TEN JACK TEN

The 90210 iPod.

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Bacon-flavored jelly beans.

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Giant inflatable dog poop.

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A comic book about illegal music downloading.

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A robot with boobs.

Part of the Miss Universe pageant is a “national costume” presentation. Here’s Miss Venezuela’s:

She won anyway.

In case you were thinking about taking Canada seriously.

On May 30, [Colleen] Leduc picked [her daughter] Victoria up from school, where she’s enrolled in an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) class with several boys around the same age. When Leduc returned home, there was an urgent call asking her to return to the Livingstone Street East school.

Frightened, Leduc rushed back to the school. She and Victoria entered a room where they were met by the principal, the vice-principal and the teacher.

What did they tell her? That they were investigating the possibility that her daughter was the victim of sexual abuse. Shocking news, but more shocking was the source:

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria’s educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with “V” was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old.

The school administrators say they had no choice but to contact the authorities, but the law actually states that suspected abuse must be reported “if there are reasonable grounds.” Probable cause has one foot in the grave up North.

Michael Pfleger is a radical priest in Chicago. You probably wouldn’t know about him if he hadn’t gone to Obama’s old church and mocked Hillary Clinton (see the vid).

That’s against Catholic Church policy, which bans partisan politics. It’s also against Pfleger’s instructions from his Cardinal, who told him not to mention candidates by name. He’s already been suspended from his parish post.

Why did he do it? Because he thought there wouldn’t be any consequences:

. . . how, as a friend and passionate supporter of Obama’s campaign for president, could he do what he did, with cameras rolling?

Pfleger’s short answer? He didn’t think the service and his “conversation” — a more casual address than a classic sermon, he explained — were being broadcast live online, as Trinity often does.

“They told me it was down,” Pfleger said. “Their live streaming had been down all day, and they didn’t know whether it was back up. . . . I regret the dramatization that I was naive enough to believe was just going to be kept among that church.”

Just in case you had any sympathy for the guy, he finishes with a reminder that he’s the real victim here:

“This is a dangerous time in America, the freest country in the world,” Pfleger says, “where you have to whisper your thoughts.”

Actually, Pfleger, it’s a dangerous time for people who won’t do what their boss tells them to do. But then, it’s pretty much always been a dangerous time to do that.

The US government’s Office of Personnel Management paid Hewitt Associates $21 million to create a system that would calculate federal employees’ retirement benefits, speeding up a complicated process that was (and still is) being done by hand.  The result?  Crap.

The OPM has said the new system would have to be capable of making up to 150 distinct calculations because federal employees are covered by different retirement rules. The formula for figuring the annuity of a law enforcement officer is different from the rules applied to a postal worker, for example.

Hewitt and the OPM launched the system in February, and the OPM said the system successfully delivered on 15 of the most common retirement calculations.

But the OPM contracting team decided to call a temporary halt to the project when tests showed that the system could handle only five of the next 61 functions. The calculator produced wrong answers some or all of the time or failed to even calculate an annuity.

The math:  20 correct calculations divided by 76 total calculations = a 26.3 % success rate.  Or, approximately $1 million per working calculation (but then they did start with the easy ones).  Ever wonder where they got the phrase “close enough for government work?”

Shows where a bunch of people chase after the affections of one person (usually of the opposite gender) are almost the worst thing on television.  (The worst is that show on Fox where people destroy their lives by hooking themselves up to a lie detector and disclosing awful things about themselves, but usually end up getting nothing because they keep trying for the big money and think they can get away with just a little lying.)

Anyway, we get to see the dim bulb of a girl talk about the men who are clamoring to win her heart, and she focuses on one guy in particular because all he seems able to talk about is how proud he is to be Greek (the country, not a fraternity member).  So she takes some time to talk to him to give him a chance to talk about something else.

Of course, all he talks about is being Greek, how his values are solidly Greek, how great his large Greek family is, how much he likes to hang around with his large Greek family.  And then, he says the single stupidest thing I think I have ever heard on national television:

“My brother is also my best friend.  He’s Greek, too.“

Obama explains to us why he’s behind in the polls for the upcoming Kentucky Democrat primary:

“What it says is that I’m not very well known in that part of the country,” Obama said. “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”

A reasonable explanation to the extent Arkansas is within a few state lines of Kentucky.  But you kind of have to ignore the fact that Obama’s home state is Illinois, which shares a border with Kentucky.

Is there some rich-Harvard-guy alternate definition of “nearby” that I was never taught?

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The Washington Post breathlessly repeats allegations of sick-leave abuse by IRS employees:

For weeks that had a holiday falling on a Monday, 27 percent of all sick leave at the IRS was taken on a Tuesday in 2005 and 2006, the report said.  And 24 percent of all sick leave taken by IRS employees during non-holiday weeks was on a Monday.

Wow, sounds bad.  Unless you have a calendar and the ability to count.  Assuming random distribution of sick leave, you would expect 20% of absences to occur on any one day of a 5-day week, and 25% of absences to occur on any one day of a 4-day week.  In that context, the variances seem less dramatic.  Or abusive.  Or worth anyone’s time.

Politically Stupid

Meet Carrollton, Texas mayor Becky Miller:

Sang backup for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne. Engaged to Eagles singer-songwriter Don Henley. Devastated by a brother’s death in Vietnam.

All are part of the colorful past described by Carrollton Mayor Becky Miller, acquaintances say.

Carrollton residents including former council members Bonnie Kaplan, Fran Brown and Judy Scamardo said they had heard Mrs. Miller say she was once engaged to Mr. Henley. Ms. Kaplan, who was elected to the council in 1999, said she took note of it because she is a “huge” Eagles and Don Henley fan.

Larry Solters, longtime spokesman for Mr. Henley and the Eagles, said the singer had no reunion with a former girlfriend or fiancé at that time.

“Don said he’s never heard of her, doesn’t know her, certainly was never engaged to her,” Mr. Solters said.

In an e-mail to The News last week, Mrs. Miller said: “I have never said that I was engaged to Don Henley. I dated him.”

The mayor, who has said she graduated from high school in 1968, has told residents and colleagues over the years, as well as reporters for previous stories, that she sang for Mr. Browne and Ms. Ronstadt.

Mrs. Miller said Monday that she toured with the artists after her first marriage. She has said she quit singing backup when she met her current husband, Jerry Miller, in 1978.

Cree Clover Miller, Mr. Browne’s manager, said the singer had never heard of a Becky or Rebecca Sampson, Gibson or Miller. Richard Bowden, a former lead guitarist for Ms. Ronstadt, said she told him last week that “she remembers nobody by any of those names.”

Informed that the singers couldn’t recall her singing with them, Mrs. Miller said, “Maybe I was going by a different name. Did you think about that?”

Told that the inquiries had included her maiden name and former married name, she said she had gone by other names. “There’s several,” she said last week. “I’m not going to tell you what they are. You have to find that out.”

Then there’s the dead brother.

Her father, Edward Sampson, said his son is alive in Maryland. “He was never in the service,” Mr. Sampson said.

Mrs. Miller admitted falsely telling Mr. Branson that an 18-year-old killed in Vietnam in 1968 was her brother.

Later, Mrs. Miller said the “brother” killed in Vietnam was “not my blood brother. … My mother did not have him.” She said the man had been raised by her family and was as close as a brother. But she wouldn’t provide a name that could be checked.

“There are other circumstances surrounding him that my family doesn’t want out, so we’re not going to go there,” she said.

“I get angry when people get into my personal life,” Mrs. Miller said. “My personal life does not have a thing to do with my job as mayor or being elected on the City Council for 10 years.”

Apparently, this intensely private person never thought to stop talking (in lying form) about her personal life.  To nobody’s surprise, she lost her re-election bid last Tuesday.

Dangerously Stupid

Experiencing shlong shame? Wang not working? Disappointing ding-dong? Maybe you should be blaming someone else.

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Rumors of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

If you claim you’ve make someone blind, they’re going to be able to verify the claim pretty quickly. Same with just about any other constantly-used part of the body. But the male organ requires support from the brain to get the job done, so if you think you’re impotent, you probably are. This is actually kind of a clever scam, right up to the point where you get murdered for witchcraft.

Politically Stupid

What happens if you catch a guy who had himself smuggled into your country and the evidence shows is likely a terrorist. How about sending him back where he came from? If you’re Great Britain, nope.

A terror suspect who was once found with a map marked with the flightpath to Birmingham International Airport has defeated the UK Government’s bid to deport him to Libya. The man, who can only be identified by the initials DD, has been described by a court as “real and direct threat to the national security of the UK”.

So why can’t they send him back where he came from? Because he comes from a shitty country. Well, that’s not fair, maybe they just don’t like terrorists either.

. . . the assurances which had been obtained by the UK from Libya, in the form of a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, were not sufficient to protect DD and AS from a real risk of torture or other ill-treatment if they were to be returned to Libya.

Ill-treatment? What does that mean? Are we talking bamboo shoots under the fingernails or denying him a car loan? Wherever it falls in the spectrum, Mr. Airport Enthusiast is staying right where he illegally is. But to make sure he behaves, they’ve slapped a “control order” on him. That sounds a lot like the legal equivalent of a warning to behave or run the risk of enduring further warnings.

Yes, folks, it’s Earth Day, the day we set aside to thank the planet-sized object that we reside upon for existing.  Let’s all be quiet for a moment while we wait for a reply.

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Looks like we’re not going to get a “you’re welcome” this year either.  Hope you didn’t spend too much money on your Hallmark card.

Hey, I kid.  Enjoy the pagan rituals, folks.  I’d join in, but there’s some First and Second Commandment issues I’m still working out. 

Stupid For Legal Purposes

If Heather Mills thought she was going to end her marriage to Paul McCartney with any class, that idea had to have ended when she chose to represent herself in court. Now, she’s just the one-legged wack job who wasted everyone’s time to get pretty much what she was offered in the first place.

She asked for 125 million pounds, and got 24.3 million. If you practiced law for a living, that would represent an ass-whipping. But if you represent yourself, there is no fail-state:

Ms Mills was “over the moon”, [her representative] said. “She is absolutely delighted, elated.

Because “delighted, elated” people traditionally throw water on the other side’s lawyer on the way out of court.

Ms Mills, who dispensed with her lawyers, rejected any idea that she could have done better with legal help. Referring to the judge and lawyers she said: “These people are in a club, it’s like they want to stay together and they don’t want a litigant in person to do well but he could not award me and my daughter such a low sum because it was actually impossible.”

Yeah, Heather, it wouldn’t have had anything to do with you not being truthful, would it?

“Having watched and listened to her give evidence, having studied the documents, and having given in her favour every allowance for the enormous strain she must have been under (and in conducting her own case), I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid. Overall she was a less than impressive witness.”

Mr Justice Bennet said: “In her evidence she told me that as much as 80 per cent or 90 per cent of her earnings went direct to charities. However, the wife had to accept in her cross-examination that there was no documentary evidence, for example letters from the relevant charities, that her fees were sent direct to charities.”

“But the tax returns do not disclose any bank interest earned or only very small sums which are not consistent with holding £2m- £3m in a bank or banks. Moreover her tax returns disclose no charitable giving at all.“

That’s British for “screw you, you lied your ass off.”

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Internet justice beats actual police-involved justice.

On March 12 McPherson returned [home] to discover that his home had been broken into and that the burglar had made off with his Xbox 360, an old Powerbook and a television.

Familiar with the competence of the Philadelphia police, McPherson decided to hunt for the items himself and soon found that the burglar had tried to sell his laptop at a local pawn shop, which has images of the guy from their camera. He tries to give the info to police, but never hears back.

That would be the end of it, but he was dealing with a moron.

He goes home, hooks [a new 360] up and discovers a voice message on his 360 from some guy saying he has his 360 and wants cash to give it back. Better still the idiot uses his current account to leave the message.

McPherson calls police again and is hung up on… so he turns things over to the Internet. Since the story hit Digg the person who left the message asking for 360 ransom has been identified, his address and high school location posted, he’s been harassed, seemingly endlessly, via AIM.

Eventually the kid caved and told his parents, McPherson was, apparently in touch with them and now seems to have all of his stuff back.

Politically Stupid

In case you haven’t seen it, CBS busted Hillary Clinton for claiming she remembered “landing under sniper fire.” Looks like when you run against Obama, you’re an honorary Republican.

At first, she claimed she was sleep-deprived and misspoke (this from the woman running the “3am” ad?). So CBS followed it up with the history of the lie, showing how the Bosnia landing grew more dangerous each time she told the story. In December 2007, it was a corkscrew landing because there might be sniper fire. In February 2008, her welcoming ceremony had to be indoors “because of sniper fire.” By March, she was claiming a “landing under sniper fire” with instructions to run to her car. CBS has the video of her standing in the middle of a class of seventh-graders on the runway.

Lying was a lot easier before the internet got big, wasn’t it?

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Borders are a big deal lately, so Great Britain formed a special border task force.

A border security force being unveiled by ministers today is unable to search for illegal immigrants at weekends because of a £100million budget crisis.

The ban on immigration staff searching for illegal immigrants at the weekends and Bank Holidays is the result of a £100 million overspend which has left officials desperate to avoid overtime payments wherever they can.

All raids will be halted except where staff formally request written permission at least three weeks in advance from senior bosses - who have made clear it is unlikely to be granted.

I wonder how well Discount Law Enforcement works.

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So the guy you’ve been hanging around with for 20-plus years sells videos of himself cursing the USA and white people in general from the pulpit? Make him look less bad by throwing your white grandma under the bus.

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. But she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know . . . there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”

See? Everybody’s a racist wacko, especially those typical white people. Vote for me.

Also, I’m developing a theory that the more trouble you think you’re in, the more American flags you need to have on stage with you.

Stupid.net

Finally, even the homely or sensible can pretend to be the ultimate form of life on the planet: a party girl.

The Miss Bimbo internet game has attracted prepubescent girls who are told to buy their virtual characters breast enlargement surgery and to keep them “waif thin” with diet pills.

In the month since it opened the site, which is aimed at girls aged from 9 to 16, has attracted 200,000 members. Players keep a constant watch on the weight, wardrobe, wealth and happiness of their character to create “the coolest, richest and most famous bimbo in the world”. Competing against other children they earn “bimbo dollars” to buy plastic surgery, diet pills, facelifts, lingerie and fashionable nightclub outfits.

If you can’t have your virtual slut OD in a back alley and drown in her own vomit, then I don’t see the point of playing.

More like these last couple of weeks in stupid, but hey, I’ve been busy, sick, lazy, and had the original version of this post deleted. Feel free to dock my theoretical internet money.

The Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Stupid

One of my pet theories is that the internet is a stupid multiplier. It takes ordinary stupid and writes it big in the clouds for all to see and join in. I keep waiting for my theory to be disproved, but it’s not going to happen this week.

The ads popped up [on Craigslist] Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.

But Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave. The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.

On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.

“I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back,” Salisbury said. “They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did.”

The driver sped away after rebuking Salisbury. On his way home he spotted other cars filled with his belongings.

Once home he was greeted by close to 30 people rummaging through his barn and front porch.

What an amazing illustration of dumbth. “Of course I can take your stuff, I have a printout from Craigslist.”

Turns out the posting was easily traced and was done to cover up an earlier burglary.

All The Stupid That’s Fit To Print

As reported by the Idaho Statesman, some kids on a college newspaper in California decide to call up some Planned Parenthood offices posing as a racist donor:

Planned Parenthood is, of course, quite offended by this behavior:

What doesn’t the Statesman tell you about the story? Where someone would get the idea to do this. That’s because if they did, they’d have to tell you that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was a vocal eugenics advocate who formed the organization to help control the spread of the lesser (i.e., colored) races.

I suppose that would have been embarrassing for Planned Parenthood, wouldn’t it? That must be why the Statesman decided to leave the ugly past alone and spare its readers any mental strain.

Our Business Is Stupid, And Business Is Good

Absolut Vodka thinks that Mexican citizens are still pining for the territory the country lost to the US in 1848.

Maybe they are, maybe they’re not, but did you think the current residents of California and Texas wouldn’t find out and think the shit you’re talking behind their backs isn’t that funny?

The campaign taps into the national pride of Mexicans, according to Favio Ucedo, creative director of leading Latino advertising agency Grupo Gallegos in the U.S.

Ucedo, who is from Argentina, said: “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.”

But he said that were the campaign to run in the United States, it might fall flat.

“Many people aren’t going to understand it here. Americans in the East and the North or in the center of the county — I don’t know if they know much about the history.

“Probably Americans in Texas and California understand perfectly and I don’t know how they’d take it.”

I’d boycott them, but I won’t pay that much money for vodka.  But I wonder how apepaling they’d find it if a US company ran ads with maps of Europe showing Sweden annexed by the Germans. 

UPDATE:  Now they’re sorry.  That they got caught.

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File under: China, your one-stop-shop for tainted goods.

A modified form of a cheap and widely used dietary supplement sold to relieve joint pain was identified as the contaminant found in tainted and at times lethal heparin produced in China for American patients, Food and Drug Administration officials said yesterday. Agency officials said they were investigating whether the compound, chemically modified chondroitin sulfate, was intentionally added to cut costs and boost profits or was mixed in by mistake.

Heparin, which has been on the market for six decades, is widely used as a blood thinner in kidney dialysis and surgery.

The contaminant is believed to have caused more than 700 severe allergic reactions in American patients, including a still-undetermined number of deaths. FDA officials said the Chinese contaminant was found in lots of heparin associated with the reactions, but it is not certain whether it caused them.

Save a buck — or respect human life. Tough choice if you’re Chinese, apparently.  And I’ll bet they’re a little confused as to why people keep protesting their pre-Olympics events.

Educated Is Not The Opposite Of Stupid

Those who don’t learn from history . . . and so forth. This time, we’re rediscovering that prohibition doesn’t work. The schools thought they could force children to eat healthy food by banning candy and other unacceptable alternatives.

But they didn’t count on the potent mix of supply, demand, and free will.

“It’s created a little underground economy, with businessmen selling everything from a pack of skittles to an energy drink,” said Jim Nason, principal at Hook Junior High School in Victorville.

This has become a lucrative business, Nason said, and those kids are walking around campus with upwards of $40 in their pockets and disrupting class to make a sale.

Finally, the schools are teaching valuable contraband-dealing skills to our youth.  Kind of like Vo-Tech without the bureaucracy and second campus.

Stupid.net

Testicles for Trucks. Yes, these are a real product.

Singing telegrams from a Rick Astley impersonator.

I really just wanted an excuse to boost their graphic.

Dangerously Stupid

It’s a shame when an animal has to pay the price for not speaking English.

According to the report, the police officer, who was not named, saw Tony jump into a truck bed and lunge at an attendant. “The chimpanzee took the attendant’s dart gun away from him and discarded it,” the report said. The chimp either fell off the truck or jumped from it when the truck sped up, according to the report. The officer said Tony started coming toward him.

“The chimpanzee started flailing its arms. The officer shouted at least twice that he was going to shoot,” the report said. “In fear for his safety, the officer then fired several times, striking the chimpanzee.”

When a chimpanzee won’t obey two verbal warnings, it’s time to open fire. The Dallas Morning News appears to agree, since it used this headline in the paper (but not online, I notice):

“I warned him twice, I said I would shoot him — what else could I have done?”

“Nothing you could have done, man, some chimps just won’t listen to reason.”

The Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Stupid

Everybody thinks they’re special. That they’re the exception to the rule. That bad things happen to other people because those people were stupid or careless or otherwise had it coming. And then Client 9 gets caught paying $4300 for Kristen the “VIP” hooker.

The jaw-dropper is that this is a guy who prosecuted others for the exact crime he got caught doing.

Dumbass. Did you not learn a damn thing from Bill Clinton? Interns are free nookie! No pesky forms to fill out! And when you’re a Democrat, you can count on you party defending you as long as you didn’t pay for it.

Think Globally, Act Stupidly

Do what we say or go to hell. No, really. Hell.

Since some folks classify exhaled CO2 as pollution, I guess I’m already screwed. Might as well perform genetic modification experiments on people I’ve made poor. Oh, the social injustice.

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But wait, the protestants want in on it, too.

Yes, it’s the poorly publicized eleventh commandment: Thou shalt honor thy latest environmental fad, and keep it holy.

Politically Stupid

When is child pornography no big deal? When you run a library.

What was the next level for the supervisor? A stern lecture? Every once in a while, librarians show their bizarre and absolute belief that if it’s done in a library, it’s somehow a protected activity.

Stupid.net

Faildogs

Educated Is Not The Opposite Of Stupid

Schools must have fixed all of their other problems, because now they have time to criminalize candy possession.

Like they usually do, the school officials backed down once the media got the story and made them look like petty bureaucrats.  One wonders how many kids get screwed like this but can’t interest the media in the story.

The Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievement In The Field Of Stupid

Fox is currently airing a show called “The Moment of Truth,” in which contestants answer questions while hooked up to a polygraph. They tell the truth (at least according to the lie detector) and they win, lie and they get nothing.