For, what, millenia now? there’ve been chain emails and jokes and websites and whatever else circulating online listing stupid or crazy or funny laws.Over the last few months I’ve come across two such sites. The first one (I have no idea how I found it) I sifted through and then concluded it was written by extremely naive young Americans, I mean the very stereotype of naive young American’s who’ve just left their hometown for the first time, let alone their homestate or homeland: “Wow, like, it’s legal to smoke weed in Holland!” Uh, actually, I believe it’s technically illegal, but decriminalised, meaning when it’s bought and smoked in certain amounts in certain places in certain circumstances the police won’t bother you, and most of western Europe seems to have similar policies. And hasn’t this been very, very common knowledge for years now? And how does such a “law” get characterised as “stupid”?
And the second such site I’m reading now. I only just found it, thanks, I believe, to Coming Anarchy, although I think their responsibility is only indirect. Anyway, it seems to have a similar America-centric focus (as in so far I haven’t noticed any kind of international section) and it seems to actually be a funny read. There are, however, inclusions that really shouldn’t be on any list of funny, crazy, or stupid laws. What is so weird about Arizona’s ban on refusing anybody a glass of water? Isn’t Arizona mostly desert and almost always extremely hot? In the real world, refusing a person a glass of water in a climate like Arizona’s could well amount to manslaughter, or something very close to that. It’s not the law that’s stupid, it’s the people who think such a law in such a state with such a climate is something to laugh at. However, this second site does seem to be actually a little bit funny. From the Arizona section (the “crazy” laws are listed by state alphabetically; Arizona seems to get a fair few common sense laws that out of state idiots think are crazy because they haven’t thought about Arizona’s very obvious situation):
Mohave County: A decree declares that anyone caught stealing soap must wash himself with it until it is all used up.
Now that is both funny and a damn good law. I’d love to be a prison guard charged with enforcing this kind of law. Well, for a day or two, maybe.
Actually, no, I take that back. Most of the contents of both sites are equally inane. Fortunately there are one or two gems.
