Print Page - Stoopid is as stoopid does........

I was chatting on the phone to Dave H last night and he commented that I didn't sound too chipper. When I told him what ailed me, he totally pissed himself laughing.

I'll preface this with the following: Have you ever been about to start some task that involves an element of risk, added to a high level of inexperience/incompetence and at the critical moment, thought to yourself, "I shouldn't be doing this - all manner of horrible sh*t could befall me if this goes piss-shaped" - and then done it anyway?

So, I'm standing in my driveway, looking up at a 60 foot pine tree. One of the boughs overhangs my drive and the really nasty, sticky sap leaks out of it onto my car, where it promptly sets like Gorilla Glue and can only be removed with a razor blade.
I'm super-pissed off about how it's fugging-up my paintwork and decide that decisive action needs to be taken.
Out comes the aluminum ladder set and (living in the land of plenty) chainsaw - every good home should have one.
The "I shouldn't be doing this" epiphiny struck me as I was about to make the decisive cut....
In order to make a long and excrutiatingly painful story short, I hit the ground at about the same time the branch did. My triple backward somersault (with pike) culminated with me making contact with my lawn (thankfully) like a well packed bushel of sh*t. Rather clumsily, I managed to alight on mt still-running chainsaw. I suspect I owe my life to the person who invented the chain-brake for this device, because without it, I suspect my handy pruning device would have neatly disembowelled me. Just to put a truly Laurel & Hardyesque finish to the whole sorry scene, the ladder then came crashing down on my prostrate form.
A neighbor casually ambled over with a view to rendering first aid, but had a tough time contolling his laughter at the spectacle of me winded and covered in chain oil, with my swede poking through the rungs of my now Fyfes-shaped ladder.
Having fully recovered my dignity and kind of suggesting that I meant to do that, I hobbled back indoors, feeling a little queezy and sporting an impressivly varied array of contusions and lacerations.
Shortly after I took to my bed and when I awoke, felt like I'd done ten arduous rounds with 'Alfonse' (the boxer who used to take on all comers in the fairground at Le Mans in't early 80's).
I would be interested to here the outcome of other members "I shouldn't be doing this" moments.

Top man Matt, I can picture it now. Did you manage to complete your arboriculture.

(http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/mgu0278l.jpg)

My wife is 100% paranoid about me chopping my legs off when I'm doing a little light pruning with the chainsaw. She insists on standing by me when I'm 'in action' and she went and bought me a pair of those kevlar chaps.
The trouble with the chaps is they're so thick and heavy I have to take my trousers off when I wear them.
Needless to say I look like a certain member of Village People.

However, to the matter in hand - stoopid things.
You may or may not recall that we keep chickens (bastard foxes!!!).

One weekend morning last year, I was woken from my slumber not by my darling wife with a cup of coffee, but by her shreiking that some of the chickens had "got out" and were roaming around the front garden near to the main road.
Well, to the rear of the house, the left side and across the road is open countryside, our garden being bordered at the side by thick hawthorn hedgerow.

I leapt out of bed (starkers) threw on the dressing gown (a la Noel Coward) and headed for the back door, pausing only to don some footwear - a pair of steel toe capped welly boots.
So out into the garden, in a rather fetching attire to round up the chickens, with almost complete success.

Except one of the bastards tried to force her way through the hedgerow. My wife decided a pincer movement was in order and despatched me to the other (field) side of the hedgerow. This necessitated walking out onto the main (A137) road, into the field and along the hedge.
So far, so good. I'd managed to avoid being spotted by any passing cars.

I managed to bend down and grab hold of the chicken and execute the 'how to hold a chicken action'. That is, position the chicken under your arm, holding the feet with the hens backside forward so that the little sod doesn't sh*t down your clothes - are you still with me?

I managed to just about reach the main road as a car slowly passed (complete with elderly couple out for a Sunday drive).

Unfortunately, my poorly fastened dressing gown managed to snag on a piece of hawthorn, just as the car approached, and I executed a very stylish genital 'flash'.

I can only imagine Mrs Old Dears comments to her husband - "Did you see that dear? That man with wellington boots on and a chicken under his arm has just flashed us".

Bloody hell Matt!! Glad you're OK....'ish.

