idiotstories

-Contact Lens Trouble -

A drunk staggered into a Pennsylvania ER complaining of severe pain while trying to remove his contact lenses. He said that they would come out half way, but they always popped back in. A nurse tried to help using a suction pump, but without success. Finally, a doctor examined him and discovered that the man did not have his contact lenses in at all. He had been trying to rip out the membrane of his cornea.

- Hole -

A 64 year-old woman with colon cancer kept returning to hospital with
an infection around her stoma (the hole where the tube from her
colostomy bag is inserted). There was also a mysterious whitish ooze
emanating from it. After eventually inquiring into her private life,
the doctors found out that she led an active sex life. "And," she
told them, "When we're feeling really energetic, my husband gets his
kicks out of removing the bag and using my stomach!"

- Stupid Crook -

Gary Blantz was arrested for kidnapping a bar owner near Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1992. Police reported later that Blantz shot himself in the foot with his .45 caliber revolver in order to show his victim what would happen if he disobeyed.

- Another Smart Crook -

When his .38-caliber revolver failed to fire at its intended victim
during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, robber James Elliot did
something that can only inspire wonder: he peered down the barrel and
tried the trigger again. Happily for most concerned, this time it
worked.

- Cigar Insurance -

A North Carolina man, having bought several expensive cigars, insured
them against...get this...fire. After he had smoked them, he then
decided that he had a claim against the insurance company and filed.
The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason that
the man had consumed the cigar normally. The man sued. The judge
stated that since the company had insured the cigars against fire,
they were obligated to pay. After the man accepted payment for his
claim, the company then had him arrested for...arson.

Believe it or not, this McDonald's chicken nugget thing actually happened to me when they had bar-b-cue wings. I asked the girl for 18 wings and she told me, in front of several amazed customers, that they only came in 6 and
12 packs. When the woman next to me told the counter girl to give me a 12 and a 6 pack, she looked at him with this weird face, turned and called the manager. The manager assured the girl she could give me 18 wings, but he had to help her with the register. America what a country.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A lady at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly. When inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they asked for a credit card number, so she's using the ATM "thingy".

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I recently saw a distraught young lady with tears in her eyes beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door un-locker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenient store) would have a battery to fit this?" "Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm too?" I asked. "No, just this remote thingy," she answered, handing it and the car keys to me. As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries, it's a long walk."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Several years ago, we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," the secretary told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five "blank" copies.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I was in a car dealership a while ago, when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister". I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the "cruise control" and then went in the back to make a sandwich.

- Boredom Without TV -

After shooting and wounding his wife and young son, Louis Pilar of Rheims, France, told police that a three-week strike by television technicians was to blame. 'There was nothing to look at,' he explained, 'and I was bored.' Fortunately his wife did not seem to mind being shot at. From her hospital bed she said: 'I don't blame my husband. It really was very boring in the evenings.'

- Sleepy Flight Attendant -

Meegan Vargas, a flight attendant for American Eagle was nearly pulled out of an airplane in July 1995 when she accidentally opened the airliner's door while the plane was still six hundred feet in the air near O'Hare Airport in Chicago IL. Vargas, who remained on medical leave nearly a year later, was described as sleep-deprived at the time of the incident.

- Teenage Car Thieves -

Three teen-aged car thieves bailed out of a stolen 1993 Honda Accord in Alexandria VA in December 1995 when they realized they were being followed by a Washington DC police cruiser. In an effort to escape, the trio ran into swampy woods towards a brick building which happened to be the Alexandria police headquarters and city jail. At the time of the teens' flight, a team of K-9 officers and their dogs were about to begin a search exercise in the same woods. In addition, the escape attempt coincided with the police department's shift change doubling the number of officers at the station. The hapless thieves were captured within minutes. Alexandria Police Chief Charles E. Samarra remarked, "These guys didn't stand a chance. There were so many officers, it was almost hard to figure out who made the arrests. It was almost like it was part of the K-9 drill when they went running by."

- Shoplifter -

Anastasios Balodimas was arrested for shoplifting in St. Petersburg FL in March 1996. Although handcuffed, Balodimas jumped into a idling police cruiser and escaped from the police department parking lot. Balodimas was arrested again later the same day for shoplifting in Largo FL, but no longer had the handcuffs or the police car.

