I feel as though I have found my people on this thread. Unfortunately, most of my people are burned and maimed.
Hot, damn, 3acres+truck!!!
I can’t think of any of my good ones off the top of my head, but I did hit myself in the face with my racquetball racket a couple nights ago. The ball had some serious backspin on it, and was coming off the wall real low. I thought it was going to be about knee height, so I took my backswing, bent my knees, and started my stroke. When the ball hit the ground, it popped up a couple feet higher than I thought it was going to be. My hit-the-ball instinct was stronger than my don’t-hit-yourself-in-the-face-with-your-own-racket instinct that day, because I caught myself square in the nose with the edge of my racket. And then I got hit in the ass with the ball that day. Grr!!!
Well, let’s see here… so much to choose from.
Last summer I got into sort of a spud launcher arms race with a buddy of mine. One fine day I was over at his place testing out my new improved version. We needed a better target so he leaned a sheet of 1 inch plywood up against his van. Without thinking too hard I fired one of Idaho’s finest right through the plywood and into the side of the van. There was no potato debris but a cloud of starchy vapor could be seen drifting off downwind. We were flabbergasted but his wife was royally pissed off because apparently it was her van. I was over there helping fix that dent three weekends in a row. After that I installed a trigger safety on the spud launcher.
Couple years ago I was asked to help unclog a drain at my girlfriend’s parents place. It was a double sink in the kitchen and both sides were clogged solid. After futzing around with a plunger and drain cleaner awhile, her dad came out of the basement with an ancient can of compressed gas that was supposed to blast the clog down the pipes. By that time both sides of the sink were full of nasty gray water mixed with caustic. So GF’s dad stuffed a rag into one side while I gave it a blast on the other side. We never did figure out who lost their grip first, but it seemed that instantly about 20 gallons of naaaasty scum blasted all over us, the kitchen, the clean dishes, the stove, and the ceiling. We both sprinted to the bathroom and rinsed our eyes for quite awhile. Then we trudged back out to face the music. Two generations of irate female, in stereo.
Back when we were young and dumb, me and my brothers were playing in my back yard. We had dug a little pond and were re creating the battle of Guadalcanal with a bunch of old plastic models. Added realism was provided by a layer of flaming gas on top of the water. Just at the height of the battle I looked over to see flames licking from the gas can. I yelled and my bro grabbed the can and threw it around the corner of the house. FOOOOM! We sprinted around the corner and there was the entire woodpile on fire up against the house. We grabbed the hose and washed it off the house but it was still burning. Now it was under the laundry drying on the line and the woodpile was still burning. Clouds of black smoke rolled up under the eaves. That’s when we got the brilliant idea to soak all the sheets and towels, throw them on the fire, and stomp on them. We didn’t have enough, and every time we pulled up a towel that spot would burn again. But we kept it off the house and eventually got it put out.
OK. We had a scorched house, fried woodpile, trashed laundry, a killed gas can, and half the back yard was black. None of us had ever ran a washing machine and the folks were due home in two hours. We considered suicide but decided to try for a cover up instead. I broke all our piggy banks and got on my bike for a sprint to the gas station to buy a new gas can. Another guy got busy with soap and a broom scrubbing the smoke off the house. We dragged the laundry in and carefully followed the directions on the lid of the washing machine. A couple towels were fried and had to be buried. We re-stacked the woodpile with the burned spots hidden. The gas station didn’t have a can even kinda like the old one so I dashed home and searched for where the original one landed. I finally found it and bashed it back sorta square but couldn’t find the lid. We were out of ideas so I sprinted back to get it filled anyway. We took a square nose shovel and carefully scraped up all the burned soil, turned it over, and stomped it flat again. Then we changed clothes and washed up. Ten minutes after we landed on the couch the folks came home.