Reminds me of a guy who got pissed in a bar in Aldershot back in the mid 90's. He had a bit too much to drink and got thrown out by the landlord, and as he left was followed out by a few locals who'd taken a disliking to him and beat 10 colours of shite out of him for no apparent reason.

He returned half an hour later with a chainsaw and proceeded to cut the bar in half, as well as several tables and chairs.

One of the aforementioned locals tried to make his escape by jumping over the bar, but the chasing chainsaw caught him from behind as he leant over the bar and ripped a rather nasty slice in his behind.

Matt, you bilthering fool, what on earth were you playing at, a man of your physique?? I'm glad you're ok, even though a bit battered and bruised.

My own "I shouldn't be doing this" moment was more of a "This shouldn't be happening to me" moment. I was once a spotty faced engineering apprentice just after leaving school at 16 on account of being too thick for A levels. The cuff of my overalls got caught in the power driven feed spindle of a ten foot high radial drilling machine. It proceeded to drag my hand into the works with hilarious consequences, though for some strange reason I failed to see the comedy value at the time it was occuring. Probably because I thought I was about to die. My thanks to a quick witted colleague who hit the safety shut-down button. I still have a two inch scar to prove it. It was about this time I reckonned the engineering life wasn't really for me, that and the crap wages.

If your incident was like mine, the peculiar thing was it all happened in slow motion. I wonder what it felt like to be the bloke who recently contrived to feed himself through an industrial wood chipper? It must have stung quite a bit. Apparently he made lovely compost.

Get well soon.

Andy Z

(http://www.ryetec.co.uk/images/chipper1_1.jpg)

That reminds me, this happened at my first place of work.

While working in a factory that produced the stuff white lines are made of, basically molten plastic with extra sand and glass beads thrown in. I was attempting to fill a tin with the molten mix when I caught the bucket with the heel of my work boots, this then caused the bucket to tip the molten plastic into my gauntlet.

I bravely tried to carry on as I was in no pain and thought I could pick it off at home later. This proved not to be possible as the more worldly wise workers suggested I went to the Qeen Vic Hospitial burns unit just down the road. Several hours later the plastic was off, togeather with a fair amout of skin. What remained look like a poached fish.

2 weeks later I was able to have a skin graft which has left a very manly scar on my lower arm.

How do you get rid of an ants nest under your patio.
Ant powder? No; I had a much better idea.

Burn the bastards. Easy, lift a slab, pour on a little unleaded, strike a match throw it on and listen to them sizzle. Then move to the next slab and repeat.
This was working a treat until I failed to notice that the petrol was still burning before pouring the next lot. The petrol I was pouring ignited, and in my panic I dropped the can spilling more petrol, most of it on me.

I'm now in the middle of the garden with my Tee shirt on fire and my incredulous wife watching me through the patio windows.

I managed to get the Tee shirt off and put out the flames on me, but the petrol can was still burning next to the house. My quickly devised plan, kick it away before the house goes up. This would have worked well had I not kicked it up against the wooden fence.

Finally got all the flames doused and went to hospital.

Two days later guess what, ants!!!

My moment of stupidity was when I was younger and playing around with my dads air riffle. My granddads old caravanette was sat rusting away under our old barn so I decided it would be fun to shoot out the tyres. Have done the tyres on that, I decided to go one better and shoot an old tractor tyre that was also under the barn. Only problem is the rubber is alot thicker, and the air gun pellet bounced back off the tyre and i shot myself in the mouth / lip and burst my lip open.
Its strange but true, but yes the whole incident seemed to happen in slow motion. I could see the pellet coming straight back at me in slow motion but was unable to do anything about it.

Well done Stuey! I figured the gas can would go over at some point. Glad you didn't torch your home and wife. We are plagued by fire ants here in FL - and they live in significant numbers under my cracked driveway slab. They periodically emerge with a mini-volcano of earth and a lot of ant-like activity as they run around doing the things fire ants do. I decided to eliminate one Vesuvius-like ant hill, by parking the rear wheel of my pick-up truck on it and directing the horesepower from it's 5.9 litre Mopar V8 into ant-central. Needless to say, the ants got vapourised - and I nearly knocked my garage over.

Nice one Chris, shooting oneself is always hilarious.

Totally stupid moments? Hundreds of the buggers when I was in toolmaking.

