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Fire!
Enough negative monetary analysis and deep thoughts on crappy markets. I just want to wish my US readers a happy holiday. For those of you who are outside the country, who wonder why 300m people stuff themselves with dry turkey and canned gravy, well, the hell with you.
I’ll be cooking this year. I’m going a bit over the top. I’m going to fry a turkey. This is half curiosity and half death wish. I’m told the bird will taste great; but it’s dangerous as hell.
Every Thanksgiving a hundred or so houses burn down because of fried turkeys. It’s not as if people don’t understand the risks, there are plenty of warnings.
A few years back, down in Tennessee, this happened to a friend. It was the usual combination of errors that were at fault. Too much alcohol (not in the turkey), cooking oil that was allowed to get too hot and a bird that was not quite defrosted. A dangerous combination.
A second or so after the bird was dropped in the fat, there was an explosion of flames.
The initial thinking was that somehow the fire would burn down a bit and, just maybe, some brave soul could get near enough to turn off the gas that was stoking the flames. No luck with that, the fire roared on.
There was a fair crowd at this Thanksgiving, so when the fire started, people came closer to see the action. That proved to be a mistake. The fire intensified. The oil was boiling out in every direction, bringing flame with it. The nearby container of propane was now covered in flames.
In a bit of bad luck, the fire burned through the gas line. The rupture sent high-pressure propane shooting out of the severed hose. This immediately ignited, causing the gas line to shoot a blowtorch of flame 25 feet long. That changed the thinking of the onlookers, but things really broke down when some guy screamed:
Run! The tank is going to blow!
So now everyone is running for cover. One lady grabs her fat ten-year old and heads for safety. She makes it maybe 20 feet before she trips on a lawn sprinkler and goes down hard, kid and all. The boy was fine; she broke two ribs and was crying for help. The twin girls were screaming their heads off in unison; one older lady actually peed in her pants. Two guys ran for a hose, but another two stopped them, (the worst thing you could do was to put water on an oil fire). There was a screaming match about that.
The good news was that the main house was hundreds of feet away, and not really in danger. The bad news was that there was a tobacco-drying barn about twenty feet from the inferno, and the flames from the gas tank were blowing twenty-five feet. So the barn caught fire. The structure was old, had a cedar shake roof and wood walls that were dry as tinder. Once it was lit, there was no way to stop it.
There was no tobacco in the barn, but there were two vehicles. An ancient Chevy S10 pickup that had 300k miles, and two Jerry cans of fuel in the bed. The other vehicle was a brand new Volvo SUV that just happened to have twenty-two gallons of high-octane fuel in the tank.
The Chevy blew first, the Volvo went a minute or two later. The fireball must have been forty-feet high.
The boys at the Fire Department were eating turkey (and no doubt, drinking) so they were late in arriving. They hosed the main house, and let the barn burn to the ground. All in, the damages were north of a hundred grand. The “Friends” at Allstate were none to pleased with the results.
Later that day, the twins found what was left of the turkey that caused all the fuss. It looked like a burnt football. The kids played soccer with it until it broke apart.
Anyway, have a good holiday.
bk
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Thanks for reminding me, I'm about 3 shots light after reading that GM/GMAC article.
Have a great Thanksgiving Bruce, probably will see butterball clauses in my insurance soon...
Where's the fucking video. I want to see this occur, I cannot take you word for it. I mean, really, seeing a fat woman trip on a sprinkler.....priceless!! How else are all of the other Globalists supposed to understand the American Thanksgiving "traditions"?
I, too, was rooting for the sprinkler.
So, this turkey explosion seems like the perfect metaphor for the US economy. Everyone's gonna get hurt, but the insurance companies (and those selling CDS) are gonna be none too happy. TPTB will have fun playing with the charred carcass of a once useful economy.
I'm thankful for my family and for the awareness we all have. I would love to see us have the freedom the US once had. I'll keep working toward that in coming weeks and months. Until then, I'll stuff my face and watch American football (plus the Brazil-Argentina friendly tonight.)
Bruce, this reads like the future story of the Fed balance sheet.
Happy Thanksgiving!
I see a funny movie script.
"A Thanksgiving! Story"
"You'll burn the barn down! You'll burn the barn down!"
This script needs a Red Ryder BB gun, and a lamp featuring female anatomy.
Go for it FiSHeS...
My Thanksgiving movie is "Planes, Trains and Automobiles." It has a special place for me since I live it every day at work. I am in the role of Steve Martin and my lard-butt motor-mouth co-worker is John Candy.
"Here is an idea, when you tell a story, HAVE A POINT! It makes it so much more enjoyable for the listener!"
Did you ever try punching him in the throat? That might shut the fucker up.
I swear it was the insurance companies themselves that bankrolled the publicicity for deep-frying turkeys. Gotta get those yearly bonuses, right? It's the perfect caper for Martha Stewart and her Wall Street cronies to profit from combining a volatile (and wholly unnecessary) cooking process with the usual American brainiac's ability to deal with modestly complex details.
There are fire extinguishers available for smothering oil fires, you can buy one at Home Depot.
Bruce, that's one of those stories that are a blast, so to speak, to read and dreadful to experience. So don't do anything that would cause you to write another such story about your own fried-turkey experience - even though the rest of us would doubtlessly enjoy reading it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Let's have a contest to see who can drop their turkey into their fryer from the highest height. That would be really cool. The winner gets a brand new skin graft. Second place wins a taller ladder.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
:D
In north-western Continental Europe
Where there is almost no one in prison
Where there is little fear of harassment by police, lawyers, courts, or government
Where there is essentially zero poverty among any legal resident, and everyone has health care
Where good food, good wine and good beer are all cheap
And where we even own guns and enjoy them at shooting clubs
Here in Europe
We give Thanks to God we do not live in police-state America
pussy boy in brussels ,, von rumpboy called he wants his daily blowjob from you
Us rednecks here in Ohio love our pending police state, because we're yearning for a little target practice. Here's what we do for fun, not sure it would be agreeable wherre you pussies live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb_tmHeI66k
You're right. I guess I'm a pussy. That was really sick dude.
Us rednecks here in Ohio love our pending police state, because we're yearning for a little target practice. Here's what we do for fun, not sure it would be agreeable wherre you pussies live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb_tmHeI66k
for bank wuss in Brussels:
In south-east Texas
Where most of our friends just got out of jail
Where there is little to fear from the Euro Commission or European Parliament
Where you can have as much poverty as you like and the neighbors will put up with
Where a 30-pack of Genesee Ice is $12.99
Where we own guns galore and enjoy shooting them at each other and the occasional pickup-truck rustler
Here in Texas we give thanks to God that our leading citizen is not Herman van Rompuy, that we don't live by mooching off the rest of Europe, and that our main businesses is not supplying prostitutes to the Eurocrats.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Watching Americans and Europeans arguing about whose police state is freer is such fun.
Dnag, the interent cut off half of your post. I fished it out of the cache to all could read your true meaning:
In north-western Continental Europe - which couldn't defend itself against an angry 7th grade class if it had to
Where there is almost no one in prison - because the damned legal system is so corrupt we can't ever get a judgement
Where there is little fear of harassment by police, lawyers, courts, or government - because they all are so far on the take that they leave us alone as long as we keep paying taxes
Where there is essentially zero poverty among any legal resident, and everyone has health care - because we have 50% taxation
Where good food, good wine and good beer are all cheap - and tastes like shit
And where we even own guns and enjoy them at shooting clubs - but we couldn't go hunt on our own land because we can't afford land and there is no wild game
Here in Europe
We give Thanks to God we do not live in police-state America -
And We here in PSA are TRULY grateful your arse sits in LaLaLand! Happy Turkey Day to all.
"And all the kids are smarter than average..."
You give thanks that you don't live in Police State Imperial Germany? Or in police state Nazi Germany? Or in police state CCCP?
You're welcome, dick smack.
Don't be angry about his comment. It's ignorant. There are still enough people around that know what America did. Not saying that it's a perfect country or idealising it. But even as a German I am glad that I am not living in such a state. And I've not forgotten the help that we received from the United States during all these years.
Responsible people keep the world going round. The rest sit, consume and bitch for more, for less. We still remember Von Stueben and those who stood shoulder to shoulder looking at the Fulda Gap.
All the best these holidays to you, friend.
Did you post that in the right thread? What does anything you just said have to do with the hazards of deep-frying turkeys? It's not illegal to be stupid in the US, it's just expensive as hell.
I wish all American readers a Happy Thanksgiving. Your comment, banker guy, is really an ignorant one. Your image of the United States is quite sad. It's pretty one-dimensional.
Happy Thanksgiving, too - you do have to admit though that the image shown here in the ZH comments on the eurozone is also pretty one-dimensional, you socialist european German, you ;-)
and bankguy's claims about prisons, courts and police in the US sounded utterly preposterous to me - until I found them out as true, something that still shocks me
take care and don't invade Poland in your sleep
Not to mention that the Belgians lock their criminals up in banks and pay them exorbitant fees to continue their lives of crime.
Yeah, well maybe. The flip side is that the place is a hoot. Enjoy your orderly, boring life.
And it was their best Thanksgiving ever. It was certainly their most memorable - the Thanksgiving that will live forever in their memories. Generations yet unborn will be begging to hear about the time great grandpa tried to fry a turkey. The story will improve in the telling.
Great story, Bruce.
More turkey humor.
"As God as my witness I thought turkeys could fly"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf3mgmEdfwg
They've been running WKRP reruns again locally. Damn, if Loni Anderson wasn't something else. I had a teacher that dated her once or twice in high school. I don't think he ever got anywhere but if he did, he should have his johnson bronzed.
I remember a friend telling me a story about two rednecks. They thought it was funny to stick half a stick of dynamite in a cat's butt. They lit it and began to laugh. The cat immediately got loose and ran beneath their porch and blew their porch to smithereens. I figured this story was urban legend, until I actually lived in the South for a while.
Those boys can blow anything up. Bruce's story seems incredible real to me. It was funny as hell, too. Thanks, Bruce.
I got a full stick of Dyn-O-Mite for Loni's butt.
Blowing stuff up Redneck style?
Last summer I had the sad opportunity to hold a memorial service for a friend and neighbor who had died young in Sept. 2011. He had a great heart, loved to drink, smoke, party, and put on a good size firework show to celebrate his birthday. This year we Gooped some of his ashes to a pile of 2 inch mortars and blew his remains up in the night sky over the lake in front of his house. That was fun, but the best part was getting everyone to cry when I blasted (through a PA) bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace" and "Coming Home" after the grand finale. He was of Scottish descent.
I've had to promise to do the same thing for others if they go before I do.
When do you call 911?
When a redneck says, "Watch this ..."
They can never find the eleven on the phone.
We don't need no stinkin eleven key- since we all have an army of relatives serving locally, who are probably right there having a beer and laughin their asses off watching the in-laws idiocy.
Happy Thanksgiving
I live in redneck land and was eventually "adopted" as one myself - kind of an honor, actually.
On the other hand, those folks, especially the younger, will often deliberately do dangerous things (either risk of injury or jail), primarily for the story value later - they readily admit this.
It's as though they all want their last words to be "hey y'all, watch this!".
It's been educational to say the least (I started out as a city boy). But in the sense of "what not to do" fairly often. Heck of a lot of fun to watch, at any rate.
The best variation on the dynamite story (a cat's ass won't hold a stick - too large diameter, c'mon) is the dog that fetched the lit dynamite back to under the truck, parked on the big lake on ice, dynamite intended to help with getting a hole to fish through...you can embelish from there.
Me, I just shoot tannerite on my shooting range. A lot safer and just as impressive. It never goes off when I don't want it to, and always does when I decide -
I'd have just reached to the propane tank and turned it off at that end. You could have done that with very minor discomfort if you moved fast enough, and the rest would never have happened.
Evidently there were zero "go-to" guys present. Bad idea no matter what the situation. You always want one around. Better yet, be that guy. But then you dislike hanging around with losers as Bruce described that crowd.
Happy Thanksgiving y'all, from SW VA.
Ha! That sound exactly like some of the dudes I know just over the line in NC. Crazy mother fuckers. This one guy has more firepower and ammo than most police departments in Europe. Him & his brothers are seriously waiting anxiously for the STHTF. Might not have to wait too long either.
Happy Thanksgiving back from SE VA.
And the women? Too busy running and peeing their pants? Are men interchangable and disposable?
Loni was OK but I found Bailey to be much sexier. Oh, and Mary Ann over Ginger, too.
The Mary Ann / Ginger contest really took a turn when it was revealed that Mary Ann also had great weed. Who could turn down Mary Ann, those tight shorts, a coconut cream pie and a big bowl of Maui?
So let's recap. 99% of the internet says they'll take Mary Ann over Ginger. A cheerful but otherwise ordinary farm gal over a (presumably) multimillionaire Sex Goddess, lusted after by millions, who (presumably) had to fuck her way to The Top and so (presumably) got pretty damn good at it. "Coconut cream pie" versus "ability and willingness to suck a golf ball through a garden hose". Hmmm.....think, think....
Jesus. Do you people even *listen* to yourselves anymore?
Hey, don't look at me. There's no fucking way I'd take Bailey over Jennifer.
The weed thing really skewed the Mary Ann debate. And don't forget that for every super hot chick there is a guy that is really tired of her bullshit.
It doesn't matter if she's hot. The war of the sexes is non-stop and eternal.
I'm with you there on both counts. Went with Jo over Blair, too.
Over Jo and under Blair was a great early 80s fantasy. I'm a little disappointed you didn't work Tootie into that, somehow.