Stoopid is as stoopid does........

[Ballast]

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.

[Abs]

Bloody hell Fat Lad, surprised you remember any of those days as you were never there. Good fun walking with you to work, trouble was you were meant to go in the building not decide to turn around and walk home again  

[Bobblehat]

When I was hippy - dippy art student, I decided to make some shirts up for the band I was in - a crap hippy - dippy art student band with no style or talent.

Got my old white school shirts, and decided to embroider the name of the band on the back. Got my mums sowing machine out. Now I have never used a sowing machine before (surprise surprise) got the first letter done "S" whent to do a lower case "a" and managed to sew my thumb on to the shirt!!! 6 nice holes with the thread running through.

[Nobby Diesel]

You should have tried a sewing machine rather than a sowing machine. I always think the needles are too big on the sowing machines!
Nice work though.

[Bobblehat]

Ahhh thats were I went wrong.........................

[Snoring Rhino]

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!

[Stu]

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!

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.

[stuey]

Checked my passport today, runs out in May. Good job I checked would really have been mister popular otherwise at passport control at the Tunnel in June!

[BigH]

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.

[Fax]

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

[Rhino]

At my parents house we had an old air raid shelter in the garden. It was always damp and full of spiders and snails. One day i came up with the great idea of pouring some petrol in and throwing a match in. Even at that young age(about 10) i knew how explosive petrol was so threw the match in and ran up the steps, closely followed by a fireball. Remember throwing myself on the ground and looking up at the fire passing safely over my head.
Being older and wiser me and my brother did it again the next week, but used a long stick to light it.

[Canada Phil]

Hi Matt, Good to hear you survived.
As i don't do ladders can't tell any stories. Next time hire professionals.
The More Firma the less Terra
Canada Phil

[Chris (Liverpool Boys)]

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.

[Nobby Diesel]

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.