Setting the cutter far too deep on a block of steel in the vise on my shaper (big noisy bugger that slices metal one strip at a time) the steel jammed the cutter which was too big anyway and forced the steel out of the vice into the swarf bin and down onto my foot Trainers not totectors! Back in the early seventies, no H&S at Work act then and me stoopid! Badly damaged but unbroken toes, phew.

Airgun mayhem? Twice... Shot small Gat .177 pistol indoors and the pellet bounced off a distant wall and smacked my little son in the face. Fortunately no more damage than his confidence in "dad" lost forevermore, but a small red mark to show his mom!

And I had a Chris24 moment two years ago, I shot a piece of wood which the .22 pellet should have penetrated, but it bounced OFF and I watched it in horror as it flew straight back at my (open) eye. Unable to move at the speed it could, I could only blink in terror. The relief as it hit my eyelid and only cut it a fraction and didn't blind me still makes me shudder...

Time does telescope when this stuff happens. I watched that flying pellet for about a fortnight!

Bill (chastened after remembering this stuff)

:-[

My best one as an apprentice machinist follows .

I was clocking up the vice with a Dial Test Indicator (DTI) and mag base, to make sure the vice was square to the machine bed. To do this you put the mag base and DTI onto the machine spindle and put the machine in neutral so you can turn the spindle by hand. Only this machine had no neutral, so I set it to the highest revs of 2800 rpm which is the next best thing to neutral for turning the spindle by hand.

Then I mistakenly pressed the spindle start button instead of the table fast traverse button that was next to it on the control panel.

Result, DTI and mag base parts flying in all directions across the machine shop at high speed. One part just missed the head of the guy working on the next machine by only millimetres !

Quote from: Perdu on April 15, 2005, 12:34:08 am

And I had a Chris24 moment two years ago, I shot a piece of wood which the .22 pellet should have penetrated, but it bounced OFF and I watched it in horror as it flew straight back at my (open) eye. Unable to move at the speed it could, I could only blink in terror. The relief as it hit my eyelid and only cut it a fraction and didn't blind me still makes me shudder...

A similar thing happened to me when I was young and me and my mate used to hit Hilti Gun cartridges (which are like little bullets) with a hammer. Nearly sh*t myself when the blood was pouring from my eye. Fortunately it was just below my eyeball.

Another stupid thing happened at work once when we got called to a man threatening to blow himself up via the gas in his house. We turned up and I parked the appliance outside his house and just stood around passing the odd message back to our control. After about 1 Hour of fruitless negoiations from the police and while the bloke from the gas board was sawing throw his gas pipe outside, the front off the house blew out.
An 8 * 4 window frame missed me by about 2 inches (I kid you not) and a load of people got showered by bricks. The roof of the appliance was also on fire which resulted in my trying to put it out whilst the thought of reams of paperwork flashed before my eyes. Fortunately theree were only a few bruises here and there. Even the bloke survived and there was no damage to the machine. I always park well away from jobs like that now.

Glad to hear that you're ok Matt and that your sense of humour was not damaged!

There seems to be a trend developming here which starts with "when I was an engineering apprentice! So, I may as well add my two pence worth....

When I was an engineering apprentice... we had a couple of university students come in to the workshop for a couple of weeks to gain some "real world" experience. Standing at my lathe I watched whilst one of the students changed a 4 jaw chuck for a 3 jaw on his lathe. He removed the 4 jaw and then carefully inserted the 3 jaw, at which point the buzzer went for tea break. On returning from tea break he inserted his aluminium billet into the chuck, cranked up the RPM to 1500 and started the puppy spinning. Everything went well for the first 5 seconds, that is until the laws of physics woke up and decided that it was unreasonable for a chuck to be spinning that fast and stay where it was without actually being attached to anything!!! yep, you've got it, he'd forgotten to tighten the bolts which hold the chuck to the lathe.

As you will know, there is a huge amount of energy stored in a body with the mass of a lathe chuck spinning at that rate. The chuck had had enough and decided to part company with the lathe. Time slowed to a crawl as we watched the chuck sit in the bed (still spinning at near 1500 rpm) of the lathe until it was good and ready before makng a rather spectacular exit stage left! How it missed the guy (and everyone else) I'll never know to this day! But the damage to the workshop was extensive. Needless to say we never saw any students again after that.

