"It's like bloody Hoth out there..."
A more appropriate description of Wakefield in winter you will not find. The above comment, typical of many a smoker, always makes me smile when they go outside in nothing more than a shirt and suit and still complain that the weather is cold.

Hasn't anyone ever heard of a magical invention known as a coat?
( jim_bob can herd cats., Mon 21 Dec 2009, 15:53, 17 replies)

Impatient fucking Londoners
OK, I'm from the sticks and I know my life doesn't operate at the same pace as all you important capital-dwellers, but fuck me you could learn to slow down a bit.
Like the time I was in London for a meeting. There I was, descending the steps to the Northern line platform at Tottenham Court Road when I overheard the announcement saying that some other impatient Londoner (in a hurry to get to the afterlife) had thrown themselves onto the track several stations down and needed turning as one side was thoroughly cooked. Consequently, the train sitting with its doors open by the platform at TCR wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
I'd barely had chance to register this when I was nearly sent flying down the remaining steps to the platform by some besuited tit's briefcase as he shot past me, sprinted to the train and barged his way through the people in the carriage doorway... just before everyone got the hint and started getting off the stranded train.
I felt sorry for the London Underground staff member who, having seen this, was desperately trying not to laugh, while I was getting funny looks from the locals as I pissed myself for no apparent reason.

Length? About six carriages.
( Snappyuk gets BIGGER with free sample., Mon 21 Dec 2009, 15:27, 1 reply)

does this qotw have anything to do with the snow?
my boyfriend lives up an almighty hill. its a struggle at the best of times. when it snows, his favourite game is casually holding my hand then suddenly running back down the hill so its impossible to get a foothold and im sliding down after him. the aim is to get me to slip and fall on my bum.

imagine my joy when it backfired, he missed my hand and fell on his face.
(ladyintheradiator, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 15:19, Reply)

Gentle Bike/Car Interface
So we'd just had a nice Sunday lunch at my Mum and Dad's and my girlfriend and I set off home.

With the girlfriend driving we made our way down the street my folks live on. It is about a minutes drive to a T junction at the end.

About half way down some baseball cap wearing little scrote, faux adidas trainings bottoms hanging round his arse, riding a BMX, screamed out of a side road in front of us causing us to have to brake sharply. He then weaved all over the road, occasionally turning to laugh at us.

Now my girlfriend isn't the most patient of drivers. An otherwise friendly and loving lady turns into a spitting demon of rage if she deems someone is holding her up on the road in any way (especially a chav). Some choice words were being aired and she accelerated up behind him in an attempt to get round.

By this time the T junction was approaching. The girlfriend put her foot down, whipped round the chav and sped towards it. The Chav didn't like that too much and attempted to pursue, his little chavvy legs pumping for all they were worth.

Now going quite fast the car brakes were applied fairly hard for the junction, at which point I heard a dull thump from behind us.

It seemed the Chav had overestimated his braking ability. I turned around in my seat to see the Chav up against the back window, his cheek nicely flattened against the glass, his arms splayed against the back of the car where he had tried to stop himself.

The junction was clear so to the tune of a muffled "aw fuckinell" we gently accelerated away. I watched with a big grin on my face as the glass peeled away from his cheek, leaving him standing there, with his hands in the air and his bike seat firmly wedged up his arse, where it had levered itself when he hit the car bumper.

I laughed all the way home.
(stubbledchin, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 15:04, Reply)

Glass! Running! Unconsciousness! Embarrassment!
I used to live in Hyde Park flats in Sheffield (post student games refurbishment). Every fifty yards or so was a fire door, comprising wood and glass.

We got back in one morning, about 3ish, absolutely trashed. My friend Niall was coming towards my flat from the other direction, waved cheerily and sprinted towards me.

Straight into a fire door.

It seems these doors have minimal give in them, and Niall knocked himself cold. The sight of him running, becoming abruptly stationary and sliding to the floor, bleeding, will never leave me.

