Hey, Idiot! Chronicles of Human Stupidity

by Leland Gregory

Features more than two hundred stories celebrating the worst traits of humanity and idiocy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humor, History, Comedy

249 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Marty Carey]

Mildly entertaining, but it was disconcerting to see that a lot of the material seemed to have been looted from another book. I would have appreciated some source material. Florida Man is alive and well.

[Paul Sand]

[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]

This is a stupid book about stupidity. I can't remember why I have it. Did I buy it? That would have been stupid. Maybe a Christmas gift from long ago? That would make more sense; it has the air of something strategically re-gifted.

But I wouldn't—couldn't—shuffle this awful book off to someone else. Pun Salad Manor is where re-gifting chains finally end.

It's 249 pages. Allegedly a "humor" book, but I can honestly say I didn't laugh once. The author, Leland Gregory, has a Facebook page, in which he describes himself as "The Official Chronicler of Human Stupidity".

Which means: he scours the media for oddball stories, cuts and pastes, adds occasional snarky comments, and when he gets to a certain number, Voila, another book crapped out.

I suppose it's a living. At least he's not a politician.

Example, an item titled "Tic-Tac-Don't":

A nine-year-old student from Weems Elementary School in Manassas, Virginia, was suspended under the schools zero-tolerance policy on drugs. The boy had been caught giving his friends a Certs breath mint. The school policy not only bans real drugs but also "look-alikes" that a reasonable person would believe is a controlled substance. Defending his son's reputation, the boy's father said, "He's not a breath-mint addict or anything like that." Not yet, but who knows where something like this might lead?

Thigh-slapper? No. (But here, if you're interested, is the Washington Post story on which the item is apparently based.)

249 pages of this sort of thing is the very definition of tedious reading.

Anyway: I own it, I put it on the to-be-read pile, and eventually it came up. And now I'm using it to inflate my book-reading numbers. Does that make me stupid? Probably.

[Chris C.]

This book is actually pretty funny; Leland Gregory does a very good job as he compiles man stories that show how little common sense people actually have.

[Amanda Briggs]

I think it should have had funnier ones than they did... it was kind of boring.

[Jennifer Daniel]

A hoot! If you like the "Darwin Awards" series this will appeal to you.

[Faith Davies]

Nowt so queer as folk. (Expression from the North of England)

I loved this trawl through stupidity! Some of the things left me helpless with laughter & some just plain confused. A huge treasure trove was overlooked, however, by not including some of the British sports commentators, in particular David Coleman who made so many gaffs that Private Eye dubbed them "Colemanballs" & regularly published them in the magazine. Gems include - "That's the fastest time ever run but it's not as fast as the world record", or " The lineup for the women's 400 metre hurdles includes 3 Russians,2 E.Germans, a Pole, a Swede and a Frenchman." Or the glorious Murray Walker who used to commentate on F1. " There's nothing wrong with the car apart from it's on fire". " Do my eyes deceive me or is Senna's Lotus sounding rough?". Football (soccer to Americans!) is another rich vein of idiocy. Footballer turned pundit, Terry Venables, " They didn't change positions, they just moved the players around". Martin Hodge, " I spent 4 indifferent years at Goodison but they were great years ". There's the moment when the normally austere cricket commentator , Jonathan Agnew announced" Botham failed to get his leg over " reducing the famously giggly but oh so posh Brian 'Jonners' Johnston to a helpless wreck for some minutes. Every time one of them regained control, the other would start sniggering sending them off again. Bear in mind that all of the cricket commentators were achingly posh gents of a certain age. The quote? Apparently it's something to do with the stumps!

The thing with the releasing of those mink was an unmitigated disaster for our native wildlife, nearly bringing about the extinction of many. In some places numbers still haven't recovered. Species like water voles may never do so again as they have to battle habitat loss as well. I'm normally on the side of the animal rights defenders but that was so monumentally ill-thought-out that it engendered nothing but hostility, quite rightly so. The wretched things are still at large, even now, as attempts to eradicate them still haven't worked 100%.

I seem to have digressed from the book widely so apologies for that, not that I think anyone has read this far! To sum up - I enjoyed the book, particularly the lampooning of self important bureaucrats & the lunacy of political correctness taken to the nth degree. I hope the next book expands its horizons & looks further afield. British law is a wonderful area to mine!

[Judi]

The incidents reported in the book were interesting and often quite funny. I took away one star because a lot of the time when there was a court case involved they mentioned everything about the case except for the verdicts. Since they did mention it sometimes I was disappointed not to know if the people won their lawsuits the majority of the time.
The chapters were organized according to the nature of the incidents, lawyers, university students, doctors, etc.
Each page was a new example of idiocy making the book very fast and easy to read.

[Bob Crawford]

I worked with a friend once, a very smart woman who would occasionally display a starkly shallow attitude. Noting an offhand flip remark, I said, “gosh, you can really be shallow sometimes. Her reply?
“We all need a little shallow to balance off the deep.”
I can’t argue with that and this book represents my “shallow.”
It is good for a few laughs at others’ expense and is a quick read.

[Ryley Balon]

Absolute garbage

I only read this because it was on sale and I bought it. I waited too long to be able to return it. The layout is trash, there are very rare sources, and there are even a few urban legends that made it into the mix.

Would rate 0 if I could.

[Janice Smith]

WOW! Just, wow!

This world has lost its mind! Or maybe, it has just adapted to its surroundings! Oy! Crazy that some people CAN get away with such bad behavior and then sometimes, you reap what you sow! Oh goodness. Made me both chuckle and cringe.

[Jennifer Holloway Jones]

I liked that the author separated the different chronicles into type, however I felt that I had heard many of the stories before. I wanted to see the observations of the author somewhere. I felt that it was just a google search of human stupidity without any kind of preamble or unique thought.

[Miss Clark]

Enjoyable anecdotes, although some are so inane as to be just depressing.

Sadly, nothing is sourced.

[Karen Cowgill]

Very good book! Funny, some sad, stories of...umm, idiots!! People can be so strange!

[Joan Wells]

OMG ...I'm delirious !!!

[Kathleen]

Enterning, full of wow and face palm moment!

[dutch]

Wow

I always thought that I was not very bright, Really seems I'm perfectly spot better than anyone mentioned in this what ,,,just happened.. Had to reread the story more then once

[Jim Viviano]

Great useless knowledge bathroom read!

Easy, fun read. Sorry, but I don't have seventeen extra things to say about this book to fulfill the word count requirements.

[Mama K]

Too funny...and, frankly, pretty scary.

[Susan D. Robinson]

Fun

Do not usually get these. It was a fun change page 125 slated me. Give it a try. There are some pretty funny and a lot of lame

[Patricia A. Gallagher]

A Quick Read

Amateur writing style is as entertaining as some of the stories. I was happy to be done with it and glad it was free!

[Don]

Lots of wasted space that could have been used to list more instances of stupidly, so this in itself can be a showing of their own stupidity in not doing.

[Mark Meiss]

Slop.

Badly researched, full of urban legends, brimming with Boomeresque conservative rants, containing many bits taken out of context, and only occasionally amusing. Hack crap.

[Karla Wilson]

Hilarious. Great quick read

[Sharron Joy Reads]

Such fun!

[Thelostbookmark]

Absolutely Nonsense

I found myself dumbfounded by some of the stories throughout this books. Again I am shocked how many of the stories came from my homes state 😭

[Jeff]

I didn't expect much. And I got it.

[Andrew]

I chose this book, because I was scanning the school library in search for a book to do for my reviews. I first saw its spine and the title caught my attention. “Hey Idiot!” is a collection of true stories of hilarious and stupid events that have happened in the news or elsewhere around the world. It also includes funny laws or idiotic blunders from newspapers. My favorite quote was “One man wound up in the hospital and another in jail when they got in a fight over which one had the hairiest butt,” because of the sheer stupidity of the brawl and its after effects. The style of the author’s writing is the same throughout the book, but the viewpoints differ from each story. I would recommend this book to most of my friends, because it is really funny. However, this book does contain some mature content.