The Stupidity Syndrome

[Brody]

They were filming this movie(Movie about Ralston) when we were there.. You could see part of the set from the boat...

Yeah, I heard they were going to make a forgettable movie about "Dickweed Ralston". What a lark....and what a butthead. Ever since then when we have been climbing and have gotten a hand, foot or something wedged into the rock on a climb for some really dumb reason, we have called that a "Ralston". "Ralston" is now generally used in the 'real' rock climbing community as a term to describe some really brain numbingly stupid move or total f***up.

Where else but in America can we be given the chance to watch a movie about a guy, who, though his own stupidity and inexperience, gets in a position where he has to make the choice to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife? What is the point? What does anyone actually 'learn' from watching this? Granted, that was a ballsy thing to have to do and actually survive the experience, but the point remains: What are we going to learn from this movie, carry a better, sharper and bigger knife?

Besides which, if he was a 'real man' he would have cooked and eaten his own arm when he got hungry. Believe it or not, I told him that to his face after listening to him pontificate about his "experience" a little too long. It didn't win any points with the people standing around who were absolutely mesmerized by him, but it for sure toned down the conversation...:D

[Rob]

Yeah, I heard they were going to make a forgettable movie about "Dickweed Ralston". What a lark....and what a butthead. Ever since then when we have been climbing and have gotten a hand, foot or something wedged into the rock on a climb for some really dumb reason, we have called that a "Ralston". "Ralston" is generally used in the 'real' rock climbing community as a term to describe some really brain numbing stupid move or total f***up.

Where else but in America can we be given the chance to watch a movie about a guy, who, though his own stupidity and inexperience, gets in a position where he has to make the choice to cut off his own arm with a pocket knife? What is the point? What does anyone actually 'learn' from watching this?

Besides which, if he was a 'real man' he would have cooked and eaten his own arm when he got hungry. Believe it or not, I told him that to his face after listening to him pontificate about his "experience" a little too long. It didn't win any points with the people standing around who were absolutely mesmerized by him, but it for sure toned down the conversation...:D

Pete, is this your blog under another name? http://unreasonablydangerousonionrings.blogspot.com/2009/04/what-happens-when-you-****-up-really.html

If not, he's definitely your doppelganger. :lmao:

I also think Unreasonably Dangerous Onion Rings is a great name for a rock band. :smokin:

[Brody]

No, that isn't my blog under another name. Man has a point, though, and like me, has an especially low tolerance for abject stupidity, among other things... What I really like is all the stuff that we get inundated with when it happens...on the news, on the TV, etc., for weeks or months on end. Then 2-3 years later, we get the BOOK. Then we have Smellywood coming out with the MOVIE about the same thing...and we are going to pay money to rent the video, buy the book, or watch the movie about the same stuff? Come on...I have a bad memory, but it isn't that bad. Neither am I stupid...

At least with movies like 9/11 World Trade Center, SOME of the profits (although a rather impecunious amount) actually went to a good cause:

Director Oliver Stone (http://www.hollywood.com/celebrity/Oliver_Stone/194665) will donate 10 percent of new movie World Trade Center (http://www.hollywood.com/movie/World_Trade_Center/3464999)'s first five-day profits to 9/11 charities.

A number of years ago, back in the early 80s when I was running my own climbing school and guide service, some dimwit got a bunch of folks lost on a cross country ski trip near Aspen or Vail. Big media coverage, all over the news, much publicized rescue, blah, blah. The dimwit then went on 'tour' speaking about his experience (thus advertising his abject stupidity) and Smellywood smelled a profit . They approached him about making a movie about his rather amateur mistake that got a group of folks into a jam. I was approached by an agent to play the part of said dimwit (a true blow to my ego, I am afraid) because I bore some resemblance to him. I refused, telling the agent that I wasn't going to play the part of a total f***up. Later on, I was meeting with some folks that I was supposed to guide up McKinley and who should wander into the room but this clown and his agent, complete with groupies. The agent recognized me and with a complete lack of thinking about my previous response, drug me over to meet this guy, not the best move. When we were introduced, my first words went something like "Oh, so you are the stupid ***hole who got all those people lost.", stopping the conversation once more....

