Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  Source: Reuters

  “What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity.”

  —Arthur Schopenhauer

  THE U.S. FLAG: LOVE IT OR MOVE TO NORWAY!

  In the United States, it’s not illegal to burn the national flag in protest. It’s not good flag etiquette and it’s not especially smart, since you may be pummeled by burly people whose understanding of constitutional protections is limited to the lyrics of Lee Greenwood’s trot-it-out-in-wartime chestnut “God Bless the USA.” But technically, it’s legal. Even the Supreme Court says so (Texas v Johnson, 1989), and the Supreme Court isn’t exactly staffed with Commies, you know.

  Accidentally on Purpose

  Norwegian comedian Otto Jespersen didn’t think he would have a problem when he burned a U.S. flag on his satirical comedy show Torsdagsklubben (The Thursday Club) in February 2003. The burning flag was part of a sketch in which Jespersen appeared to endorse the then-imminent U.S.-led war with Iraq by lighting a candle. Jespersen put the candle on a desk, where it “accidentally” set fire to a U.S. flag flying nearby. What can we say? It’s Norwegian humor.

  Crime and Punishment Norwegian Style

  Ironically, it would have been better for Jespersen if he’d burned that flag on the very steps of the U.S. Capitol. Because in Norway it’s honestly and genuinely against the law: Paragraph 95 of Norway’s criminal code expressly forbids insulting a foreign state’s flag. So in Norway, you can’t burn the U.S. flag, shred it, use it as a diaper, or even go up to it and tell it that all those horizontal stripes make it look really fat. That’s insulting. And in Norway, that’s a crime.

  As a result, Jespersen and his show’s producer, Kaare Valebrokk, were formally charged with burning the U.S. flag. They might have spent up to a year in prison, but they ended up with a fine instead. That’s what you get for not knowing your own nation’s laws, and that’s more than they would have gotten, say, in Texas. Maybe next time, they should do a location shot. Texans love that kind of edgy humor!

  Source: Aftenposten

  “BIG, FLABBY BUTTOCKS” BANNED IN THAILAND

  Bad news for hefty world travelers? No, but not so good for karaoke singers: it is one of three songs (along with “I Fear No Sins” and “I Do Fear Sins”) banned from Thai radio and TV for promoting immorality among the Thai. “In society, does freedom of speech mean we have to talk only about sex?” asked Pramoj Rathavinij, deputy director general of Thailand’s Public Relations Department. Pramoj, my man, if you have to ask.

  Source: Reuters

  COPS! LIVE ON MTV!

  Fans of the mystery genre will tell you that the perfect crime is unheard of because it requires that the perpetrator never talk about it. You know that people just can��t shut up about things like that. (“Dude, I did so commit the perfect crime and I’ll show you where I hid the body to prove it!”) So think about how much easier it is to talk about an imperfect crime, especially when there’s a TV camera.

  Bad Brad

  Nineteen-year-old “Brad” found himself in front of an MTV camera, and before you know it, he was confessing his crimes to a national audience—on a few occasions he’d taken a baseball bat to mailboxes in his hometown of Eaton, Connecticut. It’s not the perfect crime—heck, it’s not even an interesting crime—and that may be why Brad felt free to proclaim his own bad self.

  Sadly for Brad, it seems that the boys in blue down at Eaton Police Department watch MTV. (It’s part of the effort by law enforcement to keep tabs on Carson Daly, and to decide whether “fo’ shizzle my nizzle” actually means anything you can get arrested for.) The cops caught Brad confessing his crimes and crafted a warrant for his arrest.

  So remember, kids: MTV is for music, not confessing criminal activity. If you must admit to criminal activity on TV, do it where no one’s watching. VH1 is good.

