THE IDIOT BRIGADE PART I – A bunch of people who drive me nuts.
MIKE TYSON – Mike Tyson is the clearest evidence yet discovered that the Neanderthals did not go extinct, they just jumped continents. The man needs a prison all his own, because the inmates at the last one he spent time in begged the parole board to let him out before he fucked or ate everyone, including the guards. His first day in the joint he walked up to the biggest guy he could find, stuck a butter knife in his forehead and said, in his little Michael Jackson voice, “All you puppies is livin’ in my dawghouse now!” You’d think it would be easier to get rid of a guy who has the IQ of a banana slug, but he’s like a force of nature: barely sentient, but impossible to stop. How many times have the Japanese thought they’d finally killed Godzilla only to have him come back to flatten Tokyo one more time? I think the only thing we can do is to send him up with the next Mars mission and hope he won’t be able to find his way home. If we turn off all the lights, maybe he won’t see us.
ALCOHOLIC PUSHERS – I’m sure you’ve seen and/or smelled these guys in the town or city where you live. They generally set themselves up in an area of heavy pedestrian traffic, near a university or park or concert arena, with their huge backpacks apparently full of cooking utensils, several pairs of green socks and 385 pounds of pot. They try to look innocuous by playing one chord on an acoustic guitar (also filled with pot) for passersby, but don’t realize that people are naturally wary of men covered in dirt with half-eaten corn dogs stuck in their ZZ Top-style beards, especially when the smell wafting from said minstrels is actually visible to the naked eye. Nobody wants to be rude, so you try to walk by without attracting their attention, because you know they’re going to try to sell you weed or get you to help pay for their next round of animal beer. No good. The dreaded words still issue forth. “Hey, brother, c’mere a minute. C’mon over bro’.”
Aw, Christ. Why can’t I be rude to these guys? I don’t want their goddamn drugs and I’m not going to help them drink themselves to death. Shit.
“You smoke, you smoke? I got it, bro’.”
“Uh . . . no thanks.”
“Okay, ‘s cool, man. Think you could help me out, trying to get me a bus ticket, bro’.”
“Well, sure, here’s some change.” Shit!
“God bless you, brother.”
God had nothing to do with it, smell-boy.
We give them money even though we don’t want to. He won’t buy a bus ticket. We know that. Somehow, we feel guilty because these people fucked up their lives with drugs and alcohol, so we contribute to their inevitably early deaths. Are we being compassionate or just stupid? I don’t know, and that’s why these guys suck.
INTELLIGENT DESIGNERS – When are these people going to realize that changing the name of something does not change the nature of the thing? Whether they call it Creationism, Creation Science or Intelligent Design, it all amounts to the same thing: another attempt by the Christian Right to force religion into our public schools. Their main argument is that evolution is only a theory with no supporting evidence whatsoever, while they have the Bible as their proof. It’s incredible to me that a large group of supposedly rational people simply chooses to ignore a veritable mountain of solid, physical objects they can actually hold in their own hands. The fossil record is not a hoax created by the enemies of Christianity. It is painfully clear that species’ physical bodies change over time, eventually resulting in new creatures. The most striking examples of this are the fossils of Archaeopteryx, a small, winged animal with the teeth of a reptile and feathers (the imprints of which are actually preserved in the rock.)
How about those experiments with fruit flies we all did in high school biology, where inheritable traits are passed on from generation to generation? (Remember the smell of the Fly Nap, that stuff we used to put the flies to sleep before counting them? Ah, nostalgia.) But no, I suppose that’s too obvious to be trusted, as opposed to relying on a book that has been edited, excised, rewritten and manipulated by human beings repeatedly for two thousand years. The words “blissfully ignorant” come to mind here.
HOLOCAUST REVISIONISTS – Speaking of ignoring the obvious, these guys take the Grand Prize for Historical Idiocy. To blatantly deny the reality of the most thoroughly documented and witnessed and researched genocide in the history of the human species is, in my opinion, nearly criminal. I can understand a modern high school student being skeptical when presented with facts so horrendous they border on the unbelievable, but for anyone to actually dig into the available photos, films, eyewitness accounts and scholarly works and still deny it happened is absolutely shameful. Many victims of the Holocaust are still alive, for Christ’s sake, and have the blue ID number tattoos on their arms to prove the reality of Auschwitz and Dachau and the other death camps. To claim these places did not exist is a direct slap in the faces of these survivors. Perhaps it’s guilt or shame that leads some to try to erase history. I don’t know, but as far as I’m concerned, forgetting these kinds of events is bad enough. To deliberately deny their reality is embarrassingly malicious.
LUNATIC SPORTSMAN – I know there are plenty of responsible hunters out there. The problem is, there are many brain dead idiots that are allowed to purchase hunting licenses. Shouldn’t you have to pass an IQ test to carry a firearm in any sporting activity? I know a man who was hunting from a tree stand one fall when two other hunters came by and blasted him out of the tree with shotguns. They later claimed they thought he was a squirrel.
I once worked at a game check station with a game warden who related a story to me about a guy who pulled up to the station grinning from ear to ear because he had just shot his first elk. Game check stations are set up to count the annual harvest and to check ages on big-game animals, etc. The warden moved to the back of the truck to examine the elk’s teeth for age and stopped cold. Lying in the back of the truck was a mule. “Ain’t she a beaut?” gushed the happy hunter.
Why can’t we publicly beat people like this? There are farmers and ranchers that actually have to paint the word “cow” on their livestock to keep city-dwelling, vacationing hunters from shooting them. Ain’t this country grand?
MISSIONARIES – “Hi, we’re from America! We’re here to tell you that everything you believe is wrong. You must convert to what we believe because we know the one, true way. We want to help you. Recant your heathen ways and your pagan gods, and our God will let you into our Heaven. Can’t you see that we’re right? Here, read this book, it will answer all your silly questions. You can read, can’t you? Don’t you want to be just like us? Say, why are you picking up that club? Agh! Why would you attack us? We just want to save you from yourselves!”