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Hey all,

After much searching, I couldn't find the EPIC FAIL thread. Thus I am starting a new thread. If the old Epic Fail thread is still in existance then consider this to be my EPIC FAIL!

Epic Fail #2: I crashed my bicycle today...

We have the Rant and Minor Rant threads for this kinda stuff.
Added at: 16:18
I created the original EPIC WIN thread as a way to improve forum morale a couple weeks after the inception of the original RANT thread.

Maybe we could use the EPIC FAIL thread for funny things that happen? The type of "bad" things we can share to make others laugh?

I concur.

I need one banana peel on the pavement, stat!

I AM OUT OF FLOUR!!!!!!!!!!!

HCGLNS said:

I AM OUT OF FLOUR!!!!!!!!!!!

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Good! No cooking kittens for you!

Made Ya Blush said:

Hey all,

After much searching, I couldn't find the EPIC FAIL thread. Thus I am starting a new thread. If the old Epic Fail thread is still in existance then consider this to be my EPIC FAIL!

Epic Fail #2: I crashed my bicycle today...

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Are you ok? Is your bike ok?

She's fine. Took a tumble when she was biking on her own for the first time. She's feeling some pain but not black and blue.

My epic fail is assuming that it'll only take two weeks for her to learn how to ride a bike.

I crashed my bike once. It was pouring rain and I was heading to work on my bike. I looked back at the rear wheel to watch the water flying off the tire and looked up in time to see a street sign hit the right side handlebar.

I still face-palm when I think about it.

This one time I peed on my cat....

LIES!!!

This one time, I pead on my cat....


(This one was totally true.)

ThatNickGuy said:

She's fine. Took a tumble when she was biking on her own for the first time. She's feeling some pain but not black and blue.

My epic fail is assuming that it'll only take two weeks for her to learn how to ride a bike.

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I'm glad everyone (and everything) is ok.

About a month ago, I managed to break my frame.

Epic fail should be stories that would be rants, but were actually due to our stupidity or events that are unforeseen, but not entirely outside our own control.

"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in an open manhole and die."

So, you know, if it's a rant that will make me laugh, it belongs here.

Here's my bikefail:


Not only did the front tube bend, the top tube tore.

I can dig it... a couple years back, I was clearing a house after a report of a burglary in progress, in a rather ritzy neighborhood. We make entry through an open door, another team of officers snag the suspect in the back yard, but there's no telling if there's anyone else in the house.

So our intrepid, still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed rookie officer boldly checks each room, sidearm drawn, with his backup covering with shotgun at the low ready. Door after door is searched, with nothing appearing to be disturbed, and no sign of anyone else. Our slightly-disheartened rookie holsters his weapon, his heartbeat slowing, until his partner says "what about the attic?"

After ensuring that noone is holding the ladder up, the officers make entry. Visions of Tunnel Rats in Vietnam flashing through our doughty officer's mind, he proceeds up the ladder, scanning in all directions, peeking behind anything that could provide a suspect cover. His pulse races - THIS is what he signed up for! But alas, no suspect to be found. Dejected, he holsters his weapon and turns on the narrow plywood walkway...

... only to have his footing slip off the edge and for his suddenly-unsupported body to hurtle downwards. He has a moment to consider just how bad this looks before his fall is arrested by a sharp jerk at his shoulder, as his arm chicken-wings one of the crossbeams. Wincing at the sudden pain, our now-bemused rookie looks down to see the debris brought down by his fall still tumbling down the stairs that he almost fell down himself.

His partner pulls him up, laughing, and the two descend the ladder. The pain from the stop still hasn't abated, and is actually getting worse, to where it hurts to move his shoulder. But no worry! Our officer was a Marine, he's tough, he can suck it up... no, no he really can't. After explaining to his Sergeant what happened (much to the 3-striper's horror at just what kind of clusterfuck his charge has perpetrated), EMS is contacted to check the officer out. Whilst waiting, he speaks the family (who was merely relieved that he wasn't hurt worse, and told him not to worry about the damage to their lovely home) and apologises profusely.

After being checked by EMS, the call is made to transport our shamefaced officer to the hospital, given that he's feeling pain 5/10 in his upper back and shoulder area. Whilst enroute, the pain intensifies, but our officer keeps his mouth shut, not wanting to be put in a C-collar. When he tells the doctor it's at 7/10 now, the EMS Lt (who was rather cute, to be honest) proceeds to chew most voraciously upon his true blue ass for putting her at liability.



The TRULY Epic fail here? The "burglar" was the gardener, entering the house with the key provided to him by the family. The best-executed perimeter I have ever see to date (ignoring my own hijinks) was wasted on a bogus call. *headdes*





TL;DR, Officer_Charon fell through a ceiling once.

My epic fail involves me, a motorcycle, rain, and a tree.

I wanted to learn to ride a motorcycle when I was in my late 20's. My dad talked me into signing up for a safety class at a local community college and we bought a sweet little Kawasaki Vulcan 500 from a friend of the family. Dad and I were both pretty excited, so he and I thought it would be a good idea to ride the street bike around in our grassy yard so I could get a feel for it. It had been drizzling off and on so the grass was wet. I also had on a pair of leather gloves that were a tad too big and kept sticking to the grips on the handlebars. Suddenly I'm headed for our field and I don't want to get into the soft dirt, so I try to put on the brake. I reach my hand out for the brake, my glove sticks to the grip, and I end up revving the engine up. I panic and turn the bike - sending my left side right into a pretty large weeping cherry tree. Of course, I dump the bike. It lands on my foot. I broke the mirror off of the left side of the bike. I also was pretty sure I dislocated my shoulder since that is what hit the trunk of the tree. My mom had been watching with my dad. She runs into the house to get the phone. My dad comes running out to me, sees the broken glass, and assumes I must be cut and bleeding some place. Luckily, all I ended up with was a deep tissue bruise in my left shoulder.

When I was two years old, I wriggled out of the car seat and released the emergency brake of the truck I was in, while my dad had gone into the house. We were parked on a hill. In San Francisco. Down the block, one of our neighbors was a trucker. One gravity storm later, the bed of the pickup is accordioned against the trailer.

My dad's truck wasn't his, it belonged to the dealership he worked for.

When I was young, I liked tinkering with electrical things. I lived on a horse farm, and we had electric fencers. For those in the dark, these are devices that put enough electrical charge on a mile of fence wire to make a horse take notice and not jump the fence, about 800 to 1,000 volts in a quick zap that occurs about once a second.

So one of them broke, and I was given the opportunity to fix it. I disconnected it, took it apart, found an obvious electrical problem, fixed it and wondered how I should test it.

So how did I decide to test it?

Without hooking it up to anything, I put one hand on one terminal, and one hand on the other.

So the entire charge goes right through my heart. You know, the charge that not only makes a horse take notice, after a mile of wire (which was still disconnected - I was the only thing hooked up) but the same charge that burns through weeds that come in contact with it(really helpful, actually, means we don't have to mow the fence line often).

Felt like a someone took a 20 lb sledgehammer to my chest, and I'm still surprised my heart didn't go into fibrillation.

So, yeah. I'm a little more careful around electricity than I was when I was younger...

My dad used to think it was funny to trick me into touching the electric fence when I was a kid. Oh, and for those of you who've never touched a continuous electric fence before, when you grab it, it's really hard to let go, because your hands grip the wire involuntarily. Not nearly as bad as touching the terminals directly, thanks to wire resistance. But still not fun.

Incidentally, one of my coolest memories from childhood was one of the horses panicking and bursting through the wires. It was late dusk, and the horse was silhouetted, and sparks went flying when the horse leapt.

I used to work for a rather large pet store in the aquarium department and was in charge of the exotic fish section. I had just finished feeding the lung fish, which invoves taking a feeder goldfish and dangling it in front of the lung fish's face, and moved on to the electric catfish. I couldn't find a feeding stick sooooo...
Yes, I stuck my hand in the water and dangled the goldfish in front of the catfish's face.
When I woke up, I found that the shock had knocked me off the stool, five feet back into the middle of the shopping area, and my arm was numb and useless from the shoulder down.
Fear the electric catfish. They will be our masters one day.

fade said:

My dad used to think it was funny to trick me into touching the electric fence when I was a kid. Oh, and for those of you who've never touched a continuous electric fence before, when you grab it, it's really hard to let go, because your hands grip the wire involuntarily. Not nearly as bad as touching the terminals directly, thanks to wire resistance. But still not fun.

