Weird, Wonderful World Weird, Wonderful World

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.

Bathroom Reading Month: Writer for a Day Winner

Congrats to Perry P. for winning our fourth and final weekly giveawayof the month of June. The response was very diverse to our question this week: “If you were to write a book about a subject, what would you write about and why?” Here are the highlights:

• Non-military history of the renaissance

• Firsthand experiences of living through Hurricane Katrina

• Strange medical conditions as well as emergency room patients with wierd things wrong

• Is the moon landing really a hoax?

• The modern-day Seabees (Navy Construction Battalions) and their place in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And a couple of personal stories we want to highlight:

“I am a triple amputee. 14 years ago I hit a moving train while riding my motorcycle. So I would travel and get other stories of those in America who have amputations, and the things they do to accommodate in a two handed world.”

“I would write a book about a fictional character who has Developmental Coordination Disorder which is the same disability that I have. I would write about the character’s struggles in areas such as writing neatly and in gym class with basic skills such as catching a ball or trying to hit a badminton birdie. I would also write about the character’s successes such as finally mastering shoe tying or learning to skate.”

Thank you everyone for entering our weekly giveaways and helping us celebrate June as Bathroom Reading Month. Have a great weekend and don’t forget to enter our awesome June is Bathroom Reading Month Giveaway. You could win the ENTIRE in-print library of our books. Deadline is June 30!

Bathroom Reading Month: Writer for a Day

Every week during Bathroom Reading Month, we will host a giveaway for a book of your choice from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader collection. Just to spice it up, we will ask you to answer a question on the blog. At the end of the week, we will pick a random winner from the answers and post it on the blog along with our favorite answers. Remember that this is in addition to our “mother-of-all” contest: enter to win the entire in-print library of Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers.

Week #4: Writer for a Day

QUESTION: If you were to write a book about a subject,
what would you write about and why?

Answer the question in the comments section of this post to be entered to win a book of your choice from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader library. Answers must be posted by June 26, 2013, midnight PST to be eligible to win. A winner will be announced on Friday, June 28, 2013. Open to US residents, 18 year + only.

Would you write about hoaxes? Need a little inspiration? Here are a few classics from Uncle John’s Unstoppable Bathroom Reader.

Bathroom Reading Month: At the Library Winner

Congrats to Amanda for winning our third weekly giveaway of the month of June. Surprisingly none of your chose the bathroom as the section of the library that you would spend the most time in. The favorite was the Fiction section. Here are some of our favorite answers.

Graphic novels

Biographies

Knowledge and Trivia

Comedy

And, of course, several of you noted that you would go directly to the section that holds Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers. Awww, shucks! We truly have the best fans.

Have a great weekend and don’t forget to enter our awesome June is Bathroom Reading Month Giveaway.

Bathroom Reading Month: At the Library

Every week during Bathroom Reading Month, we will host a giveaway for a book of your choice from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader collection. Just to spice it up, we will ask you to answer a question on the blog. At the end of the week, we will pick a random winner from the answers and post it on the blog along with our favorite answers. Remember that this is in addition to our “mother-of-all” contest: enter to win the entire in-print library of Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers.

Week #3: At the Library

QUESTION: If you were stuck in a library,
what section of would you spend the most time in and why?

Answer the question in the comments section of this post to be entered to win a book of your choice from the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader library. Answers must be posted by June 19, 2013, midnight PST to be eligible to win. A winner will be announced on Friday, June 21, 2013. Open to US residents only.

Need a little inspiration? Read all about one of the nation’s most famous libraries from Uncle John’s Plunges into History Again.

Bathroom Reading Month: In a Kids Book Winner

Congrats to Ken for winning our second weekly giveaway in the month of June. It was loads of fun reading about your favorite children’s book characters. Here are the highlights.

There were several Harry Potter fans. Although, we have to admit, our favorite was:

Probably Harry Potter (although its not a kids book, really) only cuz I love the fact that I could turn my hubby into a toad :)

We hope her hubby doesn’t read our blog.

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