Idiocy for Dummies - Volume 1

I hope the Dummies people don't mind my having doctored their artwork as a vehicle for displaying a few daft notions of mine on the subject of idiocy! Being an idiot is easy enough but, by definition, an idiot might not always realise or remember how to do it so I thought I'd cook up a few reminders ;o)

Staircases & Escalators

• Always walk at least two abreast with your friends or family on staircases and look surprised when someone coming in the other direction expects you to allow them to pass.
• Always stop and have lengthy conversations on staircases and half-landings and always look surprised when people look at you in an irritated manner.
• On reaching the top or bottom of an escalator, always step off and stand still for several seconds as the people behind you can easily walk backwards on the escalator for a while to hold their position whilst you remember who you are and where you want to go.
• Always take the lift to descend by one storey, even if you need to wait for 10 minutes for the lift to arrive and always look surprised when you can no longer get your arse into the jeans you bought six weeks ago.

Queues

• Never face in the direction the queue is headed towards.
• Never keep up with the movement of the queue.
• Always assume that everyone behind you is in agreement with your permitting your friends to join you at the front of the queue.
• Always give the impression that waiting in the queue is more of a hardship for you than it is for everyone else.

Pavements

• When walking hand in hand with your partner, always look surprised if you are required to separate momentarily to allow someone to pass in the opposite direction without their having to step onto the road and get mown down by an onion seller on a bike.
• Never walk in a straight line.
• Always stop unexpectedly and never give the impression of knowing where you’re going.
• When exiting a shop, never check to see if someone is coming along the pavement and always stand still, central to the pavement, looking back into the shop to see where your grandmother is.
• Pause frequently to look at rooftops.
• If you meet someone you know, always ensure that the whole group of you occupy the entire width of the pavement during the following 20 minutes’ hilarious conversation.

Shopping

• Always spend 20 minutes driving around near the shop entrance so that you can save 25 seconds’ walking time by parking close to the shop.
• Always take 4 generations of your family with you into the supermarket.
• Never prevent your children from annoying or getting in the way of other shoppers.
• Never prevent your children from tampering with products.
• Always leave your trolley and prams central to the aisle, ensuring that the gap at either side is less than the width of a person.
• Always eat things in the supermarket which don’t yet belong to you and hand the half-eaten product in its wrapper to the cashier.
• Always wheel your trolley to a “baskets only” check-out.
• Always ensure that every member of your family stands in the queue and passes through the check-out, even though only one of you needs to.
• Never expect to be asked for money at the check-out – always wait until the cashier has stated the amount payable before attempting to find your purse or wallet.
• Never check in advance to see how much cash you have with you. This way, you can muse over whether or not to pay by cash or card whilst the cashier watches you.
• Always bring with you as many “10 cents off” coupons as you can cut out from your magazines but never have them ready to present to the cashier and never check that they’re actually valid against what you’ve put in your trolley or are not date-expired.
• Always make a fuss over the slightest discrepancy in pricing, even if it represents less than one tenth of one percent of the overall bill.
• If, during the check-out process, you realise that you’ve forgotten the spaghetti sauce, never decide to get it later or eat something else – always push your way backwards through the queue, go back into the store and spend 10 minutes deciding which brand and flavour to choose, leaving the check-out paralysed. Never apologise on your return to the check-out.
• Never allow the rest of your family to pack the shopping into bags with or for you. Always do this on your own before considering the payment issues.
• Always stop in the exit foyer or, preferably, within the large rotating door for a family meeting and to re-pack all of your shopping.
• Always take your children with you into DIY shops.

Banks & Post Offices

• If you are retired or otherwise not working, always visit the bank or post office between noon and 2pm when many working people will need to visit them during their lunch breaks.
• During this two-hour period, always ensure that you have at least ten different transactions to make and never ensure that you know in advance what you want to achieve in any respect.
• After receiving money from a cash dispenser, always remain in front of the cash dispenser whilst you check the statement, count your money, put it into your wallet and decide what to spend it on – if the statement or cash is incorrect, the fact that you found out whilst still standing in front of the screen will make all the difference and nobody behind you needs to use the machine.

Bars

• Always ensure that your whole group waits at the bar so that the bar staff can’t tell who needs to be served and who is already catered for.
• Always wave bank notes at the bar staff to attract their attention. They love that.
• If you smoke, always smoke in non-smoking areas.
• Always light a cigarette when someone at your table is still eating.
• If you don’t smoke, always sit in smoking areas and make exaggerated coughing noises.

