“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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Hi folks.
It’s Black Friday.
This is the day they let the crazy people out.
They wrestle and fight and tug
and roll around on the floor hitting each other
in a frenzy of greed and stupidity.
It’s fun to watch, but I’m staying at home.
How about you?
If you want to know why then have
a look at these videos and photos.
Enjoy and be safe.
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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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It’s an unwritten rule that the more power you give bureaucrats the stupider the regulations they come up with.
The European Union is a prime example. The bureaucrats there have already decided that our bananas shouldn’t be too straight, or our cucumbers too bent. Their scientists have even declared that there was no proof that drinking water helped with dehydration. (Yes, they really did!)
These examples give you an idea just how intrusive and how dumb these people are.
Unfortunately they are in a position to issue these stupid regulations and to have them enforced by an even stupider team of morons who spend their worthless lives checking to make sure that rules that should never have been passed are adhered to.
And it just keeps going.
There are new wattage rules for light bulbs, and televisions, and washing machines, and refrigerators. And within the past few days the poor vacuum cleaner has come under attack.
They’ve decided that vacuum cleaners that use more than 1600 watts can no longer be sold in stores in the EU, nor manufactured in EU plants. And the wattage is to be reduced even further during the next two years to a paltry 900 watts.
I don’t know whether the term “poor suckers” is being applied to these weak powered machines or the citizens of the EU who have to put up with such endless nonsense!
Next on the bureaucrat’s hit list are lawn mowers, mobile phones, hair dryers, kettles, in fact just about everything they can think of interfering with.
Strangely, though, the one thing they never ever consider in their quest to reduce energy consumption is to cut the numbers in the EU Parliament along with their tens of thousands of support staff.
Or maybe it’s not so strange at all!
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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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I know Cliff Clavin, the Cheers character played by John Ratzenberger for many years, was only a pretend mailman but if Jeff Bezos gets his way – and he usually does – then mailmen will have a lot less to do.
Cliff used to drone on in Cheers and bore everyone in the bar, but in the future jobs like his are to be taken over by drones.
The military applications are well known, but instead of delivering a few pounds of high explosives to an unsuspecting terrorist, drone technology, which was legalized for commercial use last year (2012), is being developed by Bezos and his team to deliver Amazon products by air right to your front door in about 30 minutes.
We’re entering the realms of science fiction here. And if it were anyone else but Bezos you might be forgiven for dismissing the idea. But he thinks big, and thanks to the success of Amazon he has the big bucks to make it happen.
If it is real and it does happen, personally I think its great! An application for this technology other than the usual powers-that-be crap of using it to kill and spy on us.
Amazon says that, “From a technology point of view, we’ll be ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is working on rules for unmanned aerial vehicles. They’ll take their time as always, but eventually it will happen.
So in a few years time seeing Amazon drones in the air may well be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today.
Here’s a taste of the future for you.
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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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I remember on this day last year starting out with great intentions of doing a Star Wars based post in tribute the day that has become known to many as ‘Star Wars Day’ because of the pun on the memorable phrase coined in the movie series “May the force be with you”.
Unfortunately I failed miserably last year because the post ended up as one about a guy who had built himself a really cool looking laser gun based on the phasers from Star Trek, not Star Wars. (Here’s the link if you missed it – click here)
So time to make amends.
Taken together the Star Wars series of movies has to be one of the most watched and highest grossing ever in the history of the cinema, if not THE greatest. The original 1977 movie itself has been estimated to have taken $2,710,800,000 in today’s inflation adjusted terms.
On top of that it has spawned a plethora of merchandising material from t-shirts to robots to gadgets to almost everything that could be seen in the movies themselves, and then some!
Top of everyone’s list has to be a lightsabre – I have never met anyone who has seen Star Wars who didn’t want to be the proud owner of a light sabre, including me.
From the first time you saw the flash of light and heard that ‘hummm’, way back in 1977, in Obi-Wan Kenobi’s bungalow, even though you didn’t really know what it was, you still knew you wanted one – needed one!
Well for a bit north of $100 now you can own one, the Star Wars Force FX Lightsaber! It has the light, it has the sound, and it looks the part – well almost.
From the sublime, however, we also have the ridiculous.
Somewhere out there is that great Universe you just know that at least one moron has subjected their poor dog to the indignity of a Star Wars suit. Poor mutt, even the look on its face says it all.
And there are lots of other stuff in between, including these
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Finally, an interesting little piece of trivia that would just as easily have taken its place in one of my ‘Did you know factoids’.
Star Wars fans were not the first to introduce the line “May the fourth be with you”. When the recently deceased Margaret Thatcher was elected Britain’s first female Prime Minister on May 4, 1979, her party placed an advertisement in The London Evening News that said “May the Fourth Be with You, Maggie. Congratulations.” This reading of the line has also been recorded in the UK Parliament’s Hansard.
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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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They call it Black Friday nowadays. It could just as easily have been Red Friday or Purple Friday or Green Friday or Any-Color-You-Like Friday. But the marketing men called it Black Friday and we’re stuck with it.
This is the day when people queue up for hours in the hope of getting something they don’t really need at a discount price they can’t really afford. And sometimes they lose their minds and fight and trample on each other for the dubious privilege.
Ah, the dumbing down of the dumb and the dumber!
When I say dumb and dumber don’t just think I am talking about the uneducated. Not in the least. Some of those for whom schooling was anathema have a lot more street savvy than most, something they have learned in what is sometimes known as the school of hard knocks – in other words, life!
I have learned that idiots come in all shapes and sizes and with all forms of learning and skills. There are smart football players and there are dumb ones. There are smart doctors and there are dumb ones. There are even smart academics and there are the well educated fools who may be exam passing machines but who haven’t the common sense to go to the local store and buy a loaf of bread.
A friend of mine, let’s call him Fred, was a guy like that. He had degrees by the yard, undergraduate, master’s degrees and even a PhD. I suppose I should have called him Dr Fred.
Academically he was brilliant. And a great teacher of academic subjects. He traveled the world and lectured in various schools and colleges to great acclaim.
But Fred hadn’t the common sense of a gnat when it came to commerce. All his life he bought things far too dear but always thought that he had bought them cheap. He was a car salesman’s dream customer, manna from heaven for a realtor, and bread and butter – and chocolate cake with icing – for any shopkeeper selling computing or electronic gear.
The reason Fred comes to mind today is that he was also one of the idiots who would queue up half the night for a sale bargain, particularly where rare books were concerned. Fred was an avid collector.
Every year our local University bookstore held a one day sale where most of their books were discounted by at least 10 or 20 percent, but where one in particular was discounted by a massive amount, at least by half and sometimes by even more.
One year Fred spotted a book he had been after that was in the sale. It had been reduced from $500 to little over $100 and Fred was determined to have it.
So he spent the night and day before the sale getting as much sleep as he could. Then he made a flask of coffee and a few sandwiches, got a sleeping bag and set off confidently about 3 am in the morning to go to the bookstore to camp out until it opened.
When he got to the store there was no one around, in fact nothing at all on the street, except for a large cardboard box sitting at the entrance to the shop. Fred quickly surmised that it was extra stock that had been delivered after hours for the sale.
He rolled out his sleeping bag, climbed inside it and settled down for the night. It was about this time of the year and cold, but not freezing or anything too extreme. He was comfortable enough.
The time passed slowly as it usually does at night when you aren’t able to get to sleep or when you are nervously anticipating some event that will happen in the morning. Four o’clock and five o’clock came and went, and at around six o’clock Fred ate his sandwiches and drank his coffee. He was very content. Just another couple of hours to go and the book would be his.
By seven-thirty it was just beginning to get light. Traffic had started to move along the main streets as people began to make their way to work. The side street where the bookshop was however was still deserted, apart from Fred and the big cardboard box.
And then about ten minutes before eight the staff of the bookstore started to arrive. They smiled at Fred as they walked past and opened the door of the store. They switched the lights on and closed the doors again. Fred knew that they would open them again soon, when they had got themselves organized. Just a few more minutes he thought. Fred stood up and rolled up his sleeping bag, ready to enter the store.
That was when he heard the alarm. It wasn’t very loud and at first Fred thought it was coming from another street nearby. It wasn’t. Then he thought it was coming from inside the bookstore, possibly part of their security system. But it wasn’t that either. And then, before he could think up any other possibilities the alarm stopped just as suddenly as it had started.
Then to Fred’s complete and utter amazement the flaps of the cardboard box flew open and a head came out. It was a young man and as he got to his feet and stretched his arms he looked over at Fred and said, “Morning. You here for the book sale too?”
It was a classic ‘WTF’ moment. But Fred was having trouble grasping what had just happened and he couldn’t get any words from his brain to his lips. So he just stood there, mouth slightly open, trying desperately to piece together what was happening in front of him.
“I’ve done this before,” the young man said cheerfully to Fred. “Best place to be on a cold night is inside a cardboard box. Those old homeless guys know a thing or two I can tell you.”
This time words started to come to Fred. “Were you… did you… have you been… were you in that thing all night?” he eventually spluttered the question out.
“Sure thing,” the young man replied. “Had to get that first edition of..” and he named the book that Fred had his heart set on. “There’s only the one copy, you know.”
Fred did know, boy did he know. But it never occurred to him that someone else might know the value of the book or that they might want it too. It never occurred to him to look at the cardboard box, even though he had been there beside it for most of the night. And it certainly never occurred to him that there might be somebody inside it!
“FFS!” Fred exclaimed, more to himself than anyone else. He didn’t say another word after that. He didn’t go into the bookstore either. He turned and walked away, still not entirely sure, I think, what had just happened.
As for me, you wont get me near a shop tomorrow, bargains or not. If you are going shopping then good luck, this might be what you are letting yourself in for.
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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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In the dark ages before the inter web and things like Ebay and CraigsList newspaper classified ads used to be the way to try to raise a bit of extra cash by selling off things you didn’t need, or to advertise for things you wanted. They still exist although not nearly so popular as they used to be.
As with Ebay etc., you can find almost everything advertised in them, even the oddest things that either give you a ‘WTF’ moment or just make you laugh – sometimes both.
Here is a short selection for your enjoyment.
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”Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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As I’ve said before on this blog, I’m a doggie person, but I know that there are a lot of people out there who like cats. However, I don’t think any of them could have liked the cat that is the subject of this post.
It happed a few years ago when a colleague and myself were on a business trip that included a visit to a small town in West Virginia. It was a lovely little town, called Rednecksville (I won’t tell you it’s real name so as to protect the guilty), full of lovely, very friendly and hospitable people.
During the time we happened to be there they held a local fair come flea market where people from the town and the surrounding countryside would gather. Some set up stalls to sell their home crafted goods, others, like myself just went along to see what was on offer and perhaps buy a few trinkets as gifts.
But, whilst the experience itself was enjoyable, the items that were on sale left a whole lot to be desired. They were quite unbelievably crudely made.
There was a guy with what I think were supposed to bird nesting boxes and/or feeders, but they looked more like an old plank of wood with a bit of drain pipe nailed to it. (It looked like that because that’s what it was, lol)
Other stalls were selling home made jewelry in what you could only call primitive style.
And yet more had bits of metal junk.
Surprisingly one of the junk stalls seemed to be doing good business, selling big rusty nuts and bolts and bits of chain and so forth. On second thoughts perhaps not so surprisingly since this was a largely rural community and new uses can always be found for stuff like that.
I smiled quietly to myself as I wondered if the bird box guy had been a customer of this stall the last time they had the fair.
At another stall a woman was selling some stuffed toys/animals she had very obviously made herself. None of them were good, but some were just downright awful.
For some reason best known to himself my colleague chose to buy a stuffed cat for his wife. He was getting on in years and had been married a long time, but in all those years he never had any idea about women or what they would like – and that was especially so in regard to his wife, although in his defense I have to say that she didn’t seem to like anything he did very much.
To my utter amazement he choose the most unusual stuffed cat I have ever seen. It wasn’t that it looked ugly as such, or that it was badly made. This thing looked pure evil. And no matter where you would be standing it always seemed to be looking right at you, or through you.
It was terrible, horrendous, occultish. If Steven King had been there he’d have written a book about it for sure. If Vincent Price had been holding it in some horror movie set it might have looked more acceptable. Or if we had been in Haiti, I could have understood it if it was supposed to be some voodoo ritual piece. But this was right in the middle of good old evangelical Christian Bible Belt America. This was no place for the cat from hell.
“What do you think?” he asked, proudly showing me his new purchase.
“I hate it!” I told him in no uncertain terms. “What the hell did you buy that thing for?”
He seemed rather miffed.
He must have been more miffed when he got it home. Needless to say his wife hated it. Wouldn’t give it house room at all. And I’m sure she made her feelings very clear to him, as she usually did about almost everything.
So he gave it to his daughter.
She hated it. Didn’t want it near her house either.
So he gave it to his daughter-in-law.
She hated it. She was actually scared out of her wits by it.
So he gave it to his grand-daughter.
She hated it. Started to cry, I believe.
So he put in the trunk of the car and brought it to his office the next day.
His secretary hated it, too. Wouldn’t have it near the office.
So back in the trunk it went.
Eventually he must have got to hate it too because it disappeared never to be seen again.
And the weirdest bit of all….
I photographed him with it when he bought it and I would have attached it to this blog post except for one thing – the photo is nowhere to be found!
That was one weird cat!
“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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It never ceases to amaze me how really dumb some people are. We seem to have bred an incredibly stupid generation of people, and unfortunately the next generation is showing further signs of further intellectual deterioration too. It’s a good argument for a theory of deterioration rather than evolution!
I’m not just talking about some people not being able to grasp quantum physics theory. I’m talking about morons who cannot grasp the fundamentals of life.
For example, my blog friend AirportsMadeSimple.com recently posted an article about a new app for phones giving people information about how to eat correctly. I know this app was probably more than that, but it made me comment that soon people will need an app to know how to chew and then swallow. It really does seem to be getting that bad.
One of the first things we learn as children, after first words, first steps and all that good stuff, is how to navigate the great barrier that we call a door. Most children master this without too much difficulty – the opening bit at least, kids are not so hot on closing doors which does provide more than a little irritation at times. For many years we have had ordinary doors and still do in most places.
I’m sure this is not the reason at all, but I like to imagine that the people who invested the automatic door did so because they recognized that idiots couldn’t handle ordinary doors.
We all know how they work, you walk up to them, a sensor recognizes you are there, the door opens automatically, and you walk through.
Easy?
For normal people, yes. For the stupid beyond belief, no!
Have a look at the videos. By the way, there’s one showing a woman and one showing a man. There is absolute sexual equality when it comes to morons.
Enjoy or cringe or hide behind the sofa.
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.(Acknowledgements to FunnyEmails for bringing this firs one to my attention)
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“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
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http://jitterygt.wordpress.com made a comment on one of my posts, “Confirmed Stupidity” that “The creativity of stupidity is also endless”. And so it seems to be.
Stupid people are always finding new ways to do stupid things. I don’t think I would go so far as to call it creative, though. Most of it happens by pure accident rather than design.
Now I have to point out at the start, that this blog post is not about things that are done to assist those in society who have some kind of disability. Everything that is done in that regard to make life a bit easier and things more accessible is to be encouraged and applauded. This blog applies specifically to those who could get out of their own way but because they are too lazy and/or obtuse, won’t!
So the question today is, and it’s a good question that hardly anyone bothers to ask or tries to answer, “Should we have to waste time, energy and resources pandering to the idiots in society?”
In other words should EVERYTHING have to sink down to their level? Should the rest of us normal-ish people be deprived of a better and simpler existence just because some people seem to be incapable of living their lives without doing themselves harm?
I vote NO, we shouldn’t pander to them. Not in the slightest.
In the dumbed down society that we are increasingly being forced to live in, and that the even dumber politicians encourage (probably so that the majority of people don’t develop the skills to see the hash they are making of everything), far from questioning the consequent waste of time, energy, and resources, they continue to make more and more rules to cater for the intellectually challenged.
Think about the consequences for a moment.
How many labels do we have on jars and cans and elsewhere that really don’t need to be there? Do we really need a label on a packet of nuts telling us that the packet contains nuts? Do we really need a label telling us that hot coffee is ‘hot’ or that iced mocha is ‘cold’?
How many otherwise productive man-hours are wasted each and every year trying to figure out what dumb thing some moron will do with a particular product?
I know the whole waste of time phenomenon has been spurred on in many cases because of spurious and unnecessary law suits by lawyers who aren’t smart enough to set up a proper law practice and by judges who are so out of touch with reality that they should be thrown out of court for not doing the same with these foolish lawsuits.
Then we have the bureaucrats weighing in. With nothing productive to do themselves, except to make our lives more and more intolerable, they dream up new rules and regulations to make business more uncompetitive and ordinary peoples’ lives more complicated.
And it’s all a waste of time. No matter what rules are invented and what precautions are taken it is a law of the universe that morons will find a way round them and hurt themselves anyway. Some of them have even walked into the signs put up to warn them about walking into signs.
So we should NOT waste time trying to make things foolproof because the fools have proved time and again that it’s a waste of time!
Let’s aspire to learn more and be smarter, instead of dumbing down to the level of those who don’t give a damn anyhow!
End rant. Have a cup of coffee – mind, though, it’s hot!
Here are a few more examples:
Suitable for outdoor use. Found on a rain gauge.
Warning: High in sodium. On a salt cellar.
Remove wrapper, open mouth, insert muffin, eat.
Use like regular soap. On a bar of soap.
Simply pour the biscuits into a bowl and allow the cat to eat when it wants. On a bag of cat biscuits.
Instructions: open packet, eat nuts on a packet of nuts
Do not use as an ice cream topping on Hair colouring
Warning: do not attempt to swallow on a Mattress
Caution: contents may catch fire on Matches
Some assembly required on a 500-piece puzzle
The appliance is switched on by setting the on/off switch to the ‘on’ position on a Kettle
Product will be hot after heating on Bread Pudding
Warning: May cause drowsiness on Sleep Aid
This ice may be cold on an Ice drink
Instructions: Put on food on Ketchup
Do not open here on the Bottom of a Cola bottle
“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”
Taking a little break from the normal blog post.
I guess that a lot of you are asking who the heck is Sam J Porcello and why should we be raising a glass of milk in his honor?
Well Sam is perhaps a lot better known as ‘Mr.Oreo’ the scientist who in a career at Nabisco that spanned 34 years, invented that creamy sticky stuff in the middle of Oreos. He died recently at the age of 76.
Sam J Porcello was one of the world’s foremost experts on cocoa, the raw material of chocolate, and the go-to guy for all Oreo related matters at Nabisco. He also created the chocolate-covered and the white chocolate-covered Oreo, and held five patents relating to Oreos.
Almost half a trillion Oreos have been sold worldwide since they hit the market in 1912, one hundred years ago this year, so I think you could say that they have been pretty successful.
And that just leaves the big question.
So how do you eat yours?
Are you a dry biter and cruncher?
Or a dunker?
Or a twist and licker?
However you do it, the next time you do it, save a thought for people like Sam J Porcello.
FACTOID ALERT!
Oreos are sold in Argentina (with banana filling and with caramel filling in the same package; in Canada (where they are manufactured and sold under the Christie brand); in China (where they were introduced only in 1996 but have now become the best-selling cookie in the People’s Republic of China, after altering its recipe to have a lower sugar content to suit local tastes); in Croatia (since February 2011); in India (introduced in March 2011 under Cadbury brand); in Norway (since 2004); in Poland (from February 2011); and in the United Kingdom from May 2008). They are also to be found in shops and supermarkets in many other countries.
If your interested Nabisco has an Oreo web site
http://www.nabiscoworld.com/oreo/
Speaking personally I’m a Wagon Wheels man. Good luck finding those but they’re truly scrumptious!
fasab 