- Compelling Explanation? -

In February, Nova Scotia provincial judge John MacDougall ruled that a doctor who had masturbated two teen-age boys numerous times in his office had not violated the law because he had thought his unorthodox procedure was a valid medical treatment for the patients (one of whom had complained merely of blurred vision after a fall). (Two weeks later, a prosecutor exercised a rare constitutional procedure and indicted the doctor directly before the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia.)

- Important Legislature Business -

In March, in the heat of a battle in the Mexican legislature over adopting daylight savings time, opponent Sen. Felix Salgado put forth his strongest argument: Advancing the clocks an hour will reduce daylight time in the morning, curtailing many "mananeros," or couples' morning sex. "(N)ow when you wake up," said Salgado, "your partner is no longer there because she had to take the kids to school."

- Tax Bill -

In 1999, James Weber of Calgary, Alberta, paid his tax bill (equivalent to about $75,000 U.S.) dollar-for-dollar with Colombian pesos (worth about $50 U.S.), arguing that the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency failed to print its dollar signs with two bars through the "S." A dollar sign with only one bar through the S, he said, is used only by several South American currencies, and thus he is now paid in full. (In March 2000, an appeals court ruled against him, despite his having produced several favorable historical banking documents from as far back as 1910.)

- Unwitting Accomplice -

In April, after her arrest for robbing a Springfield, Mo., Bank of America, Joyce Lingle told police that she had not read the note that she had handed a teller (and for which she received a bag in exchange) and only began to suspect there had been a bank robbery after she walked out the door and saw employees lock it behind her. Lingle is married to a jailed murder suspect, was in the company of a second man during her bank transaction, and implied to police that the two men were just using her.

- Pesky Housefly -

A man lunging to kill a housefly fell 59 feet out of a window onto two roofs and into a river (but suffered only minor injuries) (Ennetbaden, Switzerland).

- Police Gone Overboard -

1997 -- UPDATE In August 1996, News of the Weird reported on a group of New York City police officers who had availed themselves of expensive and hokey tax-resistance kits that would allow them to be regarded as nontaxable aliens while still being law-enforcement officers. Six subsequently pleaded guilty, but in January 1997, in the first case to go to trial, Officer Adalberto Miranda testified that he owed no tax because New York was merely a geographic area, not a government entity, and a short ways into his testimony, Miranda took it upon himself to disqualify Federal Judge Denny Chin because Chin seemed "upset," and then to "arrest" Chin from the witness stand and to give Chin his "Miranda (no relation) warning."

- Suspended Drivers License -

1994 -- In November, New York City police arrested the city's most notorious traffic scofflaw, Leroy Linen, 41, after he inadvertently gave them his real name when he was stopped for having only a crudely hand-lettered "license plate" on his car. Linen's driver's license has been suspended 633 times since 1990; when police entered his name into their computer, it took an hour and 45 minutes to print out all of his traffic violations. Still at large in the city are 340 others whose licenses have been suspended more than 100 times.

- Expensive Advice -

1992 -- In New York City, Donna Goldberg recently opened Organized Student, a consulting service (at $85 to $125 per hour) that advises children and teen-agers on how to clean up their rooms. Said a 9th-grade client interviewed by The New York Times, "I try to keep going by myself, but I can't do it." THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

- Some Great Lawsuits -

1994 -- According to Department of Justice figures, 30,000 inmate lawsuits were filed last year (added to heavy backlogs more than 28,000 in New York alone) against prison officials for "civil rights" violations, the vast majority described by judges and court officials as frivolous. Among the lawsuits were those by prisoners complaining: that the prison canteen supplied "creamy" peanut butter when a prisoner bought "crunchy"; that guards wouldn't refrigerate his ice cream snack so that he could eat it later ($1 million lawsuit); that his toilet seat was too cold; that, as an inmate-paralegal in the prison law library, he should make the same wage that lawyers make; that prisons should offer salad bars ($129 million); that a limit on the number of Kool-Aid refills is "cruel and unusual punishment"; and that the scrambled eggs were cooked too hard. In New York, 20 percent of the entire budget of the Attorney General's office is spent on prisoner lawsuits.

