h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, it nearly struck me twice yesterday, but not in the same place, so maybe that should be 'Lightning sometimes nearly strikes the same Gosho twice'.

The first time was while I was pouring beer at the Texas Craft Brewers Festival. Around 5.00pm a tropical downpour had everyone running for shelter, except for the people in line at the Karbach tent because they'd just tapped something a bit special, and beer that good and that rare is worth getting soaked for. In the middle of it a lightning bolt came down very close to where we were. It couldn't have been more than a few hundred yards away because there was no gap between the flash and the thunder that accompanied it.

Then, after I'd gone to bed, some more storms came through around 1am, and that's a nice feeling - laying in bed listening to heavy rain and rumbles of thunder... until one hits so close by that it almost shakes you out of bed

And coincidentally, as I was starting to write this, I find out that the bar across the road got struck by lightning last night which knocked out their phones, so that must have been the one. That's barely 100 yards from Fort Gosho. Not the closest strike, by the way. We had one a few years ago that split a tree next to the office

There's a guy at work who's been struck at least twice, maybe three times. Once was just outside the building at work. There wasn't any clouds overhead, the storm was several miles away. However the safety officer at work put it down as an avoidable accident, basically blaming him for getting struck by lightning.

I never liked that safety officer. I'd heard that he was originally a civil servant who should have been fired, but civil servants don't get fired, they get transferred to a contractor job and a contractor got laid off to make room for him.

He once wrote a "close call" report because a soccer ball bumped his ankle. A few guys who work in the next building over would dribble a football amongst themselves at lunch breaks in the grass between our buildings and one got loose and he felt that was such a danger to report it ending their dribbling matches. He also once saw one of my coworkers using our paper cutter. This wasn't the dangerous, guillotine type cutter, it used a guarded roller blade set on rails. He hassled my coworker for not wearing eye protection. I'd like an explanation for how anyone could possibly get an eye injury using that equipment. They'd have to pick the whole thing up and beat themselves in the face to do so.

Anyway, poetic justice put him on disability after he fell from a ladder at home.

It almost makes it worth believing in karma

I can't even figure out how you could get an eye injury using the other type of paper cutter. Chop a finger off, sure, but an eye injury? I suppose you could whack yourself in the head with the hand holding the blade handle, but safety goggles wouldn't protect you from that, anyway.

Oh, you can have someone's eye out with anything Amy, and as a mother you ought to know that. What else are you going to say when your kids are horsing around with something, and what else are you going to say when they ask for an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle?

With a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time?

Yep, and probably a thing for getting stones out of horses' hooves too

Quotation failure, I see