This Is Just Stupid!

If you are a fan of our blog then you are probably also a fan of the FAIL blog. After all, this well known blog does a great job of making fun of all of the stupid things that are out there in the world. And now, there’s a new blog that’s doing the same thing in a specific niche category. It’s the FAIL Shirt blog. It shows people in the real world wearing shirts that are so stupid that they just should not be wearing them.

For example, there’s a man wearing a shirt that says Gangster: I Am Who I Am. Okay, it’s kind of a stupid shirt but stupid enough to be on the blog? Yes, because the man is wearing it in a video where he is caught on tape robbing a bank!

It’s not just criminals that are wearing dumb shirts either. Another group of offenders that makes it onto the blog on a regular basis seems to be Wal-Mart shoppers. Falling into this category are women wearing shirts that say "I like it from behind" (which no woman needs to be wearing) or "Dream the Impossible Dream" (a sweet sentiment except that the shirt depicts a trailer on it).

Then there’s the group of guys who seem to think it’s a great idea to proclaim what awful men they are right there on their shirts. The number of shirts falling into this category is too high for a lot of their wearers to count.

We won’t ruin the rest for you. This is one blog that we’re pointing you to that isn’t stupid at all … it’s a great blog that highlights what a lot of stupid people are wearing out in public!

A book has been published that just might be the stupidest book ever to make it into print. The book is called The Great Horse Ride (La Grande Cavalcata). It looks like a normal book. It’s approximately sixty pages long. However, all that it contains is the sound of the horse ride over and over and over again.

If you take a look at the picture at the top of this post, you will see everything that you are going to see when you purchase this book. It’s just the tale of "clip clop, clip clop, clip clop" repeated again and again.

The book is, apparently, supposed to be a joke book. It’s a gag gift for your friends. As the author writes in the afterword, it’s a book that is basically an experiment in writing something funny. It may or may not appeal to you but it’s something that has the potential to cause a laugh for someone you know.

Okay, we’ll give you that. The idea is a little bit dumb but we can see how it might be funny. You open a present expecting it to be something good. You take a look at the cover of the book and it looks legit. You say thank you. Then later, when you actually go to read the book, you see what it’s all about and maybe you laugh out loud.

So, okay, we can see how it makes a good gag gift for your friend. However, this book costs nearly $20 on Amazon. There are some really amazing classic books on Amazon for a lot less than that price. There are books that great authors put some serious work into. It just doesn’t seem right for this gag book to go for that kind of money. In fact, it just seems stupid.

There was a case earlier this month that really exemplified what if means to be a stupid person. It was the case of a principal who wrote a letter in which he actually called some of the students at his school "stupid". Now, the principal took a lot of flak for this – with good reason, of course. It’s absolutely inappropriate for the leader of a school to be calling children stupid. Plus it’s a really dumb move on his part to put that particular thought of his on to paper.

But it’s not just the principal who was stupid in this case. The real stupidity came from a teacher. The teacher apparently didn’t realize that this letter from the principal was supposed to be kept in-house. She thought it was one of those letters that she was supposed to photocopy for the parents of her students. Yes, the teacher sent home a letter in which the principal was calling their children stupid.

We’d like to believe that the teacher was being smart. We’d like to believe that she was just pretending to be so dumb for the pure purpose of making sure that the parents saw the principal’s stupid action and did something about it. But all accounts seem to indicate that this was actually just a stupid move on the part of the teacher and not some witty way of getting the boss in trouble.

Incidentally, this happened in Arizona. This state is consistently ranked among the worst in education based on reports such as the Nation’s Report Card. Perhaps it’s not the kids who are stupid in this state; perhaps it’s their educators. Now there’s a thought.

A few weeks ago FAIL blog posted a picture of what they called a "tax advice fail". It was about how to report the value of items that you have stolen and which are now in your possession. The blog post from FAIL didn’t quote a source so you might think that this advice came from somebody who had misinterpreted the tax rules. After all, there are clear IRS rules about your stolen property; surely the information that was posted on the blog was written by someone who was reversing that information incorrectly.

Nope.

If you do a little bit of digging what you will discover is that the information on the FAIL blog comes word for word from the IRS itself. That’s right, the IRS rules about this are:

"STOLEN PROPERTY: If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless in the same year, you return it to its rightful owner."

This is filed under "other income" in the rules about reporting on your taxes. So, no it’s not okay to steal. However, if you do steal, you need to let the IRS know so that you can pay taxes on the items that you stole. However, if you return the item to the original owner on the last day of the year that you stole it, then you don’t have to report this income.

Hm. So the moral of this law is to do your stealing of high-value items early on in the year, use them and make sure to return them in December so you don’t have to report yourself to the IRS.

Hey guys …

You’re cutting it close to the wire if you haven’t gotten your girlfriend a Valentine’s present yet. We know that it’s tempting to pick up something cheap and cheesy just so she knows that you didn’t forget about her this year. However, a bad Valentine’s present is almost worse than getting no gift at all.

Here are five stupid gifts that you shouldn’t waste your time or money on:

1. Any sort of power tool. Even if the woman in your life loves to use them, she’s going to know that you only got this for her because you realized while you were shopping for yourself that you hadn’t gotten her anything for Valentine’s Day yet.
2. A funny t-shirt. A woman wants to be sexy and seductive on Valentine’s Day. She doesn’t want a t-shirt with some raunchy or ridiculous saying on it. If it’s sold at a tourist attraction or a convenience store, she doesn’t want to wear it.
3. Ridiculous lingerie that she would never wear. Yes, it’s wonderful to get the lady in your life a sexy lingerie item that will make her feel good about herself. It’s offensive and annoying when you get her one that you would put on your fantasy porn girl but that your girlfriend would never in a million years buy for herself.
4. Weight loss items. Maybe the woman in your life has a diet pill addiction or really wants a new yoga mat or has been saying that she needs to get a gym membership. Valentine’s Day is not the day to be buying those things.
5. Lottery tickets and beer. There isn’t a gift that screams "last minute" more than this one does. Don’t do it.

Flowers and chocolates may be cliche but they’re a lot better than these items!

The TwoDaLoo is one of those products that seems like it can’t possibly be real. It’s a two-person toilet that lets you and your partner sit facing each other while using the restroom simultaneously. Would anyone actually buy this? It’s doubtful but this is one of those products that’s been popping up on blogs again lately. For some reason, folks seem to think it’s a good idea to include this toilet in lists of things that you might want to get for Valentine’s Day.

The toilet was actually released back in 2007. It made a lot of headlines and did a good job of getting media attention. Nobody really wants to buy this thing but everyone is a little bit morbidly curious about just who would buy it. Shopping around to try to purchase it, you’ll find that there are very few details about where you can actually get it. One site vaguely says that it costs $1400 and you have to buy a minimum of 12 of them. Our imaginations are going wild trying to picture where you might need to use 24 toilet seats at once but the information on how to actually buy them isn’t very clear.

If you have the money to buy these things in bulk, you might as well go ahead and "upgrade" them as well. For more money, you can get built-in TV screens to help distract you while you’re on the toilet with others. Perhaps this type of thing would be great in busy households where a large number of people are sharing one bathroom? But then those people aren’t going to be able to afford this product, are they? Definitely something that ranks on the stupid list!