And you thought your laws were stupid...
Written: Jan 05 '05
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Funny book to read
Cons: The laws are grossly misinterpretted and forced to be funny.
The Bottom Line: If you stay open minded about the laws and just take them for the entertainment value, it's a great book, otherwise, leave it alone.
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| biscuitfarmer's Full Review: Jeff Koon, Andy Powell, Ward Schumaker - You May N... |
I really am happy that I am the first person to get to write a review about this book, because I actually have known the two that wrote this book for quite some time. The writers of this book Jeff Koon and Andy Powell and I go way back on the internet. They had and still do have a site called dumblaws.com. I had a website called dumbfacts.com and dumbbumpers.com. We decided that we should get together and promote each others sites into a sort of network if you will to help each other get more traffic. Well, as things went along, I got busier on other internet marketing projects, and they offered to buy off my two websites, so I agreed. I never knew how much they would make off of those websites, or I never would have sold them. But anyway, back to the book and my good friends who wrote it. To this day, I still do talk to Andy quite a bit over AIM and ICQ.
Background
You may not tie an alligator to a fire hydrant... is actually a collection of all of the stupidest laws that could be found through research and looking in old state books. While laws generally aren't considered interesting, they are when you read this book.
Organization
The book is extremely well organized for it's intended purpose. The book is split up into sections by state. So you can easily go to your state and find out what stupid laws exist there. Then the states are broken down into individual cities or just by state laws and these are all alphabetical of course.
Then each law is completely explained and there are references to the actual law as it is stated in the books. Some of the laws don't outright say that you can do this or you can't do that, they are quite general and have been interpretted as such for humorous purposes.
The Laws
While there aren't a lot of laws for all of the states, some of them I have listed below:
It is a felony to cut off your arm as to make someone feel sorry for you - Alabama
The actual law states, "maiming yourself to escape duty or obtain alms"
Obviously the interpretation of that law is quite a bit different than the law itself. However, the intended purpose is for entertainment and technically, as the law reads, it's so vague that the interpretation is entirely correct unless a court of law states it to be see otherwise. With most laws, it all comes down to the court's interpretation of the law, which thus sets a presidence for how the law must be viewed. In other words, judges may not write the laws, but they sure as hell have control over their meaning, so they have to be very precise, unlike this one.
There are quite a few other laws in the books that are just like that, just like the title of the book, you can't tie an alligator to a fire hydrant. The laws are extremely easy to manipulate in order to make them humorous. It's unfortunate that the publisher made them post the real law along with it, as it sort of takes the steam out of most of the humor of the laws, but they still are quite funny to think about.
There actually are some laws in the book that are almost completely word for word true. The problem is that they are so few and far between that it can somewhat detract from the entertainment that the book is trying to provide. While Dumb Laws are an American way of life, sometimes it seems that the entertainment value may not be as great as we'd like it to be.
Overview
While the laws are grossly misinterpretted for the sake of entertainment and humor, they definitely can be taken that way, if one so chooses, I suppose. However, without the law being more precisely written it goes to show that one can never be too careful of what they put on paper as it could easily be misconstrued to be something completely different.
This book while it really doesn't represent to many laws how they were really meant to be interpretted, it's a funny look at how things get twisted in the heads of others and made to be something totally different than they really are.
I still think overall, this is a good book for any age group, and although not a completely serious look at the law, I think it's a good introduction to laws for children as it's entertaining and may be a good way to teach them about the legal system, congress, or any other body of law, just as long as you don't get too caught up in the explaination and bore them. I know that if I were a teacher, I would probably throw in a dumb law into class every now and then just to keep them interested. Then I'd have them create ways to make that law better and write it so that it's intended purpose were served. So, maybe this book has purposes beyond just entertainment.
Recommended:
Yes
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Member: Clacky McSnackens
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