I don’t know about you but when I wake up in the morning I’ve usually got a bit of a raspy voice. For about the first half hour I’ve got an usually low register until the voice warms up and then speaking is business as usual for the rest of the day.
This ‘condition’ probably isn’t helped by the fact that I’ve got the aircon on whenever I’m home (I did try to resist Taiwan’s summer for as long as I could but eventually it overcame me).
When I woke up this morning things were no different. I got up, went to the toilet and plonked myself infront of the laptop to check the news/emails/make sure the world hadn’t ended etc.
As I checked the daily news, within minutes I was chuckling to myself and then gagging in pain. Evidently my throat isn’t prepared for laughter first thing in the morning…
…on the plus side though it’s not every day that you get two hilariously delicious stories of stupidity to start your day off.
Slingshots are always going t0 be something that fascinates most children. With a few cheap components (usually a rubber band and a stick) you’re all of a sudden able to catapult projectiles at great speeds.
Seriously what kid isn’t excited by that prospect?
Not satisfied with a standard slingshot, two kids from Minnesota decided to take the slingshot concept to the next level. Armed with surgical tape and a bum bag (slightly larger then a coin purse), the duo set about creating a giant slingshot between two poles down at a local park.
Starting off small, the pair began launching baseballs and small rocks. Not satisfied with following convention either, instead of firing their projectiles horizontally these kids were shooting things up into the air.
After graduating from small projectiles, the kids then moved onto bigger and better things and wound up launching a 2.7kg rock into orbit. Upon re-entry however the rock landed on one of the kids chests and crushed him.
Brilliant. Seriously, you can’t write comedy like that.
What amuses me most is that the pair were firing things up into the air, so you’d think ‘run!’ would have at some point entered the thoughtstream of our creative cast.
Apparently not.
A 2.7kg rock is approximately the same weight as a bag of oranges. Now I’m not a physicist but surely launching that into the air to a height high enough to crush something upon landing means you’d have more then enough time to get out of the way?
I can just picture the two kids launching the rock and staring up at the sky watching it.
‘Haha that’s so cool. Hey we should probably get out of the way it’s coming back straight fo-KLUNK!’
Either that or they lost interest so fast and started to look for another larger projectile to launch that the rock completely caught them by surprise upon landing.
I can’t decide which scenario is more amusing.
The only way this story could be any better is if they were filming it for YouTube and it was leaked by the police… though I guess that’d be having my cake and eating it too.
Next up we venture into the teenager years. Tying things to vehicles, whether they be go karts, rollerbladers, shopping trolleys, dumpsters, other cars, bicycles etc., is always going to be enticing to a teenager.
What with the exhilarating feeling of speed as you soar through the air without the safety confines of a car body protecting you, ah… I can almost feel the impending disaster run through my hair just thinking about it.
Such disaster struck one California teen as he rode a skateboard tied to the back of a car. Evidently he wasn’t wearing any protective gear and when his skateboard hit the back wheel of the vehicle towing him, he hit his head and died.
‘Hey guys, check this ou-’
‘…’
‘so we should probably pull over now hey’.
Apart from the hilarity of attempting something like this without protective gear, just how the hell do you plan on stopping when the car towing you brakes?
Unless skateboarding technology has come a long way in the last few years, as far as I knew skateboards weren’t too effective on the braking side of things.
What could have been any other day has now kicked off to a great start, thanks solely to the actions of two very special kids. The amusement of their antics aside, I guess what further does it for me is the confirmation that no matter how much we attempt to cotton wool the current generation, the end result of shitty parenting and stupidity always manages to prevail. Not only that but it somehow manages to also be consistently funny.
There’s writers in Hollywood whose sole job is to be funny and even sometimes they can’t deliver. Yet here’s mother nature not even trying and still delivering the funny.
Sore throats aside from early morning laughter, I’d lastly like to thank the families involved. Whilst I’m sure they were great kids it takes a special combination of stupid genes, lacklustre parenting and inspiration to pull comedy like this off.
If only every day started off this good…