Public Transport

• Always make other passengers’ journeys as uncomfortable as possible.
• Always block the aisles with bags or children.
• When booking a ticket for a journey you wish to make in a couple of weeks’ time, always do this during the morning rush hour and never research your options in advance.
• When alighting, always stand still as soon as you step off the train or bus as nobody behind you needs to get off.
• When entering a plane, always fart about with coats and overhead lockers for five minutes before sitting down as opposed to sitting down immediately, letting everyone else get past you to their seats and then getting up and farting about with coats and overhead lockers for as long as you like.
• Never assume that rules like not using your mobile phone and not standing up during take-off apply to you as well as the other passengers.
• Always treat the cabin crew (or anyone else who ever serves you anything throughout your life) like dirt.
• Always flop into your seat as heavily as possible so as to avoid any chance that my beer won’t be knocked off the little table on the back of your seat and into my fucking lap.
• When your plane lands and taxis to a halt, always stand up immediately, put your coat on, pick up your hand luggage and wonder why the stairs outside weren’t just left attached to the plane door during the flight.

Television

• Never watch any educational programmes.
• Never leave the television tuned to any one station for longer than 11 seconds.
• Always phone in to answer the quiz question. (The answer is B, “a stethoscope”)

Music

• Always play music loudly enough to annoy other people.
• Always ensure that the music you play too loudly is crap, normally the work of some talentless yob, ranting violently about nothing of any importance over a no-brain backing track.

Art

• Never admit to knowing anything about art, including the names of any artists.

Hospitals

• Always visit the Emergency department if you so much as sneeze.
• Always verbally or physically abuse the nurses and doctors who are trying to help you.
• Always assume that you know more than the doctor’s decades of study and experience have taught her/him.
• Always limp, whatever your ailment.
• Always insist on plenty of pills to take, whether you need them or not, as your family and friends will be very impressed at the implied seriousness of your condition.
• Never complain that people from elsewhere are exploiting the medical insurance you’ve paid for all your life.
• Never complain that diseases eradicated from civilised countries decades ago are now being imported right back in again.

Fatness

• Always say that it’s “glandular” or “water-retention” (but beware as these words can be difficult to say whilst eating a particularly sugary doughnut).
• Once you get significantly obese, have yourself pushed around in a wheelchair as this will have a noticeable effect upon your intake to activity ratio.
• If you are a hideously fat woman, always grow your hair long and wear lots of eye make-up. People won’t notice that you’re fat any more and will see you as being very attractive.

Food

• Always say that you don’t like various foods, even when you’ve never tried them.
• Always use phrases like “I don’t like fish”, as all fish are clearly identical to one another in taste and texture.
• Always use the phrase “I can’t cook” in place of the phrase “I’m too stupid to understand how to mix different things together in a bowl”.
• Never hold a knife and fork properly.
• At buffets, always fail to eat half of the food you chose to put on your own plate.

Roads

• Insufficient space and time to add details on this subject.

Sport

• Always consider sport to be more important than anything else.
• Always invent a cretinous name for every imaginable eventuality in your given sport like “the play-the-ball” in rugby league and, for example, “mauls” as opposed to “rucks” in rugby union.
• When supporting football, always sing in the deepest voice you can muster as this makes you seem to be very manly.

Society & Politics

• Never do anything to add to society – always take as much as possible.
• Never vote for anyone who would apply common sense to the needs of the country.
• Always view politics as “not something which you’re interested in”.
• Always give the impression that you support the idea of democracy and then start crying if lots of people decide to vote for a party they’re “not supposed to”.
• Never complain that there are too many people.

History

• Always consider history as being boring and irrelevant.
• Never learn any lessons from the events of the past, even when the parallels and warnings are glaringly obvious.

Schools

• Never ensure that your child understands why he or she goes to school.
• Never involve yourself in your child’s studies and progress.
• Always say that it’s good to mix children of very different capabilities in schools.
• Always blame the teachers if your child never learns anything.
• Never complain that your child is often taught illogical nonsense.
• Always find new behavioural “disorders” from which to say your child must be suffering so as to avoid facing the truth.

Environment

• Always drop litter and, if you see litter that someone else has dropped, always kick it.
• Always drive to the bottle bank, even though what you save, in environmental terms, will be less than the impact of your car journey.
• Always spit every 6 minutes.
• If the temperature is less than 20°C, always complain that it’s too cold.
• If the temperature is 21°C or more, always complain that it’s too hot.
• Never accept that overpopulation is behind all the environmental problems we face.

Religion

• See roads

Jobs & Offices

• Always base your opinions of someone on their job title as opposed to who they are, how they conduct themselves or what they can do.
• Always dress sharply as it will make people believe that you can think sharply.
• Always advocate the purchase of cheap stationery when claiming things are “tight” but never make any significant economies.

Fashion

• Always wear what other people say you ought to wear, irrespective of how stupid or impractical it might be
• Always pay six times as much for your clothes as you need to as long as other people will be impressed.