Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  But I’m worried that if I eat them, they’ll cause me to test positive for drug use. So I eat plain bagels instead. Surely this voluntary deprivation is proof of my saintliness and an excellent reason to be let off probation.”

  Judge: “You’re insane. Get the hell out of my courtroom.” (or words to that effect)

  Bet you don’t get any credit for near beer, either.

  Source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

  TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS

  Because there’s always room for improvement.

  DUBYA DOLLARS

  Today’s tip: When attempting to bribe your way to freedom, don’t use counterfeit bills.

  Our thief, “Frankie,” picked the wrong house to knock over. Frank allegedly snuck into the Des Moines, Iowa, home of 87-year-old Rozetta Lee in the early morning hours by cutting the screen on her bedroom window. Lee awoke and started screaming. Her son Charles, 53, who was sleeping in the basement heard her.

  According to Charles, upon finding Frankie in his mom’s room, he grabbed him and started hauling him outside “to whoop him a little.” Frankie, a decade and a half younger but apparently not confident in his ability to defend himself, tried to make Charles a deal: he’d give him $100 to forget it all happened. And maybe the plan would have worked, too, if it weren’t for the fact that the face on the $100 bill wasn’t Ben “It’s All About the Benjamins” Franklin, but rather George “Dubya” Bush. And whatever one’s opinion of the 43rd President of the United States, we can all agree that on a $100 bill, the man is literally worthless.

  So no freedom for Frankie; Des Moines police came and picked him up and charged him with second-degree burglary. His bail was $13,000. Wonder if he tried to pay that with Dubya bills, too.

  Source: Associated Press

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DUMB-ASS

  Olaf” was turning 40, a year in which one traditionally celebrates the onset of a midlife crisis, that all-purpose excuse that allows you to do a bunch of inadvisable things like bungee jumping, purchasing impractical cars, or dating your children’s friends, with the excuse that you’re freaking out because you’ve finally realized your hair isn’t coming back. To commemorate the occasion, Olaf’s friends had planned a surprise birthday party for him.

  It Comes As No Surprise

  Olaf found out about the surprise birthday party, and perhaps in attempt to capitalize on his newfound ability to act in a juvenile fashion, decided to pull a surprise act of his own. Unbeknownst to his friends, Olaf sneaked up and waited outside the cabin where the party was to take place, and when enough people had shown up, he took his shotgun and shot it into the air, scaring the hell out of his pals.

  What a prankster! After he scared his friends, Olaf popped out of the shadows to take credit for his mischief, and as he did so, he tripped, and the shotgun went off again. Six of his pals went off to the hospital. So did Olaf, who was not injured but was described as being in shock because he’d just shot six of his friends. The party was canceled. Olaf can expect to spend his 41st birthday alone. That’s a midlife crisis for you.

  Source: Reuters

  HE’LL NEED ONE HECK OF A WIRELESS CONNECTION

  The Italian government wanted something from Nicola Valeriani: it wanted him to buy a new computer. The Italians, and not unreasonably so, believe that computer literacy is the wave of the future. For today’s young Italians to succeed in the world markets, they would need the skills that would have them known as pioneers on the cutting edge of technology.

  To this end, the Italians gave grants to select 16-year-olds to purchase high-tech equipment; in June 2003, Valeriani was one of those selected. “As part of an initiative by my ministry known as the ‘Fly with Interne’ project you have been selected to receive a grant to help you get online and buy a new PC,” read a letter to Valeriani from Innovations Minister (there’s a gig for you) Lucio Stanca. It was an offer the government figured Valeriani couldn’t refuse.

  He refused. Sort of. Turns out Nicola Valeriani wasn’t 16. He was 116. Or would have been, had he not been dead for nearly 30 years at the time. Valeriani, who had been born in 1887 and who had fought in both World Wars, had gone offline permanently in 1974, back when the Internet was basically an inside joke between a couple of house-sized mainframes at the U.S. Department of Defense. Valeriani’s daughter, no spring chicken herself, returned the check.

  The cause for the error? According to the Italian Innovations Ministry, it was a computer glitch.

  Source: Ananova

  THE RUSSIAN VERSION OF SING-SING

  Hey, you don’t know how it happened, but somehow, you’ve managed to land yourself a spell in a Russian prison, with nothing to look forward to but beets three times a day and a dog-eared copy of The Gulag Archipelago. Sure you’re innocent. Everybody’s innocent in prison, pal. The question is: how are you going to get out?

  Easy: sing. In May 2003, the Moscow radio station Troika looked at the popularity of the various “Pop Idol” shows around the world and decided that they were all doing it wrong. After all, it’s not like these fresh-scrubbed young Westerners singing painfully earnest ballads really lose anything if they don’t win—they just go back to singing at the local dinner theater. The contest needed a little drama. It needed a little excitement. It needed singers with desire, with drive, with convictions.

