Free Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader® by Michael Brunsfeld Page A

connect the yolk to the shell.
    3. What’s the difference between Grade A and Grade AA eggs?
    a) Grade AA eggs contain twice as much vitamin A, because the hens get a diet of fortified chicken feed.
    b) Grade AA eggs have plumper yolks and thicker whites.
    c) Grade AA hens, also known as “yearlings” or “freshmen” hens, are younger and healthier than the hens that lay Grade A eggs.
    4. What’s the best way to store an egg in the refrigerator?
    a) With the tapered end pointing up.
    b) With the tapered end pointing down.
    c) Neither—eggs keep best when they’re lying on their side.
    5. Without breaking it open, how can you tell if an egg is cooked?
    a) Spin it on a flat surface—raw eggs wobble; cooked ones don’t.
    b) Hold it up to a bright light—eggshells that have been cooked for seven minutes or longer are slightly transparent.
    c) Carefully examine the shell—it’s physically impossible to boil an egg without cracking the shell in at least one place.
    Answers on page 507 .
    Monkey see, monkey do: Americans eat 12 billion bananas a year.

CHI MARKS THE SPOT
    Ever heard of a chiasmus? Here’s a clue: Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you.
G RAMMAR LESSON
    Chiasmus is one of those parts of speech you didn’t know even had a name. What is it? It’s a figure of speech in which the order of the words in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second, which gives it extra power or wit. Here are some examples:
    “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
    —John F. Kennedy
    “It’s not the men in my life; it’s the life in my men.”
    —Mae West
    Get the idea? Chiasmus (pronounced kye-AZ-muss) is named after the Greek letter chi (x), and indicates a crisscross arrangement of phrases. Here are some more examples:
    “Pleasure’s a sin, and sometimes sin’s a pleasure.”
    —Lord Byron
    “The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.”
    —Peter De Vries
CHIAMUS CLASSICS
    Certain chiasmuses, such as “All for one and one for all,” and the shortened Cicero quote “Eat to live, not live to eat” are also word palindromes—where the words, when repeated in reverse order, read identically.
    Chiasmuses appear to reveal hidden truths and are popular in Biblical writing:
    “Whoever sheds the blood of man; by man shall his blood be shed.”
    —Genesis 9:6
    “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”
    —1 John 4:18
    “Many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.”
    —Matthew 19:30
    Red blood cells live for 4 months. In that time they make 75,000 trips to the lungs and back.
    The two lines can express contradictory sentiments, as in the French proverb “Love makes time pass; time makes love pass”—the first line is romantic, the second line strips away this romance. Ernest Hemingway was fond of asking people which of these two statements they preferred: “Man can be destroyed but not defeated,” or “Man can be defeated but not destroyed.”
MODERN WORDPLAY
    A chiasmus can also be implied. Oscar Wilde was a master at this type of ironic wordplay. Some of his classics: “Work is the curse of the drinking class” and “The English have a miraculous power of turning wine into water.”
    Other implied chiasmus quips include Mae West’s lines “A hard man is good to find” and “A waist is a terrible thing to mind,” Groucho Marx’s “Time wounds all heels,” and Kermit the frog’s observation that “Time’s fun when you’re having flies.” A hangover has been described as “the wrath of grapes,” and a critic who provided a harsh opening night review was said to have “stoned the first cast.”
    Had enough? The elements need not even be whole words; parts of words will suffice. There’s Randy Hanzlick’s song lyric, “I’d rather have a bottle in
front
of me than have a frontal lobotomy,” and the Edwardian toast