Read Uncle John’s Briefs Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Briefs (40 page)
PANCAKES.
When the first European settlers landed in the New World, they brought pancakes with them. They met Native Americans who made their own pancakes, called
nokehic
. Even the ancient Egyptians had pancakes; in fact, there are few cultures that don’t have pancakes of one kind or another. The first ready-made pancake mix came in 1889, when two men in St. Joseph, Missouri, introduced “Self-Rising Pancake Flour.” They named it “Aunt Jemima” after a song from a minstrel show.
Why don’t we eat turkey eggs? Mostly because, proportionately, they lay far fewer than chickens.
Over the centuries, card players have come up with all sorts of strange superstitions
to help them win—and elaborate explanations for why they’re losing. (Ignoring,
of course, the possibility that they’re just bad card players.)
G
OOD LUCK
• Blow on the cards or spit on them, preferably when no one is looking. (Remember to wipe up any excess spit, so no one knows you’ve fouled them.)
• Wear an article of dirty clothing when you play cards, especially when you play poker. The dirt helps keep evil at bay.
• Stick a pin in your lapel, or in a friend’s lapel.
• There’s one lucky card in each deck. If you can figure out which card it is, touch it with your index finger before the game begins.
• If you’re sitting at a table made of wood, choose a seat that lets you lay your cards with the grain instead of against it.
• Whenever you’re on a losing streak, tilt your chair up on its forelegs and twist it three times. This works best if you twist following the path of the sun—i.e., from east to west.
• If twisting doesn’t help, rotate the chair so the back faces the table, then sit astride it so that you’re facing the seat back.
• If you’re sitting astride your chair and still losing, try sitting on a handkerchief, or walk clockwise three times around the table. (If you still lose, switch to a new deck of cards or consider taking up dominos.)
• If you see a hunchback on the way to your game, that’s good luck. Don’t touch the hump—just seeing the hunchback is all it takes.
BAD LUCK
• Don’t sing or whistle during a card game. It’s unlucky (not to mention annoying).
In Britain, judges first began wearing black robes in 1714 to mourn the death of Queen Anne.
• Don’t pick up any of your cards until all the cards have been dealt, and when you do pick them up, use your right hand.
• Never, ever let someone hover over you and look at your cards, unless that person never plays cards. If they never play cards, then standing over you may actually bring you luck. People who bring you luck are known as “mascots.”
• Don’t sit with your legs crossed—it “crosses out your luck.”
• Never play cards in a room with a dog in it.
• Never let anyone place their foot on the rung of your chair. On the other hand, if you want to give bad luck to someone who’s beating you, put your foot on the rung of
their
chair.
• Never play cards with a cross-eyed man or woman. (This superstition dates back to the days when people thought that cross-eyed people could see the cards of the people sitting next to them.)
MORE BAD LUCK
• Never play cards on a bare table. (Bring felt or a tablecloth, preferably green, with you…just in case.)
• Don’t lend money during a card game. Don’t borrow it, either.
• If you are dealt a steady succession of black cards, it means that you or someone in your family will die soon.
• If you’re a pilot, coal miner, soldier, fisherman, or sailor, you should never carry playing cards on your person. If you do and bad luck occurs—a storm or an enemy attack, for example—throw the cards as far away from you as you can to get rid of the bad luck.
LUCKY AND UNLUCKY CARDS
• The four of clubs is “the devil’s bedstead.” Discard it unless you absolutely need it. If you’re dealt the four of clubs in the first hand of the game, throw down the cards and leave the game—you’ll have nothing but bad luck.
• Dropping any card on the floor is bad luck, but dropping one of the black aces is worst of all. If you drop a black ace, leave the game immediately. Nobody recovers from luck that bad.
According to experts, the best badminton shuttlecocks are made from the left wing of a goose.
Women, you can follow these antique rules of
etiquette…or just laugh at them
.
“Immoderate laughter is exceedingly unbecoming a lady; she may affect the dimple or the smile, but should carefully avoid any approximation to a horse-laugh.”
—
The Perfect
Gentleman
(1860)
“Sending out a letter with a crooked, mangled or upside-down stamp is akin to letting your lingerie straps show.”
—
Good Housekeeping’s Book
of Today’s Etiquette
(1965)
“Fingernails are another source of feminine excess. The woman who goes about her daily avocations with blood-red finger-nails is merely harking back to the days of savagery, when hands smeared with blood were a sign of successful fighting.”
—
Things That Are
Not Done
(1937)
“It’s a great idea to file your fingernails in the street car, bus, or train. It’s certainly making the most of your time. The noise of the filing drowns the unpleasant noise of the wheels. But it is the act of an ill-bred person. Who but an ordinary person would allow her epithelium to fly all over? I think that one might as well scatter ashes after a cremation, around the neighborhood.”
—
Manners for Millions
(1932)
“The perfect hostess will see to it that the works of male and female authors be properly separated on her bookshelves. Their proximity, unless they happen to be married, should not be tolerated.”
—
Lady Gough’s Etiquette
(1863)
“No matter what the fashion may be, the gloves of a well-dressed woman are never so tight that her hands have the appearance of sausages.”
—
The New Etiquette
(1940)
“Don’t affect a lisp or talk baby talk. Somebody will probably kill you sometime if you do.”
—
Compete!
(1935)
One of the first programs to be broadcast by radio was a British yacht race (1898).
