Strollerderby : stupid

High School Student in Hospital After Scavenger Hunt

Brett Singer — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:30:00 GMT

When I think of scavenger hunts, I think of summer camp, back when I was about 10. The tasks were, "find a blue rock." Maybe a spork.

Clearly I'm out of touch.

A group of students at St. Charles North High School in Kane County, Illinois, have their own scavenger hunt for the "Jackass" generation. Items on the list include "Getting kicked in the groin", "Pelting the elderly with muffins", and the ever-popular "Jumping from a moving car."

It was that last item that landed student Erik Nava in the hospital. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that he is "hospitalized in serious condition" after participating in what his fellow students describe as an "underground scavenger hunt". Local police say that "as many as 200 students" take part in this nonsense. They prove to their friends that they did the dumb stuff by taking video of the asinine acts, and then destroying the evidence. So they prove that it happened (taking the video), and also prove that they know it's stupid (destroying the video).

Sing it with me now – momma's, don't let your babies grow up to be buttheads…

Source: Chicago Sun-Times

Image: phiredup.com

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Republican Candidate Uses Porn-esque Robocall

Brett Singer — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:00:00 GMT

I don't let my kids answer the phone, but a lot of people do. Now imagine if they picked it up and heard this:

"Mike Thompson's been a baaad boy ... we all said no to the bailout, but Thompson backed Bush, just like he did for the Patriot Act. Vote Yes for Zane."

Here is a link to the audio (wav file). You really have to hear it. Basically, it sounds like a low-rent phone sex operator. (Not that I know what a high-rent phone sex operator sounds like. Or any phone sex operator. I don't. Hey! Off-topic!)

The robocall ad was produced by the Zane Starkewolf campaign. Zane is a "self-described Green Republican" candidate for Congress in California and also a Chemistry graduate student. His explanation for the call is utterly bizarre:

I acknowledge that the idea behind the ad, and indeed the execution of the call, was not the safe route to take. And if my run for office was simply for personal gain, I would not have taken a risk.

What? A robocall political ad produced in the style of phone sex somehow shows that you are not running "for personal gain"? Is that because you know it won't work?

But the content and the facts within the message were there and need to be discussed. Hopefully this call opens up the forum for discussion on the issues and on the representation which is so essential to our system.

Meaning… what? That by putting on a pseudo-sexy voice we'll all get turned on to politics? Bad fake porn as a gateway drug to insightful political discourse?

This is the closest thing to an apology in his statement:

The unpaid staffer who recorded and submitted the message may have been a little overly enthusiastic in the delivery, but I believe it is good to get enthusiasm back into politics.

First of all, the woman who recorded the call sounds like she might be on drugs or mentally ill. At the very least, she's meshugeh ahf toit (click here for a translation, or go ask Madonna, she knows what it means). So "enthusiasm" isn't the word I would use. Second, "back into politics"? With weird robotic phone-sex calls? Yes, I remember when Truman did that back in 1948.

He then uses the phrase that is the number one justification for dummies who think they're smart – "Let’s think outside the box." Well, I guess you've done that. Maybe this idea should have stayed IN the box. A locked box. With no key.

I can't stand these robocalls and I think they should be outlawed. Not just the really wacko ones like this, but all of them. We used to belong to a temple that used them to notify people of events. They're irritating and pointless. It's as if someone said, "How can we make telemarketing even MORE annoying?"

One more thing. Not to be an old fart before my time (when is that time, anyway?) but remember the phrase from the 60's about not trusting anyone over 30? When it comes to government, how about we don't trust anyone UNDER 30? Zane is 27. This is definitely an idea that only a tremendously immature dope could come up with.

Source: Wired

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Dudes for Palin: Vote for the Hot Chick!

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:30:00 GMT

It may not surprise you to learn that, according to the New York Times, “dudes” constitute Sarah Palin’s most vocal supporters. But it may disturb you to learn what these men have to say about her.

Although Palin was ostensibly chosen for her anticipated appeal to women, the former beauty contestant has (gasp!) won over far more men than women, with her initial approval ratings at 44 percent among men and 36 percent among women. (Those numbers have since dropped considerably, down to 31 percent among men.)

Even as many conservatives fault Palin for being, to put it nicely, not “serious” enough, Joe Sixpacks can’t get enough of her. One of Palin's female supporters acknowledged that Palin rallies are about “70-30, maybe 65-35, men to women.” Among the shout-outs that Palin routinely receives at her rallies are cries of, “You tell ‘em babe!” and “You rock me out, Sarah!” Some men sport “Proud to vote for a hot chick” buttons, while others carry “Dudes for Palin” signs.

Palin apparently loves the testosterone-charged rock concert atmosphere of her rallies. After entering a rally to the heading-banging tunes of AC/DC, she told the crowd, “That was kinda cool.” She has also introduced her husband as “Alaska’s First Dude.”

At least one Palin supporter interviewed by the Times admitted that he came to a Palin rally “just to look at her.” He wisely chose to remain anonymous. Let’s hope he realizes that, just as it’s embarrassing to admit to supporting a political candidate simply because of her appearance, actually voting an inexperienced, scandal-plagued woman into the White House simply because she’s “beautiful” at a time in which our country is engaged in two wars, is widely hated throughout the world, and is in the early stages of widespread economic collapse, would be an unforgivably inane decision.

Dudes, if you want to stare at hot chicks, watch Desperate Housewives.

Photo: New York Times

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Now They Say No: Teens Deny 'Pregnancy Pact'

Amy Kuras — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:03:00 GMT

Apparently, you folks are interested in the "pregnancy pact" story based on the amout of discussion it’s generated here. It's based on a report in Time Magazine that 17 girls from a Gloucester, Mass. High school decided to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

My last post on the matter drew huge comments, and I've seen other headlines about the story everywhere (including at the grocery store today, on a supermarket tabloid "We wanted to be like Jamie Lynn"—Pregnancy Pact Girls. Sure.)

And now some of the girls who got pregnant this school year are coming forward and saying there was no pact, that it was just chance.

I think something is rotten here, although I'm not sure what. The school generally sees 3 or 4 pregnancies a year, not 17, so something was up. However, the teacher who spoke to Time about the story has since refused to comment publicly.

And the larger question, of course, is why so many girls got pregnant, pact or no. Lack of access to birth control and information about sex ed and pregnancy prevention is one reason. The town is also dependent on the fishing industry –life there is pretty hardscrabble, it seems, and these girls had little sense of hope for their future. And many of them came from teen parents themselves.

Equally as important as why these girls got pregnant is why they so much as glancing at, much less having sex with, winners like one girl's babydaddy, who was quoted in the Guardian with this trenchant observation as to how the spike in pregnancies happened:

"They were horny, it was a cold winter. It's boring around this town. Nothing to do."

Oy.

Teens Make Pregnancy Pact -- Wha???

Amy Kuras — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 12:33:00 GMT

I know teen girls are not always the most rational of people, but, WTF?

Apparently a group of 17 girls at Gloucester High School in Massachusetts decided they would make a pregnancy pact with each other. A pregnancy pact. Not, you might think, a "let's not get pregnant and graduate and maybe even go to college" pact, no, this pact was to get pregnant and raise their babies together.

None of these girls were older than 16.

According to one of the school officials, they noticed something was amiss when there was a huge spike in girls coming in to the nurses' office for pregnancy tests. Many came in multiple times and several seemed more upset when they weren't pregnant than when they were.

One of the fathers is allegedly a 24-year-old homeless man.

This brain trust was looking for unconditional love, said community members and classmates (none of them would be interviewed for the Time story). Because little babies are such givers, really, always concerned with what their mom needs and wants, happy to sleep a little more or stop crying already because it's all about YOUR needs. Right?

Oh, but there is more than enough stupid to go around here. Community members got up in arms, not over what these girls did, but over the school nurse and principal suggesting that providing birth control without parental consent might help stem this tide. Both ended up quitting in protest.

Better yet? Some blame Juno. Yeaaahhh.

Mommy? Not The Mommy -- If You Adopted, Contest Says

Amy Kuras — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:31:00 GMT

When is a mom not a mom?

When she's an adoptive or foster mom, apparently.

Let me back up a bit here. NBC and Teleflora ran a queasily saccharine "America's Favorite Mom" contest leading up to Mother's Day, which allowed people to vote for their favorite moms in a variety of categories: single mom, working mom, "chairman of everything" mom (gack—this means stay-at-home mom from what I can tell), and oh yes: "Non-Mom Mom." For adoptive, foster, and grandma-acting-as-mom moms.

Uh-huh. For those of you who adopted a kid, all this time you've been changing diapers and handling bedtimes and doctor's appointments and late-night screams for "MOMMY!" turns out according to these folks you are not actually a mom because you didn’t gestate this little person you love and care for. Because it all comes down to the genes and the uterus, apparently.

In Teleflora's defense, once the controversy hit the blogosphere they changed the category title to "adopting moms" and put a very prominent apology on the contest website.

Still. Can we say ignorant? Did no one think, before they insulted and hurt a sizable minority of mothers?

I know this is a TV and internet contest with a level of class and sophistication about what you’d expect from an event hosted by Donny and Marie Osmond, but come on. Often, people make the decision to adopt after years in infertility hell, and even when that's not the case the adoption process is fraught with stress. Adoptive parents have been through enough crap just to build families without being told, in so many words, they don’t really count as mothers.

Marie Osmond, in introducing the category, said this, according to the Wall Street Journal blog The Juggle: “We’ve created a special category for all of those who are not only moms to their own families but they brought their passion and energies to helping kids who otherwise wouldn’t experience how much a mom can mean.”
Horrifyingly? She's an adoptive mom herself.

Texas Sex Ed to Get Even Dumber

Amy Kuras — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:32:00 GMT

Oh sweet fancy Moses, tell it me it has not truly come to this. Texas schoolkids will devote a large portion of their health education classes next year to such topics as proving who their babydaddy is and how to get child support.

The target audience for this "Parenting and Paternity Awareness"" curriculum? 15-year olds.

This is the same Texas, mind you, that teaches abstinence and abstinence only in their sex ed classes. So let's just parse the message here: Don’t have sex. But if you do, and you get knocked up, which you will since we won’t tell you how not to, here's how to deal legally. Since if you're having sex you're too much of a whore to actually have a relationship with the father and will need to drag his ass into court to get what's coming to your kid.

I'll acknowledge this sort of information might be useful in many non-trainwreck type situations. But. Soooo much wrong with this. School authorities are willing on one hand to acknowledge high schoolers are having sex, may find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy, and need to be armed with this information, but on the other refuse to admit that maybe sharing birth control information would keep kids from having to face this kind of situation in the first place.

I mean, I went to a Catholic school and while we were certainly taught abstinence, our sex ed class included information about all the aspects of sex: relationships, decision making, self-esteem, values and oh yes, BIRTH CONTROL. And it was never assumed that we'd find ourselves having to haul a babydaddy into court.

Did the Washington Post Say Our Girls Are Dim Or Not?

Kelly Mills — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:35:00 GMT

The other day I was discussing the women's suffrage movement with my daughter. When she asked why women couldn't vote in the past, I cited a number of reasons, including the fact that many people thought women were too emotional and less intelligent than men, and therefore couldn't be entrusted to make good decisions. She looked dumbfounded, and asked, "Well, since the women knew that wasn't true, why didn't they just take over?" That led to another involved discussion, and it came up that some women also bought the stereotypes about themselves. Hey, and then the next day the Washington Post printed this idiotic thing on how women are dumber than men.

You may have heard that the Outlook editor John Pomfret says the piece ~~of crap~~ was intended to be "tongue-in-cheek." I dunno, I thought a key element of satire was that it was supposed to be funny, but I'm a woman, and therefore maybe a little slower at getting these things. I guess it's not like anyone really behaves like women are less intelligent, or prints stupid studies about sex differences that imply the weaker sex is, well, essentially weaker in certain key areas, right? Or that stereotypes about women are just fine to trot out regularly as other stereotypes become more taboo? Good thing we don't have to hear about how we are too emotional, how we must love "chick flicks' and "chick lit," and how we are all gonna vote for Hilary because she's a woman and she cried and we care most about our shoes and our wrinkles and having babies before we turn 35. We are from Venus, aren't we? See, I guess women aren't just unfunny (and the WaPo article certainly serves as evidence towards that assertion) but we also lack a sense of humor.

Ms. Allen, when it comes to pitching humor, you throw like a girl.