Been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding
blink 182
You more you work with people, the more you marvel that the human race has survived as long as it has. People, both individually and collectively, as so damned stupid. I’m not talking can’t understand Fermat’s Theorem Stupid here, I’m talking can’t pour piss out of boot stupid.
Now I understand that we all have learning curves to deal with. We all think, the first time we go to the DMV, that it will be a quick trip in and out on the way to the movies. Most of us learn that this is not the case.
But there are some things that remain baffling throughout a person’s entire life. How to use an ATM, as every store in the world insists on having a slightly different keypad layout, so that even if you do know what to you, you can’t do it because the Enter Key has been replaced with a Cancel Key and you have to start over. Then you hit Cancel again the second time around. This is when the Clerks at Target or Wal-Mart think about what idiots people are.
My own business requires that people fill out a form. This is not a 10w40-Schedule C with an Earned Income Voucher. It has a place for names and addresses. Nine out of ten people can’t fill out the form correctly. The problem seems to be that we ask the person to write their name twice-this is so baffling to most people that they fall into a catatonic state rather than write their name a second time. We make directories, the first part of the form is for under the photo in the book, the second part of the form is for mailing purposes. Even the tiny percentage that realize we want their address, often ignore the part where their name goes-as they already wrote their name ONCE FOR GOD”S SAKE. WHAT DO YOU PEOPLE WANT?!?!?
As a photographer, the one thing that really pisses me off is having someone not do what I tell them to do. It takes five minutes for me to take six to twelve shots and have you out the door. It often takes ten minutes to explain to the morons that I need to take more than one shot. With teens, the most often heard comment is ‘That’s Gay.’ This from a guy wearing a pink shirt, two earrings in each ear and tattoos on both arms. Sorry, Dude, I thought you were gay.
Back in the glory days of MAD Magazine, in the 1960s and early 1970s when I was reading it, there was a cartoonist named Al Jaffe. This guy was funny. His cartoon were not much to look at, but he was brilliant at writing. One of best routines was Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, which comedian Bill Engvall has stolen and retooled into Here’s Your Sign. In twenty years someone else will likely rewrite it again, as the stupidity of people is a well that will never go dry.
A typical Al Jaffe Snappy Answer to Stupid Questions would have a burgle kneeling in front of a row of safety deposit boxes, about half of them pried open. A Policeman would be standing over him asking-Hey, what are you up to? The Burglar would have three or four responses-127, why? My neck in trouble. The second row, you want to help with the third? and so on and so forth.
One of Bill Cosby‘s best routines involved him crashing his $75 car into a tree. Once the Police arrive they ask him what happened. “Well, Officer, I was driving down the road and this tree jumped right out of the forest and bit my car.”
Ignorance is one thing, stupidity is something else again. In America, we are willing to die for the right to be stupid. I just wish it was only America.
