December 01, 2004

• My first marriage was the 'stoopedest theeng' I ever did.
• I accidentally superglued my teeth together on Christmas Eve about 6 years ago. They were only stuck for about 30 seconds, but it was enough for me to question my mental faculties. Not life threatening, but certainly stupid.
• dare I ask?
• By all accounts, I should have been a contender for the Darwin. I was working retail hell, and I wanted to get a pallate off of the pallate shelving. The first shelf was about eight feet in the air. The pallate in question had one box on it. A small one, too. I tried jumping to get the box, but everytime I did I pushed it further and further toward the center. So, instead of using my licence and getting the Hilo to bring the thing down, I decided to go low tech. I looked around and saw a couple of ladders, the wheeled type with stoppers at the back that act like brakes when people stand on them. One of them was just shorter than the first shelf, so I grabbed it and brought it over to the shelf where the box was. I figured I would climb to the top of the ladder and grab the box. When I got to the top, it was still out of my reach. An idea sprung to my mind. I turned around on the top step, planted my hands on the shelf, and tried to push myself onto the shelf so that I could grab the box, go back down the ladder, and worry about the pallate later. I wasn't thinking that as soon as I started to push that the two brakes of the ladder would rise and the ladder would fly out from underneath my feet. I stayed with my hands on the shelf for a split second, trying hard to pull myself onto the shelf with leverege working against me. After that brief moment, I fell eight feet onto the concrete floor, twisted sideways so that my shoulder and ribs took the impact. At the exact time I fell, two of my coworkers were walking in the back room and saw me fall. I bounced back up after a second on the floor, completely free of pain. By stroke of luck, I had not banged my head, bruised any part of my body, nor broke any bones. I merely got up, flipped the ladder back upright, and got the hilo.
• ¿porqué?
• I raced a Porsche 911S on the interstate at 140mph in moderate traffic on the way to work a few months ago.
• 1. While driving with a carful of friends on a 2-lane road, I tried to pass the car in front of us, but the driver kept speeding up. Undaunted, I continued to try to pass, until nearly colliding head-on with a car going the other direction. 2. Driving through the worst blizzard of the season, in a very unreliable car, to an island in Maine to get a bag of weed.
• I took along handcuffs on my honeymoon and I had them in my carry-on bag. And, of course, the x-ray machine nailed them and then the Dulles Airport security teams started swarming... Ah, the memories. /revealing waaaaaay too much
• I put on a Superman cape when I was 6 and tried to "fly" off a roof. As Seen On TV! Oof, gravity sucks. Other than that, all of mine (that I can remember) are drug and alcohol related, namely hanging out in crack houses with unsavory characters, or going to redneck bars and telling my "new best friends" that I'm gay.
• One night when I was about 19 I was moderately drunk and practicing downshifting/handbrake 180 degree turns at about 50mph on a freeway access road. That's not the stupid part. Well, it's not the stupider part. The stupider part is that the noise of me doing this repeatedly for some reason attracted the paranoia of a couple of nearby people working at a repair shop. Apparently, they'd been robbed the night before. That's why they were jumpy. I had stopped to take a leak, because of all the beer I'd been drinking, when this car came skidding up to a stop in front of me. Two guys jumped out, one to the front of me and one behind. Both had shotguns. They did that loading thing. I zipped up my pants and... ...here's the dumb part. Walked right up to the guy in front of me who was pointing his shotgun at me and grabbed the barrel and moved it away from pointing at me saying, "Hey, don't point that at me." When I was driving home a few minutes later, I suddenly recalled how wide his eyes went when I grabbed the gun and I realized how close to death I had come in that moment. So, that's one thing that comes to mind of "dumbest things I've ever done".
• When I was eighteen I petted a rabid raccoon that was staggering around in our backyard.
• Oh yeah ... walking home drunk from a really bad party, I threw a plastic cup full of beer at a moving car. It hit the windshield, the car screeched to a stop, and the driver came running after me. Thankfully, his girlfriend stopped him from "breaking my specs", which he threatened to do about 5 times. Funny thing is, I think he was drunk too.
• re: superglue. I had just driven 4 hours to my parents after working a 10 hour shift as a retail manager. It was 2am in the morning, and I was putting gifts under the tree. I managed to break a gift I had for my mom, but it was easily repairable. So I found a crusty tube of superglue with the tip all clogged. Instead of getting scissors or a nail, I bit the end off with my teeth. And that my friends is the rest of the story.
• Three words, Balloon Knife Fight.
• I think Cropshy is the winner so far ... I's say kmellis, but chances are good neither of those guys would have actually shot him.
• There's some good story telling happening here. Mine isn't as stupid as yours (I think), but my parents and even my brothers still don't know about it. I must've been 8 or 9, playing w/ matchbox cars in a 100+ year old garage. I made a little mountain out of the dirt floor, and parked cars along the "roads" winding up to the top. Being a young piro, and this being a typically equipped garage, naturally I decided to call it a volcano, soaked the whole thing in gasoline and struck a match. Ok, now for the stupid part. I ran away from the 6 foot flames (I knew they'd go out pretty quickly), then looked in and saw a small tough of fire on the gas can. So..... I ran in past the fire to put it out before it exploded, "so I wouldn't get caught." Don't tell my mom, ok?
• Two candidates: First, I drove 300 miles home *immediately* following a weekend spent enjoying the soothing sounds of the Grateful Dead at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. I had taken, oh, perhaps 8-10 hits of acid over the course of two days and nights (as well as a wide variety of other pleasant chemicals and herbs - you know how it is, you can pile anything on top of good acid), and was yet well into a chemically induced reality distortion field when we left. That was an interesting drive. Second: I gave my oldest son a Marvin The Martian keychain with attached metal flying saucer containing a button-keyed green flashlight. He enjoyed projecting the beam on me, as I would freak out when he did so in extremely squirelly fashion, hopping this way and that, diving behind furniture, etc all to avoid the "laser." At one point, he sat on my stomach and flashed the light on my face, then proceeded to jam the Martian end as hard as he could (which, despite his size, was prodigiously hard) into my right eye, bruising the cornea ("about the size of a dime!" said my optometrist excitedly) and separating the front-of-the-back-of-the-eye from the back-of-the-back-of-the-eye. I avoided surgery due to my apparently puissant healing abilities, but just barely. Lesson for son: When Daddy cries, it can't be good. Runners Up: Junior High Pipe Bomb construction and detonation extravaganza! (idiot friend ended up in hospital, I was able to hide my injuries from parental homemade explosives oversight committee); Post-blizzard off-garage-roof sledding; eating truckstop chili on way to Kentucky Lake fishing trip ("acute gastritis!" said the emergency room doctor excitedly. "This shot *should* stop him from throwing up..."); sleeping with Dawn *********, junior year, at party, despite her being a large friend's girlfriend and as crazy a woman as has ever walked the planet.
