My first encounter with chillies
Ma0sm's Gaylord curry house story reminded me of my very first encounter with chillies. This took place in the strange alien world that was the 1970s, when we thought that curry was yellow stew with currants in it, and "spicy food" meant a bit of pepper sprinkled on top. Since I was about 9 years old at the time, I had probably never eaten anything hotter than a ginger nut.

I was a latchkey kid, and alone in the house after school. Mooching around for something to do, I played with the pet guinea pig for a while, then started picking out the sunflower seeds from its food - tasty and nutritious! Now, it turns out that sensitivity to capsaicin is not universal, and presumably guinea pigs are immune to it. I discovered this when I chomped down on a seed that had a small piece of red vegetable attached to it - which turned out to be dried (and hence concentrated) chilli pepper.

Very quickly the heat started. I had no idea what it was, and started to panic. It burned more than anything I'd ever experienced - maybe because I was young and tender. That often makes things burn, especially the first time. Apparently.

I started to run about, flapping my arms in panic, and moaning like a moose being buggered by Bigfoot. Desperately I tried to find a way to stop the searing pain. I quickly discovered that drinking water didn't help, as we all know, and I was beginning to think I'd spontaneously combust at any moment, as the heat continued to build and build, and my lips got redder and redder. I was panting like I was giving birth to triplets, and my eyes were bulging like Rubber Arnie at the end of Total Recall.

Finally, I had a brainwave: I lunged at the freezer, wrenched open the door, thrust my head in, and buried my face and tongue in the ice that had built up on the shelf. In my memory there were great gouts of hissing steam at this point, though that's probably just the effect of watching too many cartoons. Whatever, the ice was having an effect, and I slumped down, half inside the freezer, thankful that, as long as I kept my head buried amongst the frozen peas and arctic roll, I may actually survive the ordeal.

It was of course at that exact moment that my mum came in from work...
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Mon 11 Aug 2014, 15:48, 13 replies)

After his death, I read my father's diaries from his time in Burma during WW2
Very hard going.
In his early twenties he was part of the kind of unit that wasn't spoken about at the time and is almost completely written out of the official histories. They didn't carry a medic, didn't take prisoners and didn't leave wounded. Could the man that did these awful things be the same one who taught me to read, to ride a bike and play chess? The same man that had a deep love of music and poetry?
So, what makes me cry? Looking at his Burma Star. I miss the old bugger. Every day.
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Mon 11 Aug 2014, 9:16, 8 replies)

when cars pull out of the way to let an ambulance through, makes me proud of humans, both for having managed to organise for there to be ambulances, and for cooperating to help them get where they are going, and thinking of this makes me cry, and then I think about how even though we can do that, so often there is very little reason to be proud of humans, due to doing things that are the opposite of ambulances, and that makes me cry a bit more
( vladimir, Thu 7 Aug 2014, 23:10, 6 replies)

Gaylord
I was out a few weeks back with for a few drinks with Lloyd around Clapham (he doesn't live in London, so it’s a convenient middle ground) and after getting a bit drunker than intended for a weeknight we decided to head to The Gaylord for a curry.

I do like curry, though am very much a medium spice man and have never had the insecurity to eat inhumanly hot food to impress other people. I ordered something of medium spiciness and carried on chopsing.

As we were chatting, Lloyd's phone rang and the expression on his face suggested it wasn't a trivial call. "I've got to take this" he said, and since the restaurant was so small, decided to go outside to talk on the phone. I sat there and eavesdropped on other conversations for my own amusement while I waited for his conversation to end.

After about 10 minutes of this, there was no sign of Lloyd, and the food arrived. Thinking he'd been rude enough, I decided to tuck into my food and he could join in when he was back. I was tucking in, enjoying it, when due to a sudden lapse in concentration, I inadvertently shovelled a couple of chilies into my mouth. It wasn't until I'd chomped down and swallowed that the enormity of what I'd done hit me.

