Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Stupid people of the week

Wherein God must love'em 'cause there sure are enough of 'em


Steve Ballmer:
Q: Do you have an iPod?
A: No, I do not. Nor do my children. My children--in many dimensions they're as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed: You don't use Google, and you don't use an iPod.

College Student lives in Walmart for 41 hours. Must of been easy to avoid detection with his amazingly advanced intellect. Look how his superior skills of language completely befuddle the store manager:
"He said, 'Didn't I see you over by the magazines, like, five hours ago?' I told him, 'Maybe,"' Bartels said.

Tuttle's city manager Jerry Taylor threatened to call the FBI because he doesn't understand what an operating system is. Seriously, what do you expect from someone whose bio is in Comic Sans. CentOS has the full exchange. Snippet:
I am computer literate! I have 22 years in computer systems engineering and operation. Now, can you tell me how to remove "your software" that you acknowledge you provided free of charge? I consider this "hacking". I have no fear of the media, in fact I welcome this publicity.
Heh, tuttled indeed.

Terica Washington and anyone else who called the FBI over a sky banner advertising a movie:
The most memorable moment of Terica Washington's 30th birthday Monday was looking into the sky and seeing an airplane towing a black banner with words written in white: "6/6/06 You have been warned".

She was alarmed enough to call the FBI.

"It made me feel really creepy, especially in this day and age," said Washington, who works at Ocean Walk Resort. Noting that June 6 is a Tuesday, she drew the connection to Sept. 11, 2001, also a Tuesday.

"I thought it might be terrorists," she said.

Emergency service agencies received several complaints about the banner. And the Volusia County Sheriff's Office investigated it -- and discovered Thursday the banner is promoting a new movie from Twentieth Century Fox. A remake of "The Omen" is scheduled to be released June 6.


Lorain school officials who performed an emergency removal to kick an 8-year-old out of school for sexual harassment:
The boy's mother, Tammy Barth, said yesterday her son was playing in gym on Tuesday when a girl student said he and two other boys may have grabbed her buttocks.

He was then questioned in an informal hearing by school officials and he admitted he had been passing love notes to the same girl.

The second-grader then asked to sign a notice of emergency removal form for sexual harassment without a parent present, Barth said. The boy printed his first name on the portion of the form asking for his signature.

School documents provided by Barth and the boy's father, Frank Johnson, did not give specifics on the incident but showed that the second-grader was removed from school on Tuesday for ''sexual harassment during gym.'' It also states the student ''admits to writing notes saying 'I love you' and giving them to a student.''

Best comment on Hit and Run:
Anybody who assumes sexual content in an 8-year-old's "I love you" note is a sick fucking pervert who should not be allowed around children.
Comment by: Jennifer at March 28, 2006 04:00 PM

6 Comments:

Blogger Icepick said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

3/29/2006 04:27:00 PM  
Blogger Icepick said...

Okay, somehow that comment got badly garbled, so let me try this again.

Bill, the people who were scared of the airplane banner have reason for concern. I don't have time to dig up links for these stories (and little motivation), but the following will provide some of context for their fear.

Currently Daytona Beach has a serial killer on the loose, doing that thing that serial killers do. (Daytona Beach is in Volusia County, for those out of state.) That's bad enough, but the hookers in Daytona Beach have organized armed groups who are actively looking for said killer. If they catch him they intend to torture and kill him. Perhaps they've watched Sin City too many times, but they seem pretty gung ho about it.

(On the other hand, we are kind of Serial Killer Central down here. Why not an Army of Hookers? Which reminds me of that really awful group Army of Lovers, but that is an entirely different nightmare.)

Also down here in FLA we often have scary airplane banners. For example, some blinkered anti-abortion opponents like to fly a banner displaying an aborted fetus over the theme parks of Central Florida. Nothing says "Please bring your families on down here and spend lots of money" quite like a giant aborted fetus flying through the sky.

I mean, really, Lou Reed thinks Florida is a wierd place for a reason! Lou Reed!

3/29/2006 04:33:00 PM  
Blogger reader_iam said...

Oh, Lord, here we go again. I'm not even going to get started.

Besides, I can't possibly be subjective, since my own son writes love notes to his favorite girl friend at school. (OK, full disclosure: They occasionally hold hands and sometimes give each other hugs. At school.)

His teacher says his handwriting is pretty decent on the sample she saw--better than his usual efforts in that department. (A girl: the great motivator. For him, at least.)

The little girl's parents think it's all cute.

The little girl named a stuffed animal after my son.

Something's wrong: why aren't we all up in arms???

A bunch of freakin', under-reactin' loonies, no doubt.

vh: taqjt

3/29/2006 07:41:00 PM  
Blogger reader_iam said...

'Pick: It's all that sunshine and warm weather down there (and yeah, yeah--I know it's a big state and that it varies). There's something just abnormal about that. Drives people crazy, don'tcha know.

3/29/2006 09:43:00 PM  
Blogger Icepick said...

Florida weather does vary, but nothing like it does in most of the country. (Or world, of course.) But I don't think the warm weather is what drives people crazy. The warm weather just attracts people, including the crazies and the desperate.

Consider, if you were a homeless person, would you rather try to get through an Iowa winter, or a Florida winter? The same goes for runaways. In other words, we attract crowds of prey. It's no surprise we attrat predators too.

And the anti-abortion airplane ads are easily explained by having large audiences from all over the country. You can get a lot of bang for the buck down here.

3/29/2006 10:58:00 PM  
Blogger bill said...

We tend to stay at St. Augustine and Crescent Beach which doesn't seem to draw a lot of crazies. You get your small town local color, but the weirdoes do head further south. We'll be there end of May - fish tacos at Nalus for me, fried shrimp at Osteens for the wife.

I think we could option "Army of Hookers" to Hollywood. Maybe something like "Snakes on the Plane IV: Army of Hookers." Need a tag line, though. Got one: "This time we're calling in the Pros."

3/29/2006 11:25:00 PM  

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