I understand that stupid is in the eye of the beholder, and that when you're trying to assemble enough things to build a calendar you probably have to set the bar pretty low, but this calendar is repeatedly filled with the kind of nonsense that makes me thing the people who put it together were just grabbing frantically at random quotations by the end. In order to declare everything in this calendar "stupid," which I remind you these authors have done, you would have to (intentionally or through accident of birth (or perhaps motor vehicle)) possess a brutal ignorance of things like standard idiom, the concept of irony, the difficulties of translation, and the function of computers.
Yes, when Hillary Clinton referred to children who think 'work' is a four-letter word, an asininely literal interpretation could lead you to the misunderstanding that she thought it wasn't. Or, if you aren't a complete buffoon, perhaps you're familiar with the phrase "a four-letter word," which means "profanity." While this euphemism is somewhat archaic, I really don't believe it's entirely vanished from our cultural lexicon, and even if it has, anyone near my age or older should remember it anyway, and even if the authors of this calendar are in fact children (which might explain a lot), it seems to me that a little research would go a long way. Clinton's decision to use this particular euphemism was very likely deliberate, and the only error was in relying on her audience to have a clue, which she probably should have figured out years ago was not going to happen.
Yes, I understand that mistranslated signs can be funny. There are all manner of websites devoted to the concept of "Engrish," slogans and warnings that contain strange misunderstandings of the English language, and while I'm not a huge fan of the phenomenon, I can see the appeal. But complete gibberish mistranslations that are just random words, like the beach sign in Israel (I've long since tossed that page so I can't cite the specifics), while arguably stupid, aren't funny. Including them here isn't sharing some delightfully unintentional bon mot, it's making fun of people who don't speak our language very well. That's great, o mighty calendar authors, and I really hope you're natural polyglots, fluent in every language you ever need to use even in the slightest, because otherwise you're just pricks.
Now let's talk about the infamous Adobe updater message. I freely admit the phrasing is redundant, but what's happening here is that an update needs to be installed that the updater, in its current form, can't handle. So you have to update program A so it can update program B. Annoying? Perhaps. Poor design? Not in my opinion, but I'm sure some would disagree. Stupid? Not really, no. It serves a function.
Look, I get it. They can't all be winners. I understand. But we're talking about quotes. People. Saying stupid things. It's a no-brainer. Going to collect 365 dumbass things uttered by human beings throughout the whole of recorded history and having to resort to gibberish mistranslations? That's like when Kerry tried to call Bush stupid and wound up insulting every member of the armed forces. If you can't handle such a simple task, maybe it's not one you should be undertaking.
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