Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2

by John Michael Scalzi

  Winkelman contended that he was just using the walkie-talkies to keep in touch with the members of his large hunting group. But as part of the conversation the officer heard had Winkelman saying he was off to wake up a bunch of deer, followed by his wife saying that she was in her hunting stand “loaded, and ready to go,” he wasn’t buying that particular rationalization.

  Time in the big house for this outdoorsy celebrity? Nope: Winkelman entered an “Alford plea,” which is what you do if you want to say you’re not guilty, yet reluctantly admit that if you were tried in front of a jury they’d probably beg to differ. As part of his plea agreement, Winkelman paid a fine and wrote about hunting ethics in his columns; if he can keep from doing something like that again for a year, his legal slate will be wiped clean. No doubt deer all over Minnesota are breathing easier after this decision. Now if they could just figure out a way to get those hunters to ditch those totally unfair rifles.

  Source: Associated Press, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, NodakOutdoors.com

  Flashy Stupidity

  We love the digital camera revolution as much as anybody. Nothing makes us happier than not having to shoot a whole roll of film and then pay for developing before we can see that we’ve taken yet another picture in which we’ve lopped off someone’s head. Now we can see our bad photography instantaneously—and delete it before anyone else finds out.

  Still, there’s a dark side to the digital revolution, which is that the decreasing size and increasing ubiquity of digital cameras are encouraging the pervs out there to snap more creepy little pictures than ever before. The only good news about that is that while they’re making cameras smaller, they’re not making the perverts any smarter. This is especially the case with pervs in public, who are not smart enough to realize that public displays of stupidity call attention to themselves and also the attention of the cops.

  As one did at the Roosevelt Field Mall in Garden City, New York, when “Sam” decided to devote a day to “upskirting”—a charming little practice that involves slipping a digital camera under a woman’s skirt and photographing what you find there. Sam apparently had already had a busy day of photography when he slipped his camera under the miniskirt of a woman as she traveled up an escalator. The woman was apparently unaware that this creep was photographing her, probably because she didn’t have eyes in back of her head.

  Alas, poor Sam. Neither did he. Because if he had, he might have seen that the two men who stepped on to the escalator behind him were cops, who quickly discovered what Sam was up to. It was the flash that gave him away. Stupid, stupid Sam. Sam was nabbed as soon as he got off the escalator; the cops checked the camera for photos. For Sam, the instant gratification that digital cameras can provide also immediately provided instamatic proof of his felonious photos. He was charged with unlawful surveillance, which carries a maximum sentence of four years in the slammer.

  Not many opportunities for “upskirting” there, Sam. And if there are, it’s probably best not to take a picture.

  Source: New York Newsday, New York Post

  Dim Bulbs in Bright Lights

  Zoolander (2001)

  Our Dumb Guy: Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller)

  Our Story: Male Supermodel Derek Zoolander, depressed that he’s lost the coveted best male model fashion award to up-and-coming Hansel (Owen Wilson), takes a gig as the head model for a sleazy clothes designer (Will Ferrell). Little does he know—or could he understand—that in doing so he’s being primed to assassinate the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Manchurian Candidate style.

  Dumb or Stoned? You can’t hate him because he’s beautiful, but you can pity him because he’s stupid and certainly no on drugs. Zoolander may be pretty, but he is also pretty dumb.

  High Point of Low Comedy: Zoolander and Hansel are confounded by how to get files out of a computer, so they start hitting it and grunting in frustration. As they do so, the theme music from 2001: A Space Odyssey flares up in the background.

  And Now, In His Own Words: Zoolander delivers the “eugoogaly” after his roomates’ tragic deaths: “If there is anything that this horrible tragedy can teach us, it’s that a male model’s life is a precious, precious commodity. Just because we have chiseled abs and stunning features, it doesn’t mean that we too can’t not die in a freak gasoline fight accident.”

  He’s Dumb, But Is the Film Good? Eh. It’s not as bad as it could have been—male models? The fashion industry? All in all, it does a good job of poking fun at the really, really good-looking who are really, really not thinking.

  CHAPTER 10

  Morons and Motor Vehicles

  Ever notice how, the moment you get behind the wheel, other drivers’ IQs drop about 50 points? We didn’t really have a difficult time filling up this chapter with stories of automotive imbecility, which was just plain scary. Heck, we weren’t sure we wanted to drive again when faced with the misadventures of intelligence-challenged on the highways and byways of this great big world. So for you, we offer a mere taste, just enough to remind you to be careful out there on the road.

  On the Road, don’t Look at These Curves

  Watching TV while driving is bad enough, but, please, we implore you: don’t watch porn while driving your car. Driving is har . . . er . . . difficult enough when you’re not distracted by a small screen filled with “adult entertainment.” Not only are you distracting yourself, there’s a good chance that you’re distracting others on the road. As everyone knows, catching an animated flick or a Barney episode is easy enough to do through a moving minivan window since you can totally see what’s on the screen from three lanes over. Purple dinosaurs are one thing, but pornography is a horse of a different color altogether, and one that certainly grabs a lot of adult attention.