- Someone Who Really Wants to be a Lawyer -

1996 -- In June, federal inmate Arthur Morrison, who had served 46 months of his 51-month sentence for threatening former girlfriends, finally got his wish to withdraw his guilty plea to those charges, to go to trial, and to be his own lawyer. New York City prosecutors said their evidence (including audiotapes) is still overwhelming and that they would seek a sentence of at least 15 years. Morrison acknowledged that his chances of prevailing at trial were slim.

- Someone Who Likes Rats -

1994 -- In July, the town council in Peru, Vt., ordered Roland Williams out of his house for a month while authorities cleaned the place up. Williams had been purchasing large quantities of dog food and cola every day to feed the hundreds of rats that had been gathering on his property. And in New York City, officials reported in May that a woman feeding cereal to rats in her apartment and singing to them had also relinquished her bed to them while she slept in a chair.

- One Smart Cop -

1992 -- In New York City in April, car passenger Jose Rodriguez, 69, got behind the wheel and mowed down nine pedestrians in midtown Manhattan at the height of rush hour. According to his nephew, Rodriguez took the wheel only reluctantly. The car was parked at a curb, and a traffic officer ordered Rodriguez to move it. Rodriguez obliged the officer even though he did not know how to drive.

- A Likely Story -

1992 -- Hugo Roberts, 48, a New York City health therapist, was arrested in May after a 28-year-old woman complained that he had fondled her when she was sent to him for nutritional advice. According to her, Roberts said his technique for determining whether she was eating too much sugar or salt was to taste different parts of her body.

- Priorities -

1991 -- In a two-day period in New York City recently, a homeless man, a train maintenance worker, and a dog were killed on the subway tracks. Ninety people telephoned the Transit Authority to express concern about the dog, but only three called about the worker and no one about the homeless man.

Michigan, USA.

Guy buys brand new Grand Cherokee for 30 some thousand dollars and has 400+ dollar monthly payments. He immediately gets a hold of his friend and they go out to do some male bonding. They go duck hunting and of course all the lakes are frozen.

These 2 Atomic Brains 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 an ice hole drill.

Out of the back of the new Grand Cherokee comes a stick of dynamite with a short, 40 second fuse.

Now these 2 Rocket Scientists 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 bozos 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 loaded 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 30 some thousand dollar 400+ monthly payment vehicle sitting on the lake ice.

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 which 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.

The Forlorn Man

4/16/97 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 girlfriend 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 arced to 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 person, his fly down, what was left of his private parts smoking, and a single beer left on top of the tower.

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 found Burns "wrapped in the drive shaft." [Kalamazoo Gazette, 4-1-95]

Same thing up here in MI. Seems some poor fella thought it would be a good idea to "move" a downed wire from his car. Newspaper reports it took a FULL MINUTE of neighbors whacking away at him with a 2x4 to free their freshly fried former friend from the fatal flashing.

Bowling Green, Ohio, student Robert Ricketts, 19, had his head bloodied when he was struck by a Conrail train. He told police he was trying to see how close to the moving train he could place his head without getting hit.

In Wesley Chapel, Florida, Joseph Aaron, 20, was hit in the leg with pieces of the bullet he fired at the exhaust pipe of his car. When repairing the car, he needed to bore a hole in the pipe. When he couldn't find a drill, he tried to shoot a hole in it.

Polish farmer Krystof Azninski, who staked a strong claim to being Europe's most macho man by cutting off his own head. Azninski, 30, had been drinking with friends when it was suggested they strip naked and play some "men's games". Initially they hit each other over the head with frozen swedes [apparantly a kind of turnip], but then one man seized a chainsaw and cut off the end of his foot. Not to be outdone, Azninski grabbed the saw and crying "Watch this then!" swung at his own head and chopped it off. "It's funny," said one companion, "Cos when he was young he put on his sister's underwear. But he died like a man."

A man in Johannesburg, South Africa, shot his 49-year-old friend in the face, seriously wounding him, while the two practiced shooting beer cans off each other's head.

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.

The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.

A bus carrying five passengers was hit by a car in St. Louis, but by the time police arrived on the scene, fourteen pedestrians had boarded the bus and had begun to complain of whiplash injuries and back pain.

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.

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.

A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop.

