Day: October 13, 2009

Where’s the fire?

A photographer for a national magazine was assigned to take pictures of a great forest fire. He was advised that a small plane would be waiting to fly him over the fire. He was mumbling about how they couldn’t have chosen to use one of those live video casting solutions.

The photographer arrived at the airstrip just an hour before sundown. Sure enough, a small Cessna airplane was waiting. He jumped in with his equipment and shouted, “Let’s go!” The tense man sitting in the pilot’s seat swung the plane into the wind and soon they were in the air, though flying erratically.

“Fly over the north side of the fire, ” said the photographer, “and make several low-level passes.”

“Why?” asked the nervous pilot.

“Because I’m going to take pictures!” yelled the photographer. “I’m a photographer, and photographers take pictures!”

The pilot replied, “You mean you’re not the flight instructor?”

Insurance claims

The following are actual statements found on insurance forms where car drivers attempted to summarize the details of an accident in the fewest possible words. The instances of faulty writing serve to confirm that even incompetent writing can be highly entertaining.

  1. Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have.
  2. The other car collided with mine without giving warning of its intention.
  3. I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.
  4. I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.
  5. A truck backed through my windshield into my wife’s face.
  6. The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve a number of times before I hit him.
  7. I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.
  8. In an attempt to kill a fly I drove into a telephone pole.
  9. I had been shopping for plants all day and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision and I did not see the other car.
  10. I had been driving for forty years when I fell asleep at the wheel and had an accident.
  11. I was on the way to the doctor with rear end trouble when my universal joint gave way causing me to have an accident.
  12. As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
  13. To avoid hitting the bumper of the car in front I struck a pedestrian.
  14. My car was legally parked as it backed into another vehicle.
  15. An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car and vanished.
  16. I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat found that I had a fractured skull.
  17. I was sure the old fellow would never make it to the other side of the road when I struck him.
  18. The pedestrian had no idea which way to run as I ran over him.
  19. I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.
  20. The indirect cause of the accident was a little guy in a small car with a big mouth.
  21. I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.
  22. The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of the way when I struck the front end.

You wouldn’t use those for any insurance marketing would you?

Check the milk

I had a friend looking to lose weight without messing with diet pills, so I told her that she should switch to lower-fat foods; including skim milk. When she said her family would only drink whole milk, I suggested that she keep their regular container and refill it with skim milk. This worked for quite a while, until her daughter asked, one morning, whether the milk was okay.

“Sure, it’s fine,” my friend answered, fearing she had been found out. “Why do you ask?”

“Because according to the bottle,” the daughter explained, “this milk expired two years ago.”