How I set my testicles afire...share your dumb story

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So in the [thread=505137]Swiss Army Knife thread,[/thread] it came up that I’d once set myself afire.

I was an oceanography graduate student at the time. I’d been to the antarctic and collected a bunch of water samples for dissolved sulfur compounds, and had to analyse them back in the US of A. I had arranged to work with an old flame ionization detector gas chromatograph, which lived in an underutilized outbuilding. I’d put the seawater sample in a gastight chamber and submerge it in boiling water, which would drive out all the interesting chemicals. The chemical gases would go down a tube filled with resins, which was submerged in liquid nitrogen *, where they would stick, getting concentrated. I would then switch the liquid nitrogen with boiling oil, driving the concentrated gases into the gas chromatograph, where they would hit a pilot light, which would ignite them. The machine would then detect the amount of gas by detecting the burny-ness of the flame.

This was a very boring process. Water in, sit, boil, sit, liquid nitrogen off, boiling oil on, sit, beep, push button, repeat. The flame kept going out, and the machine would complain, and I had to quick relight the flame with my trusty zippo, or else the sample would be lost. After a week of this, all alone in the world, isolated in an outbuilding, I’m living like a bachelor. I’m reading cheezy mystery novels and wearing my tatty-est, holey-est jeans, and old tee shirts - water in, sit, boil, sit, liquid nitrogen off, boiling oil on, sit, beep, push button, repeat. I discover that I can light the zippo off the jeans of my thigh by rolling the wheel along my leg, then flick the lid down on the zippo to put it out.

After another week of this, I’m sitting there, :water in, sit, read, play with lighter, boil, sit, read, play with lighter, liquid nitrogen off, boiling oil on, sit read, play with lighter, beep, push button, repeat.

Happy in my carefree isolation, I fart. The gas shoots out my butt in the usual fashion, but finds an exit to the outside world through the holes in my jeans. The leading edge of noxious gas meets the Zippo flame and ignites - I see a tongue of blue flame shoot into my pants - did I mention drawers were not coming to work anymore? - and feel my pubic hairs burst into flame.

I yell, leap up, drop trou and, ahem, beat out my testicles. I redress and run to the washroom, so I can inspect the damage. It’s pretty deforested, but I’m otherwise fine.

Moral of the story? Science is a dangerous calling, just like on the late late show.

Now that I’ve set the bar nice and low, tell me your embarrassing story.

*I also froze my tongue to a banana during this period. Go figure.

2

You had kids? I mean its pretty hard to top.

3

As a school kid, I went down with Dad to the bank to do some photocopying while Dad worked late. Finished a lot sooner than he was, I sat in a cashier’s chair, kicking my heels, waiting for him.

Then I saw a button under the counter (you can probably skip to the :o at the end of the story). Wondering what it did, I pressed it. Then pressed it again. Nothing happened. So I asked Dad what it did. Don’t push that, it’s the silent alarm for the cashier says Dad. Gulp, thinks I. Then, with the sort of thought processes for which I really should be famed, I thought “7pm, why would the police come down here?” I pictured them sitting back, looking at a little flashing light on a board and hitting a button to switch it off, then having a snooze.

No such luck of course, a few minutes later there was a ring at the door and Dad answered. He came back in with a police officer, fully armed, and pointed at me. When the office left, having been convinced that everything was ok, Dad simply said “You pressed the button, didn’t you?”. Only now, as I right this, do I wonder if Dad got in any bother over that.

Oh yeah, :o, for those of you who skipped to the ending.

4

**Attack **- that is pure comedy GOLD!

My bouts with stupidly would, in effect, translate into a minute-by-minute journal - too many to choose from :smack:

5

I’m going to print this out and stick it to my computer. :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley: Hoo-hoo, what a story!

6

I subsequently had kids. The flaming testicles of science had failed to remove me from the gene pool. They (the kids, not the testicles) seem to take after their mother in the common sense department, thank god.

7

Lighting farts should be a part of every young mans life experience IMO. Its primitive and hilarious. That having been said, I never suffered any unwanted burning due to lighting a fart, but a friend of mine (during our fart lighting sessions) burned all his ass hair off. Seems that in certain positions, with a certain type of jeans and with enough gas, the flame gets trapped in the pants and then you wave bye-bye to the hair on your ass.

8

I have never been as happy to be a girl as I am right now.

9

Nice.

I’ll share.

I was planning on making myself a smoothie for lunch one day. In preparation for this endeavor, however, I decided that the blade mechanism on our KitchenAid blender wasn’t catching the gear on the base properly. My brilliant solution to this problem was to place the empty glass pitcher on the base, reach in and hold the blades, then hit pulse.

It didn’t quite work out like I planned. Neither was it as injurious as it probably should have been. You know how liquid in a blender gets thrown up and out if the lid isn’t on? That’s what happened to my hand before any real damage could occur. I was left with merely a nick, a bruise, and shame.

10

When I was in grade school we got a new dog. My brothers and sister and I were always finding new games for him to play, and one day we hit upon something new to do with his ball. He loved chasing it, and would go after it if it was thrown, or just peacefully lying there. So we started playing keep away with it. Snickers would chase after the person who had the ball, who was usually holding it in front of them them teasing him with it, trying to tear it out of their hands. We got him to the point where he was leaping mouth first as soon as he saw it.

So I get thrown the ball.
I’m holding it out in front of me at about waist height.
Snickers leaps at me, mouth open wide.
I pull the ball away right before he bites down on it.
Snickers continues his arc of travel, which terminates at my crotch.
Snickers’ jaws continue the act of trying to close on the ball.
Crunch

Standing in the bathroom with your pants around your ankles while your mother tries to put neosporin on your bleeding nutsack but can’t because she’s laughing so hard cuz our dog just chomped on it is a humbling experience.

