Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Dumb, But Lucky

  And what, you ask, did Whittaker need with all that cash? Well, he was at a strip joint when it happened. And he has a reputation for tipping well. But probably not that well. Police said that Whittaker was probably bound for a game of chance—and why wouldn’t he be? He was a man lucky enough to have won $170 million. The residue of that luck pulled him through this time —the money that had been plucked from his SUV was found not far away in some bushes. All of it. That’s like winning the lottery twice.

  Just in case you’re wondering, the police nabbed two suspects—the strip club manager and his gal pal, who allegedly drugged Whittaker and then snuck out and grabbed the cash. How did they know it was there? The gal pal saw him take some money out of the briefcase earlier in the evening. Whittaker’s definitely the victim here, but come on—he did everything but put a “MONEY HERE” neon sign over his wad o’ cash.

  Mr. Whittaker doesn’t need out advice, but just in case: dude—credit cards exist for a reason. And you criminals? Next time, put those ill-gotten gains away somewhere!

  Sources: Charleston (WV) Daily Mail, Associated Press

  “Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.”

  —Confucius

  “You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don’t think there’s anything man wasn’t meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn’t do.”

  —David Cronenberg

  HOW NOT TO CLEANSE YOUR PALATE

  Normally, when your waiter offers a round of schnapps on the house, it’s a cause for celebration. But in Klagenfurt, Austria, it was the cause of something else: a trip to the emergency room.

  The fun began when the waiter announced to the dinner party he was serving that they were getting a free round of schnapps. He took a bottle from behind the bar, poured for his guests, everyone toasted, and slugged back the schnapps. This was followed by the reddening of faces, the gasping of air, and some surprised coughing. In other words, your basic schnapps aftermath.

  May We Suggest a Little Sorbet Instead?

  But the basic schnapps aftermath didn’t stop, and when they were able to speak again, the diners complained. The waiter, thinking either that he shouldn’t serve anything he wouldn’t consume himself, or just not hip to his patrons’ obvious pain, poured himself a shot. Soon he was gasping, coughing, and choking just like his guests. Everyone went to the hospital, where they were treated for burns to the mouth and throat. They’d consumed detergent, which the bartender had poured into a schnapps bottle behind the bar. Clearly, the bartender hadn’t alerted the wait staff. So the next time you’re in Klagenfurt, Austria, and your waiter offers you a free drink, have him go first.

  Source: Reuters

  ANATOMY OF A DUMB EXCUSE: THE NEKKID PILOTS

  Welcome to Anatomy of a Dumb Excuse, in which we show how someone perpetrating a really stupid maneuver just makes it worse by offering up an even stupider excuse.

  Our Contestants: Two pilots, working for a national airline. Let’s call them “Bob” and “Fred.”

  The Dumb Move: While piloting their 757, Bob and Fred are discovered by a flight attendant to have removed most or indeed all of their clothing (reports are sketchy on this point). They were subsequently dismissed by the airline due to “inappropriate conduct.”

  The Even Dumber Excuse: Bob and Fred contend that they removed their clothing because coffee spilled on one of them.

  Why This Is a Dumb Excuse: “Coffee spilled on one of them.” This is a fine excuse for the one who actually had the spill—Fred. Hot coffee equals third-degree burns, which equals painful gyrations, which could mean accidentally bumping into the flight yoke and plunging an airliner 4,000 feet in three seconds and plastering all the passengers onto the cabin roof. No one wants that. So, all right, fine, Fred’s off the hook. He’s got an excuse for taking off at least one article of clothing.

  But then there’s Bob. Bob had no free-flying caffeinated beverage issues. He had no reason for taking off his tie, shirt, pants, and shoes, except possibly that he was performing a sympathy strip for Fred, so Fred wouldn’t feel uncomfortable being naked in the cockpit. This impulse, while considerate, has its own psychological pathology that one hopes doesn’t exist in the people who control a metal tube filled with other people, hurtling through the air at several hundred miles an hour, and at an altitude of 28,000 feet.

  The Truth, As Far As We Can Tell

  All told, it’s better to think this was just a couple of guys, who happened to be pilots, doing something stupid. Really, who’s gonna know they’re naked and flying a plane? Perhaps all pilots do it when they think no one is looking. We don’t know. And now that they’ve installed those secure cockpit doors, we may never be able to find out.

  The airline itself seems to have given more credence to the “guys doing dumb things” idea—USA Today, which reported on the story, noted that the company was treating the incident as a “prank that went too far.” Not too mention too high up in the air.

  Sources: USA Today, CNN/Money.com

  “One must be a little foolish, if one does not want to be even more stupid.”

  —Michel de Montaigne

  ANOTHER THIRD WILL HAVE TO SIT AT THE NERD TABLE AT LUNCH

  It’s June 2003, and once again it’s time for kindergarten graduation at Bangs Avenue Elementary School in Asbury Park, New Jersey. It was a tough year, what with all those nap and snack times, educational play, and being warned not to run with scissors, but darn it, the kids were up to it. Now, older and wiser, they head off to the verdant pastures of first grade, and then Harvard! (Or at least Rutgers.)

  This year, it fell to the vice-principal of Bangs Elementary to make graduating remarks to the kids; you know, something to inspire them as they make their way into first grade, or perhaps a mild warning that while eating paste was cool in kindergarten, the sophisticated palates of upperclassmen stick to actual comestibles. In order were some nice and light comments to usher the tykes off to a summer of cartoons and water slides and sugary fruit-flavored drinks.

  Why They’re Called Vice-Principals

  The vice-principal got up in front of the kids, asked them to stand, and told this assemblage of five- and six-year-olds that many of them were doomed, and not just to attend Rutgers.

  “He told us to take a good look at these kids because a third of them will not graduate from high school or make it to high school because they will be too busy drugging, drinking, or getting pregnant,” graduation spectator Sherri Stanard told the Asbury Park Press. “Whatever point he was trying to get across, he seemed to be saying these kids wouldn’t make it at all.”

  Undoubtedly this was a matter of some confusion for the kiddies. The vice-principal asked them to stand to illustrate the number of kids who would drop out of high school due to drugs and pregnancy, but the five-year-old mind is not particularly keen on picking up the subtle metaphorical aspects of adult rhetoric. Heck, sometimes it has a hard time following direct declarations like “clean your room” or “stop swinging the cat.” That being the case, one has to wonder how many of the kindergartners now think they have to drop out of school and take up drugs and sex because that’s what the vice-principal told them to do. And you should always do what you’re told.

  One suspects they’ll choose someone else for next year’s graduation ceremony.

  Sources: Asbury Park Press, Associated Press

  “Age and wisdom don’t always go together, I’ve found . . . Some people just become stupid with more authority.”

  —Terry Pratchett

  CANADA, MY CANADA

  Some of the notable errata from maps featured in the July 2003 edition of the semiannual magazine put out by the Canadian Tourism Commission:

  • The province of Prince Edward Island is missing.

  • The Yukon Territory is missing.

  • Halifax, the capital city of Nova Scotia, is missing. />
  • The province of Newfoundland and Labrador is labeled simply “Newfoundland.” • Canada’s newest territory, Nunavut, is spelled Nunavit.

  You would think that the Canadian Tourism Commission would know its own country, in order to promote it effectively to others.

  And to be fair, maybe it does. It simply doesn’t hire people that do: the maps and and the magazine they’re in, PureCanada, were put together by Fodor’s, based in (you guessed it) the U. S. of A. The cost of the error-filled magazines, of which more than 270,000 were printed: $600,000 Canadian.

  The Canadian Tourism Commission said that corrected maps will come out in their winter issue. This will be an immense relief to the citizens of Prince Edward Island and Yukon, who will finally be able to return to their homes.

  Source: CBC News

  A CAPITOL PERFORMANCE

  He was an unconventional visual artist, and a pretty successful one as these things go. “Ray” had even won several grants and fellowships for his art and had done an artist-in-residence stint at the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design. In March 2003, Ray and his girlfriend “Mana” were traveling across the U.S., selling their artwork, and every once in a while doing little performance art pieces that they felt reflected something about the local culture. While they were in Miami, for example, Ray dressed up like a palm tree. So as Ray and Mana drove into Washington, D.C., they asked themselves: what represents this city most?

  As it happens, this was right around the time the U.S. government was advising Americans to create “emergency preparedness kits” just in case the terrorists came to their hometown. One of the primary ingredients of those kits was duct tape. So Ray and Mana made themselves interesting little costumes in which they used duct tape to affix a number of objects to their bodies, like little sculptures and jars. Then, with their festive costumes, they went inside the U.S. Capitol building and commenced to dance and chant.

  De-Duct-ive Reasoning

  They were terribly shocked when the Capitol Police descended upon them, handcuffed them, evacuated parts of the Capitol, and then sent them to the pokey. It appears that when the Capitol Police see a couple of people with objects strapped to their body with duct tape, the first thought that comes to their minds is not “amusing performance artists exercising their First Amendment rights,” but “terrorists packing heat, here to blow up the nation’s seat of power.” They acted accordingly.

  Ray and Mana spent five days in jail. While all of the objects they had taped to themselves were later shown to be of the nonexploding variety, the two were still charged with “interstate transportation of an explosive device,” a charge that apparently can be used against people the government believes were perpetrating a hoax—no actual explosive device is required.

  We’d like to suggest that if you don’t know that duct taping objects to your body at the nation’s Capitol Building is a spectacularly dumb idea these days, you may just not be thinking hard enough.

  Sources: Washington Post, Associated Press

  “People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.”

  —Søren Kierkegaard

  “Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.”

  —Gore Vidal

  “Many wise words are spoken in jest, but they don’t compare with the number of stupid words spoken in earnest.”

