YSaC, Vol. 994: Egad!!
Rocket-propelled shoes
I have decided to give one lucky person my one-of-a-kind rocket-propelled Nike shoes. Although looks can be deceiving, buried beneath the harsh exterior is a truly, unbelievably comfortable and amazing home for your feet. Features include: Dual rocket engines (designed by Rolls Royce), hidden compartments, shoe laces, soles, complete with Nike logo. I want to be fair to everyone, so due to the volume of calls expected, offers will be accepted on a first come, first served basis.
size: 11
speed: 999mph
please call or text
### ### ####p.s. They are slightly damp from yesterday’s expedition
Let’s all assume that I’ve already made the obligatory Wile E. Coyote reference, and instead contemplate this:
I suspect it probably applies here, too.
Thanks, NH!
Geez, this economy is really bad if RocketMan is looking for some extra cash.
Sounds more like one of Dr. Mariner’s inventions for his son Marine Boy.
*Peels the last wad of 1967 era oxy-gum from under my desk and goes for a dive*
…and with that, Michael Johnson parted with the last vestiges of his glory days as a world-class sprinter……..
For some reason, the first 10 times I saw this as I was scrolling down the page, I read “Michael Jackson” and for the life of me could not figure out the joke.
Other than Michael Jackson being dead and not running anywhere.
Or him ever being known for any type of running.
Nope, just moonwalking.
You know, if I buy these sweet-ass rocket shoes, the next time someone says “we need to hot-foot it outta here” I will be the most-prepared person in the room.
*rummages through purse for credit card*
Or, after yesterday’s lesson, it would be “sweet ass-rocket shoes”. I’m googling for a pic of that right now.
*click click mouse click surf click*
OH GOD NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I made a New Year’s Resolution never to Google Image anything that could potentially require years of therapy to overcome.
That’s a good idea! Did you come up with that after your last round of Google induced therepy?
I did. And I believe it originated from a link someone posted here at YSaC. Hard to believe, I know.
But the doctor says I am fine now and the twitching should subside soon.
And it took me until today to figure out why a phrase people use all the time (sweet-ass) made yesterday’s post so funny. I was somewhat out of it with a very sudden cold (that has already departed just as suddenly) so I kept thinking that the combination of “sweet-ass” with “trumpet” was what made it funny…rather than the misplaced hyphen.
What? Couldn’t break the 1000 mph barrier? I’m out.
It’s code for those believing the end of the world starts tomorrow.
There, I deciphered it for ya.
It is very generous of Sparky to give these away. Nothing like a matching set of free third degree burns on the soles of one’s feet to restore your faith in humanity.
Gosh oh golly, I wonder why.
They ran out of that high tensile strength tape to hold the rockets on with. Duh.
How does one insert one’s feet?
Valve oil
Why the “this can only end badly” tag? What could possibly go wrong with a pair of shoes meant to propel an unprotected human body feet-first, right the hell through the sound barrier?
Yeah…Mel here makes a good point. Frankly, I can’t see a down side to this at all.
Occasionally Darwinian selection does work out for the best.
Hmm, such demonstrated darwinian stupidity being predominantly male…
And the body-posture of uncontrolled rocket shoes suggesting a feet-first attitude…
So, the alleged gonads would be exposed to rocket exhaust and impact on any impeding object until the fuel is expended? Or, the individual feet could be propelled on unique, individual, vectors until destructive failure occurs, most likely in the pelvic structure?
Wow, win/win all around.
We ought go and get some sort of grant to provide these rocket shoes to any willing to use them in the quantity required to make an evolutionary change.
Hmm, would create a need for industrial labor making rocket motors and shoes; we’d need administrators and shippers and the like, too. And, we’d need labor for clean-up, too. We could cure the Great Recession!
Hey, and we could get Discovery Channel to televise it! Employment for everybody! woo!hoo!
Wait, what, the Cat says the Android says what?
Dagnabit.
*wanders off muttering*
Wow, I understood a large percentage of that comment!
