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| Big like Tingle; blurry like Cal. |
They do so many idiotic things, give such patently ridiculous excuses, shift blame for their fuckups to so many people.
But last night, at my brother-in-law's request, I watched three back to back episodes of A&E's "Parking Wars," a tv show about parking enforcement, car booters, and impound lot specialists.
What I discovered is that everyone is fucking stupid.
In these episodes there was such a torrent of idiots that I kept thinking it had to be a prank show. One guy parks his car in front of a hydrant, facing the wrong way, with two tires on the curb. The meter person was filling out the tickets when he returned and he said, "What the fuck are you doing? I just went in the restaurant to get a sandwich. Don't you see my blinkers on?"
One lady whose car got booted for excessive fines, came running out of the beauty salon and was asked, "Do you have any parking tickets on this car?" "No," she said. "I've never gotten a parking ticket."
When they followed up, she had over $1500 of tickets, and a glove box full of them.
And these are mostly adults. Some who hold babies on their hips and call the parking official "cocksuckers" and other quaint-ities.
One college student confronted a pleasant older man who was writing her a ticket and asked why she was getting one. "This whole block is no parking," he said, pointing at a sign right next to her car.
"I didn't see it. It's not my fault."
"There are 3 more signs on this block," the man said, pointing at them, all within easy sight of where the car was parked."
"You can't give me a ticket if I didn't see the signs. It's the city's fault. It's YOUR fault. I don't deserve to get a ticket."
Oh there were more, untold acts of complete braindead-edness. I felt a little better understanding why my students are so dumb, and a little worse realizing that everyone else was, too.
You want your thing to be bigger than Dick Tingle's? Don't you think that's a bit Freudian, Hiram?
ReplyDeleteStupid is nothing new. As educators, we're supposed to be doing something about it. However, as RYS noted on June 14, 2008, every now and then one meets a foreign student who observes, "We have stupid people in my country too, but they don't go to college."
Indeed, what's new is what Joe Queenan in his book, "Basalmic Dreams" referred to as "educated barbarians." They were the result of the mass marketing of higher education, and they do things like think up increasingly sophisticated ways to loot what's left of the economy, while still not knowing the difference between "its" and "it's" while yelling, "Stop being such a scientist!" when I point out the difference.
Delete"I felt a little better understanding why my students are so dumb, and a little worse realizing that everyone else was, too."
ReplyDeleteIt's a double edged sword isn't it? A la: Where are we going and what are we doing in this handbasket?
Yes, I had a student who missed an entire part of our final exam. When she got a C instead of a B, she emailed me about it.
ReplyDeleteI sent her a PDF of the final, with section III - which she skipped and was worth a quarter of the grade.
"That doesn't seem fair," she wrote. "I didn't even see it! You gave me a zero even though it wasn't my fault."
Where did they learn this?
Where did they learn this?
DeleteIn dumbass school, i.e. life in America under Bush II.
I can cure them of the problem, but only unless you give me Soviet Power to do the job, otherwise it's all just half-measures.
I had a student skip the last two pages of an exam, wait three months, then cry about how she didn't see those pages.
DeleteFelt a little bad and was willing to cut her some slack in the letter grade department, until she did the same thing on the final. Once is a mistake. Twice is a strategy.
I was stopped at a red light the other day and the driver behind me slammed into me. She ran out of the car and told me it wasn't her fault because she did not see the red light (or my bright red car). IT WASN'T HER FAULT! Where do they learn this?
ReplyDeleteI feel like "it wasn't my fault" is some weird mantra they taught in the self-of-steam movement in schools.
Delete"I am unique."
"I am special."
"Nothing that happens is my fault."
Frog, I think you may be onto something here. It's not just isolated pockets of stupidity, it seems to be a nationwide epidemic.
DeleteI'm going to have to remember "We have stupid people in my country too, but they don't go to college."
I gave the class a quiz yesterday. The directions, in bold and all caps, read ADD NEEDED PUNCTUATION. DO NOT ADD, DELETE, OR CHANGE WORDS. I just know the ones who didn't follow the directions are parked in the fire lane.
ReplyDeleteEverything here is a sign of emotional impairment in the special education system.
ReplyDeleteEverything here is a sign of emotional impairment in the special education system.
ReplyDeleteIt's true Hiram; the world is full of idiots.
ReplyDeleteThink about someone with average intelligence. Then consider that about half the world is dumber than that person.
Ow, my head! Math! I was told there wood not be any maths.
DeleteBut ALL of the children in Lake Wobegon are smarter than that person, of course.
DeleteEven scarier is the bottom half is allowed to vote, drive 1 ton objects filled with 20 gallons of explosive fuel, and reproduce.
DeleteThanks for the laugh today, Hiram. So does this mean we're all going to end up like the people in the movie "Idiocracy"? Please say it ain't say.
ReplyDeleteWelcome to CostCo. I love you.
DeleteI am starting to think that the stupidity is symptomatic of a lack of things. A lack of teaching to anything but standardized tests so the Evil Testing Syndicate can make their $$$$. A lack of writing skills, again fostered by the "we must take these stupid tests seriously" and don't teach anyone to think critically, they might wake up and realize that there is a lot of work to be done to restore what we've lost over the last two generations. A lack of taking responsibility, which is an epidemic at all levels of society, unfortunately. For crying out loud, people, if a mistake has been made, why can't someone admit they did wrong, own up to it, and take the appropriate corrective action?
ReplyDeleteHiram, I don't want to scare you, but there are multiple such shows. I don't mean "that illustrate that everyone is fucking stupid". I mean "shows that illustrate that everyone is fucking stupid by documenting parking related stupidity". And by "multiple", I don't mean "two". There are at least four shows on cable that showcase assholicism via parking related narcissism and stupidity. FOUR!
ReplyDeleteI am probably part of the problem because I watch this crap. I've watched multiple episodes of multiple baby beauty pagent shows, bride shows... There is one show where young socialites get cut off and have to go grocery shopping and clean the toilet. I don't watch any of this crap on a regular basis. I just find something by accident that I've never seen before and I have the same experience as Hiram. I say "what?" and I think I'm confused and another one is coming up next so I watch it again to figure out what did I REALLY see. And then I realize I really saw what I really thought I fucking saw. So I'll watch eight episodes in a row of one of them in horror, trying to convince myself it's just some weird niche. The weird little niche is "the whole fucking developed world in the 21st century".
How the fuck do you spell narsicism... fuck. I have to frost a birthday cake, so I'm not checking that. I'll just cop to not knowing it and run.
I love Parking Wars. I record to watch mini-marathons, just to remind me that it's everywhere--not just in the classroom.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see that you've had this epiphany as well, Hiram.