  Source: Associated Press

  GIVE HIM A PINK SLIP

  Imagine for a moment that you are an assistant store manager for a large grocery chain in the Southern U.S. (unless you actually are an an assistant store manager for a large grocery chain in the South. In which case, don’t imagine it. Just be who you are, man). There you are, doing whatever it is assistant managers do, when you get a phone call. It’s from someone claiming to be with the police, who tells you that you need to call in one of your store employees and strip search her—and don’t worry, since he’s from the police, you’re duly authorized.

  Do you:

  a. Chuckle, say, “Yeah, I’ll get right on that,” and then continue price checking peas.

  b. Call in said store employee, tell her to strip, take away her clothes, and force her to pose, opening yourself up to arrest and your grocery store chain to a big, fat, lawsuit.

  If you picked “a” then you are not “Allen,” an assistant manager at a Winn-Dixie store in Panama City, Florida. In July 2003, Allen, on the advice and counsel of the “policeman” on the phone, made one of his employees strip and strike poses, and was not particularly hasty about giving her clothes back, according to police.

  Time for a Career Change

  After the woman got her clothes back, she contacted the police, who visited Allen and put him in the express arrest line (five charges or less!), charging him with false imprisonment and lewd and lascivious behavior. He was released on $10,000 bail, which one assumes could not be reduced with the judicious use of a Winn-Dixie Reward Card.

  The “policeman” on the other end of the phone was a prankster whose existence was well known to the real police. Lt. Claude Arnold of the Panama City police told the Associated Press that his department had been receiving complaints about similar calls for the last five years, and indeed had been alerted by law enforcement in North Dakota just a week earlier that similar calls had been made to stores in that state from pay phones in Panama City.

  In a general sense, taking a caller’s word that he’s a police officer is probably no smarter than responding to a query as to whether or not the store has Prince Albert in a can. As Lt. Arnold noted: “Who would trust a cop over the phone like that?” Now we know.

  Source: Associated Press

  AND YOU THOUGHT YOUR WORK BREAK WAS SHORT?

  Argentinean news agency Diarios y Noticias reported that a grocery store in Argentina’s western Mendoza province required female cashiers to wear adult diapers. The idea was presented as a preventative measure to keep them from taking breaks, or in case “cold, nerves, pressure, or stress” caused them to lose bladder control.

  Source: Reuters

  TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS

  We keep writing these, but they just won’t listen.

  BECAUSE I LOOK GOOD IN PUMPS Today’s tip: Wear appropriate footwear.

  The first clue the Soerum, Norway, police had that something was amiss was a 19-year-old guy trying to run from the scene of a crime in black high-heel shoes. The man was otherwise not in drag, so his choice of footwear seemed, well, odd. So they asked him: “What’s with the shoes?” He had no good answer, not even to suggest that in fact they were incredibly comfortable and that he suspected all the young dudes would be wearing them soon.

  Things became a little clearer when they entered the Soerum City Hall—the scene of the crime—and found a pair of tennis shoes, which coincidentally were the right size for our pump-loving guy. Seems the guy was bright enough to want to cover his tracks by wearing someone else’s shoes (police suspect he found the pumps in the office), but not so bright that he remembered to take his own shoes with him when the alarm sounded and he took off.

  Eventually, our footwear fiend admitted to breaking into city hall and vandalizing the place by spraying graffiti on the walls. His punishment should probably be to keep wearing those high heels. But then they might clash with his jumpsuit. And wouldn’t that be a crime?

  Source: Reuters

  PAGING SENATOR RYDER

  In June 2003, the U.S. Senate was considering adding a rule to its operating procedures: Don’t steal the fur
niture.

  It didn’t actually say it that way, but what it did say was that members of the U.S. Senate shouldn’t remove furniture, paintings, or other historic items. Some of these items manage to get labeled as “surplus,” at which point the senator buys it for a bargain basement amount, but some of these items just plain disappear, often, one suspects, after a senator is voted out of office. As if that cushy Senate pension wasn’t enough.

  The new rule, which was introduced by Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, would create a list of items that senators would be specifically forbidden to snatch, including art and objects with historical value. Presumably you could still sneak out with a stapler or two, provided it wasn’t Lyndon Johnson’s stapler before it was yours.

  Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, who chaired the U.S. Senate Rules Committee, noted that he expected the rule resolution to pass, and a good thing, too: “There has been no real restraint,” he said. He also noted that at the time the rule was recommended “most of the good stuff” from the early days of the nation had already been carted away.

  Source: Reuters

  50,000 VOLTS IS JUST GOD’S WAY OF TELLING YOU TO PLAY THROUGH

  Golfers know that thunderstorms and golfing simply don’t mix. There’s a good reason for this. Place a golfer, even a short one, on the relatively flat, rolling plain that is a golf course, and he instantly becomes the tallest object for yards around. Lightning always tries to seek the shortest distance between its cloud and the ground. Add to this the fact that golfers are swinging the sports world’s equivalent of lightning rods every time they hit the ball toward the green, which in a thunderstorm is just like daring God to take a crack at you. It’s not smart. If lightning can hit Lee Trevino, it can hit you.

  Not Smart Enough to Come in out of the Rain

  “Sam” loved his golf. Sam loved his golf so much that when it started thundering while he was playing a round at the Orton Meadows Golf Course in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, in May 2003, he stayed on the course, using an umbrella to keep himself dry as he waited for his shots. On the 14th hole, while he was waiting for the rain to let up, Mother Nature sent a message to Sam to call it a day: she zapped him. Lightning hit his umbrella and went coursing up his arm. Most people would take a few thousand volts up the ulna as a sign to get back to the clubhouse, but not Sam. Sam played through.

  Hey! I’m Talking to You

  Mother Nature, apparently miffed, rang Sam back: on the 17th hole, Sam was struck by lightning again—once again, his umbrella acted as a lightning rod and poured lightning into his umbrella-wielding appendage. But Sam was not deterred. He’d made it to the 17th hole and by God he would finish the round. After all, the chances of being struck by lightning twice are more than three million to one. With those sorts of odds, maybe he’d get lucky.

  He was lucky, to the extent that a third bolt of lightning did not sizzle down from the sky and strike him. His score, alas, was not nearly as electrifying. “I won’t tell you my score. It was a bad day,” he told reporters. “But I don’t think that was anything to do with the lightning. I just had a stinker.”

  Sam is ready to play again. His only problem now is no one wants to join him in a foursome.

  Source: Ananova

  “A word to the wise ain’t necessary; it’s the stupid ones who need the advice.”

  —Bill Cosby

  SOMETIMES THE INSECT WINS

  There are a lot of things you can do naked—and as a subset of that, there are things you can do naked, but probably shouldn’t. One of those things, in our humble opinion, is riding a motorcycle. Why? Two words: road rash.

  There are other reasons, too, as “Erich” discovered while he was driving his hog around the German nudist colony where he was staying. Erich wasn’t totally nude—he was wearing sunglasses, a scarf, and sandals—but he was nude enough that when a small, angry bee came right at him, it had an unobstructed shot at, well, let’s just say a normally protected area. Fortunately the bee missed, but not by much; Erich got stung on the inner thigh. In all the excitement and confusion and venomous pain, Erich lost control of his motorcycle and flew off it.

  It Could Have Been a Nasty Scrape

  Stop wincing; despite the potential for leaving more of himself on the road than on his bones, Erich emerged from his calamity with a mere shoulder injury and some bumps and bruises (and, of course, a bee sting). That’s one lucky naked motorcycle-riding German. Although maybe not so lucky after all: when the police arrived at the scene of the accident, they debated whether or not to ticket Erich. Not because he was naked, mind you, but because he wasn’t wearing a helmet.

  Source: Ananova

  STUPID AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLER TRICKS

  In June 2003, the leaders of the G-8 countries (France, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, and Russia) were meeting in Evian, France, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The airspace over the meeting site naturally was restricted—it wouldn’t do to have an aerial attack on the world’s most powerful people.