11

When I was a fraternity pledge, we were required to always carry a Zippo lighter, in case a brother pulled out a cigarette. We had to learn to quickly open and light the Z with one hand. This led to various ways of playing with fire. I found I could put my hand in my pocket, partly open the lighter, strike a flame, and close it before I got burned. It didn’t occur to me the flash of flame could be seen through my pants, until I was walking across campus on a warm spring night.

A girl from my history class asked me what the hell was flashing in my pants. “Oh, that? (flicking the lighter again):o Just glad to see you!”

Later, playing with butane (or, as I called 'em, profane) lighters, we found we could get a little fire ball in the palm of the hand. Holding one hand closed around an air space, I’d hold the gas button down for part of a second into the enclosed space. Simultaneously striking the flint and opening the hand gave a quick ball of fire in the open hand. I was easily amused, when I was a dumb college-y guy.

12

There was that unfortunate incident when a childhood chum and I decided that there was only one way to find out for sure whether the black substance in a mason jar was gunpowder. That way was to start dropping lit matches into the jar. Note that word “dropping.” The mental picture that should give you is two dufuses (dufi?) standing over the jar of possible gunpowder as they try to ignite it.

13

There once was a man from Green Bay,
Who was making explosives one day
He dropped his cigar
In a gunpowder jar
There *once *was a man from Green Bay

:wink:

14

Well, when it ignited, it did this rocket-exhaust kind of thing. Which we, of course, were peering straight into. Funny thing how fast black powder goes up once you get it lit. The clouds of smoke pouring out of the shed door attracted parental attention. The asswhooping actually hurt more than the minor burns and loss of eyebrows.

15

I’ve told this one elsewhere but here it is again>

I was in my bathrobe making a bowl of ravioli in the microwave. The microwave occupied all but the last inch and half of the counter. The bowl was a perfect hemisphere. So when I was pulling out the bowl with a washcloth, I didn’t have a good grip. The bowl dropped from my hands and I lurched forward to pin the bowl since there wasn’t enough room on the counter for it. This somehow cause the contents of the bowl to slosh in such a way that a single ravioli shot skyward and hit the ceiling. The ravioli must have stuck for only a second because as I was leaning over the hot bowl trying to reset my grip, it landed on the back of my neck. So I suddenly had a burning ravioli on the back of my neck but I had both hands full. And I couldn’t jump up and down or anything too vigorous as I was still using my body to hold the bowl in place. Fortunately, the ravioli fell away. Unfortunately, it went down my robe and almost lodged in the top of the crack of my ass.

16

I know the meme is old, but:

Flaming Testicles of Science

Band Name.

17

This is why I buy my 9 year old son black powder and duct tape and fuse – and he is supervised. He gets to be a boy and play with fire, but under the watchful eye of the idiot that already lost eyebrows, nose hairs, etc!

I must admit that being female, I have the obvious advantage of enough common sense to never do anything blatantly stupid and admit to it. Besides that, I had 2 older brothers – I learned by watching them.

18

There was a friend of my older brother who did this once. He was from a affluent family, with one of those names like “Pennington Symthe IV”(he was actually the fourth). As with many families where multiple generations share a name, he mainly went by a nickname, which his father had given him when he was very young. He squatted over the gas space heater in our bathroom(like many homes built before central heat/AC, ours had a heater in the bathroom) and let rip. We could actually see a bit of blue flame follow his vapor trail into his pants, and it seemed the reaction actually launched him face first into the opposite wall. The fact that his face had just impacted a wall at significant velocity didn’t seem to matter as he immediately started screaming that his “ass is on FIRE”. I didn’t stay to watch the cleanup, but supposedly he had a nice first degree burn and no remaining hair around his butthole.

Oh, his nickname?

Goober.

Enjoy,
Steven

19

They say a dog can’t be trusted once it’s tasted blood. Is the same true of scrotum?

20

Back when I was a starving art student, I was living in a tiny apartment in a run-down old building. The refrigerator/freezer probably dated back to the late 50s and had a nasty tendency to build up a ton of ice in a very short amount of time. I had to defrost it at least once every 2-3 weeks.

At one point, in the central Texas summer heat, I was defrosting the damn thing. The process seemed to be going slower than usual, and I really wanted to head out and find something more entertaining to do, preferably in a place with air-conditioning, so I decided to use a big butcher knife to speed things up.

I would lay the blade flat, jab it in a little ways, and use my other hand to hammer it up under the ice; a quick twist of the wrist and SNAP! the ice would break up into big sheets that I could just pitch into the sink.

After about 15-20 minutes, most of the ice was gone and there was a mini Loch Ness of water all over the kichen floor, as some of my pitches to the sink fell a bit short. The phone in the living room rang; I turned and hurried to go grab it, still holding my big 'ol knife.

Next thing I know, I’m laying on the wet kitchen floor on my belly with my hands underneath me and a big knife going through me and coming out my back. There was a sudden shriek of, “Owwwwww!Goddamnitmotherfuckersonofabitchfuckfuckfuckityfuck!!” I’m pretty sure it was me.

The knife had gone in, and out, through the inch or so layer of meat and subcutaneous flab just above my left hip; another inch or three to the right and it would’ve hit something important. I pulled the knife, put a wet handful of paper towels on the wound, and called my girlfriend to come take me to the Emergency Room. After sitting and bleeding for about a half hour, they stitched me up, gave me a tetanus shot and a handful of painkillers and sent me on my merry way.

Now, twenty-some-odd years later, I have two scars, about three inches apart, on my lower left side. I tell my son it’s from a duel with a pirate captain.