Life, The Universe, and Stupidity
The single most universal comodity in life is stupidity. I began my search for stupidity as a teen, when at the recommendation a more learned friend, I began reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The line from the book, "Oh my, you seam to have fallen down a well!"(or something like that(i am just too lazy to look it up (because, basically, I am too stupid to remember what page it is on (Oh, by the way, I love run-on sentences)))), triggered something in me. Now I find stupidity in everything. You are what you hate. Certainly my friends consider me a "few fries short of a 'Happy Meal'". By way of example of what you might expect to incounter when I eventually post the things I have discovered to be stupid, The following happened to me last week... Here in America, as I am sure elsewhere (I mean, if not where you live, then coming soon to an improved driving surface near you), Road Rage, otherwise known as "I'm freakin more important than you, I'm in a more advanced state of lateness than you, and my crotch is now drinking my coffee so I'm madder than you....GET THE HELL OUT OF MY WAY" syndrome. So, anyway, I have a friend (No, really I do) who has a trailer (No, really he does), which is sixteen feet long by seven feet wide and capable of carrying upto 1500 pounds (the weight, not the currency). Now my friend had loaded this trailer with cedar beams, which were approximately 23 feet long, 14 inches wide, and 4 inches thick (and no, I don't know the metric equivalents) and weighed an estimated 300 pounds each, and did I mention that there were 18 of these beams. Now you should have a picture of this in your head, but if not, I'll picture it for you. Trailer 16 feet long, beams 23 feet long. Trailer capacity of 1500 pounds, 18 beams at 300 pounds a piece or 5400 pounds(approximately 3900 pounds too much). Got the picture? Now cut and paste this, my friend, we'll call him Bill (ironic that that is his name), hooked this rolling slap in the face to physics up to his Ford Explorer (you may have heard of this vehicle's remarkable lack of stablility) which has a rated towing capacity of 1200 pounds. Think you know where this is going? Think again. Excuse me, time for more coffee..... Ok, so where was I? Oh yeah. Bill takes this train wreck in the making for a 25 mile (multiply by 1.6 for kilometers) which takes him approximately 4 hours (14,400 seconds) because if he exceeded 35 miles per hour( 56 kph), the front wheels of his Explorer ( see lawsuits vs. Ford Motor Company and Bridgestone/Firestone) would experience a profound loss of contact with the highway. Kitty, Stop That!... Now the purpose of this excurssion is to have these beams milled into boards and slats to make cedar chests. The wood shop that Bill journeyed to, would preform this service for half of the yield. Bill leaves this trailer of doom at the mill. Two weeks (14 days(336 hours)) later, the owner of the mill calls Bill (on the phone), and informs him that the beams are white cedar nor red, and therfor, are of no use for cedar chests (white cedar will not repel moths due to its total lack of smell) and therefor are of no use to the mill owner. Now Bill (you remember him, he's my friend, the one with the trailer and no real sense of self-preservation) suddenly discovers that life is worth hanging around a little bit longer for, and decides not to rush back there and repeat his oddessy of peril. Two months later, we needed his trailer back a work (did I mention that we work together? No? Well, we do). What do we do? Remodel older dwellings and such into condos. Satisfied? Good. Since Bill didn't want to retry his attempt a the worlds record for longest wheelie by an SUV (American Icon of excess in Stupidity). I volunteered. Now before you decide that I am an idiot, you should know a few things. 1st, my truck (not SUV) is a 1975 Chevrolet Heavy Duty Pickup, that is set up (power, gearing, frame, and supension-wise) for carrying very heavy things and towing even heavier things. 2nd, my truck, loaded with me, a full tank of gas(petrol), cab over ladder rack, tool boxes, gear, steel bumpers, stereo, amplifier, speakers, cd's, cigarette butts, burrito wrappers, and approximately 2 gallons (???? litres) of spilled coffee, out-weighs Bill's trailer and beams by approximately (by the way, approximately is one of my favorite words) 1200 pounds. 3rd I have a lot of experience haulling heavy things and I have seen Road Warrior and least 20 times. 4th my fear of death is only in regards to living long enough to want to ever eat at McDonald's again. Have you ever noticed that Death Row inmates never ask for a last meal of Big Mac's? No point in speeding up the inevitable. Just in case the govenor calls. Anyhooooo. I hook up to the trailer, proceed to the highway, enter the right lane (the slow lane over here) and begin the trip. My truck barely knows it is haulling anything, but I proceed at a blistering pace of 50 mph (ok, I'll stop with the conversions). All is well.... oh wait. Along comes a couple of fellows in thier little cars, at a high rate of speed. They apear to be waving at each other... oh, that's not waving, it's gesturing with a finger....Road Rage! Bet you thought I had forgotten what my point was.... very shortly after passing me, the lead car, hit his brakes. Causing the following car, who was incredibly close to the lead car, to swerve into my lane about 6 inches in front of my bumper. To avoid the eminate exchange of paint, I moved hastily to the median. This rapid change of position coupled with a change of velocity, caused the trailer to begin to swing side to side, which produced a counter swing from side to side in my truck, see the laws of physics, section one, paragraph 2; for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But wait, it gets interesting from here. I am, at this point, managing to avoid regaining complete control. Ahead, approx. 75 feet, railing for the overpass appears in the median on which I am currently occupying. I can not move left because the 2nd idiot in the Honda is currently where I should have been, explaining to the 1st idiot what a good idea the 1st idiot had of reducing his speed rapidly was. I can not stay on the median because there is no way I can stop 6 tons in the space alloted. So I opt for the lessor of three really bad options; the right. The right being around a 80 foot slope at about a 40 degree decline with a 5 foot wide culvert at the bottom. Approximately half of this distance was covered on 4 wheels; the left two on my truck and the left two on the trailer. At some point I managed to completely fail to flip over by steering into a straight descent. Only to realize that there was no negotiating the culvert straight on without ripping the trailer off of my bumper, flying across the access road into the trees on the other side with a loose trailer following me. Since I had no particuler urge to be crushed like Al Gore in Florida, I cut back to the left, ran over a large trash bag filled with what I took to be construction debris after it exploded upon impact with my bumper, sending a faux mushroom cloud of boards, sheetrock, etc. atleast 15 feet into the air. I finally managed to stop about 200 feet later. I sat for atleast 20 minutes waiting for my butt to let go of the seat, before continuing the trip at 15 mph on the access road. Now, I realize that a chunk of the stupidity involved was my own. I am not immune. But, generally speaking, the people of earth are not mostly harmless, we are all a bunch of w*****s, and maybe someone should build a new hyperspatial bypass............Conversations
| Conversation Title | Latest Post | Latest Reply |
|---|---|---|
| What? No 'Towel' Smiley? | Jul 29, 2002 | Dec 28, 2003 |
| Hi from your Ace! | No Posting | Jul 27, 2002 |
non_sequitur2000
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