• Oh.. and I voted for Bush Cheney '04!!!!!! (just kidding)
• One night, I was out with a bunch of friends, while my S.O. was at home (he doesn't like to go out very much). I got completely wasted, but that was ok since I was in the company of very good friends. I went to the bathroom, and when I got out I couldn't find any of my friends. So, instead of waiting for them to show up where I was (they were indeed still there), I decided to walk to my friend's house, still completely drunk, and sans purse, since I'd lost track of it earlier. Having no sense of direction sober, and even less drunk, I got lost in downtown. I wandered around for about 3 hours, completely lost and so drunk I could hardly read the street signs. Right as I was about to curl up in a doorway and cry myself into oblivion, a man in his 30s, driving an old pickup, stopped and asked me if I was okay. I told him I wasn't, that I'd been separated from my friends, and had no idea where I was. He offered me a ride to their house, and I accepted. Thank God and all the angels, his offer was sincere, and all he did was drive me to my friend's house. Once there, my friend's wife let me in, and on hearing my story, gave me The Eye and told me I was lucky to be alive. The kicker: I went back to the bar I was at last, and they had my purse, and nothing had been taken out of it. I never go out without my husband anymore.
• When I was about ten I was on a school trip to the zoo. We were watching the grizzly bears when some of my friends dared me to touch the electric fence in their pen (It was a double chain link fence - with one regular fence on the outside and a second electrified one about 12 inches beyond it on the inside). Of course there were danger signs all over the place. I took the dare and reached in to quickly and lightly touch it with my fingertip. Nothing happened. "It doesn't work", I thought, so I tried it again. Again there was no shock. So I grabbed hold of the fence tighter and turned to my friends and said "Hey, it doesn't do anyth..." The electric pulse knocked me on my ass and I remember looking up at my classmates and one very pissed off teacher. I wonder what long-term effects I can blame on that...
• Second: At one point, he sat on my stomach and flashed the light on my face, then proceeded to jam the Martian end as hard as he could (which, despite his size, was prodigiously hard) into my right eye, bruising the cornea. Lesson for son: When Daddy cries, it can't be good. There's something about the phrase "jam the martian end into my right eye" which just cracks me the hell up. Thanks Fes... I needed a laugh.
• Forgot one: my first flaming shot, no one tells me you have to put it out before you drink it. I lose a third of a moustache, most of an eyebrow, all my coolness. Flame on!
• Second year. I was big on the Walkman thing for my lonely trips to school. As such, I always had rechargeable batteries on me. In my pocket. Next to my house keys. Until that one day when the keys shorted the batteries, and set my crotch on fire during the middle of 17th century English. I run out of the room trying to beat out the smouldering. Few years later. Setting up a nice romantic bath for my beloved (and me). I was already buck nekkid. I lit some candles, and was in the process of bending over to pick up some magazine or something, when a candle behind me set fire to a hair or two in my ass crack. No romantic bath, as the beloved couldn't stop laughing. So there we are. Two dumb, dumb things, and both involving me setting fire to my nether regions. Go figure.
• Glad I could help, Debaser! You think that's funny, you should have seen me doing my amazing pirate imitation, complete with (towards the end) rather crusty and totally-not-piratey-whatsoever eyepatch. Avast, ye scalliwag! I theek me eyeball, she now be pus'in' up properrrr!
• BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAAA!
• So many,,I guess the worst was,,I was setting a third story deck on a condominium. You start having already set the corner posts, and affixing crossbeams at where the decking was to be set. I had just come off a project where we had done some twenty or thirty of the same style, and we were using "two by eights" to plank across(walk across) the different deck levels to nail "joist brackets" to set the floor joists which then you nail the decking to. Anyhow, the crew had left the last four by eight crossbeam without setting it the day before, sitting on the condos "rough in" floor, and I put a two by eight plank across the two crossbeams already set, and then picked up the end of the beam on the floor and walked out on the plank pulling the four by eight to position it to set into the corner post. I forgot,,or because it was snowing that day,,or something,, about the added weight of the four by eight beam and my weight, and the plank snapped in half. On my way down,,in the first second or two of my fsll, I thought,,"Oops, the second floor will catch me", but, we had`nt decked the second floor yet, and when I came to from my near death experience(which was a group of people standing in a circle around me laughing at me), I had fallen thirty feet, had a severley dislocated shoulder, and fractured lower spine(L4-L5 lumbars). Was`nt supposed to walk again, bone fragments lodged in spinal cord, but damn if I did`nt, --if life don`t kill you, it makes you stronger.
• Oh, I like Capt. Renault's second story. I like it very much. Normally, I don't think there would have been any chance at all that one of those guys would have shot me. But when I grabbed the barrel of the gun?? Much more likely.
• Oh, I like Capt. Renault's second story. I like it very much. Normally, I don't think there would have been any chance at all that one of those guys would have shot me. But when I grabbed the barrel of the gun?? Much more likely.
• Name That Itch - is the dumb part taking the handcuffs through security or taking them on your honeymoon? Seeing your new brides reaction when you bring out the handcuffs...priceless.
• So..... I ran in past the fire to put it out before it exploded, "so I wouldn't get caught." I'm not sure, but isn't it a hollywood myth that a gas can explodes when fire hits it? I thought it would just burn. I think they did this on Mythbusters, but I might have made that last part up. Stupidest thing for me? I had a one-night stand with a girl I met at a rugby party one night...no, wait, that's one of the coolest...okay, I'm gonna have to get back to you on this.
• Wasn't me, but a college roommate, his name was Tooter for some reason. Anyway, Tooter was out and the rest of us rejects were just hanging out swilling beer and enjoying ourselves when aforementioned friend comes home from date. We all immediately jumped up and started asking him who beat him up, where was it etc. Our young friend looked confused and said, "No one. I was out with xxx". It dawned on us what had happened and why he had blood all over his face. Three big guys gagging and rolling around in the dirt in front of the apartment. By turns the funniest, stoopidest and grossest thing ever.
• Snort! Capt. Renault wins it for me...I'm still laughing. Talk about burning with desire...
• cropshy still wins!
• pikestrider, the dumb part was taking them through security (although I must admit I enjoyed my bride's complette and utter embarrassment). You haven't really lived until a 300-lb black lady with a gun yells out in a crowded airport "WE'VE GOT HANDCUFFS HERE!!" And everyone--and I mean everyone--looked at me like I was the King of Terrorists.
• Grade school. Was assigned to set up the film projector. Old enough to understand the basics of electricity. Teacher's standing there lecturing the class about the film. I'm spacing out and flicking a copper paper clip back and forth along the edge of the projector cart, where there happened to be an electrical outlet. I remember a tremendous shaking sensation, then looking around, seemingly unharmed, simultaneously tremendously embarassed and thrilled to still be alive. No one else seemed to notice.
• Oh, I got another one: I once chopped up three tulip bulbs and put them on some chili. I thought they were onions.
