The Amazing Shitting Cardboard Box!
I remember one time years ago, I was about 10 or 11 years old and a couple of my mates and I were just making our way home after a kickabout in the park.

It was a cracking summers day during the school holidays, we were all in a jovial mood and life was good. I was, however, bursting for a shite and was in a bit of a rush to get home. We were passing a private car park behind a sports hall when I spotted a massive oblong cardboard box.

That was when I had my 'brainwave'.

"Watch this!" I said to my mates.

The plan was to pull the box over my head and crouch inside it, take down my breeks and skegs, curl out a perfectly formed steaming turd, do myself up again and then move away from it whilst still inside the box. In my head I imagined that this would be the most spectacular thing my friends would ever see in their lives, this marvellous image of a shitting box!

Well, it didn't quite work out that way.

After lowering the box over myself and dropping my jeans and Ys, I squatted and let go.

It was utter fucking carnage.

My poor wee arse exploded and slurrys of stagnant shite splattered the inside and outside of my pants and jeans. It was all over the backs of my legs, my socks and my trainers. And the smell! Sweet Jebus, that fucking smell. And I hadn't even thought about what I was going to wipe my arse with!

I threw the box off in a panic and stood there speechless looking at my pals, my denims half up/down with most of my bottom half covered in my own waste. They stared back with looks of shock and terror, then after realising what had just happened they erupted with laughter and glee. Bastards.

I somehow made it home without drawing too much attention to myself and told my mum that I had fell in dog shit. Thankfully she didn't pursue the issue of how dog shite had ended up on the inside of my jeans and all over my pants.

Not my brightest moment.
(Helmut McBucket invites you to pull his finger on, Sun 26 Sep 2010, 0:58, 9 replies)

Medical screwup
When I was a student I thought I could make some easy money volunteering to be a guinea pig in neuroscience research - it involved minor brain surgery, but I foolishly thought the rewards outweighed the risks. It turned out to be a massive error in judgement, as there was a bit of a cock-up, and the part of my brain that controls my lower leg movement ended up fused with part of my memory centre.

I kick myself whenever I think about it.
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 15:54, 8 replies)

Makes me shiver thinking about it even now
Early 1980s, I had an hour and a half journey to school each day, each way, and by the time I was 16 studies were starting to get a bit neglected as I discovered the bright lights of the West End and started going to three, four gigs a week. A railway strike gave me an opportunity to hatch a plan. You see, school wouldn't expect me to trudge halfway across South London, would they, so I could just tell my form master that I'd take some stuff home with me and sit it out. if I told my parents I was staying with a friend nearer school, they'd never check up. And there was one of my favourite bands playing at Gossips in Soho on an evening smack bang in the middle of the train strike.

So off I went to school the day before the strike. As it turned out I had actually arranged to stay with a schoolfriend who lived in a huge flat in Central London (but whose parents, curiously, were never, ever around) and who was happy to play along with the plan, off we went to the gig in the evening. The following day my mate, who wasn't quite so much into the whole bunking off thing, went into school, so I found myself mooching around Carnaby Street (very seedy at that time) waiting for another friend who worked nearby to knock off so we could go for a beer.

Enter Mr Plod. There's me, a youngish looking 16-year-old (though one, curiously, who never had problems getting served in pubs) hanging round on a street corner in an unsalubrious part of town, probably looking very out of place. This being the old stop & search days, his conversation opener was to ask me what was in my bag. So out come the books, all clearly marked with the name of my school on them - God knows, I must have decided I'd be doing some studying during my little jaunt - and I knew I was in the shit.

No point in lying, my school's name's on the books, as is my name, the only alternative to 'fessing up to bunking off is to somehow explain what I'm doing with them which would doubtless result in a trip to the station, so the policeman takes all my details, parents' phone number, school details etc. At best I am looking at an absolute bollocking from my parents and being grounded for a very long time, at worst I could be facing expulsion. I'm in deep shit in triplicate.