The movie, thankfully, never happened, but this incident came about when the story was still seeing some press...

And the story, now movie, about the guy and his wifey who got mauled by grizzly bears. This was a foregone conclusion to begin with if you have any idea what a grizzly bear is, how big they are, what they eat, their bad attitude and a few brain cells to think with. Dude and his wife 'studied' grizzly bears in their environment and didn't 'believe in carrying guns to protect themselves from the bears'. Yeah, right. No need to go too much into the collective stupidity that brought about their demise. At least the grizzlys got a free meal and rid the world of a couple of people who were cluttering up the gene pool with a bunch of unnecessary 'stupid genes'....

[4Runninfun]

And the story, now movie, about the guy and his wifey who got mauled by grizzly bears. This was a foregone conclusion to begin with if you have any idea what a grizzly bear is, how big they are, what they eat, their bad attitude and a few brain cells to think with. Dude and his wife 'studied' grizzly bears in their environment and didn't 'believe in carrying guns to protect themselves from the bears'. Yeah, right. No need to go too much into the collective stupidity that brought about their demise. At least the grizzlys got a free meal and rid the world of a couple of people who were cluttering up the gene pool with a bunch of unnecessary 'stupid genes'....

Oh god that moron. I first came across that story while I was still living up in AK. To hear some of the locals who knew him talk was actually pretty funny as most of their sentiments were on par with yours. When that documentary first came on TV I told D "you know this is doing to wind up with him getting eaten" and sure enough...

[Pathrat]

Dude and his wife 'studied' grizzly bears in their environment and didn't 'believe in carrying guns to protect themselves from the bears'. Yeah, right. No need to go too much into the collective stupidity that brought about their demise

Are you referring to Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend who got eaten a few years back or a new couple of nature tards who provided the latest usrine happy meal?

[Haku]

No arguing that Aaron Ralston made some horrible decisions, but I don't know why you despise him so much. None of his writing was an attempt to make him seem like a hero for doing what he did. He is and was the first person to admit that he broke all the rules of doing stuff in the outdoors (i.e. going out alone, not telling people where you are, etc) and had to pay the consequences. If anything its a "I was a dumbass and don't be like me" rather then a " I'm a badass for getting through it" story. Granted he did make a profit on the sales of the book and the movie, but sillier things have done the same for people. For christ's sake, friggin Snooky (from the Jersey Shore MTV reality show) has a biography out.

I put this more in the Into the Wild category i.e. a guy got in over his head, made some bad decisions and it bit him in the ass. Its not a "Touching the Void" situation where they were largely doing things right and a freak occurance happened at a really inopportune time. In that case, despite some questionable decisions after the accident happened (risking a healthy dudes life to save a hurt dudes life), the story really is a true representation of what a person can do when it really comes down to surviving an impossible situation that should have ended someones life.

At the end of the day, I don't see the 128 days movie aka "80 minutes till he cuts his arm off" to be a hero movie or anything glamorizing it. Its a profile of a specific arc of the psychological process a person goes through in a bad situation, but not in a glamorous way. I respect the dude who had to go through pretty much the same situation in his basement after having a water heater shift and trap his arm then some guy who was being a crazy person in Utah or whatever. It does make you think twice about where you stick your hands and limbs though. This guy dropped a tool into his furnace while he was working on it and when he reached in got his arm stuck and the harder he tried to get it out the worse it got. Still kind of a dumbass move. Not entirely sure he needed to cut his arm off, but by some accounts I read, doctors say cutting the arm off actually save him since gangrene was setting in and would have spread to the rest of his body.

I won't even get into it with animals and people beyond saying that wild animals should remain wild. No matter how long they have been well behaved and "tame", as Sigfried and Roy found out, it doesn't take much to bring back those wild instincts.

