My mate is a part-time IT support guy
for a small engineering company. He was responsible for dragging them kicking and screaming into the computer age about 5 years ago, before which the bank told them that they couldn't have a loan until they got a proper office and computers and so on.

So, he sets up a computer for the MD's wife whose job was to do the books. He showed her how to do basic stuff in Sage including how to back up the file every night to a floppy disk.

After a while, the file started getting to large for the disk and so he said to get a USB pendrive which he went out and purchased.

"So what do I do?" she asked.
"You just use it the same as a floppy disk, it just holds a lot more data and is faster too" he foolishly explained far too briefly.

Anyway, he's sitting at his computer, programming sort of project management app when he senses that she's getting flustered. He glances over to see her trying to insert the pendrive into the floppy drive at all sorts of different angles.

He had to go into the back room to make a coffee whilst he contained his mirth.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:34, Reply)

Freshers week at Uni was always a bit of a laugh.
The randy as fuck eighteen year old first years away from home for the first time were just as likely to end up in casualty to get their stomachs pumped free of all the cheap vodka they’d downed in the SU, or the pint-or-so of sperm they’d gobbled down back at the halls of residence afterwards.

In my second year I took up residence in a shitpit in Trafford with a bunch of lads doing HND’s in Motor Mechanics. They thought I was doing a degree in cooking. Fair enough: economics and home economics are pretty easy to get mixed up, and thinking about it, learning how to make a perfect soufflé might actually have had more use in the real world than knowing about the GDP of a range of minor South American countries.

Anyway, one of the lads was absolutely fucking mental. An ex squaddie from Glasgow with long girlish hair who’d done a few tours over in Northern Ireland. He was a nice enough bloke if you didn’t get on his bad side. But if you did you’d end up on the floor, covered in blood, looking like you’ve been doing some bumpin’ n grindin’ with Edward Scissorhands .

One time his battered old Cortina disappeared from outside our house. Rather than call the police – who would’ve done fuck all - Kevin very calmly taped up his knuckles, said in a very quiet ominous voice: “I’ll be back in a little while,” and stalked off. He drove up half an hour or so later in his motor. Walked in, went up to the bathroom and washed the blood off his hands. Actually thinking about it, Kevin was a really, really, really scary fucker.

Back to freshers week – Kevin pulls. I haven’t on account of drinking my own bodyweight in Coors and having a brief but passionate encounter with the SU floor. Dazed and bruised, I’m sat back in the house watching The Sky at Night (gotta fucking love that show), when Kevin rolls in with this tart. This woman should’ve been chained up in a cage in a zoo and fed raw meat – she’d have made your average cougar run for the fucking hills in panic. This woman – evidently – was not a fresher. Probably some random cock-warmer Kevin picked up in the kebab shop on the way home.

Kevin and his lady friend disappear upstairs. Grunting. A bit of shouting. Heavy feet on the stairs. Kevin sticks his head round the door: “You packing?” he asked, pushing his long hair out of his eyes.

For a brief, scary-as-shit moment, I thought Kevin was asking if I wanted to join in. A threesome with a bloke who could snap me like a twig and a woman who’s peroxide could knock me unconscious at five paces, who’s wrinkly dried-up old skin would probably have the same effect on my delicate boyish body a cheese grater would have on a knob of soft butter.

But then Kevin continued: “Condoms! Got any? She won’t let me fuck her unless I’m wearin.”

I explained I wasn’t ‘packing’. I returned to the TV screen and Patrick Moore going on about space. Kevin wasn’t finished: “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Go and fucking get me some fucking nodders!” When Kevin asked you to do something in that tone of voice, you did it. No fucking questions asked. On-pain-of-death. “And don’t piss about!” And he stormed off.

Moments later, pissed off, drunk, I’m walking down towards the 24 hour garage through the fucking ghetto. It’s raining. Lashing down. I think: Fuck this! That fucker can’t fucking fuck with me! Fuck him! And I head back home, nodderless, and resume residence on the couch.

BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG, Kevin’s heavy footsteps down the stairs again. “Well?”

And I realise I’m going to die. “they.didn’t.have.any.” I squeak. Kevin looks fucking annoyed. Then I see a dim spark light between his eyes. His brain appears to have been working overtime, or the brain in his trousers took over and came up with this ‘plan’ for him.

