Several years ago, there was a lunar eclipse visible just about quittin’ time at work. A very sweet and, yes, very blonde secretary seriously warned us not to look at it. Why? Well, she had just heard that if you look directly at an eclipse, you will go blind. In full schoolteacher mode, I asked pointed out that you can certainly not look at a solar eclipse, but a lunar was of no such concern. After all, you can look at the full moon, right? Deer in headlights response. What, I asked her, caused a lunar eclipse? Moment of puzzlement, then, “That’s when the sun gets in between the earth and the moon and casts a shadow on it, right?” :smack: I kid you not.
I don’t know what’s stupider, his explanation about the butter, or the idea that you would want to STAY SOBER WHILE DRINKING!!!
You completely stole mine. Seriously, this has got to be one of the most ignorant things evarz. A couple of years ago I was sitting in class behind two other girls, neither of whom are from the classiest side of the fence. We had just received immunization forms and they were both bitching about how they didn’t want to go get shots.
“I always get sicker after I have a flu shot.”
“Yeah, flu shots make you sick. They inject you with flu so you’ll get an immunity to it, that’s how it works.”
I tried to explain vaccination and reactions to vaccine, but she was resolute.
Another gem, this one from me. To my credit, I was a little bit sleep deprived. Yeah, that’s the ticket:
In physics class, we were solving problems like “If a boat can go x km/h and the river is flowing at x km/h, what angle will the boat have to travel to end up directly across from its origin?” There were two questions in a row which appeared to be the same thing except in one the river was flowing south and in the other north. Someone said that the direction was the only thing that would change in the answer, and I said “Nah, nothing’s gonna change because downstream is always south, right?” I guess I was thinking since south is always downwards on a map and rivers flow down, south must be the direction in which all rivers flow. :smack: I endured much ribbing for that one.
You just chose the wrong argument. You should have told him the Well-Known-Fact™ that blindness heightens every other sense and, therefore, they survived because of their heightened sense of tact (or smell or fashion or something)… 
I’ve got a million of these.
A friend of mine in high school was very bright, but known for saying empty headed things. Like:
I mentioned how I didn’t like over-muscled men who couldn’t touch their own elbows–idea being, there’s too much bulk to allow arms to cross in front of them.
She says, “Yeah, really! WAITAMINUTE! [flails trying to touch her right elbow with her RIGHT HAND] I can’t do it either!!”
Someone writes “93 Rules!” in her yearbook (I graduated in 1991).
She says, “What are the 93 rules?”
She wants fish for pets. She likes guppies. I tell her guppies are great, but they reproduce like mad and she’ll have hundreds of them in no time.
She says, “Can’t you just get them fixed?”
Years later, after graduating, we go to a music store together. Excitedly, she says, “Oh! OOOH! Do you think they have that song? …By that guy? …That they play on the radio?”
Then there’s Other People.
A few years ago, DeathLlama dyed his hair blue. At an open mic one night, a woman asked him in dead seriousness, “Wow, what interesting hair! Is it natural?”
Similarly, my miniature horse grows a winter coat like a woolly mammoth. I clip it to keep her from overheating in the mild SoCal winters. I use clippers on her face and then trace her chest and barrel, leaving hair long across her back as a natural blanket. It’s pretty dramatic looking.
A woman asked me, “What an interesting coat! Does her hair grow like that naturally?”
Yeah, shouldnt we speak the native language, Indian, like the people in India do?
I wish I could remember all the crazy statements a certain acquaintance has made. Here’s a couple from yesterday.
Never trust a dog with a black face. They will bite you. There’s no two ways about it. I wish I’d thought to ask her about all those stories about pit bulls. A lot of them don’t have black faces, yet pugs do and you never hear about them biting anyone (though I’m sure it happens from time to time.) Also, I’m an experienced dog groomer. If what she said was true, I wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to become experienced.
She also urged us not to vote for a certain senator because the senator won’t support a bill making English our official languge. If she gets re-elected, everyone will soon be speaking Spanish. This woman said this with all seriousness.
Recently, this same woman bought a nearly new car. This despite the fact that she didn’t even test-drive it first, much less have a mechanic check it out. I questioned the wisdom of this. How did she know that the salesman was giving her a good deal? She replied that God would make sure she got a good deal.
“Still,” I said, “You should take it to a mechanic.” I recommended the one our family goes to. He does great (and quick!) work for a decent price.
She said, vehemently, “I don’t trust mechanics!”
Let me see, God can make sure a used car salesperson won’t swindle you but mechanics must be beyond His control. Ohhh-kay…
:smack:
Candid Camera played on this belief once. They installed a little water sprayer in a telephone that was used by an unwitting temp secretary. Someone would call and while talking to the secretary, they would sneeze. And the sprayer would go off right in the secretary’s face. Almost all of them would automatically think that the sneeze had travelled over the phone lines. One even threw down the phone in disgust, having a major freak out.
