Source: Local6.com
THE REALLY STUPID QUIZ: THOSE CRAZY TEENS!
Would you look at that? Here it is, time for another Really Stupid Quiz! Guess which of these scenarios really happened in the real world.
1. A German teen’s parents went away, so of course he had one of those parties, with a destructive intensity you usually only get in Hollywood teen films. Realizing that he didn’t have enough time to clean up before his parents got home, our teen decided on an alternate strategy: he called the police and claimed that robbers had ransacked the house. One minor issue with the story: nothing was actually stolen. The police began putting the squeeze on the kid, who admitted he was covering up. They charged him with wasting police time and they told his parents. The rats!
2. Three Manchester, New Hampshire, teens decided they’d gotten enough flak from one of their teachers, who had recently given the three of them a poor grade on a history project. So they decided to get back at him. They captured a squirrel, which they placed in their teacher’s desk before class. During class, the teacher heard the animal moving around in the desk and opened the drawer it was in; the terrified squirrel launched itself at the teacher and bit him on the chin before escaping through an open window. The teacher, reeling from the pain, accidentally struck his head on the classroom door and collapsed, unconscious, dislocating the ring and pinky fingers of his left hand as the weight of his body fell on them. The squirrel was never found, and the teacher had to get a preventative rabies vaccination at the hospital. One of the teens confessed; all three were eventually charged with assault and suspended from school. Extra credit is not an option.
3. The latest craze among Japanese schoolgirls: ultraviolet tattoos. Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported on a new ultraviolet ink that allows people to place temporary tattoos on their skin that are all but invisible in normal light and glow vibrantly when exposed to black lights—like those in clubs. “It’s the best of both worlds,” one schoolgirl said. “I can express my individuality while at the same time being modest and practical during the day.”
Popular tattoos include Bugs Bunny and characters from the Love, Hina anime series. One drawback is that the ink causes a severe allergic rash in about 5 percent of the girls who use it; in one case a Tokyo teen was sent to the hospital for treatment. Legislators are now considering a ban on the temporary tattoos but admit that short of installing black lights at schools, it may not be possible to see who is wearing them and who is not.
Which one is really stupid?
Answer page 311.
Source: Ananova
A GUN IN THE OVEN
So, you have a handgun. If you’re not using it you need to store it in a safe and secure place.
Do you:
a. Take ammunition out of the gun and place it into a lockable gun box, and store it in a safe and secure place
b. Toss that still-loaded weapon into a bag and chuck the bag into an oven
If you’re the sort of person to say “choice b looks good to me,” you’re the sort of person who makes the rest of us really nervous, and you need to rethink your firearm storage policies.
Now You’re Cooking
“Quentin” had a bag with two handguns that he needed to store. For reasons beyond comprehension, Quentin decided to put them into the oven. So that’s what he did and then off he went.
A little while later housemate “Sadie” decided to use the oven. She turned the oven on to preheat it. She didn’t check it first to see if there was a bag of guns inside, because really, why would she? So the guns baked, and the bag they were in started to smoke. That Sadie noticed. She opened the oven to find out what was in there, which was the cue for one of the guns to go off. Bang, a bullet went through her forearm, hip, and thigh.
At the hospital, recovering from her wounds, Sadie tried to convince the staff that she’d been struck by exploding glass from the oven, but those clever medical folk know a gunshot wound when they see one. They called the police, and the police eventually arrested Quentin. He was arraigned on assault and weapons charges and held without bail.
Source: Associated Press
MORE BURNING STUPIDITY
Two women stealing gas from a small Alaskan town’s gas pump nearly paid with their lives when one of them used a lighter to look into the gas tank—while the other woman was still pumping gas. The next thing the two women knew, their clothes were on fire. The two put each other out and then ran away, leaving burning gas on the ground 10 feet from a tank holding 3,000 gallons of gas, and close to a dozen 27,000-gallon tanks of gasoline and fuel oil. Local police put out the flames before everything went ka-pow. The women were charged with criminally negligent burning, reckless endangerment, and fourth-degree theft.
Source: Anchorage Daily News
BONO’S HAT TRICK
We have very little bad to say about Bono, lead singer of U2. He’s a big rock star and could spend his days in mindless pursuits. Instead, he spends a lot of his time talking to bureaucrats worldwide, trying to get them to forgive third-world debts so those underdeveloped countries might spend a little of their gross national product on something besides interest payments.
Even so, Bono has an occasional lapse. And we’re not just talking about the 1997 Pop Mart tour, although we could go on for hours about that. No, what we’re thinking of at the moment was a day in late May 2003, when the vocalist flew to Italy to take part in a benefit concert with his good friend Luciano Pavarotti.
It seems that once Bono arrived in Pavarotti’s hometown of Modena, he realized to his horror that he had left his favorite hat in England. The Grammy-winning musician was bereft; after all, what good is it to sell tens of millions of albums worldwide if you don’t have your favorite hat to share it with?
Mr. Hat Only Travels First Class
Big deal, you say. Just have someone mail the damn hat. But no! It was a special hat. And thus it began a special journey. A special, expensive journey. First the hat was placed in a cab and shuttled from West London to Gatwick Airport. That cost about $160, fare and tip included. Then it was placed on a British Airways flight to Bologna, Italy. Cargo hold? Not on your life, baby! This hat went first class all the way—to the tune of over $700. Just imagine what the guy sitting next to the hat thought about. He should have asked for the hat’s complimentary champagne.
Mr. Hat Gets an Upgrade
And maybe he did—and perhaps even got a little unruly, which may be why the first-class flight attendants decided that first class was not good enough and transported the hat into the cockpit. That’s right, the hat got to ride with the captain! After the hat landed, it was taken to Modena by a driver specially hired for the occasion—another $240 or so. Throw in insurance and additional tips, and all together Bono spent more than $1,500 just to get his hat.
It Was All Worth It
A source from Bono’s camp noted that the amount he’d spent to get his hat sent was “nothing compared to the amount he’ll have raised on the night” of the benefit concert. Maybe not. But for future reference, Bono, two words for you: Federal Express. Maybe it won’t make for as colorful a story. But you’ll still get your hat.
Sources: London Sun, Ananova
“Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest motive.”
—Oscar Wilde
DAGNABBIT! THE GAS PEDAL MOVED ON ITS OWN!
At 85, “Harry” may have been considered too old to drive by many people. But Harry was not one of those people; he’d been driving all this time and, by gum, he wanted to keep driving. He was even going to take a driving test at the Van Nuys, California, branch of the Department of Motor Vehicles to prove he still had what it took.
And give Harry this much—he was able to start his engine just fine. But then came the part where he hit that handicapped parking sign. Which was followed by hitting the accelerator pedal instead of the brake pedal. Which was immediately followed by Harry smashing into a building. No one was ki
lled or injured, but Harry’s car suffered damage, as did the building he plowed into. And which building was that? Why, the Department of Motor Vehicles, of course. Harry was moving his car in order to get onto the street to take the test.
How Not to Pass Your Driving Test
Alas for Harry—when you crash your car into the DMV while your test instructor is right there watching you, it’s difficult to argue that you’re still competent behind the wheel. Harry’s license was revoked pending the investigation of his car accident. Hopefully he had someone to take him home. A bad day for Harry, but a good day for other drivers, not to mention other buildings and handicapped parking signs in Southern California.
Source: NBC4.tv
DUMB MOVIE FESTIVAL: GLITTER (2001)
Our Entry: Glitter, starring Mariah Carey and no one else you know
The Plot (Such As It Is): An unassuming singer played by Carey strikes it huge in the early ’80s. You may ask yourself, what is Mariah Carey doing playing Whitney Houston? Which is what we were asking when her first album came out. But never mind that. This film is basically a rehash of A Star Is Born with a little maternal drama thrown in for good measure. Carey is kept from speaking too much, which is good, but she still manages to utter dialogue on occasion, which is not so good.
Fun Fact: Based on the awful performance of this film and the accompanying soundtrack, Mariah Carey was released from an expensive recording contract with a $28 million buyout. So essentially she got $28 million for making a flop movie and album. How’s that for failing upward?
Total North American Box Office: $4,273,372 (source: The-Numbers.com). Small comfort for the studio: it cost $8.5 million to make. The film was released after Carey’s highly publicized mental collapse and also just after the 9/11 tragedy, both factored in its underwhelming performance.
The Critics Rave!
“The worst thing about Glitter is not that it’s sappy . . . The worst thing about the movie is that it’s been made by people who aren’t even trying. A lot of the biggest head-scratchers in the plotting could have been explained by maybe one quick line of dialogue or one pointed visual indicator. But the filmmakers don’t even bother doing that much work.”
—Daily-Reviews.com
“You’d have a breakdown, too, if you were stuck in a movie as drab and glum as Glitter.”—St. Paul Pioneer Press
“About as fresh as rancid Chinese food that has been stuck in the back of the refrigerator for several months . . . Life is far too short to waste it on a motion picture as devoid of intelligence and entertainment value as Glitter.”
—Themovieboy.com
“There is good. There is bad. There is worse and terrible and pathetic and painful. Then there is Glitter.”
—The Cranky Critic
“[Carey’s] inert, glassy-eyed performance is so disastrous she can’t even manage to lip synch convincingly.”—Miami Herald
“If Glitter is a cry for help from a disintegrating personality (and it can be viewed for profit in no other way), then someone needs to feel ashamed for ignoring and gaining from Carey’s pain, and for foisting this shambling monstrosity on unsuspecting 12-year-old girls.”—Film Freak Central
DEAR DIARY: I HOPE MY WIFE DOESN’T READ YOU!
