Tag Archives: stupid

Doug – a stupid short story

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Holey hat

Doug had never been aware of his third ear, but it did help him understand why his hats didn’t fit very well. That he had a third ear wasn’t really the problem, though. Rather it was the shape of the ear. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.

Where it attached to his head, it was cylindrical, but not smooth. A series of concentric rings ran perpendicular to the cylinder and whenever he would touch one, he would hear a mild, not unpleasant tone.

As the rings disappeared, however, the cylinder branched into a series of flower-like appendages. Tulips, if Doug was pressed, but gardening wasn’t really his thing.

Doug stood in front of the mirror, watching his reflection in the mirror mounted on the opposite wall. He had installed that one specifically for this purpose.

Over the course of the past hour, Doug had discovered that he could control the opening and closing of the ear petals with his cheek muscles. A strong squint and they all closed. More modest inflations and they would open and close in groups.

What use this new skill provided, he couldn’t tell. At the moment, it was just helping him occupy a Thursday afternoon for which he had no other plans.

“Gotta pee.”

The sound came out of nowhere. Doug just heard it, or at least thought he did.

“Gotta pee.”

Whatever the source, it was insistent, particularly as Doug had no real urge to pee.

Claws scraped against a metal sheet, snapping Doug from his thoughts.

“Gotta pee!”

Doug left the bathroom, following the scraping noise, and eventually ended up in the kitchen.

Beulah, his basset hound, turned slowly toward Doug as he entered the room, her tail wagging gingerly.

“Gotta pee!”

“Beulah?” Doug barely whispered.

“Peeing.”

Beulah looked sheepish but relieved as the amber puddle spread across the floor.

Doug raced to the door, stepping carefully over the dog, and threw the door open to the backyard. Beulah just looked up at him.

“I’m good.”

She waddled back to the den and her bed, trailing a pattern of damp footprints behind her.

Doug felt the breeze come through the open door.

“Licking myself clean.”

That’s it, Doug thought, that third ear had to go.

(Images are property of owners and are used here without permission because I heard nothing from them)

Adages and Subtractages

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plus-and-minus

Live your life like there’s no tomorrow…because one day, you’ll be right! (not mine)

Never put off until…

The meaning of Life is only unfathomable to those without a dictionary.

Philosophy is the art of sounding profound while saying things of no practical significance…much like Consulting.

If genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration, have antiperspirants made us idiots?

The quality of mercy is not strained, because it knows to bend at the knees.

Love is like a red, red rose… to get to the good stuff, you have to go through a lot of pricks.

The majority of people outnumber everyone else.

Dentists live hand-to-mouth.

Asking a mute for sound reasoning is like asking the blind to see your point.

Concerns about political correctness never seem to focus on the “correctness” part.

When I want an objective opinion, I’ll talk to my microscope.

How to know if you live in a basement…

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While taking off your t-shirt, you have punched the ceiling.

You open the refrigerator door in the middle of August not to feel cooler but to find your shoes.

You instinctively flinch while passing under bridges on the highway.

Your ears pop whenever you ride a double-decker bus.

You get vertigo while climbing a step ladder.

You can tell the make, model and year of a car by its hub caps.

You just found out those sit ups are actually called crunches.

Your refrigerator is nothing but crisper.

Your neighbour’s schnauzer knows its raining before you do.

(Image is property of owner and is used here without permission because I couldn’t crawl out to ask.)

It’s a meme!

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You never know what will take the internet by storm, only that every intellectual eddy has the chance of becoming a hurricane of the ludicrous. Case in point, the myriad variations on Star Wars’ General Ackbar and his sudden realization that “It’s a trap!”

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In the interests of short-cutting this process, I have tried to come up with a definitive list of variations of this meme for future use by one and all.

PS By the very nature of stating “definitive list”, you will immediately come up with others, so please feel free to add.

(I suck at graphic design, so I have not attempted to mock up any of the General Akbar memes I list below.)