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We had a dog fencer that was continuous. We were able to let go at about age 5, but I remember my little sister being unable to let go when she was younger.

The muscles that close the hand are much stronger than those that open the hand, so if you touch it with your finger, you're liable to grab it as it triggers those muscles, and you won't be able to let go, depending on your body size.

That's why, if you must touch a wire that could be live, you touch it with the back of your hand. If you spasm, you won't be grabbing the wire, you'll be pulling away from it.

It's also why fencers meant to work on miles of wire only shoot briefly once per second. If it gets you, it'll be a twitch rather than a grab, and you'll have time to pull away.

Of course, that means that if you can time it, you can touch a fence when it's not charged, and trick someone else into thinking it's not on...

"Of course it's off. How can I touch it if it's not? You can go ahead and pee on it without worry."

fade said:

My dad used to think it was funny to trick me into touching the electric fence when I was a kid. Oh, and for those of you who've never touched a continuous electric fence before, when you grab it, it's really hard to let go, because your hands grip the wire involuntarily. Not nearly as bad as touching the terminals directly, thanks to wire resistance. But still not fun.

Incidentally, one of my coolest memories from childhood was one of the horses panicking and bursting through the wires. It was late dusk, and the horse was silhouetted, and sparks went flying when the horse leapt.

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We didn't have an electric fence, but my grandfather used to do things like put together extension cords to make longer cords. He'd usually just wrap the two bare ends with black electrical tape to splice them together. I can remember my parents using one in their basement. I was barefoot, stepped on the extension cord (which was running across a cement floor) and couldn't move my leg to take another step. Had the same thing happen with an old refrigerator he fixed up. Put my hand on the metal handle to open it and couldn't let go. Scary fun.

I touched an electric fence once. I don't know what kind it was but the only thing that happened was I suddenly felt very alert. It was actually kind of refreshing. That is when I decided alarm clocks should shock you. Bam good morning!

It's not the voltage, it's the amperage.

Well, it's really the interplay between both. And the geometry and resistivity of the path it takes through you.

And your general health. And the AC or transient signal the voltage source causes in you.

Most electrocution deaths aren't of the type where someone is cooked, they are of the type where the shock causes the heart to go into fibrillation - it is no longer pumping with a steady beat, but quivering due to the complex cellular/nerve interaction at the heart muscle itself.

If the shock doesn't go through the heart, even if it burns you badly, you still have a good chance of surviving. This is where the "always keep one hand behind your back when working with electricity" concept comes from. If you get a jolt from one arm to your legs, not much of it goes through your heart.

But get it from one arm to the other, and you stand a chance at losing your heartbeat.

Get CPR or use one of those automated defibrillators that are starting to be positioned near fire extinguishers, and you may be in good shape.

But I didn't intend to turn this into the electrical safety thread. Quick, someone describe some stupid fail they perpetrated, stat!

A buddy of mine once worked at a pet shop as well. They dealt with a lot of exotic pets. One day while cleaning the cage of a very expensive parrot my buddy accidentally let the thing out. He wasn't too worried about it as it was after (or before) hours so the doors were shut and he knew it couldn't get out. What he did NOT think about was the fact that the monkey that was running around the store ate birds. He said that the monkey went from motionless to jumping through the air to biting the head off of the parrot - all in about 1.2 seconds.

The monkey was fine, the parrot was dead and my buddy was fired.

First Lady Puffinstuff said:

Quick, someone describe some stupid fail they perpetrated, stat!

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I made an account here.

Allen who is Quiet said:

I made an account here.

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Allen who is Quiet said:

I made an account here.

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Given your current avatar, though, it's obvious why you did.

monkeys are horrible things!!

Especially the evolved ones.... omgcwutididthar?