Yech

I just had to leave that picture of that fat pig Kennedy up for the entire weekend, merely for the disgust-factor. It may have driven folks from ever coming here again, but I figured for the shock-value, it was worth it.

Now, on to bigger and better things.....ok, well, better anyway. Unless I'm talking about a blue whale, it's probably not bigger....

So, I haven't told any BOOM stories lately...so here goes:
My college roommate liked anything that blew up. When I joined the Corps, he never asked, but I knew what his first question was, and I answered it before he could ask: "No, I CAN'T bring home some C-4". However, we made our own fun. We used to take CO2 cartridges that were spent from weekends of paintball (more stories about that to come) and pack them full of various explosives from blackpowder to various forms of home-made explosives. We usually blew them off in relatively harmless ways, away from people by at least a couple hundred yards, if only because we really liked NOT being incarcerated.
This one weekend, we found a tire (no rim, just a tire) frozen in the ice behind our dorm. I was walking by and kicked the tire, and it offered NO give whatsoever, thus injuring my foot a tad. And thus to get 'revenge' upon the tire, I decided to blow it to kingdom come.
Now this tire was a bit closer to our dorm than our normal operating range, so we'd have to be very careful to not get caught.
So, we took 8 cartridges, 4 filled with blackpowder, 4 filled with our own 'homemade mix' (and no, I'm not giving you the recipe...lawsuits aren't my thing). We duct-taped the homemade ones on the inside of the tire, and chipped out holes about two inches deep and just round enough for the CO2 cartridges to fit into right up next to the outside of the tire. We cut the fuses just the right length so that they'd all go off at once (very scientific...we thought). So, we're all set, we light the fuses....and wait. We're about 30 seconds from blast and we realize that we're in a world of trouble. Our RA is walking up the road behind the dorm with two girls. They're far enough away to where they'll see the explosion when it goes off, but probably a bit too close for comfort. Luckily, my roommate had an alarm on his car, which was parked in the parking lot behind them. Thinking much quicker than I was (as I was imagining spending the rest of my life with a roommate named bubba and having prison tatoos), he grabbed the remote for it and set it off, which prompted our RA (being an invoved kinda guy) to go check it out. That bought us just about 30 seconds, which was all we needed.
Now, as I said, the explosions were supposed to go all at once...SUPPOSED TO. However, the results were cooler than we could have imagined. The blackpowder blasts, being a 'slower burning' explosive, had a 'heaving' affect, blowing the tire up into the air (along with a helluva lot of ice), and the homemade stuff blew about a second after the blackpowder stuff, basically tearing the tire into a number of pieces and launching them all over the back open area of the dorm. Our RA (and the girls with him) hit the deck like any well trained military person would (or anyone who just peed their pants out of fear). After they got up and brushed themselves off, we decided that we'd come out and check it out, playing like "Wow! who did that? You guys ok?". Now our RA wasn't stupid, but he knew he couldn't pin this on us, since he had no proof, and most of any evidence he MAY have, was spread all over the courtyard. He looked at my roommate and said "Nice alarm, you just get that?", and my roommie said "Yep, it's a bit sensitive though", as he turned it off (since it was going off again due to the blast).

No more was said about the 'Great Tire Blast' with anyone of authority. Word was that our RA was thankful that someone actually cleared some of the ice on the back walk since Physical Plant had seemingly forgot there WAS a back walk and it had a good four inches of ice on it nearly the entire winter. Unfortunately, the compression as a result of the blast also put some pretty good cracks in the sidewalk and it needed to be replaced in the spring, thus ruining one of the better skateboarding stretches on campus.
We measured the distance of the various pieces of tire, and one travelled 425 feet. We both marvelled, and then quickly ran back into the dorm, just content that not only had we launched the coolest tire-bomb in the history of the small college we attended, but had gotten away with it when our RA knew full well who did it, only because we did something for the greater good, ice removal.