Without a word he disappears upstairs. Before The Sky at Night’s finished – with accompanying bed-moving, groaning, and borderline screaming from Kevin’s room – he’s done the deed. The cougar, complete with tiger-stripe leggings and leopard print t-shirt, has stalked off into the night with a woodbine dangling off her bottom lip. Kevin joins me in the living room, sweaty, spent, looking rather pleased with himself.

“You found some johnnies then?” I ask.

Kevin shakes his head. “Nah - I put this round my cock and in the dark she thought I was wrapped,” and he tosses over one of his thin hair bands, it lands in my lap and I freak out. It did – however – look an awful lot like the round hard rubber circle they have at the base of a condom. “Don’t think she even noticed when I spluffed in her.”

“Errmmm... aren’t you... errrr... worried?” I said. “You know... about not taking precautions... It’s not a good idea not to, you know, with a new partner ‘n’ all that...”

And this is where the ignorance comes in. A display of ignorance that had me shuddering to the core.

Kevin tossed his head back, laughed, and said in as patronising a tone as possible: “I don’t think there’s much chance she’s gonna get pregnant. Did you see how old she was?”

The mind boggles.

And Kevin wondered why he started pissing needles a few days later...
( SpankyHanky, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:26, 5 replies)

A Lovely looking young lady i used to work with...
all of the following ate true,

once at work we were talking about the date (it was Friday the 13th) and how many people consider this date to be unlucky. The girl opposite me wondered aloud if her birthday will ever fall on a Friday 13th, until our boss pointed out that her birthday was August 21st.

she also asked / genuinely thought all of the following

Limes were unripe lemons,

tigers were female lions,

she once asked what mushy peas were made off

she also rang me on the internal phone system and asked if it was costing the company money in phone bills.



sadly though, stupid as she was, i still couldn't convince her to sleep with me!
(Grahamey Lagroin For Its a grand old team to play for..., Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:22, Reply)

Floored by abject stupidity, you say?
I've just stumbled across this story in the Connecticut Post about a couple of bank robbers who rang the bank in advance, in effect to place their order.
"You can't make this stuff up," said Sgt. James Perez, Fairfield police spokesman. "They literally called the bank and said to have the bag of money ready on the floor because they're coming to rob the place. And then they actually show up as the police were rolling in. I would classify these individuals as, `Not-too-bright.' They should have spent time in school instead of trying to rob a bank."
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:17, 2 replies)

We did try to get intelligent people
Wavy lines back 15 years or so.

I used to work in a directory enquiry call centre. Some time before, the bean counters realised that reducing the pay bill looked good in the accounts, so they allowed lots of experienced people to take voluntary redundancy and replaced them with agency staff. The money we paid the agency was accounted for elsewhere and the shareholders were happy. The customers and the remaining staff, not so much.

Unfortunately, the area of the country we were in had a generally low level of academic achievement and the agency struggled to find candidates who had the necessary spelling and geography knowledge to pass the entrance tests, so we were always short-staffed.

The test results for the latest batch of candidates were given to us on a Wednesday and we began to look forward to their arrival as it often caused much-needed amusement.

The geography test consisted of a map of the UK on which dots were drawn on the sites of about a dozen major towns and cities. Alongside the map was a list of those cities and all the candidates had to do was put the right name next to the right dot.

Over the course of a couple of soul-destroying years of this, I discovered that Dover is in Devon, Bristol is in Scotland and Edinburgh is the major city on the River Thames.

Spelling was another shocker, particularly from the uni students coming for summer work. I can understand some of the younger applicants not knowing how to spell mortgage if they've never had one, but national? (e.g. nasionel) Barclays? (Barklaze) and so on.

Apologies for length of preamble.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:08, 8 replies)

My dad used to tell me
that there is only a finite amount of water in the world and you can't change that, only change its state from ice/liquid/steam. I was going to explain about the result of burning hydrogen, or how I separated water once by passing a current through it, but he attended school in the 40s, and probably not a very good school whose only purpose was to teach the 3 Rs until he was old enough to leave and get a job on the barges with my grandad.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:03, 8 replies)

Random sentence
School. 25 years ago. Last lesson of the day. English. We had to read a passage of writing then answer some questions on it (was that called "comprehension"?)

Anyway, as it was nearing the end of the lesson our teacher kindly said that when we had answered all the questions we could pack up and leave quietly leaving our exercise books on our desks.

I was still halfway thru when Andrew Davidson got up, packed his books away and left the room. After Andrew had left, the teacher slowly sidled up to Andrew's desk, opened the exercise book then spent quite a number of seconds peering at Andrew's answers with a bemused look on his face.

Intrigued, when I finished (along with most of the rest of the class) I asked the teacher what was so puzzling about Andrew's answers, so he showed me.

Now I cannot for the life of me remember the passage of writing, or even the question, but the answer will stay with me for ever. The exact wording that Andrew felt sufficient to submit and leave class early was:

"The the of it of it kings"

He didn't hear the end of it the next day. Or the day after that. Or indeed for the rest of his time at that school. His famous "sentence" was even put to music and sung at him at appropriate times!
(FUXTIX Not my words, Carol, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 13:00, 4 replies)

Its a small place... University
At the end of my 1st year at uni I managed to get a summer job in a sandwich factory. On my 1st (and only) day on the job I impressed the supervisor with my dazzling 'putting tomato on bread' skills so much that I was promoted to 'buttering the bread'. My fellow bread butterer was a girl in her early 20's. She seemed pleasant enough but she wasn't the brightest button in the box. The conversation went something like:

Girl: Is it your 1st day?
Me: Yes, just here for the summer holidays, back to uni in September.
Girl: Oh you go to university, do you know Sarah?
Me: Sarah? No, I don't think so.
Girl: But you both go to university, you must have seen her there.

I didn't have the heart to explain to her that there was more than one.
(Andino, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 12:57, Reply)

Sorry, I can't see you because my world view is too narrow...
Last year some time a colleague mentioned to me in an email that she'd seen a good film the night before, but said I wouldn't like it "as there were no robots or car chases in it".

I thought this a little strange, but didn't comment until a few weeks later when she told me about another film she'd enjoyed. This time I wouldn't like it as "there weren't any robots or explosions".

Curiosity got the better of me and I fired a quick reply back asking why she thought my exclusive criteria for a film were robots, car chases and explosions.

Her answer? Because I'd been to the cinema to see Transformers 2 and Terminator: Salvation
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 12:45, 9 replies)

Down on the allotment.
Some knobhead city folk were boastfully telling all and sundry how they had just moved down this way and were going to be 'self-sufficient'. I blame that twat Hugh Fearlessly Eatsitall for the mass influx of such folk.
I spied them on their little plot when they were about to start planting and took great delight in showing them the right way up to plant their carrot seeds because otherwise they'd grow up out of the ground instead of growing down.
They must've took ages to get that job done. I didn't hang around though, I was laughing like a loon on my way down the pub for a cider.

Gotta love the crackjaws sometimes.
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 12:36, 1 reply)

Tesco, eh?
First up: yes, I know that barcodes are bicoloured and that they can be scanned. It doesn't follow from this that you can scan everything that's bicoloured. There's a difference between a courgette and a barcode, and it's quite an important one.

Second: when you ask me what it is I'm trying to buy so that you know which button to press on the till and I tell you they're apricots, you won't win my sympathy be saying cheerily, "Oooh, you can tell I never eat any fruit or veg" as though you want me to hug you and congratulate you on your brave and determined stance against any food that isn't pre-frozen.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 12:21, 6 replies)

In a similar vein to the ausfahrt post a few pages back
www.b3ta.com/questions/stupidity/post670402

While cute in its 'teehee they say FART' way - my ex took it beyond stupidity by pretending every single time we drove on the highway that he was only *just* discovering that it means 'exit'.

"Ooh, I wonder why there are so many signs for Ausfahrt, perhaps we should go there! Hur hur hur, I'm so funny" gets repetitive after the first few times, but alas, I was smitten and willing to gloss over this first sign of his being utterly willing to feign ignorance to garner attention...

Length? About 200km worth of signs on the A31 to Dusseldorf..
(pineappleunderthesea mortal enemy of the apple since, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 12:12, Reply)

Just thought of another one...
My cousin went to University in Durham. One night there was a small fire at the place where he was living. It was enough of a blaze that the fire brigade attended, complete with flashing lights, sirens, and waking the neighbours...

...one of whom was so put out by this that he wrote a letter to the local paper bemoaning the fact that his taxes had been used to save the lives of student scroungers, and finishing with the charming line "Why doesn't he go back to Essex and live in an asbestos hut?"
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 12:10, 3 replies)

Undercover Police
When I was much younger my parents decided to take my sister and I on holiday to Holland, but instead of flying there (a nice quick 1 hour option) they decided to drive there (a long and boring 6 hour option).

