"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -
CLARK
"WANT TO CHANGE COLORS? CLICK AWAY!"
Kentucky: Two men tried to pull the front off a cash machine
by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their
pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the
machine, though, they pulled the bumper off their truck. Scared,
they left the scene and drove home. With the chain still attached
to the machine. With their bumper still attached to the chain. With
their vehicle's license plate still attached to the bumper.
South Carolina: A man walked into a local police station, dropped a
bag of cocaine on the counter, informed the desk sergeant that it
was substandard cut, and asked that the person who sold it to him
be arrested immediately.
Indiana: A man walked up to a cashier at a grocery store and
demanded all the money in the register. When the cashier handed him
the loot, he fled--leaving his wallet on the counter.
England: A German "tourist," supposedly on a golf holiday, shows up
at customs with his golf bag. While making idle chatter about golf,
the customs official realizes that the tourist does not know what a
"handicap" is. The customs official asks the tourist to demonstrate
his swing, which he does--backward! A substantial amount of narcotics
was found in the golf bag.
Arizona: A company called "Guns For Hire" stages gunfights for
Western movies, etc. One day, they received a call from a
47-year-old woman, who wanted to have her husband killed. She got 4-1/2
years in jail.
Texas: A man convicted of robbery worked out a deal to pay $9600
in damages rather than serve a prison sentence. For payment, he
provided the court a check--a *forged* check. He got 10 years.
(Location Unknown): A man went into a drug store, pulled a gun,
announced a robbery, and pulled a Hefty-bag face mask over his
head--and realized that he'd forgotten to cut eyeholes in the mask.
(Location Unknown): A man successfully broke into a bank after hours
and stole--are you ready for this?--the bank's video camera. While
it was recording. Remotely. (That is, the videotape recorder was
located elsewhere in the bank, so he didn't get the videotape of
himself stealing the camera.)
(Location Unknown): A man successfully broke into a bank's basement
through a street-level window, cutting himself up pretty badly in
the process. He then realized that (1) he could not get to the
money from where he was, (2) he could not climb back out the window
through which he had entered, and (3) he was bleeding pretty badly.
So he located a phone and dialed "911" for help.
Virginia: Two men in a pickup truck went to a new-home site to steal
a refrigerator. Banging up walls, floors, etc., they snatched a
refrigerator from one of the houses, and loaded it onto the pickup.
The truck promptly got stuck in the mud, so these brain surgeons
decided that the refrigerator was too heavy. Banging up *more*
walls, floors, etc., they put the refrigerator BACK into the house,
and returned to the pickup truck, only to realize that they locked
the keys in the truck--so they abandoned it.
(Location Unknown): A man walked into a Circle-K, put a $20 bill
on the counter and asked for change. When the clerk opened the
cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash
in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man
took the cash from the clerk and fled-- leaving the $20 bill
on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the
drawer? Fifteen dollars.
North Carolina: Ken Charles Barger, 47, accidentally shot
himself to death in December when, awakening to the
sound of a ringing telephone beside his bed, he reached for the phone but
grabbed instead a Smith & Wesson .38 Special, which discharged when he
drew it to his ear.
Texas: Three men who were attempting to steal copper wire off live electrical
lines for resale were electrocuted. Copper wiring is a valuable scrap
metal in Texas but is usually stolen from electric cables that are not
being used.
Toronto: Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in
a downtown skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and
plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy, 39, fell into the courtyard of the
Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the
strength of the building's windows to visiting law students.
Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according
to police reports. Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day
Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was ``one of the best
and brightest'' members of the 200-man association.
Mammoth Lakes: A San Anselmo man died when he hit a lift
tower at the Mammoth Mountain ski area while riding down the slope on a foam
pad.
Matthew David Hubal, 22, and his friends apparently had hiked up a ski run called Stump
Alley and undid some yellow foam protectors from the lift towers.
The pads are used to protect skiers who might hit the towers.
The group apparently used the pads to slide down the ski slope and Hubal
crashed into a tower. It was not clear if the tower he hit was one with
its pad removed.
