UNCLE JOHN’S
STALL OF SHAME
Not everyone who makes it into the Stall of Fame is there for a good reason. That’s why Uncle John created the “Stall of Shame.”
DUBIOUS ACHIEVERS: Random drug-test takers in Jacksonville, Florida
CLAIM TO FAME: Desecrating a microwave oven
True Story: Word on the street is that if you want to pass a drug test, warm up your urine sample. (There is considerable debate as to whether this is true). True or not, it was bad news for Parul Patel, who owns a convenience store near a drug-testing clinic in Jacksonville. “Every day,” she complained to the Orlando Sentinel in 2018, “random people walk in off the street, microwave their urine containers, then leave.” She tried telling them to stop, but most of them did it anyway. One woman even got belligerent and argued that she should be able to put her pee in the microwave because there’s no sign telling her not to.
Outcome: Patel put up a sign telling people not to put their pee in the microwave.
DUBIOUS ACHIEVER: Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union from 1923 to 1953
CLAIM TO FAME: Stealing the poop of his political enemies
True Story: In 1949 Chinese chairman Mao Zedong spent ten days in Moscow to work out a partnership with Stalin. Unbeknownst to Mao, the toilet in his guest room wasn’t connected to the sewer line; instead, Mao’s leavings were rerouted to a special box. The poop was delivered to a secret laboratory, where scientists analyzed its chemical makeup. To what end? So they could create a psychological profile of Chairman Mao. According to a former Soviet agent named Igor Atamanenko, who exposed the top-secret program in 2016, “If the scientists detected high levels of amino acid Tryptophan, they concluded that person was calm and approachable.” Mao’s poop had low levels of potassium, which was seen as “a sign of a nervous disposition and someone with insomnia.” Atamanenko said that Mao knew something was up because he felt more like Stalin’s prisoner than a guest. Convinced that his room was bugged (it probably was), at one point Mao yelled, “I am here to do more than eat and sh*t!”
Outcome: According to BBC News, “Once Mao’s stools had been scrutinized and studied, Stalin reportedly poo-poo-ed the idea of signing an agreement with him.” Stalin analyzed several other world leaders’ feces before he died in 1954. Then the program was flushed.
If they sense they’re being watched, squirrels will pretend to hide nuts to throw off interlopers.
DUBIOUS ACHIEVER: Jillian Mai Thi Epperly, an entrepreneur from Canton, Ohio
CLAIM TO FAME: Using quack medicine to create a “Poop Cult”
True Story: Epperly sells a book online called The Jilly Juice Protocol: Exposing the Lies Candida Weaponized Fungus Mainstreaming Mutancy. Readers learn the recipe and protocol for Jilly Juice, a drink that causes explosive bouts of diarrhea. Epperly refers to these bouts as “waterfalls.” What’s the difference? “Diarrhea,” she told the Daily Mail in 2018, “is when you poison the body,” whereas waterfalls heal the body by ridding it of “cancer-causing candida.” She has also claimed that Jilly Juice can “reverse 100 percent of health problems,” including “regrow lost limbs, cure autism, and turn gay people straight.” Epperly has amassed more than 60,000 Facebook followers—referred to by some in the press as the “Poop Cult.” She’s even pitched her book on Dr. Phil.
Everything was right as rain for Epperly until 2018, when the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) told her to put a plug in her outlandish claims—after a man with stage four pancreatic cancer became emaciated and died after drinking nothing but Jilly Juice for a month. The FTC warned Epperly that because she provides no scientific evidence to back up her claims, she is “in violation of regulations on false advertising of unproven health benefits.”
Outcome: Last time we checked, Epperly was still selling the book. But she told the Daily Mail that she “can’t be held accountable” for what happens to her followers. “Out of like 60,000 people that took my juice, how many people have died? It’s not fair to hold me to that kind of standard.” Yet Epperly has muddled up the language on her website to avoid litigation. Interested in enjoying your own…waterfalls? Jilly Juice’s ingredients are “fermented cabbage, water, and Himalayan sea salt.” Drink a gallon a day.
DUBIOUS ACHIEVER: Transport Canada
CLAIM TO FAME: Giving a lady the runaround after she got dumped on
True Story: In May 2018, Sue Allan took her son out to lunch near Kelowna International Airport in British Columbia. It was a nice day, so she opened the car’s sunroof…which turned out to be a bad idea. While stopped at a red light, “The ‘sky poop’ started falling,” she recounted to the Salmon Arm Observer. “It got all over my car, it got all over me and my son. It smelt horrific.” Right after the onslaught, Allan saw a plane overhead. Then her son vomited. They drove straight to a car wash and sprayed themselves off, and soon realized that the car would need to be professionally cleaned. Worse yet, her eyes started itching, so she went to the doctor the next day and found out she had conjunctivitis (pink eye) in both eyes.
