Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader (16 page)

Gentlemen, start your livers!

May we live to learn well,

and learn to live well.

May your right hand always

be stretched out in friendship and never in want.

Here’s to warm words on a cold

evening, A full moon on a dark night, And the road downhill all the way to your door.

Success to the lover, honor

to the brave, health to the sick, and freedom to the slave.

May the Lord keep you in

His hand, And never close
His fist too tight on you.

Old wood to burn, old books

to read, old wine to drink, old friends to trust.

May misfortune follow you

the rest of your life, but never catch up.

Champagne to our real

friends, and real pain to our sham friends.

May you live as long as you

want, and never want as long as you live.

May I see you gray, combing

your grandchildren’s hair.

May the people who dance

on your grave get cramps in their legs.

Health and long life to you,

The woman of your choice to you, A child every year to you, Land without rent to you, And may you die in Ireland.

In Italy, Mickey Mouse is known as “Topolino.”

Save these classic curses to use against people who refuse to toast you
.

M
ay the curse of
Mary Maline and her nine blind children chase you so far over the hills of Damnation that the Lord himself won’t find you with a telescope.

May your daughter’s beauty

be admired by everyone in the circus.

May the devil cut the head

off you and make a day’s work of your neck.

Six horse-loads of graveyard

clay upon you.

May I live just long enough

to bury you.

May you be afflicted with

the itch and have no nails to scratch with.

All your teeth should fall

out except one, and you should have a toothache in that one.

May the seven terriers of hell

sit on the spool of your breast and bark in at your soul-case.

May you be transformed into

a chandelier, to hang by day and burn by night.

May you win a lottery and

spend it all on doctors.

May the devil swallow you

sideways.

May you live in a house of

100 rooms, and may each room have its own bed, and may you wander every night from room to room, and from bed to bed, unable to sleep.

May you go stone-blind so

that you can’t tell your wife from a haystack.

Your nose should grow so

much hair it strains your soup.

May fire and brimstone never

fail to fall in showers on you.

May you have devoted

children to chase the flies off your nose.

May you back into a pitchfork

and grab a hot stove for support.

May those who love us love

us. And those that don’t love us, may God turn their hearts, and if He cannot turn their hearts, may He turn their ankles so we’ll know them by their limping.

Every American space-flight menu has included chocolate. So has every Russian space menu.

BAMBOO: ONE INCREDIBLE PLANT

And not just because the Professor can make a Geiger counter out of it, Gilligan
.

B
IG BAMBOO

To many people in the Western world, bamboo is an exotic plant, one most often used by landscapers for aesthetic reasons. In the Eastern world, however, it is very different. More than a billion Asians live in houses made of bamboo, and there are more than 37 million acres of bamboo reserves—an area about the size of Illinois—in India and China alone. Bamboo is used to make such diverse products as boats, furniture, musical instruments, chopsticks, scaffolding, and even food and medicine. Use of the versatile plant has been spreading west slowly for more than a century, but now, with modern technology improving and expanding its uses, and because it is so fast-growing and quickly renewable, some experts say that bamboo is poised to become one of the most important plant species of the 21st century.

LATE BLOOMER

So, what is bamboo? It’s a member of the
Poaceae
family—the grasses—which includes the grass in your lawn, along with all the grains, such as wheat, corn, and rice. And several species of bamboo make up the largest members of this family. Grasses are relatively “new” plants on Earth, not having appeared until around the time of the disappearance of the dinosaurs, about 65 million years ago. Bamboo, experts say, didn’t appear until 35 million years ago. Because of grasses’ ability to survive in a great variety of climates—dry plains and savannahs, marshes, and mountains—they have become one of the most successful types of plant life on Earth. There are about 9,000 different species of grasses; 1,200 of them are bamboo.

Bamboo can be found in temperate and tropical regions around the globe and is native to every continent except Antarctica and Europe. More than half of all bamboo species are found in Asia, most of them in China. But several also exist throughout India and Southeast Asia, down to northern Australia, all across sub-Saharan Africa and into Madagascar, and in the Americas. Over time, bamboo spread not so much by natural forces, but, just like the grains so vital to the development of civilization, by its close relationship to humans.

Did they put skates on their barrels? Niagara Falls froze solid in the winter of 1925.

MAN-BOO

The oldest existing bamboo artifacts, plaited mats found in China, date back more than 7,500 years. In China, especially, the plant is deeply interwoven into the culture of the people. Bamboo tubes and bamboo waterwheels were integral to the development of agriculture in China, as they provided a means to irrigate the land for another useful grass—rice. Bamboo bridges were built by the thousands—some of them so long they still confound engineers—promoting travel, trade, and the unification of disparate peoples.

The uses derived from bamboo expanded greatly over the centuries, and spread—or sprang up independently—wherever the plant grew. Baskets, drinking cups, weapons, fencing, paint brushes, rafts, and numerous other products were developed, affecting civilizations from Japan to the Congo, and from the Andes to Alabama.

BAMBOOZLED

The physical qualities of bamboo are surprising. It is harder than maple or oak, and has a much greater dimensional stability than either of these hardwoods (it doesn’t shrink or expand as much as wood, which explains, in part, its current popularity for flooring). Its tensile strength—the amount of pulling force it can withstand before it breaks—is greater than steel’s. Bamboo’s compressive strength is comparable to concrete; its weight-to-strength ratio is greater than graphite. And it has sustainable qualities that make it even more remarkable.

