Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 Page 17
Such was the problem during the funeral of Mary Fitzsimmons of Wallyford, Scotland. At the graveside, over a hundred family and friends had gathered to say their final goodbyes, and Mary’s pallbearers—her adult children—were lowering the coffin into the family plot. As the it was lowered into the grave, grieving son Kevin took a final look at the coffin . . . and noticed the name “Wilson” on the plaque on the outside.
Thus the funeral came to a screeching halt as the embarrassed funeral directors took away the casket of the mysterious Wilson and went looking for poor Mary Fitzsimmons. The mourners were left cooling their heels for an hour until the undertakers returned. As Kevin told the press, “Burying your mother is difficult enough without this kind of thing.”
Fortunately for the undertakers, the family accepted their apologies and said they had no plans to seek compensation for the screw-up. So, mortuary professionals, remember: check those coffins. Because this isn’t merely the kind of mistake that lasts a lifetime, it lasts an eternity.
Source: The Daily Record (UK), The Scotsman
He Must Really Love His Staplers
Some people, it seems, have a really unhealthy relationship with their office supplies. Take for instance, “Edward,” who worked in an office in North Platte, Nebraska. One day the supervisors of the office sent out a memo: from now on, it said (more or less), only the manager of the office would have the keys to the supply cabinets. The era of free pens and staples, it seems, was at an end in this little corner of cubicle land.
We imagine the memo was generally unpopular, on the grounds that people who are adults don’t like the implication that they can’t be trusted. But Edward’s reaction was, shall we say, more dramatic than the norm: Edward took a copy of the memo out of the office, got it up close and personal with a .22 caliber handgun, and perforated it with a lot of lead. Edward then returned the bullet-ridden memo to its position in the office. As if that wasn’t enough to give Edward’s coworkers the hot and cold running heebie-jeebies, consider that two days later he called the office secretary to declare he wasn’t coming in to work because he felt like he might just up and shoot somebody. Several coworkers were so put-off by Edward’s expression of his true feelings that they rushed out to get protection orders.
Edward’s profession? Mental health practitioner and professional counselor, of course. And was his license revoked in Nebraska, on the grounds of unprofessional conduct? Oh my, yes. We hope for everyone’s sake he was allowed to take his paper clips with him.
Source: Associated Press, World-Herald (Omaha, NE)
A Refreshing Moment of Honest, Corporate Greed
Americans like to think they have cornered the market on corporate greed and outperform everyone else out there. It’s hard to argue—look at Enron and then tell us that when it comes to corporate greed the United States doesn’t totally rock the house. Whoo-hoo! We are the champions, our friend. But it’s not to say that we can’t appreciate a well-turned moment of blatant corporate greed elsewhere on the globe. Just as a Yankees fan can appreciate the efforts of the Yomiuri Giants, so can an aficionado of U.S. corporate gormlessness appreciate it when it raises its greedy head in other nations on the globe.
Which is why we wish to raise a glass in toast to Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications provider, which enjoys approximately 90 percent of the market for line rentals in Australia. In May 2004 Telstra decided that one of the things it would like to do is charge its customers a little extra if they used a credit card to pay their monthly bills. Telstra’s managing director for finance and administration, John Stanhope, addressed an Australian Senate committee on the subject. When Senator Sue Mackay asked Stanhope why the company decided to impose the new charge, he brazenly replied: “Because we are able to.”
Wow. Think about that for a minute. If an American company officer came to a Senate Committee to explain a totally new and dubious charge, you just know he or she would skate around the subject with some mumbo-jumbo like “increasing value to the customer” or “leveraging cost structures across multiple revenue streams” or “actualizing corporate synergies.” Because here in America, we’re okay with greed, just not naked greed. Not only is naked greed pasty and flabby and icky, it’s stupid to admit to it.
But in Australia, naked greed is getting a nice all-over tan: Down Under, Telstra saw the customer, ripe for the plucking, and boy, did those customers get plucked. They got plucked hard. And really, why deny it? Why do customers exist if not to get royally plucked? That’s their contribution to the whole circle of finance. Sure, Stanhope went on to note that Telstra pays a service charge to the card companies and that the new customer charge is meant in some way to recoup that charge. But once you’ve established that you’re charging people more just because you can, any further rationale is just frosting on the mudpie.
What’s even better, the senator then asked Stanhope, if you’re charging extra to pay with a credit card, are you giving discounts to people who pay by cash? “The assumption of course is doing it by cash is less costly,” Stanhope replied. “That isn’t necessarily the case, it might be as costly as other methods.” In other words, hold on to your feathers, Telstra customers. You’re still being plucked.
Source: The Age, news.com.au
Rabid Lawyer Put Down
When you’re watching a legal thriller on TV or in the movies, it’s fun to watch lawyers shouting at the judges, badgering the witnesses, or otherwise doing things that make the life of a lawyer more interesting than filling up all those long billable hours. However, when your lawyer starts acting screwy in the real world it’s more likely to make you reach for the Mylanta than the popcorn.
“Screwy” is an apt description of the behavior of “Daniel,” a New York lawyer who was representing a middleman who brought products to the attention of manufacturers. This middleman was suing former clients, a married pair of designers, for breech of contract. Daniel represented his own client zealously—too zealously for the married couple, who complained during their deposition that Daniel had sent them “mad-dog lawyer’s letters.” When the phrase popped up again in court, Daniel barked. Like the mad-dog lawyer he was supposed to be. Then he claimed merely to be clearing his throat.
Bad lawyer, no barking! State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos slammed Daniel during a later review of the case, and noted that this behavior among other nasty tactics raised “serious concerns about fitness to practice law.” He fined Daniel $8,500 for his barking, which is a lot of kibble no matter how you cut it. To make things worse, Daniel had also lost the case. All that bad behavior for nothing.
Daniel is reportedly planning to appeal the fine. If he loses the appeal, will he literally be in the doghouse?
Source: Newsday, New York Law Journal
malpractice or monkey business?
We have a good feeling that if we were to look up the word “chutzpah” in the dictionary, the picture that would go along with it would be of Dr. Randall J. Smith, who until recently had a practice in Gresham, Oregon. The reason for this is two-fold, and began when a female patient came to his office for treatment of pain in her pelvis area.
Well, Dr. Smith knew how to fix that. He reportedly explained to the woman that massaging certain “trigger points” would help ease her pain. Unlike most doctors, Dr. Smith’s offer to massage “trigger points” was closer to an offer to see his etchings than a diagnosis. So soon enough Dr. Smith and the patient were making the beast with two backs, so to speak.
Aside from sleeping with his patients, a treatment not taught by the leading medical schools, Dr. Smith’s moxie goes one step further. Dr. Smith billed the Oregon Health Plan for these “treatments” to the tune of $5,000. That’s submitting false health care claims, and that’s a felony.
When the state of Oregon finally caught up with Dr. Smith and his innovative therapeutic techniques (and the creative billing thereof), it asked him to be its guest in one of the state’s fine correctional institutions for si
xty days. Also, Oregon revoked his license to practice medicine in the state. Add to that 200 hours of community service, $1,105 in fines, and probation for eighteen months as part of the plea agreement. So, ironically, you could say Dr. Smith really did pay for his sex. That’s what chutzpah gets you sometimes.
Source: Reuters
You Must Be This Thin To Get Your Fish and Chips
It’s not as if the average Brit was known for being svelte, but over the last twenty-five years, the number of British subjects who could be classified as “obese” has tripled to 20 percent of the men and 24 percent of the women. They’re not as fat as Americans on average, but you know the Brits have gumption and a will to succeed. Americans certainly don’t doubt their ability to catch up.
Neither does the British Medical Association, which in May 2004 offered up an innovative suggestion to keep chunky Brits from getting to their daily feedings of fat and salt from their local fast food chains. To quote Dr. Simon Minkoff, of the British Medical Association’s junior doctors’ committee: “Over-eating is not good for you—we want the government to show that it is tough on obesity by fitting narrow doorways.”
In simple language: they aimed to keep overweight people from getting into fast-food joints by making the doorways too narrow for fat people to enter.
Well, just how narrow are we talking about? Try 30 centimeters (that’s just under one foot for Americans). (For comparison’s sake, the average American door is about 3 feet wide.) Men and women who were not clinically obese could still slide through the one-foot door, no doubt with some huffing and puffing, but those who had packed on the pounds wouldn’t be able to squeeze themselves through the doorway.
Naturally, others have described this plan as cruel to plump Brits; a dietitian from the charity Weigh Concern said, “It’s discriminating and unkind. It’s saying to overweight people that it’s their fault,” while a spokesperson for McDonald’s—not a disinterested party, by the way—wondered how those in wheelchairs would get through such thin doors. And what if those wheelchair-bound were also clinically obese? Now, see, there’s a quandary.
We are neutral about the idea of super-skinny doors to block super-sized fast food customers, but we’ve got two words to describe why such a plan wouldn’t work: Drive Through.
Source: The Sun (UK)
Dim Bulbs in Bright Lights
Forrest Gump (1994)
Our Dumb Guy: Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)
Our Story: A slow but good-natured southern gentleman (Hanks) sits on a bench and recounts his life story to whomever passes by; as it turns out, Forrest has inadvertently played a role in nearly every single major social event between the 1950s and the 1980s, from Elvis to Apple Computers.
Dumb or Stoned? Forget about dumb—Forrest Gump is so darn square that it wouldn’t even occur to him to get stoned, even on New Year’s Eve in New York.
High Point of Low Comedy: After being injured in the buttocks and winning the Congressional Medal of Honor, Forrest Gump is rhetorically told by President Lyndon Johnson that Gump’s posterior injury is one he’d like to see. Forrest, alas, is not nearly smart enough to know that the request is rhetorical and obliges right then and there.
And Now, In His Own Words: Forrest, on his investment in Apple Computers: “Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don’t have to worry about money no more. And I said, that’s good! One less thing.”
He’s Dumb, But Is the Film Good? The film is so good, it gets flack from people who believe it’s not as good as it is. In reality, it’s a very clever film aimed at Baby Boomers, to be sure, but Hank’s performance gives it a center and a gravity that makes it works marvelously. It’s very good in every sense of the word.
CHAPTER 16
The Thrill of Victory, The Agony of Stupidity
Like all people everywhere, we love the intense competition and rivalry of sports, but we also like the really dumb things, too. Fortunately for us, the sports world—from the kids’ leagues all the way up the food chain to the pros—is positively riddled with the sort of sports jerks who fill our need for muscle-headed goofs and screw-ups. We can just sit back in our box seat, eat a $5 hot dog, and enjoy.
Nothing Technical About This Knockout
We don’t believe in shooting guns at anyone—that’s just rude—much less shooting guns at an athlete of international stature. But of all the athletes of international stature that shouldn’t be shot at, at the top of the list, in an uncontested decision, stands Mexico’s light-heavyweight champion Arturo “The Graduate” Rivera.
It seems that Rivera was stepping outside of a gym in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in June 2004. A gunman approached him and unloaded two pistols in Rivera’s general direction. None of the bullets actually hit Rivera, an unfortunate outcome for the gunman. Perhaps this was why the gunman came out to play with two guns instead of one: he knew he had to compensate for some really bad aim.
Well, the gunman had his fun; now it was Rivera’s turn. Before the shooting, Rivera’s record included sixteen knockout decisions; shortly thereafter, he had seventeen. The gunman was off to the hospital where he was treated for head injuries. Also, of course, he was arrested. The police are treating it as an attempted murder—on the part of the gunman, not by Rivera.
Let’s hope for everyone’s sake there’s no rematch.
Source: Reuters
When You Gotta Go, You Gotta Go
You want to know what’s interesting? We’ll tell you what’s interesting. What’s not interesting is that right in the middle of a soccer match for the Union des Associations Européennes de Football (UEFA) Cup, Marseille goaltender Fabien Barthez felt the need to relieve himself. And what’s additionally not interesting is that when Barthez felt his need, he proceeded to do just that, on the soccer pitch, in the middle of a game, in front of 60,000 spectators in Marseille’s Velodrome stadium.
No, what’s interesting is that no one at the game—not the other players, not the coaches, and apparently not the 60,000 spectators—noticed that Barthez watered the turf until after the game. There are pictures of the event, so we may presume at least one photographer had his eye on the real action. But the story didn’t leak, as it were, until a caller to a French radio show passed on the rumor of Barthez’s on-field micturation.
Inquiring minds want to know: how do 60,000 people miss something like that? Here in the United States, were Derek Jeter or Brett Farve suddenly to answer the call of nature on the field, it would be noticed. The answer, as a spectator at the game told The Sun newspaper in the U.K.: “I don’t think anyone noticed at the time because we were all watching Marseille attacking at the other end.”
Well, gee whiz. That explains it.
Source: The Sun (UK)
Beer! Hockey Fans! What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Our suggestions as to why the management of the Tampa Bay Lightning ice hockey team thought it was a fine idea to offer free beer to fans during the 2004 playoffs:
1.They wanted to give the crowd the slipping and sliding feeling they’d get from walking out into the ice, without actually disrupting the game.
2.Why limit the brawls to just the players?
3.Because in this era of diluted play and boring defensive strategy, you’d have to be drunk to enjoy NHL hockey.
The real reason was none of the above (at least, so the Lightning management says). The team simply wanted to try to sell some season tickets for the upcoming year. So during the first game of the Eastern Conference playoffs, the team announced on the scoreboard that anyone who put down $100 toward season tickets would get free beer during the game. To many of the folks at the game (and as it was reported immediately afterward) the implication was you could get as much beer as you wanted—an endless cup of hoppy goodness with which to wash away your cares during the game (which the Lightning won, incidentally, to what one assumes were the beerier-than-usual cheers of the home crowd).
After t
he entirely predictable and not-entirely-outraged responses from police and groups battling drunk driving, the Lightning management realized they had a promotion hangover on their hands and quickly backtracked. For one thing, they explained, it wasn’t as if people who put down deposits on season tickets were given a personal beer bong and a monkey to tend the keg. What they got were vouchers that let them get four 12-oz beers. What’s more, those vouchers could have also been redeemed for soft drinks, in case a prospective buyer’s drug of choice was caffeine and not alcohol. Funny the Lightning didn’t lead with the “Free Soda!” announcement.
Eventually, however, the Lightning voluntarily stuffed themselves into the penalty box, canceling the promotion and issuing an apology to those offended by the promotion. “In the end, it was a bad promotion,” the Lightning’s chief operating officer, Sean Henry, told the Tampa Tribune. “It offended a few people and it didn’t drive sales.” It’s the last of these, we suspect, that really hurt: Only twenty-five people out of a crowd of than 21,425 were willing to take the Lightning up on their free beer offer. All that bad publicity for so little benefit.
Source: Tampa Tribune, TSN.ca
The Rocket’s Red Wheeze
Hey, like any red-blooded American and/or pyromaniac, we just adore fireworks. There’s nothing like the rocket’s red glare to get us all Oooh-y and ahhh-y. Fireworks and sports events? Made for each other, of course! If you can’t have fireworks going on with a home run or at half time, you might as well just go home.