Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader (83 page)

Ironically, though they had invented the first modern role-playing game, by the mid-1980s both Gygax’s and Arneson’s own roles had ended. They were no longer involved with TSR and did not participate in the further development of their game.

Arneson, who never did join TSR, was the first to go. He ended his creative contributions to the game in 1976 and three years later filed the first of five lawsuits against Gygax and TSR, alleging that he’d been shortchanged on both creative credit and royalties. The suits were eventually settled out of court, but his relationship with Gygax never fully healed. (Today Arneson is a partner in a gaming company called Zeitgeist Games, which publishes a series of his games that are playable using Dungeons & Dragons rules. He taught game design for several years at Florida’s Full Sail University before retiring in 2008.)

When Gygax’s business partner and childhood friend Don Kaye died suddenly in 1975, Gygax had to bring in outside investors to raise the money he needed to buy out Kaye’s widow. In the process, his stake in the company dropped to 35%; then in
1979 the other investors seized effective control of the company, relegating Gygax to a figurehead position where he had very little say over the running of the company. By 1985, the year that revenues peaked at $29 million, the company had become so bloated and mismanaged that it was actually
losing
about $3 million a year. That year, after Gygax lost a second power struggle, he sold his shares in TSR and severed all ties with the company.

By 1997 TSR was more than $30 million in debt and close to collapse. That year the company was acquired by Wizards of the Coast, makers of the best-selling card game Magic: The Gathering. (Today Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro.)

After ending his involvement with Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax dabbled in fantasy fiction writing and other projects. He even developed another role-playing game, called Lejendary Adventure, which went on sale in 1999. Although the game developed a loyal following, it never approached the popularity of Dungeons & Dragons. After years of declining health, Gygax died in 2008 at the age of 69.

More than 30 years after it was introduced, Dungeons & Dragons remains the best-selling pen-and-paper, or “tabletop,” role playing game of all time. An estimated six million people were still playing the game in 2007, and that number was expected to grow following the release of the fourth edition of the game in the summer of 2008.

Drawing inspiration from the online role-playing games that it inspired, the fourth edition includes an online 3D “tabletop,” complete with Internet voice chat and even a social networking site similar to MySpace. These features are intended to make it easier for gamers who’ve spread far and wide over the past 30 years to gather together and play the game with the same old friends, even if only in cyberspace.

You might think that Gygax was inspired by
The Lord of the Rings
, J. R. R. Tolkien’s enormously poplular fantasy novels. While the books no doubt helped the success of Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax hated them. “I’d like to throttle that Frodo,” he once said.

Proving that even life’s most hallowed place can be dangerous
.

H
OME INVASION.
In February 2008 in Frankenmuth, Michigan, the toilets in 20 homes—all on the same block—started spitting up water…and sometimes more than water. The splash-backs were caused by the city public works department, which was cleaning out the main sewer line. Usually, a little gurgling is expected when a high-pressure hose is used to flush out the pipes, but for some unknown reason, the toilets in the affected homes erupted like volcanos—in a few cases making a mess all over the walls and ceiling. The city apologized and promised that in the future, instead of announcing the pipe-flushing in the newspaper, they’ll put flyers on people’s doors warning them to keep their toilet lids securely closed for the next few days.

DETHRONED.
A Christchurch, New Zealand, man (he refused to give his name because he was trying to sell his house) was knocked off of his toilet when his house was hit by a runaway SUV. The vehicle had been parked next door by a construction worker who’d applied the emergency brake only halfway. The brake slipped and the truck rolled backward down a hill and bonked into the man’s house (it caused only minor damage). When asked by reporters how he thought the construction worker felt, the homeowner said, “What about me? I got knocked off the toilet! I got a hell of a fright!”

WATCH FOR FALLING PORTA-POTTIES.
Morning commuters on a highway near Denver, Colorado, got the scare of a lifetime when a portable toilet tumbled off of a flatbed truck in 2007. The first car swerved around the toilet but hit a pickup truck, which then flipped over a few times onto the grass next to the highway. Then a tractor trailer roared through and ran over the toilet. More cars approached the melee and slammed on their brakes, creating even more confusion. In all, eight vehicles were involved in the accident and traffic was backed up for hours. No serious injuries were reported, but the Porta-Potti was a total loss.

Everyone’s got a question they’d like answered, like, “Why is the sky blue?” Here are a few of those questions, with answers provided by the nation’s leading trivia experts
.

T
RY TO CONTAIN YOUR EXCITEMENT
Q
:
Why is milk sold in rectangular containers, while sodas are sold in round ones
?
A:
“Rectangular containers use shelf space more economically than cylindrical ones. So why do soft drink producers stick with round? One reason is that because soft drinks are often consumed directly from the container, the extra cost is justified because they fit more comfortably in the hand.” But there’s more: “The shelf space that recatangular milk containers save is more valuable than it is for soda containers. Most soft drinks in supermarkets are stored on open shelves, which are cheap and have no operating costs. Milk is stored in refrigerated cabinets, which are both expensive to purchase and costly to operate. Shelf space thus comes at a premium, and hence the added benefit of packaging milk in rectangular containers.” (From
The Economic Naturalist
, by Robert H. Frank)

Q:
Why is the snooze on most alarm clocks set to go off after nine minutes instead of 10
?