-Raccoon Hunting-

In rural Carbon County, PA, a group of men were drinking beer and discharging firearms from the rear deck of a home owned by Irving Michaels, age 27. The men were firing at a raccoon that was wandering by, but the beer apparently impaired their aim and, despite of the estimated 35 shots the group fired, the animal escaped into a 3 foot diameter drainage pipe some 100 feet away from Mr. Michaels' deck.

Determined to terminate the animal, Mr. Michaels retrieved a can of gasoline and poured some down the pipe, intending to smoke the animal out. After several unsuccessful attempts to ignite the fuel, Michaels emptied the entire 5 gallon fuel can down the pipe and tried to ignite it again, to no avail. Not one to admit defeat by wildlife, the determined Mr. Michaels proceeded to slide feet-first approximately 15 feet down the sloping pipe to toss the match. The subsequent rapidly expanding fireball propelled Mr. Michaels back the way he had come, though at a much higher rate of speed.

He exited the angled pipe "like a Polaris missile leaves a submarine," according to witness Joseph McFadden, 31. Mr. Michaels was launched directly over his own home, right over the heads of his astonished friends, onto his front lawn. In all, he traveled over 200 feet through the air. "There was a Doppler Effect to his scream as he flew over us," McFadden reported, "Followed by a loud thud.".

Amazingly, he suffered only minor injuries. "It was actually pretty cool," Michaels said, "Like when they shoot someone out of a cannon at the circus. I'd do it again if I was sure I wouldn't get hurt."

- The Tamagotchi that Got Her -

A 27 year old woman from France lost control over her car on a highway near Marseilles and crashed into a tree seriously injuring her co-driver and killing herself. Accidents like this occur quite often and usually don't qualify for a Darwin Award nomination. This accident is special because the driver's attention for the road was distracted by her Tamagotchi which hang on the car keys and beeped for food. Wanting to save the Tamagotchi's life the French woman ignored the road and killed herself.

- Airplane Mooning -

Apparently, in Brazil, 3 people were flying in a plane at low altitude, when another plane approached. For a lark, they decided to "moon" the other plane. Somehow, in the execution of this maneuver, they lost control of the plane and crashed. They were all found dead with their pants around their ankles.

- Needed a Buzz Bad -

In an Inuit village, a young man was searching for a way of getting drunk for free because he had no money to buy alcohol. So he mixed gasoline with milk to get his buzz. After he drank it he became ill and vomited on the fireplace in his house which in turn ignited his vomit and burned his house down killing him and his sister.

- Plain Sick -

A recent suicide was found as follows: 34 yr. old white male found in the basement of his home died of suffocation. He was approximately 6'2" and 225 lb. He was wearing a pleated skirt, wig, white bra, black and white saddle shoes. It appeared that he was trying to create a school girls uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in its place. The other end of the hose was connected to a hollow wooden piece of a bed post approximately 12 inches long and 3 inches in diameter. This bedpost was inserted into his rear end for reasons unknown, and was the cause of his suffocation. It was difficult to explain the circumstances of his death to his family members.

- Poor Guy -

A police officer in Ohio responded to a call that was made to 911. She had no details before arriving except that someone was reporting that his father was not breathing. Upon arrival, the officer found this man face down on the couch, naked. When she rolled him over to check for a pulse and to start CPR if necessary, she noticed burn marks around his genitals. After the ambulance arrived and removed the man (who was and still is dead), the police made a closer inspection of the couch and noticed that the man had made a hole between the cushions. After flipping the couch over they discovered what caused his death. Apparently the man would put his penis between the cushions, down into the hole and between 2 ELECTRIC SANDERS (without the sand paper, obviously). According to the story, after he had his orgasm, the (ahem) discharge shorted out the sander electrocuting him to death

The Suicide

At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American Association for Forensic Science, AAFS President Don Harper Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal complications of a bizarre death.

"On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound of the head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his despondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to complete his suicide anyway because of this."

"Ordinarily," Dr. Mills continued, "a person who sets out to commit suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands. "The room on the ninth floor whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun. He was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife and the pellets went through the a window striking Opus.

"When one intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old man said it was his long-standing habit to threaten his wife with the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

"The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal incident.

"It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

"There was an exquisite twist. "Further investigation revealed that the son [Ronald Opus] had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a ninth story window.

"The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide."