It’s National Idiot day!

Finally, a holiday I can understand. It has no official designation, any day I choose can suffice and it’s easy enough to find events to tie in. If you wish you can pick an entirely different day, designate it National Idiot Day, and no one will be the wiser. In fact I strongly encourage you to do so. Idiots, like cockroaches, flee the light so we should focus as much attention on them as possible until we can come up with a more effective means of dealing with them. Not all idiots are individuals either. A grandmother in Colorado was cuffed and dragged from her home for impersonating herself. More accurately she was accused of stealing her own identity. How does that work? Not a clue, and I know smart people. It wasn’t until she went on the Today Show and they showed video tape of the alleged granny ripping off a bank. As it turned out it wasn’t the granny they’d arrested at all but a wanted felon who was known to the Chicago police who passed along that bit of useful information so the right person could be arrested. In the meantime, the honest granny’s still out $60K in legal bills from defending her name.

A Florida man discovered the joys of idiots when he typed the wrong number on a check.

A Florida man who accidentally put a “0” near the end of his mortgage check instead of an “8,” nearly lost his home.

The Tampa Tribune reports that Tom Mudie had recently been approved for a mortgage modification program that lowered his monthly payment by $200. But when Mudie’s monthly check was off by 80 cents, authorities threatened to take away both his reduced payment rate and the home itself.

“I want to keep my home,” Mudie said. “And to lose it over 80 cents is crazy.”

Mudie said he’d committed the typo while paying his monthly mortgage bill over the phone, mistakenly entering $615.02 instead of the required $615.82 payment. A customer service representative at Bank of America told Mudie to just send in a second check for 80 cents, which he did.

“I did everything they told me to,” Mudie said. “I wrote the check for 80 cents, as crazy as that sounds. I included it with my next payment. They cashed it.”

But the next month, Bank of America returned the check with a letter declaring,

“Your loan is not eligible for the Fannie Mae modification program because you did not make all the required trial period plan payments by the end of the trial period.”

He also received a “hone transition guide” from United Way designed to help him prepare for his foreclosure. “When you start seeing that,” Mudie said, “you start thinking charities and stuff. So I knew that I am in trouble.”

Thankfully, Bank of America has responded to Mudie’s complaint and is addressing the issue. Bank of America spokeswoman Jumana Bauwens said the bank is in the process of correcting the error and will restore Mudie’s lower mortgage payment plan.

“He’s in the process of getting a permanent modification,” Bauwens said. “The paperwork is not finalized, but that 80 cent error is not going to create any additional issues for him.”

Really? They were going to toss the guy on the street for the cost of a can of pop? Memo to self, avoid Bank of America at all costs.

Keeping with our theme of corporate idiots, the French children’s clothing line La Redoute released a wonderful new ad showing kids frolicking at the beach and a guy’s swinging penis clearly in the background. Why they were photographing children in front of a naked man is, believe it or not, not the first question French people are asking. It’s on the list but it’s not #1. Yet another reason to avoid the French.

Okay, let’s wander down the dark alley of humanity and discuss some individual idiots.

Police in Jacksonville, North Carolina arrested 32 year old Bridgitte Westbrook, a Navy Corpsman, for biting a child’s naked butt. She bit it hard enough to leave bruises. What’s stunning about this story is that this is her second arrest for this offense. With a different child each time. And the Navy allows her to have a weapon and access to missiles and stuff? It could just be me but I’m thinking they need slightly higher standards for people who want to join the armed forces.

Just a little, any way.

Cops in St. Petersburg, Florida came up with a novel way to catch a crook. They asked his two year old son where daddy was hiding and the nice child, because he knows to be honest, said “in the attic.” Which is exactly where he was when the police arrested him.

Cops in Oregon are laughing their patooties off over a crime that went from very serious to very funny very quickly. Thieves stole hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of rare coins. Then they went down to the local 7-11 and dumped them in the Coinstar machine. Coinstar machines, like ATMs, are monitored by video, so that helped the cops catch the crooks. They got about $10 for their efforts and Coinstar is returning the coins to the owner.

But, you have to love the deep insight provided by father of one of the crooks when he was questioned by a local TV station. “The obvious answer is that the crooks were idiots. To not know the value of what they had taken, just to get pocket change for it. Just really a stupid person. Makes me feel good he was a stupid person and didn’t realize what he had.”

Note that the father does not bemoan the fact that his child is a thief, just that he’s too stupid to be a good one.

That’s the shallow end of the gene pool right there.

Memo to thieves, if you are trying to maintain a low profile you might wish to avoid changing your name to Beezow Doo Doo Zopittybop Bop Bop and then getting really drunk and doing drugs in a public park. Ten wizard points to the cop who managed to say “Mr. Zopittybop Bop Bop was taken into custody on numerous charges” without laughing. That has to be hard to do. I know I can’t.

Okay, but not all idiots are funny. Kids in Norcross, Georgia got their new math problems and were less than thrilled they were predicated on slavery.

No, I only wish I was kidding.

Parents of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., are outraged at the school district’s response to the reports of using examples of slavery in math word problems, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

The word problems in questions include references to slavery and “beatings,” according to the paper.

“Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?” and
“If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?”

It’s not just the word problems that are sparking criticism, but the way it’s being handled. According to the AJC, district officials said the elementary school’s principal will “work with teachers to come up with more appropriate lessons.”

District spokesperson Sloan Roach told the station the teachers were trying to incorporate social studies lessons in math problems for a “cross-curricular activity.”

Roach went on to tell My Fox Atlanta that, while the the questions were inappropriate, she doesn’t believe the teachers meant any harm.

“This is simply a case of creating a bad question,” Roach told the station.

Parent Terrance Barnett told WSB TV that having to explain the questions to his child was painful.

“Something like shouldn’t be embedded into a kid of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, any grade,” Barnett told WSB TV. “I’m having to explain to my 8-year-old why slavery or slaves or beatings are in a math problem. That hurts.”

Other questions include “Frederick had 5 baskets filled with cotton. If each basket held 5 pounds how many pounds did he have all together.” Those are being cited by the school as not “slave specific.’

Ladies and gentlemen, Sloan Roach (appropriately named if you ask me) is our prize idiot of the day!

Unfortunately, I’m sure we’ll have more contestants real soon.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaec-GVfa3Y&w=420&h=315]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!