When you put it that way, I’d love a pair! I’m always looking for new and exotic ways to injure and potentially kill myself.
Or a new way to end the classic…..
“Hey y’all watch this!!!”
The last words of so many Sparkys and Sparkles.
That and “Hold my beer a second…”
Usually those words come about 10 minutes before the ambulance arrives.
True story:
I said, “Hey, watch this!” right before I broke my arm when I was 10. I was trying to do a fancy jump off the monkey bars that I just sorta assumed I could do. Turns out I was wrong.
^^^^case in point..
I’ve always prided myself on leading by poor example.
I would get into the worse trouble shortly after the words “Bet you can’t!” “Bet I can!” were exchanged between my sister and myself. That’s how I ended up giving her a black eye with a marble.
(She was doing something annoyingly big-sisterish and I threatened to throw my big shooter marble at her. She said I couldn’t do it and I surprised us both by cracking her facebone on the first try.)
Did you hear the words, “You’re fine, walk it off” a lot too?
Yep, that and “Just hold a paper towel on it, the bleeding will stop eventually.”
My mom always told us “Just put some butter on it”.
Well, there are two minor drawbacks. One, there is no device for turning, and two, there is no device for stopping.
My usual method of stopping is hitting a wall, wouldn’t that work here? Granted it would be pretty smashy smashy.
There is a device for stopping – it’s called Newton’s First Law of Motion.
Storytime!!! Really, you know if there were only a place where I could gather all these stories on one spot and have people look, point and laugh at my foibles….
Hmmm….anyway, I think Taco is distracted by some monkey bars ghostie…
Many years ago we went to Denver to visit family. It was my kids’ first foray into ice skating…hey, we live in Texas….and my oldest son discovered he could start, go reaaallllllllllyyyy fast and that’s as far as his thinking went.
Go, yes!
Go FAST! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
Stop?
Stop? Uh…..
SMASH!
He not only stopped by smashing feet first into the boards around the ring, he did this repeatedly over the course of the next two hours.
The next day he could not walk and his feet were black and blue from toe to heel. X-rays revealed no broken bones and I swear I heard the doctor snickering as he heard the explanation of how those feet came to look like that.
/end storytime.
Is that not the capsule definition of how too many Texans learn to snow-ski?
“Go that way [points downhill] really, really fast. If something gets in your way. . . turn!”
<dagnabit, my CRS is acting up, and I cannot remember what movie that is from, only that Joan Cusak’s brother was in it>
I think it was “Better Off Dead“.
Well, looking at this photo, I see lights on the “rockets”, but the shoes seem to be stationary.
I think they are sparklers
After looking at that photo more, I retract that opinion. It was wishful thinking on my part.
Red Dwarf clip ftw. If only we ALL had some jet-powered rocket pants to Jr. Spaceman our way out of tough situations.
It’s times like these I wished my work computer would let me view video.
Don’t forget:
The Seven Cat Commandments.
1.Thou shalt not be cool
2.Thou shalt not be in vain
3.Thou shalt not have more than ten suits
4.Thou shalt not partake of carnal knowledge with more than four members of the opposite sex at any one session
5.Thou shalt not slink
6.Thou shalt not hog the bathroom
7.Thou shalt not steal another’s hair gel.
————————————————-
Are you a blue hat or a red hat cat?
My cat breaks 1, 5 and 6 within ten minutes of waking up.
Actually, I wear a green hat. I’m 7th Day Advent Cloisterian.
My cat steals nail polish, not hair gel so I guess she’s still religious.
Sadly I think I must be missing something here in Hammy’s humor.
Now I think I get it. I haven’t had any coffee today.
Rumor has it that they’re filming more Red Dwarf, to come out in 2012. I hope the new episodes are as gut-bustingly funny as the last ones.
Awesome!
If you’ve never read the Red Dwarf books they are 100x funnier than the TV series.
Seconded. I’ve read all of the Red Dwarf books and they are absolutely hilarious. Although I will say Bob Grant and Doug Naylor are much funnier when they collaborate than when they write independently.
Having a rather fierce RD jones of late, I had to keep following the initial link.
