Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (23 page)

We decked out Uncle John with all of these new, innovative fashion accessories, and—well, he got a lot of funny looks. (Try it on your favorite friend or relative.)

E
YE-CATCHING JEWELRY
You may have thought that there was jewelry for every possible body part: fingers, wrists, neck, toes, ankles, ears, lips, bellybutton—but now you can wear jewelry on your eyeballs, too. Dutch designer Eric Klarenbeek has come out with a line of contact lenses that have thin metal wires attached to the center of the lenses. The wires hang down and can be adorned with the jewels of your choice. So you can walk around with a short string of diamonds hanging from each eyeball (or, if you’re really chic, just one). “People who have worn my eye jewelry are amazed at its comfort,” Klarenbeek says. “You can’t feel the wire dangling, it doesn’t affect your sight, and the lens moves along gently with your eyeball.” Asked what would happen if someone were to tug on the wire connected to a contact lens, Klarenbeek said he was quite sure that it would not cause your eyeball to fall out. They cost about $300 per lens.

LEFT-HANDED UNDERPANTS

When it comes to men’s underwear, left-handers have always been at a disadvantage. The vertical opening at the front of most briefs and boxers, which allows men to do their business without dropping their drawers, is made with right-handed people in mind. Watch a lefty try to take a simple tinkle while wearing right-handed underpants and you’ll think he’s been drinking, or perhaps he’s missing several fingers. British underwear company Hom has come out with a new design—drawers with a horizontal rather than vertical opening, making it just as easy for a lefty to open as a righty. “In our view,” said one retailer, “this is a vital step toward equality for left-handed men.”

NICE CUP IN BRA

Ladies, if you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “I wish I had a bra that could be easily converted into a 1.5-meter putting green,” wish no more. British lingerie maker Triumph has introduced the Nice Cup in Bra (it was made for the Japanese market). When it’s worn, it’s a functional, green, corsetlike bra. But when you get the urge to putt a few golf balls, just take the bra off, unroll it—and it becomes a putting green. The bra’s cups become holes at the end of the green. It even has pockets for extra balls and tees, and if you sink a putt, a recorded voice says, “Nice shot!” But there’s more—the Nice Cup in Bra also comes with a miniskirt printed with the words “Be quiet” that can be converted into a flag to hush the crowd while you’re concentrating.

The U.S. military has designed an “indestructible” sandwich. It can stay fresh for up to three years
.

WINKING PANTS

Do you want to be able to wink at people behind you while you’re walking down the street…without turning around? Well, thankfully, some enterprising clothes designers in Everett, Washington, have invented “Winkers,” pants that have eyes painted on the butt, just under the crease, so that as you walk, the eyes seem to open and close. So you “wink” as you walk. Winkers cost between $140 and $160.

THE VENDING MACHINE SKIRT

Let’s say you’re walking down the sidewalk dressed in an ordinary skirt and—
Here come the bad guys! And they’re chasing you! Run! Hide!
Too bad you weren’t wearing this special piece of clothing: the Vending Machine Skirt, by Tokyo designer Aya Tsukioka. It looks like a normal skirt, but when you need to become invisible, it quickly unfolds into a large, rectangular piece of cloth that looks like a soda vending machine. Just hold it in front of you and hide behind it, the idea goes, and you’ll blend into the scenery. “Vending machines are on every corner of Japanese streets, and we take it for granted,” says Tsukiokais. “That’s how I came up with the idea for this dress.”

“Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.”

—Quentin Crisp

Per capita, it is safer to live in New York City than it is to live in Pine Bluff, Arkansas
.

PLANTS GONE CRAZY

The more we find out about plants, the more we fear them
.

P
LANTIMAL
The New Scientist
reported in 2008 that biologist Mary Rumpho of the University of Maine discovered a species of sea slug that is an animal…and a plant. The primary thing that distinguishes plants from animals is that plants use
photosynthesis—
they convert sunlight into energy needed for survival, while animals have to eat plants or other animals to get energy. But
Elysia chlorotica
, an inch-long, leaf-shaped, gelatinous mollusk that lives in shallow ocean waters along the Atlantic coast, is an animal that does
both
. It eats algae—a plant—and then incorporates genes from the algae into its own DNA. Then it utilizes those genes to create chlorophyll, the pigment that plants use to perform photosynthesis. A baby sea slug, Rumpho found, eats algae for just the first two weeks of its life, and lives off sunlight for the remainder of its lifespan, making it the first multicellular animal-plant hybrid known to science.

RAT-IVORE

Researchers on the Philippine island of Palawan reported in August 2009 that they’d discovered a new—and gruesome—species of carnivorous plant. It’s a type of “pitcher plant,” a group of plants that grow deep, pitcher-shaped traps filled with sticky liquid. Insects are lured to the pitchers by sight or smell, fall into them, and become trapped in the liquid. Acidlike enzymes then slowly dissolve the captured bugs, and the plant absorbs nutrients from them. The plant on Palawan works the same, but its cone-shaped pitchers are huge—more than a foot deep and seven inches diameter at the opening, and they can trap and eat not only insects but even small mammals such as rats. “It is remarkable,” lead researcher Stewart McPherson said, “that it remained undiscovered until the 21st century.” The researchers named the rat-eating plant
Nepenthes attenboroughii
—a tribute to 83-year-old wildlife broadcaster Sir David Attenborough, who commented, “I’m absolutely flattered.”

As much as 70% of the microwaves emitted from mobile phones are absorbed by your head
.

FABRICATED MEMOIRS

Coming next fall:
The memoirs of Uncle John,
in which he describes his colorful past—training elephants in Antarctica, flying biplanes for the Secret Service, and negotiating a peace treaty between the Klingons and Crutons on Uranus. Who cares if it’s not all true? It should make for great bathroom reading!

M
AKING IT UP AS YOU GO
Most successful memoirs are written by people who are already famous—that’s why their books sell well—and while the stories might sometimes stretch the truth a bit, you can be reasonably certain that they’re mostly accurate. But in recent years, a new type of book has infiltrated the publishing industry: totally made-up memoirs written by authors known to almost no one, who become famous only because their books become famous. Probably the best-known example is
A Million Little Pieces
, by James Frey. For years he tried to sell a story of drug abuse, crime, and redemption as a novel, but no publisher was interested in it. In 2003 he finally got publishing powerhouse Doubleday to release it—as a memoir—and it became a national sensation, selling millions of copies. Frey’s rise and subsequent fall on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
is fairly well known, but there have been several other fake memoirs with far more fantastic claims than Frey’s. Here are a few of the most outrageous “memoirists.”

MEMOIR:
Honor Lost: Love and Death in Modern-Day Jordan
, by Norma Khouri (2003)

WHAT SHE WROTE:
Khouri and her best friend Dalia owned a hair salon in Amman, Jordan, in the 1990s. After Dalia fell in love with a Christian soldier, she was stabbed to death by her Muslim father in an “honor killing.” Khouri was forced to flee the country, first to Greece, then to Australia, and wrote her memoir in Internet cafés whenever she could. When
Honor Lost
became a bestseller in Australia, Khouri was subjected to threats against her life and had to go into hiding. The book quickly became an international success, and Khouri became a symbol of independence and courage for oppressed women throughout the Arab world.

At the same time? 17% of drivers pick their noses in the car, and 17% flirt with other drivers
.

THE TRUTH:
In July 2004, the
Sydney Morning Herald
exposed Khouri as a fake. She
was
born in Jordan—but her family moved away when she was three years old. She was raised in Chicago, where she lived for nearly 30 years. During the 1990s, Khouri and her American husband, John Toliopoulos, were reportedly involved in several shady real estate deals in Chicago, and in 1999, after being questioned by the FBI, they moved to Australia. She never owned a hair salon in Jordan, and there was no proof that “Dalia” ever existed. Khouri initially stood by the book, then in August 2004 admitted that most of it was made up. She defended it anyway, saying it was for a good cause.
Honor Lost
had sold half a million copies in 15 countries by the time the hoax was revealed.

MEMOIR:
The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams
, by Nasdijj (2000)

WHAT HE WROTE:
Nasdijj (pronounced NAS-de-gee) was born on a Navajo reservation to an alcoholic Indian mother who died young, and a white father who abused him. He eventually got married, had a daughter, then adopted a young boy who suffered from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. At the age of six, the boy died in Nasdijj’s arms. A section of the story was published in
Esquire
magazine in 1999, and the piece was nominated for a National Magazine Award. The full-length memoir followed, to wide critical acclaim, making the
New York Times
Notable Book list and winning the
Salon.com
Book Award. Nasdijj went on to write two more memoirs—both of them also critical successes.
THE TRUTH:
In 2006 the alternative news magazine
LA Weekly
published a story, titled “Navahoax,” that provided proof that Nasdijj was actually a white writer of gay erotica from East Lansing, Michigan, named Timothy Patrick Barrus. The entire story of Nasdijj the Navajo had been made up. Barrus lost a lucrative publishing contract and currently writes angry diatribes about the publishing industry on various Internet sites.

MEMOIR:
Love and Consequences
, by Margaret B. Jones (2008)
WHAT SHE WROTE:
Half white and half American Indian, Jones was removed from her childhood home after being sexually abused by a relative. At the age of eight, she landed in a foster family in South Central, a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Los Angeles. There, she was raised by a black woman known as “Big Mom,” whose grandchildren became Jones’s foster brothers and sisters. By the time she was a young teenager, she had joined the “Bloods” street gang, started doing drugs and making crack cocaine, and witnessed one of her foster brothers gunned down in front of their house. Jones finally escaped that life, attended the University of Oregon, graduated with a degree in ethnic studies, and sold her fascinating story to Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin.