It's always important to remember that the DUMB can take many forms. I think today would be an excellent day to take a bunch of small bits that aren't worthy of their own full-day column and shabbily dress them up as a Tour De Dumb, to remind us all that there's more than politics and religion to inspire idiocy, although not MUCH more.
For example, there's BOOBIES AND WEINERS. And TEXAS. Pretty much any time you get boobs and Texas together, you get a primo example of Funny Dumb.
Funny Dumb is when a barge tips over in Texas. Because all the passengers were on one side of the barge. Because the barge was tied up near a nude beach. A nude beach named "Hippie Hollow". When there's only one nude beach in your entire state, and it's named "Hippie Hollow", you really don't get to bitch when people call you backwards.
Apparently, there is no Internet in Texas. Or premium cable. Or 7-11's. Because only in a world without these things is seeing naked people such an event that it could get EVERYONE on a barge to come out and stare. PLUS, the beach was being used for a semi-annual gay and lesbian event, so I can just imagine what must have gone through the minds of the 60 Texans on the barge, from "Hey, naked people!" to "What are they DOING!" to "Why are my feet wet?" to "Glub". Funny, funny dumb.
And then there's Creeeeeeepy Dumb, which may be the nigh-exclusive domain of Michael Jackson. Attentive readers may have noticed me not making much fun of MJ, because the as-yet-untold Michael Jackson joke is an elusive beast indeed. But yesterday, the contents of some confiscated stuff were revealed, amongst them a note. And in the note, MJ refers to his young guests at Neverland Ranch as "rubbers". GAH! Creepy dumb!
If they ever find a note where MJ calls himself "glue", he's going to jail, as "bounce off" and "stick" are not verbs you want associated with your underage sleepover guests.
And, of course, there's Wuss Dumb, which is always my favorite kind of dumb. Wuss Dumb occurs whenever someone important is caught on tape saying something that is... inconvenient later. And so they either pretend they always meant something else ("weapons of mass destruction related program activities"), claim youthful indiscretion ""I think the word [atrocities] is a bad word. I think it's an inappropriate word.", or, when these aren't an option, just completely wuss out. My PDA just beeped, which means one thing. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!
"The new administration seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?'" - Paul Bremer, February 2001
"Criticism of the new administration, however, was unfair. President Bush had just been sworn into office and could not reasonably be held responsible for the Federal Government's inaction over the preceding 7 months.'' - Paul Bremer, WUSSING OUT yesterday.
And speaking of months of inaction, BONUS QUOTE! - "In November I talked to Mr. Bremer about human rights violations in general and in jails in particular. He listened but there was no answer. At the first meeting, I asked to be allowed to visit the security prisoners, but I failed." - Abdel Basset Turki, former Iraqi human rights minister. This makes Paul Bremer the official poster boy for Wussy Dumb. Asshole.
And finally, there's Whiny Dumb. Once a month, like clockwork, I have to experience Whiny Dumb. No, not that, you misogynists. I'm talking about the kind of whiny dumb that happens when little children don't get what they want the instant they want it. See, there's a version of Dance Dance Revolution for XBox. And every month, Konami puts up five new songs to download. And every month, Microsoft is less than completely diligent in getting the song pack up on the servers. And despite this happening five times now, people still WHINE on the big DDRFreak.com message board. Like this guy, who uses the handle "wesdives":
I wouldn't be concerned except we were never given a date, and it takes me a grand total of ten to fifteen minutes to shut down my computer, unplug eth. cable from modem and replace it with one that goes down to the xbox, then turn the modem back on and wait for it to warm up, go downstairs, disc swap, wait for ultramix to load, wait for live to load, and wait for the songpack screen to load, by which point I know I must either A.) download the freggin' songpack which'll take twenty minutes or B.) repeat all of the above steps in reverse order so I can complain as I'm doing now. Not very keen on the idea of doing that 10 times a day.
Man, what a hassle. If only there were some large group of DDR fanatics. DDR Freaks, even. And if only there were some way for this large community to talk to each other, some kind of... FORUM, that's it! And on this forum, whoever noticed that the song pack had been posted could, and I know this is radical and revolutionary, but they could MENTION IT. And then all the other people reading the board could go check for the songpack. Oh, sure, this would require some kind of national computer network for sharing data, some kind of... Internal Network or something, but maybe there's some military technology we can adapt. All to save poor wesdives the trouble of checking TEN TIMES A DAY for a song pack that nobody will ever play online anyway because they're busy setting up Castles In The Sky Light games non-fucking-stop.
That last bit was just for me. If you laughed at it, you should send me your gamertag.