Yesterday we lost one of the greats in the history of country and pop music, Alabama-born Charlie Louvin (LOO vin), best known for being one of the Louvin Brothers with his brother Ira starting in the 1940s. Here’s a nice little video bio. An especially nice bit is when Charlie talks about the roots of the duo’s harmony, about 1 minute and 40 seconds in:
A good obituary, strangely enough in the UK’s Telegraph:
This, dear readers, will make every one of you feel a tiny bit better for every minute you’ve ever been on a senseless and agonizing telephone run-around mill courtesy of your telephone company—and a tiny bit times a thousand or so adds up to a lot of feeling better:
Belgium’s much-reviled phone company Mobistar was elaborately pranked by a program on VRT Belgium; the pranksters hid themselves in a steel container, which they had dropped directly in front of the gates of a large Mobistar office at 5AM. The container had a prominent customer service number printed on the side of it — a number which rang the pranksters inside the container — that was promptly called by a series of Mobistar employees who wanted to get the container moved off before 2,000 Mobistar employees reported for work and found the parking lot blocked off.
The pranksters proceed to put the Mobistar employees through a high-art comedic phone hell, disconnecting them…
As the kids say: Oh. My. God.
Four types of “Toylets” games are available to be played during a test period ending this month at four male bathrooms in pubs and game arcades, in a project aimed at drawing attention to digital adverts.
Each urinal is fitted with a pressure sensor, and a small digital display is placed at eye level. Digital adverts are shown after the games.
Games include “Graffiti Eraser” in which a user tries to aim at the pressure sensor in the urinal to erase virtual graffiti on the display.
There is even a video. Really. (And no, it does not feature an actual man peeing.)
The undauntable Jack LaLanne has left for the big exercise room in the sky:
“I have not only lost my husband and a great American icon, but the best friend and most loving partner anyone could ever hope for,” Elaine LaLanne, Lalanne’s wife of 51 years and a frequent partner in his television appearances, said in a written statement.
This is our first year in the great big blogosphere, and therefore our first UJBR YiR. We had an executive meeting of the BRI crack staff, and decided that the theme of our first ever YiR should be…weird bathroom news. I mean “bathroom” is right there in our name and everything! How weird is that?
Getting right on with it:
In February, Toronto, Ontario, restaurant Mildred’s celebrated Valentines Day by encouraging patrons to have sex in its bathrooms. “Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?” they asked on thei website. “Check out Mildred’s Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture.”( We do get the picture—and it ain’t pretty!) Bizarrely, Toronto Public Health said it was alright: “As far as bodily fluids,” said Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program, “it’s pretty much similar to the other human functions going on in there.” (Photo: Rene Johnson, Toronto Star)
We wanted to get each and every one of you a gift this holiday season. But, since we didn’t have everyone’s addresses, the hard part was figuring out what to get you that we could transported through the internet. So, here is our little thank you for supporting us in 2010 and for the many years before…and after: THE ORIGAMI DUCKY! (First appeared in Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader)
Continue Reading to print out the template.
Some people do the most ingenious things with toilet paper:
That, my bathroom-reading friends, is a bird toy:
From Uncle John and the entire worldwide staff of the Bathroom Readers Institute, a very special Christmas – or other December holiday of your choosing – to all of our readers, browsers, fans, fanatics, critics, and quoters everywhere. May the holiday season be filled with the best and warmest possible experiences for each and every one of you.
Three days ago the Men’s U.S. Olympic Hockey team got an unexpected win over heavily favored Canada, the first time the Americans have beaten the Canadians in an Olympics since 1960. MSNBC got 8.22 million viewers for the Sunday afternoon broadcast—the second highest total in the network’s history. (Only election night 2008 got more.) Congratulations to the U.S. team, and good luck for the rest of the tournament to both the U.S. and Canada.
