Wednesday
There is a lot of stupidity about. To come up with examples from the world of politics would merely be depressing. In Act Two Scene Three of Macbeth the play takes a break from people murdering each other and Scotland descending into civil war so that a comic doorman can make lame jokes about brewer's droop. In the spirit of that doorman, here are two wavelets in the world tsunami of stupidity that flowed my way recently:
Example 1: Barnado's, the children's charity, has put one of those collection bags through my door. The slogan on the envelope reads:
"We believe in children, do you?"
I would so like to say, "No, I'm a paedgnostic," but that might be misunderstood. This slogan does not quite reach the heights of meaninglessness scaled by "Us needs you 'cause you're Younique" that featured in the book Spacetime Donuts, but that was fictional and meant to be stupid.
Example 2: Several thousand of those things in which Barnardo's so ardently believe took their Biology GCSEs today. One syllabus, extruded by Edexcel, is called 360Science. Yeah, without a space. No further evidence that it will be 360Stupid is really required, but in case anyone is wondering... a family informant swears that one of the questions on today's paper featured a picture of a cat bearing the caption "This photograph shows a cat."
What have you seen lately that is amusingly stupid?
UPDATE: to my mortifishameification I realise that "paedgnostic" would mean almost the opposite of what I meant. Consider it replaced with paedo-agnostic, which sounds even worse. Of course one could also tell the Barnardo's collector that one takes either the weak or strong apaedist position.
I suggest frequenting The Fail Blog(Link) where failure and humiliation are presented with humor.
Posted by marshall at May 20, 2009 11:11 PM
Someone once asked Mark Twain if he believed in infant baptism. He is supposed to have replied like this- "Believe in it? Why, I've seen it with my own eyes!"
Variations of this theme could provide laughter for ages, and for other occasions.
Posted by Nuke Gray! at May 21, 2009 02:25 AM
Here in America we're abjured every year to "Drive carefully, school's out" in the Summer and to "Drive carefully, schools are open" the rest of the year. One suspects that the logical connection between driving carefully and the status of school is a little weak.
Posted by PersonFromPorlock at May 21, 2009 02:44 AM
Private enterprise can be just as stupid. A real estate office called themselves Integrity- and their signs all proudly proclaim 'Integrity- For Sale!' Do we chuckle at their cynicism, or applaud their honesty?
Posted by Nuke Gray! at May 21, 2009 03:04 AM
Another great blog to visit if you want to laugh at other people's stupidity would be Cake Wrecks.
Posted by Ted Schuerzinger at May 21, 2009 03:47 AM
Or there's What Not to Crochet. Though every now and then I find myself thinking, actually that's kind of ... no. No. That way madness lies.
Posted by Natalie Solent at May 21, 2009 08:39 AM
Natalie, great to have you back, post more often please!
Barnado's is quite possibly the biggest Fake Charity of them all, so any nonsense from them is just par for the course.
And the picture of a cat should of course have been captioned "ceci n'est pas un chat", but I guess that would have been beyond today's schoolchildren - and probably their teachers - on so many levels that it is not worth thinking about. Shame.
Posted by Andrew Duffin at May 21, 2009 12:08 PM
The Darwin Award are always entertaining.
There is a chain of tax preparation offices in my area of the US (possibly national in scope?) with the odd name "Liberty Tax Service". (Their logo is the Statue of Liberty, and during the height of tax season they frequently have some poor schmuck dressed in a SoL costume outside by the street waving at traffic. Sad.) I am always bemused by the choice of name, and am of the opinion that "Servitude Tax Service" would be far more apt.
Posted by Laird at May 21, 2009 06:03 PM
Andrew Duffin:
What's specifically wrong with Barnado's, that is more than any of the monstrously bloated, socialist mega-charities (Oxfam et al)?
Posted by Snag at May 21, 2009 08:57 PM
Vice President Buffoon's commencement speech at Wake Forest University in North Carolina was the most amusing and at the same time horrifying spectacle I've heard about in some time. Tim Blair does the honors:
Posted by Robert Speirs at May 22, 2009 12:00 AM
For horror and humor combined, check out Vice President Buffoon at Wake Forest, North Carolina (courtesy of Tim Blair):
Posted by Robert Speirs at May 22, 2009 12:03 AM
Do you guarantee the video is twice as funny as anything else? Is that why you posted it twice, Robert?
Posted by Nuke Gray! at May 22, 2009 01:59 AM
In defence of Vice President "Joe" Biden, he had a stroke some years ago (mild damage, but still damage), and sometimes does not really know what he is saying (to use the overused words "he lives in a fantasy world"). Whoever wrote the speech for him may have decided to have some fun with this weakness (after all he would have read out "I am a teapot", and believed it, if that had been written in front of him).
Of course the media could have pointed this out before the election - but they considered their duty to cover such things up (Biden helped win over Catholic voters and voters in key states like Pennsylvania - due to his Scraton roots, although his father's riding to hounds and other playboy aspects have been rewritten to make him working class).
Of course Biden (or whoever tells him which way to vote) also had the third most leftist voting record in the Senate - so could be counted upon to be give Obama no trouble ("I will select a Vice President who will challenge my thinking" was one of Barack Obama's many blatent lies). Almost needless to say, the media presented him as a "moderate", his voting record as third most leftist Senator was not reported by the mainstream media.
Vice President Biden also provides comic relief (now The One is safely elected).
So comics can say "we are not biased, we attack the Obama Administration - here are some Biden bashing jokes".
Actually it is bad as (as I point out above) the man has mild brain damage.
He talks a lot and is actually quite witty in his talk sometimes - but he loses his chain of thought and goes off into fantasy.
It is not funny, because a man like Biden (however nice he may be) should not be Vice President.
Posted by Paul Marks at May 25, 2009 06:43 PM
No, a man like Biden should not be Vice President, one heartbeat away from the Presidency. Of course, no one in his right mind (and probably not even a psychotic) wants that, so I guess it's pretty good insurance for Obama. (Having Pelosi in the #3 position is just belt-and-suspenders.)
Posted by Laird at May 26, 2009 03:25 AM
Dear Natalie
I second Andrew Duffin's welcome-back and let's-hear-more-from-you*.
Another site with a sharp eye & ear for low-octane mental operations is Hayibo.com. No-one is sacred there either -- it has shown exhilarating sauce in hauling Stephen Hawking over the coals for "stating the bleeding obvious" on the Middle East and -- to take iconoclasm even further -- ticking off Nelson Mandela for trying to get the vote extended to 14-year-olds when he was President.
*To me you are the yin to Mark Steyn's yang. I do hope you won't leave him yanging about alone so long again...
Power to both your elbows -- or better still, to both of yours and both of his -- which means, power to all four of your elbows -- no, wait, I don't mean that --
Posted by Tony Shaw at June 3, 2009 09:17 AM