  As it so happens, one French transport helicopter did briefly enter into the restricted airspace. In one of those moments of air controller wit (or possibly extreme boredom), a Swiss air traffic controller jokingly labeled the errant helicopter “Al Qaeda” on his radar screen. We imagine he then called over all of his coworkers and they had a nice chuckle. To a Swiss air traffic controller, there’s nothing funnier than labeling French helicopters as terrorists.

  Off the Radar

  Thing is, that “Al Qaeda” label also showed up on the radar screens of the French military. Quicker than it takes to think about the fact that a real Al Qaeda helicopter probably wouldn’t voluntarily identify itself as belonging to the most feared terrorist organization in the world, the French scrambled their Mirage jets to bring down the chopper. And they would have blasted it too, had not a last-minute correct identification revealed that the helicopter was French. The French, naturally, were not amused, and in retrospect, even the Swiss air controller admitted what he’d done was “absolutely stupid.” He was given some enforced time off pending a disciplinary hearing. Not good news for him, but at least it means he won’t have another dull day at work for a while.

  Source: Associated Press

  PAGING HOMER

  Sure, it’s amusing when you watch The Simpsons and Homer is snoozing away blissfully at his nuclear power plant job. But in the real world, it’s a little scary. So you won’t be comforted to know that in June 2003, the sole operator in the control room of the MIT Nuclear Reactor Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had an early morning catnap. His nap was discovered when his working partner was locked out for more than a half an hour and couldn’t raise his pal by way of phone, pager, or radio. By the time the napper woke up, the police were on their way. Makes you feel safe, doesn’t it?

  Source: Boston Globe

  “There are more fools in the world than there are people.”

  —Heinrich Heine

  MON DIEU! STOP THE MUSIC!

  Valerie Faure was both a French lawyer and an avid player of the accordion—two facts that, when combined, would make one suspect it would be impossible for her to find a spouse. Nevertheless, she was married to a man who played the violin. For fun and relaxation, the two liked to hang out on the street corners of their hometown of Bergerac and play their instruments for the amusement of passersby, who may or may not drop coins into their open music cases.

  One day, two of those passersby happened to be French lawyers—French lawyers who became incensed that one of their own would be doing such a horrible, awful thing. Successfully defending potential criminals is one thing, but playing an accordion on the street, well, that was just très sick. French lawyers have a reputation to protect, and they’re not above disbarring a lawyer when her conduct is unbecoming and unprofessional. Indeed, there’s a rich tradition of French lawyers getting the boot for extracurricular activity. As far back as 1826, a French lawyer was disbarred for perfo
rming in the theater, because you can’t have a lawyer as an actor. Actors are professional liars! And that’s not like a lawyer at all.

  And so Mme. Faure was hauled up in front of her local bar association, which suspended her from practicing law because of her penchant for playing the accordion on the street. But Faure—who was a lawyer, after all—filed an appeal and her perseverance paid off; her bar association’s decision was overturned.

  Interestingly, the decision noted that Faure couldn’t have demeaned the profession of lawyer by her accordion playing because she wasn’t wearing her lawyer’s robes while she was performing. So all you French lawyers who like to perform in the street, just make sure you do it in casual attire. Also, based on this line of reasoning, the lawyer in the 1826 case has excellent grounds for appeal. Free the French lawyers!

  Source: Agence France-Presse

  MISSING THE POINT

  A Russian tightrope walker was told to wear a hard hat while performing his act in Britain—this despite the fact that the man does his act without a net. Goussein Khamdoulaev, a performer with the Moscow State Circus, traded in his usual Cossack hat when the circus was told by insurers that it had to comply with new workplace rules put in place by the European Union. What value the hard hat would have if Khamdoulaev fell from the traditional tightrope height of 50 feet is unclear.