[Brody]

but I don't know why you despise him so much.

I simply despise stupidity in general. I try to not single any individual or entity out. I really despise people who capitalize on their stupidity. Ralston just happens to be someone who fits in that category.

Read post#1 again about the people who have seen the news on TV, read the articles in the papers, bought the book(s) and are now planning on seeing the movie....:D

The other point I was trying to make is that there is really no reason for the general public (meaning people who buy the books and pay for tickets to watch the movies or pay for tickets to see these people speak) to actually support stupidity like it is a valid way to make a living....That is sort of the "welfare mentality", where anything you can do not to work and make a valid living (ie: the world owes me a living) is a good thing...

Jock's post with the link to Dangerous Onion Rings is a classic example. Who, for instance, goes to some place that serves onion rings and asks to be served "cold, or room temperature" onion rings? People generally like hot onion rings. Ditto with coffee. You order a cup of coffee from anywhere, you expect a hot cup of coffee. You don't sue someone because the coffee was hot and your are such a clumsy F***up that you manage to spill it on yourself. Or, at least, you do so in America....This again shows support for people's stupid actions as both the coffee suit and the onion ring suit won...Same concept, showing support for other people's stupidity...

Or the people who yearly manage to kill themselves with "unloaded" guns? That is always another good one.."Well, the gun was unloaded and then it somehow went off and killed XXXX." Yup...right. Oooops...Don't own a firearm if you aren't smart enough to work with them..period. You don't need (or shouldn't) the warning labels that come with firearms of any kind to figure that one out, either..Gotta spend too much time trying to figure out if firearms have potential hazards that you need to be aware of? Then guess what? You probably shouldn't be considering buying/owning one...

Guy I knew once had a 44 revolver. Had the wheel loaded with 6 rounds and managed to fumble it out of the holster, dropping it on the hammer. It went off and the round went under his arm and through his lat, taking a chunk of shoulder blade with it. Big rescue as he was out in the boonies at some cabin in Montana, big drama. He tried to sue Smith and Wesson...really. Their lawyer said to go ahead as it was his money, but in all the years that S&W had been in business they had never ever lost a law suit. This guy was an absolute idiot and tried to profit from his stupidity and clumsiness. Bottom line: he shouldn't have owned a gun or been allowed around them in the first place as he was simply too stupid to own a firearm....At least he didn't profit from his experience and may have actually learned something from it. Maybe he wrote a book you can get...

At any rate, I suppose it is good to see that we have a defender of the "hard of thinking" on the forum. They can probably use someone else in their court...then again, maybe not. The "hard of thinking" thinking seem to have the majority vote...

[RockyMtnHigh]

and are now planning on seeing the movie....:D

Couldn't be much different than sitting there watching Buried, guy stuck in a box for an hour and 35 minutes, I think I will pass!

[Brody]

Are you referring to Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend who got eaten a few years back or a new couple of nature tards who provided the latest usrine happy meal?

Well, I am not sure of the names, but if Tasty Timmy and his wife were the ones living with the bears in their habitat, then those were the folks. The other couple just fit right in to the generally 'stupid" mix. Anyone who has more than 2 brain cells to rub together should be able to take a look at a bear, panther, mountain lion, or any other carnivore and figure out that they aren't your basic 'warm, fuzzy, cuddly creatures'. Of course, if you can't find the other brain cell in order to start the rubbing process to begin with, then you really deserve to be eventually turned into a pile of warm animal **** at some point. I am sure the animals love people like that, too.

Of course, the bad side for the animals is that we send people out to kill them after the animals have performed a much needed thinning of the human population, as they are now deemed to be "dangerous"...another fine example of "hard of thinking"..

[SCRubicon]

Oh god that moron. I first came across that story while I was still living up in AK. To hear some of the locals who knew him talk was actually pretty funny as most of their sentiments were on par with yours. When that documentary first came on TV I told D "you know this is doing to wind up with him getting eaten" and sure enough...

Tim Treadwell, that guy was a complete whackadoo. My wife's uncle is a committee member on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Apparently Mr. Treadwell wasn't very well liked by a lot of people up there.

[Pathrat]

Tim Treadwell, that guy was a complete whackadoo. My wife's uncle is a committee member on the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Apparently Mr. Treadwell wasn't very well liked by a lot of people up there.

Yeah, he was beyond stupid, he was just plain crazy. He lost sight of the boundaries of reality and of wild animal and man. Treadwell saw bears almost as pets and the big bad wildlife officials as the Evil Empire.

[RockyMtnHigh]

And despite the Treadwell ordeal, there is yet another genius up in Alaska:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSOKW6V6Bi8

It came out awhile ago on one of the major networks, about an hour long. If you ask me this guy is worse than Treadwell or giving himself a greater chance of becoming a bony snack, by attracting two different species onto his property and then interacting with them the way he does. If he doesn't end up dead intentionally becoming a meal, he'll get caught up between a pissing match with a black and grizzly bear and eventually become a meal.

[Brody]

Hey...Darwin. Someone wants to volunteer to put themselves lower down on the food chain and within easy chomping distance of carnivores, I am not going to stand in their way. Way I see it, there are way too many totally stupid people out there in the world anyway and they aren't weeding themselves out fast enough as it is...Personally, I have always thought that being eaten alive by some large animal probably was a really lousy thing to have happen...

To paraphrase The Sixth Sense:

"I see stupid people everywhere. They walk around just like everyone else and they don't even know that they are stupid..."

[Warrlord]

And despite the Treadwell ordeal, there is yet another genius up in Alaska

He probably watched too many episodes of Grizzly Adams (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=grizzly+adams&aq=0) ;)

[RockyMtnHigh]

I haven't seen Grizzly Adams since I was a kid! :lmao:

I came home and found this link: http://animal.discovery.com/tv/stranger-among-bears/charles-vandergaw/charles-vandergaw.html

I will say it's probably a remarkable experience to be that close once and live to tell about it, but to continuously do it is just playing with fire. There's another concern that I have, if not his safety, it's others that may encounter these bears in the wild. We've seen what happens when wild animals lose that "fear" of humans and I quote fear because an animal of this size doesn't really fear anything, they just don't understand our capabilities and take caution. I mean, we're talking about animals who have absolutely no fear when it comes to attacking a moose or elk with intentions of eating it, comparatively speaking without a sharp stick or gun we don't put up much of a fight, we move slow, don't climb well and can't tread water very well either. What happens when someone else runs across one of these bears and doesn't react the way they expect a human to or the way he did? People like this need to consider the danger they are creating for everyone else that could come into contact with them. This is one of the reasons I went off on someone on here awhile ago about his obviously baiting bears for picture opportunities, it causes a threat for not only someone else, but the animal as well.

If you read the article in that link, appears after his story made public headlines the great state of Alaska decided to use some common sense on his behalf, by telling him to knock it off!

[scout man]

To change the subject a little... here is some stupidity I witnessed at Mississippi and 225 the other day. Lady drove right under the trailer of a semi and got hit by the rear axle. She was turning onto the on ramp, and clearly just ran right into the side of him.

[Rob]

:OMG: Sometimes those semis are so hard to see. :D

[Jackie]

I don't think I would be so quick to judge. While not being very exciting stories, I've had a few situations in my life that might have turned out very badly if I hadn't made the decision to bail.

Pete, you have written books (and I hope, profited from them) from some of your extreme experiences that some would call "stupid". If they were "Hollywood material" stories...would you bite? Of course you would! So the guy f'd up - but we all learn from it, and he earns enough money for a prosthetic arm.

[4finger]

i have some cool stories to tell people about what happened to my left hand. but the first thing i always say is I was being STUPID AND NOT PAYING ATTENTION. i do not blame it on anything else. i believe that most accidents happen because someone wasnt paying attention to what they are doing or the surroundings (traffic, avalanche danger, loose gravel walkway by a cliff, ect ect ect) and that if you see a movie or news clipping about how they found the lost skiers after 4 days you can go ahead and guess that the first part of the story SHOULD read " well, i wasnt paying attention"..........
the fact he survived the ordeal is amazing. but then again i have to knock that amazing down a few pegs- he did put himself in that situation.
as for the lady who got stuck under the truck??????????????- well theres stupidity and then theres SUPERRRR STUPIDITY!!!!!!!!!!!

[Brody]

Pete, you have written books (and I hope, profited from them) from some of your extreme experiences that some would call "stupid". If they were "Hollywood material" stories...would you bite? Of course you would! So the guy f'd up - but we all learn from it, and he earns enough money for a prosthetic arm.

Yep. I have written 7 books. Some of my better stories have been from 'stupid ' mistakes, too, so I am not leaving myself out of the 'stupid equation'.

You are wrong about jumping on the Hollywood bandwagon, though. The deal to play the role of the Aspen guide who screwed up had some serious money figures attached to it. I refused because I didn't want to play the role of an idiot, not because I couldn't have used the money. As far as the books go, I was asked for years to go and do 'book signings', especially from mountaineering shops in the area and for the 'Colorado Authors' days that Barnes and Nobles and Tattered Cover do. REI offered at one point to fly me out to Seattle (way before REI stores were sprouting like Starbucks everywhere) for an 'author' thing they were doing at their very first store. I passed on that, too. Been to Seattle already, thank you. I never did one of them, and that was probably reflected in the overall sales of the books, too. Did I really care? No. I don't like the limelight, and never had a desire to be 'famous'. Still don't.

In fact, if Smellywood approached me about making a movie about one of Pete Brody's stupid f***ups, I would probably tell the person who approached me to kiss my f***ing ass and leave before I hurt them. Anyone that really knows me pretty much knows that would be my response and it wouldn't surprise them at all....

One of the guys that was involved in the 5301 University sham survived a severe head injury from a skiing accident years ago (like 10-12) and decided to capitalize on this. He is now a paid lecturer all because of one stupid mistake he made. Talking about milking something to death... Having met this guy, (and heard his particular brand of BS)we all would have been better off should he not have survived, but that is another story altogether...

Yeah, we all make stupid mistakes. What I really don't like is the capitalization that the general public seems to be all to gullible in supporting. It is like giving the big OK to make really dumb mistakes as this now seems to be a valid means of making a living...

The other point I was making is that are we really so damn dumb that that we need to hear it on the news, then the book comes out (which people then buy), then the movie comes out(which we then pay to go see in one form or another), then the dude or dudette goes out and speaks to audiences about his/her 'experience (which, again, is paid for), again showing an overwhelming support for stupidity? Hell, all the criminals that were involved in Watergate, or, for that matter, Iran Contra, have written best sellers and made fortunes on the lecture circuits. And these were people who we should have simply shot... This is something I truly do not and probably never will understand, nor do I support it. I mean, WTF, were we all brain dead or asleep?

The World Trade Center 9/11 is, of course, a classic example. Books, movies, blah, blah. What, did we happen to miss it the first time around? Sure, the human race in whole or in part is pretty damn stupid. After all, we are in the process of killing the one and only planet we happen to live on pretty quickly. We propagate like crazed rabbits, then complain that we are running out of resources because the population continues to grow. (Ever had an ant farm? You know, one of those cute little two sided glass/plastic things where you can see the cute little ants? Try dumping 5 or 10 times the number of ants into the same cute little box and watch what happens. That is us...in an ant farm, so to speak). We generally accept this fact, do little or nothing about it, and still haven't figured out a way to get off the planet. Basic monkey brain thinking there, more like a pack of bonobos ( ie: capable of successfully eating, ********, ******* and sleeping, but little else) than an supposedly intelligent species, but come on....

Also bonobos haven't spent the last 2000 ++ years trying to annihilate the neighboring tribe simply because their fur color is different or because they happen to worship the sun instead of the moon....