Wrath of the Bitch King posted:

I'm pretty sure it's just where I work. Either that or behind the scenes a lot of churches are just hosed up.

Here's a story:

The church I work for is very into pageants and theatrical stuff. They'll have plays with the thematic subtlety of a sledgehammer, usually centering around or at least alluding to going to hell.
Personally I find some of the stuff they put out there fairly objectionable but I won't derail the thread with that kind of a powder-keg. Just to preface, I'm not going to inject my personal opinion of the subject matter into any of what follows, i'm merely presenting what happened. The gist of the play they want to put on is thus:

There's a young, attractive woman riding in a cab. The devil (literally) decides to hop in shotgun next to the cab driver and "orders" him to force himself on the girl. The girl is horrified, the terrible act happens, and the cab driver somehow gets away scott free after doing the Devil's work. As if it wasn't horrible enough the woman gets pregnant and has recurring nightmares about fire and brimstone whenever she seriously thinks about abortion, so she's effectively guilted into having the kid. She has the kid, gives it up for adoption, and life continues but she can't live with the guilt of abandoning her child. She gets into drugs and ODs, which counts as suicide, which means she goes to hell. The intent is to show this on a Sunday afternoon to a mixed age audience.

So the powers that be approach me and my boss about something they want to do: they want to set the lady playing the poor woman mentioned above on fire as part of the show. Instantly the word NO launches itself from my face before the conversation really begins in earnest, but that just means I'm ignored from that point on and it's a conversation between my boss and the pastor. To this day I'm thankful for how level-headed my boss is; there have been a number of times where I've nearly lost it over stupid bullshit at this place, and setting a lady on fire as part of an act definitely ranks up there. Like most people in this place, the "actress" is a volunteer.

They're talking about this while I'm red-faced and fuming and the Head Pastor is very animatedly pontificating on kevlar and fireproof dresses and such. Clearly not anyone I want messing with pyrotechnics. My boss is completely on my side and is having almost as hard a time as I am keeping it together, but he's a veteran. He's been in this crazy trench waaaaaaay longer than I have, so he knows how to speak the lingo. My boss pretends to do the speaking in tongues bit and walks off, waving back at me and the pastor saying he'll need to think on it. A minute later my phone starts to buzz and I know that's my cue to head back to the office with him.

I get back there and I unload. They HAD to hear me screaming, they just had to, but to this day I've never heard a single word about any of it. My boss looks at me and tells me, "Look, they're going to go ahead with whatever stupidity it is they're planning. The best we can hope to do is minimize the impact. Once <pastor name> gets an idea in his head he's going to run with it no matter how negligent it is."

We talk for a while longer and get into a creative groove. I had the idea, but he put the finishing touches on it: instead of setting the girl on fire we'd use her high heels as a form of symbolism. It'd be easy enough to rig something together that would set them on fire with a switch of some kind, and we had the time to plan it so it wasn't a rush job. We ordered one of those fire starter kits that magicians use and had our plan of attack in order.

The next day he presents the idea and the pastor loves it, but he wants a practical demonstration. We don't have any high heels and the pair being used for the show are the only ones they have, so we're charged with buying a pair ourselves so we can demonstrate. The pastor is a huge rear end in a top hat with regards to scheduling and making himself available for questions/concerns, so we know he'll only be around for maybe an hour before he vanishes into the darkness for a week. We break off from the pastor and make the quickest dash for PayLess shoes that a human has ever made, returning with these red sequined abominations. They're perfect.

It takes ten minutes or so to get everything prepped, but we get it done. The presentation goes off without a hitch and the ugly shoes are burning on stage on top of an industrial rubber mat. It's a slow burn too, which I thought was a nice touch if you're going for subtlety in how you present the theme (slow encroachment of sin, damnation is a gradual burn, that kind of thing). The head pastor sort of grunts at us and tells us it's good enough, but I can tell he's not super thrilled. Dude really wanted to set this poor lady on fire, I guess. We never got comped for the shoes OR the remote starter, either.

I'm not a member of the church, so I didn't see the production. I just work there. My boss though, he saw it, and the next time I saw him was a few hours after the show and he was obviously stricken. Something was wrong. "Yo dude, you alright? You look pale as hell."
He tells me that the higher-ups didn't think the shoes burning was obvious enough. The fire was too small, not evocative enough. So they doused the shoes in kerosene and set everything up the same way we had it otherwise. "Bitch King, walk out to the stage with me. It's easier to just show you."

We walk out and the left half of the stage is charred black. I'll never forget the sight of it: the piano they keep on stage had collapsed when one of the legs burned through, the electronics and lighting were all disabled since the damage was so extensive, and apparently they had a tough time getting the fire otu at all because all the fire extinguishers were expired and barely worked. Apparently, mid-fire, someone ran out to Wal-Mart and bought two of the cheap ones while the rest of the church battled the flames on the stage with faulty equipment. Thankfully nobody got hurt, but sitting there right in the middle of the stage were a pair of high heels, completely unblemished and untouched by the fire. Mocking the absurdity of it all. I'm told it burned for twenty minutes straight while people sat around waiting for Wal-Mart guy to get back, just doing their best to contain it somehow with the power of good intentions.

To this day I don't know what they did to gently caress up so badly, but I took it as a sign that maybe there is a dude up there punishing us for our stupidity. Just maybe. Needless to say there was a prayer drive the following week and the damages ended up repaired rather quickly. I'm still just thankful they didn't try to set some poor lady on fire. And to this day they still haven't updated all the fire extinguishers, just the ones around the stage.

Gorilla Salad posted:

This may be the least unsafe thing I have ever seen a forklift driver do while screwing around:

Jerry Cotton posted:

Does it have a fork? Does it lift with that fork?

Budgie posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmvKlnhMjUw

It's worth every second.

shame on an IGA posted:

I can show you several in NC where it's a flat, straight, wide enough for five lanes US highway through a completely dead village where every single commercial building along the road has been boarded up since the 70s and the posted limit is 20MPH.

Platystemon posted:

Save space and money and make it a man engine

Say Nothing posted:

TVs Ian posted:

There are a few RiffTrax shorts that might work, Shake Hands with Danger, Live and Learn, and 10 Long Minutes being three I can think of off the top of my head. There may be unriffed versions around (pretty sure Shake Hands with Danger is on YouTube at least), but the riffed ones are cheap enough and also hilarious.

Potential BFF posted:

Here's an interview with a shitternaut.

The closed helmet would make me feel slightly better about the pooposition, slightly.

Platystemon posted:

Americans learned nothing from the War anything.

Azhais posted:

It's a complicated cam and nobody understands it but its pinion