Bamboo is the fastest-growing plant on Earth: Recorded growth rates have been clocked at two inches
an hour
. Huge shoots can attain maximum height in less than two months. Maximum height? A world-record giant bamboo was found in 2003 by researchers at Yunnan University in southwestern China. The
culm
(the tubelike stem) was 150 feet tall, weighed 990 pounds, and was 14 inches in diameter. The rapid growth rate has obvious economic advantages:

Nerd…or prodigy? Bill Gates started programming at the age of 13.

A bamboo plantation can be harvested in 3–5 years, compared to a 10–20 year cycle for most softwood trees. And because it’s a grass, bamboo can be harvested without killing the plant. Most of the biomass of bamboo is underground, so it will just send up shoots the following year—more and progressively bigger ones.

ECO-FACTS

• Bamboo leaves contain up to 15% protein, providing high-nutrition fodder for several species of animals (not just pandas!).

• Growing on otherwise unsuitable or degraded land, the dense and fibrous root system of bamboo retains moisture, prevents erosion, and helps to rebuild the soil.

• You’ve heard that plants “breathe” for the Earth? Well, bamboo breathes better than trees do. Bamboo absorbs more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than an equal area of trees, and produces about 30% more oxygen.

• The dense leaf litter of bamboo reduces evaporation and doubles the amount of soil-water retention.

• Many species of the plant are disappearing along with their habitat. It’s estimated that up to half of the world’s bamboo species are threatened, along with the many animal species that depend on it—the giant panda, the Himalayan black bear, and the mountain gorilla in central Africa being the most notable.

MORE FACTS

• Bamboo terminology: The joints between segments of a culm are called
nodes
.

• Other products that are (or were) made from bamboo: airplane wings, water filters, umbrellas, paper, kites, water pipes, rope, fishing rods, and wine (made from the fermented sap of young shoots).

• A bamboo grove is a cool, quiet place, traditionally valued as a site for meditation. (Buddha is said to have spent a lot of time in a bamboo grove.)

*        *        *

He who makes no mistakes, never makes anything. —
Anonymous

December 31st is Make Up Your Mind Day…or is it
May
31st?

OFFICE PERSONALITIES

If you work in an office, you’ll probably recognize most of these personality types. Just preparing to enter the workforce? Use this as a guide for whom—or what—to avoid. (Uncle John is a Pontificator.)

PSI
(Personal Space Invader): Has no concept of acceptable distance; usually hovers well inside the bad-breath zone.

The Hamburglar:
No food is safe in the office fridge.

Hipper Than Thou:
Talks in catchphrases; punctuates remarks with two-handed finger pistols. Addresses coworkers as “Dude” or “Chief.”

Stinker #1:
Never heard of deodorant.

Stinker #2:
Exceeds the Right Guard (or perfume) quotient.

Wrinkles:
Shirt is never pressed and is always hanging out the back. Usually has a lot of jingly change in pockets (is often also a Stinker).

Pontificator:
No answer is a simple “yes” or “no.”

Mr. Nice Guy:
Can anybody actually be this pleasant?

Possibly harboring a dark, dark secret.

Know-It-All:
Butts into other people’s conversations, adding un-asked-for viewpoints.

Klepto:
Likes to “borrow” stuff from your desk.

Homer:
Loves
The Simpsons
; lives
The Simpsons
. “D’oh!” Related to Star Trekker. (“Kirk to Enterprise!”)

Whiner:
Management is stupid, lunch is lousy, the boss is unreasonable, my work never gets recognized, life sucks.

Oscar Madison:
Somewhere under that pile of papers and burger wrappers is a desk. Somehow he knows where everything is.

Felix Unger:
Keeps a feather duster and a mini-vac in the office.

Pun-isher:
The office “comedian” has a bad pun for every occasion. Makes meetings last longer.

Gossip Queen:
Own life is so boring that she feels compelled to create office drama.

Mr. Needs-a–Tic Tac:
Need we say more?

Oversharer:
Gives way more info about personal ailments, romantic conquests, and family history than anyone could possibly want to know.

Comic book quiz: Who is Selina Kyle? A: Catwoman.

iPod Offender:
Thinks he’s being quiet, but has no clue how loud he really is, humming along and tapping to the beat. Responds by yelling.

Toucher:
Pats you on the back, places hand on your shoulder, brushes against you in the hallway. Creepy.

Fiancé(e):
Every sentence begins with “My fiancé(e)…”

Nervous Nellie:
If female, compulsively twists her hair into dreadlocks; if male, clicks pen and bites his fingernails.

Cliff Claven:
Master of useless (and incorrect) knowledge.

Chester:
Man who has difficulty looking female co-workers in the eye, focusing instead on the region south of the chin.

Loudspeaker:
Hasn’t mastered his “indoor voice.”

The Quitter:
Has been announcing intentions to “quit this damn job” since before you worked there, and will still be after you’re gone.

Cat Woman:
Not the superhero, but the gravel-voiced lady whose life is her cats, to which her cubicle is a shrine.

The Echo:
Repeats other people’s ideas and often takes all of the credit.

Gab Gab Gabber:
Shows up unannounced to your cubicle and tells you
all about
his recent trip Disneyland; usually has photos.

Frequent Forwarder:
Once they get your e-mail address, you’ll be bombarded by cute li’l Internet jokes (like a list of office personality types).

*        *        *

MIDNIGHT RUN

“Police stopped a 10-year-old boy who was pedaling his toy car alongside a road in central Germany in the middle of the night. The boy said he was on his way to his grandmother’s house in Berlin, police said on Thursday. He had been pedaling for about an hour but still had more than 400 km to go to reach Berlin. He had no coat on when spotted by a motorist in the middle of a snowstorm. Police warmed him up and took him home, where no one had noticed his midnight escape.”