Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 Page 12

  Her reaction, as reported in the Cape Argus newspaper: “I can’t believe I could have done something like that.” We bet the coin was surprised, too. But perhaps not as much as another one of the coins, which the woman suspected she spent as a 20-pence piece (which it apparently resembled), which would be worth, oh, a few pennies or so here in the States. The woman’s excuse for mixing up her money: She was shopping without her glasses. Probably the last time she’ll be doing that. The woman has asked town officials to be on the lookout for the coin. We’re sure they were right on that.

  Source: Cape Argus (South Africa), Reuters

  The Case of the Too Clever License Plate

  By definition, people who have vanity plates on their cars and motorcycles want to be noticed (they’re not called humility plates, after all). Jim Cara of Delaware was no exception—he wanted to give people a chuckle when they read his motorbike plates, so he selected what he thought was a clever little statement: “NO TAG.” Because, see, he had a tag, and the tag said “no tag!” It was, like, totally meta. And thus did Jim Cara of Delaware feel mightily pleased with himself.

  Until, that is, he started receiving the traffic violations—more than 200 of them, ranging in offenses from speeding to meter violations, with fines from $55 to $125 (which would mean the total amount would have been at least eleven grand). Either someone had been borrowing Cara’s wheels and flaunting the law on a very rapid basis or something had gone horribly wrong somewhere in the ticketing system.

  It seems that when you have a license plate with the words “NO TAG,” all the violations for cars that don’t actually have plates suddenly get attributed to you, because police officers and meter maids alike write “no tag” on the violations. Because computers aren’t smart enough to realize the clever little license plate joke, Cara’s vehicle became the most heavily fined in the state. Cara became understandably twitchy about hitting the road on his motorbike. “I messed up the system so bad,” Cara said. “I wonder if they can put me in jail or something?”

  Good news for Cara—he got in touch with real live humans, who quickly realized what the problem was and fixed it, so the cops wouldn’t throw him in the pokey for hundreds of violations he never incurred. Spokesmen at the Delaware Division of Motor Vehicles suggested that Cara change his plate, but he refused: “I want to keep it,” he said. “I think it’s awesome.” At least until the next computer screw-up.

  Source: Delaware Online

  The Annals of Ill-Advised Television

  today’s Episode: My Mother The Car

  Starring in this Episode: Jerry Van Dyke and Ann Sothern

  Debut Episode: September 14, 1965, on NBC

  The Pitch: It’s just like Mr. Ed, except the talking horse is a talking car, female, and the main character’s mom. An everyday guy (Jerry Van Dyke) is stunned to find that his dearly departed mother (Ann Sothern) has been reincarnated as a jalopy (a 1928 Porter—although in reality no such model exists). He buys the car and takes it home much to the consternation of his family (who wanted a station wagon), and to the envy of car collector Captain Manzini, who plots to get the car for his own just about every week.

  It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Because: TV networks were looking for kooky ideas in 1965, partly because of the success of Bewitched and The Man From U.N.C.L.E the year before. Other TV shows from the class of ’65 include I Dream of Jeannie and The Smothers Brothers Show (not the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, but a sitcom in which one of the brothers was a ghost). Given its contemporaries, a show about a car inhabited by some schlub’s dead mother probably just seemed par for the course.

  In Reality: The show was pilloried almost immediately for its profound stupidity, and critics were none to kind about its star, either: A review in Time noted that “Jerry Van Dyke . . . has finally answered the question, what is it that Jerry hasn’t got that Brother Dick has?” The show also had the misfortune of competing against two adult-themed dramas on the other networks: Rawhide on CBS and Combat on ABC, although this had the interesting side effect of leaving the kid market to Car—which was enough to help this jalopy of a show wheeze through an entire full season.

  How Long Did It Last? 30 episodes—more episodes than in today’s TV seasons, and the most of any show in the Annals of Ill-Advised Television. The last episode ran April 5, 1966.

  Were Those Responsible Punished? Not in the slightest. Show creators Allen Burns and Chris Hayward would go on to greater TV rewards: Burns would help create the Mary Tyler Moore Show as well produce spinoffs Rhoda and Lou Grant. Hayward became a producer on Get Smart and Barney Miller. Star Jerry Van Dyke, who had turned down Gilligan’s Island to be in Car, would later find fame on the long-running ’90s TV hit Coach. Ann Sothern went on to get an Oscar nomination for 1987’s The Whales of August, 60 years after her first appearance in film. Sothern died in 2001 and to date has not been reincarnated as any sort of automobile.

  CHAPTER 11

  Outsmarted by Animals

  There’s dumb. There’s really dumb. And then, a cut below that, there’s the sort of dumb that even animals roll their eyes at. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, here and now, for your delight and edification, a series of incidents involving animals and humans, in which it is clear that the smartest living things in the stories are not the ones with the opposable thumbs.

  Cette Panthére est Trés Petite, Non?

  Those French. Oh, stop your giggling. We haven’t even told you what stupid thing they’ve done yet. Really, now. Let us do our work, here.

  Where were we? Ah, yes, those French. We understand that France, having been occupied by humans for several thousands of years at least—humans who have a well-justified aversion to having large predators loping around where they live—might not have all that much going on in the way of lions and tiger and bears (oh my) these days. So when it was reported that several residents of Marseille had seen a large black panther roaming around, naturally everyone was a little on edge. Authorities shut down a large recreational area outside of town where the panther had been spotted—wouldn’t do to have tourists eaten—and dozens of soldiers and police went through the area to find the large feline predator.

  And they found it, sort of. What they found was a predator, and it was feline, but “large” was strictly a relative term. It was an ordinary if somewhat big-boned black housecat, which experts estimated being two feet long from tip to tail and weighing in at 22 pounds. For comparison, your average panther typically weighs in at 100 to 200 pounds and can be seven feet long, not including the tail. But we guess you could confuse a house cat with a panther. If you were a gnome.

  We wonder how the good people of Marseille would describe a real panther. We’re not sure, but just in case, we’re instructing our clipping service to look out for stories with the words “Marseille” and “Saber-toothed Tiger.”

  Source: Reuters, www.iol.co.za

  The Great Immobile Owl

  In retrospect, it could be said—not by polite people, but even so—that the bird enthusiasts of Wrenthorpe, West Yorkshire, England had perhaps gotten a little smug. And why not? It was near their little village that storks only rarely found in Britain had been recently spotted. And so when a new, large, mysterious owl appeared in their midst, the birdwatchers were thrilled. It was just more proof that, if you were a bird or a birdwatcher, Wrenthorpe was a tidy English paradise.

  What was nice about the owl was that it seemed to have a predictable routine. Every morning, there it was on a telegraph pole. Really, you could set your watch to it. And after a few days of that, well, some people got suspicious. As local bird enthusiast Harold Barrett mentioned to the local press, “Owls can stay in one place for a while, but not that long.”

  So eventually someone went to get a closer look at the owl. At which point it was discovered the owl was a decoy nailed to the pole. To scare off other birds or to fake out the now embarrassed and angry birdwatchers? The prankster has not been found to explain his motives, and the
owl, of course, is silent.

  Representatives of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds offered these consoling words: “It is great that they are looking out for birds. Let’s just hope that next time they spot something more than a decoy.”

  Source: Reuters

  Meow, Baby

  If you were suddenly missing a finger, wouldn’t you mention it to someone? Wouldn’t you at least acknowledge it?

  We ask because in May 2004, there was a spare finger lying outside the jaguar exhibit at the Rio Grande Zoo in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with no one around to claim it. It turned out to be a more complicated affair then just poking a finger in the cage. To get to the jaguar, the perp had to go past metal barriers and cactus, and avoid detection by the zoo staff to reach his quarry. Make no mistake, it took real initiative to lose this finger. So it was surprising that no one cared to claim it.

  Be that as it may, the zoo staff had their suspicions as to who Mr. Nine Fingers was. Particularly, they had their eye on a frequent zoo patron who had been there nearly every day over the past few years and, more importantly, who was seen running from the zoo on the day the finger would have gone missing. Apparently, not only was he running, but he was doing so with his hand in his pocket and with a dark stain spread over his pants. He was a member of the zoo, so they looked up his number in their database and gave him a call. And he said something along the line of, well, I’ve got ten fingers, so you’ve got the wrong guy.

  Well, he didn’t, and they didn’t. The mystery of the missing finger was solved pretty much like you’d expect. Back at some point when this zoo patron did have ten fingers, he’d been fingerprinted by the police. So the zoo handed over the gruesome jaguar treat to the police, who compared its fingerprint and matched it up with that of the zoo patron. Confronted by the overwhelming evidence of the fingerprinting (and, one imagines, the uncomfortable fact of being able only to count to nine on his hands), the patron reluctantly admitted to the former ownership of said finger.

  The zoo didn’t press charges against the patron, reasoning that having a finger snapped off by a predator is probably punishment enough. But they did ban him from the zoo, we guess just in case he hadn’t learned his lesson. Well, look at it this way: if he doesn’t learn it after another eight or nine times, we figure the problem will just take care of itself.

  This is an object lesson to all you would-be animal lovers out there: just because you think you have a special relationship with an animal at the zoo, it doesn’t mean that the animal agrees. This is especially true of, say, animals who are at the top of their food chain in their native habitat and have a mouth full of teeth especially designed for shearing off body parts. But don’t take our word for it, take the word of zoo director Ray Darnell, who told the press: “They’re not your friends, they’re not your pets. They’re wild animals.” Preach it, Ray.

  Source: Associated Press, TheNewMexicoChannel.com

  Pssst. . . Dogs Don’t Get Representational Art

  First, let us note our enduring respect for the mail carriers of North America, who without fail deliver unto us all our bills, magazines, and circulars. Without you guys we wouldn’t have anything to look forward to in the late morning to early afternoon hours of our workdays. You guys rock. And we also note that in doing your job, you are also often forced to deal with large, angry dogs. You have our sympathy, and our best wishes for accurate aim with that pepper spray you carry on your belt.

  Having said that, we can’t help but think that the folks at Canada Post were a wee bit oversensitive in the summer of 2004 when they lobbied the Canadian Pet Valu chain of pet stores to stop carrying a brand of doggie treats known as Bark Bars, on the rationale that these dog snacks come in two provocative shapes: cats, which Canada Post is neutral about, and mail carriers, which it is not. “I will tell you, personally, I think it was in very poor taste, considering the hazards that our carriers have out there every day,” said Canada Post spokesperson John Caines.

  This does seem to suggest that someone at Canada Post is under the impression that dogs will look at the snacks, which are vaguely human-shaped with the word “mail” stamped on them, then look at their owner’s mail carrier (who despite his or her job, probably does not have the word “mail” stamped chest-wide) and see a one-to-one correlation. Which would suggest that the dogs could, you know, read. The wonders of the Canadian educational system notwithstanding, this seems a little much.

  Nevertheless, the Pet Valu chain decided to pull the mail carrier-shaped treats, citing its own largely neglected guideline of not selling anything relating to mail shapes. The cat-shaped treats, however, are still a go, so look out, feline lovers.

  Ironically, in the United States, mail carriers reportedly have a different relationship to the carrier-shaped snacks; they carry them around to feed to the dogs on their routes. Better the dogs chew on the snacks than on the actual mail carrier.

  Source: The Globe and Mail (Toronto), Reuters

  And Then the Entire Town Imploded From the Weight of All the Puns

  You have to understand that the previous city manager of Ridgefield, Washington, really was something of a washout. Apparently he tried to remove lead paint from the city hall without paying attention to environmental regulations. So while he did save the city $15,000 by ignoring the regulations, his penny-pinching also, according to court filings, released an “immense cloud of toxic dust” which had something like six times the acceptable level of lead. And then there were the lead paint chips flowing into the sewer and then in the nearby lake . . . in all, a real mess. The city manager was suspended and then fired and then faced charges of official misconduct.

  So whom to elect as the city manager? The local citizenry decided that Otis, who keeps regular hours at Ridgefield Hardware, would be a fine candidate. He was well-known and well-liked around town—everyone called him by his first name, after all. He was known to be level-headed and not pushy, never interrupted people, and seemed to value people as people, not as just more votes. And everyone was positive that Otis would never do anything as damn foolish as try to strip lead paint illegally. In July 2004, fliers went up around town: Otis for City Manager, paid for by the “He Will Do Better Than the Last Guy Committee.”

  The one drawback: Otis was only 11 years old. But maybe that really wasn’t such a drawback, because that meant that he was 77 in dog years, a more accurate reflection of his age since Otis, after all, was a dog, a Boston Terrier, to be exact. “A doggone improvement,” read another sign, and you can just imagine all the rest of the dog puns that went from there. Oh, and of course, let’s not miss this quote, from Otis’s owner, Scott Hughes: “They wanted to know if there were any scandals in his background. I told them, no, he’s been fixed.”

  Are the good people of Ridgefield completely out of their collective gourd? We suspect they’re probably letting off steam, and that when push comes to shove, they’ll elect an actual, live human (complicating matters was the emergence of Drumstick, a chicken, as a second candidate, possibly splitting the animal vote). But it does have us feeling just a little bit sorry for the previous city manager. It’s one thing to be fired and face charges of official misconduct. It’s another thing to have been so bad at your job that someone jokingly suggests a dog would be a better city manager than you . . . and the entire city agrees. Good luck getting that next position, pal. Although if Otis gets elected, there will be a open spot at the hardware store.

  Source: Associated Press, The Vancouver Columbian

  Please, Think of the St. Bernards

  They say that breaking up is hard to do, but splitting the proceeds afterward can be just plain annoying. There are all the questions of who gets what, where it goes, and who pays for it all. It’s enough to make you want to stay together to just avoid the organizational nightmare. Now people breaking up in Canada have a new wrinkle on the break-up proceedings: pet support.

  It all started when the relationship ended: Ken Duncan of Warburg, Alber
ta, and Barbara Dawn Boschee put the brakes on their six-year-relationship, the accouterments of which included two St. Bernards: Mojo, adjudged to be “her” dog, and “Crunchy,” who was “his” (the dogs, we’d bet, were neutral on the whole ownership question). Sadly for Duncan, he couldn’t find an apartment that would allow him to keep a large, slobbery dog bred to rescue Alpine frostbite victims, so Crunchy stayed with Boschee, and Duncan agreed to pay for any extraordinary expenses regarding the dog.

  That’s not enough, said the judge presiding over the couple’s spousal support settlement in June 2004. Henceforth, Duncan would have to pay $200 (that’s Canadian dollars) a month for the upkeep of his dog—and retroactively spring for payments for the previous year. Boschee claimed that amount was fair, listing monthly expense of $55 for food and $30 for rug shampooing because Crunchy has “lots of accidents.” Duncan—who agreed to pay—nevertheless maintained that he never spent more than $40 a month on dog food. The real irony, said Duncan: “I can’t even visit my dog, ’cause the judge won’t let me. I miss her a lot. I can’t even watch a movie with a St. Bernard in it.”

  So beware, Canadian couples! Before you end that relationship, won’t you please think of the pets? And the costs you’ll have in supporting them.