Uncle John's Presents: Book of the Dumb Read online

  And something did: Eva’s magic potion burst into flames, which spread to the rest of her home. Eva had to be treated at the scene for smoke inhalation.

  All in all, not a very magical moment for Eva.

  Source: Ananova

  AND IOWA’S STREETS WILL FLOW CORNHUSKER RED!

  The last time American states went to war, hundreds of thousands died on both sides, brother fought brother, Atlanta burned, and Scarlett went hungry. So interstate warfare is not something one enters into lightly. It’s better to let state rivalries be fought the way they’ve been for over a century now: on the football field. Heck, it’s kept Ohio and Michigan from annihilating each other for decades.

  But some people just aren’t satisfied with long bombs that involve a pigskin. They wanted real war. Take Nebraska senator Pam Brown of Omaha. In May 2003, Senator Brown tried to convince her colleagues that what Nebraska needed was some major combat with neighboring Iowa. She introduced a piece of legislation that declared “a state of hostility with the sovereign state of Iowa until such a time as the state of Iowa ceases the unjust and relentless appropriation of the resources of the citizens of Nebraska.”

  Iowa Is the Favorite

  A case of cross-border cow-snatching or cornfield razing? Nothing so agricultural. Seems that Nebraskans like gambling and they can’t legally do it in Nebraska. So they cross the border into Iowa, which allows gambling, and spend a whole bunch of cash that Senator Brown thinks should be spent in the home state. How much? An estimated $250 million a year at the Council Bluff casinos, which are located, mockingly, right across the border from Senator Brown’s Omaha. Interestingly, the declaration of war was attached as a rider on a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow gambling in Nebraska.

  There are a couple of roadblocks to Nebraska going to war against Iowa, primarily that the U.S. constitution doesn’t allow individual states to take up arms against each other. Yes, yes, the Civil War, but that was absolutely the last time, kids.

  Anyway, Senator Brown later rescinded her proposed declaration of war. Iowans from Des Moines to Ottumwa can sleep safe, knowing their borders are safe from rampaging Cornhusker militias.

  Of course, that’s just what the Nebraskans want the Iowans to think.

  Source: Associated Press

  “Johnson having argued for some time with a pertinacious gentleman; his opponent, who had talked in a very puzzling manner, happened to say, ‘I don’t understand you, Sir’; upon which Johnson observed, ‘Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.’”

  —James Boswell

  BABY, YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR—IN SEVEN YEARS

  When reading this story, give “Otto,” our hero, this much credit: he knew he was too drunk to drive. When it came time to go, Otto took a moment of (relatively) sober reflection and realized that more people than just himself would be at risk if he got behind the wheel. So let it be noted that Otto chose not to drive drunk. In the moment of truth, he took his keys and handed them to his friend “Susie” and told her to drive.

  Too bad she was nine years old.

  While Susie was behind the wheel, Otto’s car veered off the road and hit a tent at a campground in Moses Lake, Washington. Unfortunately, there were people in the tent at the time; two were injured but fortunately were expected to make a full recovery.

  Meanwhile, Otto is in trouble with the Grant County sheriff’s office. True enough, he didn’t drink and drive. But handing the keys to someone whose entire driving experience up to that point may have consisted of pushing along her Malibu Barbie Corvette really isn’t any better. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk—or prepubescently.

  Source: Associated Press

  “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.”

  —H. L. Mencken

  AND HERE I THOUGHT GUTVIK WAS A KIND OF FISH

  I KEA, the Swedish furniture giant, is known for affordable, stylish pieces that can be assembled at home with a single freakish tool. It’s also known for giving each of its products a Scandinavian name. From the Albäck solid birch hat and coat stand (“Eighteen knobs in different heights make it useful for everyone”) to the Wicke computer desk (with swing-out mouse shelf and optional drapes to hide your workspace), everything IKEA sells has a name that’s often amusingly unpronounceable and which you will undoubtedly forget the moment you get the thing home.

  Just Put Glimma on the Duvemar

  Sometimes a word IKEA uses to describe a product will resemble words in other languages like Bar magnets (which are not actually bar magnets), Curry chairs, and the Flabb wall lamp. Other names are not real words in English but are snigger-worthy if you have an infantile mind (for example, the Beslut conference chair or the Diktad line of furnishings), which makes one wonder how carefully the IKEA head office pays attention to how the names might translate in other places.

  Gutvik? I’ll Take Two!

  Evidence that IKEA doesn’t pay much attention to how the names might translate came in April 2003 when it put the Gutvik bunk beds on sale across Europe. IKEA maintains that the word is the name of a small town in Sweden (the town is actually in Norway, 330 kilometers from Trondheim). But as it happens, it’s also a slang word in Germany, where it means “good f***.”

  By the time someone pointed this out to the IKEA folks, ads for the beds had been printed up, sent out to newspapers, and plastered on windows. The ads, as you might imagine, were hastily withdrawn.