• if you put a straw in the nozzle of a Lysol spray can you can make a flame thrower - the end of the straw will stay lit and you can shoot several blasts. The straw melts however, and burns a hole in the new carpet your mom just had put in. *shrug*
• When I was a little 'un, and hopped up on sugar, my mother announced that it was nap time. So I went running up the stairs, sprinted into my bedroom, leapt in the air toward my bed, shouting, "Da-duh-duh-DA-duh-DA, Superma-OWWWW!" I'd either underestimated my leg strength or overestimated the distance to the bed. As it was, I split my eyebrow wide open on the top of the headboard. As payment for my stupidity, I got stitched up by a doctor with a bad case of the shakes. Let me tell you, when you're five and see a needle lunging at your eye, you scream. There was also that drunken night of strip poker, but dear God the next morning misery and shame.
• If we're voting, I gotta go with the Captain. The diminishing effect of burning butthair on the female libido must, I imagine, be extraordinary to witness.
• LOL...some of you guys are freakin' lucky to be alive! OK, so I have two non-bright moments: 1. In my country, the electrical poles are made of cement, so they conduct electricity if there are any wires touching it. Well, there was one...so me and my friends used to touch it. We knew that the more of us that touched it, the less electrity we were gonna get. So at one point like 12 of us linked to it. IT WAS SO RAD, it was a very light tickle. but then we got bored and decided to up the ante (of course) and oh, I dunno, perhaps close the circuit? What better way to do that than have the first person touching the pole and the last person with their hand on a bucket of water? *zap* ALL 13 of us ended up collapsed on the floor and for a moment thought we'd died, then the stupid "are you ok?" laughter started. And we left the pole to touch it nevermore. 2. The second was in chemistry class. We were playing with a powder chemical that kinda goes "poof" when you light it with a match (can't remember the name) anyway, I decided to be funny and grabbed a handful of it and without him noticing, dusted my friend's right arm. And then very lightly, set him on fire for an instant. Honestly, I don't know what happened, but in like 2.5 seconds my friend had no hair in his arm, or right eyebrow...and neither did I. LOL. Funnily enough, he still talks to me.
• I was back in college, and was planning a romantic evening to seduce my then gf. Mind you, I lived in a frathouse at the time, so this was no easy task. I put away all the dirty laundry that had been covering my floor, vacuumed, dusted, bought a bottle of wine, and set up candles around the room. She came over, I shut the lights, lit the candles, poured the wine, and proceeded with the smoothness. Just as things started to get, well, heated, I opened up the window a bit. The candles started smoking in the breeze. Which set off the fire alarm. WIthin 15 seconds half the frathouse was pounding on my door trying to get me to turn off the alarm, because the main alarm had been triggered and the fire department was on its way. After that night she and I joked the sex was so hot we set off the fire alarms.
• This was, perhaps, an assist. On a band trip, one of my friends ran into three sailors on leave on the boardwalk and made arrangements to sneak out and meet them at midnight. Said friend was, at the time, fifteen, and visibly underage. I helped her sneak out and covered her absence on the grounds that (a) if I finked, she'd hate me forever and (b) if I didn't help, she'd sneak out anyway and then *nobody* would know where she'd gone if something terrible happened. I didn't sleep all night, worried sick. (She was ok, but the chances of three men picking up and underage girl like that having decent intentions...) In retrospect, I should have stopped by a payphone on my way back and called Naval Security (I'd seen the ship and name badges on their uniforms and knew the meetup point) and put in an anonymous tip. Friend might have been embarrased by the resulting flap, but the sailors would have been discouraged from encouraging the delinquency again.
• In college I was stalked by a sicko who liked to slip "love" notes smeared with blood (police said it was animal blood) under my door and I got sick of not knowing who was doing this so one night I borrowed this huge hunting knife from a friend and sat in the middle of my room with my door open hoping to catch the person. Another friend stopped by and freaked out and called the police, who lectured me and then put a police watch on my dorm and ordered me not to go anywhere alone. I found out the cops didn't watch the dorm after midnight and I got so sick and tired of not having any freedom that I started sneaking out of my dorm after midnight and wandering around campus alone. It dumb to risk my life, but I can't say I wouldn't do it again.
• burning butt hair, hehehehe! It's my favorite, too
• A little clarification on the rabid raccoon story: It was a small raccoon and I briefly petted it on its back, not its head. But still...
• I'm not sure, but isn't it a hollywood myth that a gas can explodes when fire hits it? Yes, it is.
• Speaking of rabid raccoons, did you know there's now a way to cure rabies? At q.queso.com, there's an explination (third post down).
• well, I hardly think I would qualify as a winner here, but whilst in college, after attending a Pink Floyd show at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, I drove us home on the New Jersey Turnpike because I was on less acid than everyone else. I was doing 40 the whole way, a very bad idea, and the lane divider line was visibly moving/wiggling/whatever. we made it home fine though.
• Apparently when I was about 3, I had stuck a wire coat hanger in a socket. Needless to say I can't remember much...
• I just listed three stories in the other thread. There was also the time I was jumping my bike (actually, my sister's bike). The ramp was 2x4s sitting on some blocks of wood. The 2x4s got seperated. "That's OK, I don't need to fix it," I thought. The 2x4s slipped off, the bike fell away, and I went sliding headfirst over the jagged limestone pebbles that make up the driveway. Somehow I only got a few scrapes on my hands. Then there was the time I learned how to start a fire with a 9-volt battery and steel wool. I lit a kleenex on fire, put it out, and threw it in the trash. Only the kleenex wasn't totally out. And the trash can had lint in it and the bag was a paper bag. I burned a hole right through the bottom of the can. I set up fans hoping to get the smell out before my mom got home, but she came home early from work and I got busted.
• I drove us home on the New Jersey Turnpike because I was on less acid than everyone else. *tips hat to Medusa*
• Speaking of driving on acid, a friend of mine has a story where he was with some friends on acid driving down the highway. At one point the driver remarked, laughing, "it's a good thing I'm not driving!"
• Was born ... although it is noted that it was involuntary.
• Debaser?
• One night, driving home from a club in the village, my amorous girlfriend assaults me with kisses while I desperately tried focusing my booze-soaked eyes on the road ahead. At a red light I decided to engage her for a few moments when who should drive up along side us? A regular Hollywood casting call of leather-clad, homophobic morons from Long Island. It was the After School Special they never aired. "Dykes!!" "Let's kill those bitches, man!!" And what did I do? Something the introductory manual all lesbians are given during the initiation ceremony expressly warns against: I flipped them the bird and told them to fuck off. Hilarity ensued. And by hilarity I mean terror. Long story short; one of them produced a gun, fired it, bullet lodges in the inside passenger door - missing my girlfriend by inches. Car chase; cops; they were arrested; court; only the shooter does time. I get a DUI. Fun night.
• OMG badonkadonk...you were shot at? that's fucking scary.
• badonk, your "stupidity" pales in comparison with that of your attackers.