By the time we enter Holland my sister and I are bored out of our minds and are just staring out of the windows when my sister spots something....

Sis: Wow look at that there are loads of cars here with blue licence plates.......I wonder why..
Me: Huh? Where? I can't see any.
Sis: There! There! Look! *Points* I bet they're under cover police cars!

The whole car then just goes silent before the rest of us just laugh at her while a car with a blue licence plate and a big sign on the roof saying TAXI drives past.

We still use it to take the piss out of her 10+ years later.
( Jimbo314 is drunk on, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 11:24, Reply)

Virgin Media... twunts
Stating the obvious that i know but thats not what this story is about..

Was on the phone to them last week, looking at cancelling and jumping to Sky with their "Half Price HD for 12 months" offer, i was in the process of 'bartering' for more services, he was explaining how AMAZING their broadband is, only 1 thats totally unlimited, yada yada yada. I was saying yes, but i'm not bothered, i don't download much, etc when he came out with this gem

Sales Goon : "Look, i'm with Sky, i can tell you their...."
Me : "Hang on, YOU'RE with Sky?"
Sales Goon : "I can't get Cable in my area"
Me : "But Virgin offer ADSL too, you know? and surely you'd get discount?"
Sales Goon : "Yeah, but.. it's only for the HD Package, anyway, we're not talking about me"


Priceless. Their own rep even admitting to not having the service he was telling me was so amazing!
(TheManofScience, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:52, 4 replies)

A day out at the Sea Life Centre
This particular Sea Life Centre had a seal sanctuary in it. The Terry Nutkins Seal Sanctuary no less.

Any by god they were proud of their seals. Everywhere you went you'd see a sign telling you about the Terry Nutkins Seal Sanctuary. And when you eventually reached the tunnel that led to the seals, you also reached a frenzy of signage:

"Seals This Way!"
"This way to the Seals!"
"Welcome to the TERRY NUTKINS SEAL SANCTUARY!"
"Get Ready to See THE SEALS!"
"YOU ARE ALMOST AT THE TERRY NUTKINS SEAL SANCTUARY"

We pushed through the final door emblazoned with the legend "HERE ARE THE SEALS!", and walked under a banner reading "SEALS! SEALS! SEALS!"

And the woman in front of us exclaimed in delight "OO! Look at all the lovely sealions!"
(richardm, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:49, 4 replies)

Tesco Twuntage
One morning I decide to make my then GF a nice continental breakfast so off I pop to Tescos in search of croissants I get to the till to pay for said pastries wearing my nice shiney new Metallica t-shirt and the (admittedly blondes) checkout girl trying to impress the clearly not interested Metaller she was talking to says the following:

"Oh Metallica i love them!! My favorite song is stairway to heaven"

her friend and I exchange bewildered looks, I accept my change and leave shaking my head only to hear in a shrill voice from behind me "WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU FUCKING TELL ME? NOW I LOOK REALLY BLONDE!!!!"

Nuff said

TTFN

Edited for spelling thanks disaterprone
(Womble Lover Is in the corner kicking the cat, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:39, 2 replies)

Thailand
At the end of a 3 week trawl around the various hedonistic delights of the thai islands, we headed back to Bangkok for our last night and flight home. We had deliberately booked a 5* hotel to compensate for the sheds we'd been living in over the previous few weeks. (The Davis hotel - £100 for a presidential suite that sleeps 4..) We took the opportunity to find a nice restaurant and enjoy our last few hours. One of our group, Mel, is lovely but occasionally very dim.

We had been eating thai food for most of the holidays which is generally exemplary and we had become fairly adept at spotting the dishes we liked at the 60 or so meals we had eaten so far. Mel had, bless her, struggled with it. Fair enough, it wasnt always straightforward and the language and written thai is fairly impenetrable to western ears and eyes.

