Daily Dispatch

Lorikeets and the Upchuck Thing

BRI Thom here, still on assignment in Australia (they told me it was only going to be two weeks!), with a quick note.

Four lorikeets have been coming to our veranda the last few days. We give them apple slices – they make a big mess eating them up.

Here are two of them, surrounded by described mess:

They all look pretty much the same, but while two of them will grab apple right out of your hand (and sit in your lap to eat it, if you let them, as we’ve happily learned in the past), two of them seemed very shy and skittery.

Just found out why:

E.T.: The Long-Awaited Follow-Up! (Sort Of)

E.T. Video GameAtari’s 1982 E.T. video game, based on the smash hit movie E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is probably the most spectacular failure in video game history.

Here’s what happened. E.T. the movie was released in June 1982. The tender story of a lonely boy befriended by a lost alien creature was an unexpectedly massive hit, spending its first six weeks at #1 at the box office. It was late July by the time Atari, the most popular video game brand in the world at the time, secured the rights to make an E.T. video game. However, the company gave designer Howard Warshaw just six weeks to create the product, so it could be on store shelves by Christmas. End result: a terrible, nonsensical game, even by early 1980s standards. Bearing little resemblance to the movie, players had to control a thing that sort of looked like E.T. as it collected pieces of a phone to “phone home.” E.T. mostly fell in holes, or encountered one of the game’s many bugs.

No Whey? Yes Whey: The Truth About Greek Yogurt

The truth about greek yogurtA few years ago, a new product hit your grocer’s dairy case seemingly out of nowhere: Greek yogurt. It’s an extra-thick, extra-creamy, and protein-heavy version of. The main difference, besides the thick, almost cheesecake-like consistency: There’s very little liquid in a container. Popular brands include Yoplait and Chobani. And Ben and Jerry’s has a frozen version. How popular is Greek yogurt? In New York state alone, production at yogurt plants has tripled over the last five years to more than a billion pounds per year. Want to know the truth about Greek yogurt?

College Majors of the Rich and Famous

College Majors of the RichIt’s graduation season, but if you can’t find a job in your field, don’t worry—you could always just shift gears and be a movie star. Here are some celebrities who got a college degree before they became famous for doing something else. Still, it’s nice to have a “fall back.”

Bathroom Reading Month: In a Kids Book

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 #2: In a Kids Book

QUESTION: If you could trade places with any character from a children’s story,
whom would you pick and why?

Georgia High School Teacher Uses UJ’s Bathroom Reader as Bathroom Pass

We got this message from BRI fan Erin the other day:

I thought you might be entertained to hear: I am a high school teacher, and my bathroom pass is a copy of the 23rd Reader with a big post-it on the front- “Bathroom Pass- so at least I can learn something while I’m out of class.”

The kids were seriously weirded out at first, but they have come to love it!!! It helps me limit the number of kids out of the room and they’re learning the coolest things when they least expect it!!!!

She added:

I LOVE the way it has really got them learning the greatest little tidbits!!! I have some of my favorite pages bookmarked, too, so they have somewhere to start!! A good dozen of them are obsessed with the book now and flip through it when it’s not ‘in use’ ;););)

There is just no way to express how happy this makes us. You have made our day – and our decade – Erin! Thank you so much!

Oh yeah: We got Erin to send a pic:

So awesome.

P.S. Erin added:

An Odd Holiday: Donald Duck Day

Are you all ready for Donald Duck Day? Have you carved Donald Duck’s face into a pumpkin? Are your Donald Duck stockings hung by the chimney with care? Is there a frozen duck thawing in your sink right now?

Okay, so these aren’t real traditions, but yes, Virginia, Donald Duck Day is a real thing. It occurs every June 9. Why that date? Because that’s Donald Duck’s “birthday”—that’s the day of the release of the foul-mouthed fowl’s first animated short, Walt Disney’s “The Wise Little Hen,” in 1934. That means this year is Donald’s 79th birthday.

Bathroom Reading Month: On Top of the Throne Winner

We have a winner! Lendell H. is the random winner of our first weekly giveaway in the month of June. As we continue our celebration of June is Bathroom Reading Month, it is clear that we have lots of bathroom readers out there. Here is what we learned about all of you from what you keep in your Throne Rooms.