• Warrior, it's weird because at the time it was happening and for months after, I didn't feel scared. Recently, however, the terror of it hit home. quidnunc kid, I appreciate that.
• I was young and put cow-catcher-thrawting rocks on the railroad tracks, then stood not-terribly-far-away to watch the train hit blow them to bits. I consider this dumber than the train hopping.
• hmm...i must have been about 5. One evening after a shower as i was drying myself off and getting ready to wear my nighty, i grabbed mentholated medicated foot powder instead of regular talcum powder and decided my peepee hole needed extra powder for some unfathomable reason. Hah! Didn't feel anything for about 5 seconds...then a gradual cooling...getting progressively cooler, then all of a sudden the burning began. And BOY did it burn! I Didn't want to go tell my mama coz i thought i'd done something bad (i was 5) so i jumped back in the tub. Now water + menthol = extra burning. After 10 minutes of holding back the tears i couldnt take it any more so i ran buck nekkid into the living room where my mom was entertaining guests, lay flat on the carpet, legs sprawled wide open, (still bawling) and said the words which still live on in infamy (at least in my house) "Mama, there's fire in my peepee." Of course my mom still delights in torturing me to this day about it, and always asks if any of my boyfriends have managed to set my peepee on fire like i did when i was 5!
• Even without ruling out the drug and alcohol stories... to set your own ass on fire, for looooove. That is so stupid, and so fine. I worship. Stoopeedest theeng (intoxicated category): many years ago, I walked out of a tavern (The Comet in Seattle), flying on a fine cocktail of stimulants, both legal and extra-legal. Loitering on the street immediately outside the tavern, a pair of shady characters eyeballed me, decided that I fit the profile, and asked me if I was holding. I denied holding what they sought, but offered them some of what I did have as a gift, just because I was so happy. They were of course delighted, and offered me some of what they had in turn. So we slipped into a dark side alley, me and two thuggish strangers, whereupon—compounding my stupidity—I handed them my wallet (freely, and of my own will) so that we would have a surface off of which to do a line. Of course I lost the contents of that wallet during my ensuing mo'-stupida stupor. Stoopeedest theeng (sober yet still stupid category): I once drove a truck solo into the White River in an attempt to ford the river. The force of the river picked up the truck and washed it sideways, downriver... I had barely enough traction to back out of my stupid venture. Had my rig been just a little lighter, or the water just a little higher, I could have ended up in the Pacific Ocean. This is all while I'm technically an adult. Juvenile pyrotechnics constitute their own chapter.
• Fire in my peepee...if I had a nickel for every time I've screamed THAT while splayed on the living room carpet in front of my mother's guests... I'd have ten cents.
• Monkeyfilter: Fire in your peepee.
• Ramix's story is one I will always remember.
• I would like to nominate "Mama, there's fire in my peepee" as our newest MoFi cliche. And not to take the heat off of me, so to speak. Thanks, ramix!
• You know those little wads of paper with gunpowder inside that kids used to be able to buy for the purpose of throwing them at things and making a big BANG? When I was rather young, like 8 or 9, a friend dared me to chomp one in my mouth. In retrospect, that was really, totally, hideously dumb. As it was, the worst that happened is that I had a slight burn (about like eating too-hot pizza) and I was tasting sulfur for two days.
• I set the sink on fire while playing with matches and bug spray. Oh, the irony. I couldn't get the water to put it out because the faucet was burning. I knew a kid at school that took part in jelly fish fights. In the stupid but not dangerous category, as a young child I discovered the neat colorful effect you see on a TV screen when you run a magnet over it. My mom had to call the repairman to get the colors right again :).
• When I was first driving, I remember saying to my friends "Let's see just how fast I can change lanes". I actually brought that VW bug up on two wheels for a very short (yet infinite) moment.
• Stupidest thing I (almost) did, but for some reason backed off from. Age 16 or 17. My friends and I all worked for a local newspaper in the summers. They trusted us to drive the newspaper panel van, though they should not have. They were changing presses, which meant that they had a roll of newsprint which was the wrong size for the new press. They asked us to take it to the dump. We loaded it in the van with a forklift, and drove off. Stupid thing one. The roll was 5' high, and almost as wide as the van. It wanted to roll back and forth, hitting the back of the van. Inertia and mass were going to batter open the door for sure. Solution, a friend stood behind it, buffering it with his body. That even sort of worked. Stupid thing two. "Hey, there's a great big hill near here with a railroad crossing at the bottom. I wonder how far it would fly if we just rolled the thing down the hill." The railroad crossing had a ramp of sorts leading to it, you see, and we already knew you could get a panel van airborne by hitting it fast enough. I drove there and backed up to the top of the hill. We opened the door, and peeled the end of the roll off, so that it would leave a huge streamer all the way down the hill. Then...somehow I remembered that it would be fairly easy for the small-town cops to figure out where a giant roll of paper had to originate. We went to the dump. I kinda wish we'd done it, in retrospect. I'd be out of trouble by now anyway.
• While on vacation in Belfast 10 years ago, I did a high-speed driveby photo shoot of a british soldier while hanging out the window. I had been told the previous day that it was a common tactic of IRA enforcers to take pictures of the soldiers to later identify their families for future attacks. I just wanted the picture I guess...oh and I was a little drunk at the time.
• I jumped of the trunk of a car doing 35mph. I had no shirt, and since I was facing the opposite direction I was travelling, I immediately was on my back. I stayed on my back the whole time until I skidded to a stop. Soon after I got up the cops showed up, and I had to play it cool. (We were playing around in a graveyard at the time. We had to talk our way out of a trespassing ticket) I actually learned alot about playing it cool from that incident, and now almost never get nervous in situation like that.
• Debaser? posted by petebest at 06:48PM UTC on December 01 Hey they stole my thread!!! Mine was up first!!! Well, as they say, imitation is the best form of yadda yadda yadda.....
• I recently lost my keys down an elevator shaft while helping a friend move. A heavy desk with awkward positioning plus a non-zipper pocket and an elevator from the '60s with an inch-and-a-half gap at the door make for an angry, stupid yentruoc. It was Sunday, so no repairman, apartment maintenance person, etc. And I live about 40 miles away and don't know where my spare keys are. So, naturally, I try to go after the keys. I reach into the gap while holding the door open (so no one else can summon the elevator). The floor is too far down. Try a coathanger + flshlight, but the keys are nowhere to be seen. Obviously, I just need to get under the elevator. Since the door has to be closed for the elevator to move, and once the door is closed, it can't be opened until the elevator is there, I needed to find a way to trick the elevator into thinking the door was closed. It appears that a metal latch sticks into a slot to signal the door closing. So, I stick my finger into the slot to mimick the latch. And receive a big jolt of electricity. After my jaw stops clenching, I think for a minute and realize that the fact that it is a metal latch is somewhat important. So, I stick the coat hanger into the slot. But, you know, wrap the end in a plastic bag so I don't get shocked again. I blame this later stupidity on the first shock leaving me somewhat addled. Luckily, there are no further shocks, as I have set off some sort of idiot switch and completely shut down power to the elevator. Whoops. I ended up having to have my friend drive me home to get my keys, and then drive back to continue moving furniture from the third floor sans elevator. To top it off, a little old lady from the top floor asked if I was the one who broke the elevator on the day she had to carry beverages down to the patio for a tea party. Only if I had broken the elevator by shoving a kitten in the fuse slot could I have felt more guilty.
