Bathroom Readers' Institute's Blog, page 107

Down the Rabbit Hole: 5 Facts About ‘Alice in Wonderland’

The beloved children’s novel is celebrating its 150th birthday this year. Or is next year its “unbirthday”?

1. It was written by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. Dodgson conceived the premise during a leisurely boat trip in July 1862 that was attended by a colleague’s three daughters. He later wrote the tale down and gave it to one of them as a gift for Christmas in 1864. The girl’s name? Alice.

2. That version was titled Alice’s Adventures Under Ground. Before eventually sending his crazy tale to a publisher, he added an additional 12,000 words and considered titles like Alice’s Hour in Elf Land and Alice Among the Goblins before eventually settling on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Among the many chapters added on include the ones about the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Tea Party.

3. The initial press run was only 2,000 copies but the book quickly became a literary sensation in the U.K.; Queen Victoria and Oscar Wilde were among its earliest readers. Since then, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has never been out of print. More than 100 editions have been printed in English, and it’s been translated into 174 languages.

4. Fans and literary scholars alike have attempted to decode all of the hidden jokes and references that Dodgson squeezed in. Dodgson characterized himself as the Dodo, who, like him stuttered whenever he spoke. Bill the Lizard, meanwhile, was supposedly a reference to then British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli. Many speculate that the Mad Hatter was inspired by Theophilus Carter, a cantankerous furniture dealer from Oxford that loved to wear top hats. It also allegedly contains numerous barbs directed at mathematicians.

5. Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (or “AIWS” for short) was pinpointed by British psychiatrist John Todd in 1955. It sometimes impacts those suffering from migraine headaches and causes them to perceive nearby objects as smaller, bigger, or further away than they actually are.

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Some Sweet Surfing Slang

Now that you know all these surfer slang terms, the only thing stopping you from going surfing is the ability to surf.

Boneyard: where the waves break, or crash down to the point where they can be surfed.

Soup: the foamy white water after a wave breaks.

Ankle slop: waves too small to surf.

Cruncher: A large, hard-breaking wave that folds back over on itself and is almost impossible to surf.

Honker: a big, surfable wave.

Off the Richter: a particularly excellent wave

Eat it: to fall off, or wipeout.

Gremlin: a young, novice surfer.

Hodad: a non-surfer.

Probros: amateur surfer derogatory term for professional surfers.

Gandalf: an old, wise surfer.

Dawn patrol: early-morning surfers.

Goat boat: a jetski and its rider using up all the good surfing waves.

Meatball: a “no surfing flag.” Traditionally, these flags were yellow with a solid black circle in the middle.

Humpback: a double wave that can be surfed by two people at the same time.

Having a Neptune Cocktail: to accidentally ingest a large amount of seawater.

Reef rash: getting cuts and scratches from coastal reefs.

Beef jerky: reef rash.

Depth charge: when a surfer is too far away from shore and needs to make a #2…they go for a depth charge.

Delammed: short for “delaminated,” or when a fiberglass surfboard becomes so old and used that the foam core is poking through the top, making the board slippery and hard to stand on.

Wettie warmer: to pee in one’s wetsuit to make it a little warmer.

Noah. Short for an Australian rhyming slang term, Noah’s Ark, which means…shark.

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FIFA, the Movie

After years of relative obscurity, soccer is finally big in the United States, with the Women’s World Cup drawing huge ratings and many more paying attention to FIFA because of a corruption scandal. Here’s a look at one part of the soccer phenomenon that didn’t score a goal.

In 2013, FIFA, the international governing body of soccer, announced that it was making a big-budget film to celebrate and further popularize the sport. The plan was to have the movie ready for theaters in spring 2014, just before the start of the men’s World Cup tournament. But the movie that was made wasn’t really about “the beautiful game”—it was a puff piece about the founding and development of FIFA itself.

United Passions debuted to poor reviews and audience disinterest at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival and was released to a handful of theaters around Europe. It starred Academy Award nominees Tim Roth as FIFA president Sepp Blatter and Gerard Depardieu as FIFA co-founder Jules Rimet. The film, which FIFA wanted to title Men of Legend or The Dreammakers, had a budget of about $30 million, of which 90 percent came directly from FIFA, a non-profit organization that has since become the subject of an international probe and subsequent corruption scandal.

