» When Animals Attack

eels: not as bad as camels
For a few years in my mid-to-late 20's I had a saltwater aquarium, 75 gallons, quite nice. After I'd had it a while, I bought a snowflake moray eel. We fed the vegetarian fish little globs of algae and fish food, and we fed the lionfish live goldfish.

The moray was probably 10" when I bought him. A few months later he's doubled in size, and he knows that when the top of the tank opens, food is coming. So instead of waiting like a good little eel, he starts *darting* at the hole in the top of the tank. And he can launch himself a good six or seven inches out of the water. So I'm reduced to flinging open the top, dropping pellets and live fish in and withdrawing as quickly as possible. Until one day I was too slow, and that little fish-fucker sunk his needle-sharp teeth into my finger and just hung on. It hurt like fuck and all I could do was flail my bleeding finger around until he got annoyed and dropped off.

So after that, we netted him, bagged him, and took him back to the fish store, which bought him back for three time what we'd paid for him.

Also, he ate our hermit crab.
(Tue 29th Apr 2008, 5:49, More)

» Ignoring Instructions

years and years ago
My sister's best friend decided that as a young woman of 14 years, it was time to switch from pads to tampons. She didn't bother to read how the "plastic applicator" part of a tampon works, and just stuck the whole thing up there and left it that way. It didn't work very well. Ewww.


(Wed 10th May 2006, 7:50, More)

» Dumb things you've done

the dumbest thing I've ever heard
A good college friend was once engaged to a very nice woman whose smoking hot body was matched only by the mind-boggling stupidity of the things that came out of her mouth. The one that stuck in my memory came during a game of Scrabble, when she asked if it was okay to use "ebonics-type" slang words (if you don't already know, "ebonics" means African-American urban vernacular language, ie, rapper-talk).

By way of example, she used her word in a sentence for us. The sentence, in its entirety, was "I seen the big bird."

The "slang" word she wanted to use was "seen."

Yes, Kristen. You seen the big bird.

Ebonics.

*sigh*
(Mon 24th Dec 2007, 6:58, More)

» In the Army Now - The joy of the Armed Forces

Basketball camp-- ARMY style!
My mother was in the US Army and spent a tour teaching at West Point. Which gave me the opportunity to spend a month there one summer learning to play basketball The Army Way, which is closer to being in the Army than I ever want to be again. Of course, The Army Way and teenage girls are a pretty sorry mix. Up at 5am! Lights out at 9pm! Chipped beef on toast! Scary hairy lesbian instructor!

Of the five girls in my room, I was the only one who a) lasted the entire month, and b) went home without a concussion or a broken bone. They played basketball there the way other people play field hockey.

Also relating to my mother's stint at the USMA at WP, there's a ski slope at West Point that we would frequent. I was only 15 or 16 but could easily pass for 18. Whenever I'd ride the chairlift with a cadet, I'd ask him (or her) if he had any classes with Major West. If they said yes, I'd try to see how much shit I could get them to say about her before announcing that Major West is my mother and skiing away really fast.

I never relayed their comments to my mom though. I'm not a farking narc.
(Fri 24th Mar 2006, 3:35, More)

» Sacked

good riddance
Back in high school, for some reason I thought it was terribly important that I get accepted to, and attend, A Prestigious University, instead of one we could afford. So like a genius, I turn down a full ride to A College You've Never Heard Of and take on about 48 grand in student debt and the magically wonderful "work-study" job-- as if doing a job which outside the borders of campus would be filled by one of our many welcome visitors from Mexico qualifies as a form of study.

So, my choices were a) food service or b) the desk at the engineering library. I chose the library, figuring if I wanted to work in food service I could skip college altogether. Contrary to what the name "work-study" implies, studying while on the job was strictly forbidden. On my luck days I got to reshelve books. On the other days I had to stand at the front desk, refilling photocopier credit cards, yelling at people who don't sign in (you have to sign in to go to this library. It's special), and telling red-faced engineering students that all of the computers are in use right now, like it's my fault.

My long shift was Sunday evenings, from 7 to 11pm. The week of finals exams, I discovered the final for one particularly god-awful course (some kind of calculus, I think) was at 8am on Monday. So, thinking that the purpose of going to college is the classwork, figure I need to get out of work so I can study, sleep, and have maybe a 50-50 chance of passing this course. Too bad for me that there was no mechanism whatsoever to get out of work on account of class. So after asking ever single other people who worked at the library to cover for me, I decided, fuck it, I'm not going to A Prestigious University so I can hand books to oily boys, I'm staying in to study.

So the next night I get a phone call from the ice-bitch manager, who informs me that failure to show up "could result in my termination." I told her that would be just fine with me, and after that I went to work in the cafeteria. I particularly enjoyed arranging the decorative kale on the salad bar.
(Sun 26th Feb 2006, 3:11, More)