• I don't know about the stupidest thing I've ever done (that mostly involves stupid teenage things with motorised vehicles, and isn't very entertaining), but the funniest dumb thing I've ever done was: I was in this flat where we had this refrigerator. It was small (half-height) and had a small freezer inside. The freezer didn't work too good. In fact, it would turn to a solid block of ice from time to time, trapping anything in it. One day, as I was hacking away at the ice therein, I had a brainwave. What makes ice go away fast? Heat! What's hot? Fire! How can I get fire? Why, I have a lighter. I have cans of flyspray. Therefore, I have a freezer-defrosting flamethrower! This was, in and of itself, not the smartest thing in the world. What pushed it into the realms of surreal stupidity was that one of the mice that shared the flat with us appeared. I had a flamethrower. Now I had something to *hunt*. Cue Rodger chasing the mouse around the kitchen, great blasts of flame curling out of the flyspray container, with an increasingly desperate mouse scuttling for cover. Suddenly I had a very vivid vision: a flaming mouse. Running into a hole in the wall. Followed by a flaming house. I put down the lighter, the flyspray, and let the mouse go. Much to the relief of my flatmates, I might add.
• the flaming mouse reminds me of a story a friend likes to tell, of being a bored pre-teen in Houston. Houston has these mammoth flying cockroaches, and he and a friend would sit in the friend's bedroom and shoot them with a bb gun. this is already dumb, but then they learned the aerosol+lighter=flamethrower equation. They aimed the aerosol at one of the cockroaches and it began to flame... and then it started flying around the room, in flames, divebombing them and everything else in the room. the cockroach didn't set the house on fire, and they managed to get it extinguished. but to this day, the sight of a cockroach freaks him out.
• Oh, and I had the inverse of Minda's situation. On New Year's Eve a few years back, I found a man hanging out at a bus stop outside of the apartment I was staying at. Since that stop was no longer in use, I figured something was wrong and asked if he was ok. He was so drunk, he immediately handed over his wallet. I tried to hand back the wallet and explain about the bus never coming, but he wasn't having it. I told him I would drive him to his house, but he couldn't tell me where he was staying. Actually, he couldn't tell me his name or identify which state he was in. He thought he was in Texas - no part of which is easy to mistake for the hills of San Francisco. So, I took him up to the apartment, which only had one room, and put him on the couch I wasn't using. Probably not the smartest thing, but it turned out ok. The next morning, he was hungover and mortified and thanked me approximately 93 times as I drove him to his hotel.
• Also, when I was in 2nd grade, I used to pile blankets at the bottom of a flight of stairs and jump onto them. I could barely clear the entire flight. A friend of mine couldn't jump quite as far and ended up breaking her arm. The even stupider part is that I didn't stop after she broke her arm. It took my own sprained ankle to accomplish that.
• Rogerd I used to plug in a clothes iron and iron the ice out of our freezer. A friend told me that was stupid, and used an ornamental sword to sword-fight the ice, thus puncturing the freon tubing.
• Fire and Acid,,--- we use to do acid and make,what we called "zilches". When we were peaking, we`d hang twisted plastic bags from the rafters,or anywhere, put a pan of water below them, and set them on fire from the bottom.Those plastic collars that hold together six packs were good for these too. The sizzling plastic drops would make a weird synth sound as it fell and landed in the water. This was about 1970, and there was very little electronic music going on, plus being so young,on LSD, it was all new to a bunch of suburban kids. But one weekend of my acid partys that I was having regularly,because my parents left town every weekend,I forgot to take down the remains of the burned plastic bag and got busted by Mom and Pop, who could`nt understand why we were listening to burning drops of plastic,at the risk of burning down their home. They probably still wonder , heh heh,, if it is still in their memories, just what that was all about.
• During elementary school (think it was in grade 7) we went on a field trip to the woods. Being up North'ish (Prince George) was full of wildlife and fauna. We were walking along a trail next to body of water when I saw this really cute baby beast with spindly legs and a big head aka moose. I walked up to it and started to pet it. I think my teacher (a man) had a baby that day ... apparently it is something you just don't do ... ever needless to say we high tailed it out of there while I kept demanding to know what the big deal was ... heh When I was about 8 I was in the play ground, swinging as high as I could. At the apex of the upswing I leapt from the swing and landed on my hands forgetting to unlock my elbows. About 3 hours later I was getting casts on both arms - I had broken several bones.
• I opened a train door while the train was moving. The door whipped open, nearly dragging me with it. Were it not for the design of the door handles, I would be dead now. All the passengers on my side of the carriage got up and moved to the other side.
• Last year a friend and I lived about a forty minute walk from campus. It was spring, warm, and I didn't want to drive. So, I decided to rollerblade to class. A problem presented itself almost immediately, namely the 21% slope outside my front door. I didn't know the neighborhood very well, but thought that if I went up the hill and then east I'd come to a much gentler slope and could roll freely and easily to the bottom. This was in fact the case. However, a pickup turned to the right directly in front of me, and my options became smacking the side of it or going down an unknown sidestreet. So I turned right as well. Into a road that had house construction on both sides, and was full of curves. It was a far steeper grade than the one I'd intended. So I'm whipping along at speeds that are ludicrous, with my options for things to fall into consisting of wood, road, rocks, dirt, and concrete. A car turned up the hill, broadening my options to hood ornament. So, instead of taking any of the presumably less painful than hitting the road options, I curse and continue down the hill. Ahead of me, a light turns red. The intersection looks empty, and it isn't as if I can stop at this point anyway, so I zoom through. The driver of the pickup that helped cause this whole mess honks at me, as if I'm unaware that I'm hurtling down a hill. I see a patch of grass up ahead. Safety! I hit it, hard. After the tumbling stops, (really it wasn't so much tumbling as it was crashing), I find my head has come to rest in a pile of dog poop.
• Mr. Knickerbocker, you still get in situations like that?! yentruoc, thank God for people like you! rodgerd, patita: I once watched a discovery channel show, one of those real-life emergency room deals, where a 17 or 18 year old high-school senior had been playing with an aerosol can & flame. The can exploded on him, and he suffered nearly crippling burns on his chest, stomach, & legs.
• Pez, did you throw some of the poop at the driver of the truck? He certainly deserved it! this is one hell of a fun thread. Thanks, Debaser!
• Oh, and I used to occasionally read a book while biking home from school.