  • More than one person has the Bro Code. Yo!
  • Several of you take your tablet into the bathroom (check out our e-book sale: 50% off)
  • Several of you are die-hard BRI fans and refuse to read anything else in the bathroom. Cheers to you!

Doughnuts or Bacon? Why Decide? Happy National Donut Day!

Donut & Bacon Sandwich National Donut DayAre you the kind of person who grabs breakfast on the way to work? And do you hate having to agonize over which mostly-unhealthy choice to reach for—a donut or an egg-and-cheese sandwich? Well, here’s good news: Dunkin’ Donuts recently introduced the Bacon & Egg Donut Sandwich. That’s a fried egg patty and two slices of bacon…between two glazed doughnuts. It’s the national chain’s way of celebrating June 7, which is “National Donut Day.”

The new sandwich sounds like a gut-buster…but it’s actually not that bad. Glazed doughnuts pack less fat than thickly-frosted cake varieties; two of them, even with eggs and bacon inside, amount to only 360 calories. Meanwhile, Dunkin’ Donuts offers a breakfast sandwich made with eggs and turkey sausage, and that health-conscious item has 390 calories—30 more than the one made with two glazed doughnuts.

This isn’t the first time doughnuts have joined with bacon. Voodoo Doughnuts, a small chain based in Portland, Oregon, introduced the Bacon-Maple Bar in 2003—it’s a Long John (a bar-shaped doughnut), covered in maple frosting and topped with two pieces of crispy bacon. After it was featured on an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, the style caught on and can now be found at doughnut stores around the country.

Uncle John’s Wins a Gold Award at The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards

This year, Uncle John celebrates 25 years of sitting on the throne as the “King of Bathroom Reading” while also winning a GOLD award for Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader and a SILVER award in for its kid’s book, Uncle John’s KID-TOPIA Bathroom Reader For Kids Only! at the 2013 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards.

KID-TOPIA was honored for non-fiction books for young readers, while the super-sized Fully Loaded was honored in the humor category. The IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards recognizes excellence in both editorial and design and is regarded as one of the highest national honors in small and independent publishing.

Note From a Fan: Jack Tales

From our FaceBook page two days ago, from a recent contest winner:

I want to thank you guys for stirring an old memory, very precious and nearly forgotten. I was reading one of the free books you sent me not long ago (thanks again!), and found the story of the “Jack Tales”, the traditional southern storytelling folklore. My great-grandfather, who was born and raised in Georgia before the *other* turn of the century, used to tell me these stories around 40 years ago, and I might not have thought of them again if not for your book. As I read the article, I was able to read it in his voice mentally. I only wish I could remember all the different stories he told (I know there was one about an island). It really took me back and helped to keep his memory alive. Thank you so much!

Wes R.

Wes, we are so pleased to be able to light that wonderful memory for you, and thank you for thinking to tell us about it. Very nice of you!

The “Jack Tales” story Wes is talking about comes from our very latest annual – Uncle John’s Fully Loaded 25th Anniversary Bathroom Reader (page 388). Continue reading for the whole story.

Bathroom Reading Month: On Top of the Throne

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 #1: On Top of the Throne

QUESTION: What reading materials do you have in your bathroom in addition to Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers?

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 5, 2013, midnight PST to be eligible to win. A winner will be announced on Friday, June 7, 2013. Open to US residents only.

A Weird But Great App: No More Kissin’ Cousins in Iceland

iceland cousins appThe United States is a melting pot. More than 300 million people live here, and most of us are either immigrants from another nation or the descendants of immigrants who came here within the last 200 years or so, from all over the world. The tiny European island of nation of Iceland is not quite so diverse. Distant and remote from mainland Europe, the country hasn’t expanded its genetic pool much over the last millennium. Result: All 300,000-odd residents of Iceland are related to each other.

The government of Iceland has intricately detailed its national genealogy, setting up a database that lists more than 720,000 people born in Iceland, including 95 percent of everyone born there since 1703, but going back 1,200 years. For example, everyone in Iceland—everyone—is related to a man named Jon Arason, who died in 1550.