So I head off towards Charing Cross, where I may find a train or if they're still not running, I can get a bus in the general direction of home, but apprentice pisshead that I am, I decide to stop in a pub in Soho to drown my sorrows a little. I'm sitting there, probably looking pretty fucking sorry for myself, and this guy starts talking to me, asking why I'm looking so down, so I recount my story. Next thing I know, we're round the corner at what at the time I think must have been the Wendy's on Shaftesbury Avenue, now McDonald's (a great loss the day Wendy's quit the UK, by the way), and the guy's bought me a burger and said, you know, if you don't fancy going home to face your parents, you can always crash at mine, and I'm kind of, you know, that might not be such a bad idea, and then...

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING?"

There's been twice in my life that I've heard those words shouted at me from within my own head, drowning out any other thoughts; the only other time, more recently, was the night before I stopped drinking which, in all probability, saved my marriage and a shitload of other problems. I really can't explain where it comes from, but it's a voice you can't help but listen to and act upon. And if the second time I heard it was a turning point in my life, I'm pretty convinced the first time was, too.

Alarm bells stated ringing in my head. What the fuck was I doing here, with this strange man, who, come to think of it, was making me feel uneasy, though with everything else going through my head, I hadn't really picked up on my intuition. I didn't just need to get home, I needed to get the hell out of here right now.

Well, thank fuck for Routemaster buses is all I can say. The countless times i'd hopped on and off the platform at the back paid off and - shit, it is moving a bit quickly, isn't it - I just managed to get a foot on the boards and a hand round the pole and off down the road I went, my erstwhile benefactor's face blending into the crowd as the bus sped off.

It was a face I remembered, though, and perhaps the glasses had something to do with that. I certainly recognised that face when I saw it on the news a couple of years later, and whenever I hear the name, it sends me cold.

Length? Dennis Nilsen got 25 years, later increased to life. He'll never be paroled.

PS - Just checked his Wikipedia entry for when he was arrested and some of the facts really do make me pause and realise just how lucky I was. The Golden Lion, I'm pretty certain, is the pub. He bought one of his victims a hamburger. Originally, I'm from Scotland, as many of his victims were. Thank fuck I listened to that inner voice (and apologies for lack of funnies)
(Capo, Sat 25 Sep 2010, 1:09, 17 replies)

I volunteered to take part in a Bukkake session at London Zoo
I don't know what came over me
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 14:52, 5 replies)

One occured about 4 hours ago...
I've just had an op to remove a stubborn (and rather sizeable) Kidney Stone this afternoon which involved cameras, hooks and lasers being introduced via the 'gentleman's area', which all went well thankfully. However, when my surgeon (a rather lovely lady probably only a handful of years older than myself) visited me just after coming around in a ward she sat down, asked if I was ok and then said:
"To be honest, it's one of the biggest ones I've seen in a while"

I blame some of the anaesthetic still in my system for immediately replying:

"Thanks, and what about the Kidney Stone"?

She saw the funny side, which was lucky.
( The Great Architect is still waiting for his account to be deleted on, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 22:20, 8 replies)

I really should know better.
I was helping a friend of mine clear some brush from his land, including a stand of bamboo. We had piled a load of brush in a clear area and had a merry little fire going onto which we threw the shrubs and branches and whatnot that we had cut down. Then we threw on a load of green bamboo with the rest of the branches.

Did you know that those chambers inside bamboo are actually pretty airtight? Did you know that putting it into a fire while green would result in steam pressure building up inside those chambers until they burst? Did you know that a large piece of bamboo can produce explosions sufficient to hurl chunks of fire in all directions so that you have to simultaneously dodge and try to put out a dozen small fires that have suddenly sprung up all around you?

Well, I fucking do now.
( Wanderer, Fri 24 Sep 2010, 13:47, 3 replies)

So as a 10 year old lad in the middle of Somerset, much of my summer holiday was spent in the woods
We'd fish for sticklebacks, we'd make bows and arrows, we'd build dens, rope swings, rafts, dams, and, of course, spent a significant portion of our time climbing trees.

