Old Video Shows Stupid Idea: Big Cleveland Balloonfest Of 1986

Zillions of balloons rain down on
Cleveland during a 1986 ill-fated
attempt at a Guiness Book of World
Record attempt

The Atlantic recently featured a short film about a long forgotten, failed attempt at a Guinness Book of World Record balloon launch.

The city of Cleveland launched 1.5 million helium filled balloons. It looked spectacular, but the end result was kind of like that famous Thanksgiving turkey scene from the 1970s show "WKRP In Cincinnati." (In that episode, the radio station inadvertently bombarded Cincinnati with turkeys, with hilariously messy results.

Cleveland should have known that kind of fiction would come to life with their balloon launch. And unlike the sitcom, the result was not hilarious at all.

Hundreds of thousands of balloons littered the city and nearby Lake Erie.  The balloons weren't biodegradable, so they made a mess and an environmental hazard.

Worse, all the balloons interfered with a search and rescue mission on Lake Erie for two missing fishermen. There's no way they could be found amid all those balloons floating in the water.

Here's the short film on the doomed Cleveland balloon fest:

Irma Emergency Sign Language Interpreter Not Up To The Job

The guy in the yellow shirt was definitely not qualified to
be a sign language intepreter duirng an Irma briefing.  

Often during important announcements and press briefings, you'll often find a sign language interpreter there, too, relaying the crucial information to people who are hearing impaired.

In the video you'll see below, the interpreter clearly wasn't up to the job. You'll hear what the Manatee County, Florida emergency manager has to say, and what the sign language interpreter in the yellow shirt was relaying.

For instance, the emergency manager said, "You need to be safe." The interpreter came up with "Need to bear monster."

To be fair to the intepreter, he was not a professional, and he knew it. He was just some random guy who works as a marine rescuer for Manatee County who happens to have a hearing impaired brother.

The emergency operations center asked him to intepret, he said no because he was not qualified enough, but they coerced him into doing it, with disastrous results.  So it's not really the fault of the guy in the yellow shirt.

Advocates for the  hearing impaired said the county should have used the services of a company that provides certified interpreters. One was available, says ABC News.

But here's the video anyway:

Klutzy People Break Many Things

The latest time wasting video is people
who clumsily break things, just like me

I'm one of those people who are a bull in a china shop.

If I get close to it, I break it. No matter how careful I am.  I never mean to break anything, I just do.

So I appreciated the video at the bottom of this post that proves lots of people very stupidly break things.

They range from just a bit of broken glass to chaos on the highway due to some idiot breaking a major overhead sign.

All but one or two of the people in the video below didn't mean to cause problems. The exception is the horrible woman about 3:20 minutes in who is getting back at her ex-boyfriend. Trust me, the guy narrating the clip could do better.

My favorite character in the video is a hostile bird who Does Not Like the plastic cup pyramid somebody built.

In the category of shoddy products, watch the bike disintegrate at about 4:34 minutes in.

Here's your time wasting video. Hope you enjoy it, and relate to it as much as I do. OOPS, damn, just dropped and broke the beer bottle I was holding.

Anyway, here it is:

School Science Experiment, Monday Style

This sweet girl's vinegar and baking soda volcano
experiment certainly erupts, in a way.  

It's Monday. Time to go back to work and school.

And school kids: Is your science project ready for today's show and tell?

We have one girl who did the old baking soda and vinegar volcanic eruption demonstration.

But it's Monday, so the demonstration goes in a very Monday sort of way. Watch:

O Canada! Hockey, National Anthem And Skating Hazards Don't Mix

Not the best moment in the history of people
singing "O Canada."  

You have to expect this to happen all the time in Canada: A hockey game and a rendition of "O, Canada," the national anthem at the start of a hockey game.  

Some moron decided that it would be cool to have the guy who sings "O Canada" skate around the arena before the hockey game as he sings.

Bad idea, but it wasn't totally the singer's fault. Some moron, there were a lot of morons in this incident, apparently, put out a ceremonial carpet. The singer, Mark Donnelly, didn't see the carpet and fell flat on his face as he was singing.

Decent recovery though.

Watch the disaster in this video:

World's Worst Parallel Parker Ever!

A woman in Portland, Oregon recently tried to parallel park. It didn't go well.

A still from a video in which the
world record might have been set for worst
attempt at parking  

I guess some people don't have really good spatial capabilities. This woman didn't.  Especially since you could have almost parked a Mac truck where she was trying to pull in.

I know, I know. The ability to parallel park is not necessarily a sign of intelligence.

But this lady sure needs a refresher course on this task. Watch and you'll see why:

You Make Me Feeling Like Dancing, Or Failing

If you feel like dancing, better check out this video.  Time to change yoru mind, perhaps?

It's a dangerous business, a case of happy feet, as these people now know.

Best to sit still in your chair and not let the music get to you:

Compilation Fail Video Shows How Many Ways CrossFit Can Kill You

OK, to be fair, maybe not everyone in this video was doing CrossFit, but most were.

CrossFit is all the rage in fitness circles, but sometimes, it's better, safer and healthier to curl up on the couch with Cheez-Its and Mountain Dew, rather than do what these people are doing:

TV Station Has Audio Meltdown. News Anchors Hilariously Make Do With Handwritten SIgns

Television station WGN in Chicago recently had probably one of the worst possible types of meltdowns during a morning newscast.

The audio failed, except for a lone feed from a reporter out on a frigid looking street.

This normally would have been cause for irritation for the TV viewer, except the deadpan news anchors in the studio got a bit creative and took us back the to Golden Age of silent films. Or something like that.

Watch and laugh:

If Something Goes Wrong With Your Thanksgiving Feast, Here's Something To Make You Feel Better

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

There's always at least one small disaster on
Thanksgiving, but don't worry, it could be worse.  

I hate to go negative on you, but there is always some problem on Thanksgiving. Some food items might not turn out right, somebody gets drunk, or Tea Party Uncle clashes with Environmentalist Vegan Niece.

But it could always be worse. So, if you do have a bad moment on Thanksgiving, just watch this video to understand that your Thanksgiving mishap isn't all that bad after all.

Moron Of The Week Hits At Least Four Cars With Stolen SUV, Thinks He Can Get Away

Today we get from Chicago the less-than-heartwarming video of a guy driving a stolen black SUV who has just hit a taxi.

The black SUV hits a cab, on its way to
hitting several other cars as guy driving
stolen vehicle acts like a moron.  

The cabbie tries to stop the driver, even trying to bust out the passenger side window. The SUV driver decides to make a daring getaway!

Instead, he crashes into at least four cars. He does get away momentarily, but the reports are the cops naturally caught up with the loser. He faces multiple charges.  

So far they have not identified the jerk in the SUV.

The cab driver faces some discipline from his boss, but won't be fired. You're not supposed to confront morons like the SUV driver, says the boss. The cab driver is out of work for a week, too, while is cab is being fixed.

Here's the sad, sad video.  

How To Stop People From Peeing On Your Building

A locksmith business in Allentown, Pennsylvania had a problem.

A corner at the back of their building was the perfect place, in a lot of peoples' minds, to take a quick pee out of sight of passersby and without having to find a proper restroom in some building somewhere.

Guy tries to pee against building, building pees
on him.   

The people in the locksmith business didn't like this. Who wants the smell of stale pee wafting into your workspace all day? They needed to solve the problem.

What they did was ingenious. They set up a security camera, and anytime someone started to pee on the corner of the building, the building would pee on the pee-ers.

Well, it was just water coming off the building, but a lot of it.

The business put together a NSFW highlight video of a people peeing and getting peed on by the building.  It's hilarious.

This post won't please the commenter on one of my previous blog posts, which showed a flash flood roaring through a building. She said that video made her want to pee. This will be worse.

Here's the video, just for laughs:

Not-So-Glorious Animal Kingdom Taxidermy

You bag a big game animal, or your beloved dog, cat or other pet dies, and you want to capture some vestige of the animal's glory for posterity. Beyond photographs and video, the only way to do that is go to the taxidermist.

If you're into that sort of thing, it might work. Or it might not, judging from the Tumblr site Crappy Taxidermy. The site will probably make you reconsider the taxidermy route, but it will make you laugh. Or cringe. Or both.

How could what had been such glorious animals look so awful? You'll marvel like I did. I grabbed a few examples from the site from Crappy Taxidermy to give you a peek.

Another Month of Fails

As I do at the end of almost every month, I'll pass along a compilation video of some epic fails of the previous month. In May, as is often the case, most of the failures involved poor decisions regarding bikes, motorcycles, skateboards, concrete and water.

The purpose of the video is to make you feel better. After all, I bet you didn't make mistakes as painful or stupid as the people in the video. See? I bet you feel better already.

Amazing Forklift Win, and Amazing Forklift Fail

If I ever need somebody to carefully pick up a bunch of heavy stuff with a forklift and set it down without damaging anything, I'll hire the guy in the video below. It's a fun time waster to watch. He picks up a small coin with a huge forklift and drops it into a soda bottle. Really. See for yourself!




Of course, I also have to include the opposite extreme: A guy who in grand comic fashion, fails at forklifting. I love train wrecks. I bet the title is right: The guy's last day at that warehouse.