Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (45 page)

—
Gov. Walter Hickel, Alaska

“You’ll get a chance to ask questions later and make your stupid statements; now let me make mine.”

—
Karl Rove, to hecklers

“What we have is two important values in conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for a healthy democracy. You can’t have both.”

—
Rep. Dick Gephardt

“PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air.”

—
Mitt Romney, who strapped his dog to the roof of his car

“54.”

—
Stephen Byers, British Minister for School Standards, after being asked by a BBC interviewer
,
“What’s 8 times 7?”

“We’re no longer a superpower, we’re a super-duper power.”

—
Rep. Tom DeLay

“Having plead guilty, I do not believe that I am any different than the vast majority of the members of Congress.”

—
Rep. Dan Rostenkowski

When it comes to the morbid and the strange, we’re the crematorium of the crop
!

H
ANDLE WITH CARE
In May 2007, Leslie Wright of Cambridge, England, died. He was 71 years old. His son, Chris, decided to give him a very special send-off: The elder Wright had owned his own delivery business for decades, and loved his work, so Chris dressed his father in his courier uniform, put him in specially made cardboard coffin marked “Fragile,” loaded it up in one of Dad’s trucks, and delivered it to a crematorium. “Dad had a fantastic sense of humor,” Chris said, “and he would have loved this.” And where was “the package” addressed to? “Cloud 9, Peace and Quiet Road, Heaven, Near Scotland.”

In 2005 Therese Mallik of New South Wales, Australia, testified against the planned expansion of a local crematorium, claiming that, among other things, she had once seen a “ghostlike figure” hovering above the building. When the local
Cessnock Independent
newspaper ran a story with the headline “Witness sees a ghost over Cremator,” Mallik sued the paper for making her appear “demented.” She lost the suit. (The ghost remains at large.)

Employees at a crematorium in Salt Lake City had to call the fire department when the building caught fire in October 2006. Fluids from a burning body had leaked out of the oven and ignited. “Those fluids can be very flammable,” fireman Scott Freitag said. “Sort of like a grease fire.”

In October 2007, Gina Partington of Manchester, England, called police and told them that her son, 39-year-old Tommy Dennison,
was missing. A few days later the police called with bad news: They had found the body of her son. She went down to the morgue and identified him, and had the remains cremated a day or two after that. Three days later the police called back…and told Partington that her son had been in police custody all along—they’d cremated the wrong man. “I know it sounds unbelievable,” the distraught woman said, “but this poor lad was the absolute replica of my son.” Police were later able to identify the cremation victim as a 37-year-old homeless man, and notified his family of the mixup. “These circumstances are clearly distressing,” a police spokesperson said, “and urgent inquiries are going on to establish how this happened.”

When retired pipe fitter Russell Parsons, 67, of Charleston, West Virginia, dies, the people around him will know exactly what to do with him: Parsons, an Army veteran, a cancer survivor, and a widower, has instructions tattooed on his arm. “It’s a recipe for cremation,” he said. The tattoo reads: “Barlow Bonsall” (the name of the local funeral home) “cook @ 1700-1800 degrees for 2 to 3 hours.”

April 5 is the day of the annual Tombsweeping Festival in China, when people clean the tombs and graves of their ancestors. It’s also the day that they burn fake money, which tradition says accumulates as wealth for their ancestors in the afterlife. Apparently the ritual has evolved over the generations. In 2007 Chinese newspapers noted that thousands of people now burn
different
things for the dead…like paper replicas of Viagra pills, to increase the dead’s chances for good sex in the afterlife. Pictures of condoms and “bar girls” have also become popular for burnt offerings, the reports said.

Mixed Messages:
In 2008 the Netherlands—which is famous for legalized marijuana smoking in Amsterdam cafes—banned cigarette smoking in all public places. Smoking marijuana remains legal.

Most of us prefer clean clothes to dirty ones (Uncle John not included). Here are some interesting tips sent to us by neat freak and BRI veteran writer John Dollison to help with problem stains. No guarantee they’ll work, but it’s fun to see how inventive homemakers can be
.

C
hewing Gum on Clothes:
Throw the article of clothing into a plastic bag, then put the bag into the freezer until the gum is frozen solid—it’s a lot easier to remove hardened chewing gum than a soft and sticky glob.

•
Very
Delicate Delicates:
Here’s how to clean lace undies or any other items that are too delicate even for the delicate cycle of your washing machine. Pour some warm water into a gallon jug or similar container and add a little bit of liquid laundry or dish soap. Stir to mix thoroughly, then add the articles of clothing; shake the container, then let soak for half an hour. Rinse the clothing with cool water, wring gently, and hang to dry.

• Ring Around the Collar:
If you’re out of the stuff that’s specially designed to remove collar stains, try rubbing some shampoo into the stain. That should work just as well.

• Speeding Up Hand-Wash Rinsing:
If you do a lot of hand washing in the sink (or in the jug mentioned above), you can speed up the time it takes to rinse out the soap by adding 1/4 cup of white wine vinegar to your rinse water. Just make sure you give your clothes a final rinse in clean water
without
the vinegar.

• Do-It-Yourself Spot Remover:
If you’re tired of paying big money for tiny containers of spot remover, mix one part rubbing alcohol with two parts water and you should find that it removes many kinds of spots just as effectively as the store-bought stuff.

• Dirty Canvas Shoes:
Using a clean shoe brush—the kind that’s used to apply shoe polish—rub some spray-on carpet cleaner into the canvas. Wipe off with a paper towel or a clean piece of cloth and your shoes should look almost like new.

• Freshen Up a Grubby Old Leather Belt:
Rinse a clean sponge in water and wring it out. Use the sponge to rub cold cream into
the belt to soften the leather and remove dirt, then wipe the excess cold cream away using a clean cloth.

• Ink Stains on a Leather Jacket:
If the stain is black ink on a black leather jacket, hang the jacket in a closet and go find something else that
really
needs cleaning. If it’s a red ink stain on a white jacket or a blue stain on a red one, or something equally noticeable, lay the jacket on a flat surface, pour some baking soda on the spot and let it sit until the ink is absorbed. (Try it on a small test spot first.) It may take several applications to get the stain up, but with a little effort you should be able to remove it.

• If the sleeve cuffs of an old sweater have gotten too stretched out, soak them in cold water and then dry them with an electric hair dryer set on high, being careful to keep the dryer at least three inches away from the cuffs to prevent burning.

• If you need to dry something quickly on a clothesline before you hang it up, lay the wet piece of clothing on a clean, dry towel, roll the clothing up in the towel, then squeeze the towel so that it soaks up some of the moisture. You should notice a significant improvement in the amount of time it takes the clothing to dry.

• What about the washing machine itself—does
it
ever need washing? Uncle John has his doubts, but Mrs. Uncle John swears by this: Every once in a while she pours half a gallon of white, distilled vinegar into the machine and runs it on the regular cycle without any clothing (the
washing machine
should be free of clothes, not Mrs. Uncle John!).

Parents of kids at Edgewood Middle School in Trenton, Ohio, complained after learning that a music teacher had the students sing “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “The Night Santa Went Crazy” in class. The song features Santa shooting up his workshop…and making sausages out of his reindeer. The teacher was reprimanded (even though the kids probably loved it).

Uncle John collects postcards. That makes him a
deltiologist
. Can you match the collectors on the left with what they collect? (Answers on page 540.)