(Location Unknown): Terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death
of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but
autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had
consisted of beans (they said what kind; I forgot) cabbage (and a couple
other things). It was just the right combination of foods.
It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing from the poisonous
cloud that was hanging over his bed. The ME said, had he been outside or
had his windows opened it wouldn't have been fatal but the man was shut up
in his near airtight bedroom. He was ``...a big man with a huge capacity for
creating [this deadly gas].'' Three of the rescue workers got sick and
one was hospitalized.
Cairo, Egypt: Six people drowned while trying to rescue a chicken that had fallen into a well.
An 18-year-old farmer was the first to descend into the 60-foot well. He
drowned, apparently after an undercurrent in the water pulled him down,
police said.
His sister and two brothers, none of whom could swim well, went in one
by one to help him, but also drowned. Two elderly farmers then came to help,
but they apparently were pulled down by the same undercurrent.
The bodies of the six were later pulled out of the well in the village
of Nazlat Imara, 240 miles south of Cairo.
The chicken was also pulled out. It survived.
St. Louis: Robert Puelo, 32, was apparently being disorderly in a
St. Louis market. When the clerk threatened to call police, Puelo grabbed a
hot dog, shoved it in his mouth, and walked out without paying for it.
Police found him unconscious in front of the store: paramedics removed
the six-inch wiener from his throat, where it had choked him to death.
(Location Unknown): Poacher Marino Malerba shot a stag standing above him
on an overhanging rock -- and was killed instantly when it fell on him.
West Virginia: A man at a party popped a blasting cap into his mouth and bit down,
triggering an explosion that blew off his lips, teeth and tongue.
Jerry Stromyer, 24, of Kincaid, bit the blasting cap as a prank during a
party.
``Another man had it in an aquarium, hooked to a battery, and was trying
to explode it,'' the police said. ``It wouldn't go off and this guy said, `I'll
show you how to set it off.'
``He put it in his mouth and bit down. It blew all his teeth off, his
tongue and his lips.''
Oregon: Tony Roberts, 25, lost his right eye during an initiation
into a men's rafting club, Mountain Men Anonymous, in Grants Pass, Ore.
A friend tried to shoot a beer can off his head, but the arrow entered
Roberts' right eye. Doctors said had the arrow gone 1 millimeter to the
left, a major blood vessel would have cut and Roberts would have died
instantly.
Roberts admitted afterwards he and his friends had been drinking that
afternoon. Said Roberts, ``I feel so dumb about this.''
London: A Thief who sneaked into a hospital was scarred for
life when he tried to get a suntan.
After evading security staff at Odstock Hospital in Salisbury, Wiltshire,
and helping himself to doctors' paging devices, the thief spotted a
vertical sunbed. He walked into the unit and removed his clothes for a
45-minute tan.
However, the high-voltage UV machine at the hospital, which is renowned
for its treatment of burns victims, has a maximum dosage of ten seconds.
After lying on the bed for almost 300 times the recommended maximum time the
man was covered in blisters.
Hours later, when the pain of the burns became unbearable, he went to
Southampton General Hospital, 20 miles away,in Hampshire. Staff became
suspicious because he was wearing a doctor's coat. After tending his
wounds they called the police.
Southampton police said: "This man broke into Odstock and decided he
fancied a quick suntan. Doctors say he is going to be scarred for life."
Wichita, Kansas: Police arrested a 22-year-old man at an
airport hotel after he tried to pass two (counterfeit) $16 bills.
(LocationUnknown): A company trying to continue its five-year perfect safety
record showed its workers a film aimed at encouraging the
use of safety goggles on the job. According to Industrial
Machinery News, the film's depiction of gory industrial
accidents was so graphic that twenty-five workers suffered
minor injuries in their rush to leave the screening room.
Thirteen others fainted, and one man required seven stitches
after he cut his head falling off a chair while watching the
film.
California: The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear
weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one
within city limits.
