In case you all haven’t noticed, I haven’t really had sufficient time to keep up with maintaining this site. Believe it or not, it’s actually hard to find stupid people in the news!

I haven’t yet decided what to do with the site, but the archives will remain up and accessible indefinitely.

If you’re jonesing for some stupidity, though, you can visit my main site, Homeland Stupidity.

And if you think you can maintain this Web site, want to take it over, purchase it, or just post bits of stupidity to it from time to time, feel free to contact me.

Trevor Corneliusien, 26, an artist, went camping in an abandoned mineshaft about five miles north of Baker, Calif., on Tuesday, wrapped a chain around his bare ankles and locked it, and proceeded to draw it. Then he realized he didn’t have the key.

So he hopped across the desert for 12 hours before finding help.

“It took him over 12 hours because he had to hop through boulders and sand,” [San Bernardino County Sheriff's Deputy Ryan] Ford said. “He did put on his shoes before hopping.”

The artist, who is from the area, often sketched images inside mines in the Southwest. He had finished his drawing Tuesday when he realized he didn’t have the key.

Corneliusien finally made it to a gas station and called the sheriff’s department, which sent paramedics and deputies with bolt cutters. His legs were bruised but he was otherwise in good health, Ford said. — Associated Press

Ford also said that the artist’s drawing of the chain around his legs was “pretty good.” But that doesn’t excuse Trevor Corneliusien, who is today’s Stupid Person of the Day.

A foot-long hole in the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines jet caused the plane to lose cabin pressure, forcing the crew to make an emergency descent from 26,000 feet and return to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, authorities said Tuesday.

“There was a bang and the oxygen masks fell down… and I knew at that point that something was wrong,” [passenger Damon] Zwicker said.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were investigating, along with the airline and the Port of Seattle.

A ramp worker has acknowledged he failed to immediately report striking the plane at the gate Monday with a baggage cart or baggage-belt machine, NTSB spokesman Jim Struhsaker said.

The worker told the agency that although the vehicle touched the plane, he was not aware he had dented it, Struhsaker said.

The bump created a crease in the plane’s aluminum skin, which opened up into a 12- by 6-inch gash as the plane came under increased pressure at 26,000 feet, Struhsaker said.

Alaska Flight 536 left the airport for Burbank just before 4 p.m. Monday. The flight crew reported a loss of cabin pressure about 20 minutes later, Boren said. Oxygen masks deployed for passengers and the plane made a rapid descent, landing at Sea-Tac just before 5 p.m., she said. — KOMO

The unnamed ramp worker is today’s stupid person of the day for causing fear, panic, an emergency landing, and repairs (and subsequently, passenger delays) all because he failed to do his job.

Each year the St. Petersburg Times scours the news archives to find the dumbest, craziest news stories of 2005, and they got some real doozies this year.

For the past 12 months, we scoured newspapers, magazines and the Internet for all the futile, inane and moronic news stories in Florida. And as usual, we came away overloaded.

Here’s the best of the best. Keep in mind that it’s people like these who make Florida what it is.

Scary thought, isn’t it? — St. Petersburg Times

Go read them all and laugh your ass off.

In one episode of The Simpsons, Homer swallows a cell phone, and then has conversations on it while it’s in his stomach.

A Blue Springs, Mo., woman apparently tried to repeat the stunt, and it didn’t quite work out so well.

Police said they received a call at 4:52 a.m. from a Blue Springs man who said his girlfriend was having trouble breathing.

When they arrived at the house, they found the 24-year-old woman had a cell phone lodged in her throat.

“He wanted the phone, and she wouldn’t give it to him, so she attempted to swallow it,” Detective Sgt. Steve Decker of the Blue Springs Police Department said. “She just put the entire phone in her mouth so he couldn’t get it.”

Police said an ambulance transported the woman to St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue Springs. A hospital spokeswoman said she couldn’t give details about the woman’s health because police have not released her identity. — Associated Press

Police said they didn’t know if the phone was set to vibrate or not.

The woman, as yet unnamed, is today’s Stupid Person of the Day.

In Englewood, Pa., the O’Connor family picked up a beautiful 8 foot (2.4m) Douglas fir for the family’s Christmas tree. The tree had already been cut and bundled and was just waiting for a loving family to take it home.

So they did. And they decorated their tree, stringing it with sparkling lights and ornaments and even a star at the top.

And very early Tuesday morning, it happened.

Mary Kathleen O’Connor, 16, doing some studying for school about 6 a.m. Tuesday, said she was the first to be startled by an apparent Christmas tree stowaway.

“I’m looking at the tree and the angel just pops off,” she said. “And a second later, this head just popped up. The eyes were, like, glowing. I was thinking, ‘Oh my God!’ And I screamed.”

