(Long Island, NY) I thought that for once, I would have nothing to complain about. The Easter holiday headlines were filled with good, cheerful news stories. Kids showing off their award-winning artwork, a multi-million dollar facelift proposal for downtown Hempstead, a family goes on reality TV to lose weight; tons of shiny happy reporting.
Then I saw a headline that got the old cynic in me working overtime. It was the heartwarming tale of a drunken moron who not only got behind the wheel of a car while intoxicated; he also managed to slam right into a police car.
The first reaction I had was a desire to punch the guy’s lights out just for being such a moron. Then I wished I could have been the cop who had his car wrecked by the town idiot.
“Allegedly”, my editor keeps screaming, “ALLEGEDLY!” OK. Can we take the law into our own hands now and put the guy on display in the town square for being an alleged dork?
Since I can’t take the law into my own hands (my editor tells me not even to joke about such things), I began designing a recognition contest for knuckleheads such as these. I call it The Brain Donor Awards, and the (allegedly) drunken dimwit gets the very first of what I assume to be many such awards.
A Brain Donor trophy would probably look like an empty cranium set in bronze, on top a big pile of beer cans and a broken down TV set. If I were truly ambitious about setting this thing up properly, I could find at least one recipient a month, maybe one per week. If I allow crummy LIE drivers to earn a trophy I could hand out one per day.
But let’s not get too carried away.
I was really hoping that the Easter weekend would bring nothing but lighthearted news fare. Isn’t it the nature of pessimists to be always pleasantly surprised while the optimists always get the letdown? Not THIS weekend. What a bummer. The drunk driver story was only the beginning. A West Islip news story about a cat-killing neighbor sent me into a fit of morose brooding about the human race; if morons like these can go on breathing with impunity, is there any future left for the sane people? According to a police report, the bad neighbor would steal the cats, take them to an animal shelter and have them put to sleep. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I thought it was a page from a Stephen King short story.
Unfortunately there is no cutesy award I can hand out to mark THIS guy’s brand of stupid. I sincerely hope they give him the maximum sentence, if he’s found guilty. Of course, if he’s NOT guilty (we have to give benefit of the doubt, I’m told-it’s supposed to be good journalism.) then I hope whoever DID commit the crimes has a bank safe or a grand piano fall on his head.
I suppose there are people out there who would say that’s going a bit too far. Maybe so. Still, news stories like this lead me to believe that the zombies really have taken over, and it’s up to the few remaining live people to try and make some sense out of the world. I go back to my original idea for the award; there has to be some kind of public recognition for the zombies in our lives, doesn’t there?
Something we can point to like the Academy Awards, which everybody knows is the stamp of approval saying it’s all right to say you enjoyed a dingbat Hollywood fluff movie. Before you start screaming at me for THAT one, remember that every movie made in Hollywood goes before endless “focus groups” to see how “the audience liked it”. Whole plot elements often get changed based on those focus groups. If we had one for dingbats like the drunk drivers and cat killers of the world, maybe we’d be better off, but the movies that are shaped by this process generally suck. You’d never catch Bergman or Truffaut asking a focus group whether the ending of THEIR movies are OK.
But I rant and rave here, and get far from my original point, which was to identify the buffoons and dimwits of this world with their own special prize.
It’s a concept I’ll have to give up, it would cost a fortune to have a trophy done up every time some dingbat tries to convince us that the human race really won’t make it very far. I suppose I’ll have to settle for venting my spleen here, but what about the rest of you? It may not keep me up very long at night, but I do lie awake sometimes wondering what the rest of Long Island is thinking about when they read the bad news stories. Just one bit of friendly advice when reading about the knuckleheads of the world; don’t take the law into your own hands no matter how tempting it is; it’s dangerous, illegal, and usually ends in tears. Besides, you can always sue.
My editor will probably hint that I shouldn’t encourage people to cast frivolous lawsuits. I say if you sue someone for being an idiot, that sure as hell ain’t frivolous in the case of any allegedly drunk drivers slamming into police cars.