The next three days we lived in constant fear. I was prepared to die; my only regret was I hadn’t managed to get my hands on the girl next door yet. Saturday morning came and there was a bellow from the garage, “AAAAaaaarighhhhhht boys, front & center!” We said our goodbyes and trooped out to meet our doom. There was the dreaded gas can in dad’s hand. Just as I was about to make a full confession he said, “How many times have I told you boys to put the lid back on the gas can? And now look what you’ve done, you managed to lose it! That’s it!!! From now on I’m locking it up in the cabinet. By god I’ll get a push mower and you can mow the lawn the way I had to when I was a boy! That’ll teach you!!!” “Aw, gee, sorry dad, I dunno what happened…” “I’ll buy you another gas can out of my allowance…” “I guess I musta forgot…”
Ten years later when we were too big to beat, we confessed. They didn’t believe us until we took them out and turned over the dirt to show them the black layer. Then we found out we were only just a little too big to beat.
Perhaps he meant to say “I was going to make a joke about Australians drinking a lot, when I knocked over my can of beer, and it shorted out my computer, which ignited my bathrobe, and set fire to my back hair”.
Oof. That reminds me of what happened to my neighbor’s little brother. My sister (one year older than me), our best friend (girl our age), and I were like the Three Musketeers. Her little brother (aka “the little bother”) was a few years younger. He was sort of the sidekick.
Leading by example, we hatched a scheme of sneaking up on people like ninjas and eventually ended in one of us going “BOO!” and scaring my mom. It resulted in mom’s high-pitched squeal of panic and a strange flight/fight dance that kind of looked like Big Bird doing Riverdance while holding a basket of laundry. High comedy!
So the little sidekick decided went off on his own, totally missing the ensuing parental rage and admonishments for being the Three Very Stupid Musketeers. Sidekick went home, where found his dad watching a game on TV. So he slid silently into the crevice between the sofa and wall, to get to the corner of the room with ninja stealth.
And here’s where things went horribly wrong.
His dad was a Vietnam vet. He hadn’t seen any seriously rough action, but his training was pretty ingrained and he was a big guy. So when our little sidekick popped out yelling “BOO!” instead of Big Bird, he got John Rambo.
BAM!
His dad had sort of karate chopped him in the mouth and he needed stitches because his inner lip got cut on his pointy, little teeth. Since everyone was truthful about the whole thing, no one at the hospital thought it was abuse, but I was told a cop did show up at the hospital just to be sure, and verified the story by talking to my mom who said “Yes, the older kids are only a few braincells away from retarded” and that we’d been jumping out scaring the crap out of adults.
So our friend’s dad didn’t get in trouble at all, but the kid’s lucky he didn’t get his head knocked clean off his shoulders.
Cheese Louise, guy, you went to a lot of work for that! You noticed it every time? Wow!
Look, here’s the thing. Only met about half a dozen Aussies, like them all, remind me of Texans. Maybe Australia is the Texas of the Pacific. Whatever. What I especially liked is the sense that you could rag on them all day without offending them. I think that’s totally cool. Nothing speaks of good character more than a complete lack of self-importance.
But if its going to rank you out like this, maybe you should just skip over posts with my cognomen? Ain’t worth getting your knickers in a bunch. (It’s “knickers”, right?). Guarantee you I’m not going to say anything you can’t live without.
Hell, didn’t even mention the sheep!
I laughed mightily, but made it to #46 before it was so bad the tears started.
This isn’t a case of stupidty, but more along the lines of Not Following Orders. After being in the Navy for awhile, you begin to detect subtle clues that you are getting close to land. These include, but are not limited to:
Garbage spotted. Mostly Styrofoam.
Birds appear.
The EOD division dumps a couple of Zodiacs off of the Fantail, and then dissapears over the horizon.
On my boat, it was the Condom Covered Door Knobs. A couple of days before hitting the beach, the Medical Department would issue condoms to all of the various Divisions. Squids being squids, condoms would magically appear on just about every piece of equipment that protruded all over the ship. Another facet of intel was the stern admonishment, “Do Not Drink The Water.” This point was repeated over and over, to the point that everytime I heard it, my eyes would begin to glaze.
When we hit the Phillipines, I had some leave time saved up, so I hit the beach for a week or so. Did I bring condoms? You betcha! Did I drink the water? No fucking way!
Unfortunately, I forgot that Screwdrivers made in hot weather have ice in them. Back on the boat, I discoverd that I had developed a nice case of Dysentery. After languishing in my rack for a couple of days, I’m cleared to Limited Duty. Limited Duty in this case means that I got to carry huge sacks of trash from the Forward Mess Deck to the Incinerator Room. This also involved walking through all three hangar bays.
