Too Stupid for Words category archive

Details here.

Clearly, knowledge must lean left.

Don’t dry and drive in Chicago.

But prosecutor Mike Mermel said there’s a big difference between polishing nails and other forms of distracted driving.

“It is not the same as biting a sandwich … it’s a voluntary disablement,” he said. “She might as well have been in the back seat making a sandwich.”

A Lake County jury of eight women and four men apparently agreed. After deliberating 3 1/2 hours Thursday, they found that Hunt, 49, of Morris was criminally reckless in the crash near Lake Zurich that killed 56-year-old Anita Zaffke on May 2, 2009.

Assurances of privacy be damned:

Screener Rolando Negrin’s private body parts were observed by his Transportation Security Administration colleagues conducting training on the airport’s full-body imaging machines.

Months of joking culminated on Tuesday night, when Negrin attacked co-worker Hugo Osorno in an employee parking lot, according to an arrest report.

Via Unqualified Offerings.

. . . would be better than this. Emily Hill at the Guardian theorizes that weird celebrity behavior can be traced to weird celebrity diets:

(Naomi–ed.) Campbell is a strong, powerful woman. Bread or no bread, she’d still be breathtaking. But she’s not the only celebrity engaging in increasingly crazed regimes. Cheryl Cole eats according to her blood-type – it’s called the Eat Right 4 Your Type diet — which can only lead one to the conclusion that the pop princess’s gullibility cells are as active as her thyroid. Actress Kirsten Dunst apparently follows a diet that consists 70% alkaline foods and 30% acid. Jennifer Aniston allegedly downed a glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice first thing every morning but has now embarked on a new baby food diet. Liz Hurley famously lived on a bowl of cabbage soup a day. Hollywood starlet Megan Fox guzzles a cider vinegar cocktail, while popstar Fergie does it in shots.

I’ve just been reading Janusz Bardach’s Man is Wolf to Man, and am considering becoming a diet guru myself – proposing the gulag diet (1 x head of salted herring, 12 x hours of sawing down trees. No water. 500g of bread at the end of it = red-carpet-ready bone visibility guaranteed within one week).

Shorter version of the column I read today and wish I hadn’t wasted my time:

I have to figure out some way to call Obama “far left” so I can scare some more people.

Bring back banishment as a punishment.

By God, if it was good enough for the ancient barbarians, it is good enough for us.

All joking aside, this is wankery.

You know, of course, what wanking refers to.

It makes one feel good in the short term, but really doesn’t accomplish anything nor does it leave a legacy.

Words fail me.

Why else would Arizona be afraid of a H. G. Welles science fiction story?

Not just in the news. Are the news:

For anyone who is dizzied by all the Twitter jargon, here’s the gist: ABC’s Twitter feed issued a false report of Elena Kagan’s nomination (to the Supreme Court–ed.), attributing it to ABC White House correspondent Jake Tapper. Tapper, always the trenchant fact-checker, pointed out that he said no such thing. But by this point, the falsehood had spread rapidly among Twitterers hungry for news but lax about double-checking.

The website Mediaite reported that the mistake was the result of an ABC staffer misunderstanding a “drill” that the news team was conducting, in preparation for coverage of real breaking news. The drill story was reported over an internal loudspeaker, prefaced by, “DRILL DRILL DRILL FOR DRILL PURPOSES THIS IS NOT TRUE,” a spokesperson told Mediaite. ABC’s designated Twitterer missed that first part, and the mistake was off and running on the Internet. (The original tweet has since been deleted.)

Via Bart Blog.

Because, as Atrios points out, most of us who live in cities and suburbs aren’t allowed to keep chickens.

Video via TPM.

Addendum:

With apologies to Joann Worley, another chicken joke.

Dumb and Dumber meets ignorant. Ignorant of history, ignorant of political theory, ignorant of America. Oh, never mind. It’s all about the Scary Black Man anyway.

Must be Fox News viewers (warning: language):

Teabaggers via the Booman Tribune.

Jon Stewart via TPM.

This has gotten mostly derisive play in the West, but think about it:

Change the phrase “Islamic cleric” to “Christian evangelist.”

It is really no crazier nor more hate-full than the stuff many of our home-grown religious fanatics say (think Pat Robertson on Haiti or James Dobson on anything).

Promiscuous women are responsible for earthquakes, a senior Iranian cleric has said.

Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi told worshippers in Tehran last Friday that they had to stick to strict codes of modesty to protect themselves.

“Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes,” he said.

Addendum, the Next Morning:

A commenter at Balloon Juice links to BlagHag, who’s fomenting a protest:

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it’ll be one involving plate tectonics.

Glomarization takes down the practice of registering kids’ birthday wishes at stores. Read her post, then follow the link to the article which prompted it.

There really is only one reason for merchants to promote this: It’s to get you to come to their store, not go to the one down the street. Like much American marketing, it is a slimy, manipulative practice masquerading as a service.

According to the lady in yellow, “Nothing’s better than a dead liberal.”

Via DelawareLiberal.

Afterthought:

No more self-awareness than a ceramic floor.

Words fail me.

Via Kiko’s House. Read the whole post at the link. It collects a bubbling stew of stupid.

People of Walmart Dept: He couldn’t stop playing with his warm gun:

At one point, a clerk working the electronics section told police that Walters took the gun out of its holster and then removed and replaced the gun’s magazine. The woman feared she was about to be robbed and notified the store manager. Walters continued through the store, apparently with a video game he told the clerk he would pay for at the front registers.

Walters wound up near a register where he later told police he intended to purchase the game. Several customers were nearby.

He removed the Jennings from the holster again, causing the magazine to come loose and fall to the floor. Walters re-inserted the magazine and continued manipulating the handgun when it fired, sending one round into the ceiling, Peoples said.

At Kiko’s House.

God forbid persons should be able to go to the doctor.

Road rage.

Then he cleaned their teeth with Rustoleum, no doubt.

A former Fall River (Mass.–ed.) dentist accused of using paper clips instead of stainless steel posts in root canals, then billing Medicaid for the more expensive parts, goes before a judge.

Firearms do have a way of going off, even at the Easter Parade:

The family of a woman who was killed during a fight that police say started over a skimpy Easter outfit — jean shorts and a green T-shirt tied up around her midriff — said yesterday that her style was well known among relatives.

(snip)

A woman who called 911 after the shooting told the dispatcher she shot her niece. The woman does not give her name. The woman says in the 911 call that she got a gun to prove a point during an argument and the weapon went off.