If only Darwin could do a ‘Lassie, come home!’
Saying that people can be such idiots will obviously not win you the Nobel Prize for Innovative Research. Mind you, it’s still true.
Someone once wrote that there are sound Darwinian reasons for not forcing people on motorbikes to wear helmets. While I’m sure that not all bikers are as useless as a square ball in a game of gene pool, some most definitely are:
A Japanese man continued to drive his motorcycle for over a mile after losing his right leg below the knee. Kazuo Osada, 54, crashed when he failed to negotiate a bend, and was unaware his right leg had been severed below the knee apparently because his attention was focused on the strong pain he felt from the crash, police said.
Mr Osada noticed the loss of his lower leg when he arrived at a junction 2km from the scene of the accident. Another motorcyclist travelling with him returned to pick up the severed limb.
Still, one might say, as long as idiots are solely into self-destruction, who cares? That would be true, of course, but for the regrettable fact that most imbeciles are only happy when they have an audience:
A barrister who exposed himself while giving a best man’s speech at a wedding reception later launched a ferocious attack on a guest who gave him a dressing down, a court was told.
After his speech, Christopher Dunn, 40, was told by David Baird-Dean, a fellow guest, that his actions had been inappropriate given that the audience included a 13-year-old girl.
Mr Dunn then attacked Mr Baird-Dean, 48, pinning him down on the ground and punching him repeatedly in the face, Preston Crown Court was told.
Unfortunately, it’s not just individuals who behave like complete asses. Most companies, these days, seem to be in some kind of existential race to find out, once and for all, what their true driving force is: good old greed or plain stupidity:
A children’s entertainer has been banned by Tesco from using balloons during his act in one of their stores.
Barney Baloney, the clown, usually twists them into animal shapes and hands them to children
A Tesco spokesman said: “This is a health and safety issue. We have banned balloons because latex is used in the manufacture of them and this can trigger an allergic reaction in some children. We always have the welfare of children at heart.”
Truly, if you left it to these corporate bozos, all of our lives would be as interesting and eventful as a politically correct cartoon.
However, when it comes to real ‘I do not believe it!’ stupidity, look no further than the British rail companies:
Britain’s worst-performing train company has hired a poet to soothe the tempers of its frustrated customers.
First Great Western, which operates services from Paddington to South Wales and the West Country, insisted yesterday that its decision to engage Sally Crabtree, a Cornish poet, to perform at selected stations over the next four days had nothing to do with its poor punctuality record.
The most fascinating thing here is this reassurance that hiring a poet has nothing to do with levels of punctuality.
That does make you wonder how those First Great Western staff meetings go, when certain problems are dicussed:
A bit of bother with non-working railway signs? Why not hire a team of Norwegian midget Gospel singers?
Snow on the rails – or autumn leaves? I know: what we need is a four-year old snow giant who can do Donald Duck imitations!
No wonder the bloody company is the most incompetent organization since a certain travel agency advised Hannibal to go from Tunisia ’s Catharge to Rome, by way of Spain, over the Alps, on a fucking elephant!
Some days you just want to give up and follow the example of this guy:
Andy, a homeless man, shelters under an umbrella as he stands upside down with his head in a bucket to draw attention to his situation in Princes Street in Edinburgh.
It might, in the end, do your cause no bloody good at all but you quite simply can’t beat the view from there.
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