Prior to getting a DVD recorder, I had quite the VCR setup. At one time, I had as many as six machines. Now it’s down to one for recording and a couple of old ones for playback (some of my older tapes can only be played on old two-head machines).
A couple of weeks ago, I was in a mood. One of the newer machines (about 5 years old) started acting up. I would hit rewind and it would shut off, flash the letter “L” on the display, and do nothing. When I turned it back on, it would eject the tape. It had been doing this for some time, but, since it was too expensive to fix (I could just buy a new one for less), I put up with it.
Anyway, the mood struck and the damned thing just pissed me off one time too many. I unplugged it and beat the living crap out of it with a hammer.
It is extraordinarily rare that I get pissed off this much, but I felt a lot better after the carnage.
I, too, am slow to anger, but a few years ago while dealing with a lawn mower that refused to cooperate, I boiled over. A lawn mower will develop sufficient altitude to fly several feet when swung by the handle. And make a satisfying crunch/crash noise when impacting a large tree. The tree wasn’t hurt, but the mower died. My son still laughs uncontrollably when recalling the sight.
I had a beater car that died in rush hour traffic and wouldn’t start. I managed to get it into the center left turn lane, then called for a jump. When a friend showed up, I lifted the hood and saw that the entire front right side of the car had cracked loose at the firewall and was spread apart. The car wouldn’t hold a charge because the engine was sitting on the alternator instead of the motor mounts. I slammed the hood shut, jumped on top and bunny hopped (in the way that bunnies would jop if they wore jackboots) down the hood, over the roof and down the trunk.
Then I pushed the car home and eventually sold it for half of what I bought it for.
My boss was moving and had an old plotter that was obsolete for all the software in the office. He called around to every place he could think of to find someone who wanted it–free. (I believe he even contacted a local museum that exhibits technological equipment.)
He could not find anyone to take it and it was too large to go into the dumpster, so I was told to dismantle it and get it into the dumpster. I mostly used a screwdriver, but a couple of recalcitrant assemblies were removed with the assistance of a 10 lb. sledgehammer.
Later, I was told that the original purchase price was in the neighborhood of $17,000.
When in High School we had a sub one day. When he stepped out of the classroom for a few minutes I started wondering what happens when you drop one of the schools new computers out the 2nd story window. I was very statisfied with the destruction, and even more so with not getting caught.
Setting the scene: I had purchased two HP printers the previous year - one for my classroom and one for the Dept. Chair’s classroom. Neither printer was very good. After about a year of fighting with these pieces of crap, one morning I just snapped. I disconnected the printer, raised it over my head, and with a roar of satisfaction hurled it out the door to smash on the concrete outside. I dusted off my hands and returned to my classroom, a smug look on my face.
What made the action perfect is this: 15 seconds after I trashed my printer, my neighbor, the Dept. Chair, hurls his printer out the door to join mine!
Really freaked campus security. They kept walking by, looking at the pile of printer parts and wondering why the office kept laughing when they called in this act of “vandalism.”
I destroyed a $1500 set of china once. In my defense I did it with out knowing how much it was actually worth. Only after I had smashed it to bits with a hammer did I look up the manufacturer and pattern and found out how much it was worth. I only paid ten bucks for it at a garage sale.
I intentionally destroyed an antique sapphire and diamond ring that my grandmother had given me. I got some mad idea when I was in high school that I could cannibalize the ring, along with some other jewelry, to “create” a new, more artistic piece of jewelry (with the help of some Elmer’s glue). I ended up with lots of useless pieces of course, and sad, sticky hands.
Me and some of my friends were at school late one day, and we came across an old, broken speaker. It was tucked away in a back room, and it looked like it hadn’t been used in years. So, we decided to throw it off a balcony.
Apparantly the speaker could’ve been repaired (until we threw it that is), and it was worth about $2000. Luckily, no one who could’ve punished us ever found out.
I once bought a 1958 Cadillac for $20. And, oh, by the way, the dealer didn’t have the key, so I paid $5 for a new key. By the way, the dealer was still waiting for the title. There’s a way to get such a title, but I didn’t know that then. After a couple of months, the puddle under the car told me there was only plain water in the cooling system, and a freeze plug in the right-hand head had popped out. My $25 car needed much more than $25 to repair. I took a piece of iron pipe, and several of us dented every square foot of it. We towed it into a field and blew out the windows with a gunpowder-in-a-jar bomb. I got $25 worth of entertainment out of it.
However, I have since found out what some parts of that car were worth, before we beat them up.
Windshield and rear window= $1500 each
Dashboard= $2500
And so on… :smack:
An old diesel subaru wagon my friend owned that puked its oil and died.
He “sold” it for scrap… and seeing how it had to have the glass broken out before they crushed it anyway…
I was foiled. sigh I always vowed that as soon as we got a decent networking solution I’d smash the Intel Internet Station to pieces with a hammer. Mr Cazzle had other ideas and swiftly sold it before I could wreak my terrible revenge.
I was pissed off at a man and I was just so uncontrollably upset that I only had three choices: Murder, suicide, or flinging my entire record collection into a creek, one by one, like frisbees, until they were all gone. I chose the latter. 20+ years down the crapper. Jesus, I still cringe just thinking about it. :smack:
I know a guy who shot his car.
I know a girl whose soon-to-be ex held her captive on the phone while he smashed all her antique furniture. She had to listen to the destruction play out.
I once destroyed a $200 VCR when the tape wouldn’t eject, and it had been doing this more and more. Every time this happened I got so pissed off and frustrated trying to get the stubborn tape out of there. When the VCR held one of my tapes captive once again I decided I had had enough with this worthless piece of shit. I lost my cool and beat the holy hell out of that damn thing. By the time I was done with it the outer metal casing was dented up every which way and all the internal parts were scattered all over my living room. I felt bad about it later, but it was sure a good catharsis at the time.
I also did something similar, though not as violent, to an audio cassette deck I had bought second hand as part of a complete stereo system from a garage sale (the whole lot was $100 and I still have the good components). The tape deck had a problem of automatically engaging the recording function after putting a tape in. After seeing it tape over one of my good recordings I went into a rage and finished it off.
There was an abandoned gravel pit where we would go shooting when I was a kid. One day, when my friends and I showed up to do some plinking, there was an apparently abandoned car parked up against the sand bank that served as a bullet stop.
We blew the hell out of it with every rifle and shotgun we had brought. By the time we were done there wasn’t a square inch of that car that didn’t have a hole in it. It looked worse than the Bonny & Clyde death car. Even the engine was destroyed, thanks to some WW2-surplus armor-piercing shells we had for an old Mauser one of the guys had brought.
We found out later that the car had been stolen by a joyrider and left at the pit. The thief was caught but no one ever found out who shot it up.