Other family members came running. “We looked at it and I thought it might have been a fake,” said her father, Michael O’Connor, a Frackville attorney. “But then it moved its head. And I thought ‘Holy Jeez. We’re in trouble.’” — Associated Press

Now if that were the end of the story, you wouldn’t be reading about it here. As it turns out, not only do the O’Connor family not know that the possum, which is native to their area, is quite harmless, they apparently had trouble recognizing one when it was staring them in the face.

So Dad was so confused, he didn’t know what to do! He called the police.

But while he was doing that, mom Patricia picked up the entire tree — stand and lights and all — and threw it outside into the front yard!

A game commissioner came up and took the possum a few miles away and released it.

And that is how a possum stole Christmas from the O’Connor family and helped Michael and Patricia O’Connor take their rightful place as Stupid People of the Day.

[Editor's note: It seems the old tricks still work against new people. An unnamed person in Greenville, S.C., fell victim to one of the older tricks in the book.]

[Greenville County sheriff's deputies] said a woman was in the parking lot of Wal-Mart on Woodruff Road when she was approached by another woman, who told the victim that she had $8,000 in cash, but did not like the serial numbers on the money and wanted to exchange it with the victim.

The victim was asked to go to her bank with another man, withdraw $6,000 and give it to the suspect, and in turn she would receive the $8,000.

When the victim withdrew the money and gave it to the woman, the woman and the man left without giving the victim anything.

The victim was not hurt.

Investigators said people should take steps to avoid this situation, such as:

• Never shop alone.
• Do not speak to strangers.
• Ask yourself why someone would give you more money than they will receive.

— WYFF

Today’s unnamed Stupid Person of the Day forgot the basics, things that everyone should be taught while growing up.

My mad-scientist girlfriend bought me this book for my birthday and now I’m sharing it with you.

The Lexicon of Stupidity is a 400 page pocket-size book with a vast collection of stupid quotations, signs, book titles, bank robbery holdup notes, and more.

I love this book. Consider the bank robber who handed the teller a note with his shopping list. Or this quote from a baseball sportscaster: “Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head on the wall and it rolls off! It’s rolling all the way back to second base!”

Definitely worth the read. I’m still laughing over it.

A woman in Houston, Texas, called the Houston Fire Department three times reporting that her cat was stuck in the sewer. After getting no response, she called back, and said her baby was stuck in the sewer. When firefighters arrived, they found out that “Baby” was the cat’s name.

The firefighters arrived expecting to find a child, but rescued the feline from the sewer anyway. Police gave the woman a ticket for making a false report, a Class B misdemeanor.

“They said they were desperate, didn’t know what else to do,” Houston Fire Department Capt. Keith Ellery told Houston television station KPRC. “They didn’t know who else to call so they called 911. It is not the type of rescue we normally do … but on this particular incident, we felt compelled to kind of help them out.”

Members of the woman’s family tried to rescue the cat themselves before calling for help. — Associated Press

I don’t even know how to file today’s unnamed Stupid Person of the Day, but I would advise her not to try to contest the ticket.

A Stanfordville, N.Y., man was in stable condition Monday after an incident last Friday where in Poughkeepsie he leaned over into the path of an oncoming Metro-North train, suffering head injuries.

Parker T. Hall Houghtaling, 23, was recovering from his injuries at St. Francis Hospital Monday, where he was listed in stable condition. Houghtaling was waiting on the platform of the Poughkeepsie train station Friday when he stuck his head out and was hit by the 6:26 p.m. commuter train, according to authorities and eyewitnesses.

It wasn’t the first time. In 2002, he was waiting at the 51st Street subway station in Manhattan when he stuck his head out and was hit by a subway car. He was hospitalized with a shoulder injury, nose fractures and bruises, according to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, which runs Metro-North and the subway system. It was unclear Monday what led to the incident in the subway. . . .

On Friday, officers found four prescription drugs on Houghtaling — all legally prescribed to him. Authorities ordered toxicology tests in the hopes of determining whether the prescription drugs played a factor in Houghtaling getting too close to the incoming train.

There were several witnesses Friday.

“They saw him take steps toward the edge, they saw him step back, and they saw him lean into the train,” Anders said, adding Houghtaling was standing and conscious when the train’s conductor and engineer found him. — Poughkeepsie Journal

If it were just once, I could see it being the medication, but clearly Parker T. Hall Houghtaling suffers from chronic stupidity, and that’s why he has won the Stupid Person of the Day award.

Marlene Whitby, principal of William Penn Elementary School in Elizabeth, Pa., submitted her resignation Wednesday, after parading an 8 year old girl around to all the classes in the school and denouncing her as a liar and a thief. The girl’s accuser, another student, later admitted she falsely accused the victim.

Whitby and the school’s administration came under fire this month when the parents of third-grader Katie White protested that Whitby had not been punished for the September incident.

After the classmate accused the girl of stealing the $5, Whitby took her from room to room, calling her a liar and thief. The other child later recanted the story.

