December 01, 2004

• cranky little fella, ain'tcha flying_w? in any case, we don't want the stupid to survive, even in jails. it's what we call 'evolution'. or maybe 'intelligent design' - ie, we are intelligent, and we should get to design the world how we like it. preferably with automatic weapons and instruments of mass destruction. yeah. bombs and explosions and flames and shit.
• Darwin Award candidate.
• I wouldn't say cranky. Why don't we just ship all the stupids to some far off planet and see if they could survive? We could even check up on them every so often to see how they're doing. Or, better yet! Make a reality TV show out of it!
• I think Douglas Adams may have got to that idea first.
• did i mention the flames? and bombs?
• it's what we call 'evolution'. or maybe 'intelligent design' I think Bobcat Gothwaite summed it up best, 'thin the herd' If we're going to round them all up start with the 'cast' of Jackass, whats his name the canuck with the obvious lack of humour ... Tom something. There's more, I can email ya a list (list will be in order of 'stupidity'), it'll be a long one though ... about 6 Billion people - give or take a few hundred thousand ;)
• You know who else is stupid? Bush. (but you never see any posts about it)
• I don't think that making a foolish and tragically fatal decision makes someone stupid necessarily. People should be able to make mistakes without having sweeping conclusions drawn about what sort of person they were. Many amazing technological breakthroughs have been achieved through silly accidents or mistakes. I think this haughty dismissal of the "stupid" people of the world (jeez, beeza, who isn't on your list? or did you mean that everyone is foolish to a greater or lesser extent?) is a bit disingenuous, too. prismatic7- I can't tell if you're being at all serious or not; however, as anyone with an advanced degree in any biological science will tell you, evolution is not teleological in that way--it does not tend toward specific traits, e.g., intelligence per se. If we as a species are "intelligent", it means only that our most successful anscestors were those who excelled at the tasks necessary and benificial to their situations, tasks which share certain characteristics with pursuits in the modern world. Look at the president: he's a complete moron, and yet he's phenomenally successful in the social sense. Nature does not select against many types of "stupidity" partially because we are social animals.
• Two words: Monster Island.
• If the piece of glass had flown into the heart of a violent rapist burglar who happened to be busting in at that moment, could I rate the I.Q. higher?
• Who's not on the list ... erm me a few 'select friends' heh. Seriously? It was the latter meaning: did you mean that everyone is foolish to a greater or lesser extent?
• What clockzero said. It's not uncommon for someone to accidentally set something the shouldn't on a hot burner. Ever see the video where the guy set his girlfriend on the hot burner? It was in a trailer. He doesn't have alot of room, and probably has to use the stove top as table top often. People also often accidently leave burners on alll the time. Shit happens. Every single person has done something stupid at one time or another.
• Listen, who among us hasn't put their lava lamp on the gas burner to warm it up? Who among us can .. uh.. cast the first.. shard.. or something?
• One time I just had this grenade, right, well.. in my double-wide, there aint much room, so of course I had to use my stove top, which I was cooking dinner on at the time, for a grenade-holder. Shit, I didn't know my wife would go to pieces like that.
• I've set a paper plate on a still-hot burner, but I tend to put stuff like the car keys and camera between the burners when I set stuff on the stove.
• I'm with tracicle. Darwin Award material, fer def. Not so much because he made a stupid mistake, but becasue the manner of his death involves a lava lamp. I wonder if his family can sue the early 70's for proximate cause.
• Watch it there buddy; a lava lamp fell off a dresser and hit my wife in the head (I think she was down there trying to unstuck a drawer(s)). She could have died and made a huge mess at the same time.
• clockzero: two points of note. a) Not My President. Ich Bin Ein Australianer. b) As they say in the classix, 'wocka, wocka wocka'.
• Person lives in a trailer and owns a lava lamp - Person lives in a trailer and owns a lava lamp - mildly amusing. Person who lives in trailer sets a lava lamp on a burner that was accidentally on and is killed when the lava lamp explodes sending chunks of glass in to his heart - not funny. I'll grant that the guy may have intentionally set the lava lamp on the burner to get it warmed up quickly and forgot about it but it's still not funny. I'll bet we've even got some members that wouldn't immediately realize that a lava lamp would explode if it was heated on a stove. There are plenty of people who have studied physics who are not always aware of how thinks work in their daily lives.
• Meanwhile, not far from this tragedy, a Washington state town is setting the stage for a catastrophe of psychedelic proportions: Washington Town to Get Giant Lava Lamp. A local group -- the Soap Lake Giant Lava Lamp Project Incorporated -- has been working to turn Soap Lake into a tourist attraction by erecting a gargantuan, functional lava lamp. For chrisakes, stop these people before the pedestal arrives.
• prismatic7: a) Lucky you. b) you mean...the muppet show? huh?
• I once decided to fix an enormous 70's era console tv. The manual channel changer thingee on its front would kind of get stuck in static land between channels. So I plugged it in, fired 'er up, removed the back panel guarding the innards, and put a mirror against the wall in front of it so I could see if shoving through the tv's guts to fiddle with the the backside of the channel changer knob with a really long metal screwdriver blade was working. That's what growing up without electricity'll do to you. But. Not only did I not die, I actually fixed the stupid channel changing knob, and it did not occur to me for a number of years that there had ever been a problem in my methodology.
• exactly, moneyjane. We must respect the noble human tendency to do bizarre things as a means to achieve important tasks. Must!
• Why would someone NOT think that it is okay to heat up lava?
• Boy, a lot of people sure do get peculiar satisfaction from pointing at others and shouting "Stoopid!" Couldn't be displaced self-doubt, could it? Naaah. 'Cause nobody here would ever do anything stupid. 'Cause if you have any brains you do everything right all the time.
• There are many, many people who will dig the toast out of the toaster with a metal utensil. This isn't much worse than that.
• I like to dig the toast out of the toaster with my peni.... ahhh nevermind...
• I think Douglas Adams may have got to that idea first. Or Ayn Rand.
• I saw a TV interview with the guy's parents on the news, they found him afterwards. He had a wife, siblings, and a daughter who's about 1-1/2. Reminded me of the time that I tripped must have hit my head on a cold and wet flight of unfamiliar outdoor steps, and the last thing I remember before passing out for a while was being stepped over by a few people. Looking back, someone would surely have found it hilarious had I died, what a loser to be stepped over like that, should have been looking more carefully, shouldn't have been alone, was he from a planet where there's no water or something, should have known better. Bah.
• Stupid? Yes. But those damn lava lamps take forever to heat up in the conventional way, so I can kind of understand his impatience.
• I once unscrewed a broken bulb from a strand of Christmas lights with a pair of pliers. The strand was plugged in at the time. The handles were bare metal. Somehow, I didn't get a shock, but when the loud POP occured, I had those pliers leaving my hands at about 70 mph. That would have been a hilarous way to die. Then there's the time a few weeks ago when I changed a light bulb while standing on my computer chair. The chair has wheels on it. The fixture is right at the top of a flight of stairs. Luckily the carpet doesn't allow the chair to roll very well.
• Then there was the time I was cleaning my keyboard with rubbing alcohol. I went to take a swig of my cream soda and found myself with a mouthful of rubbing alchohol. I'm pretty much destined to die a dumbass death.
• He died a stupid death because everyone knows that you use a microwave to heat lava lamps. Duh.
• jesus, be careful, dirigibleman. Like it's not enough that you pilot a freaking dirigible.