I felt the burning sensation start to make its way through my mouth, a sensation simultaneously numbing and excruciating. As the seconds passed it just got worse and worse. I started to panic, not wanting to seem like the sort of idiot who eats chilies or make a scene in the restaurant. I gripped the side of the table, and dropped my jaw in a pathetic attempt to aerate my mouth while beads of sweat started running down my forehead.

Suddenly in a moment of lucid clarity I had a fantastic idea and called the waiter over. In a voice as close to calmness as I could muster, I said "Would it be possible to get a glass of milk?"

"Sorry?"

"Milk. Please could I have a glass of milk."

Blank stare.

"Like from a cow, milk, creamy milk... Please."

At which point the waiter walked off, but without that act of realisation that you would expect from someone who truly understood you. Despite this, I hoped for the best and sat there trying to focus on not crying, avoiding eye contact and trying to find my safe place in my head.

What felt like an eternity later, the same waiter came back to my table and asked "Sorry, what was it that you said you wanted again?"
I despaired as I realised I was no closer to my milky haven, and involuntarily stared at him like I wanted to rip his head off and present it to his first born. Sensing a problem, one of the other waiters joined in to try and assist.

Hands still gripping the table like I was going to fall off the earth and struggling to talk, I repeated "Milk. Please could I have a glass of milk?". My eyes were filled with pleading, while I wondered if it really was such an odd thing to ask for milk in a curry house. As my jaw continued to hang, the new waiter suddenly showed had that expression of recognition from my request that I had so sorely craved.

Tears started to fill my eyes as I pleaded for my shining knight to give me the respite from pain that I needed so badly. The pain continued to rip through my mouth as I resumed my meditative state staring at the patterns in the wall paper, trying to find some sort of hidden meaning.

After another eternity that was probably only a few seconds, the first waiter beamed back to the table with a glowing expression fit for a hero. It was a face I couldn't be happier to see again, until I looked down at his hands. In his hands was a little jug of double cream. I snapped, I couldn't keep my composure any more. In a raised voice of desperation, with tears blurring my view I pleaded "Milk, not cream, I need milk, please bring me milk, why won't you bring me milk, I just want a glass o-" when I suddenly realised it wasn't going to get any better than this and I should just take what I've been given.

I took the jug of double cream from him and started to down it like some sort of obese hero that nobody asked for, the negative reaction of my body to so much cream being nothing compared to the sweet relief my mouth and stomach were now feeling. With so little there, I held the last drops in my mouth, hoping they could counteract the pain. It wasn't ideal, but at least I had a moment of respite.

As the pain started to subside, the positive feeling of knowing I had overcome the worst of it made the remaining time so much easier to deal with. With the mental capacity to think of other things, I wondered where Lloyd had been all of this time, which turned out to be twenty minutes and not the thirty years that it had felt. A couple of minutes later he returned to the table, apologising for the long phone conversation, blissfully unaware of the traumatic experience that had occurred in his absence.

I could barely touch the rest of the food and wish I could say I'd learned my lesson, but that would be a lie.
( ma0sm, Mon 11 Aug 2014, 13:55, 28 replies)

Charlie Brooker's tribute to "Small Films" producer Oliver Postgate.
Every time I watch it. EVERY time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAftt3UnzoI
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 20:28, 2 replies)

that bit in that film

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 15:16, 6 replies)

Alright then.
As many people are mentioning TV shows or films that choke them up...

The final 30 minutes of Last Of The Mohicans. The way the English Major, played by Steven Waddington, spends the first 90 minutes of the film being an utterly irredeemable shit-pocket, then to realise that Hawkeye is the only man who will keep the woman he loves alive, he instantly gives up his own life to protect her ...it sets me off.

By time Uncas has lifelessly slid over the cliff and Johdi May's Alice chooses to join him, well, I'm watching it through a blur.

By the time Daniel Day Lewis and his Film-Dad have performed their savage, heroic, completely unrealistic rescue of Madeleine Stowe I'm normally in a right old state.

I once made the mistake, as a man in my late twenties, of watching this in the company of four other fellas. They all enjoyed the testosterone-heavy violence of it, I had to go for a casual, 20 minute, very manly poo.