Sweden: Swedish business consultant Ulf af Trolle labored 13 years
on a book about Swedish economic solutions. He took the
250-page manuscript to be copied, only to have it reduced to
50,000 strips of paper in seconds when a worker confused the
copier with the shredder.
Washington DC: A convict broke out of jail in Washington D.C., then a few
days later accompanied his girlfriend to her trial for
robbery. At lunch, he went out for a sandwich. She needed to
see him, and thus had him paged. Police officers recognized
his name and arrested him as he returned to the courthouse
in a car he had stolen over the lunch hour.
Michigan: When two service station attendants in Ionia, Michigan,
refused to hand over the cash to an intoxicated robber, the
man threatened to call the police. They still refused, so
the robber called the police and was arrested.
(Location Unknown): An unidentified man, using a shotgun like a club to break a former
girlfriend's windshield, accidentally shot himself to death when the
gun discharged, blowing a hole in his gut.
Michigan: James Burns, 34, of Alamo, Mich., was killed in March as he was trying
to repair what police described as a "farm-type truck." Burns got a
friend to
drive the truck on a highway while Burns hung underneath so that he
could ascertain the source of a troubling noise. Burns'clothes caught
on something,
however, and the other man foundBurns "wrapped in the drive shaft."
Toronto: Man slips, falls 23 stories to his death. A man cleaning a bird
feeder on
his balcony of his condominium apartment in this Toronto suburb
slipped and
fell 23 stories to his death, policesaid Monday. Stefan Macko, 55,
was standing on a wheelchair Sunday when the accident occurred, said
Inspector
D'Arcy Honer of the Peel regional police."It appears the chair moved
and he
went over the balcony," Honer said."It's one of those freak accidents.
No foul play is suspected."
South Carolina: Michael Anderson Godwin spent several years awaiting South Carolina's
electric chair on a murder conviction before having his sentence
reduced to
life in prison. In March 1989, sitting on a metal toilet in his cell
and attempting to fix his small TV set, he bit into a
wire and was electrocuted.
Indiana: A cigarette lighter may have a triggered fatal explosion in Dunkirk,
Indiana. A Jay County man using a cigarette lighter to check the
barrel of a
muzzleloader was killed Monday night when the weapon discharged in his
face,
sheriff's investigators said. Gregory David Pryor, 19, died in his
parents'
rural Dunkirk home about 11:30 p.m. Investigators said Pryor was
cleaning a
..54-caliber muzzleloader that had notbeen firing properly. He was
using the
lighter to look into the barrel when the gunpowder ignited.
Arkansas: Thurston Poole, 33, of Des Arc and Billy Ray Wallis,
38, of
Little Rock were seriously injured when their pick-up truck left the
road
and struck a tree.
The
accident occurred as the two men were returning to Des Arc after a
frog-gigging trip. On an overcast Sunday night, Poole's pick-up
truck's headlights malfunctioned. The two men concluded that the
headlight fuse on
the older model truck had burned out. As a replacement fuse was not
available,
Wallis noticed that the .22 caliber bullet from his pistol fit
perfectly
into the fuse box next to the steering wheel column. Upon inserting
the bullet, the headlights again began to operate properly and the
two men proceeded on east-bound toward the White River bridge.
After traveling approximately twenty miles and just before crossing
the river, the bullet apparently overheated, discharged and struck
Poole in the
right testicle. The vehicle swerved sharply to the right exiting the
pavement and striking a tree.
Poole suffered only minor cuts and abrasions from the accident, but
will require surgery to repair the other wound. Wallis sustained a
broken clavicle
and was treated and released. "Thank God we weren't on that bridge
when Thurston shot himself or we might both be
dead," stated Wallis.
"I've been a trooper for ten years in this part of the world, but this
is
a
first for me. I can't believe that those two would admit how this
accident
happened," said a State Trooper. Upon being notified of the wreck, Lavinia,
Poole's
wife, asked how many frogs the boys had caught and did anyone get them
from
the truck.
Michigan: A man buys a brand new Grand Cherokee for 30 thousand dollars. He
immediately
gets ahold of his friend and to do some male bonding. They go duck hunting
and
of course all the lakes are frozen.