• If I had followed through on this it would've been a sure Darwin award: in high school, I had my first car. I lost the gascap, so had to stuff a rag in the tank. It was winter, and I pulled up to buy gas. But the gas-soaked rag had frozen into the tank. In those days, I carried a lighter. Didnt smoke, just for lighting fireworks and whatnot. So, I thought, what de-freezes things? fire! I had the lighter out, about to put it to the rag, when it occurred to me maybe this wasnt the best idea.
• I signed up for MonkeyFilter. ZING! No, really, a bunch. Guys in the midwest seem to compare this shit like baseball cards. The dumbest things that I've done have resulted in injury to others much more than to myself. I can remember swinging this pipe around my head in our back yard, with my brother (who had been following me around) a couple feet away. I was trying to get the end, which had bent, to fret off just by whirring it around. I told my brother to stand clear, because it was going to come off and I could tell that the only safe place to be would be where I was, whirring it around. Sure enough, it came off and caught him square in the mouth, which exploded in blood. I still feel really bad about it, and he probably hasn't forgiven me. In fact, I'd say most of the really stupid shit I did directly ended up harming him, which is why it's much worse that the shit I did that harmed myself... (That includes calling my mother while peaking on acid, sure that I was going to die; lighting a fire in the art classroom that took about half an hour to put out
• I paid five dollars to be a member at metafilter.
• I haven't done anything too incredibly stupid, but I did do something rather silly when I was about four or five years old. My dad was standing perfectly still, so I walked up to him and bit his hand as hard as I could. I later explained to my mom that I was just trying to make sure that he was still alive and not a statue. A friend of mine in junior high lit her hand on fire in science class. She, uh, "accidentally" spilled alcohol all over her hand and then "accidentally" got her hand near an open flame. Same friend later lit a paper towel on fire on her desk and tried to extinguish it by blowing on it. This caused it to fly onto the floor, and she panicked and promptly dropped a book on it.
• radiator fluid is not necessarily the best de-icer. Just FYI.
• I'm about 14 years old. It's the middle of a raging blizzard, and we live on a farm a good distance from anywhere else. For some reason I don't remember (chores maybe?) I'm outside with my dad. I find a frozen potato on the ground. I pick it up and start monkeying around with it like it's a baseball. Dad says "don't throw that". I throw it. Hard. By some perverse opposite of a miracle I score a direct hit on a distant metal box that's on the telephone pole in the middle of the barnyard. The metal box that directs the electricity wires into our house. Out goes the power. Dad very, very, very angry. Me, very, very, very embarrassed. House very, very, very cold and dark. For a long time.
• Let's see... Stupid things that could have gotten me killed is hard. I'll go with free-climbing a roughly 20m crag in southern Illinois. The route was mostly really easy but had a 5.9 or so crux at the top. This would normally be either marginally stupid or a good easy free climb, but at the time I did it my left arm was in a cast and unusable.
• I'm curious on whether or not it has to be stupid and funny, or just stupid. Here we go. I'm maybe 8 or 9, my brother is 2 years younger. We're with our dad down in atlantic city, unsupervised, as his apartment is on the block of the boardwalk. It's snowed heavily, and the snow is literally right up to the ocean. My brother and I walk out to the edge, and notice every now and again that the snow falls from the edge into the ocean. We think this is cool, so we, with one foot on the edge, one foot back, smack our foot down, watching the edge crumble beneath our feet, our rear foot keeping us in a safe place. But, that's not exciting enough. I decide to really make it cool, I should grab his hands, he should jump hard on the edge, and I should yank him to safety. I think we kept this up until we were bored.
• Well. There was the game I played with my brother and a friend that involved two people trying to hang on to the top of a car while the third swerved crazily, trying to fling them off. Or standing in the road as the friend drove at us and then jumping up and seeing if we could get over the car (no, we couldn't). Or standing on the hood and jumping off as the driver slammed on the brakes. This is all at 30 to 35 MPH. Amazingly, no one got hurt. A head went through the windshield, but only the car was damaged. I also once climbed at least a hundred feet up a steep muddy cliff that was only a few degrees short of vertical. Hand and foot holds were easy to come by, just jab the appendage into the mud, but they only lasted a second before they collapsed, so to avoid falling to a messy death I had to keep moving very quickly. Near the top it was a close thing, I was too tired to keep moving so fast. A few more feet and I wouldn't have made it.
• i been looking at this all day trying to think of what i have to contribute. and i just remembered. a couple of years ago, i had been living in brisbane with the then girlfriend, but we hated it and were coming home to melbourne, right before christmas - driving all the way (about 1800km). i had been licensed to drive, at this point, for a month and a half. we decided to leave well early on the 23rd of december, about 4 am. The night before we left, with all our stuff either packed or on a truck heading south, sleeping on the floor of our soon-to-be-ex house, on a blanket, there was the biggest december thunderstorm queensland had seen for years. hours of huge thunderbolts roraring out of the sky. suffice to say, i (already nervous about the drive) got absolutely no sleep. but, the gf woke early (3am) and we made our coffee and sammidges and left. we were at the half-way point by midday and wired on adrenalin and the prospect of getting home, so we kept on going. and going. and going. driving in three hour shifts, through grassfires, the truck lanes of the newell highway, and the deathtrap that is the hume highway. we were at the new south wales/victoria border by 8 pm, so close to home we could taste it. so we kept going - 15 hours on the road now. solid. maybe an hour's worth of break time. four hours later we're just north of melbourne, and drifting sideways on the highway left... ...right... an hour from home. at most. an hour. running low on gas... chocolate for energy... we see our first police car in 1750km... does he see that we are broken people? no... we're at broadmeadows, twenty minutes from my parents' house. we made it. 20 hours, one day, one drive. two years afterwards, that drive was one of many death knells of the relationship. life sucks, kids. don't forget it.
• Rode 60 miles home on my motorcycle while high. On a freeway. On a crowded freeway. Dumbest thing ever. Totally, mind-bendingly dumb. And dumb without even having the slightest bit of cool factor. Oh my god stupid why the fuck am I still in one piece dumb. Driving is dumb enough, but shit, you gotta keep motorcycles upright, that takes at least a little balance. Well either that or sleeping with my lesbian best friend's girlfriend and getting caught. Twice. But that's a different kind of stupid. And to think after a few years she forgave me.
• (That would be the girlfriend of my at the time best friend. Who is a lesbian. (the friend, not, obviously, the girlfriend.)) There needs to be a better way to phrase that.
• Try "the girlfriend of my lesbian best friend". Sound better?
• Wait, how can the girlfriend of a lesbian not be a lesbian? Was she a guy? or uh... huh?
• This is the stupidest 100th comment ever!