It doesnt really excuse her though, for at the point of ordering from the rather posh waiters for asking "do you do rice?"
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:34, Reply)

I've deliberately left this until today as it's a pea...
Some of you may know that my real name is Kerry. As it mentions in my profile, many people have commented that they thought that was a girl’s name. Back in my sales job in London (many years ago) I was talking to a customer on the phone and arranged to give her a call back once I’d found out some information for her. She was being quite abrupt and told me that she’d be calling me back if I hadn’t got back to her shortly. She then asked my name, and the conversation went something like this:

“What’s your name?”
“I’m Kerry”
“Kerry? That’s a girl’s name”
*sighs*
“Well, no. It can be, but it’s a bloke’s name too”
“No, it’s a girl’s name”
“It’s really not, it’s unisex, like Lindsay or Lesley”
“Well, I’ve never heard of a bloke called Kerry. I’m sorry, but you’ve got a girl’s name”
“… Well, I’m a bloke, and I’m called Kerry – so now you DO know someone called Kerry who’s not a girl”
“Nope. You’ve got a girl’s name”
“Right, okay. Well I’ll get the information and call you back. I’ve got your number, what’s your name?”
“Chris”

At this point I really tried to restrain myself, honestly I did. Sadly, I couldn’t help myself and blurted out “THAT’S A BLOKE’S NAME!”

She hung up on me...
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:23, 12 replies)

Too Stupid To Live!
Way back when, when I was in school I had this friend by the name of Darren. Now he was a fairly smart guy, always got good grades and was always up for a laugh.

One day he spent the best part of an hour trying to convince us that Oxygen was an addictive drug, and that the body could survive without it! When we pointed out that without it you would die, he responded with "It's just the withdrawal that kills you, not the lack of it that kills!"

He never did take us up on the offer of holding his breath for an extended period of time though.
(Herr Doktor Lemminge Is bored, so cheer me up!, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:09, 1 reply)

Working behind the bar...
...of a busy student pub, serving glorified home brew and reheated meat-style snacks to Britains brightest and most hygienically-challenged.

It's a Sunday lunchtime, and the usual mob descends for a game stab at tackling its collective hangover with a Sunday roast. One hapless punter shuffles her way up to the bar, orders two giant roasts and two pints, and dutifully hands me her NUS card to prove that, yes, her towering intellect and status as future captain of industry do indeed entitle her to 50p off her lunch.

"Fair 'nuff" says I, handing over her change and one of those little metal table signs with a number on it.

She looks around the room for a moment, mystified, then turns back to me and with a slight edge of panic in her voice, asks "er, which one's table nine?"
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 10:01, 1 reply)

Rebecca Barry
Apparently this woman is a newspaper columnist, for a paper in New Zealand. I defy anyone to get to the end of this without sticking pins in their eyes.

---

IT'S a shame the NZ Atheist Bus Campaign slogans won't appear on Auckland's buses. Some drivers could do with a reminder that a higher power won't necessarily watch the road on their behalf.

On a recent trip from the city to Grey Lynn, the driver spent the majority of the ride shrieking into her walkie-talkie, eyes locked on the rear-view mirror at the bus behind us.

I couldn't help but wonder if a whacking great sign along her wheels reading, ``There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life'' might have rubbed off.

That second sentence could have done all of us good. The guy next to me practically chewed his thumbnail off he was so distracted for his safety.

Secular sentiment seems appropriate on a bus. You'd hardly associate this steaming mode of transport with godliness. I don't know anyone who has married on the bus, been baptised or christened as they ripped the greasy handrail and pulled the buzzer.

Perhaps a more appropriate slogan would be, ``There's probably no God on this bus but you could check the 725. Now stop worrying and catch the train''. (Although, as a friend who recently sat on one for more than an hour waiting for it to leave Newmarket told me, that's run by the devil.) We'll just have to make do and have this debate somewhere else.

It's high time because faith is on the nation's mind this year. First, the questionable conduct of a certain man at the forefront of Destiny Church. Then the controversy surrounding these bus ads, which NZ Bus have refused to run. We now have a new Anglican Bishop of Auckland.

Simultaneously, atheism is supposedly on the rise. This week the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne had an impressive turnout of 2500 paying punters keen to worship at the altar of rational thought, while defending enlightenment ``from deliberate attack from organised ignorance'', according to speaker Richard Dawkins, who spoke more sense in New Zealand last week.

An atheist convention does seem a bit pointless, a bit like holding a convention for meat-eaters. I'm bored with hearing non-believers blame religion for everything.

That just gets in the way of a debate about what law-abiding, non-radical individuals believe, regardless of the doctrine they choose to follow. Why must a religious debate stray into lectures on terrorism or apocalyptic themes when ordinary citizens are more
concerned with doing the right thing by their neighbours? Shouldn't atheists just stop worrying and enjoy their lives?

I'm no atheist, nor have I ever been religious. While schoolmates wrote Anglican or Catholic on their school identity forms, I wrote ``None''. At school we did Bible readings and sang hymns and the only thing I remember, other than the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians which we had to learn, was the sound biblical advice, ``Take the log out of
your own eye'', the imagery of which I found amusing.

Even our non-religious maths teacher taught us it was statistically beneficial to believe in God because at least then you have a shot at getting into heaven.

Perhaps I should've paid more attention. Because in later years, realising how little of the world I understood, and with a few bizarre
experiences that I cannot explain away as an over-active parietal lobe, I now lie somewhere in that ambiguous area between logic and
faith.

In Aotea Square one night I almost choked with laughter when a group of well-meaning Christians offered to instantly heal a friend's
broken leg. But when I prayed really hard for a carpark in the city that night, I got it. I can only put this down to some kind of miraculous force at work because the park was on K Rd.

Seriously, though, if scientists can believe in the possibility of parallel universes without testing the theory, and the experience of faith is so real to so many wise and intelligent people, why is it a scary concept that needs campaigning against at an unholier-than-thou
convention?

As long as our minds remain closed to the beliefs of others, barricaded firmly rather than open even just slightly ajar with curiosity, no mutual understanding or change can ever ensue.

Even Dawkins, the world's most famous atheist and whose brilliant and inspiring observations of the evolutionary process I'd come to hear, gave a less than compelling argument against the case for God, calling
him an invention to channel our gratefulness for life. Which is silly because I've always prayed to pixies for that.

I wanted to ask him why atheists chose to use the word ``probably'' in their not-on-the-bus campaign to promote their cause to the world. And what, other than shrieking bus drivers, they think believers are worried about.
(foxy01, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 8:30, 12 replies)

My headmaster
(a severe, forbidding man - name of Fred Pape) asked us what a foreskin was in our RE lesson when I was about 12.

Naturally, I raised my hand, took the floor and proudly, in ringing tones, pronounced it to be "that bit of skin just above your nose."

Now, I was a bright child although genuinely ignorant in this respect. My explanations fell on deaf ears however and I spent a short while basking in the adulation of my classmates, followed by a longer while basking in a series of Friday night detentions as I reflected on my unwitting impudence.
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Wed 24 Mar 2010, 6:02, 6 replies)

having lived in London for the last ten years
I finally took the plunge and returned to deepest darkest Devon.

Sitting in a pub on the first night back I and my family were treated to the aural delight of a guy sitting at the bar using some pretty choice words to describe a guy with who he was having some kind of dispute, his main problem seemingly the fact this guy was black.

I was both shocked and glad. Glad that I had escaped that small-town mentality a long time ago. And shocked that, as a Devonian, he hated any race of people more than he hated the Cornish.
( nightbuffalo needs more duct tape, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 1:27, 11 replies)

Learn from your mistakes.
I've seen Carlito's Way twice and and both times he ended up dying. Carlito's way = the wrong way.
(8allright is praying you've got a cold, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 0:59, 3 replies)

Lose hope
Recently, my wife has become a teacher. She wants to specialise in teaching low ability kids.

Her 1st year is going well, but exam time comes and she expects very little. Apart from Freddie. Her golden boy. Maybe a grade C. Even a B!

Exam comes and goes; Aug 22nd or something like that, results day.

Freddie has achieved a U. Wife Strump see young person waiting around out side school. Gives some sympathy.

2 weeks later she gets the Exam Overview - basically something from the exam board saying what a departments kids are good at. They have a "special mention"

Student 1866 - Freddie would have achieved a high Grade B; if half way through the paper he hadn't broken into a rant about how "fucking pointless this question was and how the person setting the exam was a fucking this and fucking that". Fair enough, it was Pythagoras but he had his entry revoked and his B + rant ended up in a U.
(Strump striving for imperfection since, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 0:41, 6 replies)

i work in a children's shoe shop which means i am the monkey responsible for measuring feet on the machine and bringing shoes in and out. customers come in all shapes and sizes. there are cute little toddlers right up to sixth formers.

i got a sixth form boy. this is always embarrassing for them because a) i only left sixth form two years ago and b) they should be capable of buying their own shoes by now.

one came in with his dad. clearly, they had been sent in on strict instruction by mum. boy knew exactly what to get down to the size, name and colour. asked for it. was clearly dying to get out as quickly as possible. dad hadn't got a bloody clue what he was doing.

we didnt have the shoe. i came back and suggested some other styles. dad asks what size his son is and whether there would be any in the sale. i say a 10 but we don't go up that high in the sale.

