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Some Mothers DO Ave Em!

Ever since he was a child, Larry Waters had wanted to be a pilot. But although he had at one time been recruited by the US Air Force, poor eyesight had resulted in an early discharge. Nevertheless, Waters was determined to live out his boyhood dream, and in 1982 the 33-year-old truck driver set out on an unintentionally epic flight in his deckchair. First, he bought 45 weather balloons (each measuring about four feet across) from his local Army-Navy surplus store in San Pedro, California. He then filled the balloons with helium and tied them to his deckchair, which he anchored to his jeep with rope. He packed some beer, a parachute, a two-way radio and some jugs of water to keep him balanced, together with a pellet gun so he could pop the balloons if he got too high. The plan was to lazily drift up to about 30 foot and then hover for a while, all the time keeping the deckchair moored to his jeep on the ground. However, Larry had failed to tie the rope securely enough, and, when the mooring came lose, the power of the weather balloons carried him high up into the sky. After a rapid ascent, Waters finally leveled off at 16,000 ft. He passed above several private planes and was also spotted by two jet pilots, who were understandably bemused to see a deckchair floating among the clouds. By now Waters was panicking and began trying to shoot down the balloons with his pellet gun. He succeeded in bursting ten of them, but then accidentally dropped the gun, leaving him completely stranded. Getting colder and colder, Waters finally veered into the primary approach corridor of Los Angeles international airport and was picked up by an airport helicopter, although the rescue was hampered by the fact that the blades of the chopper kept blowing Waters further away from his rescuers. After being brought down, he was charged with violating federal airspace and fined $1,500. A brief period of fame followed, including a round of talk show appearances. Sadly, though, in October1993, Waters became so depressed at having made so little of himself in life that he committed suicide.

Ted and Alice Fairburn were holidaying on the East Coast of New Zealand when they heard choking sounds coming from outside of their caravan. Thinking someone might be trying to steal their petrol they went outside and found a siphon hose and a petrol can. However, next to these they found a pile of vomit, a metal cap and local criminal William Goose writhing on the floor. Taking a closer look, they noticed the cap was from the sewage tank, which was next to the petrol tanks, and sucking the pipe to get the flow going, siphoned the raw sewage directly into his mouth. He was taken to hospital for a stomach pump. The campsite decided not to press charges.

Yorkshiremen Stuart Darby and David jones were arrested outside an electrical warehouse near Wakefield in late 1993. Their behavior was considered suspicious when they were spotted carrying hammers, bin-liners and a large sack on which the word "swag" had been written.

Computer Freaks

In the middle of the night, a rep received a call from a woman in some distress. She had woken her children and moved her entire family into the neighbor’s house. From where she was phoning. When she had calmed down, she explained that her computer was about to blow up. It turned out that her Macintosh had just suffered its first system error and the woman had become hysterical after seeing the bomb symbol which appears on the screen. She thought her computer was about to blow up.

A customer phoned the Dell Computer Tech Support center to say she couldn’t get her computer to turn on. "I keep pressing the foot pedal, but nothing happens." The rep took her through the start-up procedure, and also explained that the mouse wasn’t actually a foot pedal.

A systems manager was called up by a secretary complaining her disk drive didn’t work. He asked her to demonstrate, and she put a disk in with the plastic dust sleeve still covering it. When he asked why she didn’t take the cover off, she replied that she didn’t want the computer to get a virus.

A caller rang up technical support to complain that the cup holder on his PC was broken. Confused, the tech rep asked if the cup holder had any trademark on it. The caller replied that 4x was written on the inside. The rep twigged that the customer had been using load drawer of the CD-ROM drive to hold his coffee and unsurprisingly, it had snapped off.