...ok so a unicorn then. ;-)

Yes, it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness, but let's all first agree that it's dark.

If you are running the stand-up then gauge how useful they are and adjust - you may be part of the problem. If they're not useful, cancel them. Recast your stand-ups and keep people on point - if the point of your stand-up is not to further a single project but rather for a group of people to get together to justify their paycheck for the previous day, then you probably need to stop calling them stand-ups and just admit it's homeroom and everyone has to share what they did yesterday to make the world a better place.

In all my "agile" experience so far I have only been on one project that ran stand-ups the way I described - 1 project where all participants had a stake in what the others were doing and we didn't have to have it daily - if some key participant wasn't available or the group felt the time was better spent on project activities - that's what we did. Projects and teams should be agile not "Agile".