It was almost without doubt the funniest thing I've ever seen. I nearly pissed myself!
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Mon 21 Dec 2009, 14:55, Reply)

If theres one thing that winds me up its people using mobile phones whilst driving.
I was waiting at a bus stop near my place of work at the end of the road, near a roundabout. A woman drove past, going about 10mph, window down, on her mobile. I shouted "Get off you phone idiot!" for it angered me so. She turned her head to face me and shouted "Mind your own fucking business!" before driving in to the back of the car in front which had now stopped at the roundabout. I laughed. He got out and wasn't fucking happy. I laughed. As she sat with a very shocked look on her face she said right in front of the guy "I've just had a crash I'm going to have to call you back" The guy called the police. I laughed and my bus arrived, I left the scene still chuckling.
( Peej, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 13:44, 25 replies)

Why is it driving offers so much scope for this?
In any event, was driving in the bleak north this weekend - all due care and attention, nice & easy, not exceeding 30/40 (the snow was pretty brutal, all in) when some tit in a Corsa decides to go flying past me at 60 or so - on un-gritted snow / ice / slush / etc.

Can't end well, I think - sure enough, 20 minutes down the road, the same Corsa, on it's roof in a ditch. Do the charitable thing, stop and check the occupants are OK - and they've all buggered off.

I'm guessing they were pissed?
(mymilkshakebringsallthemongstotheyard poison hearts, poison minds - joining hate, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 13:31, 6 replies)

With headphones on, you have a soundtrack to life
... and I was walking along the high street in Dalston (the arse of Hackney, itself the arse of Mordor) listening to Transglobal Underground on a beautiful summer morning.

I noticed up ahead of me a big, muscley chap striding down the street towards me, and a late teens/early twenties slip of a girl chasing after him, pawing at his arm, tears streaming down her face, and occassionally falling off her high heels. Every time she pawed at him, he shrugged it off aggressively.

This was understandably something of a spectacle for the street.

The scene continued for several tens of metres until, unable to contain himself any longer, he turned around and belted her full in the face with a hard clenched fist.

I have never seen what appeared to be a random array of people doing various activities become one mass so quickly, as about six guys pummelled him to the floor; his face already spurting claret before he even hit the deck.

Shadenfreude? Woman-hitting karma gonna kick yo ass about town, more like.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 12:40, 9 replies)

Escalation...
A few years ago some friends and I went to Reading Festival. Naturally we arrived incredibly late, as is our way, and the camp site was full. The only space we could find was not in one of the fields, but just over the track that ran around the outside, on a reed bed, next to a ditch that separated one site from another. Others had also done this, so while most of our tents were together, my mate Tom's was further down the way (we didn't mind too much as Tom's tent was ancient, one of the old triangular scout-style ones that I think may actually previously have belonged to his dad).

Anyhoo, next evening we're all sitting around a fire outside Tom's tent, recovering after a frankly horrific trip into Reading town for a McShit (more about that another time, if the QotW topic is ever 'the most vile, shaming scatalogical thing you've ever experience'). The evening is balmy, we can hear the bands playing, we're a bit drunk and we're excited about the imminent rocking of our socks.

So when an empty plastic bottle sails over the canal from the campsite on t'other side, we naturally pick it up and throw it back over. Bloody litter louts! But a few seconds later it returns. So back it goes, this time accompanied by a few cans from our own impressive arsenal of empties.

Well, as I'm sure many of you can guess, things got out of hand rather quickly. Within a few minutes there were literally hundreds of people on either side and it was raining plastic. All good fun. We were kinda chuffed that we'd help start this pseudo-battle to the death. But then, as happens with large groups of chemically-aided revellers, it went too far...

