Nice one saltwn... 6 idiots, and not aware of it. So for all idiots I shall continue.

Quotes from stupid 01
These are supposedly actual quotes taken from around the world.

"The effects are fleeting and lingering..." - Overheard in a hallway

"In Managua, people are cheering in the streets, which are deserted." - CBS reporter during the solar eclipse

"A trucker called to thank all of the courteous Seattle drivers he had run across." - Announcer on KZOK radio

"He threw 110 pitches in six innings, and that's a mouthful!" - CBS baseball announcer

"An agreement is not an agreement until the parties to the agreement have reached an agreement." - Irish Politician on RTE radio

"This is the biggest pawn that Israel holds in the whole hostage equation." - BBC world service.

"We have two incredibly credible witnesses here." - Sen. Biden at Thomas hearings from Bob Ericson (Marlboro, MA, USA)

"He's going to step down 'til he's back on his feet." - Vermont Public Radio commentator on Jimmy Swaggart's latest sex scandal

Quotes from stupid 02
These are supposedly actual quotes taken from around the world.

"That race was all about competition." - David Coleman, ITV

"And I can see the strong wind blowing the sun towards us." - Brian Johnson, BBC Radio 3

Mark Goodier: What's the name of the company you work for?

Listener: Mining and Engineering Services. Mark Goodier: So, what kind of work do they do; is it mining and

engineering services? - BBC Radio 1

"Marling - unbeaten in her three victories."

Peter O'Sullivan, BBC2 TV: "Both drivers are fundamentally wearing white helmets."

James Hunt, BBC2 TV: "A church spire nestling among the trees...there's probably a church there too." - Richie Benaud, BBC2 TV

Stupid people awards
It is once again time to vote for-the Darwin Award nominees for 1997. As you may already know, the Darwin Awards are for those nominees who will not be contributing to the gene pool (thankfully).

The 1997 nominees are:

NOMINEE No.1: [San Jose Mercury News] An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.

NOMINEE No.2 [Kalamazoo Gazette] James Burns, 34, of Alamo,Mich., was killed in March as he was trying to repair what. police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a friend to drive the truck on a highway while Bums hung underneath so that he could asthe source of a troubling noise. Burns' clothes caught on something, however, and the other man found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft."

NOMINEE No.3 [Hickory Daily Record] Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot himself to death in December in Newton, N.C., when, awakening to the sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson. 38 Special, which discharged when he drew it to his ear.

NOMINEE No.4 [UIPI, Toronto] Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto Skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lawyers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man association.

NOMINEE No.5 [Bloomburg News Service] A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage(and a couple of other things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal. But the man was shut, up in his, near airtight bedroom. According to the article, "He was a big man with a huge capacity for creating "this deadly gas." Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized.

NOMINEE No..6 [The News of the Weird.] Michael Anderson Godwin made News of the Weird posthumously. He had spent several years awaiting South Carolina's electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence reduced to life in prison. Whilst sitting on a metal toilet in his cell and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a wire and was electrocuted.

NOMINEE NO.7["The. Indianapolis Star"] A cigarette lighter may have triggered fatal explosion - Dunkirk, Indiana. A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the barrel of a muzzle loader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his face, sheriffs investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his parents' rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was cleaning a 54-caliber muzzle loader that had not been firing properly. He was using the lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.

NOMINEE No.8 lAP, St. Louis] Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it. Police found him unconscious in front of the store; paramedics removed the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.

NOMINEE No.9 [Unknown] To poacher Marino Malerba, who shot a stag standing above him on an overhanging rock-and was killed instantly when it fell on him.

NOMINEE No.10 [Associated Press, Kincaid] Blasting Cap Explodes in Man's Mouth at Party. A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down, triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth, and tougue state police said Wednesday. Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a party late Tuesday night, said Cpl. M.D.Payne. Another man had it in an aquarium hooked to a battery, and was trying to explode it," Payne said. "It wouldn't go off and this guy said, 'I'II show you how to set it off."

Yet Another Darwin award candidate - or pair of candidates -- this just might be the winner!

Truly stupid people 01
A man buys a brand new Grand Cherokee for $30,000+, and has $400.00+ in monthly payments. He's pretty proud of this rig and gets ahold of his friend to do some male bonding with the new ride. They go duck hunting and of course all the lakes are frozen. These two Atomic Brains go to the lake with their guns, the dog, the beer and of course the new vehicle.

They drive out onto the ice. Now, they want to make some kind of a natural landing area to attract ducks - something the decoys will float on.

Remember it's all ice, and in order to make a hole large enough to interest a flock of ducks - a hole big enough to entice ducks to land, they needed to use a little more than an ice hole drill...

Sooo, out of the back of the brand-new Jeep Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite with a short 40-second fuse. Now to their credit, these two rocket scientists DID take into consideration that if they placed the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where they (and the new Grand Cherokee) would be waiting and ran back quickly, they would risk slipping on the ice as they ran from the imminent explosion and could possibly go up in smoke with the resulting blast. After a little deliberation, they come up with lighting and THROWING the dynamite, which is what they end up doing.

Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the beer, the guns AND THE DOG???? Yes, the dog. The driver's pet Black Lab (used for retrieving - especially things thrown by the owner). You guessed it, the dog takes off at a high rate of doggy speed on the ice, reaching the stick of dynamite with the burning 40-second fuse about the time it hits the ice - all to the woe of the two idiots which are now yelling, stomping, waving arms and wondering what the hell to do now...

The dog is happy and now heads back toward the "hunters" with the stick of dynamite. I think we all can picture the ever-increasing concern on the part of the brain trust, as the loyal Labrador Retriever approaches. The Bozos now are REALLY waving their arms - yelling even louder and generally feeling kinda panicked... Now finally one of the guys decides to think - something that neither had done before this moment, grabs a shotgun and shoots the dog. This sounds better than it really is, because the shotgun was loaded with #8 duck shot and hardly effective enough to stop a Black Lab. The dog DID stop for a moment, slightly confused, but then continued on. Another shot, and this time the dog - still standing, became REALLY confused & of course scared...

Thinking that these two Nobel Prize Winners have gone TOTALLY INSANE, the pooch takes off to find cover with a now extremely short fuse still burning on the stick of dynamite. The cover the dogs finds? Underneath the brand new Grand Cherokee worth 30-some thousand dollars the $400.00+ monthly payment vehicle that is sitting nearby on the lake ice.

BOOM! Dog dies, vehicle sinks to bottom of lake, and these two "Co-Leaders of the Known Universe" are left standing there with this "I can't EVEN believe this happened to me" look on their faces. Later, the owner of the vehicle calls his insurance company and is promptly informed that sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is NOT covered on his policy...He had yet to make his first car payment.

GRAVITY KILLS

A 22-year-old Reston man was found dead yesterday after he tried to use accessory straps (the stretchy little ropes with hooks on each end) to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle, police said. Fairfax County police said Eric A. Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these straps together, wrapped an end around one foot, anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped ... and hit the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. "The length of the cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle and the ground." Police say the apparent cause of death was "major trauma". An autopsy is scheduled for later in the week.

LAUNCHED ON THE FOURTH OF JULY

Three young men in Oklahoma were enjoying the coming Fourth of July holiday and wanted to test fire some fireworks. The only real problem was, their launch pad and seating arrangements were atop a several hundred thousand gallon fuel distillation storage tank. Oddly enough, fumes were ignited, producing a fireball seen for miles. They were launched several hundred feet into the air and found dead some 250 yards from their respective seats.

DON'T ASK GOD TO PROVE HIMSELF, HE JUST MIGHT

A lawyer and two buddies were fishing on Caddo Lake in Texas when a lightning storm hit. Most of the other boats immediately headed for the shore, but not our friend the lawyer. Alone on the rear of his aluminum bass boat with his buddies, this individual stood up, spread his arms wide and shouted: "HERE I AM LORD, LET ME HAVE IT!" Needless to say, God delivered. The other two passengers on the boat survived the lightning strike with minor burns.

THE BOYS OF SUMMER

A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. Big deal you may say, but there's a twist here that makes him a candidate. It seems he and a friend were playing catch with a rattlesnake. The friend (a future Darwin Awards candidate himself) was hospitalized.

THEY SAY THOSE THINGS WILL KILL YOU

Not much was given to me on this unlucky fellow, but he qualifies nonetheless. You see, there was a gentleman from Korea who was killed by his cell phone ... more or less. He was doing the usual "walking and talking" when he walked into a tree and managed to somehow break his neck. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to drive and dial at the same time.

GOT A LIGHT?

In a west Texas town, employees in a medium-sized warehouse noticed the smell of gas. Sensibly, management evacuated the building, extinguishing all potential sources of ignition -- lights, power, etc. After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked.

Witnesses later described the scene of one of the technicians reaching into his pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a lighter. Upon operation of the lighter-like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded, sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The technician that was suspected of causing the explosion had never been thought of as "bright" by his peers.

Lastly...

Truly stupid people 02
Top honors for "Human Projectile of the Month" go to an as-of-yet unidentified dude who is also a serious contender for the annual "Darwin Award". That prestigious prize is given posthumously to the person who does the human gene pool the greatest service by removing himself from it in the most extraordinarily stupid fashion.

Troopers from the Arizona Highway Patrol got on to this gallant if not brainless form of ballistic research after motorists reported some mysterious scorched and blackened scars on a stretch of deserted highway.

The more officers found, the stranger the case got. Here is what they "pieced" together:

JATO units are basically huge canisters of solid rocket fuel used to achieve "Jet Assisted Take Off", typically lifting big transport planes into the air from short, rough ground runways, or shooting overloaded planes from the decks of aircraft carriers.

They were not, repeat NOT, designed to augment the inherent boost factor of a 1967 Chevy Impala. But it is guessed that -- let's call him "Zippy" ---- didn't know that when he hooked one up to his ride.

He apparently chose his runway carefully, selecting a nice long, lonely piece of straight highway in good repair. Not guessing that he might need a bit more than five miles of zoom surface, Zippy's test track had, that far down the track, a gentle rise on a sloping turn. He kicked the tire, lit the fire, ran his Chev up to top cruising speed, and hit the ignition. Investigators know exactly where this happened, judging from the extended patch of burned and melted asphalt.

The pocket calculator boys figure Zip reached maximum thrust within 5 seconds, punching the Chevy to "well in excess of 350 miles per hour" and continued at "full burn" for another 20 to 25 seconds. Early in that little sprint, at roughly 2.5 miles down the road, the Human Hydro Shock stood on the brakes, melting them completely, blowing the tires and rapidly reducing all four skins to liquefied trails on the pavement.

Remember that little rise on the turn? That's where Zippy concluded his land speed record attempt and went for airborne honors, ultimately reaching an altitude of 125 feet and still climbing when his flight was abruptly terminated. We'll never know how far or how high he might have gone. A cliff face of solid rock kind of got in his way, posing a serious reaffirmation of the law of physics vis-a-vis two chunks of matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time. He gave it hell though, blasting a 6-foot crater. The best modern forensic science could do was ID the car's make and model year. As for Zippy, only trace evidence of bone, teeth, and hair were found in the crater.
Now all this proves is we got a lot of real stupid people walking around but one less now! If we are lucky th erest will follow soon. I hate stupidity sense the Nam. It gets people killed

__________________
Jesus Was A Liberal

If a certain course of action makes the mouth-breathers furious, then that’s a good policy. – The Practical Environmentalist

Simon had a great job. Every day he was playing with cool hardware and software, he liked his colleagues, and the pay... well... OK, he was underpaid. Vastly underpaid. While his company made good on their promise to give him a raise once he got a C certification, it was an insulting two figures. Simon would've felt less insulted if they'd literally slapped him in the face (instead of figuratively). It didn't take him long to line up some interviews and get a job offer for a position that sounded just as interesting, with the added benefit of a reasonable level of compensation.

Once Simon made his intentions to leave clear, his boss started worrying — they needed someone to take over for Simon, and not having any spare staff, they had to hire someone quick. Simon's boss pulled him aside and asked him to draft a test with some basic questions to weed out the hacks.

Simon got started on a test that had questions ranging from braindead easy to moderately challenging. He tried to come up with questions that would make someone think, but not frustrate them. Ten questions seemed a reasonable amount, so that was his goal.

The first question was one of the harder ones — "Explain how a modulus 11 checksum works and write an example of how it would work in pseudocode." The next several questions were about simple VB and C syntax (remove an element from a linked list, write a sorting algorithm, etc.). The last question, however, was tough.

10. You're writing code in a programming language that you've never used before. You have no documentation about the language except the other code. Complete the following function: ...

Simon included some actual production code from one such system. The company had several machines that ran on long lost programming languages, and long lost manuals and reference sheets except for a few copies written in German, French, or Chinese (with large sections of pages missing), or they were transcribed on stone tablets in glyphs that no one on the team could decipher. So the developers at the company had to think on their feet and really pay attention to existing syntax. Simon didn't intend for the question to be answered correctly, but rather to see the candidate's approach to it.

He finished preparing the test the same day he gave his two weeks notice, and the candidates started coming in over the next few days. The goal was to have Simon train his replacement.

Business continued like it usually did over the next few days, though Simon had yet to meet any candidates that had passed the initial screening process. One day when Simon was in his boss's office working on his computer, when he spotted something strange. It was a completely filled out test, with answers that were not totally correct.

1. This is a BS question!
2. A child could do this one.
3. First year programming question. (which was the point)
4. Who wrote this crap? You should fire him!
5. I would be embarrassed to answer such a stupid question.
6. This question makes no sense at all!
7. Stupid!
8. ...

For most questions, it was full of complaints about the exam. For the tougher questions, it was complaints that the questions didn't make sense. Simon wondered whether it was his boss that had written these responses to the test (and that he'd soon be told to write another test), but the handwriting didn't look like his boss's...

He put it out of his mind and focused on other tasks. If his boss wanted a rewrite, Simon would wait to hear from him. He was curious how the hunt was going, though, so he asked. "Any luck finding a replacement?"

"Actually, yes," his boss replied with a smile. He looked as though he'd just been relieved of a huge burden. "Turns out my nephew is really good with computers, so we're going to give him the job!"

"So... he did OK on the exam then?"

"Oh, yeah, he did great! In fact, he said it was too easy and that he could've done much harder questions!"

Weird. Simon hadn't provided an answer key, since he'd have to grade the more open-ended questions on his own after each applicant finished. His boss didn't have the technical knowledge to review the tests. "I'd like to see his test if you don't mind."

"Uhh... err... we already offered him the job."

Simon had no response; all he could do was stare.

"So there's really no point, He'll be in tomorrow."

Simon blinked twice and continued staring. He was irritated that he'd spent all that time drafting the test, only to have it swept under a rug by someone complaining that it was too easy. I guess I'll withhold judgment until I see the kid's chops, Simon thought.

The following day, Ryan came in and began his training. After a few minutes with Ryan, Simon could tell that Ryan couldn't program, and in fact Simon even doubted that Ryan had ever used a computer before. He'd put together an intense training schedule that would barely fit in the remaining days he'd be on the job, but they didn't even get through a half day's worth of material in the first day.

The first few days involved basic math training, and going over what a bit, byte, binary, hex, etc. were. After explaining hex to Ryan, a revealing question was asked.

"So, like, hex can be a number or a letter between 'A' and 'F', right? Are there any conditions where this isn't the case?"

Simon closed his eyes for a second, then turned and focused on Ryan. "What do you mean?"

"Like, could it ever be a 'G', for example?"

Simon's inner voice was screaming loud enough that he was concerned Ryan might actually hear it. He answered Ryan's question and continued the training.

Hours passed, and Simon learned that Ryan wasn't coy about anything. At one point, he blurted out what his salary was — twice what Simon had been making.

As Simon's last day loomed closer and closer, he tried to put Ryan on some of the equipment to let him learn for himself a bit. A manager that worked in the area saw Ryan doing basically nothing all day aside from asking basic questions, taking bathroom trips, and frequent water cooler visits, and he was concerned that Simon had wasted the training time. "Ryan, did you get any traini- I mean, who did you go through your training with?"

"Simon," he responded. "But he didn't do a very good job of it, I hardly learned anything from him."

Suspecting sabotage, the manager rounded up the other managers and called Simon into the conference room.

"Do you know why you're here?" they began. Before Simon could open his mouth, they continued "We don't think you trained Ryan very well. We think you don't care because your time is almost up here."

His blood boiling, Simon couldn't help but say exactly what was on his mind. Fists clenched at his side, he yelled "This guy is a complete idiot! He doesn't know anything about computers, he doesn't know anything about the business, and the only reason he was hired is because he's related to Larry! And that's also why he's making twice what I made!" After a brief flash of embarrassment that he'd gotten so worked up about it, he realized he had proof of Ryan's incompetence. "Look, I think we can clear this all up if we just look at his exam."

The managers were stunned. After a long pause, Simon's boss (Ryan's uncle) chimed in. "Uh... w- I lost it."

"OK," Simon replied, "how about re-interviewing him?"

Ryan's uncle started to respond, "uh, I don't think that's neces-"

"Fine, bring him in," one of the other managers said. Simon was asked to leave the room.

Hours later, Simon was summoned back to the conference room. All of the managers other than Ryan's uncle were there.

"Look, we're sorry. Turns out you were right — Ryan doesn't know anything. Is there any chance you can stay on?"

"Sorry," Simon said. "I've already accepted another offer."

"We'll pay you what we were paying Ryan!"

Simon buried his face in his hands, slowly looking up. "Look, my new employer made me a better offer, and how could I possibly want to work here after what happened?" He'd taken all he could, so he just got up and left the room, finishing the day working quietly at his desk.

To blow off steam, he got together with a friend later that night and complained about the whole messed up situation.

"So, like, they're hiring now?" his friend asked.

"Well, yeah, but did you listen to everything I said?"

"Yeah, but that's more than I'm making now. Who can I send my résumé to?"

A few days later, Simon's friend was offered a job right after his interview. Meanwhile, Ryan is still working at the company. He was moved to a manual labor position, however.

Nepotism Trumps Interview - The Daily WTF

I laughed...
I cried...
I think I used to work for this company...

While it may not be a "joke", I got a "dilbert-esque" chuckle out of it, so I share it here...

Grrr...

Do you realize I just kept expecting one HELL of a punch line the longer and longer that got ...

I now really wanna you down!

__________________

EARTH—Former vice president Al Gore—who for the past three decades has unsuccessfully attempted to warn humanity of the coming destruction of our planet, only to be mocked and derided by the very people he has tried to save—launched his infant son into space Monday in the faint hope that his only child would reach the safety of another world.

"I tried to warn them, but the Elders of this planet would not listen," said Gore, who in 2000 was nearly banished to a featureless realm of nonexistence for promoting his unpopular message. "They called me foolish and laughed at my predictions. Yet even now, the Midwest is flooded, the ice caps are melting, and the cities are rocked with tremors, just as I foretold. Fools! Why didn't they heed me before it was too late?"

Al Gore—or, as he is known in his own language, Gore-Al—placed his son, Kal-Al, gently in the one-passenger rocket ship, his brow furrowed by the great weight he carried in preserving the sole survivor of humanity's hubristic folly.

"There is nothing left now but to ensure that my infant son does not meet the same fate as the rest of my doomed race," Gore said. "I will send him to a new planet, where he will, I hope, be raised by simple but kindly country folk and grow up to be a hero and protector to his adopted home."

As the rocket soared through the Gore estate's retractable solar-paneled roof—installed three years ago to save energy and provide emergency rocket-launch capability in the event that Gore's campaign to save Earth was unsuccessful—the onetime presidential candidate and his wife, Tipper, stood arm-in-arm, nobly facing their end while gazing up in stoic dignity at the receding rocket, the ecosystem already beginning to collapse around them.

In the final moments before the Earth's destruction, Gore expressed hope that his son would one day grow up to carry on his mission by fighting for truth, justice, and the American way elsewhere in the universe, using his Earth-given superpowers to become a champion of the downtrodden and a reducer of carbon emissions across the galaxy.

"Perhaps he will succeed where I have failed," Gore said.
Al Gore Places Infant Son In Rocket To Escape Dying Planet | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Please don't feed the animals...