I’m struggling up a ladder with the first bag of trash. We’d been underway for awhile, and it was time to launch an F-14 off of a Waist Cat. I’m halfway across hangar bay 1, when the catapault abruptly goes off. Now bear in mind, we’d been in port for a couple of weeks straight, so I wasn’t used to hearing thing like arresting gear, or planes being launched. The waist cat went off, with a huge BANG!!!
I was so startled that I shit myself.
Literally.
Utterly.
Completely.
Luckily, I had my pant legs tucked into the top of my flight deck boots, or I’d have left a trail that Helen Keller herself could have followed. After casually walking almost the whole length of the ship, while trying to act like I hadn’t just shit myself, I deposited the trash in the chute, and was faced with yet another dillema.
Should I take my chances, and walk all of the way back to my berthing area with a huge shit stain on my pants? Negative. I decided the best action would be to make my way up to the O3 deck, and find an empty head. Finding one, I pulled off my boots (rinsing them first in a shower stall), then stripped down. To my regret, my shorts/trousers were not salvageable. Neither were my socks. The smell alone was remarkable, not to mention the coloring.
Biting the bullet, I assured myself that I would have an easier time traversing the O3 level, instead of trying to walk across 3 hangar bays half naked.
I almost made it, too, until I was spotted by a Lt.Commander.
“A little out of uniform aren’t we?”
He did have a point, as I was only wearing a red turtleneck jersey and a pair of boots. Period.
“Taking care of that immediately, Sir.”
“Carry on.”
To this day, I only drink Screwdrivers while sitting on the toilet.
Don’t take this too personally or take out a restraining order against me, but I think I lurve you.
Man injuring his testes is comedy gold.
While I consider myself somewhat goodish with computers, there is the tale of how when I was a teenager, I came close to death by voltage.
My computer’s fan had just conked out (or something - I don’t really remember why I needed a fan so desperately to tell the truth). I was crushed - it’s Friday night, what am I going to do all WE without a computer to play on and chat ?! And trekking all the way across Paris just to get a 5 bucks fan…ugh. But wait a minute, we have an old computer from the 80s somewhere in the basement. It still works, so I can probably scavenge parts from it ! Quick, to the batcave !
Sure enough, there’s a usable fan, of the right size, although it doesn’t have a practical and easy plastic plug like the modern fans I’m used to. The thing is soldered in. Bah, no matter, it’s just a fan, all I need to do is figure out which leg of the motherboard fan plug is positive, and which one is negative, the plug is just there for convenience anyway. Hey, the legs are actually labelled ! Nifty. So all I’d need to do to make this work is find a way to tie the fan’s copper wires to the thing. Easy peasy… but I don’t want to start soldering and whatnot without knowing if it’ll work first. I’ll just carefully hold the wires in place with my hand and power the computer up to check, shall I ?
So I do. And my hand trembles, and slips, and causes a short. The computer won’t power up anymore. FUCK ! But… hold on, I don’t smell anything. Maybe the PSU’s the internal fuse has just blown from the power surge, but the computer’s not totally dead. So I open it up and sure enough, the fuse is scorched, but nothing else. Pfew. I’m only down 5 bucks for a fan and a HUNDRED for a new PSU. Or… am I ?
Daaaaad, do we have spare fuses ? Nope, son. Dammit. I know I could just fix it with a paperclip or a length of copper wire, but somehow it doesn’t sound like a smart thing to do at this point. For some reason, stop fucking with it and call it a night doesn’t occur to me.
Because there’s GOT to be a fuse in the old comp’s PSU ! I race back down, yank the thing out. Odd, there are no screws at all, the whole block is like weird steel origami. They really did things weird and non tinker-friendly back then. But ain’t nothing brute force can’t solve : I get it open in no time. And there it is, my preciousss, working fuse. Up to voltage AND amperage specs, too ! Success ! I’m so smart.
I race back to my room, plug the fuse in the naked PSU sitting on top my tower case, and plug the power cord back in.