  You Know, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Had a Fabulous Singing Voice

  So they hatched a plan: all across the 748-prison Russian penal system were more than one million inhabitants with lots of time to work on some songs. So, Russian prisoners would compete in a singing contest in which the winner would get fabulous prizes, including his or her freedom and a recording contract. The losers, presumably, would be returned to their dank and festering holes. Prison officials had been asked to disqualify the really bad eggs, but the definition of “really bad” seems to be on something of a sliding scale, since several convicted killers were allowed to croon for their chance at a musical acquittal.

  Tastelessly exploitative? Not according to a Troika spokesperson, who reasoned, “There’s lots of talented people out there in those prisons, and this is just the way for them to be discovered.” But don’t they realize that fame is a prison, too? Just with better bathing facilities.

  In any event, remember: if you’re ever thrown into a Russian slammer, start working on those scales. Ask your cellmate to help. Maybe you two could sing a duet.

  Source: Ananova

  ALIAS, ME

  How carefully do the police check names on their police warrants? In Pinellas County, Florida, not carefully enough. A man was held for six days on a 33-year-old narcotics possession warrant because his first and last name matched that of the wanted man. The middle name was different, but police said they thought the middle name might have been switched as an alias. That’s a pretty subtle alias. The man was finally released when his fingerprints proved him innocent. We smell a lawsuit!

  Source: Associated Press

  SO MUCH FOR PUPPY LOVE

  A dog is man’s best friend, but the converse is not always true. Look at what people do: they leave their dogs at home all day, alone, while they go off to work or school and have full, engaging lives. When the humans do come home, they’re so tired from all that working they hardly have time to spend with their puppy pals. And if the dog does manage to guilt its master into a walk, it’s usually a quick trip to the nearest fire hydrant. A dog’s life really is a dog’s life; it’s not just a convenient expression.

  So thought German artist Karl-Friedrich Lentze. “Some dogs only get a five minute walkies on the lead and that’s not enough even to sniff another canine, let alone indulge in a bit of fun,” he said in a business application to the City of Berlin.

  His proposed business? A dog brothel.

  Dogs Just Want to Have Fun

  Lentze’s plan: for about $40, those poor neglected stay-at-home dogs would get, well, you know, sex.

  The city council was not amused, but the rejec
tion was, shall we say, based on extremely spurious, not to mention highly judgmental, reasons. “Dog sex is for the purpose of reproduction only,” a report by a city official maintained. “There is no evidence of a problem with sexual frustration among the city’s dogs.”

  This contention might come as a surprise to anyone whose leg has received the amorous attention of a Jack Russell terrier. But Berlin’s city fathers planned for that objection. “When dogs rub themselves on people’s legs it is just a result of boredom and an attempt to show who’s boss,” the report maintained.

  So all those Berlinerhunden are just plain out of luck. “A visit to the brothel would only reinforce a dog’s sense of importance and make him more troublesome, not less,” the city council report stated in its rejection of Lentze’s business. But perhaps it’s for the best. Imagine being a Berliner caught outside a brothel and trying to explain to people that you’re just there to pick up a dog. People would run screaming.

  Source: Ananova

  NOW HEAR THIS

  A Brazilian man had a severe ear infection, so he went to the local clinic to get it looked at. After some time, he thought he heard his name called, so he went into the doctor. Turns out the doctor had called someone else—who had come in for a vasectomy—which our man allowed the doctor to perform! When asked why he let a doctor fiddle with equipment that had so little to do with his ear, the man replied that he’d just assumed the infection had spread.

  That’s some ear infection!

  Source: Reuters

  DUMB MOVIE FESTIVAL: FREDDY GOT FINGERED (2001)

  Our Entry: Freddy Got Fingered, starring Tom Green and Rip Torn

  The Plot (Such As It Is): A diminishingly youthful cartoonist (Green) antagonizes everyone and everything around him, especially his father (Torn), whom he accuses of molesting his brother (the Freddy of the title). Along the way Green does some astoundingly vile things involving barnyard animals and umbilical cords that are not only not worth describing, but probably shouldn’t even be thought about. Green also cowrote and directed this film, which is generally regarded as the worst movie of the 21st century to date.

  Fun Fact: When Tom Green made this movie, he was married to Drew Barrymore, who has a small cameo in the film. Now he’s not. Coincidence?

  Total North American Box Office: $14,249,005 (source: The-Numbers.com). Frighteningly enough, the film cost $15 million, which means after home video release, it probably actually became profitable. That noise you hear is one of the seals of the Apocalypse being cracked.

  The Critics Rave!

  “Green is perhaps the only person on earth who could make a moviegoer actually nostalgic for the subtle intellectual brilliance of Pauly Shore.”—Sacramento News & Review

  “How bad are we talking about? Consider this: At a recent preview screening for an audience top-heavy with members of the target youth-market demographic, the picture generated a steady stream of walkouts. And when the film finally, mercifully ended, the hardy few who remained were in such a hurry to leave that—are you ready for this? are you sitting down?—many left behind their souvenir, movie tie-in T-shirts.”—San Francisco Examiner

  “If you go to see this movie, Green will earn the money to make another one. That’s between you and your conscience.” —Jam! Showbiz

  “Putting [Green] in the director’s chair is like handing a drunk gorilla the keys to the monkey house—the result is complete chaos, a deafening free-for-all of screaming, hollering, and fluid-spraying.”—Reel.com

  “This movie doesn’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t the bottom of the barrel. This movie isn’t below the bottom of the barrel. This movie doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS

  It’s time again for Tips for Stupid Criminals! Because smart criminals don’t need tips, do they?

  THROW THE BOOK AT ME, WHY DON’T YOU?

  Today’s tip: When being sentenced for a crime, don’t taunt your judge into giving you the maximum sentence.

  You wouldn’t think someone would need this tip. But it would have come in handy for “Joe,” who faced Judge Craig Doran in New York for sentencing on a burglary charge (he’d stolen jewelry from his girlfriend and her parents). Judge Doran accused Joe of being unremorseful, and Joe, all riled up, dared the judge to do his worst. “Are you gonna sentence me to the max?” Joe said, full of the bravado that makes for a great story in the big house recreation yard. “Is that what you’re getting at? Go ahead! You’re going to give it to me anyway!” Doran, apparently an obliging judge if there ever was one, sentenced Joe to the slammer for the maximum seven years.

  Joe’s lawyers maintained that their client was indeed remorseful. They probably should have checked with Joe for confirmation on that.

  Source: Ananova

  YOU FOUND WHAT IN MY FREEZER?

  What’s in your freezer right now? No, don’t go look. Do it from memory. Not so easy to remember, is it? And you’re probably forgetting that bag of mixed vegetables that’s been in there longer than you’ve been married, or the box of diet Fudgsicles that came to live in the chilly confines of your freezer roughly the same time Eric the Red landed in Greenland. Let’s face it, it’s easy to lose track of what’s in there.

  But some items are more memorable than others. So we wonder what was with up with “Sal” and “Eva,” two citizens of De Leon Springs, Florida.

  One day, officers from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came to their door and asked to look through their freezer. Just a few hours before, Sal and Eva had been written up for shooting at deer from their car; they’d been found in their car with a shotgun and open beer cans shortly after officers heard gunshots in the Ocala National Forest. Now the officers wanted to make sure the two of them weren’t in possession of illegal venison.

  What Did They Have to Lose?

  Sal and Eva gave them permission to look because, as it happens, there was no venison in the freezer. But Sal and Eva forgot about something else they had in the freezer: two plastic bags filled with a total of about a pound of marijuana. That’s a lot of pot. Even if you’re baked to the gills, we’re betting you’d probably remember where you’d stashed that.

  What an interesting collection of charges Sal and Eva ended up with: felony possession of marijuana and taking a deer at night, plus discharging a firearm on a highway and possession of an open container.

  Kind of makes you want to go check out your freezer doesn’t it? You know, just to be sure.

  Source: Ft. Myers News-Press

  SMOKE ’EM IF YOU’VE GOT ’EM

  The two Austrian customs officers’ jobs included confiscating black market cigarettes and then destroying them. However, they weren’t supposed to destroy them by smoking them. Or give them to friends and family. Or hold smoking parties in the customs office with confiscated liquor to lubricate the partiers. Just a hunch, but this is probably why these two customs officers were charged with misuse of office.

  Source: Ananova

  YOU OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES. OR NOT.

  One of the great mantras of the Internet is “information wants to be free.” Now, most people think that means that all those MP3s and pictures of scantily clad people doing scantily clad things want to be downloaded onto your hard drive without you having to pay for it. Well, that is one interpretation—one that anyone with a copyright gets a little twitchy about. But we’re thinking more about the personal and dark side of that particular maxim, which is that anything you ever do on the Internet is going to come back and kick you right in the gut when you least expect it.

  Just Her Type—Dumb As a Post

  Ask British politician Phil Grayson about this one. In March 2003, Grayson started receiving e-mail from “Julie Masters,” who claimed to be a 23-year-old woman who liked older men, a category for which the 45-year-old Grayson was eminently qualified. Apparently unaware that the numb
er of actual hot 23-year-old women soliciting older men for attention on the entire Internet could be counted on one hand, and that in any event the very last thing a married, father-of-two politician wants to do is get involved with a presumed younger woman he’s never even seen, Grayson began an e-mail correspondence that included steamy fantasies, which we can all agree are better left unsaid.

  But what fun are stories without pictures? Apparently no fun at all, because in addition to the fantasies, Grayson included pictures in his e-mails, and not the sort you show people when they come over for dinner, unless your idea of predinner entertainment is to show your guests pictures of yourself wearing suspenders, tights, and no underwear. (In which case, never invite us for dinner.)

  Seduced and Betrayed

  This is where that “information wants to be free” thing kicks in. Turns out “Julie Masters” was not the special friend she claimed to be, because she sent the pictures to each and every member of the borough council of which Grayson was a member. This was of course very bad news for Grayson; imagine coming into work and realizing that everyone in your office has seen you naked. It’s not so much of a problem if you’re a stripper, but how many of us are? And as bad as it was for Grayson, think about it from the other end of things; your coworker wants to talk to you about issues for the next meeting and all she is doing is picturing you in tights and suspenders. And no underwear. It’s distracting, to say the least.