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Contest: They Shoot Idiots, Don’t They?
by Mary - September 25, 2006 - 4:51 PM

DanceMarathon04.jpgLast week, we announced our new campaign to reduce idiocy across America — and to kick it off, we asked for examples of stupidity in everyday life. We’ll be featuring them all this week and next on the blog, with the best two winning copies of Condensed Knowledge. We’re still looking for ‘em, so send us yours! The first week’s winner is Katie Britt, who submitted this great (and tragically common) example:

Our school’s visual ensemble made many posters for our homecoming dance, which will last from 8 P.M. to midnight. Most girls wrote 8 p.m.-12 p.m. That’s a rockin’ 16-hour dance.

Happy homecoming, Katie! Send us your address at tips-at-mentalfloss.com and we’ll get your book on its way. For the rest of you, we’d like to invite you all to a very special mental_floss dance marathon to benefit our cause, taking place from 8 p.m. to 12 p.m. tonight (and tomorrow).

Oh, and if you’re wondering what that headline is all about, click here. The pic is from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 1928.

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Comments (4)

  1. You failed to mention where the mentalfloss dance marathon will be held. I would like to attend. I’ve got some moves.

    posted by Alex on 9-25-2006 at 6:28 pm

  2. I was working, ever so briefly, at the Virginia Department of Health in the Vital Records office before getting a real job after college. I answered calls from those in search of birth, death and marriage certificates. One woman wanted her son Mark’s birth certificate. To facilitate my search, I asked if Mark was with a “k” or with a “c,” to which she replied with great exasperation, “It’s with an M!”

    Also courtesy of the VDH: One of the employees in my office had a teenage son who was applying to colleges. She and her son had just returned from a weekend visit to one school, and she was describing the campus to her coworkers. To help them visualize the admissions building, she invoked the image of a familiar landmark, explaining, “It had the octagonal shape of the Pentagon.” I hadn’t been to D.C. in a while, but the last time I checked, the Pentagon was shaped like a freakin’ pentagon.

    posted by Becky on 9-26-2006 at 3:07 pm

  3. Your banned book week post made me think of one. Earlier this month, a concerned parent in Davis County, Utah, wanted to remove the book Voyage of the Basset from the public library because one of the illustrations has topless mermaids in it, which she thought could be suggestive. My local newspaper ran an editorial and printed a copy of the illustration along with it. The mermaids’ tops were covered with hair. You couldn’t see a thing. Sheesh. Luckily the library board decided to keep it.

    Here’s the story:
    http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,645195626,00.html

    posted by Janel on 9-29-2006 at 2:07 am

  4. Katie Britt, are you from IL and have a brother Bill? If so, I think I know you.

    If not, congrats on the contest anyhow!

    posted by Joe on 10-3-2006 at 11:36 pm

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