oh but we do, according to dad. and he goes over to a rack of black school shoes clearly labelled 10. i didnt really know where to start. should i explain the size system? shoes start at a 4 for toddlers and go up to a 13, which approximately fits a seven year old, before it starts again at 1. or do i point out that the shoe he is holding up is A QUARTER of the size of his son's foot.

son goes bright red.

clearly, dad felt he hadn't mortified his son enough because before they went to the till, i asked 'can i do anything else for you, sir?' and dad went 'oh yes, but my wife wouldn't like that very much'.
(ladyintheradiator, Wed 24 Mar 2010, 0:16, 3 replies)

i did the classic turning up in fancy dress to a party when no one else had
in the colours of the irish flag. a couple of other people made the same mistake and came as father ted but its pretty easy to remove a dog collar and pretend you decided to come in all black. not so easy to hide yourself when you're wearing bright orange and bright green.
(ladyintheradiator, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 23:58, 6 replies)

First Post, Please Be Gentle...
Hi, everybody

This is my first posting here, and first of all I just want to say that some of the entries for the image challenges on this website are absolute genius, so it is a pleasure to actually be a member of this site.

I have toyed with the idea of answering the Question Of The Week before, but it never really worked out - I'm currently very ill, and I'm not always able to post things in time, but this one is just begging to be answered. Do you ever get the feeling that you're the person who's experienced the most instances of ignorance and stupidity ever? I feel like that a lot.

Please feel free to skip this post if it starts to bore you to tears; I find that, unlike the image challenges, these threads can quickly become very boring, and - I don't know about you - I normally give up reading after the 3rd boring entry (which is a shame, as some of the Q.O.T.W. responses are absolute gems). So apologies if this becomes one of them, but I do hope not. (And I know that some people here share incredibly personal experiences, but this thread so far seems to be very light-hearted. So more sincere apologies if I bring the tone down.)

Firstly, I have to mention one of my exes, who was so outrageously thick, she must've bordered on actual retardation. Seriously - I'm not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that. If you're wondering why I went out with her in the first place (and I've wondered that many, MANY times myself over the years!), she was O.K. if you were talking to her about something mundane and unimportant, which was 95% of our early conversation. (And it wasn't just the early easy conversation, but she used to suck my cock. Sometimes ignorance is worth it if your girlfriend eats dick as much as she used to...but only just.) But talk to her about anything with any weight or significance, and she knew absolutely fuck all about it, and cared even less.

She never had anything to add to any conversation, and she hit me with the whole 'You can finish my sentences for me, so we must be meant to be together' routine more times than I can remember. No, the fucking reason I can finish your fucking sentences is that you always say the same fucking shit! I never said that to her, though. Not out loud, anyway. Inside - believe me - I was absolutely fucking screaming it.

There was a time that I needed to get past her, and I said "Excusez-moi." She just stood there and ignored me, so I thought she was just being fucking awkward with me again - she was most of the time. So I had to gently squeeze past her. You know what her reaction was? "YOU COULD HAVE SAID 'EXCUSE ME'!" Yeah, you DID read that right. Look, I did French at G.C.S.E. level - and all I can remember now is how to tell you that I'm 16 years old, and give you directions to the station, so I couldn't have learnt it properly - but surely everyone knows what that means? And even if you don't, the fact it sounds almost identical to 'Excuse me' should be some sort of fucking clue??? I mean, for fuck's sake, man. You and me are fucking done professionally.

She used to blame her stupidity on her dyslexia, which is not only hugely ignorant in itself, but also immensely insulting to all the people who struggle with dyslexia every day of their lives. Let me make this abundantly clear - although some people, like this bitch, suffer from both, I know that dyslexia and stupidity are two very separate, very different things. Richard Branson is dyslexic, and he is obviously a very intelligent man. Not being able to make out certain words (or spelling being impossible for you), or inadvertently mixing up numbers, or sometimes getting your words confused, that's dyslexia. Making Terry Fuckwit look like Stephen Hawking is not.

I have real sympathy for people who are labelled thick because they're dyslexic, I really do. But I cannot fucking STAND stupid people who hide behind it, or even pretend that they have it when they don't.

Other people I can't stand are stupid people who don't know that they're stupid (and some even think that they're actually very clever) which, strangely, has to be around 99% of stupid people, in by my experience - finding a stupid person who actually knows they're stupid is a very rare thing indeed. You can't help the level of your intelligence or understanding, but denying it is absolutely unforgivable in my view. And that brings me to the most outrageous display of wanton ignorance I have ever encountered in my life.