As they wouldn't hear my pathetic sobbing noises from the bathroom.

Mills & Boon twat.
( sir_spicious2000 Crap I've watched: www.filmplop.blogspot.com/, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 0:58, 7 replies)

I think I first saw this one here...
A teddy bear sits on a mattress
One glass eye and threadbare paw
Looking at a cuckoo clock
Which shows it's ten to four

Four o'clock is teddy's teatime
Lots of friends and fancy cake
Although it's only pretend eating
Oh how long ten minutes take

Shadows grow on distant hillsides
Orange sun on glassy sea
All in his amber eye reflected
And still ten minutes left 'til tea

The mattress, striped, is old and broken
Rusty springs through stuffing show
The cuckoo clock is also broken
But how's a teddy supposed to know?

Unaware he's been discarded
That this is not the nursery cot
The hills and sea just glass, old papers
On a disused rubbish plot

A telephone that no one answers
Empty tins that once held tea
The clock that still says nearly teatime
Where can all the children be?

For ages now he's lain unwanted
Saluting with his threadbare paw
He'll never know he's been abandoned
'Til the clock reads after four

Don't tell him that the clock is broken
For as long as teddy doesn't know
It'll always soon be teatime
As it was, so long ago.
(ScousersPet, Wed 13 Aug 2014, 12:56, 4 replies)

Disney's Frozen
I mean, the plot inconsistencies are a sodding tragedy compared to Disney at its finest.

"My sister has cast a spell of eternal winter" - what, like, at most, four hours ago? You were there remember, and you immediately set off up the mountain on a horse, and here you are. 'Eternal' my arse. Look, she's obviously moody as she just got her first blob-on; give it a few days and she'll be fine. Sorry, you don't agree? What do you think the isolation, and the shame to touch anything, and the fucking great angry ice-monster symbolises? PMT, right. Just don't ask what the ever-present fluffy little white Olaf represents in all this coming-of-age metaphor.

"Here's your new sledge" "Thanks" "Though since it's paid for out of the royal purse everyone else will be paying for it through taxation". "And incidentally, now we've got a queen who can practically piss liquid nitrogen your ice-cutting business is pretty much fucked".
( joefish It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks, Tue 12 Aug 2014, 18:45, 17 replies)

the number of alleged adults on here getting upset about cartoons, children's films, low-budget sci-fi and computer games is certainly enough to bring tears to the eyes.

( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Tue 12 Aug 2014, 13:37, 26 replies)

Planes, Trains and Automobiles
I love this film. Really, really love it. But I remember watching it with my wife, and her being astonished by how upset I was when it's revealed that Del Griffith has no family and no home. I mean like proper unable to speak crying. She thought there was something genuinely wrong with me, which I suppose in some ways there is. Just the idea of someone being so utterly alone makes me cry like a baby every time.

Also the bit in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray's character realises that there's nothing he can do to prevent the old homeless guy dying, and the way he tries to make a difference to his last day to ensure that he's not completely alone.

I think I might be terrified of dying alone.
( CaptainCrackerjack live trout, slow motion, Sun 10 Aug 2014, 11:14, Reply)

Schindlers List
I'm not often moved, but this movie really brought home the tragedy, when I thought about all those poor german soldiers receiving inferior munitions
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Sun 10 Aug 2014, 10:41, 6 replies)

Went to see "The Babadook" this week.
For those of you who haven't seen it, it's an Aussie horror film about a malevolent and incoherent spirit that invades people's homes, causing them to have violent and antisocial thoughts, and once it's entered your home, you can't get rid of it.

Basically, it's the Sob Carehome Movie.
( .Yeti., Fri 8 Aug 2014, 13:39, Reply)

Mr Horrible

( spanishfly is so fucking sexy people impersonate him, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 13:31, Reply)

Battlefield walk ends (and starts) in tears
I used to live more or less on the battlefield of Waterloo and read a lot of books about it. One weekend we had a load of friends and relations visiting so as part of the weekend's entertainments I offered to give them a tour of the battlefield with commentary about the various locations. We started off at the Hougoumont farm and I told the story of its defence, including how a load of Frenchies had got inside the courtyard but the gates were closed behind them, and all the Frogs were killed apart from a little drummer boy. At this point I found myself overcome with emotion and burst into tears in front of the 20 or so guests. The rest of the tour I started blubbing at every single mention of an injured or killed soldier. So that was a happy couple of hours.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 10:31, 2 replies)

The bit
where they beat up Johnny 5 in Short Circuit 2.