• Wait, how can the girlfriend of a lesbian not be a lesbian? Was she a guy? or uh... huh? Please, won't somebody think of the bisexuals? /rippedoffjokesorry These are great. I just have "stupid things I've said" (like... "does the song 'Rock Me Amadeus' come from the movie Amadeus", and yes I know who Mozart was but...oh, forget it) and "clumsy things I've done" (tobogganing down a flight of stairs on my back, carrying a 40-pound arthritic dog), but nothing truly mythic.
• Not only that, but she could also be a lesbian. Sleeping with a person of the opposite sex doesn't make a person heterosexual or bisexual. This reminds of the "Chasing Amy" thing where lots of folks would insist that whatshername couldn't have been a lesbian since she got involved with Affleck's character. But it's pretty common for gay people to have had at least one straight relationship. Not just before they're sure of their own sexuality, but also for a variety of other reasons, including simply that they really, really like the person. The story above reminded me of how one of the coolest and smartest women I've ever known is a lesbian and she and I had sex because we were instant great friends but also very intimate and, basically, we felt we had fallen in love with each other. But she was very definitely lesbian and when we had sex it really screwed everything up and eventually ended our friendship. I still regret losing her as a my friend and from that time on I've vowed never to sleep with anyone that I'm already really, really good friends with. (This came up years later when I first met my best-friend of the last 14 years. He's gay, I'm straight. But we sure are close. I never have known if he was ever attracted to me
• I'm not sure, but isn't it a hollywood myth that a gas can explodes when fire hits it? Yes, it is. Ok, fine. That wasnt dumb, then. Of course, some of my later experiments with smokeless powder weren't exactly genius material.
• I think it was the summer after my sophomore year in college that I was home alone while my parents were in Europe. It was 3 AM and I became convinced there was someone in the house with me. I found my parents' handgun, which I wasn't supposed to know about, knocked off the safety, and went through the house. There was nobody there except me and the two cats, of course, so I had to put the safety back on. I couldn't get it back on, and I ended up shooting a hole in my mother's closet while trying to fix it. Note: no drugs other than caffeine were involved in the production of this stupidity. After that I got me some shootin' lessons, and my parents decided not to keep Daddy's gun out and loaded in his closet. Or so I thought--it turned out that my mother kept the gun and much later, she had to call HPD to find out how to dispose of the damn thing safely. It hadn't been cleaned or maintained since I was a little kid, and I was lucky I didn't blow my hand off when I used it, not to mention my head. (Why yes, I do believe kids should be taught to use firearms and how not to use them. Untrained kids + guns = trouble. You can't always control where the guns are, but you can control whether or not the kid is trained.)
• kmellis: yeah I agree with you about the homosexual sleeping with the opposite sex thing (and the straights sleeping with the same sex... hey I had a boyfriend for a year and I'm straight) while staying quite homosexual thank you very much, but in this case she was obviously not a lesbian. And questionably bi-. And now back to people doing stupid things that really should have lead to being dead.
• I was far too sensible, being the eldest child. Worst thing I did as a kid was break my foot after building a makeshift ramp onto the trampoline which, not surprisingly, slipped off when I was halfway up. As an adult, I had a dumb motorbike accident which I've explained before and which resulted in a nice exhaust-burn and knocking out my front teeth. But it wouldn't have killed me. I'm so boring.
• We could gladly make up a few stories for you to claim, tracicle.
• My stories are really stupid little kid stuff, but I still think they're funny. When I was a little kid, I loved to climb things. Anything. My mom jokes that she wanted to tie bricks to me, to make me too heavy to climb. Anyway, I was really good at climbing up things (trees, houses, furniture, big rocks, cars...), but really bad at getting back down. So I usually just jumped. And landed on my face. While I never actually knocked out any teeth, I did black them out a few times. This is when my family learned that teeth can bruise. On a similar note, a friend and I were bored at church one day when I was about 10. We discovered that if you hit the nozzle of the liquid hand soap in the bathroom *really hard,* it would shoot soap out across the floor. Exciting! This is when we decided to "ice (soap) skate" on the bathroom floor. We covered the whole floor with soap -- a fun process -- then skidded around on the bathroom floor for a glorious half hour. (In our church shoes and dresses, which got really soapy) Then church let out...and old ladies started going to the bathroom and hitting the deck, which was briefly funny, until we got caught. Needless to say, we got into lots of trouble -- and were the subjects of the next week's sermon. Oh, and there's the time in high school where my two friends (who had the same make and model of car) decided to race to see who could go faster. On the freeway. At rush hour. I think we hit 125mph. The one time I've been on the freeway in Dallas and not gotten passed.
• Please, won't somebody think of the bisexuals? I am now thinking of the bisexuals. My own stupidity is more of a constant, low-level background stupidity, lacking any of the glorious peaks of idiocy involved here. For one thing, I don't get reckless when drinking or on drugs, I get obsessively cautious. But I'd offer: cracking my head when jumping out of the laundry basket because I was "being a volcano" (age 6, hospitalised, still have bump); sprinting head first into the metal pole of a climbing frame for absolutely no reason (age 11, concussed, still have bump); hitting myself very hard in the head with a cricket bat (age 15, became very dizzy and was bowled second ball, still have bump); and diving head first onto the concrete steps of a swimming pool whilst fully clothed and with a champagne glass in my hand (age 21, rubbed head, picked up broken glass, wiped blood off hand, had another drink. Still have bump.) Me and my head clearly have issues we need to resolve.
• I knew a girl at school who managed to splash acid in her eye during a lab test and get hit in the same eye, a few months later, with a cricket ball, right before final exams. God knows how she kept her eyesight.
• As a boy I listed to the stories of my father and his brothers. They made gunpowder in their rooms. Build cannon. Constructed a ramjet. Their father had, as a boy, greased a section of train track with a side of bacon. These inspired me. My best idea was to look up how to make gunpowder. I assembled the ingredients. Charcoal, nitrate (ice melter) and sulfur. I ground them up in the blender. When the time came to mix them together, I did this outside, not in the kitchen. I was not dumb. What to do with the gunpowder? I found a 8 inch length of steel pipe, bought a cap, drilled a hole for the fuse, packed in the powder, followed by a clay plug. I stood this up in a larger pipe, in the backyard. The first two times I lit the fuse, I got a bright, hot flare out of the fuse hole. On the third try, Liftoff! The larger pipe remained in the yard, smoking. There was one of those long periods that contains only a few seconds. Perhaps 15 seconds, but I did not time it. Then my pipe returned to earth, and imbedded itself in the lawn. I realized that there were many things that did not happen during those few seconds. I was unhurt, and the projectile had not gone through any roofs, etc. I quit the pipe bomb business. My boys are 12 and 8. I am going to have to introduce them to controlled mayhem, so that they will not be forced to compensate for a dull childhood with a careless youth. I have already showed them that there should be a bed of sand under the focusing lens, not the wooden deck. And look both ways before crossing the railroad tracks. Will this be enough? I doubt it.

• Driving is dumb enough, but shit, you gotta keep motorcycles upright, that takes at least a little balance.

