Too Stupid for Words category archive

A seven-year-old boy, suspended after taking a novelty pen onto a school bus, has filed a federal suit against school officials in Pennsylvania alleging the district’s weapons policy is unconstitutional.

Officials punished the boy with a four-day suspension and branded him a “weapons offender” for possessing the pen, which emitted a small shock when the cap was pressed.

But it’s okay for a gun nut to pack heat in a bar.

You couldn’t make this stuff up.

MSM twits.

Huntley, Brinkley, and Cronkite are spinning in their graves.

Well, maybe not. From Der Spiegel:

To sadomasochists keen on fresh air and the country life, it must have seemed like a dream come true. A 35-year-old woman advertizing herself as a dominatrix promised strict discipline to paying clients on her farm in the northeast of Austria.

(snip)

Instead of savoring the sweet pleasure of pain, the men found themselves consigned to farm labor such as chopping wood in the nude and mowing the lawn while wearing black fetish masks on the farm near the town of St Pölten. In effect, they were paying for the privilege of doing farm work.

You can’t make this stuff up.

But will anyone notice the new incarnation of this hollow, silly, exploitative spectacle which has always tried to pretend it’s about something other than staring at putting girls on display for money, burlesque without the moves*?

Karen Heller reminisces:

Years ago, I was sent to Atlantic City with this novel pitch: “Sooner or later you’re going to have to cover Miss America, so you might as well get it over with.” I went. I saw. I was conquered by the absurdity. I abandoned all neutrality, rooted for the aerodynamically confounding Miss Louisiana, Linnea Marie Fayard – who came in only fourth! – and had such a blast that I was sent back a second time.

Never cover Miss A a second time.

Little has changed since. The press is still asked to call the organization “a scholarship program,” not a pageant. The whatever-it-is must be promoted as “the world’s largest provider of scholarship assistance for young women,” yet most winners ultimately become anchorbots and infomercial chatterboxes. True, there are doctors, lawyers, and Vanessa Williams, the most talented Miss A ever, but the year’s first Miss A, Mallory Hytes Hagan of Brooklyn, 23, claims her ambition is to “obtain a degree in cosmetics and fragrance marketing.” How much scholarship assistance does she need for that?

Back when I was a young ‘un, news stories for the new Miss America in even the most proper paper carried the winner’s measurements. They no longer do so.

Now we wait for the sex tape.

___________________

*Afterthought: And without the honesty.

As opposed, I reckon, to an intentional misfire.

DeKalb County Police Chief Cedric Alexander said Wednesday the shooting was an “unintentional misfire.”

“It has been revealed to us that the subject shot by one our DeKalb police officers was not associated with the burglary on Streamside Court,” Alexander said. “He was truant from school and began running when he saw police officers in the area.”

Excerpt:

It is much easier to scare a population than to un-scare them.

Find the appropriate marks target audience.

Frat boys acting like frat boys.

Gasp.

Outsourced to Dick Polman.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Well, I guess they had to be good for something.

Grammatically incorrect tweets by Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga are being used as teaching materials to help Brazilian students learn correct English.

In a crafty attempt to help its students learn in a modern, engaging way, the Red Balloon English language school, which has branches in several Brazilian cities, has been getting its pupils to critique celebrities’ badly written tweets. The “Celeb Grammar Cops” are a team of children aged between eight and 13 who respond with the grammatically correct edits to celebrity solecisms.

High-speed twits.

An 18-year-old accused of killing a bicyclist with his car has had a vehicular manslaughter charge upgraded to murder in part because he boasted about speeding on Twitter, prosecutors said Thursday.

Somebody has been watching too many oaters.

A Louisiana man was jailed early yesterday morning and charged with battery, public intimidation, and disturbing the peace after he rode his horse into a bar multiple times and then lassoed a man, dragging the 47-year-old through the parking lot of the drinking establishment.

Anyone who uses Gmail and didn’t realize that Google was peeking at the contents so as to target advertisements should not be allowed to use a computing device.

There’s a reason I use Startpage for a search engine. And you should too.

A business person interviewed in the Charlotte Observer counsels that

Gen Y customers value authenticity and genuineness. Your brand must connect with their values of integrity and being real.

Expect a spate of consultants offering workshops in how to be authentic and genuine, followed by self-help books on authenticization and integritification prcesses, followed by a feature in Time Magazine about the most authentic authenticization integrification consultants.

According to Wildwood Ordinance 4-2.4, which went into effect July 9, all people over age 12 must wear footwear and shirts on the boardwalk and refrain from allowing their pants or swim trunks to sag more than three inches below the waist.

“I don’t think people should have inappropriate things hanging out, because there are children around,” said Freiberg, a 24-year-old dentistry student at Manor College in Jenkintown. “But in general, people should be able to do what they want.”

Mayor Ernie Troiano Jr. has said the town passed the law in response to complaints from visitors and residents.

This is the same town where, the last time I visited it, the hottest items in the boardwalk shops seemed to be Big Johnson Tee Shirts.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Via PoliticalProf.

Historiann asks, “Why is this the summer of tweeting badly?”

Yes, indeed, they do, and the internet is a public place.

Apparently, there is now a “Zimmerman defense.”

Der Spiegel reports on the paparazzi and the paragliders.

The lengths that folks go to provide pablum for the celeb-crazy is stunning.

Here’s a snippet.

But the celebrity journalism community is not in agreement over the use of remote-controlled flying objects. Some photographers still have doubts as to the suitability of flying machines for the work of paparazzi. Hans Paul, who has pursued Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on his moped, sees the use of drones in his line of work as “the greatest nonsense.” The flight time is too short, the risk of detection too high. He favors a paraglider. “I fly one with a backpack motor and can take much better photos,” he says.

Really, now, why does anyone care about these people and the victims they photogragh?