Posted By:
Boo
in The Land of the Haggii... Apr 14, 2005
First of all, I want to clarify. The Daily Star is a crappy tabloid which I mostly buy because it's cheap and also funny.
Now, for a while I've noticed little articles that then turn up on the museum of hoaxes a few days or weeks later (the suicide dogs one springs to mind) or I notice things I've read on the Museum turning up in the paper a month or so later.
So I decided to note any strange or hoaxy type articles that I came across.
Phew.
Yesterday's articles.
Star Burst
Rich would-be Robinson Crusoes are lining up to splash £5 million for 45-acre Green Island in Dorset's Poole harbour.
Girls so Cocky
A gadget that measures the length and girth of a guy's manhood is being snapped up by women. Thousands have contacted makers Cockrule Ltd ( see here) after seeing it on TV show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. A spokesman said: 'Women want to know the truth and find out how big their men are.'
Mum Killed By Own Car in Freak Crash Fawlty antics turn tragic
A mum who launched a Basil Fawlty-style attack on her conked out car was run over and killed by it.
Alison Taylor was so angry when the rusting Peugeot 405 wouldn't start she got out, lifted the bonnet and laid into it with a hammer.
It mirrored a scene from the TV comedy Fawlty Towers when Basil - played by John Cleese - launched a frenzied assault on his stalled car with a broken branch.
But Alison's banging triggered the starter motor and sparked the ailing engine into life.
The car then lurched straight into her because the handbrake was broken.
Terrified Alison, 36, desperately reached out her hand to stop herself being dragged under - but accidentally grabbed the throttle cable.
That caused the car to accelerate and run her over, killing her in front of her mum. Alison had just dropped off her son Daryl, 12, at a school meeting and was trying to get the car to start at Seaton Burn Community College, North Tyneside.
Mum Marjorie said: "The car made a small jump forward followed by a much larger, more obvious one.
"There was smoke coming from the front and I saw Alison trapped underneath."
The family were planning to get rid of the car this week.
"It is one of the strangest cases I've come across." PC George Rutter told a North Tyneside inquest. The coroner gave a verdict of accidental death.
All articles copyrighted to the Daily Star of Scotland, of course.
Not sure if it's a European thing, necessarily.
I suppose that (if I had a car) I'd have things like screwdrivers in the boot. But a hammer does seem a little bizarre.
Apart from using to attack things (or, I suppose, to defend yourself), is there any use for one in a car?
taking out your frustrations on the POS car that couldn't have waited just five - FIVE freaking more minutes before ripping your transmission to little grindy pieces instead of stranding you in the turn lane with the nearest place to push it over a hunder feet away, goddammit.
I don't carry screwdriver's...I have pliers, and wrenches. I used to carry one of those screwdrivers were the end flips around & it can be phillips or flat head. I don't know that there is much in my car that needs a screwdriver.
And for tight lugnuts...don't ya just need a good push??
It is because it makes more sense that way...descriptive is good.
It's kind of like how I would say "to get there, go down three blocks and turn left at the Jewel Food store, and go until you see a purple house on the left hand side.". You might say go to Johnson St., turn left onto Market St., and it's number XXX, 10th house on the left".
I knew a guy who got so pissed off at his car while he was trying to remove the transmission that he unloaded his 9 mm into said car. It didn't help the problem of course, but he said it made him feel better at least until he got a ticket for discharging a firearm in city limits. Dummy! LOL
Yikes, I can't imagine having a temper bad enough to do something like that...
Raoul
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 | 12:26 PM
This tragic woman should have owned a '67 Plymouth Satellite, like my Chariot of Fire. I have only taken a hammer to her once, and that was to tap in a new freeze plug. Cars are like women; treat them well. Rrrraoul
Rod
in sane in the membrane
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 | 12:51 PM
Hammers are handy when you're trapped in a car and need to break a window to get out.
For example when you end up in a body of water, you can't open the doors until the pressure equalizes. To equalize the pressure, almost all of the air has to be evacuated. Using the hammer just gets it done quicker.
It's also handy when you need to get out after you have hit the ditch in deep snow or mud and the doors won't open, and for some reason the windows won't roll down.
If the car was an old piece of crap which she'd been having lots of trouble with she might have had a hammer for this reason. Sometimes when a "starter" goes out on a car you can get it to work by tapping it with a hammer. This loosens any debris around the brushes and between the connections and therfore allows the starter to work. I've done this before when a starter went out on an old pick-up truck I owned. The trick was taught to me by my grandfather. I called him when I was stuck at a grocery store. He showed up with only a hammer to which I replied..."Just what are you going to accomplish with that?" He reached under the truck, tapped my starter a few times with the hammer, and voila... it started! I was able to put off replacing the starter for another 3 months or so by using the tapping trick whenver the starter decided it didn't want to work...
Rod
in sane in the membrane
Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 | 01:04 PM
Of course, she COULD just be into cracking walnuts as she drives...