A:
“By setting the snooze time to nine minutes, the alarm clock only needs to watch the last digit of the time. So, if you hit the snooze at 6:45, the alarm goes off again when the last digit equals 4. They couldn’t make it 10 minutes, otherwise the alarm would go off right away, or it would take more circuitry. Historically speaking, there’s another element to the answer. Clock experts say when snooze alarms were invented, the gears in alarm clocks were standardized. The snooze gear was introduced into the existing mix and its teeth had to mesh with the other gears’ teeth. The engineers had to choose between a gear that made the snooze period either 9+ minutes or 10+ minutes. They figured that ‘less than 10 minutes’ seemed more punctual and marketable than
sending people back to dreamland for ‘more than 10 minutes.’ The public became accustomed to this, and clock makers have generally stuck with it.” (From
Jewish World Review
, by Jeff Elder)

Q:
Do we eat insects without knowing it
?

A:
“We certainly do. It is impossible to totally exclude insects while a food is grown, harvested, and shipped, so most of the foods we eat do contain small quantities of insects or insect fragments. It might be possible to produce, say, a bottle of ketchup that contains not even one insect fragment, but it would take a huge effort that could raise the price to hundreds of dollars. Recognizing this problem, the FDA sets a maximum legal limit on how many insect parts can be contained in a food that is to be sold. For example, peanut butter is allowed to contain up to 30 insect fragments per 100 grams.” (From
The Handy Bug Answer Book
, by Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer)

Q:
Why can’t we remember anything that happened to us when we were babies or toddlers
?

A:
“Our memories of past experiences are organized in our brain as narratives. Kids younger than about three don’t yet know narrative conventions. They can’t tell a story. They don’t know how to set the scene. They don’t understand time, place, character, or plot. In other words, our memories start at the age when we realize that what we’re all trying to do in life is find the moral of the story.” (From
Why Things Are & Why Things Aren’t
, by Joel Achenbach)

Factory worker Robert Preston was fired from Phelps Dodge Copper Products in Connecticut and not given a reason, so he sued the company and won nearly $800,000 in damages. But a few weeks later, the judge made Preston pay back the money after the real reason for his termination was discovered. He’d contracted poison ivy and then used a toilet seat at work, which spread the rash to several other employees…including the factory manager.

Everybody loves a good mystery. Like the time Uncle John went to the movies and left Porter the Wonder Dog home alone. When he returned
, someone
had eaten three bags of dog food off the kitchen counter. Who did it? (It’s a mystery!)

W
ASHED ASHORE
On April 7, 2005, police in Sheerness, a coastal town in southeast England, noticed a man wandering the streets. Confused and disoriented, he was wearing a suit and tie and was soaking wet from head to toe. It hadn’t been raining, so the police assumed he’d been in the ocean and may have come in from a boat. But he had no ID and no travel papers. Even the tags had been cut out of his clothes. Further complicating matters, the man couldn’t—or wouldn’t—speak.

The police took him to nearby Medway Maritime Hospital. Doctors, nurses, and social workers spent hours gently trying to persuade the man to talk. He remained completely silent, entirely unresponsive. One doctor was curious if he might have some kind of neurological or other medical condition that prevented him from speaking. So he gave the man a pen and some paper, hoping he’d write down anything—his name or any information that could be used to identify him and notify his family.

The silent man suddenly sprang to life. He grabbed the pen and paper, but he didn’t write anything. Instead, he drew an elaborate, detailed sketch of a grand piano. Doctors took him to the hospital chapel, which had a piano. The man sat down and played for more than four hours, nonstop. He played all kinds of music, mostly pieces by Tchaikovsky, as well as other classical music and even a few Beatles songs. And he played them very well. In fact, he played better than that—he played exquisitely, at the level of a virtuoso concert pianist.

So who
was
he?

The man, whom medical officials called “Mr. X,” was admitted to the high-security mental health wing of the West Kent NHS and Social Care Trust. In addition to traditional forms of therapy, doctors
tried music therapy and art therapy to get the man to communicate, but to little avail, as therapy requires some kind of interaction. Mr. X barely even ate or drank. Aside from his frequent trips to the piano, the man lived completely inside his own head, with a couple of exceptions. He once drew the Swedish flag in an art therapy session. Another time, he pointed to Oslo, Norway, on a map. A Norwegian interpreter was called in, but could elicit no response from Mr. X.

In an attempt to find his relatives, Mr. X’s picture was posted on England’s National Missing Persons Helpline Web site. The mysterious circumstances of the case quickly made it front-page news all across Europe. (The media quickly gave Mr. X a new nickname: “the Piano Man.”) By mid-May, the Helpline had received more than 500 phone calls and 100 e-mails, which generated 300 “legitimate” leads as to the Piano Man’s true identity.