This is our first year in the great big blogosphere, and therefore our first UJBR Blog YiR. We had an executive meeting of the BRI crack staff, and decided that the theme of our first ever YiR should be…weird bathroom news. I mean “bathroom” is right there in our name and everything! How weird is that?

Getting right on with it:

In February, Toronto, Ontario, restaurant Mildred’s celebrated Valentines Day by encouraging patrons to have sex in its bathrooms. “Have you given any thought to moving beyond the bedroom?” they asked on thei website. “Check out Mildred’s Sexy Bathrooms throughout the weekend of Big Love. You get the picture.”( We do get the picture—and it ain’t pretty!) Bizarrely, Toronto Public Health said it was alright: “As far as bodily fluids,” said Jim Chan, manager of the food safety program, “it’s pretty much similar to the other human functions going on in there.” (Photo: Rene Johnson, Toronto Star)

In March, Australian newspapers reported that a “Mysterious Bathroom King” saw his personal fortune double to nearly $1.8 billion. “Leslie Alan Wilson is fifth on the Rich List. The famously private billionaire is executive chairman of Reece [a bathroom-products empire],” The Daily Telegraph reported, “declined to be interviewed for this article and rarely speaks to reporters.” On a related note, Mystery Bathroom Reading King Uncle John refused to be interviewed for this blog post. He’s locked himself in his private bathroom, which we’ve never been allowed to see, but have reasons to believe is made of solid gold. Hmmmm… (Photo of mysterious mystery person, who may or may not be Leslie Alan Simpson, provided by Wiikimedia Commons.)

In April, William Ferris called police in Cincinnati, Ohio, to report that he’d been robbed the in bathroom of a White Castle restaurant bathroom. Only he hadn’t been robbed: He’d paid a prostitute to provide services for him in said bathroom, and he hadn’t been happy with those services. So he called police. He was arrested and charged with solicitation and making a false police report. (Photo of actual Cincinnati White Castle where Mr. Ferris went for some bathroom fun provided by Google Maps.)

In May, right here at the Bathroom Reader Blog, we brought you Bathrooms…in Space. “At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, NASA has set up training potties for practice. The astronauts are aiming for an opening only 4 inches wide when they are going #2. This requires being perfectly centered over the opening which requires some tight maneuvering.” They have to aim their Number 2? As the kids say: TMI!

In June, Waterford, Michigan, plumber Brian Hines was out on some plumbing business when he got a call from his mother telling him to get home right away. When he got there he found his wife in the shower—about to give birth to the couple’s second child. Hines called 911, and a dispatcher guided him as, just minutes later, he helped deliver his 7 pound, 8 ounce son…on the bathroom floor. “I enjoy the irony,” Hines told reporters, “plumber and bathroom floor. It’s where I do my best work!” (Photo of totally unrelated baby emerging from its pupal cocoon provided by Wikipedia.)

Yet again in June, a man in a Dallas, Texas, Wal-Mart called police to report that a man in the stall next to him had reached his hand under the stalll divider…and snapped a photo of him with his cell phone. Police said surveillance video showed the man leaving the store in a blue Mustang convertible, and that anyone seeing such a vehicle…should avoid going to the restroom with whoever was driving it.  (Photo of bathroom sign with arrow showing where you to put cell phone camera found somewhere on the internet.)

In July, a restaurant in West Hollywood, California, reported that its bathroom was haunted by Jim Morrison, the late singer for the 1960s psychedlic band The Doors. The restaurant, called “Mexico,” is located in a building that was once The Doors’ recording studio. “You feel it here almost every day, throughout the entire place,” manager Chritina Arena told AOL News, “but especially near this spot.” This spot being the restaurant’s bathroom, which used to be the vocal booth where Morrison recorded such hits as 1970s “L.A. Woman.” “Funky things happen all the time we can’t explain,” co-manager Christine Chilcot said. “When that bathroom door handle jiggles by itself, that’s the weirdest sign.” Uncle John asks: Do they hear Morrison singing, “This is the end, your rear end, my friend…” in the bathroom? (Photo: Chris Epting, AOL.)

Also in July, a 26-year-old man in eastern Pennsylvania called police on his mother. Why? She had cleaned their bathroom. With his toothbrush. Justin Novack told police his mother, 52-year-old Deborah Woist, had “got feces” on the toothbrush whilst scrubbing the loo with it. Woist was cited for harassment. (Photo of motorized toothbrush from this place.)

In August, the “living bath mat”—went on sale. Created by Swiss artist La Chanh Nguyen, the mats are made of seventy balls of living moss held together in a latex fame, and are meant for actual use in actual bathrooms. “The humidity of the bathroom and the drops flowing from the body,” says Nguyen, “water the mosses. This vegetation carpet procures a great feeling to your feet.” Cost: about $70. (Photo via La Chanh Nguyen.)

In October, 55-year-old Sharon Glover was in a motorhome on Interstate 10 in Florida when she had to go to the bathroom. She walked to the rear of the vehicle and opened the bathroom door…except she opened the exit door by accident. Glover fell out of the moving motorhome and bounced 100 feet down the pavement. The driver, 50-year-old Bonnie J. Rickett, pulled over and called 911, and Glover was hospitalized with serious injuries. Police said she had been drinking.

In October, Take Two, we brought you the bathroom of the future news of Tubeless Toilet Paper Rolls! What will those crazy kids think of next? Tubeless tube-socks!

In November, a 69-year-old woman in Paris, France, was in her bathroom when the lock on the door broke. She was stuck here…for three weeks. A neighbor finally called police when she noticed the woman’s mail hadn’t been picked up in some time. Other neighbors said they had heard banging noises in the nights the woman was missing, but thought it was road workers. They had even stated a petition protesting the noisy workers. The woman was rescued and hospitalized with severe malnourishment. She said she survived by drinking lots of water, taking showers, and brushing her teeth. (Too bad she didn’t have something to read…)

Finally, in December, a young man walked into Captain Nemo’s restaurant in University Place, Washington, around ten minutes before closing time, walked into the bathroom…and disappeared. Well, not really, but police said evidence showed that the man had crawled into the bathroom’s false ceiling, and had waited ther for staff to finish their cleanup procedures—more than two hours. Then he climbed out, broke open a simple safe, and left with more than $5,000. Police said they were on the lookout for the “Bathroom Bandit.” Wayne Hogan, owner of the Captain Nemo’s restaurant, said he was “disappointed in humanity.” You can actually watch video of the Bathroom Bandit doing his bathroom-banditing over here. (Photo)

And with that we conclude our UJBR Blog Year in Review, and wish all of you the best New Year celebration of your lives, and an impossibly wonderful 2011. Woo hoo!