February 25 , 2005

Contrubutions from our readers:

IDIOT Hooters: There's a joke/puzzle going around that goes "Some months have 31 days. How many months have 28? Answer: all of them." I asked one of the girls at Hooters and her anwer was -- two. Ed Henry (Mama's Note: maybe "idiot hooters" is redundant. )

IDIOT Students: I teach at a major Canadian university. I get calls from students telling me they couldn't find my class, how do they make it up? I tell them they have to report to the Chief Executioners' Mate. Invariably they ask me how to find that person. These are some of the brightest minds in Canada??? A. H.

IDIOT Warmongers: They not only walk among us, their vote counts the same as ours too. Extra scary !! Here are some excerpts from a "discussion" I had with a lawyer/columnist after I wrote offering examples refuting some of his statements. (All have been copied/pasted from the original e-mail): "The attack on PH was a surprise, but the fact that PH was attacked was not." "But the US has never committed atrocities as a policy, tactic, or strategy, unlike most of the countries we have fought in the last century." "Of course war is an atrocity, but sometimes it is a necessarily atrocity."

IDIOT Shopper: I was at Home Depot picking out a bag of Ice Melt. A women with children in tow asked me "What do you use that for?". I can only guess that the big letters on the bag and the sign proclaiming "Ice Melt" were'nt clear enough. I really felt for her kids.

IDIOT Hospital Employees: An employee complained to management that the trash compactor wasn't working, that it was spraying trash everywhere. The management was willing to believe it was broken, but spraying trash everywhere?

They went down to the basement to watch the employee work. She demonstrated what she did; loading the trash, pushing the button, and the trash sprays everywhere. After a moment of silence, one administrator said "Um, over there is the trash compactor. That's the potato peeler."

IDIOT Zone Sightings (Collected from friends, e-mails, and articles)

IDIOTS In The Neighborhood: I live in a semi-rural area. We recently had a new neighbor call the local township administrative office to request the removal of the Deer Crossing sign on our road. The reason: "Too many deer were being hit by cars" and he didn't want them to cross there anymore.

IDIOTS In The Airport: A National Guard soldier on security duty got in trouble, when after handing his M-16 (and magazines loaded with ammo) to the screener and walking through the metal detector, he was found to have forgotten his pocket knife in his BDU jacket pocket.

--I was at the airport, checking in at the gate when an airport employee asked, "Has anyone put anything in your baggage without your knowledge?" To which I replied, "If it was without my knowledge, how would I know?" He smiled knowingly and nodded, "That's why we ask.

--A commercial airline pilot was prevented from flying his scheduled flight because he left a multi-tool (with a knifeblade) in his pilot's briefcase, apparently from flying a private airplane. I guess they were afraid he would use the knife to force the copilot to crash the plane, or make the attendants have sex with him, or something.

IDIOTS In Food Service: My daughter went to a local Taco Bell and ordered a taco. She asked the person behind the counter for "minimal lettuce." He said he was sorry, but they only had iceberg.

--I once asked for a hamburger with no mayonaise, no onion, but everything else. When I got back to the office I discovered that there was plenty of mayonaise and onion on it, but no hamburger. I guess they decided to save me calories in a different way!

IDIOTS In College: A mother, seeking to get directions to the building on a college campus where the SAT tests were being given, used her cell-phone to call the college information desk for instructions. Three attempts to get the name of the specific building and directions to it were all answered the same way - "Just go to our website and there is a map that you can print out to take with you," even though she explained all three times that she was in a car, talking to them on a cellphone, driving through the mountains to get to the town.

--A large campus had a tram that circled the complex clockwise each hour. One day I was talking to a young man at the tram stop who said he'd been waiting over an hour and was afraid he'd be late to his class. The building was about 3/4 of the way around the circle to the right. Seems he'd been waiting for a tram going the other direction. He could have walked to class several times over in the time he'd spent waiting. I refrained from suggesting that he wasn't really ready for college. MamaLiberty

IDIOT Renters: A rental management company received a call from an anxious mother in an apartment complex, calling to demand that someone immediately come to her complex and remove the snake crossing the street. She was afraid it was a rattlesnake and that it would bite one of the children.

The service representative tried to calm her, suggesting that the best thing to do would be to just keep the children away from the snake and let the snake make its way across the street, between the buildings, and into the swamp behind the complex. It would, she explained, even be a good opportunity to warn the children about the danger of rattlesnakes, while keeping them safe and letting the creature survive.

"But you don't understand," the frantic young mother wailed, "the snake won't go away; it's dead!" The service rep had to severely stifle her laughter before being able to explain to the mother that dead snakes did not bite children... or anything else.

IDIOTS On The Street: The stoplight on the corner buzzes when it's safe to cross the street. I was crossing with an intellectually challenged coworker of mine when she asked if I knew what the buzzer was for. I explained that it signals blind people when the light is red. Appalled, she responded, "What on earth are blind people doing driving?!

IDIOTS At Lunch: At a good-bye luncheon for an old and dear coworker who was leaving the company due to "downsizing," our manager commented cheerfully, "this is fun. We should do this more often." Not a word was spoken. We all just looked at each other with that deer-in-the-headlights stare.

IDIOTS Operating Office Machines: I work with an individual who plugged her power strip back into itself and for the life of her couldn't understand why her system would not turn on.

IDIOT Mechanics: When my husband and I arrived at an car dealership to pick up our car, we were told the keys had been locked in it. We went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver's side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. "Hey," I announced to the technician, "it's open!" To which he replied, "I know - I already got that side."

IDIOT Criminals: A man intending to hold up a Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco wrote out his demand on the back of a deposit slip, and got in line. However, it was taking too long for the line to move forward, so he left and went across the street to the Bank of America branch. With a shorter line he presented the demand to the teller, apparently hinting that he had a gun in his pocket. The teller politely informed him that she could not honor the demand, since it was written on a Wells Fargo slip. Frustrated, he grabbed the note back from her and stomped back across the street to the Wells Fargo Bank, where police arrested him minutes later, still standing in line.

IDIOT Spam: I keep getting one that starts out, "How are you? I'm a new female." (the rest is obviously a porn website ad) I can't figure out if she just discovered she is female or recently had a sex change operation. Actually, I don't want to know. MamaLiberty

They walk among us .............. scary!!

Thanks to Nathan Barton for another wonderful idea.

We would love to add your IDIOT ZONE story. Just write it in the comment block below and it will be added to the page. We hope you enjoy this little departure from the more serious business of restoring liberty. Without humor, I don't think any of us will survive to see it happen. MamaLiberty