And the last bit of AI.

And the bit with the tiny robot rebuilding the mosaic in Batteries not Included.

And the end of Bicentennial Man.

Wall-E

Basically all my manly tears moments are caused by robot films.
(Tiny Blindfolded Horse Kitten sound car horns would end road rage, Thu 7 Aug 2014, 16:44, 8 replies)

Tear ducts stopped working.
I'm very upset about this. Probably.
(eViLegion Chief Commissioner of the Scottish Lunacy Board, Tue 12 Aug 2014, 18:09, 3 replies)

Stubbed my toe.

(eViLegion Chief Commissioner of the Scottish Lunacy Board, Tue 12 Aug 2014, 14:57, 3 replies)

The ending to Anal Angels #6
When she farts out his spooge.
( $$ ✅, Mon 11 Aug 2014, 9:18, 6 replies)

Watership Down
When Elahrairah comes to take Hazel.
I still get upset at this scene.
( FeralCatMan Unusual disease collector., Mon 11 Aug 2014, 1:01, 2 replies)

Two Little Boys

(Littlesirjohn sprung up his head and so amazed them all., Fri 8 Aug 2014, 20:48, 1 reply)

I saw a picture of a lady in her bra and I dun a cry out of my winky

( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 15:27, 2 replies)

Bagpuss
The starting music and sepia tinted photos set me off. Just the innocence and simplicity of it.

I heard an interview with Oliver Postgate a few years ago and he said that he had no idea about how deeply it moved people until he met a young woman at some exhibition he was talking at. She told him that she had had a horrible abused childhood but her quiet place in her head was with Bagpuss and the others and she hugged him and wouldn't let go. He was, of course, rather embarrassed by the whole thing.
(Gusofnavarone always makes a map of france from sarnies, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 12:24, 4 replies)

The semifinal of Masterchef.
The soaring music, the back story of the contestants, the pressure they've been under to make a bit of dinner, and then they get sent home after all that hard work.

Gets me every time.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 8 Aug 2014, 11:06, 3 replies)

LCD Soundsystem's Someone Great
For reasons Ivan Pavlov probably understands better than I do, even the instrumental version sets me off a bit.
(J H Christ began in Afrika ka ka ka ka, Thu 7 Aug 2014, 23:16, 2 replies)

A Recipe.
Sarson's pre-spiced pickling spirit vinegar. Schwartz's pickling spice. Midget Peppers.

Boil pre-spiced spirit vinegar and empty both sachets of pickling spice (effectively making 3x the spice quantity). Leave boiling for 10 minutes to infuse the spirit vinegar further. Meanwhile chop the midget peppers into slices. Fill up the jar with the chopped peppers. When the vinegar/spice has cooled put in the jar with the chopped peppers. Seal jars and leave for two weeks for the spices and vinegar to infuse the peppers.

After two weeks, open a jar and try out your new super-pickle. Drop a single slice into your mouth. Chew.

The vinegar fumes will enter your sinus cavity causing you to involuntarily gasp and suck the triple spiced spirit vinegar into your lungs.

That made me cry a bit.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 7 Aug 2014, 19:10, 4 replies)

My daughter loves Frozen, and enjoys listening to the soundtrack when we are in the car together.
Which is a shame, as both Do you want to build a snowman and Let it go will invariably fill my eyes with tears, making driving more hazardous than usual.
Difficult to nonce-punch a copper when you're blubbing, too.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 7 Aug 2014, 17:28, 5 replies)

Onions
Especially if they're thrown at me really hard.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Thu 7 Aug 2014, 15:01, Reply)