At this point, Dad, who’d been wondering what all the noise and running was about, comes up and asks what the hell I’m doing in the middle of the night. I quickly explain. He smiles because though I’m an idiot, he’s glad I’m doing stuff by myself and finally seem to have a tinkering spark in me. He does however observe that my proposed test is very unsafe and I should at least take the time to screw the PSU cover back on.
Rubbish, I say from the heart of my Cloud of Smartness ! I won’t be anywhere near the PSU when I plug the cord in the wall socket, nor when I turn the tower on, and besides it’s just a test to see if it works !
I plug the power cord in the wall socket. Nothing happens. See ? Told you. I fire up this sucker. IT WOR…CRACKLE ! Did I mention the tower case was metallic ? A gigantic blue spark, and a smell of burnt plastic fill the room. I can see the magic blue smoke escaping from the now thoroughly fucked PSU. And from the $300 graphics card. And possibly the $400 motherboard, too.
Well played, Einstein.
Now that I’ve got my breath back and I can see, I’d like to request a translation, please.
EOD: Explosive Ordnance Detail (?). These guys go around and blow stuff up. They always found out a couple of days before we’d be hitting a port. A Zodiac is an inflatable raft, with a small outboard attached. The Fantail is the back end of a Surface Combatant.
So they’d jump in the Zodiac, then zoom off to hit the beach first, as most foreign ports shut down a lot of things down/raise hotel rates whenever a Carrier pulls in.
It doesn’t annoy me at all. Shoulda used a smiley. You’re forgetting about that dry sense of humour thing. Funny thing is that I had this vague recollection of you doing the joke before. Once. Decided I’d give you some shit over it. Did search. Cheese Louise indeed! Hits all over the place. Several before I even joined up. Couldn’t resist.
Ah! Well, that’s all sorted out, then! Good on you, Bruce! ('ere, is your name not Bruce?..)
Getting ready to go skiing one year up in Tahoe, late season, not all that cold. I realized that my Columbia Ibex rain jacket has snaps that can tightly snap the wrists. Perfect for my ski gloves! Thinks I. I suit up, snap my golves tightly in the jacket, chuckling to myself all the way up the lift.
First couple of runs were flawless, and I was enjoying my clever gear setup, mildly puzzled by the curious looks I was getting.
Next run I missed a mogul near the top…and fell.
I wish someone was filming the dead-eyed, staring-into-the-sky look on my face and I slid on my back at about 20 miles per hour for about two hundred yards, unable to retard my progress down the slope thanks to my tobbogan-like rain jacket.
Today I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things on the way home. I got out of the store with my stuff and my baby in the cart. I put the baby in the car and drove off leaving my groceries behind. I live way too far from the grocery store to bother going back.
At least I got the baby.
What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
About three years ago, the house I was living in had the laundry room straight off my bedroom. I got a load of laundry out of the dryer, put the used dryer sheet on top, and went to the kitchen to fold laundry. I didn’t notice that the dryer sheet had been blown off by the fan. Got the laundry taken care of, and went back to my room to continue chatting online with some friends.
About an hour later I got up to get a drink, and this is where hilarity ensues, but first some things need to be pointed out. My bedroom had linoleum floors. I had on socks, as it was winter. The bedroom originally didn’t have a closet, and one was later built into the room, leaving a protruding corner across from where I had my desk and recliner set up.
My socked foot lands on the dryer sheet, and slides out from under me. I pitch forward, arms pinwheeling, only to be stopped short when my forehead meets the protruding corner of the closet with enough force to bounce me back. At this point the dryer sheet has stuck to my sock, so that when I try and stand back up, my foot slides out form under me again, but this time forwards, making me fall backwards, where I smack the back of my head on the protruding corner of the desk. This hurts so much that I roll to the left, where my nose hits the wooden arm of the recliner.
I give up trying to stand back up, and finish falling to the floor, where I smack the back of my head again. I lay there stunned for a few seconds, where it dawns on me just how funny this must have looked to my youngest sister and brother, who were in my room at the time. We’re all silent for a moment, then burst out laughing.
The rest of my family comes in to see what the commotion was, and by the time I get through explaining, they’re all holding their sides laughing. It took us about 15 minutes to finally get ourselves under control; for the rest of the week the mere mention of a dryer sheet was enough to get any of us laughing again.
My only regret was that none of it was caught on film.