  However, interestingly enough, as of this writing the Gutvik bunk beds are still on sale on the German IKEA Web site. As they might say in Sweden, whööps.

  Source: Ananova

  ON SOLID GROUNDS

  A Romanian woman asked for a divorce from her husband on the grounds that the man kept calling out the name of his first wife while he slept—every night for the three months since they had been married. “How could I live with a man who sleeps besides me but has sex with the ex-wife in his dreams?” she asked the court. Well, it is marginally better than the other way around.

  Source: Ananova

  TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS

  Welcome to Tips for Stupid Criminals! Because, let’s be honest, stupid criminals need all the tips they can get.

  YOU LOOK AWFULLY FAMILIAR

  Today’s tip: When handing a stolen ID to a store clerk to cash a stolen check, make sure the person on the ID is not the store clerk in question.

  Seems that down in sultry Louisiana, a store clerk was visiting a friend in Metairie when her car was broken into and her purse was stolen, along with her checkbook, ID, and other objects typically tucked away in a purse. A week later, our clerk had just punched in to work when her first customer in line wrote out a check for $259.17. The clerk thought the checkbook looked familiar and the check even more so. Perhaps it was the Looney Tunes characters on the checks that were the giveaway, or else it was the clerk’s own name on the check. Either way, the clerk asked for ID and was handed her own, recently stolen driver’s license. “I still don’t know how she didn’t realize it was me,” the clerk told a reporter. Further examination of the customer’s purse after her arrest netted ID cards from five other women. It’s unknown if any of them were store clerks as well.

  Source: New Orleans Times-Picayune

  THE REALLY STUPID QUIZ: ESCAPED PRISONERS

  Put on your thinking caps, because it’s time for a Really Stupid Quiz. In this quiz (and others like it throughout the book, you’ll be presented with three news stories. One of them is true; two of them are false. All of them feature someone doing something really stupid. Your job: decide which one of the three is really stupid (i.e., actually happened). Think it’s going to be easy? Guess again.

  1. A German criminal who had escaped from a city jail in Hamburg was rearrested after he posted an online personal ad admitting he was an escaped felon. On the German version of Yahoo! Personals, he wrote, “In the spirit of openness, I have to say I ha
ve a criminal past and I am hiding from police as I have escaped from jail. But I am looking forward to turning over a new leaf with the right woman.” Yahoo! staff notified police, and an undercover officer, who posed as a woman looking to meet a match, arrested the criminal as he waited for his “date” at a café in Bremen.

  2. An escapee from a São Paulo, Brazil, prison was rearrested on his first day at his new job—as a bus driver taking friends and relatives to visit prisoners at another São Paulo prison. How the escaped prisoner got the job in the first place is still a mystery, but he was taken into custody after a routine inspection disclosed his true identity. Said a police spokesperson: “How dumb can you be? You escape prison and then get a job where you drive inside another prison every week?”

  3. A prisoner who had been serving time for arson escaped from a state penitentiary in Nevada and attempted to hitch a ride on a highway by displaying a sign that read “Just Escaped from Prision [sic]—Give a Guy a Break!” And in fact it worked, up to a point: a truck driver picked him up and drove him to the next truck stop on the highway. He bought the escapee breakfast and encouraged him to take a shower. While our escaped prisoner was showering, the trucker had the waitress contact the police, who rearrested the escapee as he was coming out of the shower.

  Which one is really stupid?

  Answer page 311.

  Source: Ananova

  NOTE TO ESCAPING PRISONERS

  Watch where you’re going. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a guest of the St. Charles County Jail who tried to make a break for it while being escorted back to his cell. Our man broke free from his escort, ran toward a fire exit and raced out of it—and smack into a concrete retaining wall about three feet from the door. The end result: a severe head injury and no escape. Ouch.

  Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  YIPES! STRIPES!

  The city burghers of Glassport, Pennsylvania, took a look around their governmental chambers in early May 2003 and decided that the place needed a good sprucing up. They didn’t know how right they were until they discovered that the American flag that stood in the council chamber was out of date by over 40 years.

  The flag in question had 48 stars on it, and had last accurately flown in 1959, the year Alaska became the 49th state (followed quickly by Hawaii). Apparently no one noticed the flag was out of date because it was draped around a flag stand—for 44 years. It hadn’t been touched since the Eisenhower administration.

  Local congressman Mike Doyle helped bring the government of Glassport into the 21st century by donating an updated American flag. Other suggested donation items for our time travelers: a couple of Beatles albums, a “Have a Nice Day” button, a Rubik’s Cube, and a Tamagotchi.

  Source: Associated Press

  “I like to think of my behavior in the ’60s as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.”

  —P. J. O’Rourke

  ONE MORE ITEM FOR THE “DO NOT PLACE IN MICROWAVE LIST”

  Everybody loves a money-saving beauty tip. The staff of Argentina’s Claudia magazine had a good one—if you just heated your dried-out nail polish in the microwave for three minutes, it would be good as new.