Consequently, a friend and I developed a magnificent device to enable the quickest access to the higher branches of a tree - this device was a long length of strong rope, with a stout stick tied to the bottom. You throw the stick over the high branch and lower it down. Then, sitting astride the stick, you pull yourself up, and, when you get to the branch, grab it, and hey presto - you're already in the middle of the tree.

Now, early one morning in the middle of spring, I was walking through one of the higher fields on my way to the woods. This field is about a mile long, with grass about waist-high to my 10 year old self, and it being early morning, the grass was still covered in dew.

The field is uphill in the direction I was travelling, and muddy, and by the time I was two thirds through, I was bloody knackered, and wanted to sit down. Of course I couldn't sit down, as the ground was muddy, and the grass was wet.

I was so knackered.

Suddenly, a rather dull, 20-Watt lightbulb went off in my head. I had my rope and stick ... which I sit on when climbing trees ... it supports me ...

I placed the stick between my legs under my bum, held on to the rope, and sat down - SPLASH - heavily into the puddle in which I was standing.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Mon 27 Sep 2010, 13:20, 7 replies)

I grew a mullet
I didn't really want a mullet, but my hair has a kind of afro-ness to it that meant that I couldn't really grow it long or I'd end up looking like a white kid that got kicked out of the Jackson Five.

Anyway all my mates had long hair and I wanted to be like them so I just grew it at the back. It looked fucking awful, especially when combined with the glasses and the bad skin that cursed my teenage years. I kept it for a couple of years, then on the day I left school I went to the barber and got a short back and sides -- the same style that's done me for the twenty-odd years since.

Anyway my embarrassment at this follicular faux-pas had almost entirely dissipated by the time of my wedding, some dozen or so years later. I'd been quite merciless in my destruction of all photographic record of it, erasing a whole chapter of my life in order to escape the horror. But I didn't bank on my best man's sneakiness or my Mum's ingenuity: she remembered the one and only remaining pic, nestling unharmed inside my old passport which she'd stashed in a drawer somewhere.

It was with some surprise, then, that -- after having sat through a This Is Your Life style recap of my first 30 years (and the hairstyles) -- I witnessed my so-called friend instruct each and every one of the assembled guests to reach under their chair, where they would find a golden envelope containing their very own copy of the photograph in question. For years afterwards I'd wander into a friend's kitchen, only to be greeted by my own morose, mullet-bound mug staring back at me from under a magnet on their fridge.

Bastards.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 13:41, 1 reply)

Just because a confidence isn't whispered ...
doesn't make it any less of a confidence.

Back story; my dad is one of eight kids born on a Glaswegian sink estate to a washer woman in the 40s. His childhood was four kids to a bed, cabbage soup for supper and 'one bath on Saturday to be clean for the Sabbath whether you need it or not' kinda poverty.

He and three of his siblings migrated to Australia in the 60s to seek a better life. They found a white working class man’s paradise. Good work, decent schools, cheap beer and smokes.

I am the family rebel. I am the first and only of my extended family to go to University. I got a great job, married a nice fella, had my kids in wedlock and don’t have a single tattoo. On the scale of Chavness I am an Epic Fail.

I moved back to Old Blighty 15 years ago and thought I’d introduce myself to my Glaswegian cousins. Sadly, I found that the kids of the siblings who stayed in Glasgow were living on the same estate as their folks in a slightly elevated level of poverty than that which their parents endured.

Like most working class Glaswegian extended households, my Clan is ruled with an iron fist by a fearsome Matriarch. She’s a 2 pack a day ex-mental health nurse. If she ever met Catherine Tate’s Nan, she’d spang her round the back of the head with her oxygen bottle. She’s well ‘ard.

