Everything Is Stupid

Stupid Sex: A Mile-High Mistake, Lame Nicknames, Bra Salesmen and Dumb Birth Control!

1. If you are ever even remotely tempted to try and get busy between the plastic toilet and the barely-locked door of the airplane lavatory while you’re at 30,000 feet, here’s another good reason to resist the urge… at least on the anniversary of America’s most memorable airplane-related violence.

Stupid Sex: A Mile High Mistake, Lame Nicknames, Bra Salesmen and Dumb Birth Control!   Stupid American Culture, Brainwashed Americans, Stupidity of Americansvideo platformvideo managementvideo solutionsvideo player

Seriously, if you were just “making out,” perhaps you could have kept it in your seats. Sure, the attendant might ask you to ease up a little if you start to get all handsy, but come on now… you can’t make it from LA to NY without some T&A?

2. In case it wasn’t clear after that little stunt you pulled after The Office’s big gay kiss, just because Steve Carrel gets some laughs with it on TV does not mean it’s a good idea for you to do it at work!

Doctors and even secretaries at NYU Langone Medical Center were so convinced that longtime pediatric nurse Kristen Haight was a 41-year-old virgin, they repeatedly urged her to hop in the sack, she claims in a $45 million lawsuit claiming her medical records weren’t protected.

She alleges that pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Jeffrey Wisoff repeatedly referenced “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” movie, and reassured her that sex is “like petting something furry for the first time.”

If that was a come on, Doctor, you should know that “small and furry” hasn’t exactly been great a selling point since Alice & Wonderland was published. If you’re not a virgin yourself, it’s still fair to say you haven’t had sex (for free) in at least four decades.

3. Ever gotten the wrong response when you asked someone if an outfit made you look fat? Try being forced to do it in front of some random dude who has to size you up in order to fit you into a pair of bra and panties. Seriously.

Thanks to the strict segregation laws in [Saudi Arabia], women have been banned from working in sales or using fitting rooms. That means that women buy thongs and negligees from male salesman who size them up by looking at them. In one recent incident, a woman asked for a 32C padded bra, and the salesman told her, “No, you’re not a C.”

Dude. You might as well have told her that you didn’t serve “her kind” in your establishment, so she could come back with her crew of bra salesladies to kick your butt out, Pretty Woman style. Probably wearing a different dress, though. ”In 2008, financial adviser Reem Asaad launched a campaign to allow women to work as clerks in lingerie stores. Thanks to her efforts, shops have been ordered to switch to female employees by the end of the year.” Take that, sales jerk! They took ‘yer jobs!

4. Does birth control make you stupid? Well…. a recent study from UC Irvine suggests:

Women using hormonal contraceptives for as little as one month remembered more clearly the main steps in [a] traumatic event – that there had been an accident, that the boy had been rushed to the hospital, that doctors worked to save his life and successfully reattached both his feet, for instance. Women not using them remembered more details, such as a fire hydrant next to the car.

So, without birth control we can remember all the little details, like the environment in which an event took place. With birth control, women were “better” at remembering things that actually happened. What does that even mean? That some of the women who weren’t on birth control were also smoking too much pot that day and couldn’t remember whether it was little Timmy’s hands or feet that needed re-attaching? WTF?

posted by BexvanKoot in Corporate Stupidity,Media Stupidity,Plain Ol' Stupidity,Pop Culture Stupidity,Relationship Stupidity,Science Stupidity and have Comments Off

Media Stupidity of the Week: Planking (again) and Coning; Vampires and Dancers Attack!

Lots of great All-American Stupidity in this week’s reflection on the news. So, what’s trending in stupid?

Planking gets expensive, and coning is so over.

I don’t think I need to reiterate that planking is one of the dumbest inventions of the modern world, but now it’s not just stupid… it’s painfully stupid. In the wallet.