  If appeals to your sense of safety or decency don’t move you, try this: if you watch porn in your car, you’ll get a trip to the pokey. Such was the fate of “Derek,” a Schenectady, New York, resident whose tricked-out Mercedes Benz included three DVD screens full of pure, X-rated viewing. As Derek tooled around the greater Schenectady area on this particular day, his in-car movie of choice was the somewhat disturbingly named Chocolate Foam, starring Pebbles, famous for her star turns in Lewd Conduct #6 and Ebony Extreme: Kitten.

  While Derek was stopped at a red light, he was so engrossed in Pebbles’s Bam-Bam, as it were, that he didn’t notice that behind his car was an unmarked police vehicle. And you say, well, it was unmarked. Fair enough. But even giving Derek that one, the Schenectady Police Department building, located at that very corner, should not have been difficult to miss. But we guess it wasn’t.

  Derek was pulled over to be cited for playing porn in his car, which is—who knew?—illegal in New York state; the law makes it a no-no to both watch TV while driving and publicly display “adult” material. Derek then compounded the problem by giving the policemen a false name when he went to get fingerprinted, possibly because he was also driving around with a suspended license. So on top of his charge of these other two charges, he also got slapped with a forgery charge. Oh, Derek.

  Source: WNYT-TV, New York Daily News

  Vehicular Stupidity, Canadian Style

  Americans have this image of Canadians as a sensible people, but it turns out that they too have a vast potential for incredibly stupid acts. As evidence of this, allow us to present to you a compilation of vehicular stupidity from the Great White North, from just one province (Ontario) over just one weekend in 2004, as noted by the Ontario Provincial Police. These Canadians, at the very least, are not terribly sensible.

  1.One 24-year-old driver was clocked doing 150 kph (93 mph); when he was pulled over, he explained that he was terrified of the freeways and was speeding so he could get off of it faster.

  2.Another sterling excuse for speeding, from a 27-year-old: “I’m running out of gas and I wanted to get to the gas station fast.” (And now, the science: to drive faster increases air turbulence around your car, increasing drag—and lowering your gas mileag
e. Dope.)

  3.One car was stopped because the windshield was taped to the car. That’s worth a trip on the back of a tow truck.

  4.Our personal award for stupidest Canadian driver goes to the guy who not only neglected to wear a seatbelt (dumb) but also didn’t bother to strap down the four children in the car with him (criminally idiotic); one of the kids was holding the driver’s bucket seat steady because the seat was completely broken (just plain sad). The car was towed and the driver got slapped with five moving violations, one for each unseatbelted human.

  5.A close second: a fellow, who had been waved over for a babyseat inspection, tried to switch seats with the passenger before the cops came over. Not that it mattered, since both the guy and his female passenger had suspended licenses. But wait, there’s more! The driver also had no insurance, the car’s plates were stolen, and the driver was wanted on multiple warrants. And to top it all off, there was a court order forbidding him to come within 100 meters of his passenger. Car towed; woman and baby to a shelter; man to the slammer.

  Source: The Star (Toronto)

  Driving Toward Trouble

  There’s never a good time to display road rage. But some times are worse than others. One of the worst would be when you’re in front of policemen, while you’re out on bail, and there’s an illegal substance in your car.

  Certainly “Adam” didn’t think this perfect storm of circumstances required him to play it cool. When he came storming out of his Florida house to rev up his Honda Accord, it didn’t bother him in the slightest that there were ten uniformed deputies of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office participating in a community event. In fact, Adam blasted down his street at high speeds, actually aiming at the cops, who quite naturally signaled to Adam to pull over. Instead Adam yelled at the cops to get out of his way, and phrased that request using language one typically would not impart to someone wearing a badge.

  A couple of the sheriff’s deputies got into their own cars and caught up with Adam, at which point there ensued a veritable festival of ticket-writing. And during this festival, the cops just happened to notice a coffee can in Adam’s car, which just happened to contain about 20 grams of cocaine. And that’s not just a moving violation, friends: That’s possession with intent to sell.

  And for the kicker: Adam was already out on bond for another completely unrelated charge, but seeing as he lacked the wisdom not to antagonize the cops or traffic in coke, he was placed in the cooler without the opportunity to spring himself once more. This is what road rage gets you, especially when it’s so poorly timed.

  Source: WESH.com, Associated Press

  I wasn’t Speeding. The Earth Just Rotated Slower

  Grab a pencil: It’s time for a quiz! According to Australia’s Herald Sun newspaper, which of the following are actual excuses given by people caught violating the law in their wheeled vehicles:

  1.“A red light means stop? You know, I never knew that before.”

  2.“I would have put on the brakes, but my cat was asleep on my lap and I didn’t want to disturb him.”

  3.“I just wanted to see if my speedometer is accurate when I go really fast.”

  4.“I was in a hurry to get home. My dog’s having an epileptic fit.”

  5.“I’m not wearing a seatbelt because I have a broken arm.”

  6.“I was driving my motorbike at 200 kilometers an hour (124 mph) because the sun is setting and it’s dangerous to drive a motorcycle at night.”

  Which ones are real excuses? They all are. They’re just not real good excuses. Drive carefully, now. And remember, red means stop.