First some of the smaller bottles were filled with urine. Then some of the larger bottles. Then came the poo. Our resolve, already faltering at this point (not that we smelled of roses, but we really didn't want to cover our BO with the reek of piss), failed, and back up the track to our tents we ran. There we sat, safely out of the line of fire, cracked a few beers and settled down to watch Tom's tent (and Tom) getting a drenching. Highlight had to be when one of those massive 20-odd litre bottles sailed over and slammed straight into the side of his tent. Damn near knocked it over. Wasn't full of course, but there was still a good 4-5 pints of wee in it.

A few hours later Tom stomped back up to us, not looking like a happy chappy. And smelling, how shall we say, a little fruity? As we started to amble over towards the stages together, we discussed how impressive it was to not only hurl the enormous piss-bomb over but to fill it was well!

Oh how we chuckled
( kappynitty doubled your entendre on, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 12:36, 1 reply)

Is this schadenfreude or justified gloating?
“It could be worse. It could be my problem.” I’ve lived my life by those words. I have also made a habit out of not getting involved in what Douglas Adams described in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books as “S.E.P. Events”, S.E.P. standing for “Somebody Else’s Problem”.

Early one Saturday morning I was parked up in a supermarket car park waiting for a song to finish on the radio before I braved the rat race that is Tescos. I watched a plump middle-aged woman park a bright yellow Nissan Micra into an empty space in the row in front of me. I was idly thinking that she had parked a bit close to the car next to her when she had a change of mind and attempted to reverse back out of the space, however, she started turning the steering wheel much too soon…”Crump” was the noise the front of her car made as it connected with the side of the car next to her. “Doh!” I muttered, subconsciously logging it as an S.E.P. event. She then proceeded to do that thing that drivers do when they get flustered, that backwards and forwards lurching without actually turning the steering wheel, making the same mistake again and again and again. It was painful to watch, backwards and forwards she went, the actual trajectory of her vehicle not changing, smack, smack, smack into the car beside her…

I had to stop her; she had given up any illusions of avoiding the other car and was slowly screeching the nose of her car down the side of the other, the sound of metal on metal was like nails down a blackboard to me. I ran over and banged on her window, “Stop! Please, just…stop!” She wound her window and snarled “WHAT?!” “You keep driving into that car” I stated. “No I don’t” she replied. “I watched you do it” I countered. “Well, he shouldn’t have parked so close to me”. I really didn’t want to get into an argument with her so I told her to drive back into the space, straighten her wheels and then reverse out completely before turning. When she was finally out I said “Let me just check that your wheel arch hasn’t buckled into your tyre” to which she replied “Oh do piss off” and promptly drove away.

Up until that point I had had no intention of getting involved any further, but her final comment had well and truly ground my gears. I whipped out my mobile and made a note of her number plate. I then returned to my car and wrote out a full report of the incident, including descriptions of the driver, the car, date, time and her number plate. I signed it and left my phone number. I folded the report up inside a carrier bag and left it under the windscreen wiper of the damaged car. To cut a long story short, the bloke who owned the car received a super-fast insurance payout from the daft cow in the Micra and she was contacted by the police (but no further action was taken). I get a warm fuzzy feeling of Schadenfreude every time I think about her losing her no claims bonus and having to explain herself to the plod.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 12:32, 6 replies)

the only pleasure to be had when forced to squeeze onto a busy bus
and stand pressed up against your fellow smelly commuters is when the bus gets full enough for the driver to stop letting people on and instead flys past busy bus stops , allowing you glimpses of anguished faces and helping you complete your journey in record time .


Well , I say the only pleasure .....
( horace wimp needs more than 49 characters to fully express hi, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 12:12, 1 reply)

back from a night out
my idiotic friend, filled with drinks, couldnt wait for the toliet and didnt want to go outside in the snow. solution? wee out of the window. there was a massive crash. two of us ran upstairs to find him lying on the floor, still holding onto the window blind and with the chair he'd knocked over underneath him ... desperately trying to zip his flies up before more people came in.
(ladyintheradiator, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 12:11, Reply)

Schadenfreude Christmas Special - 3 for the price of 2
The following three stories concern one friend whose monumental lack of foresight has led to some spectacular ouchies:

1.) The plug - When replacing a fuse in your hoover plug always ensure to fit the plastic cover on - it is there for a reason. Failing to do so and forcing the plug into a socket which is already on (whilst holding Live and Neutral) may result in shocking consequences.