The game came just a day short of the 30th anniversary of what is arguably the biggest moment in U.S. sports history, the “Miracle on Ice” that saw the Americans beat the Russians, winner of the gold in the four previous Olympics, on their own way to winning gold at the 1980 games in Lake Placid, New York. In Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Plunges into Minnesota (2006), we covered the “Miracle on Ice” story—and looked into where some of the players and coaches are today. Here’s an excerpt (with updates!)
Greetings, Bathroom Reader fans around the world. BRI Thom here, reporting from the field, which, barring deportation or a fatal shark attack, I shall be doing so henceforth. I’ve flown the bathroom-reading headquarters coop in our sleepy little Oregon hamlet, and am currently reporting from a picnic bench a few yards from the South Pacific Ocean just north of Sydney, Australia—one block or some from my new home. Leaving Uncle John and the crack staff at the BRI was heartbreaking…until I got here. (I mean come on! I practically live on a tropical beach, for goodness’ sake!)
Fortunately Uncle John forgot to change the locks here, and I’ll still be posting on the UJ Blog!
My first exclusive: The Aussie Loo, and how it corresponds almost exactly to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Just take a look at this beauty:
As we approach our first month anniversary of the launch of the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader iPhone/iPad app, we wanted to take a moment and get your feedback. We have already heard from many of you that the app finally fills that void in your life that you never knew existed. We are thrilled to get such great comments from you and overall we are happy to declare it a success.
But, we want to hear from you….
Today, December 7, 2010, is the 69th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (69th?! Wow!) In our very latest—and many are already saying the greatest, thank you very much—work, Uncle John’s HEAVY DUTY Bathroom Reader, we tell the story of the single Japanese spy who made the entire attack possible. Here’s an excerpt:
DUSTBIN OF HISTORY:
THE PEARL HARBOR SPY
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, remains
one of the most infamous events in U.S. history. Yet the spy who
played a key role in the sneak attack is a forgotten man,
unknown even to many World War II buffs.
Under Cover
On March 27, 1941, a 27-year-old junior diplomat named Tadashi Morimura arrived in Honolulu to take his post as vice-consul at the Japanese consulate. But that was just a cover—“Morimura” was really Takeo Yoshikawa, a Japanese Imperial Navy Intelligence officer. His real mission: to collect information about the American military installations in and around Pearl Harbor.
This is a news item about two separate, yet equally important groups: The police who investigate crime, and the District Attorneys who get sent text messages by drug dealers. (Dong dong!)
Police say an Indiana man was arrested after mistakenly sending text messages to a prosecutor about drugs he was trying to sell.
We have a winner of our latest BRI contest, “6 Things Your Dry Cleaner Won’t Tell You“! Thanks to everyone who entered! You’re all very, very naughty! Well, most of you anyway.
And the winner is…
If you were looking for something this morning that was wrong in more ways than you can count, look no further:
A Polish fire brigade has rebelled against its commander after an alleged campaign of humiliation and abuse of power that saw him force them to greet each other with a “Heil Hitler” each morning.
Oh, this is such a good idea, I can’t believe we didn’t think of it ourselves!
In conjunction with Design Tide Tokyo, architect Hideyuki Nakayama – a protégé of Toyo Ito – has teamed up with UNION, a manufacturer of door handles and levers, to create a glass globe doorknob. As you approach the doorknob you catch a glimpse of what appears to be another world, waiting for you to enter and join, but in fact is a reflection of the room on the other side of the door.
The funny man from the Northwest Territories has gone to that great Airplane in the sky.
“LOS ANGELES – Leslie Nielsen, who traded in his dramatic persona for inspired bumbling as a hapless doctor in “Airplane!” and the accident-prone detective Frank Drebin in “The Naked Gun” comedies, died on Sunday in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 84.
The Canadian-born actor died from complications from pneumonia at a hospital near his home at 5:34 p.m., surrounded by his wife, Barbaree, and friends, his agent John S. Kelly said in a statement.”
A moment from Lieutenant Frank Drebin:
