You want to know what irks me? Too bad, I’m going to tell you anyway. The “…for dummies” and “complete idiot’s guide to…” series of books. They’re fantastic to read, I’ll give you that, but recently they’ve been trying to convince dummies and idiots to do things that they just shouldn’t do.
These titles started out fairly reasonably, things like, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to AOL” and “MS Word for Dummies.” Great! Fantastic! Idiot’s are well equipped to use AOL and Dummies use MS Word all of the time. These are perfectly acceptable tasks for idiots and dummies and I applaud the authors and publishers for helping society’s less intelligent members to function properly.
Recently, however, I’ve noticed a distrubing trend. There are still some books that deserve to be published: Communicating Effectively for Dummies and Cool Careers For Dummies, for example, but there are some that should just be left alone.
For your viewing pleasure, I offer a sampling of the topics that dummies and idiots should have NOTHING to do with:
- Homebrewing Great! Encourage them to kill MORE brain cells!.
- Magic - Look, kids, when I open the refrigerator door, the light comes on!
- Opera - NO NO NO! BAD DUMMY!
- Sex & Pregnancy - This happens enough already. Result: stupid kids.
- First Aid - “Get AWAY from me with that band-aid!”
- Indoor Grilling - This is trouble waiting to happen.
- Leadership - Did someone say “City Council?”
- Pit Bulls - On second thought… GOOD IDEA… “Go on, poke him with that stick!”
- E-Commerce - “Hey maw! I’munna sell the pig on that thar ‘nterneck!”
- Success - What’s in there? How to open a can of ravioli?
- Networking - That’s just what we need… moron.net
- Anything Linux Related - Enough said.
As you can see, there are just FAR too many ways for dummies to think that they’re capable of doing things that they just shouldn’t do. What I think we need is “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being a Moron… For Dummies.” Maybe THEN some people will have a chance to quit being so damn stupid.
Until that time, I’ll be looking for “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Germ Warfare” or “Building a Nuclear Reactor For Dummies”…
Hmmm… I think dummy-hood is sectional. Like, Einstein was a genius but maybe didn\’t know the first thing about car repair, or something like that. Take me, for example. I am a fairly functional human being, but I would have blown up my kitchen by now if it weren\’t for Cooking For Dummies.
How many Dummies do you know that can/do read 300 page books?? It seems to me that Dummies are not the ones who read these books in the first place…unless there\’s a \”How to Read for Dummies\” to get them started…
Regardless… there are still some things that dummies (true dummies) should not be doing: Entrepreneurship, programming in linux or unix, and raising pit bulls are perfect examples.
I\’ve got one \”How to live with Pete, I mean Dummies.\” Written by Michael Alexander and Jim Crowell.
*crunch crunch crunch* < --popcorn
Oh, don\’t mind me. I\’m channel surfing, and this show looks like it might be good too. *grin*
How about an \”Idiot\’s Guide to Writing Books for Dummies?\” You could potentially double the revenue that way…