You are clearly a kind hearted person, but … no. Midwestern U.S. born and bred.
I thought of an even better one. In college, my roommate and I were watching Thelma and Louise in another girl’s dorm room. At the end, the other girl said, “Well, that’s a terrible movie. They don’t even tell you what happens to them.”
Sadly, this girl went on to be an elementary school teacher. Despite flunking “Math for Elementary Teachers” twice and not being able to remember the difference between parallel and perpendicular. It gives me cold sweats thinking about that.
The alcohol server course taught by the state of New Mexico (required for servers license) does teach that fatty foods interfere with the rate of adsorbtion.
This does NOT appear to be backed up by research.
Food is effective not due to dilution, but because it causes the pyloric valve at the exit of the stomach to close, delaying the passage of anything to the small intestine. Alcohol is metabolized about 25% from the stomach, and 75% from the small intestine.
In high school, me and two friends went to the local Safeway to stock up on chips and soda for a late night. We get to the soda isle:
Chuck: Here it is, a veritable menagerie of soda! (Yes, he really talked like that.)
Dan: Uh, I don’t think that’s what “menagerie” means.
Me: Well, it’s pretty close. I mean, properly, they should be animals, but he’s being, like, figurative.
Dan: Wait, what does “menagerie” mean?
Me: It’s a collection of animals. Like a private zoo.
Dan: Oh.
Chuck: What did you think it meant?
Dan: I thought it was a type of frog.
Another friend, while watching the 20th anniversary theatrical re-release of The Godfather:
Sonny: What the hell is this?
Clemenzo: It’s a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.
Friend: Oh my God, that’s such a cliche!
This one happened a few days ago. I had just parked on the fifth level down in an underground parking garage and was waiting for the elevator when another guy–who had also just parked–walked up and asked me whether he had to go up or down to get to street level.
Preface: I hate the woman at fault in this message. Loathe her, even. And I’ve only ever met her once. I have a very low tolerance for this sort of thing and she treated me like a twelve year old the entire night (I was sixteen at the time and she has two full grown daughters).
A family friend invited my father and godfather out to dinner (we all live together in a dysfunctional family unit) at another friend’s place (we hadn’t actually met them and I wish we never had). The girl (hah!) who owned this place was a widow, with two daughters who lived overseas at the time. The people attending were a bit of a frightful bunch; claiming they were in their thirties but they looked older than my father at 49 (who looks about 35). But this hostess, she really pissed me off, to put it nicely. She was deadset that blood type determines everything about you and it. was. NOT. genetic. Her assertation?
“My first daughter loves red meat and etc etc so she’s type A, according to this book, whereas second daughter prefers salads and is type B. I’m type A like my daughter because etc.” It was mindboggling especially in the face of two scientifically minded people as my dad and godfather.
Dad: “Have you ever actually had your blood tested to see what type you are? Have your daughters?”
Her: “No.”
Dad: “What was their father’s blood type?”
Her: “Why does it matter?”
Dad: “Because there is strong scientific evidence from many researchers which indicate that blood type is influenced only by your genes.”
Her: “Oh what a load of crap.” Er…okay. So apparently the Earth is round too?
At that point, I poured the boys another glass of wine and began meditating. That was called to a quick stop when she turned to me and said sweetly;
“How do you feel about your father dating?”
“I don’t really care. His life.” (This is true.)
Pause. “You can tell us how you really feel.”
(In my head):
“Fuck off.”
I was infuriated from that point on because this woman was really sucking it down and insisting that my dad take out her friend Judy (present at the time) for a good time. Dad took one look at Judy (nice lady, bit old for Dad’s taste and he’s very picky) and shook his head vigorously.
Yeah, I really hate that woman and almost wish Mum hadn’t taught me to hold my tongue so well. I maintain that her husband (died of a heart attack in his sleep, she woke up to him being stone cold) died with relief. I really hate her that much.
Stupid I know…but I’ll be young and impetuous while I’m still young enough to do so.
During the last elections, I was rather annoyed by various random people saying “ANYBODY BUT BUSH IN '04!”, be they in person, on a t-shirt, or online.
My history-geek reply would be to shout “ANYBODY BUT SCHLEIGER IN '33!”
Regardless of what your opinions are of the current leadership, you’ve gotta be a BIT pickier than that when electing your nation’s leader. If you tried, you could find a LOT of people a LOT worse than Dubya to run the country. I should know, I used to live in BFE, Oklahoma.
Oh, speaking of Oklahoma, this girl I used to go to high school with, lovely redhead, very athletic, played Saxaphone in the high school band, and who I know later went on to go to school at a major university. She once informed me that Catholics are Pagans, because we worship the saints. She also claimed that we practiced ritualistic cannibalism what with the body and blood of Christ thing (to be fair, that one is a bit confusing, the way I understand it, it’s not cannibalism since it’s Jesus, God made manifest as Man, etc.)
