Phil Elmore
Master of Arts
As a technical writer I have worked in many industrial environments, dealing with engineers and manufacturing personnel and making my way through many warehouses and plants in order to get information I needed. One of the constants in the industrial unvierse is that lift truck (forklift) drivers are all -- to every last man and woman -- completely contemptuous of human life. "You takes your chances," as they say, when you work or walk around such machinery and those who pilot it. My father was an engineer who became assistant plant manager of a factory before he became a technical writer. He, too, warned me of lift truck drivers and the danger they presented to hapless passers-by.
Recently, my friend Lyman found for me a video that had me dying of laughter in my cubicle. It is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Apparently a German lift truck safety video, it goes from boring in-house training piece to hilarious Monty Python-esque horror movie in what seems like several minutes into the film.
home.astrakan.hig.se/sax/rokka/files/staplerfahrer_klaus.wmv
For those of you who cannot do video or who would like to make avatars and such from this hilarity, the star of the film is this happy-go-lucky fellow, whom we'll call German Forklift Guy:
German Forklift Guy helpfully tries to lift a coworker to a high shelf using a wooden pallet. The coworker, predictably, falls. A safety bell on the wall rings; then a German ambulance ferries the poor worker to the hospital.
German Forklift Guy is minding his own business thereafter, raising a load with the lift truck, when a utility knife left unsecured on the load falls into the skull of its owner:
Not to be deterred, the endlessly cheerful German Forklift Guy is throwing the thumbs-up to anyone who'll notice...
...as a coworker is fixing something in the engine compartment of the forklift. German Forklift Guy throws him a thumbs-up as he starts the engine while the guy is still rooting around in there...
...and the guy looks up at him with stumps where his hands were:
German Forklift Guy then gets sprayed with blood as the guy's stumps start pouring it.
The video goes on like this, getting increasingly silly. German Forklift Guy manages to impale another worker who is wielding a running chainsaw...
...then spears a second fellow who doesn't hear the truck coming because he's wearing hearing protection.
The guy with the chainsaw and the guy with the hearing protection each start screaming at each other. Every time we cut to the guy with the earmuffs, there's no sound, because of course he can't hear anything. It had me in pain, it was so funny.
Eventually poor German Forklift Guy...
...is himself beheaded when he drives past a piece of sheet metal.
The forklift, now piloted by a headless German Forklift Guy, continues on its merry way. There is a subplot involving a fellow chopped in half earlier in the film who eventually meets his demise at the hand of the chainsaw, still attached to the chainsaw worker's arm, the arm severed by another unfortunate incident. The forklift passes the guy with stumps for hands, who now is trying to do his job with two hooks.
Accompanied by creepy music that sounds like those recent Enzyte commercials in the States, the forklift drives out of the warehouse and off into the sunset, still bearing its impaled human cargo.
I swear this is the funniest thing I have ever seen on planet Earth.

Recently, my friend Lyman found for me a video that had me dying of laughter in my cubicle. It is the funniest thing I have ever seen. Apparently a German lift truck safety video, it goes from boring in-house training piece to hilarious Monty Python-esque horror movie in what seems like several minutes into the film.
home.astrakan.hig.se/sax/rokka/files/staplerfahrer_klaus.wmv
For those of you who cannot do video or who would like to make avatars and such from this hilarity, the star of the film is this happy-go-lucky fellow, whom we'll call German Forklift Guy:

German Forklift Guy helpfully tries to lift a coworker to a high shelf using a wooden pallet. The coworker, predictably, falls. A safety bell on the wall rings; then a German ambulance ferries the poor worker to the hospital.
German Forklift Guy is minding his own business thereafter, raising a load with the lift truck, when a utility knife left unsecured on the load falls into the skull of its owner:

Not to be deterred, the endlessly cheerful German Forklift Guy is throwing the thumbs-up to anyone who'll notice...

...as a coworker is fixing something in the engine compartment of the forklift. German Forklift Guy throws him a thumbs-up as he starts the engine while the guy is still rooting around in there...

...and the guy looks up at him with stumps where his hands were:

German Forklift Guy then gets sprayed with blood as the guy's stumps start pouring it.

The video goes on like this, getting increasingly silly. German Forklift Guy manages to impale another worker who is wielding a running chainsaw...

...then spears a second fellow who doesn't hear the truck coming because he's wearing hearing protection.

The guy with the chainsaw and the guy with the hearing protection each start screaming at each other. Every time we cut to the guy with the earmuffs, there's no sound, because of course he can't hear anything. It had me in pain, it was so funny.

Eventually poor German Forklift Guy...

...is himself beheaded when he drives past a piece of sheet metal.

The forklift, now piloted by a headless German Forklift Guy, continues on its merry way. There is a subplot involving a fellow chopped in half earlier in the film who eventually meets his demise at the hand of the chainsaw, still attached to the chainsaw worker's arm, the arm severed by another unfortunate incident. The forklift passes the guy with stumps for hands, who now is trying to do his job with two hooks.

Accompanied by creepy music that sounds like those recent Enzyte commercials in the States, the forklift drives out of the warehouse and off into the sunset, still bearing its impaled human cargo.

I swear this is the funniest thing I have ever seen on planet Earth.