  Source: Herald Sun (Australia)

  The Wrong Fake ID

  You know, there are a lot of really excellent reasons not to use a fake ID. And here’s another!

  Meet “Jim.” Jim was zooming down the road near Lafayette, Indiana, when he was pulled over by a state trooper for speeding. Now, at this point we don’t know why Jim decided it would be a prudent course of action to present the state trooper with a fake ID, although if we had to guess, we would figure because that way the ticket would be written to someone else, and Jim could continue his speedy ways unencumbered by points on his actual license. So up comes the officer, and out comes the fake ID. It’s a good plan.

  Except for the small detail that the fake ID is from a real person. And that real person is wanted in Texas for attempted murder, a more serious charge to have on one’s record than speeding. Jim gets a free trip to jail, and after he presents proof of his true identity, he is also charged with identity deception and false informing, the first of which can get you three years in prison (we also suspect the original speeding violation was transferred over to Jim’s real name. The Indiana State Police are just helpful that way).

  The moral to the story is to just show your real ID. Or at the very least, don’t show an ID that has a thicker police file than you do. In that case it’s the crime you didn’t commit that’s going to get you in trouble.

  Source: Associated Press

  A Short Cut, Or a Long Way Down?

  We’ve all lost our car in a mall parking lot: You park, go shopping, and the next thing you know it’s six hours later and you can hardly remember what section of the parking garage your car is in. Then you wander aimlessly and wonder how you’ll ever get home. So when you do find your car, you want to run to it as quickly as you can, like a lost love, and then never return to the mall again, or at least until the next time you want a corn dog or need a killer pair of shoes.

  That being that case, we understand how “Gladys” felt when, after wandering though an Orlando, Florida, mall’s garage, she spotted her car—only it was one building over from where she stood. The safest way to get to her car was to go back into the mall and find the exit that led to the garage where her car was waiting for her. This whole process would have taken several minutes. But instead, Gladys was so anxious to reunite with her vehicle that she decided to just leap the two-and-a-half-foot space that separated the car garages to reach her car in a matter of seconds.

  One small detail was overlooked; while the gap between the parking garages was about two-and-a-half-feet wide, the parking garage was also about six stories up. So when Gladys didn’t quite make the leap across, she made the plunge down. Way down. All the way down to the concrete six stories below her.

  The good news is that she lived. The bad news is that the shortcut ended up costing her a lot more than lost time.

  Source: WESH.com

  A Crushing Loss

  Now, we realize that y’all don’t come to a book called the Book of the Dumb for helpful public service announcements, but on the other hand we don’t want you doing something stupid if it can be avoided. As much as we like writing about people doing dumb things, we don’t want any of you, our fine readers, to show up in the book unintentionally. So here’s our small piece of advice for you today:

  If you lose something in a trash Dumpster, make sure it’s not pick-up day before you go digging in it.

  It seems a simple lesson, but was lost on “Irene,” a woman who lost her keys in the Dumpster outside her Ridgeland, Mississippi, apartment complex. Irene needed her keys—who doesn’t? So in she went, sifting through the trash so she could get on with the rest of her life. We guess either she didn’t realize the trash guys were coming that day, or simply assumed that she could get out in time—or that the garbage guys would look in to see if there were any actual live people in the Dumpster before they emptied it. Whatever Irene’s reasoning was, it turned out to be faulty. The trash guys showed up, speared the dumpster with that forklift-like attachment, and tossed its contents into the trash truck, with Irene along for the ride.

  A stinky situation—but also a life-threatening one for Irene, since after the dumpster’s contents ended up in the garbage truck, the truck’s driver started compacting the trash, which would have made things a very tight squeeze for Irene. Fortunately for Irene, people heard her screaming from the back of the truck a
nd told the driver to stop. Irene was pulled out of the mess and taken to a nearby hospital for pains in several of her joints. No kidding. No word if she actually ever found her keys.

  David Myhan, a district manager for Waste Management, whose Dumpster it was, suggests that people who have lost something in the garbage call the company, who will dispatch someone to root through the garbage for you, which will keep you from getting dirty and/or compacted into a square shape. “We take this real seriously,” he said, to a local newspaper. “We do not want people getting in our containers.” Leave the trash-digging to the professionals, folks.

  Source: The Clarion Ledger (Jackson, MS)

  She Can Park There For 17 Years

  Let’s say you’ve been given a 100-year-old gold coin worth $1,000, because, oh, it was “$1000 century-old coin day” at the local minor league ball park. What you should do next is take that coin home, lovingly encase it in plastic or a wall safe, and tell the children that if they so much as breathe on it that you’ll ground them until they’re eighteen. What you should not do is leave it around like so much loose change. Because if you do, you may do something stupid with it.

  As did “Marta,” from Paarl, South Africa. Seems that she inherited from her parents some very valuable gold sovereign coins, minted in 1890. She stored them rather lackadaisically, and they managed to get mixed in with a bunch of other coins. So one day she scoops up some coins, drives her car downtown, parks. and slips a coin into the parking meter. One of the 1890 coins worth $1,000. That’s a lot of parking.