Don’t drink Sambuka after Karting!
We did a Corporate Karting do for our distributors, great night, got back to the Hotel and started drinking Flaming Sambuka's. This was Ok until it was my round, I picked up two and started towards the table, trouble was that my hands were still shaking from the Karting. First I spilt one over one hand - so that was on fire, then whilst I was trying to concentrate on putting it down on a table I spilt the other one, so while I distracted by the second hand being on fire I Knocked over the first one, so now the tables on fire - it was at his point somebody put me and the table out with a glass of coke. They wouldn't serve us any more Sambuka after that!

Quote from: IRW on April 15, 2005, 06:19:55 pm

In a Ibis hotel in Paris once , after splitting a bottle of Tequilla amongst other things, someone asked me to blow the fire. So being the worst for wear, I filled my mouth with Ronson Lighter fluid and holding a lighted match, blew the stuff all over my hand and the bed. The lad that had crashed out on the bed woke and lept about 10 foot screaming expletives as the bed cover was on fire. I was sitting looking at my burning hand and my other mate was beating the bed cover out with a sweat shirt. I had to work the next few days with my hand taped up with insulating tape due to the large blisters on my hand. The bed cover was hastley disposed of. According to my mate I just sat there saying 'eeargh eeargh, my hands on fire' before I sat on it to put out the flames.

The Demon Drink stirkes again.

Well done boys, these stories have kept me chortling all week (the mental image of Matt in free-fall with a buzzing chainsaw is a picture allright, complete with the Loony Tunes music in the background). I think I've previously posted several of my own personal episodes, and am warmed to read of your own. Stu reminds me of another.
One winter, when I was sharing a large victorian house with a few colleagues and mates, I popped home one lunch time to pick up something I'd left behind that morning. As I walked up the garden path I was puzzled by what appeared to be cotton wool pressed up against the windows. As soon as I opened the front door I realised the place was on fire. (I've never owned up to this until now, but I was in the habit of leaving my slippers up close to the still warm fire in the morning, so they'd be nice and warm when I got home in the evening, and I reckon this is where it all started...). Confronted with the fire, I remembered that someone had once described to me the total mess that the boys from the Fire Brigade had made of their lovely house when they turned up for a bit of extintinguishing one evening. So it seemed to me that the best course of action was to have a go myself. I didn't have anything with me to help put out the blaze, but I knew of a hardware shop a couple of blocks away that sold extinguishers.
H: Hello there, how are you doing?
Salesman: Fine than you, can I help you with anything?
H: Yes, I wonder if you have any fire extinguishers?
Salesman: I think we may have sold out sir, I'll just have a look out the back.
H (to his retreating back): I'll take two if you have any!
Off he goes, to return empty handed.
H: No luck then?
Salesman: I'm afraid not, we've sold quite few recently.
H: Oh..
Salesman: We could order one, it would be no problem.
H: How long would that take then?
Salesman (brightly): We'd probably be able to get some by the end of the week!
H: Oh. Actually, I'm in a bit of a hurry, I think I'll leave it. Do you know of anywhere else?
Salesman: Try Robinsons, on the High Street.
H: Righty-o, thanks for your help.
Anyway, after a little while, I returned home with an extinguisher. I have to say though, I had probably left it a little too late, my slippers, amongst other things, were no more. I then had to phone the landlord to tell him his house had burned down. All in all, it wasn't a good day.
Every now and then I reckon you are presented with two alternative solutions to a sitiuation. There's the regular common sense one, but worryingly there is always a bonehead-so-stupid one, and perversely you know in the back of your mind that it is this one that is more interesting and has the potential for providing better entertainment.
I reckon Our Lord Jesus Christ knew this when he turned water into wine. He could have gone for Lucozade or Pepsi, they would have been much more refreshing, but in my minds eye I think the wine he went for was a real dense soupy red, the sort that leaves a trip hammer in your head the next morning. He must have had a right old laugh. It's been a few days since I read The Good Book, but seem to remember he tried something similar with loaves and sausages.

