My Astro professor was complaining today that he was awakened last night by the sound of his dishwasher door flying open and pouring many gallons of water across the floor and down the basement stairs. This reminded me of a friend from home, who claims that when he was in fourth grade, he was watching “Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte” with his family when the television exploded. I have no idea if that’s true or even possible, but the mental picture that accompanies it always makes me start snickering.
Anybody got a good story of an appliance or device that chose to go out with a bang rather than a whimper?
-Andrew L
(PS: I couldn’t make up my mind whether this belonged here or in IMHO. I mean, I guess it’s sort of a poll since I’m asking for funny stories, but on the other hand, these are anecdotes, not opinions. Oh well.)
When I was a wee lad, the dishwasher died wnen a plastic bowl hopped off the rack and landed on the heating element. The resulting stench nearly drove us out of the house. The bowl was thoroughly stuck to and around the heater and the next day, a new dishwasher was ordered.
Same house… An electric “burner” on the stove shorted out internally and started spitting sparks and molten slag that used to be its metal casing. Quite festive and quite scary.
At work last year, my monitor started acting a little funky, then CRACK!!! something died violently inside and all the magic smoke leaked out.
I was hauling an old refrigerator that had been converted into a beer keg frig. The rope I tied it down with broke while I was taking a corner and the frig fell out. The top and side were scraped and dented but I took the frig home and it worked just fine. I did have to tweek the door a bit so it seal shut.
I’m not sure if this qualifies, but we were watching a DVD last summer when lightning struck a tree outside. The thunderclap drowned out the sound of the ‘gunshot’ from the DVD, which continued playing. As the thunderclap sound rolled away, both characters on screen wheeled to the left (their right). One said “Did you hear That?” and the other said “It came from over there…C’mon…!” It was perhaps the funniest unstaged moment I have ever seen on TV.
I had a breadmaker commit suicide.
A friend had picked up a used breadmaker for us at a garage sale, complete with instruction manual and recipe book. After several months of stellar service, it started to develop a little wobble. Then one day while busily kneading dough it walked across the counter and threw itself to the kitchen floor.
ROFL…! No offense, but I have to know the answers to Two Qustions:
-
What Recipe makes Kitchen Appliances Commit Suicide?
-
Can I have a copy for my In-Laws?
I spilled Guinnes all over a TV once. It didn’t break it, though. It just made the picture more white and less contrasty. It sure fizzled a lot with the beer all over it!
Then I broke a computer monitor once by touching it. It just died for no reason.
I had a phone get fried by lightning so bad that it wouldn’t stop ringing. It just rang contsantly like an alarm clock.
I like to taunt my blender.
ROFLMAO*
I had a toaster that commited suicide once. Got a Pop-Tart stuck in it and the toaster does this herky-jerky dance across the counter and jumps off onto the floor,never to dance or toast anything ever again.
IDBB
We actually had our phone lines call 911 repeatedly. The people who owned the house before us had finished part of the basement. Apparently they had run some telephone line under the carpet, and at some point they cut the wires off and just stuffed them back underneath. We got a little bit of water in our basement one spring, and that was causing a bunch of calls to 911 and 411. We were away for the weekend when the cops showed up to see what was going on. Luckily, our neighbors had a key to the house, so they didn’t have to bust the door down.
So although we didn’t have an appliance commit suicide, we did have our house call 911 for help.