Read Uncle John’s Curiously Compelling Bathroom Reader for Free Online

furious that a major corporation would advocate vandalism and ordered Sony to clean up the walls or face legal action. Sony denied involvement at first, but finally gave in and removed the ads.
    SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM!
    British comedy troupe Monty Python, who routinely made fun of Spam on their 1970s TV show, was paid by Hormel Foods to display cans of the processed meat in Spamalot , their Broadway musical adaptation of the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail . ( Spamalot also featured a paid mention of Yahoo!)
    A NOVEL APPROACH
    In her chick-lit book The Sweetest Taboo , British novelist Carole Matthews changed the car her heroine drives from a Volkswagen Beetle to a Ford Fiesta. Why? Ford paid her—plus they gave Matthews her own Fiesta (which she named Flossie).
    JO$E, CAN YOU $EE?
    In 2005 famed playwright Neil Simon approved a script change in his 1969 play Sweet Charity : The original version had the characters simply drinking “tequila.” Now they drink “Jose Cuervo’s Gran Centenario Premium Tequila.” And not only that, the Jose Cuervo logo was displayed prominently on some of the sets.
    BODY LANGUAGE
    In 2005 Karolyne Smith of Salt Lake City offered something unusual on eBay: advertising space…on her forehead. She did it, she says, to send her son to private school. GoldenPalace.com , an online casino, chose the “Buy It Now” option for $10,000, and Smith now has a tattoo of the casino’s logo on her forehead. “To me, $10,000 is like $1 million,” she said. “And it’s a small sacrifice to build a better future for my son.”
A tiger can cover about 30 feet in a single stride.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS
If you could choose your last words, what would they be?
    “Curtain! Fast music! Lights!
    Ready for the last finale!
    Great! The show looks good!”
    — Florenz Ziegfeld, Broadway producer, hallucinating on his deathbed
    “It hurts.”
    — Charles de Gaulle
    “Dost thou think that I am afraid of it? This will cure all sorrows. What dost thou fear?
    Strike, man, strike!”
    — Sir Walter Raleigh, to his executioner
    “I’m losing.”
    — Frank Sinatra
    “I am not going. Do with me what you like. I am not going. Come on! Come on! Take action! Let’s go!”
    — Sitting Bull, to the police who were there to arrest him, just before being shot
    “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it! This is…”
    — David Johnston, geologist who was killed in the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens
    “I’m tired. I’m going back to bed.”
    — George Reeves, who starred as Superman in the 1950s, to his friends before shooting himself
    “Wait until I have finished my problem!”
    — Archimedes, Greek mathematician, to the Roman soldier who captured and killed him
    “No.”
    — Alexander Graham Bell, in sign language, to his deaf wife, who pleaded, “Don’t leave me.”
    “Codeine. Bourbon.”
    — Tallulah Bankhead
    “Dammit…Don’t you dare ask God to help me!”
    — Joan Crawford, to her housekeeper, who was praying for her
    “Yeah.”
    — John Lennon, to the cop driving him to the hospital, who asked, “Are you John Lennon?”
Think you know everything about Harry Potter? Okay—when’s his birthday? (July 31)

THE MUSTACHE REPORT
We found these stories right under our noses .
    W HY THE LONG FACE?
    In 2003 Bhupati Das, from the Indian state of West Bengal, announced his plan to break the world record in “mustache weightlifting.” The 48-year-old said he’d been inspired to try it six years earlier when he read about a man who had lifted a typewriter with his mustache. “I made up my mind,” Das said, “and started nursing my mustache.” He “nursed” it to a length of four feet, oiling it twice a day (he had to keep it tucked behind his ears and covered with a cloth while at work). Alas, it was all for naught: He failed to break the Guinness world record of 24kg (52.9 lbs.).
    THE STRONG, SILENT TYPE
    In 2005 Suzy Walker of Kirkland, Georgia, started going everywhere—even