2.) The flaming bottle - Most 14/15 year old boys have probably tried this one. Task a glass beer bottle, liberally fill with butane from the clipper that you probably stole from you dad, hold lighter to one side and light. Thus creating a pretty fire ball and jet-like flame from the bottle. However if you fail to hold to one side and instead hold your hand above the lighter neck, you end up in A & E with 2nd degree burns.

3.) The razing of the garage - Back in the mid 90s myself and some friends offered to help my mum take down her old garage. It was a nice hot summers day and we had made steady progress, so all that remained was the basic timber frame. Now in your head imagine the two ends of the garage which looked like 16ft-tall letter As. The two ends had originally been joined at the top, left and right by three timbers (think corners of the As). The left and right supports were then removed and taken to the skip. This basically meant that the two ends were purely supported by a single piece of timber. On returning from the skip my brother-in-law and I looked up to see my friend straddling the timber and smiling like a tit as he was merrily sawing through the timber on which he sat. Brother-in-law and I look at each other with that "I'm not gonna say anything if you don't" look. Taking a seat on the patio with a cold beer to watch the impending fall/fail... 16ft onto concrete.

I wish to this day I had a camera phone. The moment of realisation on his face as he cut through was priceless. There was a loud crack as the wood gave way. To his credit he managed to grab the top of the A he was nearest to. What followed resembled a kinda backwards pole-vault as the entire frame folded in on itself, him holding on for dear life. On landing he turned to us with a shit eating grin as if to say "Ha! see i meant that to happen"/

Then he got twated on the head by the cross-member he had just cut through. Darwinism is a bitch sometimes.

That is all.. oh yeah merry christmas one and all!
(skintagain, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 11:15, 7 replies)

Idiots in A&E
A couple of years ago, around Christmas time, I was given an all mighty pasting whilst kicking some large fellows out of my pub.

Police arrive, ambulance is prompt, and off I go to the A&E department on the last Friday before Christmas. The hospital is chock full of drunks bleeding from all manner of injuries.

Now, like true Brits, most of us patients sit there, umm, patiently. But a handful are loud, obnoxious drunks, ranting vile racist dribble at the nurses for not getting them a doctor imidiately. One such fellow appears to have nothing more than a small cut on his finger, but his missus has, it transpires, made him come into hospital as it might get infected.

After one particulalry foul rant that wouldn't be out of place at Nick Griffin's dinner table, he told the nurse to fuck off and turned on his heel to storm out. Promptly hammering his head against the cowl of the telephone on the wall, this caused him to stumble uncertainly before losing his balance and colapsing onto a table nearby. The table top, held onto it's legs by a strip of yellow and black tape proceded to flip viciously, striking the obnoxious arse firmly on the head.

I don't know what was funnier, the sight of this prize strap on coming a cropper, or the department full of sick and poorly people sniggering and giggling, wincing in pain due to their own injuries.
( monkeyboyalpha jumping on the bandwagon since, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 10:06, Reply)

Public Transport!
I was sitting in the luggage section on a busy train to birmigham one day, and there was a very smart suited guy standing infront of me waiting to get off, however he was standing by the automatic doors that seperate to carraige from the section with the exterior doors.

When these doors started to close they mangaged to just ping his glasses off his face sending them one side of the doors and leaving him the other, and i had to spend 10 mins sitting on the floor a birmigham new st, laughing like a crackhead!