The movie was finally released in the U.S. in early June 2015 into just ten movie theaters around the country. It’s take on opening weekend: $918. The makes it the worst opening in box office history. (One theater that showed it, the FilmBar in Phoenix, tallied a gross of $9—a single ticket all weekend.)

Ironically, another FIFA movie is in production, but it’s probably not one FIFA is interested in. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are making a movie about the corruption scandal that led to the resignation of multiple FIFA executives, including president Sepp Blatter.

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4 B-Sides That Became Bigger Hits Than The A-Sides

Record labels used to release an artist’s big hit single on the A side of a record or cassette, with some filler on the other side. Here are some cases in which the “filler” was the song the public liked more.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, rap was a cultural movement. In 1991, the first rap song to hit #1 in the U.S. was, believe it or not “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. And yet the song was initially the B-side to Vanilla Ice’s rap version of Wild Cherry’s disco hit “Play That Funky Music.” That single hit #4 on the charts, but only because people were buying it to get “Ice Ice Baby.”

KISS is one of the most iconic bands of the ’70s, but they didn’t have a lot of hit singles. They did most of their business selling concert tickets, live albums, and merchandise. Oddly, one of the band’s few hit singles was not the raunchy rock n’ roll it was known for, but “Beth,” a ballad sung by the band’s drummer, Peter Criss. The rest of the makeup-ed monsters of KISS don’t even play on the song. At first the song was the B-side to the hard-rocking “Detroit Rock City.” But radio stations started to play “Beth” more, and the single hit #7.

Gloria Gaynor’s “Substitute” was a 1978 disco version of a little-known Righteous Brothers song. It didn’t thrill disc jockeys—not the ones in radio stations or the ones at discos. But DJs in both venues loved the B-side: an empowering song about moving on after a bad breakup called “I Will Survive.” “Substitute” was a minor hit on the R&B chart, but “I Will Survive” went to #1 on the pop chart and became one of the most famous and enduringly popular disco songs ever.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers were primarily a heavy metal-funk band in the 1990s, and didn’t think much of its mellow song “Soul to Squeeze.” It was used as the B-side of both “Under the Bridge” and “Give it Away,” and allowed it to be used on the soundtrack to the 1993 film Coneheads. Although the movie bombed, the song took off. It became a #1 hit at alternative rock radio, and a #22 pop hit. It’s the band’s most successful single ever.

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Christopher Lee, Nazi Hunter

The legendary horror and science-fiction actor recently passed away. But before he ever played Count Dracula or Count Dooku, Christopher Lee was one of England’s most daring soldiers.

As Adolf Hitler’s forces stormed across Europe in the lead-up to World War II, Lee volunteered to fight for the Finnish in 1939 and eventually enlisted in the Royal Air Force. He spent the war years learning Russian, German, and French, fought Mussolini’s forces in North Africa, was nearly killed twice, and even managed to subvert a mutiny. His many acts of bravery on the battlefield netted him several honors.

But Lee’s military career took a strange turn as the global conflict began winding down. Due to his prolific language skills, he was an obvious pick to serve in the Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects, an organization was tasked with hunting down fleeing Nazis who had committed unspeakable crimes. Due to the sensitive and secretive nature of the registry, not much is known about what Lee and his colleagues did during this period. He often refused to talk about it and, when pressed during interviews, he would routinely say to reporters: “Can you keep a secret? Well, so can I.”

Nevertheless, at least a few stories slipped out. Lee often hinted that the missions he participated in. On the set of one of The Lord of the Rings movies, director Peter Jackson attempted to tell Lee how to behave during a scene in which his character was struck by a dagger. After patiently listening to Jackson’s instructions, Lee coolly informed him, “Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody’s stabbed in the back? Because I do.”

In 1946, Lee returned to the U.K. and eventually decided to become an actor. His language skills and his unflappable persona aided him greatly in the decades that followed. “When the Second World War finished I was 23 and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime,” he once said. “I’d seen dreadful, dreadful things…so seeing horror depicted on film doesn’t affect me much.”

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Lava Lampology

It oozes, it undulates, it never stops…and it never goes away. Most people thought Lava Lamps had died and joined Nehru jackets in pop culture heaven. But no—they’re still around. Here’s a quick course on the history and science of lava lamps.

Egg-straordinary History

Shortly after leaving the Royal Air Force at the end Light Duty Craven-Walker saw a timer into a lamp and sell it to the public. He tracked down its inventor, a man known today only by his last name, Dunnet, only to find he had died—without patenting his invention. So Craven-Walker was able to patent it himself.

Craven-Walker spent the next 15 years perfecting the lamp so it could be mass-produced. In the meantime, he supported himself by making “art-house” films about his other passion: nudity. (In those days, pornography was illegal in many places, and the only way around the law was by making “documentaries” about nudism. Whether he was a genuine nudist or just a pornographer in disguise is open to interpretation.)

Coming to America

In 1964 Craven-Walker finished work on his lamp—a cylindrical vase he called the Astrolight—and introduced it at a novelty convention in Hamburg, West Germany, in 1965.

Two Americans, Adolph Wertheimer and Hy Spector, saw it and bought the American rights. They renamed it the Lava Lite and introduced it in the U.S., just in time for the psychedelic ’60s.

“Lava Lite sales peaked in the late sixties,” Jane and Michael Stern write in The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, “when the slow-swirling colored wax happened to coincide perfectly with the undulating aesthetics of psychedelia….They were advertised as head trips that offered ‘a motion for every emotion.’ ”

Floating Up…and Down…and Up…

At their peak, more than seven million Lava Lites (the English version was called a Lava Lamp) were sold around the world each year, but by the of World War II, an Englishman named Edward Craven- Walker walked into a pub in Hampshire, England, and noticed an odd item sitting on the counter behind the bar. It was a glass cocktail shaker that contained some kind of mucous-like blob floating in liquid. The bartender told him it was an egg-timer.

Actually, the “blob” was a clump of solid wax in a clear liquid. You put the cocktail shaker in the boiling water with your egg, the bartender explained, and as the boiling water cooked the egg, it also melted the wax, turning it into an amorphous blob of goo. When the wax floated to the top of the jar, your egg was done.

In early 1970s, the fad had run its course and sales fell dramatically. By 1976 sales were down to 200 lamps a week, a fraction of what they had been a few years before. By the late 1980s, however, sales began to rebound. “As style makers began to ransack the sixties for inspiration, Lava Lites came back,” Jane and Michael Stern write. “Formerly dollar-apiece fleamarket pickings, original Lava Lites—particularly those with paisley, pop art, or homemade trippy motifs on their bases—became real collectibles in the late eighties, selling in chic boutiques for more than a brand new one.” Not that brand-new ones were hurting for business—by 1998 manufacturers in England and the U.S. were selling more than 2 million a year.

Lava Light Science

Only the companies that make lava lights know precisely what chemicals are in the lamp, and in what combination—the recipe is a trade secret. But the principles at work are pretty easy to understand:

Grooovy, Baby!

When the lamp is turned off and at room temperature, the waxy “lava” substance is slightly heavier than the liquid it’s in. That’s why the wax is slumped in a heap at the bottom.


When you switch on the bulb and it begins to heat the fluid, the wax melts and expands to the point where it is slightly lighter than the fluid. That’s what causes the “lava” to rise.


As the wax rises, it moves farther away from the bulb, and cools just enough to make it heavier than the fluid again. This causes the lava to fall back toward the bulb, where it starts to heat up again, and the process repeats itself.


The lava also contains chemicals called “surfactants” that make it easier for the wax to break into blobs and squish back together.”


It is this precise chemical balancing act that makes manufacturing the lamps such a challenge. “Every batch has to be individually matched and tested,” says company chemist John Mundy. “Then we have to balance it so the wax won’t stick. Otherwise, it just runs up the side or disperses into tiny bubbles.”

For more weird facts from the weird world around you, check out Uncle John’s Weird, Weird World.

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6 Quick Facts About the Running of the Bulls

It’s one of the world’s craziest, and most dangerous, annual spectacles. Here are a few quick facts about this strange Spanish event.

Several world cities host bull runs, but the most famous takes place every summer in Pamplona, Spain, as part of the city’s San Fermín Festival. The eight-day event, which honors the patron saint of the surrounding region, begins at the stroke of midnight on July 6th. Locals love the parades, fireworks, and El Struendo (“The Roar”), in which everyone screams at the top of their lungs while playing a musical instrument.

However, the encierro —“The Running of the Bulls” is what draws international visitors to the city. According to one source, the annual run was inspired by young daredevils who used to jump in front of bulls as they were being corralled through the streets of Pamplona and into the city’s bullring. Others say that the tradition dates back to the 14th century and involved pedestrians in northeast Spain running away from bulls while they were being led toward a market.

The first run is held at 8 a.m. on the morning of July 7, with additional runs taking places every morning of the festival thereafter. Among the minimal rules: Runners must be over the age of 18, can’t antagonize the bulls, can’t run toward the bulls, and can’t be drunk. (Many opt to wear the traditional outfit of white pants, white shirt, red belt, and neckerchief.

The 903-yard course features six bulls and stretches from a corral to a bullring through Pamplona’s oldest district. Wooden barriers are set up along the route to protect spectators and contain gaps just wide enough for participants to escape through if a bull gets too close. Organizers fire off rockets to let everyone know when the bulls have been released. A final rocket announces the arrival of the bulls in the ring.

How long does the average encierro last? A mere four minutes. A lot can happen in that amount of time though. On average, between 200 and 300 people are injured during the fest’s bull-related events. Most are caused by trips and falls. Goring doesn’t happen often, but the bulls have managed to kill 15 people since officials began keeping records in 1910—13 of those deaths came in 1977 while a man was crushed to death by the bulls.

To keep up with all of the inevitable injuries, 200 volunteers and medical professionals are on site to treat participants. They’re stationed at 16 posts along the route, one every 50 yards.

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7 Fun Facts About the Tour de France

Here are some fun facts about one of Europe’s most beloved annual sporting events.

The first Tour de France in 1903 was organized by French sports magazine L’Auto as a publicity stunt to elevate itself over rival magazine Le Vélo. The original race was set to take place from May 31 to July 5, but when only 15 cyclists showed up for a race of such grueling length, organizers cut it down to 19 days.


The winner of the first race: Maurice Garin of Italy. In addition to being the first person to cross a Tour de France finish line, he was also involved in its first major scandal. After winning the race’s second edition in 1904, he was stripped of his title for cheating, along with eight other participants: He’d allegedly attacked another cyclist outside of Saint-Étienne.


In addition to Garin’s violent outburst, other cyclists were accused of using cars to pull their bikes up hills and breaking other rules, such as accepting food from well-wishers. After cyclist Antoine Fauré passed through his hometown, 200 of his fans ran out into the street to block his opponents.


All the mayhem briefly led organizers to end the annual event after two iterations…but it returned in 1905. It’s been held every year, except during World War I and World War II.


Only males can participate in the race but there was a version for women held each year between 1984 and 1989. Another event for female cyclists, dubbed “La Course by Le Tour de France,” was held in 2014.


The route changes every year and by 2013, the Tour de France had rolled through every region in Metropolitan France except Corsica. That year, organizers staged the first three courses of the race on the island in honor of the event’s 100th edition.


Like many other sporting events, the Tour de France has been rocked by plenty of controversies over the years, most notably the Lance Armstrong doping scandal. This year’s race may be interrupted by an intense labor dispute between Dutch police officers and government officials. The race’s “Grand Depart” (set to take place this year in the Netherlands) could be brought to a screeching halt by frustrated cops that are planning to set up a roadblock on Rotterdam’s iconic Erasmus Bridge.

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4 Male Fashion Fads

Clothes make the man. This stuff made men look like buffoons.

Parachute pants

These oversized pants were popular for a while in the ‘80s. They had lots of zippers and were made out of a type of synthetic nylon that’s similar to the material typically found in parachutes (hence the name). Breakdancers loved them because they made spinning around on the ground a lot easier. They popularized them, but became a trend when Bugle Boy started cranking them out in the mid-‘80s started cranking them out like crazy in the mid ‘80s. The company even attempted to market a line for women but it totally flopped. The high-flying fad finally fell to earth by 1990.

Harem pants

These trousers are even more baggy than parachute pants. Originally marketed to women in the 1910s, they enjoyed limited popularity in Europe before being resurrected by rapper MC Hammer nearly 80 years later. Despite his best efforts, Hammer couldn’t quite turn the pants into a huge fashion phenomenon but plenty of people bought pairs in the early ‘90s. They may even be making a comeback—entertainers like Justin Bieber and Psy have recently worn them on stage.

One-strap overalls

For a while, it was popular for people, especially young men, to wear overalls with one strap hanging loose. Others preferred to leave both straps unchained, thus allowing both the front flap and back straps to hang down past their legs (which makes the overalls just a pair of pants). It’s difficult to pinpoint who came up with the idea but hip hop stars like Jodeci, Bell Biv DeVoe, the Fresh Prince couldn’t quite seem to button them properly during the Bush’s administration.

Shutter shades

These “sunglasses” have been around since the ‘50s but their heyday was the ‘80s when bands like Simple Minds and Animotion wore them in music videos. After that, they were pretty much everywhere. Even “Macho Man” Randy Savage owned a few pairs and he often wore them while he was stomping his way through the WWF. Shutter shades soared back into pop culture in the 2000s when rapper and fashion plate Kanye West made them part of his signature look. In the years that followed, famous people ranging from Hugh Hefner to President Barack Obama were photographed in shutter shades.

Some more short-lived male fashions: trucker hats, man purses, sideways visors, carpenter jeans, wallet chains, and “utilikilts.”

 

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Olestra: A Leaky History

In the 1990s, the dream of a fat-free potato chip became a reality…along with some very gross side effects.

In the late 1960s, Proctor & Gamble scientists were charged with creating a nutrition supplement to help premature babies gain weight quickly. They played around with sucrose molecules, manipulating them into different configurations in hopes that they would be more efficiently absorbed by the digestive tract. As is often the case, the science went horribly awry, and instead of creating something that would improve the lives of tiny, vulnerable babies struggling to survive, P&G accidentally invented Olestra, a substance that would allow people to eat as many potato chips as they wanted without feeling guilty.

Formally known as “sucrose polyester,” Olestra is a synthetic fat substitute which is made by altering the chemical components of sugar and oil. When used as a food additive, it replicates both the delicious taste and satisfying mouthfeel of fat. However, the molecules are too large to be properly absorbed by the intestinal tract. The hoped-for result: food that tastes rich and fatty, but isn’t absorbed by the human body and turned into body fat. A win-win, right?

Not exactly. The only problem, which turned out to be a significant one, was that if the fat you eat doesn’t get absorbed into your intestines, it has nowhere to go but out of your intestines. In less delicate terms, foods made with Olestra can cause people to experience what the Food & Drug Administration describes as “abdominal cramping and loose stools.” No one should have been surprised by this side effect; early safety testing with lab rats resulted in “anal leakage” and vitamin malabsorption. Because of this, P&G was engaged in a legal brouhaha with the FDA that stretched on for decades before Olestra was allowed on the market.

Ultimately, it was decided that Olestra could be used as a commercial fat substitute, with one caveat: Foods made with it had to carry a warning label so that customers would know not to stray too far from their bathrooms. In 1998, after 30 years of hard science and legal battles, Olestra made its debut in the form of Frito Lay’s “Wow!” brand of snack chips. Sales were initially impressive (“Wow! A savory snack that won’t make me gain weight!”), but then declined precipitously (“Wow! These fake chips are causing me to poop myself blind!”).

Studies later indicated that Olestra’s pants-ruining side effects were not as widespread as initially thought; i.e. not everyone who consumes the product suffers from uncontrollable diarrhea. That was good enough for the FDA, which no longer requires products made with Olestra to contain a warning label. Yet Olestra’s bad reputation proved hard to shake, and to this day most people would rather gain a little weight than take their chances with it. Happily, science found another use for sucrose polyester, which has been repurposed as a machine lubricant and an additive in deck stains.

Read about more weird inventions in Uncle John’s Weird Inventions .

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