I was round at her house one day when my 15yo cousin announces that she’s pregnant. To my surprise, the womenfolk were all ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ and ‘well that’s a good way to leave home’. No questions such as; ‘Who’s the father?’ or ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ or ‘What about school?’. I sighed and kept my disapproval to myself.

The conversation rolled on and went to put on the kettle. I returned to hear my 15yo cousin moan 'I suppose I'll have to quit the fags now'. At this point the Matriarch pipes up. 'Don't you believe any of that shite love! I smoked through all my pregnancies and never had any bother at all.'

My bullshit tether broke.

'Really? All four of them?' I said into a room containing her THREE adult children. What was I thinking?

The conversation stopped dead as icicles started to form. The red hot glare of hatred from the Matriarch made it clear that I was never to darken her doorstep again.

I learned that day that Aspiration, the expectation that your children will do better than you, is a peculiarly middle class thing.
(Que?, Tue 28 Sep 2010, 6:06, 5 replies)

"I'm going for a piss," I slurred to my mate, draining the last dregs from my bottle.
"Good plan," said J, struggling to his feet to join me, "Johnny, you get the next drinks in." Johnny laughed, and told us to go fuck ourselves. He wasn't budging from the snug little nook he'd found.

J and I, unsteady on drunk legs, managed to get ourselves vertical and looked around us, working out where the best pissing location would be. The lights from the bars two hundred yards away glittered off the Solent, and the steel glint of dawn was kissing the eastern horizon. "Over there," pointed J as, using the metal uprights for support, we edged our way seawards. It was a stumbling journey, footstep after creeping footstep and hands clinging to the nearby poles until we got to the edge.

It wasn't until my cock felt the chill of the sea breeze that my brain finally realised where it was: the top of a crane constructing the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth at 4am, up which we had climbed in our drunken foolishness. I'd been listening for the splash as my piss hit the harbour, while instead it was tracing a golden arc into the night, 187 metres above sea level, atomising into a sour vapour long before it could make any audible impact on the ground a long, long way below. As the realisation of that distance hit me, my stomach lurched, and my two grips (one on pole, one on cock) tightened considerably.

"Scrap that drink Johnny," I croaked, not even daring to shake out the last drops. "I think it's time to call it a night."
( Grrrmachine the indifference engine, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 15:30, 2 replies)

Those WERE the droids I was looking for..

( SigmaX0 Dear Die Hard. You rock!, Fri 24 Sep 2010, 13:23, 1 reply)

As a young man..
I got terribly drunk at a house party and called my dad to come pick me up. We drove home with my head sticking out the window, trying my very hardest not to throw up. We finally got home, I couldnt take it anymore, I ran straight into the bathroom which was opposite the front door and shouted soup into the bathtub. I was scooping/pushing everything down the plughole when I noticed a piece of chicken too big to fit down there. So I did what my drunken brain thought would be most logical. I picked it up and ate it. It wasnt bad actually, tasted exactly the same as when I had eaten it a few hours previously.

No apologies, im new at this.
(krupa, Fri 24 Sep 2010, 2:46, 12 replies)

I could have dined out on this one for years...
So I was working in a rough-as pub in Hammersmith (part of a famous chain that keeps old alcoholics heated through the winter). I was working in this pub because I had just moved down to the big smoke and needed some cash for rent and stuff.

Now, there are many aspects of working in the pub that were awful (the customers mainly; but the hours, low pay, increased night bus travel all were particular joys) but there were some things that were brilliant. I worked with some amazing people (who, 10 years later are still amongst my closest friends). I had never met an Aussie before, but now I knew loads of them.

One of the girls I worked with was super cute. She was Aussie, funny, loud and really fit....and for some reason, after about a couple of months working together she developed a major crush on me.

One night we were all out at the Palais (RIP) when she took me away from the others on the dancefloor and started thoroughly 'pashing' me as she would describe it. Suffice to say I was really rather pleased with this development.

Now, this same evening the staff from a different pub were also at school disco. These guys used to take their breaks in our pub, as we took our breaks at theirs. One of the girls who worked in there was Polish, chubby, quite pretty and also had the hots for me. (Take it for granted that I am not an oil painting, but I was used to fat lasses liking me). She also, I knew, partook in the occasional bout of lady flirting. I have no idea if it ever went further than this, but I certainly had seen her snog girls.

So, at the end of the night my lovely Aussie came over to me. it was obvious that she and I were going to go back to hers and have some messy (and probably embarrassing) shenannigans. But I was a little surprised to see that she had the Polish girl with her.

"Big Fella" she said "xxxxxxxx says she would like to come back with us. I said it was up to you, but I thought it would be fun".

Well, as you can imagine, i was slightly startled. I mean, I was blatently and openly being odffered a threesome..... I only wish I realised that. I, because I am an idiot, thought that having another girl there would mean that me and my Aussie lady friend would not be able to get up to any messy and embarrassing shenannigans. So I said No.

No.

To a threesome.

With two ladies.

And I would be allowed to play.

Nude.

With two ladies.

I'm a dick.
(Thebigfella, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 14:33, 22 replies)

Bad day
Many moons ago I was happily working in the stockroom of a shop when I reached a bit too far whilst stacking some boxes on high shelves. During my frantic descent I somehow managed to catch my wedding ring on something hooky, which left me hanging mid-air for a second before I was free-falling again and the bloke who should have been holding the ladder broke my fall. My ring had cut right into the soft tissue at the bottom of my finger, much blood ensued. Being a stoic type at the time I wrapped it up with a cleaning cloth and shortly afterwards headed home. In retrospect a trip to A&E might have been a bit more prudent.

On the way back my ancient Audi's exhaust chucked the latest 'temporary' (8 months) patch on its exhast and I spluttered the last few miles back to Riffjedibaby Villas. One of the very few redeeming features of this former residence was a garage in the back garden with an inspection pit.

After cleaning the finger up a bit and thinking "I should have taken that ring off whilst I had the chance" because the bottom of my finger was starting to swell, I bandaged it up again and put the car in the garage to start working on my latest gun gum/chicken wire/coke can repair.

Half an hour later my latest creation seemed to be holding up but the finger was now swollen and angry and starting to indicate through the medium of acute pain that I should do something fairly quickly to relieve the swelling.

Again, the prudent move would have been A&E but (due to another totally unrelated finger getting trapped in something daft experience) I knew that the fire brigade would inevitably be called to cut the ring off with a grotesque can-opener type device and I couldn't be doing with all the fuss.

So I fetched a hacksaw and secured as much of the ring in a bench vice as I could and started to carefully saw it off.

The ring I mean, not the finger.

Incredibly this did just the trick, not too much self inflicted additional damage and an immense feeling of relief when circulation was restored.

In a giddy whisky and analgesic fuelled mood I stepped back from the bench to admire my home surgery success, straight into the open inspection pit.

As I lay in the oily gunk of the pit marvelling at how much skin I'd scraped off on my second descent of the day, I realised what the inexplicable decision was that brought me here.




Marriage.



Length? Almost 20 years. Depth, about 5 foot.
(riffjedibaby almost 1,000 chickens, Wed 29 Sep 2010, 22:53, 1 reply)

When I was a wee lass
The head of my bed was against the radiator. It was in an old house and the central heating would regularly erupt with various gurgling, rawr-ing and plopping noises. These were somewhat frightening to a sensitive small child such as I.

My mum had just put me to bed and I asked her what the scary radiator monster was.

"It's Willy," She responded. She had her hand on a book about the infamous captive killer whale.

From then on, anything scary or intimidating was a 'willy.' My parents drew much amusement from this misunderstanding and encouraged my usage of the word in this sense.

Backfired though. I was in a shop with my dad, queueing to buy something tasty. He was jangling his keys in his pocket as men do. Enthralled by the noise, I got the attention of the old lady in front of me, pointed to my father's pocket and declared: "There's willies in there!"