Another time i was sitting on the back of a bus, one of the ones that lowers to curb level to let buggies on. The bus stopped, lowered to curb, and doors opened then all i saw was a 12 year old lad, with shopping bags in each hand fall foward and face plant the floor, i swear he hadn't even taken a step, just fell, then got evil looks from all the old ladies for howling with laughter, as apparently a man in his 20's is not supposed to laugh at a kid falling over!
(dougthegoat trapped his mohawk in the car door, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 9:52, Reply)

Darren vs Chunky Chuck Norris
Back when I was at school my mates and I would skive off double maths on Friday afternoon and make the short trip up to Abington Park, Northampton, and do what any self respecting sixteen year olds would do for enjoyment – twat about on the swings ‘til home time.

One particular December day it’d been snowing heavily. The park was an oasis of calm. Picture-perfect white. It looked as if God had had his new issue of Celestial Playboy delivered and had spent the day beating off and ejaculating stupendous amounts of deity cum across the land. The park was whiter than a Klu Klux Clan convention in the most inbred parts of Alabama. There were also loads of snowmen everywhere. An invasion of the fuckers. The good folk of Northampton appeared to have said, en masse: “Fuck work for a game of soldiers, let’s go to the park and build snowmen, yay!”

My mate Darren decided it would be absolutely fucking hilarious to rugby tackle the parks new snowy inhabitants as we walked along, making our way down to the adventure playground to smoke a few fags and act all hard. As we skidded unsteadily down the icy path Darren was off to one side dealing out death and destruction to all snowmen kind, Terminator-style.

As we approached the end of the path Darren let out a girlish scream of glee as he noticed a particularly large be-carrotted cunt with two lumps of coal for its eyes. This particular snowman was pretty damn spectacular, a work of art, you could say. It also stood a good six feet tall and was as thick as a tree trunk. It even had twigs for arms and a little hat on. This wasn’t a snowman. This was a person made up of snow. And Darren – being the destructive little cunt that he was – was compelled to ‘cunt it in the fuck to death’.

“Watch this, boys,” said Darren, as he took a run up and launched himself head first into the snowman’s lower torso, flying through the chill air like a pubescent Superman.

And as Darren made absolute, full-on, brutal fucking contact with Mr. Snowman, the produce of some talented family’s labours, Darren bounced off and lay motionless on the snowy earth. Impressive. The rest of us, being schoolboys, resorted to the standard response for these sorts of situations – we started laughing like hyenas on speed. Peculiar thing was Mr. Snowman still stood proud and (oo-eeerr) erect, gazing down on Darren’s crumpled, unmoving form like a water-based chunky Chuck Norris.

Darren was out cold. Turns out Mr. Snowman was as thick as a tree trunk for a reason. His broad, stout body had as its foundation a sturdy, solid, incredibly-difficult-to-move-with-a-schoolboy’s-head tree stump.
( SpankyHanky, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 9:46, 1 reply)

I'll make this quick:
In primary school, a very large (250lb+) and a very small (75lb+) boy were arguing. The large boy gave the small boy a swift kick to the groin. He lifted off the ground about 4-5 inches, rotated 45 degrees, then fell to the ground, screaming.
(Zoidberg Jr - Food, you say?, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 4:54, Reply)

Justice.
It was early in my first year of university, but I had already found a great bunch of lads and ladies into which I fit snuggly. As in any group, there was alot of piss taking and joking on, and as in any group, there was one who wasn't so good at it.

Now this lad, Mike, was a decent sort, but rather then a gental ribbing that every one could enjoy, he had a habit of taking it to far, and just plain bullying the target.

We were all headed out one night, stood in the rather messy corridor and Mike had a full can of ice cold carlsberg in his hand, which he intended to enjoy on our walk to the bus stop. Being students, this was ok. It was as we headed for the door that he decided to have a go at one of the girls in our group, and as allways, took it to far, causing her to get mad and begin storming out, while Mike laughed at his own joke (it wasn't funny) he raised his can for a victory sip when suddenly BAM! A football, kicked by a fellow I can't recall ever demonstrating any skill at the game, hit him square in the hand, crushing the can and forcing the ice cold lager to fly out of the can, directly into his gloating face.

I'll never forget the look of shock and confusion on his face, as foam clung to his beard. I was creased on the floor, unable to move, roaring with the rest of the group, enjoying Mike's turn to storm off, whilst we all lay in tears of laughter.
(Mong goose, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 2:54, Reply)

slip sliding away
I've been doing a few home renovations of late, part of this included ripping up all the carpet and replacing it with floating floorboards. After a hard days work the passageway was completed. Que the cat returning home after a day of sitting in the sun and chasing the skinks, she decides to have one of her "nut out" moments which in general involving running around the house like a rabbit on rocket skates. If you've not yet guessed, she flies down the passage and attempts to turn the corner only to find the floor a little more slippery than usual meaning she can't stop and BAM! right into wall. oh how i laughed as she picked herself up and did the "i don't know what you are talking about, i would never do something so stupid you must be thinking of the dog" thing that only cats can.

its my first time so i hope the punchline didn't come to quickly...
(thebarkingdog, Mon 21 Dec 2009, 1:46, 4 replies)

Audi
Someone told me a story he read on a motoring forum. A man had just gotten the baby settled and was finally managing to get some sleep when his wife woke him up saying that she heard the dog barking and voices downstairs. As he was looking for a blunt object to use as a weapon he heard the sound of a car making a swift exit. He got downstairs to find his dog passed out but no sign of a break in or anything obviously missing. Something was bugging him though, the sound of the car's engine had sounded strangely familiar. He through open his front door to find his £37k Audi missing from the driveway, only then did he notice that his keys were missing from the table in the hallway. He duly called the police out to give his statement and in the morning he called his insurance company - only to be told that his policy had run out 4 hours before the robbery and he had forgotten to renew his policy. If it had been any other car I would have had sympathy for him but since it is a well known fact that Audi drivers are wankers I pissed myself laughing instead.
(mmm....beer, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 23:23, 5 replies)

It's good to hear a newsreader commit schadenfreude.
I remember this story on the news on radio.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8293035.stm
and they played an excerpt from that video clip (well the audio as it was on radio). The bit around 0:44 - 0:50 made me chuckle. But it had tickled the newsreader far more who had to cough and snort her way through the last three items before bursting out laughing.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 22:37, 1 reply)

Pick Me Up et al
I love reading those crappy cheap women's magazines like Pick Me Up and Woman's Own. I particularly like the human interest story. Each edition of the magazine has one or more of the following;

A story about a grizzly murder
A story about an abused wife
A story about someone who was abused as a child
A story about someone with a bizarre illness that doesn't really exist like Morgellon's or something.

The thing is, the victims of the grizzly murders and the abused wives usually have it coming in these stories, usually out of stupidity. If you shack up with a satan worshipper who collects machetes, you really have to accept a certain amount of responsibility for the conseqeuences. And the mystery illness stories are usually funny because it's always some hyperchondriac, and hyperchondiacs are the acceptable comic face of mental illness along with people with OCD and narcolepsy. It's only really the abused children that I don't laugh at. But I still read the stories out of morbid curiosity.

Also, I find it funny when people fall over.
(Seance Trumpet has got no beef with a man enjoying a croissant, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 22:33, 6 replies)

X Factor
I must confess to having a very well developed sense of Schadenfreude and love very little more than the auditions of the X Factor. The chance to laugh at deluded plums really gets my Saturday evening off to a good start. It's the look on their little faces as their dream gets shattered that really moistens my gusset.
Once it gets serious I couldn't give a flying fuck. Give me the likes of the chicken factory bloke who sang Barbie Girl and the fat lass in the frock her Dad made for her (and for that reason I love YouTube muchly) and I'm in hog heaven.
( Sallyrsm, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 20:38, 2 replies)

*splat*
Luke, in my year at school, was a monumental cunt. Charming and sweet and a straight-A student, people had nary a bad word to say about him. Other than me, who hated him as equally as he hated me for the six-year hate campaign he took it upon himself to orchestrate (even after he emigrated to Canada after our GCSEs) and had all the bad words to say about him no one else would - manipulative, arrogant, pretentious, closeted, small-minded, conniving fucking cunt being a small sample. This is a tale of the one glorious time his arrogance got the better of him.

Sports Day rolled around one summer, and aside from those of us who had sufficiently injured themselves to be excused or whose mothers were overprotective enough to prevent them going near patches of grass lest it agitate their hayfever, it was time to be press-ganged into the various sports that we didn't want to take part in. I managed to escape it this year thanks to having a twisty ankle, and was delighted to find the anorexic-looking, weak as a kitten Luke had been selected for the 500m sprint. He was not best impressed until he remembered that this would offer him a chance to show off his skillz (for one of the boys who was always seen in the back of the crowd when the boys played rugby, flanked by the equally slow fat bastard Stalker Boy, and some of the less sportingly inclined boys who would have been far happier in the IT suite playing LAN Tiberian Sun, he suddenly viewed himself as Mr Motivator).

On the day itself, the vast majority of us are skiving off and sitting in the stands with a glazed look of boredom on our faces (there was to be no water, even in the baking heat, no work, no Game Boys, no phones, and iPods hadn't yet been thought of), as all we were allowed to do was cheer for our house in the most half-arsed imitation of something house-y from Harry Potter. The 500m rolls around and sure enough, Luke astounds us all by pushing straight out in front, limbs flailing and doing a good impression of a stick insect on a bed of coals. The girls who constituted his "fan club" (who he insulted constantly, called slappers and prostitutes and treated marginally better than me - hello, mummy issues) were, naturally, pandering and waving and chanting his name.

True to form and probably sporting a boner from this stroking of his already ridiculously oversized ego, Luke turns his head to wave to the stand, gives the thumbs-up and begins to mouth "I'm brilliant!".

Except he gets halfway through saying what he needs to say, and falls arse over head just before the finish line, dropping from first to an embarrassing eighth, via a face full of springy tarmac. Beautiful.

An eerie gasp drops over the stand, before being broken by an increasingly loud *pfffffffffffft* of laughter where I, in absolute stitches from what I've just seen, look up to find at least ten beady pairs of female eyes staring me down as if I had just fed their entire families to a leopard for laughing at their leader's fall from grace.
( Maladicta, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 20:18, 2 replies)

Revenge of the Weedeater!
A few years ago I had a small VW diesel that had had a rough life prior to me taking it on, and had a bad turbo that made the same noise as a string trimmer. It was so underpowered that it couldn't get out of its own way and would decelerate going up the smallest hills even with the pedal to the floor. However, it also get phenomenal mileage.

So one Thanksgiving we were going to see my parents who were in South Carolina at the time. Like everyone else we were going south on I-95, which was running full traffic at decent speed. I had my daughter in my car, while the Lunatic Artist had my boys in her car. I was mostly staying in the slow lane, but the big lorries would sometimes go slowly enough for me to pass them. And so it was as I started passing one as I started up a hill.

I got about halfway along the lorry before I really was having problems- but I was still going only a few miles per hour below the speed limit and was still passing the truck, albeit slowly, so no biggie, I thought. Unfortunately there was a very large SUV behind me driven by a heavy man with a 70s mustache and steel rimmed glasses, whose large beefy face was turning red with frustration as he beat on the steering wheel. Apparently to him it was, in fact, a biggie. He was maybe five feet off of my back bumper, so I could see the veins popping out in his face clearly.

Well, I couldn't go to the right, because the truck was there. I could have slowed down and dropped behind the truck, I suppose- but then he would have burst a blood vessel. So I just stuck with it until I could get by the truck, which I did after maybe thirty seconds. Mr. Beefy Face kept snarling and cursing the entire way, and when I finally pulled into the slow lane he swerved toward me and leaned on the horn as he gave me the finger, then punched the gas hard and roared off down the road.

Unfortunately for Mr. Beefy Face his SUV was so big that he didn't realize that the car directly behind him was a fully marked state trooper. When he jammed the gas down, the flashing blue lights came on next to me and flew down the road after him.

We passed them a couple of miles later, and Mr. Beefy Face was almost purple. I imagine that he spent the rest of his Thanksgiving holiday drunk and cursing the little green VW.

We were still laughing about it two hours later when we arrived.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sun 20 Dec 2009, 19:11, 1 reply)

the cold
just to today me and mrs pheonix where sat waiting to pull out of the multi story and across the way a family were walking down the ice covered pavement. The middle child must of been around 12 - 13 and was wearing only a tee shirt even tho it was about 3 below.as i turned to the misses muttered summat about the idiot farther lettiing her out like that when girl slipped ares over tit straight onto her arse. Cue her looking around in embarresment spotting me and misses creased up laughing.she knew we were laughing at her as we had our fingers pointed straight at her.the poor girl started crying even harder so when her dad gave her a good bollocking for crying.kinda feel sorry for her now tho she must have been freezing!!ah well it was fun at the time :-)
(pheonix07, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 18:05, 2 replies)

Has it got Power?
Barry was an asshole. Everyone except Barry knew this, and only the fact that he was far senior to most of the shop kept him from general ridicule and rebuke. Our shop fixed medical equipment for a large hospital, and Barry had a habit of turning up at your shoulder asking the most insulting and basic questions:

Is it plugged in? Has it got power? Did you check the fuse?

After a safety inspection, we were all issued new lighting for our workbenches. However the lights came without switches or power plugs, having been designed for permanent installation on remote circuits with wall switches.

This didn't present a problem to us, we had plenty of plugs and switches. All of us wired up our new lights without difficulty - except Barry.

Barry managed to wire his switch so that it was a direct short. When he flipped the switch, the switch went up in smoke, the wires in the conduit rattled, and the circuit breaker for half the building tripped with a loud snap!

Cue the general cries of "Hey, Barry - Is it plugged in? Has it got power? Did you check the fuse?"

Too funny. Then we helpfully pointed out that he'd wired the switch backwards. He rewired a new switch, and this time he confidently called out: "Let there be Light" before he threw the switch and plunged us into darkness yet again.

We laughed so hard we all cried. Months later a call of "Let there be Light" would reduce us to a puddle of laughter.

Barry pretty much kept to himself after that, over at his dark workbench.
(danalan Pretty good, for an amateur., Sun 20 Dec 2009, 17:55, Reply)

Topical
I've just been to Huddersfield to pick up a laptop - the warehouse is at the bottom of a sloping road which obviously hadn't been gritted, and when I was there the snow was falling heavily. As I returned to my car, my full attention was taken by a blue BMW M3 with engine madly revving and wheels spinning furiously, trying to get out of the car park and failing, while its scruffy-looking slack-jawed 20ish driver visibly struggled to comprehend what was happening. He tried three times to climb the hill, but each time barely managed to make it half way before sliding back into the car park. Well, after the third time I took my turn, easily navigating my way out by keeping the revs low - as far as I know he could still be there. Ha, ha.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Sun 20 Dec 2009, 16:57, 3 replies)

Paul.
He was the pub manager, and incredibly overweight. He was so fat he couldn't get into the cellar. One day kitchen pixie left it open. he didn't notice, fell in and got stuck by his stomach. It took about 10 minutes to pull him out, because the whole place was pissing with laughter.
Edit. He was also a wannabe tattooist, and practised on his wife. She was covered in not very good tattoos, poor woman. But we laughed at them too.
(Bear Pookie The Frankly Challenged. Halloween is coming to town., Sun 20 Dec 2009, 13:04, Reply)