Read Uncle John’s Briefs Online
Authors: Bathroom Readers’ Institute
Uncle John’s Briefs (44 page)
D
racula Blows His Cool
(1982)
“Three voluptuous models and their photographer restore an ancient castle and open a disco in it. The vampire lurking about the castle welcomes the party with his fangs.” (
Video Hound’s Golden Movie Retriever 2001
)
Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb vs. the Monsters
(1960)
“Little Red Riding Hood and Tom Thumb fight a vampire and a witch in a haunted forest! One of three Hood movies made the same year in Mexico and shipped up here like clockwork in the mid-’60s to warp the minds of little kids whose parents wanted to go Christmas shopping.” (
The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
)
Planet of the Vampires
(1965)
“Some astronauts crash land on a strange planet where the undead kill the living, only to discover that the alien-possessed vampiric survivors are preparing to land on another alien world—Earth!” (
The Essential Monster Movie Guide
)
The Devil Bat
(1940)
“Bela Lugosi plays a crazed scientist who trains bats to kill at the scent of a certain perfume.” (
Halliwell’s Film and Video Guide
)
Haunted Cop Shop
(1984)
“When vampires invade a meat-packing plant, the elite Monster Police Squad is brought in to stop them. When the squad botches the job, the Police Commissioner bumps them down to foot patrol until the vampires
attack the county hospital. Impressive special effects.” (
The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide
)
Antarctica has no standard time zones.
Samson vs. the Vampire Women
(1961)
“Sexy vampire women keep muscular male slaves on slabs in their atmospheric crypt. Santo the silver-masked Mexican wrestling hero (called Samson in the dubbed version) defeats them all.” (
The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film
)
Vampires on Bikini Beach
(1988)
“Californians save their beach from undesirable vampires.” (Is there some other kind?) (
The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide
)
Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
(1965)
“The title says it all. Dracula travels to the Old West, anxious to put the bite on a pretty lady ranch owner. Her fiancé, the legendary Billy the Kid, steps in to save his girl from becoming a vampire herself. A classic.” (
Video Hound’s Golden Movie Retriever
)
The Return of the Vampire
(1943)
“Bela Lugosi plays Armand Tesla (basically Dracula under another name), who returns to claim a girl after ‘marking’ her when she was a child. But his assistant, the werewolf-with-a-heart, turns on him and drags him out into the sunlight, where he melts in spectacular fashion.” (
Amazon Reviews
)
Atom Age Vampire
(1960)
“Badly dubbed Italian timewaster with cheese-ball special effects and a tired premise. A mad professor restores the face of a scarred accident victim.” (
Video Movie Guide
)
Haunted Cop Shop II
(1986)
“This improved sequel to the 1984 original features non-stop action. The vampire creature is destroyed by the hero relieving himself into a swimming pool and completing an electrical circuit!” (
The Illustrated Vampire Movie Guide
)
Traditionally, Swiss newlyweds make a wish and break a pretzel.
Author and newspaper columnist Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
often peppered his articles with his own humorous—and
cynical—definitions for common words. Here are a few of our favorites
.
D
entist:
A magician who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket.
Positive:
Mistaken, at the top of one’s voice.
Acquaintance:
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Dog:
An additional Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s worship.
Clairvoyant:
A person who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron—namely, that he is a blockhead.
Revolution:
An abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Corporation:
An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
Admiration:
Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.
Saint:
A dead sinner, revised and edited.
Alliance:
The union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other’s pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.
Responsibility:
A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck, or one’s neighbor.
Appeal:
In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
Coward:
One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
Famous:
Conspicuously miserable.
Friendship:
A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.
Husband:
One who, having dined, is charged with the care of the plate.
Meekness:
Uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.
Outcome:
A particular type of disappointment.
Love:
A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
In an average day, an adult American experiences about 50 stress-related adrenaline rushes.
You already know the names. Here’s who they belonged to
.
W
illiam Colgate.
In the early 1800s, making soap at home was a matter of pride with American housewives: That’s where 75% of U.S. soap was made (although it smelled terrible). In 1806 Colgate opened a soap business and succeeded by offering home delivery, and by adding perfume to his soap.
Gerhard Mennen.
While recovering from malaria in the 1870s, he learned so much about the pharmaceutical trade that he opened his own drug store. He made his own remedies, including Mennen’s Borated Talcum Infant Powder—America’s first talcum powder.
Dr. William Erastus Upjohn.
Until Upjohn invented a process for manufacturing soft pills, prescription pills were literally hard as a rock—you couldn’t smash them with a hammer, and they often passed through a person’s system without being absorbed by the body. Upjohn’s new process changed all that.
John Michael Kohler.
A Wisconsin foundry owner in the 1880s. One of his big sellers was an enameled iron water trough for farm animals. In 1883, convinced that demand for household plumbing fixtures was growing, he made four cast-iron feet, welded them to the animal trough, and began selling it as a bathtub.
William Boeing.
When he wasn’t working for his father, a timber and iron baron, Boeing and a friend named Conrad Westervelt built seaplanes as a hobby. In 1916 the pair founded Pacific Aero Products. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the Navy bought 50 of his planes. He never worked for his father again.
William Rand and Andrew McNally.
Rand and McNally printed railroad tickets and timetables. In 1872 they added maps to their line. Other companies used wood or metal engravings for their maps; Rand McNally used wax engravings, allowing them to update and correct maps at a fraction of the cost. By the early 1900s, Rand McNally was one of the largest map-makers in the country.
Michael Jordan had a specific clause in his contract that permitted him to play basketball anytime in the off-season. It’s known as a “love-of-the-game clause.”
See if you can guess the name of the country before
reading all the clues. (Answers on
page 286
.)
S
AVED
1.
It was originally inhabited by the Pipil tribe.
2.
The Pipil are believed to be direct descendants of the Aztecs.
3.
The Pipil were defeated by Spanish explorers looking for gold.
4.
The Christian Spaniards named it in honor of Jesus.
Name the country
.
1.
The local Nama people call it “an area where there is nothing.”
2.
The name describes the coastal desert area of the country.
3.
It has been governed at different times by the British, the Germans, and the South Africans.
4.
It gained independence in 1990 from South Africa.
Name the country
.
1.
It got its European name long before Europeans knew it existed.
2.
Early geographers insisted it must be there—if not, the Earth would “wobble.”
3.
The early name was Latin for “The Unknown Southern Land.”
4.
Captain James Cook “discovered” it in 1770.
Name the country
.
OVER THERE WHERE THE SUN COMES UP
1.
Our word for this country originally comes from China.
2.
It combines the words “sun” and “east.”
3.
Portuguese traders learned the name from Malaysians in the 1500s.
4.
Inhabitants of this country call it Nippon.
Name the country
.
1.
Early inhabitants called themselves the Pritani.
2.
The Greek sailor Pytheas named it after the inhabitants in 300 B.C.
3.
When enemy tribes attacked in the 400s, many inhabitants fled this island, taking the name with them to the mainland.
4.
To differentiate between the new “lesser” settlement on the mainland, the word “Greater” was added to the name of the island.
Name the island
.
ACUTE COUNTRY, BUT A BIT OBTUSE
1.
This country, when grouped with two other countries, is known by another name.
2.
When grouped with three other countries, it’s known by
another
name.
3.
The name comes from a Germanic tribe that invaded the country about 1,500 years ago.
4.
It is believed that the tribe’s name referred to their homeland in present-day Germany, which was shaped like a fishhook.
Name the country
.
1.
This country was also named after an invading Germanic tribe.
2.
The tribe’s name came from a Latin word meaning “masculine.”
3.
Their allegiance with Rome, and use of its written Latin language, are two reasons why their language is so different from German.
4.
They controlled so much of Europe at one point that the Arabic and Persian words for “European” are based on their name.
Name the country
.
1.
This country was named by the Portuguese in the 1470s.
2.
The name comes from the Portuguese word for an overcoat,
Gabao
.
3.
The French gained control of this equatorial country in the late 1800s and helped to end its slave trade.
4.
It’s in western Africa.
Name the country
.
It can take as little as 20 seconds for a child to drown.
Here’s the story of a man who suffered a family
tragedy and then went on a mission to save
other families from the same fate
.
T
ERRIBLE LOSS
In the summer of 1946 a fire broke out in LeRoy and Lillian Gorham’s house in The Bottom neighborhood of Chapel Oaks, Maryland. It took firefighters a very long time to arrive. Too long. By the time they put out the fire, all three of the Gorhams’ children—Ruth, 4, Jean, 3, and LeRoy Earl, 2—had perished in the blaze.
There’s no way to know if the Gorham children could have been saved had the fire department arrived sooner, and for that matter, no one knows exactly why it took the fire department so long to get there. But The Bottom is a black community, and residents there claim that the all-white fire departments of surrounding communities were always slow to respond to emergencies in black neighborhoods…if they came at all.
“It’s just the way it was,” said resident Luther Crutchfield. “If they got a call for a fire in a black neighborhood, they either came or they didn’t. Sometimes they came, but they took their time.” Further complicating matters, The Bottom didn’t have running water in the 1940s, so even when firefighters did respond, there was no place to hook up their hoses. Fires were fought with bucket brigades, using water drawn from nearby wells and streams.