With everyone related, that makes dating a little awkward—nobody wants to date their first cousin. Your eighth cousin? Well, that might be okay, but first cousin? Gross. That’s why an Icelandic computer programmer named Arnar Freyr Aoalsteinsson developed an app called IslendingaApp. Essentially an interactive version if the Icelandic genealogical registry, two people who have the app tap their phones together, and the app will tell them how closely they’re related. The app’s slogan: “bump the app before you bump in bed.”

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Pop Culture Pizza Pies

pop culture pizzaThere are approximately 50 billion pizza joints in New York City, but Vinnie’s Pizzeria in Brooklyn is arguably the coolest. For the past few years, co-owner Sean Berthiaume has created dozens of special pizzas with punny names, many “ins-pie-red” by popular TV shows. We call these pop culture pizza pies. Here are a few of our current favorites:

Mad Men

• The “Mad Mein” is topped with chicken chow mein, stir-fried noodles, teriyaki chicken, onions, broccoli, and cheddar cheese

• The “Don Caper” (a play on “Don Draper”) includes capers, tomato, garlic, “soy (Jon) Hamm,” soy cheddar, and mozzarella.

Game of Thrones

• The “Pita Linkage” (named for co-star Peter Dinklage) is an open-faced pita pizza with sliced sausage links, red onions, roasted red peppers, and feta cheese.

• The “Khal-Cheesy” (named for “The Khalesi,” portrayed by Emilia Clarke) has cheddar, provolone, mozzarella, and parmesan cheeses with sliced “pepper-thron-i.”

South Park

• The “South Pork” is topped with salami, ham, bacon, onions, and peppers.

A Weird But Great App: No More Spoilers on Twitter!

Tired of spoilers on online? What you need is a ‘No More Spoilers on Twitter’ app! Gone are the days of watching a TV show on the channel it airs at the time it. Most American homes now have some form of “time shifting” solution when it comes to TV, from the good old VCR to digital video recorders like TiVo to watching the shows online, either a couple days later via Hulu or a couple of months (or years) later in season-long viewing binges on Netflix.

A diehard fan of a show will watch it as soon as possible—when it airs—and many of those fans like to share their thoughts online, while it airs. So if you’re not going to get around to watching Mad Men the night it first airs, you’d better not go anywhere near Twitter. Mad Men fans will discuss plot points, twists, and, to use the parlance of the Internet, “spoil it.”

No More Spoilers On Twitter AppBoston teenager Jennie Lamere loves to use Twitter to connect with her friends and follow celebrities, but she hated how she would often inadvertently find out the results of her favorite show before she watched—the reality program Dance Moms. So for a student-computer-programming contest, she designed a Twitter application called Twivo. The program works like this: You install it and tell it what shows you don’t want to know anything about. Twivo then blocks all references to the show on your Twitter feed—the text is blacked out—no more spoilers on Twitter. Lamere won the contest; the app may be available to the general public in just a couple of months…hopefully before Breaking Bad starts up again.

Making the Most Out of Kickstarter: How Do I Land?

How Do I LandThe “crowd-funding” website Kickstarter can be used for a lot of things. For example, Rob Thomas, creator of the cancelled TV show Veronica Mars, raised enough money this spring (more than $3.5 million) to make a follow-up movie.

Or it could be used to fund expensive, elaborate pranks. Last January, comedian Kurt Braunohler (best known as the host of IFC’s Bunk) put up a plea on Kickstarter to raise $4,000. Goal: to“hire a man in a plane to write stupid things with clouds in the sky.” In other words, to skywrite jokes.

Braunohler successfully raised $6,820—way more than his $4,000 target. And earlier this month he hired a skywriter, who wrote this amusing message in the skies over Los Angeles: HOW DO I LAND?

 

Parents Just Don’t Understand: Celebrity Emancipated Minors

Celebrity Emancipated MinorsRecently, actor Will Smith told the British newspaper The Sun that his 14-year-old son Jaden, star of movies like The Karate Kid and the upcoming Will Smith movie After Earth, was looking into joining the ranks of other celebrity emancipated minors. It’s usually used to declare minors legal adults to either help teenagers escape abusive homes, protect financial assets or, as we’re guessing is the case with Smith, be able to work long hours on movie sets without violating child labor laws. The elder Smith seems cool with this. After all, he’s a guy who used to win Grammys for complaining about his parents.

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