So, I also watched the religion clip, and Patrick Stewart on RD, Daleks on Season 7, then, to mashups by a BBC One producer that mixed Dr Who with STTNG.
I didn’t know Rolls Royce designed model rocket engines. Did they make the masking tape holding them onto the shoes as well?
Unfortunately they do not, but duct tape works just as well.
Everyone says you can use duct tape for everything but I beg to differ. I think duct tape would make a really bad condom. The girl wouldn’t get pregnant but the guy would need skin grafts.
Now I have reached my daily pecil humor goal. For a straight girl I sure do make a lot of jokes about doing harm to pecils.
That was Airbus.
No no you don’t understand. Rolls Royce makes Nike Shoe rockets, not model rocket engines. BIG difference. Mostly because Dr. Scholl’s is involved in the fire proof insoles that are required to use them.
RR make engines and motors to any client’s specifications.
They’ve actually make 1/4 scale turbofan engines.
I remain afraid to research just what a 1/4 scale RR turbofan costs, even as I have to wrestle and beat into submission the part of my brain that comes up with entire universes of potential uses, all of which have the potential to be just as safe/dangerous as quark-antiquark reactions . . .
Just a thought, but if you put roller skates on an ass-trumpet player, wouldn’t you get the same effect?
Only if you had a lighter.
And a diet of beans and cabbage
Before a corey shows up I’ll get it out of the way:
Yes, this is most likely a joke posting.
No, it doesn’t matter to us; it sucks anyway.
There, I think we’re covered.
A joke?!? What next? The Tooth Fairy isn’t real? The world will continue after the 21st? Donald Trump will not be president in 2012? Well, I would rather live in a world filled with civil war over hats!!!
It’s really disturbing that the shoes are still damp. Must have got caught in a thunderstorm.
Or he jet-powered his way right into lake on the first test-run and that would be why he wants to sell them.
I was more thinking he was trying to run on the water fast enough that he didn’t sink but he failed. Spice Christ wannabe.
I think it’s just because he peed his pants when he set his balls on fire after an unexpected bout of flatulence.
That is a very valid theory too.
Alas, my feet are too small for these
fictionalamazing shoes.You need to think outside the shoebox. If your feet are smaller, that gives you extra room for snack storage!
And extra socks for say… if you wanted to fly to the North Pole to visit Satan.
The extra room could be used for rocket fuel storage. That’s how they do it on the space shuttles.
Just pretend that the shoes are a size 6.
Shoe fly, don’t quit on me
Shoe fly, don’t quit on me
Shoe fly, don’t quit on me
Or I will be a dead body
What does one hide in the compartments of rocket shoes?
A passport?
Spare change?
Asbestos?
A fire extinguisher and dry pair of tighty-whities.
A phone! Duh! All shoes should be equipped with phones, they were in the 1960’s.
Would you believe two mini-grappling hooks and a road flare?
I don’t know. I might want to polygraph them.
First you have to talk to their lawyer, the tire iron.
I thought their lawyer was the water board. Hence, the reason that they’re slightly still wet.
Wonder if I can find a good picture of Agent 99 for an avatar?
Here you go Windy…
Thanks, BD! Now, just wait for Gravitar to catch up. *sings the Jeopardy Final Round song*
Emergency valve oil.
Huh…
I believe, where I come from, these are called “flares”.
Funny, I thought of those battery powered candles everyone sticks in their windows at Christmastime.
No wonder I want to sing ‘O Holy Night’ every time I look at this picture.
I thought they were road flares to begin with, but the short one on the left instep looks more like a model rocket engine.
The best part about model rocket engines is when they blow up at the end.*
*Ok, so it’s just a puff charge to pop out the parachute, don’t crush my dreams here.
I’d like to trade a some ACME Tunnel Paint for your rocket shoes. Would be willing to throw in a comically small umbrella. Please call.
Bianchi…you make me miss Saturday mornings as a kid…sigh….
MY GOD (WO)MAN! What is your number?! This offer is too good to pass up and I know some Sparky is dying to call right now! At least I hope Sparky is dying. It would put him out of his misery from those burns on his feet.
pssst! I think BS is a he.
Damn! Sorry Bianchi!
The mistake is understandable since he is a goddess.
It can be confuzzling when he channels his inner goddess.
There, I fixed it.
Channeling…. channeling…
Squee! (S)He’s here!
*Bows Down*
Sorry Bianchi. But I’m really in the market for a small unblubler.
I think SilvaNoir has one.
I do indeed
Perhaps this is another mom selling Snowflake’s science project.
I don’t understand why no one tries to sell a potato clock or a vinegar and baking soda volcano.
I’ll take a potato clock if you can make it speak with GLaDOS’ voice.
funky monkey, you have four corners to yourself today! Congrats. IF will just be looking in occasionally.
*takes pillow and slinks slowly to corner*
Can someone please throw me a banana? And a coffee slice? Or a banana-flavored coffee slice?
*weeps softly, wetting fur with tears*
*here, have a Yoo-Hoo*
:gets out blender:
Banana daiquiris for everyone!
Yes, alcohol will help. Hugs.
The only problem with anything banana flavored is that it tastes the same coming back up as it did going down. Add alcohol and most likely you’ll get to experience that.
There, there, FM. It’s a good thing, really! I’ll be giving you a gentle massage at the end of the day, too.
*booooOOOOOIIIIIIINNNNNnnnnnggggg!!*
You might want to rethink that “BOING!”; the last “gentle massage” I got from Windy dislocated my shoulder and chipped three teeth.
I won’t even mention the eye thing.
FM may have been referring to the sound of the spring in his head popping up when Windy punches him.
I had a joke here that made light of domestic abuse at the hands of Windrose. But due to a large percentage of people who would probably be upset by this kind of humor I have instead redacted it and replaced it with the following:
Enjoy
squeal!
Oh gosh that is the cutest little bunny. It makes me miss when I had them as pets.
When I woke up this morning, I said to myself “Lara, we really need to find a way to engulf your feet in fire while still promoting several brand names.” I was initially thinking of plastering stickers for different brands on my body and then soaking my feet in gasoline before running across hot coals but these shoes are SO much simpler. Sometimes the powers that be just smile down on you, ya know?
I know, I know! It’s like when you find not only your lost car keys under the couch cushion but also that cookie you lost last week, and it only has a FEW cat hairs and pieces of gum on it, and that green crusty thing on it probably ain’t REALLY a boog-
*scoots back to corner*
For awhile I have been pissed that they don’t make those light up shoes that kids have in adult sizes. This is a possible solution but not quite what I had in mind.
Me too! My nieces have some and I am insanely jealous of their flashy feet.
I fit into the kid sizes, so I have owned (fairly recently) light-up shoes. It is one of the few advantages of having child sized feet.
“A Bad Case of Hermes”
He could scarcely believe it. Despite dropping five bills on something he more than halfway expected to be fake from someone he didn’t know through a website he didn’t trust, there they were, gaping up at him from their padded box, sitting upon his dining room table. More than the veracity of their existence however, Jeeb was surprised by the craftsmanship. The image on the website really wasn’t much to go on. The poor photography made it look like someone had simply taped a set of stale road flares to either side of the shoes and lit them. It turned out the strips that looked like tape were part of a harness to keep the shoes attached to your feet beyond the capability of the laces, and the road flares were actual, miniature steel rocket boosters.
Not that Jeeb knew the first thing about aerospace engineering or anything, but in picking up one of the shoes and examining the boosters — the fine millwork of the casings, the plate they were attached to that ran through the reinforced sole of the shoe, and the heft of the unit as a whole — it seemed a little too elaborate to be any kind of a joke. Perhaps it could have been a movie prop, but even movie props had a tendency to go for considerably more than what he paid, particularly if the movie was well-known and popular.