Actually, being a Catholic in a rural Oklahoma town exposes one to all SORTS of charming lapses of common sense and knowledge. Another girl, who I had the misfortunte of sharing a 45 minute long school bus ride with, believed that Jews and Muslims were Protestants, because they weren’t Catholic. I tried to explain it to her, but eventually gave up. IIRC, this was the girl who said she couldn’t stand Texans because they all dressed like cowboys (this was the girl who wore Strangler blue jeans and a long-sleeved button up shirt, and had a house far enough out of town to necessitate riding on the bus for 45 minutes).
And don’t even get me started on the people in Oklahoma quoting Full Metal Jacket and thinking they’ve just come up with a witty, new joke. (In turn, I’d give a stinging retort informing them that Texas didn’t float into the Gulf of Mexico because Oklahoma sucked so much.)
I’m sure there are many many very intelligent, very reasonable people living in the state of Oklahoma. The vast majority of them did NOT live in the inbred little town of Cache, and there were precious few of them in the city of Lawton either. (I spent several hours this July 4th sitting on my sister’s front porch with a water hose, waiting for the neighbors, setting off fireworks in their lawn, to set their house on fire).
I had gotten a 1988 calendar from ebay, and mentioned that I was glad 1988 was a leap year, because I could use the months from March on for the present year, which had the same weekly setup. Co-worker states “No you can’t.”
Me: What not?
CW: Because the year doesn’t match.
Me: But the months are the same.
CW: Yes, but the year doesn’t match.
Me: What difference does THAT make?
CW: You can’t use it. The year’s wrong.
Me: :rolleyes:
I also heard a guy talking about how his pit bull was attacking a child and someone standing by shot it and blinded the dog in one eye, so he was going to sue the guy that blinded his dog. Yeah, you’ll really get far with that one.
The murder here, for me, is that it involves both co-mothers-in-law.
Back when I was 10 and having a bout of tonsillitis after another, Mom complained to the doctor that “this girl won’t eat me well!” Doc said “well, I sure do hope you’re not expecting her to eat you, although you’d surely be quite nutritious. What is she not eating?”
“She won’t eat her liver! Or her cauliflower! Says they make her sick, but it’s just because she hates them, that she gets sick!”
“Again, I do hope you’re not expecting her to eat HER liver, that would be unhealthy. Come to think of it, both liver and cauliflower are quite indigestible… does she eat lentils or spinach?”
“Oh, yes, I can give her the whole pot!”
“So do, woman!”
“But one must eat a bit of everything!”
“… that doesn’t mean of each individual item that God invented and man found a way to cook. Nobody’s expecting the kid to eat dogs, and there’s countries where they do. Lentils and spinach it is.” And, turning to me: “if anybody insists that you have to eat liver or cauliflower, you send them to me, all right?”
If anybody ever opens his sanctification process, I’m signing up.
The Nephew turned 1yo last Wednesday. A couple weeks back, SiL and her Mom are telling us about his amazing eating habits, which they have figured out must come from my family and want to confirm if this is so. If they give him a ham omelette, he’ll manage to separate the ham from the omelette and spit back the omelette. They’re worried because at his age he should be eating eggs already.
I say “have you tried fried eggs? Both his Pa and me prefer fried eggs to omelettes, so did Daddy.” (Lilbro has always liked omelettes best, he’s our control point)
“Oh yes, he’ll eat those just fine, tries to grab the dish even.”
“OK, so fried it is!”
“But, but… one must eat a bit of everything!”
Mom looked like she’d been wacked across the stomach with a baseball bat. I’ve been dropping “one must eat a bit of everything” into moments of silence and her reactions just kill me every time, hehe.
This one was from me, a few weeks ago.
I was talking on the cell to my sister, half distracted for several minutes while searching around for an item that I thought I’d misplaced.
Me (to my sister): “I know it’s somewhere around here 'cause I just saw it!”
My sister: “What?”
Me: “My cellphone.”
:smack: "
My sister and I were standing in line to buy tickets for Titanic. Having read A Night To Remember when I was in third grade, I was something of an enthusiast on the subject. So my sister and I were talking about the whole story, and I was describing how the hull of the ship had snapped in two as it was sinking.
Two overly-painted, size zero waifs standing in front of us turned and stared at me in shock. Wide-eyed, they said in unison, “It SINKS?”
Hoo boy.
Hehe, reminds me of when Passion of the Christ first came out, and a couple guys in the dorm were running up and down the hallways screaming “HE DIES IN THE END!” :rolleyes:
I just remembered this, not one of my finer moments:
One winter, a couple of decades ago, I spent several months living in West Yellowstone, Mt. I met this couple who were “house sitting” a motel that was closed for the winter. They invited my lady friend and me over for dinner and served us elk steaks. I commented on how good it was and our host said “It always tastes better when it’s poached.”, to which I replied w/ something about thinking it was broiled. :smack: