April 15 - send the new reporter to the post office at midnight.
Black Friday - new reporter to the mall to see the soccer moms fight over the Cabbage Patch kids.
December 24 - send the new reporter to the mall to interview bad husbands buying last minute gifts.
January 1 - See the divorce lawyers rejoice in the start of a new year... "I can't stand one more holiday with my family. You are the only one who can help."

Well sure but then again Super Bowl Sunday (tm) is the busiest day for emergency rooms, due to all the wife beatings. I know it's true because my friend's friend heard it from his uncle's auto mechanic who knows an ER doctor.

/see?
//there ought to be a way to make money off this crap.

The "double whammy" of Christmas and the credit crunch will make this week one of the busiest ever for divorce lawyers, experts said today.

No whammies, no whammies, no whammies...STOP! Awww...fark you, Christmas.

migueldelascervezas: jamesmusik: I thought people were sticking together because they can't afford to get divorced...

This was my understanding. Unless they're morons and do them online....

Online divorce? Got a link?

The idea of the full moon making people crazy is "repeatedly debunked" as well but as someone who has worked in EMS I can tell you that people DO go nuts on a full moon.

Devilbunee: My wife left me today, so I got kicked....

Congrats! Now you can go get a younger and sexy girlfriend.

/It's good to be divorced

I_C_Weener:

April 15 - send the new reporter to the post office at midnight.
Black Friday - new reporter to the mall to see the soccer moms fight over the Cabbage Patch kids.
December 24 - send the new reporter to the mall to interview bad husbands buying last minute gifts.
January 1 - See the divorce lawyers rejoice in the start of a new year... "I can't stand one more holiday with my family. You are the only one who can help."

If a number of people carried that kind of list around with them on a 3" x 5" card, laminated, and when a reporter came up to 'em simply looked up the date and read off what the subject was, at the very least everyone around them would start to get the picture that the news outlets are lazy.

Biff: Biff Bartleson, Action 10 news...sir, how do you feel about this weather?
Citizen #1: *consults his card* Huh. According to my schedule, you guys are about to make a stupid joke about frying eggs on the sidewalk. Am I right?
Biff: ...
Citizen #1: Of course I'm right. Oh, and just for the record "it's not the heat, it's the humidity", "it feels hotter than it ever did before" and "I can't believe how hot it is". Does that about sum it up?
Biff: ... Johnny, cut that segment. Let's find someone else. You, ma'am, how do you feel about the weather?
Citizen #2: Dude's right. I'm tired of seeing the same dumb interviews. G'bye!

Shakespeare's Monkey: Well sure but then again Super Bowl Sunday (tm) is the busiest day for emergency rooms, due to all the wife beatings. I know it's true because my friend's friend heard it from his uncle's auto mechanic who knows an ER doctor.

The interesting thing about this myth is that, if you look behind the marquee event it actually makes sense that LESS men would be infuriated by the outcome of the game than any other during the NFL season. Only two teams are playing, so besides the gamblers, the likelihood of your team losing and causing ultimate suffering (which is then passed on to the missus for some reason) is pretty low.

My wife works in a Domestic Violence shelter and they've had very few clients lately. A drop during the holidays is normal, but they think the serious lack of calls is due to the job market. Sad, really, considering that women have to basically submit to regular torture because the option is homelessness for them and their kids.

I can see this concern putting a hold on divorce plans, too.

Conservationist: Most people are completely clueless when it comes to voting, driving and buying the DVD player for $129 that will last ten years instead of the $29 one that will last for two.

Why do you expect marriage to be any different?

We need eugenics soon or our civilization will resemble Idiocracy.

I've got a $400 DVR* and a 10-year-old marriage.

As for Eugenics, not everyone can be smart. But not everyone HAS to be smart. The average driver couldn't design and build a car. Most people online wouldn't be able to put together their own computer, never mind understanding what's going on under the hood. You can operate a lightswitch or a toilet without being an electrician or a plumber.

Smart people will always be in a lesser supply than the general population, by definition. Idiocracy did say that the dumber people tend to breed faster, but they neglected a key factor - you only require a small fraction of the population to be smart in order for progress and advancement to continue. To use an analogy, one general can command a large number of NCOs.

Smart people aren't alone; it can just feel that way sometimes. Half the people in the world have above-average intelligence.

_{*It plays anything from anywhere.}

msheda: Ok, you've convinced me, I'm going to divorce my imaginary wife.

Anyone got the number for a good imaginary attorney?

Hope I don't have to pay any imaginary alimony (all my money? ).

If I do, I'll have to do an imaginary murder.

Don't worry. Miss jpg sleeps around, so you should be able to prove infidelity with astonishing ease.

NeverDrunk23: I've never heard of this theory.

However, I have heard of the 'Gym memberships multiply x100000 in the first week of January' story.

It always does seem to be busier the first month or two of the year. This morning mine was relatively busy compared to how many people were there at the same time back in early December.

jst3p:
/love the movie
//hate the idiots that think it is an in progress documentary.

To be fair, it is only fairly recently that we as a society encourage the breeding of idiots under the umbrella of "compassion." In previous generations, they'd be starving. So in some ways we may well see an increase in stupidity. However, intelligence doesn't always breed true- I've seen farking morons have some smart kids, and smart parents have kids who don't have two brain cells to rub together.

You are correct, though, that the movie isn't a before-the-fact documentary. Any society with that much stupidity would have reverted to hunting and gathering; there's no way you can keep an urbanized industrial society going if everybody is a comparative retard.

theMagni:

Smart people will always be in a lesser supply than the general population, by definition. Idiocracy did say that the dumber people tend to breed faster, but they neglected a key factor - you only require a small fraction of the population to be smart in order for progress and advancement to continue. To use an analogy, one general can command a large number of NCOs.

The point in Idiocracy, though, was that the Smart:Dumbass ratio was decreasing. If that ratio gets low enough, you might very well have a population unwilling or even unable to listen to smarties....

stevarooni: The point in Idiocracy, though, was that the Smart:Dumbass ratio was decreasing. If that ratio gets low enough, you might very well have a population unwilling or even unable to listen to smarties....

If it is any consolation, my wife used to do IQ testing professionally and immersed herself in the topic for graduate school. People are getting smarter over time, so that they are re-centering the tests upward. She also gets really irritated every time I trot out the "half the population is of below-average intelligence." Evidently, the middle standard deviation (65% of the population is 85-115 IQ) are neither appreciably nor repeatably different in intelligence than the mode of 100.

Below and above that, the differences become noticeable and in rapid fashion.

BHShaman: Koalaesq: We have a lot of clients who approach us asking for a divorce and then give up when they realize (shock!) they won't necessarily get alimony and probably won't be able to survive out their on their own.

EG, my wife: Completely changed after our second child. Constantly brings up that she might be better off now with someone more "compatible" to her. After a few rounds of trying to offer counseling, and other strategies for us to address the issue and hearing that she just needs something different....

I agree, tell her I want one of our two kids and that we'll sell the house and split the equity. Then she can go off on her own with her P/T job that I used to subsidize with my earnings and try to make it. She has more degrees than I do, so it would be a hard sell getting alimony from me when her income potential is much higher.

She promptly calms down and recognizes that "for the good of the children" we should try working it out.

/still not made it to counseling

Many people are content and confuse that with being bored. You guys have been together for about 8 years, right? That's a rough time. The seven-year mark is when people realize that they've been in the relationship for a long, long time and it's their last chance to find someone new before they get too old to attract another mate.

Maybe she wants to try something new in bed. Ask her what she wants. (In my case, "a good night's sleep". badum kssh)

Anyway, marriage isn't always a firey passionate affair. It's a long-term business partnership with sexual overtones.

Conservationist: Most people are completely clueless when it comes to voting, driving and buying the DVD player for $129 that will last ten years instead of the $29 one that will last for two.

Yeah, you saved like a little over a buck and a half PER YEAR over ten years with nothing but your own genius and a 10 year-old DVD player.

You're the farking man. Clearly you deserve to be spared from your genetic purges.

blazemongr: Sybarite: Snopes seems to think it's true.

Yeah, but if Snopes was under the controlling eye of the divorce lawyers, how would we ever know about it?



Well we could just check on...hey, wait a minute!