Beep-beep! A coyote can actually run faster than a roadrunner.
Allan looked to Transport Canada for an explanation, an apology, and compensation for car-cleaning bills. But after several phone calls, all she had were conflicting explanations, no apology, and no compensation. “First I was told that there were three planes that flew over that area at that time, then I was told that there was one plane, and now all of a sudden no plane flew over the area at that time.” They also told her that it’s unlikely that a pilot dumped the plane’s sewage on purpose; rather, some of it leaked and froze onto the fuselage, and then, as the plane neared the ground, melted and splattered all over Allan’s car. She also discovered that this was the 18th report of an unfortunate shower near that airport in the past month.
Outcome: After receiving no help from the authorities, Allan told her story to the press. When asked to comment, a Transport Canada spokesperson said, “We are aware of the incident you describe and are looking into it.”
DUBIOUS ACHIEVER: “Parrotheads,” aka Jimmy Buffett fans
CLAIM TO FAME: Turning a parking lot into a hazardous waste area
True Story: Every August, the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts, hosts Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band. Thousands of Parrotheads roll in—donning their customary leis, loud sunglasses, and tacky hats—for a night of cheeseburgers in paradise (that’s a Jimmy Buffett song). Before the show, there’s always a big party in the parking lot. And instead of waiting in long lines for the portable toilets, some resourceful Parrotheads have taken to bringing their own makeshift loos: most commonly a five-gallon bucket with a lid. Then they leave the full buckets in the parking lot after the show. According to Mansfield police chief Ronald Sellon, this problem is unique to Jimmy Buffett concerts. In 2015 nearly 100 Parrotheads were told to put away their buckets and use the commodes. “It’s unsanitary and just disrespectful,” complained Chief Sellon.
Outcome: Prior to each year’s show, the Mansfield PD issues a friendly reminder to Parrotheads to use the “actual, health-code-compliant toilets that aren’t attached to the bumper of a pickup truck”…but the conflict continues.
DUBIOUS ACHIEVER: Lamarr Chambers, a 24-year-old suspected drug dealer from London, England
CLAIM TO FAME: Putting his bowels through hell for a month and a half
True Story: On January 17, 2018, Essex police arrested Chambers on suspicion of selling drugs. But where were they? The cops thought he swallowed them, so they took Chambers to jail and waited for nature to take its course. He didn’t poop on the first day or the second, and thus began #PooWatch. As days passed and the drugs didn’t, the police tweeted about the suspect’s (lack of) progress. Some examples:
•Day 3: Male has now been in police custody for the past 50 hrs and will remain until he passes said items. #PooWatch
•Day 8: Suspect has now been with us for an entire week and not been to the toilet once! Back to court tomorrow to request further detention until items are recovered. #PooWatch
•Day 19: We still have no movement, male doesn’t seem to understand that eventually he will need/have to go. #PooWatch
Official state sport of Maryland: jousting.
Chambers received daily doctor visits, and occasionally ate some fruit and nut bars, but his bathroom strike kept going and going. After a while, the cops even got tired of updating #PooWatch: “We will make one final announcement when he does what he needs to do.” Meanwhile, Chambers’s lawyer demanded his client be released so he could go on his own, telling BBC News that Chambers is “in an arena of risk of death.”
Outcome: Nothing came out. On March 5, 2018—after 47 days—Chambers was released…and was taken straight to the hospital. The drug charges didn’t stick.
DUBIOUS ACHIEVER: J. B. Pritzker, an Illinois gubernatorial candidate in 2018
CLAIM TO FAME: Using toilets to get out of paying taxes
True Story: With only a month to go in the governor’s race, the billionaire Democrat’s chances were tainted after a document was leaked from the Cook County Inspector General’s office. It seems that back in 2007, Pritzker and his wife (heirs to the Hyatt Hotels fortune) had purchased a second mansion next to their mansion on Astor Street in Chicago. Then they didn’t live in it. Not wanting to pay high property taxes on an empty house, in 2015 the Pritzkers found a loophole: They had a plumber disconnect all the toilets, which technically made the mansion “uninhabitable,” thus lowering its value from $6.3 million to a paltry $1.1 million…and lowering the property taxes considerably. (And after the tax assessment was made, the toilets were hooked back up.) Once the scandal became public, the incumbent Republican candidate, Governor Bruce Rauner, released a political ad calling Pritzker the “Porcelain Prince of Tax Avoidance.” Pritzker called the leak a political ploy, but he admitted to disconnecting the toilets, while maintaining that he “didn’t break any rules.” And he did agree to pay back $330,000 in back taxes.
Outcome: The Porcelain Prince of Tax Avoidance unseated his opponent.
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor; rich is better.”
—Sophie Tucker
A comet’s tail always points away from the sun.