It’s the clap! – Dr. F. Ackbar, family doctor

Use the flap! – Henry Ackbar, frustrated dog owner

There’s an app! – Simon Ackbar, computer nerd

Here’s your Pap! – Dr. G. Ackbar, gynecologist

Cut the crap! – Jodie Ackbar, frustrated wife

Mind the gap! – Eddie Ackbar, metro/subway driver

I played Hap! – Willie Ackbar, unemployed actor

Touch your lap?! – Candy Ackbar, stripper

Read the map! – Sir Edmund Ackbar, adventurer

Need a nap! – Old man Ackbar, old man

Want the wrap?! – Tootie Ackbar, waitress

Suck the sap! – Angus McAckbar, maple sugerer

Lick the strap! – Mistress Ackbar, dominatrix

Dis ma rap! – Big Daddy Ackbar, home boy

What’s on tap?! – Jessie Ackbar, Ackbarfly

Shut yer yap! – James Cagney Ackbar, mobster

It’s a snap! – Fast Eddie Ackbar, informercial host

Take a slap! – Jacques Acqbar, hockey coach

Please don’t….ZAP – the late Ensign Freddie Ackbar, red-shirted Starfleet cadet

Stupid is pretty smart

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I find it interesting that most people seem to be less afraid of being stupid than they are of looking stupid.

I say this because of the inordinate amount of stupid material I find every day—the people posting this stuff obviously don’t think it’s stupid—and yet many of the brightest people I know (and not just those with whom I agree) are paralytically afraid of saying anything lest people think they’re stupid.

Now, I appreciate that stupid is subjective, but this is not a condemnation of stupid, it is a call to embrace our personal stupid and use it to move forward to brilliance.

If you watch a group of children as they age—not literally moment-by-moment; that would be stupid—you will see that they start out unfiltered and unhindered by subconscious voices that make them edit themselves. They are free to create amazing things and proudly display those things on refrigerators around the world.

As they get older, though, those subconscious voices creep in and you find the children become less enthusiastic about their art. They become more self-conscious about being seen as stupid, and so the refrigerators of the world become increasingly barren.

That is incredibly sad, and not just because the typical refrigerator is a featureless, oddly coloured box with little inherent fashion sense. It is sad because it creates a population of adults who are incredibly repressed and overwhelmingly self-conscious.

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As I have mentioned before, I have numerable friends who want to write, but they are routinely stopped from taking any action by an infernal firewall of what to write. They can’t just write anything. Writing just anything would be stupid.

No! No! No! Writing just anything would be freaking brilliant!

Writing just anything would make you a writer, rather than the non-writer you are now.

Write the word “stupid”. Write “stoopid”. Write “styupid”. Write “stewed pet”. And bloody screw AutoCorrect.

Let stupid be your creative scissors and run around the room not caring into whom you run or stab. Stupid begets intelligent, no matter how stupid that sounds.

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Besides, no matter how clever, intelligent or prosaic you are, someone is going to find your writing stupid. Stab them with your stupid scissors and move on.

I absolutely abhor the novel Crime and Punishment, routinely espousing that the crime was the writing of the book and the punishment is the reading, and yet many people find it a marvelous work of art. How stupid is that? (You can read that as I’m stupid or they’re stupid…I don’t really care.)

In King Lear (III, ii), Shakespeare wrote: “The art of our necessities is strange that can make vile things precious.”

As used in the play, this line has absolutely nothing to do with the point I’m making, and depending on how you read it, the line actually blows my thesis apart or completely justifies it. Now that is freaking stupid.

As Liam Neeson should have said in the movie: Release the Stupid!

You may just find that your stupid is pretty amazing…and even if it’s not, you’re one step closer to your brilliant.

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(Images used without permission. Pretty stupid, eh?)

On Word, Ho!

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The things one thinks of:

What’s another word for “thesaurus”?

I need another thesaurus like I need/want/desire/have use for another/an extraneous/an alternative/a supplementary hole/gap/abyss/chasm in my head/cranium/brain carrier/noggin.

Is Roget merely the thesaurus author’s pseudonym?

Who first put the alphabet in alphabetical order?

Is it true that the letters of the alphabet, in order, spell out the name of a town southeast of Cardiff, Wales that even the locals can’t pronounce?

The word “onomatopoeia” was really an etymologist drunk-dial, right?

Why use a short word when you can use a perfectly viable polysyllabic etymological variant?