  Who doesn’t like good as new? Certainly not thrifty Argentinean ladies! All over the great South American country, women tossed polish into microwaves and zapped the bottles for the same length of time as you’d zap a microwavable mini pizza.

  Sadly, it appears the staff at Claudia magazine did not field-test the tip in their own microwaves, or they might have known that in many cases, the combination of nail polish and microwave radiation equals an exploding microwave. More than 100 readers of Claudia, however, did try this tip and were rewarded, not with rejuvenated polish but with wrecked household appliances. The staff at Claudia was forced to publish an apology.

  One would hope they also sent those women some new nail polish. At the very least.

  Source: Ananova

  NOT WHAT IS USUALLY MEANT BY “MIXED MEDIA”

  A recipe for trouble: one modern-art museum, ten blenders filled with water, no less than ten goldfish in said water in said blenders, and at least one sadistic art lover.

  Mix all four ingredients together and what you’ll get is probably very similar to what happened at the Trapholt Art Museum in Kolding, Denmark, in early 2000. The museum was hosting an installation by artist Marco Evaristti, which featured working blenders with goldfish in them, and an invitation to visitors to go ahead and grind up the little fishies if that’s what they really wanted to do.

  Well, at least one person did, and two of the goldfish found themselves blended (or, depending on the blender setting, whipped, crushed, or frappéed) into oblivion. The art museum isn’t sure who the person was, but here’s a tip: look back through the records to find if a high school class had a field trip that day. Call it a feeling.

  Cruel and Unusual

  Speaking of feeling, animal rights activists felt the installation was cruel to the goldfish. The Kolding police agreed and fined museum director Peter Meyer the equivalent of $315. Meyer refused to pay, contending that being killed by whirling blades wasn’t in the least bit cruel, a point of view which, if nothing else, makes us want to be sure not to let Mr. Meyer anywhere near our home aquariums. Everyone went off to court, except for the goldfish.

  The wheels of justice in Denmark move considerably more slowly than the blades of death, and it wasn’t until May 2003 that Judge Preben Bagger announced his ruling and sided with Meyer, saying the fish had died instantly (which was probably true) and humanely. Bagger was guided in his decision in part by a representative of blender manufacturer Moulinex, who in expert witness testimony maintained the fish would have been thoroughly blended within a second. And maybe so.

  Source: Associated Press

  TREE HUGGER, TREE KILLER

  Now, this has got to be embarrassing . . . A prominent environmental activist admitted to violating state timber harvest rules when he chopped down trees on his land to make way for his new home—creating potential harm to the habitat of the red tree vole and the coast lily, two closely watched California species. The employee, who spearheaded efforts to stop logging in the Jackson State Forest, swore it was “an inadvertent violation of the law . . . There was no real harm done.”

  Hey, tell it to the red tree vole!

  Source: Associated Press

  UP IN SMOKE

  Nobody likes mosquitoes, but some like them less than others. Like “Joao,” a citizen of mosquito-laden Dourados, Brazil. Joao was upset by the fact that the small bloodsuckers had invaded his home, and he resolved to eradicate the little vampires.

  There are a number of ways to dispatch mosquitoes, although each has its disadvantages. Flyswatters work, but it is time-consuming to go after the mosquitoes one at a time. Citronella candles bother mosquitoes, but they smell funny. Bats feast on the insects, but an echolocating flying mammal just doesn’t go with most interior decor.

  Like a House Afire

  We don’t know how many mosquito-eradicating options Joao considered. We only know which one he took: he set a piece of paper on fire and used it to scare off the bugs. Unfortunately, the fire got out of hand. First the room Joao was in, and then his entire house, was engulfed in crackling, mosquito-scaring flames. Joao’s neighbors, no less scared, called the fire brigade.

  As his house burned down, Joao remained admirably focused. “When we took him out he was still angry about the mosquitoes and kept asking if they were gone,” said a member of the fire brigade.

  Next up: Joao removes a fly from his own forehead. Ambulances are standing by.

  Sources: Ananova, Terra Noticias Populares

  TIPS FOR STUPID CRIMINALS

  Because stupid criminals might make smart readers.

  TOOL TIME

  Today’s tip: It’s bad form to look for a job at the same place you recently robbed. />
  I ronically, the reason “Art” robbed that construction company in Stillwater, Oklahoma, seems to be that when he went there looking for a job in June 2003, no one was around. And perhaps Art figured, heck, there’s no reason why he should have come all that way for nothing. Whatever Art’s thought processes (or lack thereof), he came away from that construction site with a power tool and several goodies he lifted from a car on the site.

  Unbeknownst to Art, his adventures in thievery were recorded on a security camera. And so, when he came back to the construction company the next day, employees recognized him as they guy who’d helped himself to whatever wasn’t pinned down the day before. The folks at the company kept him on the premises by interviewing him for a job; while he was talking about his qualifications, the cops showed up and hauled him away.