South African survives exploding fridge attack
'I thought the world was coming to an end'
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RoTM It's been suspiciously quiet of late on the murderous white goods front, but confirmation that your kitchen is still out to get you comes in the form of a chilling exploding fridge attack in South Africa.
According to the Pretoria Times, Adrian Coetzee, of Silver Lakes, Pretoria, "narrowly escaped death" on Wednesday when the 7am blast "ripped through his kitchen, blowing food and shrapnel from his four-month-old fridge across the room".
Mercifully, Coetzee was knocking up a milkshake "with his back to the fridge when it exploded", and he escaped with slight injuries to his neck and shoulder caused by the flying fridge door. His house came off worse, with damage to the garage ceiling and kitchen and lounge windows blown out.
A shaken Coetzee recounted: "I thought the world was coming to an end. I think I'm the only guy nearly killed by his fridge."
Neo-Luddite Resistance Army cadres should note that the assassination attempt was triggered by Coetzee's housekeeper reconnecting the juice to the kitchen appliances after their owner had noticed they were dead on Tueday night. He confirmed: "It was when she flicked the power back on that the blast took place."
The bomb squad later determined the incident wasn't caused by explosives, while a Samsung SWAT team comprising several engineers and managers admitted it "couldn't say what caused the blast". An independent refrigeration expert sent by an insurance company "suggested the explosion may have been caused by something inside the fridge, as opposed to a fridge component", but Coetzee said he would launch his own enquiry into the incident. ®
Bootnote
Thanks to Francois Holloway for the heads-up.
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COMMENTS
Switch
"I bet it was running Windows for Refrigerators"
I made the switch too, but got an iFridge. I can't get as many different meals as your open source fridge, but each one looks fantastic. It never explodes and is 10 times whiter* and shiner than the average fridge.
* Also available in black.
Windows????
More likely it was running some sort of freeware 'equivalent' the Linuxloonz are always droning on about as being "just as good". I've been caught in only slightly less dramatic fiascos as a result of managers buying *that* one more than once.
Luckily my fridge runs OS2200. Guarranteed to run for decades without trouble.
:o)
Unfortunately,
spoiling a good story is tha fact that there is no Pretoria Times newspaper. We have a Pretoria News and a Sunday Times (actually from Johannesburg, but still). So which was it, assuming there was indeed such a story? My vote goes to the more sensationalist Sunday Times. Nothing ever happens in Pretoria.
Regarding Yanks: according to the latest TV ad, they think South Africa is somewhere in Mexico, so they probably would not be able to distinguish between Pretoria and Johannesburg. Suspicion thus falls on a Yank journalist trying to generate a few more column-inches. Ashlee Vance?
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