  —Sam Levenson

  TRAIN WRECK TV

  Many of the guests on Jerry Springer’s talk show are not, shall we say, swinging from the highest branch of the intellectual tree. Having noted that, there are still certain examples of extreme imbecility springing from Springer that deserve to be noted, and we have two of them for you.

  Our first shining example of Springer-osity is Paul Alexander of Wildwood, New Jersey. Mr. Alexander was a featured guest on a October 2002 episode, in which he admitted that he was engaged to the mother of the mother of his child. During the course of the show, 29-year-old Alexander noted that he had a 7-year-old child with his fiancée’s daughter, Rita Koelle, age 22. Do the math there.

  The Cape May County prosecutors did the math too, which is why after the show aired, they had Alexander picked up and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and second-degree sexual assault. In July 2003, Alexander was sentenced to one year in prison for criminal sexual contact. Koelle and her mother (Alexander’s fiancée, remember) didn’t want Alexander punted into the pokey, but as Judge Carmen Alvarez noted, “Once a person goes on national television and acknowledges committing a crime, I can’t imagine a state—any state—standing idly by.”

  Alexander’s fiancée intends to visit Alexander in the slammer. “I don’t care what people think. There are stranger things than this out there,” she said. (If there are, we should all run screaming into the night.)

  But Wait, There’s More!

  Alexander may not have been aware he was admitting to a crime when he was dazzled by the idea of being on TV, but when Barbara Payne of Florida decided she wanted to be on the show (on which she appeared with her boyfriend and twin sister for an episode called “Sneaky Sex Affairs”—her boyfriend and her twin were supposed to be having an affair), she was aware that she might be committing a crime by doing it. Payne, as it happens, was under house arrest for felony burglary and grand theft charges. When you’re under house arrest, you’re not supposed to leave your house, even when Jerry’s calling.

  But Payne really wanted to be on TV, so she concocted a ruse that should be familiar to any college student who had a 10-page paper due and had ingested six more beers than absolutely necessary: she sent her probation officer a fake letter from a Chicago funeral home asserting that her grandmother had passed away, and asked to be able to attend the funeral. The probation office denied the request, but Payne went anyway. When her probation officer came around, Payne’s neighbors cheerfully volunteered that Payne had been all excited about going off to be on Springer.

  Next on Springer: “I’m in Trouble with the Law for Being on Springer!”

  Payne was looking at a year in the slammer for her little transgression, but Circuit Judge Thomas Gallen took pity on her because she was seven months pregnant at the sentencing. So it’s another year of probation for her. “If she hadn’t been pregnant, she’s looking at a year in jail just for being stupid,” said the state’s prosecutor.

  The worst part: Payne admitted that her boyfriend and her twin sister weren’t having an affair. They all just wanted to be on TV. Man, if you can’t trust what you see on Jerry Springer, what can you trust?

  Sources: NBC10.com, Associated Press

  FIRE! AND NOW A COMMERCIAL!

  From the hours of 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., German television network Super RTL plays an image of a burning log, because, well, why not? It’s better than infomercials, at least. However, the pixellated pyre was a little too real for one German woman in October 2003; upon waking up, she thought her television was in flames and called the local fire department. The firemen rushed over and heroically put out the fire—with the remote control. God bless ’em.

  Source: Reuters

  “I’d give Charles Darwin videotapes of Geraldo, Beavis and Butt-head, and The McLaughlin Group. I would be interested in seeing if he still believes in evolution.”

  —Dean Koontz

  NEXT TIME, HE SHOULD GO FOR A LITTLE SEQU INED NUMBER

  August in northern Sweden can get a little hot—if you consider 77 degrees Fahrenheit hot. While that’s what passes for cardigan weather in Phoenix, Arizona, back in the Swedish town of Umeå, bus driver Mats Lundgren felt that it was warm enough to ditch his long pants while he drove around town. No—Lundgren wasn’t planning to motor about nude from the waist down, he just thought it’d be nice to wear shorts for a change.

  So he went to the bus company and asked if he could wear shorts. But, no, shorts were against the company dress code. A dumb regulati
on, but what can you do? Everyone knows that outside of a few laws of physics and the “five second” rule about dropping food on the floor, internal company regulations are the most inflexible laws there are.

  Skirting the Issue

  So Lundgren did what any reasonable person would do when confronted with an inflexible yet asinine company policy: he went around it, and he showed up for work in a skirt. And a lovely skirt it was, too: a snappy navy blue number that showed off Lundgren’s Scandinavian knees while he drove. While there was a company regulation against people wearing shorts, there was nothing about people wearing skirts. And as everyone knows, if there’s no rule, then you’re cool.

  As a bonus, Lundgren apparently digs his new attire. He told the Vaesterbottens Folkblad newspaper, “It’s even better than shorts. It’s unbearable driving a bus in long trousers when the sun is blazing through the windscreen, but with the skirt it feels just great.”