Repost: if you didn't like it the first time then you can read it again and not like it again.
Thirteen years ago I was a naive, pretentious, shy student type. Twelve years ago I was into drugs, then eleven years ago I was a burnt-out unemployed waster, still living in a monumentally dirty student house with a few other dropouts who I'd had a lot of fun with before the cabin fever set in and the drugs stopped working.
It was around this time that one housemate decided that he was going to be a graffiti artist. I wasn't very interested in this new hobby at first, but one day I joked about how funny it would be if he went round spraying pentagrams on the front of churches. Over the next couple of weeks he did just this, usually riding out on his bike to sully the entrances early on a Sunday morning to make sure the parishioners saw his handywork.
My contribution to the project came soon after. Walking back from the shop I noticed a man changing the sign on the front of the local church. The sign was for a youth group called "Urban Hymns" and each week would have a theme along the lines of "God Is A DJ" and the like. The board had no lock and the theme was merely a piece of white paper with 64-point comic sans italic writing. Hm.
The next day the front of the church looked like this:



For some reason nobody at the church noticed this, so it was up there for almost a whole week. Later I would introduce the obvious themes like "Jesus loves you, everyone else thinks you're a cunt" and "God hates you, worms". These were funny in 2001, not so much now.
The apex of our defilement was probably the alpha course sign which we stole, turned into a horrific Francis Bacon style vision of hell, re-titled "The Alpha Whores" and nailed across the front door at 5am on a Sunday morning.

That morning at about 7 we were playing Beneath A Steel Sky and considering bed when we heard a noise in the kitchen and went to investigate. In there we found a dishevelled old man with a beard in a red jacket muttering about how he was being pursued by some kids. How he got into the house is still a mystery. After we'd kicked him out we arrived back in my room for a last joint and found he'd stolen two phones and several other items of value. It was Anti-Santa himself.
A sober person who didn't smoke so much hash would probably have been able to rationalise the experience, but such a person was not around. A decision was made to stop defiling churches, smoke less hash and try to find jobs. I eventually did this. The graffitist ended up getting committed a couple of years later. I think we've all learned our lessons one way or another.
( Zuowan, Thu 1 Sep 2011, 15:56, 5 replies)

I like this story
made me chuckle
(Nitrous Nitrous, Thu 1 Sep 2011, 20:18, closed)

Probably not interesting to anyone but me but...
I recognise that church! - that's in Southampton, I used to live in a godawful student house just round to the side, owned by the worst landlord in the world. He used to turn up at 7am just to scream abuse at us, then pretend to be having a heart attack when we argued back. Ah, Mr Sandhu, I miss our special chats.
( Zoroastermouse thinks therefore he am, Thu 1 Sep 2011, 22:34, closed)

I lived just round the side. My landlord was Mr Sandhu.
!!!
( Zuowan, Fri 2 Sep 2011, 16:56, closed)

Haha
Got to be the same chap! I think he had a few properties round there.

His handyman Mr Khan was great too - quite a lot less angry, but absolutely awful at all practical tasks. Sandhu decided we needed a new front door one day so his man turned up, took the door off, then went home for the day. He turned up again the next morning with a new door, which he sawed great uneven chunks off, re-hung, then spent three hours hammering the door numbers on using screws instead of nails. The door had a half-inch gap at the bottom and the letter box was upside down. Job well done!
( Zoroastermouse thinks therefore he am, Fri 2 Sep 2011, 17:38, closed)

I remember his speech about "I am 90% nice guy, 10% bastard"
We probably did worse to him than he did to us to be fair.
If you lived in #34 Harborough you would have seen the evidence.
( Zuowan, Sat 3 Sep 2011, 14:11, closed)