Mericans are famously insular. The vast majority have never traveled abroad. But it can be even more extreme than that. Back in college I hitchhiked (okay, not my best decision ever) from Minnesota to the Virginias and back. In three cases (West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky), I met adults who’d never been out of the county that they’d been born in. Most Mericans speak only one language, and many don’t even do that well. You might be hard-pressed to find a continental European who didn’t speak at least two languages.
Mericans as a whole have done a lot of stupid things. Like adopt the designated hitter rule, more than once going to war based on the flimsiest of excuses, or give a desk in the Oval Office to an FSB asset. But our stupidity is not spread evenly across our vast country. Sure, stupid people doing stupid things have been known to occur in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Idaho, and Texas, but anyone who’s paid any attention will tell you that Florida seems to be the venue for stupidity more often than might be warranted on the basis of random distribution.
Just within the last month in Florida, a naked man started a house fire while baking cookies on a George Foreman grill, a couple decided it would be a good idea to remodel their mobile home with a drive-thru window for narcotics sales, and some genius figured out how to kill an alpaca with Doritos, Cheese Nips, and peanuts.
But Merica can have hope. There is indeed stupidity beyond its shores. This story from the UK reminds us that we have no monopoly on morons.
24-year-old Jy Kennedy decided to do a bit of burglary. To get in the mood, he did some cocaine, drank 24 bottles of beer, and fortified himself with some Jägermeister. That he was still alive testifies to a liver accustomed to filtering massive quantities of alcohol. How he was then able to ride a bicycle a mile while being chased by police is a mystery to anyone who’s never been that inebriated.
Ye Olde Mugshot:
But if you get caught doing something stupid, it’s always handy to have someone else speak up for you:
Delroy Henry, defending, said Kennedy had shown a lack of maturity and still had a lot of growing up to do.
He was soon to be a father and would miss his first born’s birth if sent to jail.
