World Champions of Stupid

[lightcrystal]

There are too many sensible World Champions. Pub darts. Cheese rolling. Morris dancing.

No. We need something better: the World Champions of Stupid. YOU can excel at one totally pointless activity. YOU can be the best pointless individual that planet Earth has to offer. Let's start with my own claim to fame, glory and meaningless achievement.

My World Champion title: Homonym Travel Champion. Namely the furthest distance from two places with the same name. My claim: I've been to Liverpool [UK] and Liverpool [NSW, Australia]. Distance as the crow flies: 17030.187 Km or 10582.068 miles. I even saw the Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, known as Paddy's Wigwam, when I was in Liverpool, UK. Surely that adds cultural acumen to my World Champion claim. I am aware that I have to remain competitive; there are other Homonym Travel contenders out there.

I know deep in myself that LibriVox is bursting with many World Champions of Stupid. I can feel the pointlessness like a tidal wave in my veins. The talent is here. It just needs to be given support and recognition.

[Dulcamara]

[GettingTooOld]

YOU can be the best pointless individual that planet Earth has to offer. (.......)

I read a great book on that subject, it presented examples of the 'ruling class' as quite convincing evidence of the thesis that the more stupid you are, the higher you rise. Hilarious book, you can't get it now, and you may be familiar with the author, he is a fellow melbournian. You may remember him as the character Flacco.

Releasing the Imbecile within: An Incomplete Idiot's Guide - Softcover Paul Livingston
https://www.abebooks.com/9781741140699/Releasing-Imbecile-Incomplete-Idiots-Guide-1741140692/plp

I know deep in myself that LibriVox is bursting with many World Champions of Stupid. I can feel the pointlessness like a tidal wave in my veins. The talent is here. It just needs to be given support and recognition.

When I read that, I thought "this thread is not going to last long" and I couldn't help picture in my head the last 100 movies where I've seen someone chasing someone else with a long-barreled gun, and they have just reached the point where they temporarily lose their target in a crowd, who, upon seeing the gunman, all freeze. Then as they look this way and turn and look that way, scanning the crowd, they're completely unaware of the gun that they are holding which is also swinging back and forth, following their gaze, and the obvious effect it is having upon the entire crowd of people, so caught up are they in their passion.

Yeah, I shouldn't make fun of such an embarassing blunder you've made right there and you'll kick yourself silly when you re-read what you wrote, but I'm sure you won't mind after all, it's all in humor, as is the entire topic.

Meanwhile there is the question to be posed, what is stupid ? It's popular for the middle class to think of themselves firstly as upperclass and then to think of themselves as having risen to biblical heights of splendor. What I love is strikes. Strikes are what illustrate the volunteerism of the world we live in. The way some cultures believe that dreams are reality and reality is a dream. It's the people who are OK with so called "living small lives" that are the real true volunteers who create and enable the world to exist. There cannot be nice cafes and lovely gardens without low wage volunteers who think and dream that the world would be better if it had the cafe and quaint bookshop they picture in their dreams and work to create. The fake commercial equivalents are always completely shithouse by comparison to the real thing, the real dream, the opposite of the franchise. People who choose small improvements and work at small jobs are the foundation of the world.

Strikes prove this. How long it takes your strike to bring the world to an end points at just how valuable you are. Cafe worker strikes are a small worry, they do not bring a city to it's knees exactly, it takes time to get attention but after a few months perhaps comprimise is reached. Transport workers go on strike and people start paying attention. Sure, it can hinder for a while, but it does not take as long as cafe strikes to get the respect deserved. Now the real workers who make the world a better place, it doesn't matter what resolve the so called ruling class have come up with, when sanitation workers (garbage men) go on strike, anything and everything is brought to its knees with no diplomacy whatsoever. The city is dead and unliveable within no time at all, the effects are within hours, the uproar within days, the destruction within weeks. capitulation is inevitable. Garbagemen are the rulers of the modern world.

But you know who else has gone on strike before ? dabbled in the boycott actions to further their ideas ? Bankers. Yep, bankers and their first world problems getting too overwhelming got too much for them once, perhaps more than once, I don't know or care, it was hard to pay attention and harder still to recall where it took place, but it happened I recall someone recalling. The effect ? well obvious, nobody noticed and nobody cared. Politicians and bankers, when they go on strike it simply makes the world a more blissful place. Life goes on. Life is good. Luckily they go on strike so seldom people don't really remember that lesson. The bankers and politicians can hide their embarassing secrets as they are skilled at doing.

Now what is often on peoples minds of late is nuclear war, that thing where all life on earth will be brought to an end. Where losing a war against goat-herders with guns is one thing, but war with nuclear superpowers is viewed by the same people as being somehow the same good idea. Everyone is scared to speak out and call the pro-kill-every-living-thing-on-the-planet people 'stupid' or anything else negative, for fear of reprisal. I wonder what we should think of ourselves when we protect the very people who will kill us all, protect them or their ideas, by any means not limited to quashing dissent on their behalf. What is more stupid ? to silence those who speak out, or to not speak out ourselves, and just help it all to happen either way.

[GettingTooOld]

[.....] Cheese rolling. Morris dancing.

I'm thinking that this is in danger of being in response by innuendo to the brilliant performance on the field by Delaney Irving just a few days ago. It's not alluding to the controversy surrounding her brilliant heroic performance I hope ? No, I think we can agree it's all co-incidental. As for other things, yes, there are some activities which should be capital offenses, and I'm sure if there is not some african country that lists Morris dancing as a capital offense, then I want to off to Africa and find a place and change the world right now.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Cheese+prices+in+britain+graph&t=Solgaleo&iax=images&ia=images

P.S. on second thoughts, looking at the mention of an activity where, well, wait a minute, I'm looking for some phrase here which approximates the cliche 'normal rational people' without actually referring to either normal or rational, but you know, still being polite ? I'll try and think of a phrase later, for now I'll just say 'british' OMG look at the mention of an activity where british people throw themselves into a violent barbaric senseless blood sport of cheese rolling and tell me, tell me you're not making fun of them the way people make fun of starving people sometimes. I can't be party to that, LOOK at cheese prices, a wheel of cheese would have any rational brit risking their life and limbs, teeth and toes to gain such a treasure. Are we making jest of this appauling spectacle and the poverty that drives people to it, are we making fun of poverty ? I hope not. While I'm often an outspoken critic of self sensorship, looking at this, I think we should look the other way. My rallies against censorship are ancient history anyhow, if I look at the timestamps, they must be at least 10 minutes ago.