Then there was the fact that he could smell the fuel. The heels of the shoes were extended and had a small fill cap. He didn’t know what the combustion rate of these rocket engines were but he didn’t imagine they were built for much more than short jaunts — short relating to burn time rather than distance, given that these rocket shoes were supposed to be able to propel him to speeds exceeding Mach 1. He wasn’t sure how they managed to do that on regular unleaded gas, but the details didn’t really matter beyond the fact that they combined to make goddamn rocket shoes.
Jeeb was giddy. He laid the shoe down and ran to the garage to grab his jerry can, which he had filled with gas a few days earlier in anticipation of this package arriving. He returned, uncrewed the fill cap on each shoe and poured the gas in slowly until he could just see the fuel touch the bottom of the stumpy fill tube, then replaced the caps. Jeeb giggled biriefly and stared at the shoes a little more, bathing himself in the anticipatory rush of adrenaline. He went over the instructions the seller had given him: Open the fuel valve, light the pilot, grab the remote ignition, and then squeeze the throttle. A mere four steps beyond the act of putting them on and he would be off and flying at speeds that would peel the white off his teeth.
Jeeb giggled again, grabbed the shoes and stepped outside on his porch. Kicking off his ordinary, very non-rocket shoes, he sat down on the porch step and slowly, almost reverently, donned his new kicks. He stood carefully, and experimentally took a few cautious steps. The shoes were heavy, alright. They felt like he imagined moon boots felt — which was rather appropriate under the circumstances. But that didn’t really matter. These shoes weren’t made for walking. Jeeb grabbed a lighter from his jeans pocket and knelt down. On the tongue of each shoe was the fuel valve, which he turned until he could hear a light hissing. That was his cue to light the pilots which jutted just briefly out the back of each rocket, four in all, each angled in toward the center of the rocket’s opening where the real flame would emerge. Each pilot sprang to life like tiny metal candles. He was set. Slowly he stood, replacing the lighter to its rightful pocket. From another pocket he retrieved the remote throttle that was included in the box. This was it. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He placed a finger delicately over the throttle trigger, breathed one last deep, cleansing breath, and squeezed.
The squirrel regarded him with a wary curiosity, its whiskers twitching nervously as it tried to determine whether he was a threat, whether he might happen to have any food on him — or was himself food — and whether it was worth finding out in either case. Jeeb moaned, which seemed to make up the squirrel’s mind as it scampered several feet away, mentally revising its threat assessment. He wondered if the squirrel was on to something, because Jeeb was certainly nuts. He had no idea how the squirrel was standing upright on the wall like that though, and it took him several moments before he realized the wall was the floor and he was lying on it. He briefly wondered if squirrels could experience schadenfreude.
Jeeb closed his eyes as his brain, apparently in punishment for his stupidity, replayed the scene: He squeezed the trigger — gently, he thought, just enough to get a little speed going. But there were two things he hadn’t quite thought through all the way to the end. The first was that these shoes didn’t have wheels. If he wanted to get moving, he either had to give the shoes enough thrust to overpower the friction of the pavement he was standing flat on, or he had to take off from a smooth, glassy surface or some kind of wheeled platform.
But this oversight wasn’t quite as crucial as the other bit of physics he hadn’t taken into account: Rockets can move faster than him. Specifically, rockets can move whatever they are attached to faster than he could, and if whatever they were attached to was capable of being moved independent of the rest of his body, they would do so independent of the rest of his body faster than he could react to them. Thus it was that, in one alarmingly swift motion that nevertheless mentally played out in slow motion, he saw his feet propel out from under him, swing up in a graceful arc, and kick him right in the head.
Clearly his excitement trampled his common sense on its way to the shoes. Now that his ardor was cooling off in a lake of pain, he had time to properly plan things out. To start with, he was going to have to allow himself to get up to speed without having to fight friction, which meant he’d need some kind of wheeled platform from which to launch. Second, he’d have to considerably lower his center of gravity. He figured a skiier’s squat should do the trick there; his bent knees and hunched posture should, given a more gentle acceleration curve, allow him to launch off the wheeled platform and maintain greater stability.
Jeeb had a home-made wheeled dolly he used for carting heavy stuff around, so he got that out of the garage along with a helmet — something else he had overlooked in the rush to start his maiden voyage — and his old goalie pads and elbow guards just in case this second attempt didn’t go as planned either. Donning his protective gear and making his way out to the street, he stepped onto the dolly and squatted down. Once again, he closed his eyes, took a deep, cleansing breath, and gently squeezed the trigger.
The amount of thrust these shoes put out was quite remarkable even with the slightest pull. The dolly immediately started to move, and Jeeb instinctively gripped the edges. He had built the dolly for strength rather than speed or accuracy, so when it began to yaw in one direction, he had to shift the heels of his feet slightly to try and counteract it. Somehow this just caused the yaw to become more pronounced and in very short order he found himself hurtling down the street on a lazy Susan.
He didn’t feel like he was quite up to the necessary speed yet, but he didn’t really have any choice: It was time to launch. Despite the rotating platform, Jeeb, in as careful a manner as he was able to under the circumstances, lunged up in an approximation of a bunny hop so as not to shift his center of gravity too much for too long.
There was an almost tangible transition between his impromptu jet-powered skateboard trip and the moment when he became airborne. It was almost like a bright line had been crossed as he slipped his earthly tether and began to soar through the air. He felt like he was doing something humans shouldn’t be able to do, even if it wasn’t under his own power. He felt powerful, exhilarated, supernatural — and best of all, free. Not just land-of-the-free-free, but completely free. I-can-go-anywhere-and-do-anything-free. Nothing-in-this-universe-can-stop-me-free.
It was a feeling that lasted just about twelve seconds, which was the point at which he was introduced to the stopping power of billboards. In fact, it wasn’t the billboard that stopped him per-se, but it did set off the chain of events that ultimately brought him to an abrupt halt. After leaving a cartoon-like, self-shaped hole in the billboard, he was thrown quickly off balance, which caused him to start to spin out. As the rockets hadn’t yet expended their fuel, he was tossed to and fro.
Somehow, amid the dizzying spin of worldly objects in his rapidly disorienting field of vision, he reached out with his free hand and latched onto a pole in an attempt to halt his momentum. This only served to remind him of his physics class lessons on torque and centripetal force; as his hands desperately clung to the pole and his body straightened out, his rocket shoes now became the engine that turned him into a single-bladed propeller. As the pole bowed to the increasing force he exerted on it, Jeeb realized, rather belatedly, that his other hand was clutching the throttle remote in a death grip, and a brief, hot flash of embarrassment shot through his body. He let the throttle drop, and the rockets immediately ceased their thrust.
Unfortunately, he also let go with his other hand as well which sent him careening several dozen feet into a sign mounted on a brick wall, which hung a good twenty feet above an open dumpster, which was where gravity finally managed to reclaim him as its prisoner. Jeeb lay there, disoriented, hurting, and covered in discarded Chinese food. His feet were hot as the near-molten rockets melted through plastic garbage bags and fried the contents within, adding to the dumpster’s reek. As with his first attempt, his mind replayed everything back, allowing him to analyze where he went wrong — but he really didn’t need to review that this time, as he knew the point at which he went wrong was the moment he decided to buy these shoes.
Worst five dollars he ever spent.
Comes with asbestos socks and one free pass to the emergency room.
What? No Ace wrap and an ice pack? Too rich for my blood.
[OT] Out of curiosity, what is the plural of pecil anyway? [/OT]
Polygamy.
pecilium.
*starts to speak and stops abruptly to march self into the corner*
Here, let me show you…Hi kelli, surprised to see someone here before me for a change.
Well this is just a Darwin award waiting to happen.
I can’t cover the snark any better than these fine folks already have, so I’ll just say Red Dwarf FTW!
Holy carp!
I was searching for something else entirely when I stumbled upon the following:
Soot Sprite.
I now have yet another project.
Hey, look! It’s the Dust Puppy!
Whoa, sorry FM, I should have said no to the last 5 bananananana daquiris. Here’s your delayed Punchity Punch Punch!
Good morning, Air Force One.