If there’s one thing that rattles me it’s when people ignore what I call ‘Common Sense Warnings’. Now, this is where something is absurdly stupid and makes every alarm bell in your brain scream in no uncertain terms “do not perform this action.” These alarms can arise for a number of reasons: there is a high danger level, it will humiliate you for the rest of your life, or you could spend eternity married to a goat. Occasionally the result of this is a mixture of these unfortunate happenings and when this does occur who do you blame? Everyone but yourself. Even when it was you who decided to swim in shark infested waters in your favourite seal costume, even when you got the bright idea to mix hang-gliding with target practise (where you were the target), or when it suddenly seemed hilarious to get horrendously drunk only to wake up bent over a wheelie-bin surrounded by horny, Polish tramps. Clearly, all of these were the brainwaves of Tony from down the pub, who strangely enough is always on his third bottle of wine by six o’clock and sat on the same piss-stained stool. With no friends.
Take the example of the Japanese tourist who was having a wonderful family adventure at the Niagara Falls. We all know the stereotype: a camera, shorts that don’t match the rest of their clothing, small glasses and flip-flops, only on this particular day it was raining so she had an umbrella too. The subject was having a glorious time taking in the utterly beautiful surroundings until she wanted a closer look. I’m lucky enough to have experienced the sheer velocity of the Falls and I can vouch that a mixture of it’s powerful, thundering water and the mysterious aura of the mist can draw you closer to the edge of the railings for a glance over, but most people stop at this point because the body slams into Code:Red - Danger Factor. But no, not this tourist. A mere 20 meters down stream from the 51m drop into almost certain death, she decided to climb over the barrier to get a better photo with her Coolpix camera. Within seconds a gust of wind had caught her open umbrella, dragging her into the rushing river that drops 600,000 gallons of water over the Falls a second. The result was more Mary Droppings than Mary Poppins. Needless to say she didn’t float gracefully into the white water rapids below.
Somalian Pirates have been in the news a lot over the past few years and not because they are pleasant individuals who plan parties for the disabled and buy orphanages to transform into PlayZone’s. Generally speaking they are in the headlines because they have ambushed cargo ships and painted the walls with blood. Obviously this is a great advert for Somalian tourism because so many middle class nitwits and retirees sail into pirate territory with the attitude that it would never happen to them, that nobody could possibly want to take their luxury yacht by force and lock two delightfully British people who speak with their wallets in a tiny cell and starve them. It goes without saying that this isn’t the case as delightfully British couple and middle class retired nitwits who speak with their wallets Paul and Rachel Chandler discovered the hard way - by having their luxury yacht taken by force and then by being locked in a tiny cell and starved for over a year. Luckily they lived to tell the tale and were eventually released but I would love to know whose idea it was to sail through such dangerous waters, or even hear a snippet of their conversation: “Oh darling, Somalia sounds tropical! Let’s cruise past there.” If you really want to sail to the Seychelles, go round the long way, it’s much safer. And make sure you have your common sense alarm turned on whilst planning said trip.
The host of the popular NBC show To Catch a Predator, Chris Hansen, lives by the hidden camera so it was only apt that his marriage died by the hidden camera. In the show (in which Hansen anchors) paedophiles are lured to the house of an actor who portrays a young teenager lurking on seedy internet chat-rooms acting as a bait for the sex-starved, moustachioed sex offenders with colonies of ants living under their armpits. They arrive at a decoy house where they are greeted by the ‘child’ (who looks over 20, let alone 14) who welcomes them to their home and offers them a drink. Hansen then appears with his famous line “would you like to take a seat?” By this point the offender must be feeling immortal at the thought of a threesome, until it’s revealed to them that this is in fact an undercover sting operation and the moment they leave the house they will be arrested.
Similar to the offenders, Hansen has been caught red-handed on hidden cameras cheating on his wife with someone 21 years younger than him. Which, admittedly would be a lot more awful if he wasn’t 51. Regardless of this, Hansen is a man very much in the public eye so with that in mind he should be considering more secluded locations than hotels and restaurants to conduct his affairs in. Add to the mixture that he is the host of a hidden camera show and he should be all the more careful because there’s bound to be someone wanting to turn the tables on him. There are currently unconfirmed reports that he asked his secret date if she would like to take a seat... On his face.
Our final subject for examination is the victim of a Polar Bear attack victim Horatio Chapple, or rather the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES), who organised the trip to the Arctic Circle when it was common knowledge that the white bundles of fluff were starving as Global Warming has left them with less seals to scoff. Chapple’s tent was ripped into by the hungry teddy bear as he was sleeping, leaving him in pieces and four of his school friends injured as they tried to fend off the bear. As tragic as this is, there is nobody to blame but BSES who ignored the widely used safety measure of creating a look out post to spot danger. Coming from a country that is as health and safety conscious as Britain and with a name that announces their Britishness, surely BSES would have had other measures in place in case a look out point could not be established. Surely they would have working rifles and flares. Apparently not. The rifle didn’t work instantly and had to be cocked and fiddled with a few times and the flare gun was useless, not even emitting so much as a spark.
Five public school boys are hardly cage fighter material so they didn’t stand a chance against a billion tonne bear hunting a Big Mac. Granted, Horatio and his fellow students are much more used to bumping into wild Deer grazing on their lavish estates than the monstrous children’s toys with razor sharp teeth, but if anything this shows that no matter where you go for an education, nowhere can teach you how to be bear-proof.
So the moral here is very clear: If something sounds stupid, it probably is and no, you probably shouldn’t do it. However, if you can live with stories about you eating soggy biscuits or weeing on electric fences circling around your current set of friends and your future friends, oh and not to mention your family and their families, then go right ahead. You don’t have to take my advice.
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