Last Updated on: 5th April 2021, 04:17 pm
I’m not sure what the stupidest thing I’ve done while drunk is. Not because I’m usually too far gone to remember things like that, but because generally speaking I’m not the kind of person who does a lot that could be classified as seriously, terminally dumb.
For instance, it’s rather unlikely that you’ll ever find me intentionally swinging on or around live power lines.
“Of course not,” you say. “You are an adult man, not a 7-year-old boy.”
“Yes,” I reply. “But that distinction doesn’t always matter, apparently. Sometimes it’s shockingly hard to tell the difference between the two.”
Hydro workers in Kingston, Ont., are telling adults something they never thought they would have to: Don’t swing on or near power lines.
Staff with Utilities Kingston got reports this weekend of people swinging on poles and near lines at a large unsanctioned street party during Queen’s University homecoming weekend.
Jim Keech, president of Utilities Kingston, said they heard from residents and even police who were concerned someone was about to get badly hurt.
“The police actually did call into our operations centre with the same concern to see if it would be possible to turn the electricity off,” he said.Annual homecoming parties in Kingston are a regular problem, but Keech said this has never been an issue before.
He said they do education programs for small children, but never would have thought they had to make this case to grown-ups.
“You’re talking about young adults here and I am quite surprised people would do that,” he said. “There is not a lot of common sense here and it could quite easily kill you.”Don’t turn a party into peril! After reports of people grabbing & swinging from utility lines during an unsanctioned street party, we remind the public: powerlines can be deadly! Assume any utility line is electrified and stay well away: https://t.co/QE2Yrzn3nu #ygk pic.twitter.com/DQnit89fxQ
— Utilities Kingston (@UtilitiesKngstn) October 22, 2019
A couple of things to keep in mind:
- I’m only assuming that these people were drunk, I don’t know it for a fact. They could have been sober, but come on, be serious. I mean there’s just no way…right? Please?
- This story is pre-pandemic, so a gigantic street party is not in itself a cause for outrage/concern unless you live in the area and aren’t a fan of annual imbecile night.
I have seen these street parties in real time, and they really can get quite out of control. Also these are the assholes who are responsible for us having variance of concern in my city right now. Also also, why the hell are you just finding this now after two years?
Because the story got buried in my gigantic archive of things until I found it randomly yesterday and decided fuck it, I’m posting it anyway because it’s still funny and not irrelevant.
Well we have 76 active cases. At least 66 of them are related to the fucks at Queen’s. Eegits!
We have around 350 active cases at the moment, and on the news last night there was a story saying that our neighbourhood is considered to be a COVID hot spot. So yeah, that’s nice. That part came as a shock to me. All anyone can seem to focus on lately here are the universities, neither of which are anywhere near here. Thankfully even though they’ve been a bit of a problem, it’s not as bad as it could have been. The usual enormous illegal Saint Patrick’s Day street party didn’t happen. That thing is basically our annual imbecile night.
Update from my dear friend Allen. He lives in Scotland, where if you aren’t being wasted all the time, you’re doing it wrong. And apparently when people get severely pissed, swinging from live powerlines is a thing he has seen sometimes. So it may be crazy to ask, but apparently in his neck of the woods that’s just a normal Tuesday.
Does he have any statistics on whether or not the average IQ of the country goes up whenever one of these incidents takes place and some goober gets fried? For that matter, how often does some goober get fried doing this? And if they do, who pays for cleanup?