The girl’s father, Ryan White, said that when he spoke to Whitby she acknowledged that she didn’t look at a school bus video or talk to the bus driver to verify the theft accusation. . . .

Police had to be called to Wednesday’s board meeting because some in the crowd of about 70 people became upset when board President Lowell Meek said there would be no public comment on a personnel and discipline matter. — Associated Press

Anyone who’s been around children for more than a few minutes knows they make things up. Especially if they’re being mean to each other, which they do frequently. Marlene Whitby, who should have known better, is therefore today’s Stupid Person of the Day.

People will believe just about anything, it seems. Nou Chang, 52, of Coon Rapids, Minn., owner of Foley Foods grocery store there, was duped into believing that con artist Franklin T. Forlemu, 22, of Savage, had a potion that would turn blank paper into hard cash if immersed in the potion for several hours.

According to the complaint, Forlemu went to Chang’s store, slipped blank pieces of paper between some $20 bills, donned a breathing mask and poured his mysterious concoction over the pile. When he was done, the blanks looked like twenties to Chang.

Forlemu told him to get large sums of cash, and Chang came back with $70,000 in $100 bills.

He watched Forlemu put the blank slips between them and pour the solution on the stack, then wrap the wad in tinfoil and pour on more.

Forlemu said the money and paper must be sealed for three hours before opening the windfall. But when Chang finally unwrapped the tinfoil stack, he found nothing but white paper.

Chang felt foolish, he told police. But he wound up lucky.

Police arrested Forlemu at his apartment and found $76,000 in $100 bills duct-taped in a cardboard box under his bed, including Chang’s cash.

The potion turned out to be water, said Coon Rapids Detective Dave Westberg. He said Forlemu used sleight-of-hand to make it look like the paper slips turned into cash.

Forlemu refused to say where the additional $6,000 in the box came from, Westberg said. — Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Con artists and swindlers do their thing very well, and one should be skeptical of things that seem too good to be true. In this case, it’s the victim, Nou Chang, who gets today’s Stupid Person of the Day award. But the fact that he got his money back should make him feel a little less bad about it.

A 70 year old pensioner in Torino (Turin), Italy, frightened by two trick-or-treating boys in Halloween costume, instead of giving them candy, grabbed his hunting rifle and shot them.

The 14-year-old boys, dressed as demons, had knocked on the man’s door during an evening of “trick or treat” near the northern town of Turin and set off a firecracker.

When the door opened, instead of a treat, the man fired four shots at the boys having been scared by the noise and their strange outfits, the news agency ANSA said.

Police arrested the man, who lived alone and was the victim of several robberies, for attempted murder, ANSA said. Police said the boys’ lives were not in danger but one risked losing an eye. — Reuters

The two children are listed in serious condition at Ivrea hospital, according to the news report.

The practice of trick-or-treating is relatively new to Italy, so maybe today’s Stupid Person of the Day, who was not named by police, simply hadn’t heard of it yet.

In Oklahoma City, Okla., on Tuesday, a man being sentenced asked for a longer prison sentence than he had been given.

The lawyers reached a plea agreement Tuesday for a 30-year term for a man accused of shooting with an intent to kill and robbery. But Eric James Torpy wanted his prison term to match Bird’s jersey number 33.

“He said if he was going to go down, he was going to go down in Larry Bird’s jersey,” Oklahoma County District Judge Ray Elliott said Wednesday. “We accommodated his request and he was just as happy as he could be.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in 26 years in the courthouse. But, I know the DA is happy about it.” — Associated Press

Sarah Sevick, 19, a freshman at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Tex., has filed an Americans with Disabilities Act complaint with the federal government because the university refused to allow her to keep her ferret in her dorm room.

Sevick said she has been diagnosed with psychiatric problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. She takes medication for depression and anxiety, she said. . . .

Sevick requested to keep the ferret at her dormitory and in class before she moved onto campus in August, but was denied. . . .

Sevick said she’s had many attacks since she’s been on campus without the ferret.

She discovered Lilly’s calming effects when she received the ferret as a gift about a year ago.

“Pretty quickly, we realized it was very responsive to her,” said Sevick’s mother, Kay, who now cares for Lilly. “When (Sarah’s) anxiety goes up, (Lilly) climbs on her and nuzzles her, and will stay for hours with her until she’s better.”

Sarah Sevick said university officials feared the ferret was a threat to other students and wasn’t trained as a service animal. . . .

Meanwhile Sevick said she’s not doing well in class.

“It’s almost like I’m being jinxed,” she said. “Because of that, I stay in my room.” — Associated Press

Whoa, being depressed is a disability? I’m terribly depressed! Excuse me while I go file for some nice government benefits. As for Sarah Sevick, I hear she needs a boyfriend. Any of you eligible bachelors out there want to go out with her?