Free Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader by Bathroom Readers’ Institute Page A

seriously injured)—the result of a brawl over which sport was the “manliest.”
WHO MOVED THE CHEESE?
    La Fromagerie Boivin, one of Quebec’s largest cheese manufacturers, dropped about a ton of cheese into the Saguenay River in 2004. They thought that aging the cheese underwater for twelve months would give it extra moisture and improve its taste and texture. Did it work? We may never know. In October 2005, the cheesemaker announced that despite the use of thousands of dollarsin high-tech locating equipment, divers were unable to find the 2,000 pounds of lost cheese.
    Glenn Close and Brooke Shields are second cousins.
TATTOO YOU
    Lane Jensen, an Alberta tattoo artist, has a tattoo of a large-breasted cowgirl on his left leg. In 2007 he decided his cowgirl didn’t look buxom enough. So his tattoo got “breast” implants—dime-sized bags of silicone inserted into his leg under the tattoo. Two weeks later, Jensen lost a liter of lymphatic fluid from his leg—his body had rejected the implants. “I guess my girl wasn’t meant to have 3-D breasts,” he said.
WHAT GOES AROUND…
    In 2007 a 15-year-old in Hamilton, Ontario, was sledding one night and decided he wanted to tag a local bridge with some graffiti. He left his gloves and cell phone in the sled and rappelled down the side of the bridge. Suddenly the rope shifted and the boy panicked. He tried to scurry back up but somehow ended up hanging by his feet, upside down. As he tried to wiggle free, his shirt came off. And it was February. And it was –5°F. He was there for two hours before someone finally heard his screams for help and saved him.
THE SMOKING GUN
    Keep It Simple, a bar in Edmonton, was in danger of being closed in 2003 when officials found out it was not abiding by the citywide smoking ban. The only place smoking is legal is in liquor-licensed bars. But Keep It Simple is a bar for recovering alcoholics—it doesn’t serve alcohol. It does allow smoking, which helps many alcoholics not to drink. But because it didn’t have a liquor license, it was illegal for people to smoke there. So in order to let its non-drinking customers smoke, Keep It Simple applied for and received a liquor license, which it doesn’t use, because it doesn’t sell liquor.

    “Everything is funny as long as it’s happening to someone else.”
    — Will Rogers
    Relative to body size, crows have the largest brains of any bird.

THE MYSTERIOUS EEL
    And we mean reely, reely, mysterious .
    W HAT ARE THEY?
Eels have been one of the aquatic world’s great mysteries for for more than 2,000 years. It wasn’t until relatively modern times that scientists discovered that they were a type of fish—specifically members of the class Actinopterygii , the “ray-finned” fishes, making them relatives of herring, anchovies, salmon, and goldfish. Like all fish, eels are cold-blooded, they obtain oxygen via gills, and they have fins. Beyond that they are completely unique.
    Eels make up their own fish order—the Anguilliformes (from “snake-shaped” in Latin). They all have long, tubular bodies, and instead of having separate fins on their backs, tails, and bellies like most other fish, they have one long, continuous fin that goes down the back, around the tail, and up the belly. Another unique characteristic: they’re “naked.” Almost all species of eel have no scales, and those that do have them embedded in their skin. What do they have instead of protective scales? Slime. Eels produce a thick, mucuslike substance that protects their naked skin, and, of course, makes them very slippery.
SEA EELS
    There are more than 600 different eel species and a tremendous variety of shapes, color, and sizes. Most, by far, are marine—they live exclusively in saltwater oceans and seas. Some standouts:
    • There are about 200 species of Moray eels living in tropical reefs in all the world’s oceans. Some are small, just several inches long; some are huge. Giant Morays, for example, can