Thursday, April 08, 2010


The Darwin Awards are a designation given to someone who has eliminated him/herself from the gene pool doing some stupid act. Muffling the explosion of a stick of dynamite by holding it between your legs is an example. Those tuning a radio or using a hair dryer while standing in a tub of water are other candidates for the award, which is usually given posthumously. I want to have another category for the award for those who do acts or say stupid things but are not eliminated from the genetic pool. This latter group remains on the planet to further dilute the pool with stupid people.

Yesterday there was a good candidate for this new category. A so-called diplomat from the tiny oil-rich country of Qatar sneaked a smoke in the lavatory of a United Airlines flight from Washington DC to Denver. When confronted about the smell he remarked that he was trying to light his shoe, in reference to the shoe bomber. This set off an immediate alert. Jets were deployed as escort and the airliner reduced it’s altitude and hastened to land. After landing the other passengers were detained for questioning. This idiot smoker should have been shot on the spot and sent to Allah to be with his virgins. He was just joking.

I also experienced another candidate yesterday. This was a doctor who had to be in his early 50s. We were sitting at the same table, having lunch, prior to my lecture on the “Deaths of American Presidents.” The projector was on as we were eating and a picture of Dwight Eisenhower was displayed on the screen. The picture is an introduction to my lecture. The intellectual giant of a doctor ask me if this guy had been a General as well as President. I started to just cancel my lecture because I knew that he and the 150 other people in the audience would, likewise, have no appreciation for history and the US Presidents. I just wanted to say, “beam me up Scottie there is no intelligent life down here.” In the case of the audience, I was wrong. The lecture was well received. This brilliant lunch partner was a college graduate, but where he has been is a mystery. He was like an alien from another planet. It’s hard to believe that anyone his age would have no knowledge of World War II. During the course of my lecture I talked about the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy and I’m sure these were breaking news items to him.

My spouse and I are thinking about getting a dog to have as an intellectual companion on the porch. It would be rare to have a dog to ever qualify for a Darwin Award. Humans are standing in line to receive the award. Some will be eliminated from the gene pool but, unfortunately, more will remain to continue to dilute the pool with idiocy.

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