Sp they go to the lake with the guns, the dog, the beer and of
course the new vehicle. They drive out onto the lake ice and get ready. Now,
they want to make some kind of a natural landing area for the ducks,
something
for the decoys to float on. Remember, it's all ice and in order to make a
hole
large enough to look like something a wandering duck wants to fly down and
land
on, it is going to take a little more effort than a ice hole drill.
Out of the back of the new Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite with a
short, 40 second fuse. Now they do take into consideration
that
if they place the stick of dynamite on the ice at a location far from where
they
are standing (and the new Grand Cherokee), they take the risk of slipping on
the
ice when they run from the burning fuse and possibly going up in smoke with
the
resulting blast. So, they decide to light this 40 second fuse and throw the
dynamite which is what they end up doing.
Remember a couple of paragraphs back when I mentioned the vehicle, the beer,
the
guns AND THE DOG? Yes, the dog. A highly trained Black Lab used for
retrieving,
especially things thrown by the owner. You guessed it, the dog takes off at
a
high rate of doggy speed on the ice and gets the stick of dynamite with the
burning 40 second fuse about the time it hits the ice all to the woes of the
2
idiots yelling, stomping, waving arms and wondering what the hell to do now.
The dog, well it is happy and heads back from where it came from moments
before,
with the stick of dynamite, only to the mounting woes of the 2 bozo's now
really
waving their arms, yelling even louder and jumping to new heights than ever
before. Now one of the guys decides to think, something that he has never
done
before this moment, grabs a shotgun and shoots the dog. The shotgun is
oaded
with #8 duck shot, hardly big enough to stop a Black Lab on its appointed
rounds. Dog stops for a moment, slightly confused and continues on.
Another shot and this time the dog, still standing, becomes really confused
&
of
course scared, thinking these 2 Nobel Prize winners have gone insane and
takes
off to find cover, with the now really short short fuse burning on this
stick
of
dynamite. The cover the dogs finds? Underneath the brand new Grand Cherokee.
BOOM !
Dog dies and it and the brand new Grand Cherokee 30 some thousand dollar
400+
monthly payment vehicle sink to the bottom of the lake leaving the 2
candidates
for Co-leaders of the Known Universe standing there with this "I can't
believe
this happened" look on their faces.
Later, the owner of the vehicle calls his insurance company who tells him
that
sinking a vehicle in a lake by illegal use of explosives is not
covered. He had yet to make the first of those 400+ a month payments.
Conneticut: There are many transmission lines that crisscross Connecticut.
These
are held up by Transmission Towers of various constructions. Those
most commonly installed near urban areas are called "metal Ornamental
Towers" (supposedly prettier than wood towers). Sometimes adventurous
folks climb
the towers in order to enjoy the view and the night air. Most stay
away from the wires, and, when they get bored, come back down.
Apparently, a man who was forlorn after a recent spat with his
girl-friend
needed some fresh air to clear his head and decided to climb a tower.
He stopped for a 6-pack to help clear his thoughts, went to a tower
south of Hartford, next to I-91, and climbed it.
Public Service employees later pieced the story together. The man sat
there
60 feet above the highway, drank his beer and consoled his bruised
ego. After
5 beers, he needed to do what people often need to do after 5 beers.
It being
such a long hike down, he unzipped and did his business right there
off the
tower.
Electricity is a funny thing. One doesn't need to touch a wire in
order to
get shocked. Depending on conditions, 115,000 volt lines, like those
supported by the tower, could shock a person as far away as 6 feet.
When the man "whizzed" near the conductor (wire), the power arcedup
his "stream" (urine is an excellent conductor of electricity),
traveled up to
his
private parts, and blew him off the tower.
The guys at the power company noted a momentary outage on this line
and sent
repairmen to see if there was any damage. When they got to the scene
of the
accident, they found a very dead man on the ground beside the tower
with his
fly down, what was left of his genitalia smoking, and a single beer
left on
top.
