Compilation 2021 Gem Groom
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Welcome to Gem's Completely Fascinating Bathroom Reader . Here you'll find entertaining stories and intriguing sayings to engage your mind and tickle your funnybone while you're temporarily anchored by your bottom.
Some of the most enjoyable, most important, most fascinating anecdotes in existence don't see the light of day often enough if ever because they appear in books that are no longer new. They sink into oblivion, and all their sparkle is wasted.
It's our pleasure to find these short, entertaining bits and share them with you. Most are true stories; a few are exceptional scenes from works of fiction. They're all gems that deserve to be seen and enjoyed.
Our team has also put together a beguiling collection of jokes and smart sayings to share with our readers all pleasure, nothing mean-spirited or cheap. Around here, we like smart sayings that are truly smart, and funny jokes that are truly funny. It's hard to dig out those gems, but we do it. We've sprinkled them around this book.
Most of the stories in this collection are excerpted from books available online at the archive.org free library an extraordinary resource and we've linked to the books there so you can have instant access to them if you want.
And, finally, may we suggest that you keep in mind the good advice of King George V and " always go to the bathroom when you have a chance."
May you have every opportunity
and may all your bathroom visits be fascinating.
We didn't put any "buy" links in the text because we want you to enjoy Gem's Completely Fascinating Bathroom Reader without having to think about spending money. Libraries are pretty great. But so is owning a book, and many of the books we share excerpts from are available to buy, new and used, online or in your local bookshop. If you want to buy a book we mention from Amazon, you'll find a list in the appendix, with our Amazon affiliate links.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A DUBIOUS BUSINESS TIP FROM ARISTOTLE ONASSIS
True or false, the public airing of this dirty washing might have harmed Onassis's reputation irretrievably had the whole affair not suddenly taken a fantastic twist.... The French investigating judges ... demanded to see the contract with Onassis on which Catapodis based his claim. But Catapodis was not in a position to produce the vital document. It had been prepared in minute detail, he said, and signed by Onassis, but later, when he looked at it again, he discovered that the signature must have been written with disappearing ink. It had vanished. He had gone back to Onassis and asked him to sign it again but Onassis had taken the contract from him and promised to send him a new one the next day. Catapodis said that the next day never came. Furthermore, he added, Mohammed Ali Reza had the same experience and also found Onassis's signature on his own contract fading, but where Catapodis failed, Ali Reza was supposed to have succeeded and received a contract signed with more durable ink. It was more than any judge could reasonably be asked to accept. Catapodis's suit was dismissed. When asked to comment, Onassis smiled indulgently and said, "What did you think I go around with disappearing ink in my pen?" Willi Frischauer, in his book Onassis
Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Best relationship advice: Make sure you're the crazy one.
People who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have to wait for them. E.V. Lucas
Dylan Thomas by Jessica Dismorr, 1935
A LOVE LETTER FROM DYLAN THOMAS
It's awful to write to you because, even though I love writing to you, it brings you so near me I could almost touch you and I know at the same time that I cannot touch you, you are so far away in cold, unkind Ringwood and I am in stale Barnet in a roadhouse pub with nothing but your absence and your distance, to keep my heart company.
I think of you always all the time. I kiss my uncharitable pillow for you in the nasty nights. I can see you with our little Mongolian monkey at your breast; I can see you in that unfond house listening with loathing to the News; I can see you in bed, more lovely than anything that has ever been at all. I love you. I love Llewelyn & Aeronwy, but you above all and forever until the sun stops and even after that.
And I cannot come down this weekend. I have to work all day Sunday. I am working, for the first time since I sold my immortal soul, very very hard, doing three months' work in a week. I hate film studios. I hate film workers. I hate films. There is nothing but glibly naive insecurity in this huge tinroofed box of tricks. I do not care a bugger about the Problems of Wartime Transport. All I know is that you are my wife, my lover, my joy, my Caitlin.
But Cat darling I miss you too much to bear.
Come Back on Wednesday. I'll send you another inarticulately loving letter tomorrow, with some money. You should have it by Saturday morning. No, it's better that I wire the money so that you can have it for the weekend. Even though I dislike Blashford very much, I envy it because all my love is there with my children and with you.
Come back on Wednesday. Please.
I haven't been in London at all as I have to start working unlikelily early in the morning & carry on until six o'clock.
I love you more, even, than when I said I loved you only a few seconds ago.
I think I can get Vera a little part in this film: a tiny part as a pudding-faced blonde sloth but I shan't tell her that.
Write to me telling me two things: that you love me & that you are coming back on Wednesday which is like a day full of birds & bells.
I am writing on the back of a script by Mr J. B. Priestley. But that doesn't spoil what I have to say to you. I have to say to you that I love you in life & after death, and that even though I drink I am good. I am not drinking much. I am too lonely even for that.
Write.
Give my love to the pigmy baby & kiss Llewelyn on the forehead for me.
Touch your own body for me, very gently. On the breast & your belly. My Caitlin.
Your
Dylan
X
Dylan Thomas, from the book The Love Letters of Dylan Thomas
What we learn with pleasure we never forget. Louis Mercier
Driving a crappy car changes your entire mindset. If someone cuts me off on the freeway, I can't flip them off because I may need that guy to jump-start me in a few minutes. Dobie Maxwell
An open mind is all very well in its way, but it ought not to be so open that there is no keeping anything in or out of it. Samuel Butler
A MAN CAN'T JUST SIT AROUND
California truck driver Larry Walters had always wanted to be an airplane pilot, but poor eyesight prevented him from fulfilling his ambition. Undeterred, he decided to build his own flying contraption, which resulted in a crazy adventure in the skies above Los Angeles in the summer of 1982. After buying 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium from his local Army-Navy surplus store, Larry strapped the balloons to an aluminum lawn chair, which was in turn anchored to the bumper of his jeep. He then packed beer, sandwiches and a loaded pellet gun so that he could pop a few of the balloons when he was eventually ready to descend. His plan was to float gently up to a height of about 30 feet above his back yard and come back down a few hours later but when he severed the cord tying the lawn chair to his jeep, he instead streaked into the sky as if fired from a cannon. Rather than levelling out at 30 feet, he levelled out at 16,000 feet.