In what is (probably) the world’s “first workplace planking prosecution” ever, two men have been fined $1500 each by a court in Australia for planking at work and posting stupid planking photos to Facebook. Somehow, very mysteriously, those Facebook photos found their way into the hands of WorkSafe inspectors who determined that planking is not up to workplace safety codes. Yes, not just a stupid planking story, but a stupid Facebook firing too! It’s got everything, really.

“This prosecution isn’t about planking, it’s about workplace safety,” Mr. McQuillen said.

“The workplace isn’t a playground and forklifts are not toys to be played with.”

Mr. McQuillen said the men, when asked their reasons for doing it, both replied: “Stupidity”.

Shouldn’t honesty count for something?

And, right here in the land of the free, folks are taking a stand against ridiculous internet meme pranks, too!

The gone-viral video is a bit of a mystery. Did the lovely blonde really not know what the drive thru manager was talking about, or was their coning plan completely foiled? Either way, Anonymous McDonald’s Manager, we salute you.

When weirdos attack – vampires and dance troupes are freaking out!

Setting the scene: a 69-year-old man spies a confused young blonde get out of a car at a gas station and try to call for someone to pick her up. He invites her to join him as he sits up in his motorized wheelchair on the porch of an abandoned Hooters, and promptly falls fast asleep, no doubt dreaming about the good old days. He wakes up to the crazy chick babbling something stupid about being a vampire and trying to bite his face off! Bleeding and in a shock, he hot-wheels it out of there and to the gas station, where he reports the incident.

When the police arrived on the scene, they found 22-year-old Josephine Rebecca Smith “… half naked and covered in blood, but uninjured. They said she had no idea what happened or why her clothes were off. Ellis said she was dressed when he last saw her, police said.” Despite her vampire strength and skills of manipulation, the police managed to arrest her and charge her with aggravated battery on an elderly person, the court setting bail at $50,000. Better hope she has some rich vampire friends before it’s time to go out into the yard!

And, while the rumor that they are probably vampires has yet to be started, New Mexico local street dance troupe the Zinsations has been opening up a can of whoopass too, this time at least not on senior citizens. No, it is Facebook bullies who are taking the brunt of the brutality this time.

So, just how hard are New Mexico street dance groups? The eldest is an 18-year-old Police Athletic League boxer… and the only guy who was still left standing got away with having his backpack stolen and a strong right hook to his already injured-and-in-a-sling arm. Watch out, So You Think You Can Dance judges! These dancers are badass!

posted by BexvanKoot in Media Stupidity,Plain Ol' Stupidity,Pop Culture Stupidity and have Comments Off

If You’re Sexist And You Know It…. Fall for Some Stupid Pick Up Artist?

You know the kind of guy I’m talking about… that creep who’s read way too many David D’Angelo eBooks or makes funny faces to himself while listening to his copy of The Mystery Method in his iPod on the subway home from work, all the while scanning the car for potential flirting victims. You’ve no doubt seen the barrage of absurd books, the stupid reality TV stunts, the ridiculous online circle jerks. Even with a vast array of scientific background and psychological insight, this stuff makes me gag.

If you are for some reason the luckiest woman alive and have never met a pickup artist, would you know how to spot one?

“Pickup artistry puts a renewed emphasis on the “hostile” part, encouraging men to pair sexist manipulation with stupid hats to ensnare women into sex at the first possible opportunity. Their ”speed seduction” strategy directs a man to compete aggressively for a woman’s attention, lightly insult her, then isolate her before steering her to bed.”

For example, Mystery (aka Erik von Markovik) claims to have “slept with over 100 women, potentially several hundreds of women and has had an unknown number of girlfriends.” One of his claims to fame includes training other “Dating Gurus,” including a man named after the crazy Fight Club freak Tyler Durden. His “celebrity girlfriends” include a Russian makeup artist, a psychology student, his baby mama and some “Mexican girl” – that’s seriously how she’s identified.

So have you ever wonder just who exactly gets all hot and bothered by the cheesy lines and manipulative tactics?

Studies into the effects and mechanisms of this kind of relationship dynamics (if you can call such “get laid”-goal driven interactions “relationships”) have begun to emerge. The results to the burning question of “Why? Why does any woman fall for this stupid crap?” may not be all that surprising, but it is a lame reflection of the sad state of humanity today. All those dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of women (if you believe the hype) falling for the new niche of “seduction celebrities” out there are a sexist bunch themselves, likely to agree with statements that aren’t just plain wrong in the eyes of everyone I know and love, but almost offensive.

Someone in my Facebook feed used the phrase “reverse sexism” yesterday. I don’t get what’s “reverse” about things like “reverse racism” and “reverse sexism”. Sexism doesn’t presume you’re a man who thinks girls are dumb. Any presumptions based solely on gender are prejudices which lead to sexism. In the most recent study focused on the narcissistic seduction movement, women who were more inclined to fall in line for some stupid seduction tactics were also likely to agree with statements like ”Women seek to gain power by getting control over men” and “A good woman should be set on a pedestal by her man.” Check out all of the statements in the Ambivalent Sexism Survey to see what I mean. Researchers Jeffrey Hall and Melanie Canterberry reported of their study “Sexism and Assertive Courtship Strategies,” of 363 college students and 850 adults:

“Women who have negative attitudes about members of their own gender find men who treat them in a dominant way during courtship more desirable because it is consistent with their sexist ideology.”

Can anyone explain to me why this kind of ridiculous recipe for date-rape is legal, but consensual prostitution is illegal? Yes friends, it’s a stupid, stupid world.

posted by BexvanKoot in Media Stupidity,Pop Culture Stupidity,Relationship Stupidity and have Comments Off

What’s Making Us Stupid Today?

The results are in for several new studies and it doesn’t look good. Here’s what’s making us stupid today:

1. Women

Technically, it is contact with the opposite sex that seems to make people stupid, but the effects are especially pronounced for men in the presence of women, says a whole bunch of scientists who are probably afraid of girls. Two different studies performed by Dutch scientist Johan C. Karremans and colleagues at Radboud University of Nijmegen showed that men (but not women) overwhelmingly performed cognitive “thinking” tasks poorer when in the presence of a woman. Not surprisingly, there was obvious correlation between the level of attraction the man reported feeling for the woman in the room and his ability to render his hands and brain useful. A handful of women with a “goal to impress” the men in the room fared poorer than the rest. I couldn’t care less about proving that men get stupid when ration of X chromosomes in a room increases – like I didn’t already know that? – but I do like to see some science backing up the idea that women who do things because they think it will impress some man are less likely to do that thing well. Hear that, ladies? Trying to impress men makes you stupid, so cut it out already.

2. Spongebob

If you ever needed a reason to turn off the Spongebob Squarepants and send your kids out into the back yard to play, now you have it. Spongebob makes your kids stupid, hyperactive brats. Do you even need an explanation? Okay, okay, you’re right. “Just because” is not a very good answer if you’re trying to get them to go away.

University of Virginia psychology professor Angeline Lillard randomly assigned 60 four-year-old children into three different groups, each of which spent nine minutes in a chosen activity. One group got creative with some crayons and spent the time drawing, one watching a “slower paced” children’s program called Caillou, and the other watched the “fast paced” program Spongebob Squarepants. Results?

“After nine minutes, the kids took a variety of cognitive tests, as well as a test of self-control that involved measuring how long they could wait to eat snacks. The SpongeBob kids scored an average of 12 points lower on the cognitive tests than the other groups, who did about the same as one another. And they were only able to wait about two and a half minutes before scarfing the snacks, while other kids could hold off for four.”

Nickelodeon says the problem is that the study sample is too young (Spongebob is supposed to be for 6 to 11 year olds) but the study authors didn’t figure that kids pay too much attention to those sorts of “rules” if their parents aren’t paying attention. Regardless, the study wasn’t meant to comment directly on the sea sponge and his Bikini Bottom pals who make fast food look so glamorous, but all “fast paced” children’s programming like it. Just turn the TV off and back away slowly.

3. Video Games

Well, okay, this isn’t really a study about how video games make kids stupid, but it might make them hate you. Or the other way around. A recent study shows that kids who play a lot of video games are more likely to judge their parents poorly as authorities and role models. Do bad parents let their kids play more stupid video games? Or do video games make teenagers into sullen angry monsters who hate everyone? Only time will tell.

posted by BexvanKoot in Media Stupidity,Plain Ol' Stupidity,Pop Culture Stupidity,Relationship Stupidity,Science Stupidity,Technology Stupidity and have Comments Off

Media Stupidity of the Week: The Stupid Canadian Edition

Okay, okay… our first entry here in the Stupid Canadian Edition of your media stupidity report isn’t necessary just a Canadian issue… but I have seen these KY commercials in Canada, so shut up.

Yes, the makers of KY Jelly are the inspiration for our first dose of stupid today. After the shocking revelation in the scientific community that bisexual men exist, KY has advanced the acceptance of LGBT shoppers and tv watchers everywhere, by admitting to a television audience that not only do lesbians exist… but they have sex too! Like normal people, you know, not just on Showcase or HBO, but sometimes on CityTV really late at night… achem.

According to a KY press release:

Gay male couples have been featured in print advertising since 2008 and now the brand is continuing its tradition of support and visibility with advertising that is inclusive of lesbian couples.

People are calling it some kind of LGBT triumph and, as was to be expected, other people are showing it off as proof that the “homosexual agenda” has reached our living rooms and is brainwashing our children. Oh, diversity, how I love you. Always so predictably oppositional across some completely ridiculous and arbitrary line in the sand.

Speaking of ridiculous things that are pissing people off….. sexy stick figures!

Anti-adultery website Cheaterville.com is crying harassment and a pro-cheating agenda because the Toronto Sun refused to print its ad.

Media Stupidity of the Week: The Stupid Canadian Edition   Stupid American Culture, Brainwashed Americans, Stupidity of Americans

In a subsequent press release, a Cheaterville.com spokesperson says:

The ad was REJECTED by The Toronto Sun, taking away Cheaterville.com’s “freedom of speech” to speak and advertise openly about anti-cheating in Toronto, Canada—one of the highest rated cities where people have been caught cheating.

An Advertising Sales Account Manager for The Toronto Sun said, “The stick figures are not appropriate. We do not publish ads that show the act of sex for it may offend some of the readers. Although we do have some ads and pictures selling the idea of sex we need to make sure advertisements of this nature is done in a tasteful way so they do not offend any readers.”

I’ll be the first to admit that The Sun isn’t exactly the classiest paper that Toronto has to offer, but the Cheaterville.com website owner goes a bit overboard, suggesting that they didn’t run his image of a stick-women bent over a desk being impaled by a giant stick-dong because the media is conspiring to encourage cheating, since cheating scandals sell papers. Yes, that must be it.

Finally, a bunch of people in Alberta and now everywhere else are up in arms because some idiot at a radio station had a brilliant idea for the stupidest radio contest ever. Possibly trying to one-up the recent boob-job giveaway in Calgary, hosts over at 100.3 FM “The Bear” are planning to spice up the life of one man who is “interested in potential holy matrimony with a hot foreign chick” and doesn’t mind having to fly to Eastern Europe to tie the knot. Seriously… this is the “Win a Wife” contest.

Slate reports:

Although not everyone is a fan of the “Win a Wife” contest – Alberta’s immigration minister, Thomas Lukaszuk, has vowed to pull departmental advertising from the station as long as the contest continues – Rob Vavrek, brand director for “The Bear,” explains that the idea behind the contest is merely misunderstood.

According to Vavrek, “Win a Wife” is “a concept similar to many other such contests held on reality-TV shows over the past few years around the world,” such as The Bachelor.

Brilliant! I can see it now…. The Mail-Order Bachelorette! Perfect.

Also, does Immigration Alberta really advertise on the local radio? Think about that for a minute. Yeah.

posted by BexvanKoot in Corporate Stupidity,Media Stupidity,Pop Culture Stupidity and have Comments Off