The Art of Stupidity.

    Like a plague riding on the backs of fleas, here it comes.  It’s an acrid cloud that reeks of human waste and sweat, threatening to violate you in the most revolting and inhumane of ways.  It’s unavoidable and prominent in all areas of the world.  It’s not racist, it’s not sexist, and it’s not picky.  Lock your doors, hide your most prized possessions, and keep your children away.  Get ready for a bumpy ride.
    It’s. . . STUPIDITY!
    How can humans, a group of 6.9 billion members that is at the top of the food chain, have so many unintelligent members?  Seriously, what went wrong in the world that made the scales tip in favor of the stupid?
    There are so many examples of stupidity that I can’t spout off about, but that would take a lot of time to write about, and would most likely be the longest blog in the history of mankind.  Maybe I’ll set a world record with that when I have more free time.
    I was driving on the highway today, passing cars and keeping the vehicle at a steady 71MPH or so.  Yes, I was technically speeding, but I was keeping up with the flow of traffic and I am a phenomenal example of manhood.  I passed a car and looked into my rearview mirror so that I could move back into the traveling lane, being a safe a cautious driver with my pregnant wife riding shotgun.  When I peer into my mirror, I see a beat up old pick-up truck weaving back and forth between lanes and flying at me.  When I get ready to move over to the traveling lane to let this tough guy pass, he tries to cross into the traveling lane first so he can pass me. 
    I managed to get into the lane first and he just cut back over and passed me.  Of course, there was no reason for this driver to be speeding like this.  He wasn’t on fire, he wasn’t rushing a pregnant lady to the hospital, and he wasn’t racing to an emergency situation.  He was a teenager wearing a goofy hat sideways, traveling with a young girl on his right, her sunglasses oversized and appearing to be more like bug eyes than sunglasses.
    What did I do,  you may ask?  Did I let them pass without incident?  Did I lose my cool?  I’ll give you a moment to make a guess.
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    I extended my arm out the window, lifted my middle finger, and reached out as far as I could.  The people in the truck did the same, and then cruised on by.  I watched in awe as this kid buzzed by me, cut into the right lane again to get around a car, and then back to the passing lane, where he drove off the road and had his left tires almost on the grass, nearly killing himself and the bug-eyed girl with him.  After about three minutes of weaving through cars, he cut his wheel and brought his car from the passing lane, through the driving lane, in front of two other cars, and off an exit.  I found myself wondering where he was going, not only at that moment, but in life.  Would he be our next congressman?  The new cashier at a burger joint?  A drain on society? 
    Needless to say, despite what he may become in life, he will always be STUPID.
    Moving along.
    Last week, my wife told me a great story riddled with stupidity and redneck-ery.  She was at a video game store trading in her brother’s old games for him so that he could purchase the new basketball game that he had been wanting.  After trading his games in and buying his new game, she left the store and saw a women with a few young children.  She was not paying attention to the kids and they made their way toward the parking lot.  How does she respond?
    “OH!  You little MOTHERF*CKERS!  Get your asses back over here!” she said with class.
    The clever speech of such a sophisticated young lady.  I’m willing to bet that she won’t be the next speech writer for the president of our country.  More than likely, she will continue her streak as “Trash Bag mother of the Year.”  Despite her awards and credentials, she is STUPID.
    Getting angrier and angrier and moving along at a crawl. . .
    I was once told a story by a man who worked at a retail store.  He received a complaint from a shopper that at baby was alone in a car out in the parking lot.  Upon investigation, there was indeed a baby, no more than a year old, seated in a car seat and buckled in.  The police were called and within a few minutes, officers were on the scene and getting ready to open the car so they could get the child out safely.
    A man came running out at that point, yelling and getting angry that people were touching his car.  The police immediately stopped him and asked him if the car and child were his.  He told the police officers that this was his child, and that he had run inside for a minute to purchase something, and that he had only been gone for a short period of time.  When the employee spoke up and told the officers that it had been over fifteen minutes since he called the police, the man got angry and disputed.  Soon enough, though, he confessed to being in the store for a long period of time, but gave a argument that he thought was smart and would give him the advantage in this dilemma.
    “Well, I left the window open some.”
    He left the window open...some.  Awesome.  That was his reasoning behind why he thought it was safe to leave an infant unattended in a vehicle for nearly a half hour.
    I don’t know if he should even be allowed to keep this child.  What kind of person leaves any aged child in a car alone?  I wonder if his child will grow up thinking that he is a great father.  If I ever meet this child later in life, I will assure him that his father is a few IQ points shy of being a rock, and is more than anything, STUPID.
    I know I’m not the smartest man in the world, even though I AM in the top ten greatest men of all time.  Despite my dashing good looks and genius IQ, I don’t think I’m better than anyone.  But I know for sure that I am smarter than 85% of humans on this planet.
    I’m comfortable saying this, mostly because I have seen a range of stupidity in my life, and I know for a fact that I don’t fit into any of these categories.  I’ve done stupid things, and I’ve been involved in stupid situations, but isolated incidents don’t make the individual.  I guess that I just contradicted myself, as I’m calling the above people stupid based on single instances.  But the situations are pretty big bench marks for stupidity.  Maybe they are half stupid, or even three-quarters stupid, though I doubt they know enough about fractions to be able to make that distinction of asked.
    The old saying “Think Before You Act” would work wonders if it was explained properly to a lot of people.  Maybe if we all find a stupid person every day and explain to them some common sense things then we will greatly deplete the amount of asinine humans on our planet over a few years.  Even if we don’t succeed, we will probably have some funny stories to tell.

I wish that I could fly!

    Despite the fact that I am thirty years old, I enjoy reading novels that are in the Young Adult genre.  Aside from being fun and are easy to read, they center around topics that were once important in our lives.  Love, revenge, and hopes of becoming rich and successful are usually present in some form or another.
    James Patterson is the author of one such series known as the “Maximum Ride” series.  The books center around a group of kids who were created with a small percentage of avian DNA grafted into their human DNA.   The outcome: they have great big wings!  Yes, wings.  It seems silly if you think of it from an adult standpoint, but if you step back and look at it with an imagination that isn’t tainted by society, you’d see that it is something that each of us has most likely wanted to do.  FLY.
    The group is thrown into some very adult situations.  They have to escape from a group of scientists who want them back in the “school,” which is basically a laboratory where the scientists continue to experiment on innocent children.
    Countless thrills ensue throughout the entire series.  The kids get into fights with adults and beat them senseless most of the time.  They are charged with saving the world from the damage that we have all inflicted upon it.  Greatest of all, they are passionate about there own small race of humans, and protect each other as a family should.
    When I was younger, I always wanted to be able to fly.  I used to wish that I could turn into a bird, even if it was only for a day, so that I could fly as high as possible, swoop through trees, and live life with no worries and the ability to look at earth from high up with no interruptions of any kind.  I think that is one reason why I really liked this series.
    Another thing that I really liked about this book was that the chapters are anywhere from one page to seven or so pages.  Each chapter centers around a different topic or conflict.  It makes for a really exciting read and makes you not want to put the book down until you have finished reading it.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I am guilty of not being able to put a novel down on a regular basis.