Now, I won't give away any identifying details of this next prick, but if they ever read this, they'll certainly fucking know who wrote it, even if you don't know them, so I would expect major shit from it. But this example is just too ridiculous to comprehend (at least for my feeble brain), and deserves to be flagged up.

This is a know-it-all who is amazingly ignorant. Someone who claims to have gone to grammar school, and got 11 G.C.S.E.s at either A or B grade, but who mixes upper- and lower- case letters in the same word (a sure sign of low intelligence, from what I've heard - the most famous example of this is a certain Dubya), who uses Americanisms like 'mom', who doesn't even know what a hyphen is, and - this is the most grating thing - says 'supposably' instead of 'supposedly'. Seriously, it's like the seed has been planted in my head for me to start doing that at some point, and if I ever do, I want you, my new B3tan friends, to take a loaded shotgun, put it against my temple, and pull the fucking trigger.

I passed my 11+ (a lot of thick people do, and a lot of intelligent people fail it), and went to a grammar school myself. No-one in my family had managed that apart from two of my uncles and one of my aunts (plus my mum), and I'm child no. 4 out of 5, so that’s some wait, as well as an added pressure for an 11-year-old, I can tell you. It was the holy grail, apparently, and I had it drummed into me for a long time how much better grammar schools were than comprehensives - even my comprehensive-educated sisters told me so. So I was proud to get into a grammar school, but...it didn't work for me. Honestly, how people ever learn ANYTHING in a grammar school is beyond me. I can't speak for other grammar schools, obviously, but the way mine worked was that, if you didn't understand something the very first time of being told, you were thick. No second explanations, no different methods used to clarify what was being taught, no going over what you'd just 'learnt' - absolutely fucking nothing. But no-one else needed - or at least asked for - more guidance, so I must've been thick, right? Wrong. I'm far from fucking stupid. I proved that by moving to the comprehensive over the road half-way through the second year, and going on to gain 6 G.C.S.E.s at grade C, despite going through an incredibly difficult time at home in the same period.

My point, made in such a rambling and long-winded way, is that if I struggled at a grammar school, this thick cunt wouldn't have lasted a fucking week. But the following is proof of his stupidity and ignorance, but I wouldn't blame you if you didn't believe me, because I still don't really believe it myself. Some people just come out with shit that leaves you speechless with its stupidity, don't they?

We were discussing someone we only knew in passing, a very unsavoury character, and this guy (let's call him Steve) suddenly suggested the guy we were talking about (shall we call him Andy?) might beat up women. A bit of a leap - Andy seemed like a right arsehole, but I didn't think he would have ever stooped that low. I didn't know either way, of course, but this conclusion-jumping was based on no evidence - circumstantial or otherwise - whatsoever. Then Steve suggested that Andy might even have raped a woman, and that's where it got REALLY weird.

Steve said that he would far rather that Andy had 'just' forced himself onto some poor girl, than beaten her up. Now, being beaten up is definitely no laughing matter. I have such utter hatred and disgust for the 'men' - and you'll notice that I'm using the term as loosely as possible - that do it, I can't even put it into words. But beating someone up, no matter how badly (even if the victim IS a woman), is nowhere near as bad as rape. I mean, honestly and truthfully, I thought that Steve was playing some kind of sick, twisted joke on me by saying that. But he actually meant it. He - he ACTUALLY. FUCKING. MEANT. IT.

I was unfortunately witness to my scumbag dad hitting my (also a scumbag, but in this context that is neither here nor there) mother, when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Fortunately, I was only ever witness to it once. But it fucked me up, let me tell you. If I'd been witness to him raping her, I'd be in some sort of fucking institution right now. My dad is many things, and he truly is a cunt - he really, really is - but even he's not a rapist. I know that some 'men' do both, but he’d be too scared of being caught, even if he wanted to do something as fucked-up as that.

So that, ladies and gentlemen, is the most prominent example of ignorance and stupidity that I have ever encountered. Someone thinking that a person being beaten up is worse than if they were raped. If anyone reading this feels inclined to agree with Steve, then please do us all a fucking favour by ending your worthless fucking existence NOW.

Rant over.

[EDIT: Apologies for length. And bile.]
(TheAmazingMeatMan ™ can't sing, but he's got soul, Tue 23 Mar 2010, 23:38, 10 replies)