“A lady-punster is a most unpleasing phenomenon, and we would advise no young woman, however skilled she may be, to cultivate this kind of verbal talent.”
—
Collier’s Cyclopedia
of Commercial and
Social Information
(1882)
“Girls, never, never turn at a whistle, to see if you are wanted. A whistle is usually to call a dog.”
—
Good Manners
(1934)
“A beautiful eyelash is an important adjunct to the eye. The lashes may be lengthened by trimming them occasionally in childhood. Care should be taken that this trimming is done neatly and evenly, and especially that the points of the scissors do not penetrate the eye.”
—
Our Deportment
(1881)
“If a man must be forcibly detained to listen to you, you are as rude in thus detaining him, as if you had put a pistol to his head and threatened to blow his brains out if he stirred.”
—
The Gentlemen’s Book “of
Etiquette and Manual
of Politeness
(1860)
“Still less say of anything which you enjoy at table. ‘I love melons,’ ‘I love peaches,’ ‘I adore grapes’—these are school-girl utterances. We love our friends. Love is an emotion of the heart, but not one of the palate. We like, we appreciate grapes, but we do not love them.”
—
The American
Code of Manners
(1880)
“Never use your knife to convey your food from your plate to your mouth; besides being decidedly vulgar, you run the imminent danger of enlarging the aperture from ear to ear. A lady of fashion used to say that she never saw a person guilty of this ugly habit without a shudder, as every minute she expected to see the head of the unfortunate severed from the body.”
—
Etiquette for
the Ladies
(1849)
“Certain daring necklines have a paralyzing effect on the conversation and even on the appetite of the other dinner party guests, who hope to see a little more than is already revealed and would love to change places with the waiter, who has a particularly stimulating view.”
—
Accent on Elegance
(1970)
“Large hats make little women look like mushrooms.”
—
Everyday Etiquette
(1907)
Studies prove: A human voice really can shatter glass.
They’re called “flying carp,” “winged weasels,” “scum of the sky,”
“park lice,” and “winged infestation.” Lawyers? No, pigeons.
They don’t get much respect, but maybe they should.
There’s more to them than you might think
.
• Pigeons were first domesticated by the ancient Egyptians more than 5,000 years ago.
• Pigeons can see clearly for 25 miles and hear wind changes hundreds of miles away.
• Pigeons mate for life and share parenting duties. The father sits on the eggs during the day, the mother at night.
• Pigeons are the only birds that don’t have to lift their heads to swallow water.
• Passenger pigeons were once the most numerous birds in the world. Ornithologist John J. Audubon recorded seeing a single flock in 1808 that he calculated to be 150 miles long, numbering over two billion birds. By 1914 hunting and deforestation had led to the total extinction of the birds.
• Ever seen a baby pigeon? You probably have: young pigeons grow extremely fast. They may weigh more than their parents by the time they’re only four to six weeks.
• In the 17th century, pigeon droppings were used to tan hides and to make gunpowder.
• Homing pigeons were used in both world wars to carry messages between troops and headquarters. They had a 98% success rate in missions flown.
• Racing pigeons have been clocked at 110 mph.
• Only mammals produce milk, right? Wrong. Pigeons make “pigeon milk,” an extremely nutritious secretion from the “crop,” a chamber at the bottom of the esophagus. Both parents make it and feed their young with it.
• Racing pigeons are bred for speed. In 1992 champion racer
Invincible Spirit
was sold for over $130,000.
• Why do pigeons live in cities? One theory: They are descended from rock doves, cliff dwellers that live near the Mediterranean. Urban structures mimic those ancestral cliffs.
Q: What is the largest animal that ever lived on Earth? A: Not a dinosaur—it’s the blue whale.
Stars are often at their funniest when they’re attacking other stars
.
“I’m not a Julie Andrews fan, no. I’m a diabetic.”
—
David Janssen
“Prince looks like a dwarf that fell into a vat of pubic hair.”
—
Boy George, on Prince
“Marlon [Brando] is the most overrated actor in the world.”
—
Frank Sinatra
“Zsa Zsa the-Bore. Did I spell that right?”
—
Elayne Boosler
“If Kathleen Turner had been a man, I would have knocked her out long ago.”
—
Burt Reynolds
“Jeremy Irons has no sex appeal….He’s perfect for horror movies—or science fiction. He’s an iceberg with an accent.”
—
Andy Warhol
“Where else but in America could a poor black boy like Michael Jackson grow up to be a rich white woman?”
—
Red Buttons
“Charlton Heston—a graduate of the Mt. Rushmore school of acting.”
—
Edward G. Robinson
“Peter O’Toole looks like he’s walking around just to save the funeral expenses.”
—
John Huston
“Sylvester Stallone’s got two bodyguards who look exactly like him walking around on the beach, so I guess he figures that cuts the odds of being assassinated to one in three.”
—
Jack Lemmon
“I am fascinated by Courtney Love, the same way I am by someone who’s got Tourette’s syndrome walking in Central Park.”
—
Madonna
“In truth, he’s [Michael Caine] an overfat, flatulent, 62-year-old windbag, a master of inconsequence now masquerading as a guru, passing off his vast limitations as pious virtues.”
—
Richard Harris
State with the highest cremation rate: Nevada, at 65%. Lowest: Alabama, at 4.5%.
Answers to every question you ever had about physiology, provided
that every question you ever had is one of these three
.