El Stupido

TASK #40: EL STUPIDO

“Majesty: when a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” George Bernard Shaw

Men are morons. We do idiotic, stupid things because we are lazy, or ignorant, or prideful. I have long kept a record of the most mind-boggling, moronic acts in history, which was difficult in the days before the internet, but now, with YouTube, which is basically a storehouse of recorded moronic behavior, it is much easier to chronicle the lame stunts of my brothers…but I go beyond that.

I scour the internet for tales of male stupidity. I read them, laugh my ass off, and file them away. Here are three of my favorite:

ONE: Renton, Washington. 1990.

A man decides to commit a robbery. He makes four mistakes. 1) His target is a gun shop. 2) The shop is full of customers, in a state where it is legal to carry concealed weapons. 3) As he entered the shop, he stepped around a marked Police car at the front door. 4) A uniformed officer was drinking coffee at the front counter, talking to the owner of the shop. The thief, undeterred, yelled “hold-up” and fired a few shots into the air. The officer and the shop owner returned fire and killed the man.

TWO: Carbon County, Pennsylvania.

A group of men were drinking beer and shooting their rifles from the rear deck of a house owned by a guy by the name of Irving M. They were shooting at a racoon. But impaired by alcohol, all 35 of their shots missed, and the racoon scurried into a drainage pipe. A big drainage pipe. Irving decides to smoke out the critter. He grabs a gasoline can and poured some down the pipe, but couldn’t get it to ignite. So he went and got a five gallon can of gas and poured that down the pipe. He tossed several lit matches down the pipe, but again–the gas didn’t ignite. So Irving slid feet first into the pipe and lit a match.

The gas ignited. A fireball four feet in diameter launched Irving into the afternoon sky. He flew over his house and landed in the front lawn. A witness said later that Irvin flew like a “Polaris missile leaves a submarine”.

Irving screamed as he flew over the house and landed “with a loud thud”. Amazingly, he only suffered minor injuries. Later, Irving told a reporter, “I’d do it again if I was sure I wouldn’t get hurt”.

THREE: Tacoma, Washington.

A bunch of guys are drinking in the early hours of March 23d, 1993. One of the guys said that he’d heard a story about a guy who bungie-jumped off the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in the middle of traffic. An argument ensured, and the men–there were 10 of them–trooped off to the bridge. At 4:30am. Drunk.

Once at the bridge they argued some more, and one the guys, Kerry B., declared that of course one could easily bungie-jump off the bridge, and he would prove it. No one had a bungie-cord, but Kerry was inventive–he found a coil of cable nearby. He tied one end to the bridge and one end to his leg, and leaped. His flight lasted 40 feet, then the cable tightened, and tore off his foot at the ankle. He plunged into the icy water and was rescued by two fishermen. After he sobered up, he told officers at the hospital, “All I can say,” he said ernestly, “is that God was watching out for me.”

His foot was never found.

The thing is–I’m snickering as I write this, because while the stories are sad in a way, they are also, as Mr. Shaw says, majestic.

TASK:

Take our your notebook and write down every moronic act that you’ve committed. And vow not to do it again.

Photo by and Joe Doe