Once upon a time, there was a Romanian teenager (let’s call him Adrian) who heard that a single man could perform no more than 10,000 sexual acts in a lifetime. Well, Adrian wasn’t going to take that one lying down. And so, as an adult, he started a diary. A diary with one purpose only: to record each and every sexual act he ever had. Adrian tended to his diary faithfully over the years; no sexual incident was too small or ill-advised to evade entry in his journal.
This eventually led to some good news for Adrian: at the age of 60, he was closing in on the magic 10,000 acts number. That was the good news.
The not so good news—just as he was closing in on his magic number, Adrian’s wife found his diary and its voluminous entries concerning her hubby’s sexual activity. The even worse news was that apparently less than a third of the entries actually involved her.
My Achy Breaky Heart
To be fair, she was credited as being a participant in roughly 3,000 events, more than any other participant, and, if you add up the time involved, it would almost certainly seem to be a healthy amount. But then there were those 7,000 other incidents. Maybe if there were just fewer other incidents Adrian could have explained away some of those couple thousand events that just meant nothing. But the percentages were against him.
Adrian’s wife filed for divorce, citing overwhelming evidence of her husband’s infidelity. For his part, Adrian told a Romanian newspaper that he regretted that he’ll be losing his family over this. And also his diary, which was taken as evidence.
Source: Ananova
FANCY MEETING YOU HERE
A Romanian man and wife were talking to each other on their cell phones. He was telling her that he was at his parents’ house, doing a bunch of chores. She was telling him that she was at home, in bed, because she wasn’t feeling well. So it was mildly inconvenient for both when they bumped into each other, while still on the phone, at the seaside resort both had snuck off to without the other. The couple reported that they went home to try to patch things up but would probably divorce. Yeah, that’s not much of a surprise.
Source: Ananova
“The easiest person to deceive is oneself.”
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton
WHAT THE HACK?
Everyone knows that computer skills are dreadfully important to the next generation of workers. And to signal the importance of computer skills, the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry of Japan planned a computer competition for high school and vocational college students. The competition would pit teams of young computer geniuses against each other. The goal was to build security measures for their computers and then defend their computers against security incursions while simultaneously attempting to overcome the security measures devised by other teams.
In the real world, we call that hacking. And it’s sort of, you know, illegal. In Japan, if you’re caught hacking, you can get a year in the slammer (in a space even smaller than a Japanese hotel room) and a fine of 500,000 yen (about $4,200). Losses due to computer crime, which includes hacking into computer security systems will cost businesses in the United States an estimated $2.8 billion in 2003, and billions more worldwide.
The ministry was subsequently swamped with angry calls suggesting that it was encouraging cybercrime rather than teaching Japan’s youth that hacking wasn’t a very nice thing to do. The ministry eventually agreed and pulled the plug on the contest. Ironically, one of the reasons the ministry had planned the contest was to promote computer security. This is not unlike promoting fire safety by letting teenagers set off a series of uncontrolled fires.
Sources: Associated Press, USA Today
DUMB MUNICIPAL CODES IN ACTION
Some people can’t handle alcohol very well, and not because they’ve had some sort of industrial accident that has left them without the opposable thumbs needed for truly competent handling of beer steins. We mean that they’re alcoholics, burdened with a disease that makes them especially susceptible to the addictive nature of drink. Alas, the way most people find out they are alcoholics is by drinking themselves into trouble. It’s sort of a catch-22 that way.
A Pack of Kools and Some Kool-Aid
“Catch-22” is also the way to describe the situation faced by the owner of the Keep It Simple club in Edmonton, Canada, in August of 2003. Keep It Simple was a “bar” for recovering alcoholics, in that it provided all the ambiance of a bar (bars being a second home for many alcoholics, for obvious reasons) but without all that troublesome alcohol. Part of the ambiance, along with the pretzel bowls and pool tables, is the haze of cigarette smoke: Recovering alcoholics are notorious smokers. Sure, it’s trading one addiction for another, but on the other hand, smoking two packs of cigarettes won’t cause you to wrap your car around
a tree like a case of cheap beer will. In the short-term, it’s an understandable trade.
But Edmonton has smoking laws, and the Keep it Simple bar had a problem: The only bars you can smoke in are the ones that serve alcohol. So, in order to allow smoking on the premises, the bar had to apply for a liquor license.
A.K.A. the Quibbling Commission
Fine, said Tom Charbonneau, the co-owner of Keep it Simple; he went to get the liquor license, but didn’t plan to actually use it. When the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission heard about that, however, they refused to give over the license. “They weren’t looking for a liquor license, they were looking for a smoking license,” said Alberta Gaming spokeswoman Marilyn Carlyle-Helms. Not that they give out smoking licenses. That’d just be silly.
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