  Actually, aspo, the faster you go, the more that physics keeps the bike up, no balancing involved. It's when you're going slow that it's a problem.
• I was 15 and heading to Europe for the first time. My plane ticket had been purchased some time after my mother's, who I was going to tour Greece with for 25 days. Because of the different purchase times, I was able to get on her flight from California to New York, but from there we had different flights. She went straight to Athens, and I had to change planes in Rome. We'd bought 25 rolls of film to take with us. When we split up in New York, she took the camera and handed me the film. She told me not to let it go through the x-ray machine under any circumstances. She also told me to be sure not to miss my connection in Rome. The night before we left, there'd been an all-night bon voyage party. I didn't sleep during the flight to New York or the flight from New York to Rome. All of that combined with a fairly lengthy delay in New York meant that I'd had no sleep for roughly 57 hours when I arrived at the Da Vinci airport. Most anything resembling intelligence was long since out the window. I put it after I later got sleep in Athens that I'd had two brain cells left operational, one for each of the instructions my mother'd given me in New York. No room for anything else. Including survival instincts, apparently. Da Vinci had been hit with a string of terrorist attacks, and security was on the alert and heavily armed. When I changed planes, I had to go through the x-ray and metal detector rigamarole before catching my next flight. I took the bag of film and asked the man at the counter to check it by hand. He told me to put it through the x-ray. I explained it was film. He stood firm. We began arguing. The heavily armed man doing security by the metal detector noticed this. When the argument showed no signs of stopping, he came over. He pointed his gun at me and told me to put the film through the x-ray machine, and there was mention of that lovely word, "terrorist." I turned, looked at him, looked at the gun pointed at me, and cordially invited him to go fuck himself. And only then realized what I'd said, and to whom, after the words were out of my mouth. I imagine I was going quite pale just as rapidly as he was turning a lovely shade of angry crimson. Despite the scenarios that played out in my head during the long moments that he was glaring at me, he did not even attempt to arrest me, much less shoot me (both of which seemed quite possible at the time.) He went back to his post and continued glaring. The man behind the counter was laughing his ass off at me. But still would not hand check the film. We resumed arguing. Finally, I put the film through the x-ray machine. Only because otherwise, I would have missed my flight.
• And we got some really spectacular effects on one roll of film. Either that, or Zeus sent a lighteng bolt.
• Around Christmastime I went to a party at a friends-of-a-friends house during which many intoxicants were gleefully consumed by all. At the end of the evening, it was determined that some of us were too far gone to safely make it home so the hosts graciously put us up for the night. I was assigned a spare bedroom upstairs. I awoke during the night desperately needing a wiz. So I got up, opened the bedroom door and stepped out into space, crashing all the way down a long flight of hardwood stairs, landing on my face in a bleeding, moaning heap at the bottom, clad only in my underwear. The commotion, of course, roused everyone in the house. Fortunately, no permanent injuries but I was a mess for weeks afterward.
• islander, that reminded me of this (which is the last one before I swear off this thread for good): A bunch of us had rented a beach house for a weekend. The first night there, I had a few too many Coronas. Well, okay, a lot too many. Anyway, around 2 am I stumbled off to bed with my girlfriend for a little hanky-panky. Drunk, horny, and condom in place, we were all set. Well, almost. With all the Coronas in me, I had a little, er, difficulty maintaining certain standards, if you know what I mean. So we decided the one thing we could do well at that point was sleep, which I did about six seconds later. At about 4 or 5 am I really really really had to piss, so I lumbered into the bathroom, threw up the toilet seat, and started to go. Now even though I was still quite drunk, I knew that when you pee, there's supposed to be some sort of sound associated with it. Like the sound of it hitting the water in the toilet. But I got nothing. Just silence. I looked down. There--on my dick--was a small piss-filled condom. And it was getting bigger. And bigger. In a mad panic, I ripped it off. That couldn't have been a bigger mistake. As soon as I did, piss exploded all over the bathroom like the dancing fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas. Not knowing what else to do, I quickly finished my peeing and slunk back to bed.
• I stuck a key in an electric outlet when I was about 3. Shocked the bajezus outta me. So I did it again.
• While in college a friend from Texas accidentally swapped her diaphragm's spermicide tube for her roommate's tube of Ben Gay. Nothing starts my day like bursting into the women's bathroom to find out who's being murdered and seeing a well-built 6' naked blond screaming while doing a headstand under the shower...
• I asked a priest whether or not he was excited about Texas' legalization of sodomy last year. I live in Dallas. It was in confession. I'm an atheist. I humped the Hancock Tower in Chicago for five minutes straight for 10 bucks. I would do it again. I was fourteen. But ramix fucking wins.
• Good thing yer an atheist, mfpb, otherwise you'd burn in hell for that one.
• bedii, Name That Itch...these just keep getting better and better... The images you paint in my mind are spectacular. Great way to start the day at work. :D
• piss exploded all over the bathroom like the dancing fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Vegas That's a keeper, I think.
• If we're voting, I think I have to go with Capt. Renault's setting his crotch on fire with his keys. That is just impressive.
• I dunno, the screaming handstand is an image that's stuck with me all day.
• Smart thing - wearing a bicycle helmet. Dumb thing - go to a wine tasting, riding my mountain bike to get there. Get a little happy, and then start to ride home - at night - in deepest, darkest South Carolina. So I'm riding, riding, decide to take a short cut to get onto the highway home through a supermarket car park. So I'm riding, riding, WHAT THE ****??!! WHERE DID THEY COME FROM....grabbed the brakes and thus locked the front wheel, causing the back wheel to come up off the ground and pivot around the front axle, which slammed me head first into the pavement. I then skidded for a bit. The really embarassing thing was that I was due to fly home to Australia in a month, which gave me that long to heal, and get rid of the more obvious scarring so that my mum wouldn't ask questions. I actually managed to fade out the scar on my chin in that time, though I still have the scars on my knee, and on my wrist where my watch band was just abour dragged off over my hand. My helmet was completely smashed, and replacing that the next day was one of the first orders of business. My mum is still, thankfully, in the dark. She frets.
• Inundating the school on the first day of use of the new building. On the 'open house' the weeknd before I opened a faucet to the firehose. During the night the hose, now under pressure, bursted and monday morning the whole building (the first school with carpet!) was filled with a few inches of water. It took a couple of days to dry it and the carpet was still very wrinkly after that. I never dared to confess my actions.
• one adam twelve, one adam twelve, proceed to mare's house . . .
• This is sorta a Curious George thing , mare, but how come you finally 'fessed up' now? *calls in false alarm*
• It's time for the taglines: MonkeyFilter: Not life threatening, but certainly stupid. MonkeyFilter: /revealing waaaaaay too much MonkeyFilter: setting fire to my nether regions MonkeyFilter: my head has come to rest in a pile of dog poop
• Don't forget: MonkeyFilter: Me and my head clearly have issues we need to resolve.
• Ah yes, Bevos, nice save!