Jesus Matt,
Glad to hear your akay after your Wil-E-Coyote moment.
I had a similar situation pop up last summer when one of my thirty foot high maples suddenly developed the sulks and the local woodpeckers started beating fist sized holes in it. Turns out the bugger was infested with carpenter ants and were slowly eating it from the inside out. I thought about the same tactic as you, one man and a chain saw but when I brought this up to a buddy he said when I mentioned chain saw and extension ladder in the same breath his blood ran cold and he saw nothing positive coming of this.
He works in the maintenence division of a local restaruant chain and he borrowed a cherry picker and togther with a couple of other buddies and a case of Budweiser we felled the bastard. One of our number wisely suggested we wait until after the tree was down before getting into the Bud. As far as stupid moments go, my buddy Carl has a prize winner. During our senior year in high school a group of us skipped out one spring day and ended up back at my parents house drinking beer (my parents both worked all day). My father had placed several Japanese beetle bag traps around the back yard and after a few suds Carl decided to light a pack of firecrackers, drop them into a beetle trap and drop the lot down into the storm sewer in front of our house. After the predictable ear splitting explosions we ventured over to the sewer to find, when the smoke cleared, hundreds of beetles trying climb out of the sewer. Carl in a moment of inspired stupidity grabed a empty Coke bottle from the garage, filled it with gasoline from the lawn mower can and headed for the street. The dumb-ass stood right on top of the steel grate and emptied the contents right down into the still smouldering sewer. The flaming mushroom cloud the followed looked like the footage from old atomic bomb tests films. He survived remarkably unscathed from the episode, just took a few weeks for his eyebrows to grow back. Still one of my best friends to this day, in fact he one of those helping me with the tree.
Fax

Well I have to admit when I was just 16 I came home early from a familiy holiday to do my saturday job and this was the first time I had ever been allowed to stay home alone. We were in sunny newcastle and my dad dropped me off atcarlisle station for me to get the train home all going well except the train was delayed by 3 hours and it was about midnight when I got home.

I was starving and on looking in the fridge the only thing in there was bread and eggs so fried egg butty it is. I put the pan on the stove with oil in it turned the gas on low and put the cooker extractor on and went into the lounge to whatch telly while the pan heated up and promptly fell asleep. I only woke 2 hours later when there was a gunfight on the telly at which point i thought thatpan should be just ready now and with no rush sauntered over to the kitchen door.

On opening the door I can remember the exact words that came out of my mouth "sh*t!!!!!". There were 2 foot flames coming out of the frying pan and the cooker hood was melting into the pan like a water fall and thick black smoke atjust above my head levell the gas was still on keeping the now frying pan nicely lit with molton plastic and crisp n dry combination in it. I rushed over to the pan and turned the gas off and went into the garage to get the dry powder fire extinguisher got out and couldn't find the keys was just about to put the glass through when I realised they were in the lock got the extingusiher only to get it in the kitchen and find out it was knackered. So went to the bowl of water in the sink and by some miracle and moment of clarity stopped myself launching it directly onto the flaming pan and drenched a towel then chucked thaton the pan which put it out but at the same time spalshed hot oil and molton plastic down my arm and legs as i had shorts on.

The cooker hood was gone the cupborad doors knackered and the ceeling and walls down to half the hieght of the room were jet black.

I get reminded of this every year at le mans by our group who worked with my dad any time i go near a frying pan.

Not too far removed from the Sambuka tale ....
I was at Joe Cools in Durban, celebrating the Lions fine win over the Boks in '97.
Our celebratory drink of choice was a 'SpringBuk'.
This was some sort of 3 layered shot, all the colours of the SA flag. I seem to remember it being topped off with flaming Cointreau.
After far too many and for some totally inexplicable reason, instead of extinguishing the little flame with a beer mat and then slinging the drink down in one, I took leave of my senses and tried to blow the flame out.
This resulted in me, the bar top and the bar tenders Jackson 5 type afro, all be rather well ablaze.
A hastily applied jug of water extinguished the bar, a handy bar towel put my hand out, but the Mr Moonwalk ran around slapping his now smoking hair.
I returned the following morning, with a rather healthy burn to my right hand, to be confronted by a shaven headed bar tender, reluctant to serve any more Springbuks.

Club Arnage

Club Arnage => General Discussion => Topic started by: Matt Harper on April 13, 2005, 08:51:20 pm