restaurants have emerged, offering diners not just a meal…but an experience. Although, not all of them succeed, they all make a great story.

Themed Restaurants Moden ToiletThe Modern Toilet
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Details: Yes, it’s a toilet-themed restaurant. Diners sit on toilets and eat out of toilet-shaped bowls and plates. The interior of the restaurant is laid out with brightly colored bathroom tile, and the lights are shaped like urinals. The favorite menu item, says owner Eric Wang, is chocolate ice cream—probably because “it looks like the real thing.”

Fruit Brute and Other Forgotten Cereals

Wheaties and Rice Krispies have taken up permanent residency in America’s breakfast bowls—these forgotten cereals, not so much.

Fruite Brute and Other Forgotten CerealsFruit Brute: General Mills debuted a line of five monster cereals in the 1970s: Franken Berry, Yummy Mummy, Count Chocula, Boo Berry, and Fruit Brute. The biggest flop of the bunch: Fruit Brute. But it has a cool factor—filmmaker Quentin Tarantino collects old cereals, and his personal box of Fruit Brute has appeared in his movies Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. BREAKING NEWS: This Fall we will see the return of Fruit Brute and Fruity Yummy Mummy for Halloween. This may be the best Halloween EVER!

Graham Crackos: Kellogg’s released this graham-cracker-flavored cereal in the late-1970s, a few years before the crack-cocaine epidemic that hit American cities. In light of this, old commercials for Crackos become unsettling. In one, a character named George arrives at a suburban house to deliver a box of Crackos to a new family. In the background, a cheery balladeer sings, “Something new is comin’ to town, George the Milkman is bringin’ it ’round.” After the mother takes a bite, she asks George if the cereal will help slow her kids down. “Long enough for them to eat,” he replies.

Uncle John’s Funniest Ever Giveaway!

8/26/13 UPDATE

Winners are: Don J., Eric W., Craig G., Terry D., and Valerie. You have all been contacted via email.

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Another box of advances has just arrived at the office. This one is for Uncle John’s Funniest Ever Bathroom Reader. The book will be available mid October, but we are giving away a copy each to 5 lucky winners (scroll to the bottom of this page to fill out the entry form). Also, as a bonus, here is an article from the book.

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Uncle John's Funniest EverCRAZY WORLD RECORDS

Uncle John holds the world record for the most pages ever read on the throne.
Here are some other dubious achievements.

Christian Adam of Germany set the distance record for riding a bicycle backward while playing the violin: 37.5 miles. It took him a little more than five hours. He played J. S. Back…er, Bach.

On May 6, 2009, Eric “No Class” Matyjasik of Arizona unzipped his pants 162 times in 30 seconds, breaking the old record by 27 zips.

The unofficial world record for staying awake: 18 days, 17 hours, set by Maureen Weston of England while participating in a rocking-chair marathon. Although she hallucinated quite a bit, she says she hasn’t suffered any long-term health effects.

Naya Ganj of India has the world’s longest ear hair. “Making it onto Guinness is special for my family! God has been very kind to me!” said the guy with 5.25 inches of hair growing from his ears.

Food Facts: A Non-Vanilla Source of Vanilla

In the very near future, we might get vanilla from a source that sounds pretty gross, but is also incredibly environmentally friendly.

Do you love the way old books smell—musty and slightly smoky, but just a little bit spicy and sweet? (It’s what the BRI Headquarters smells like…really!) There’s actually a technical explanation for old book smell. It’s comes from a chemical called lignin, which is found in wood pulp. Wood pulp is used to make paper, and in that process, lignin gets exposed to air, or oxidizes. The oxygen in the air starts a chemical reaction in the lignin, and creates another chemical, called vanillin, which is one of the main compounds in vanilla. Old books smell slightly like vanilla, which scientists say is one of the most pleasing scents to the human nose.

There are only a few ways to get vanilla. The first and most obvious source is the vanilla bean or pod. But they’re relatively rare (growing mostly only on the island of Madagascar) and, of course, expensive—vanilla beans cost about a dollar each in stores. Another way is to synthesize it in an industrial laboratory. Vanilla flavor can be obtained from a chemical combination of sodium hydroxide and sodium sulphide, or by processing a petroleum-based chemical called guaiacol.

Uncle John's KID-TOPIA Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!

Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Wins ForeWord Awards

We are please to announced that we were honored at the ForeWord Reviews 2012 Book of the Year Awards.

Uncle John's KID-TOPIA Bathroom Reader for Kids Only!Uncle John’s KID-TOPIA Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! won Bronze in the Juvenile Nonfiction category.

Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader got an Honorable Mention in the Humor category.

Uncle John’s The Enchanted Toilet Bathroom Reader for Kids Only! was a finalist in the Juvenile Nonfiction category.

The ForeWord Awards program was designed to discover books from independent publishers across a number of genres. The final selections are made by librarians and booksellers based on their experiences with patrons and readers. Drawn from entries representing more than 600 publishers, the winners are selected after months of deliberation. This year there were 1,300 entries in 62 categories. Awards were determined by librarians and booksellers and announced at a special program at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago on June 28, 2013.

Congrats to the whole team and to all our fans!

Fast Food Flops

Spinoffs are common in entertainment: Puss in Boots was a spinoff of a character from the Shrek movies, and All in the Family spun off a number of other hit TV sitcoms, including Maude and Good Times. Spinoffs are a lot less common in the fast food restaurant business. But in the late 1960s, two successful fast food chains tried to expand with new restaurants serving completely different food. The result: fast food flops.

Flop #1. After founder Harlan Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken and allowed it to be aggressively franchised in the early 1960s, the chain’s popularity grew just as fast. By 1968 it was the sixth-largest restaurant chain in America and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Rather than saturate the market with even more KFC locations, the company opted to start a second restaurant chain: Kentucky Roast Beef & Ham. The new chain sold all the standard KFC side dishes. But instead of chicken, they served roast beef and ham. Launched in 1968, all the roast beef and ham restaurants were converted into chicken joints by 1973.

What’s On Tap? 5000-Year-Old Beer Recipe

Beer has been around for centuries—lots of world cultures have developed some variation on fermented grain and water. But the brews our distant forefathers drank were probably a lot different than the ones we drink now.

5000-year-old beer recipeWhile the ale that was enjoyed centuries before the birth of Julius Caesar may have been tastier than other beverage choices of the day, it was still incredibly sour, with a flavor closer to vinegar than Hefeweizen. That’s according to a team of University of Chicago archaeologists and brewers from the Great Lakes Brewing Company. Using a 5,000-year-old beer recipe outlined in “Hymn to Ninkasi,” an ode to the Sumerian goddess of beer, they brewed up a batch of era-appropriate beer. To help ensure authenticity, they even used recreations of ancient wooden tools and ceramic fermentation pots based on artifacts found in Iraq in the 1930s, malted the barley on a roof, and hired a baker in Cleveland to prepare the bappir (“beer bread”) they used as the source of their yeast. And they heated the beer during the brewing process the old fashioned way: over a manure-fueled fire.

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