We left the shop very quickly after that.
(KeenBean objects to this comma, Mon 27 Sep 2010, 19:26, 2 replies)

God-bothering
I know it's a middle-class cliche but I do love old Stephen Fry. Statistically, you probably do, too. So imagine the scene five years ago. I was walking down Piccadilly in TV's famous London when Fry himself popped out of no 195, BAFTA HQ, like a tweedy poo from a sleek and privileged bot.

Fry stood for a moment, blinking in the sunshine. In a split second I decided that, as this was the only chance I'd ever have, I'd go up to him and engage him in witty banter. He'd laugh at my cleverness, perhaps even suggest we collaborate on a TV show and would even maybe shower me with quality goods bearing the Apple logo. You never know.

I went up to him. I said, "excuse me." He looked down at me politely. I said, "I'm sorry to bother you." And my courage fled. I shrugged apologetically like a twat (or a Frenchman - much the same thing) and scurried off. As I went I heard him say, in a kindly if bemused voice, "oh. Well really it was no bother."

What hurts, what hurts like buggery on a ski lift is that ever since then I can't see him on telly without my toes curling in shame as I remember that cringe-worthy day. I am such a sphincter.
(judgetheobscure used to sweep in butchers' shops., Thu 23 Sep 2010, 21:11, 6 replies)

Oooh!
I can show you this photograph of myself again.


(yokelrobin THE NERD WHOSE HAIR DEFIES GRAVITY/FASHION, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 18:45, 12 replies)

Two Weeks Ago

Up a small step-ladder, changing a lightbulb.

"Hmm. Did I switch the light switch off? Is this fitting live?"

Stuck my finger in to find out.

While lying on the floor I discovered that our two cats can laugh.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 28 Sep 2010, 14:28, 4 replies)

My dear, soon to be ex,
wife wanted an extra 30 minutes in bed one morning. Unable to fathom the alarm clock, she put the nearby microwave on, empty, for the alloted time. Unsurprisingly, it blew up, taking the house fuses with it.
(Mousy Tongue ...Generally bemused by life..., Wed 29 Sep 2010, 4:37, 15 replies)

Ah, the drugs, the drugs.
Out for an evening on the piss, met up with an acquaintance's ex. Not a friend, mind you, an acquaintance, and an acquaintance who had gone seriously doolally at that.
Said ex was astonishingly good looking, and for some reason, as the beer and wine flowed, we hit it off.

I am pudgy, bespectacled, pock-faced web-developer, gentlemen, and these things do not happen to me. A few lagers in, she was on a rant about her ex and for some reason, something awoke within me.
"Want to get revenge?" I said, in perhaps the smoothest moment of caddery I have ever experienced in my life.
"Hell yes." says she. And off we toddle out of the club back to her palace for nooky.

Now as I'm walking, my head clears and the neuroses that had been in retreat for the only ten seconds of suave I have ever experienced suddenly came back with reinforcements.
"WTF are you doing?" they said. "You're drunk! You'll not get it up! She's too good for you! Girls like this don't go for you! There's got to be a catch! It's a trap! It's a trap! Fleeeeeeeeeeeee!"
"Silence, neuroses!" say I, mercifully internally. "I'm getting my end away and there's nothing you can do about it."
Unfortunately, there was.
We were lying in bed, in our underwear about to get jiggy with it and I'm extremely nervous, having never seen a naked woman this hot in three dimensions. And she can tell. "Would you like a spliff first?" she says, soothingly.
"Hell yes."

In summary:

Beer + Wine + Nerves + Weed = vomiting

On her breasts.
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Tue 28 Sep 2010, 12:50, 11 replies)

I bought a house, despite everyone telling me it had ghosts.
...that decision still haunts me.
( Zak McFlimby Twibbling @McFlimby, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 14:00, Reply)

Sort of, but not really.
Sometimes I kick myself for having stayed with my ex for 5 years. He was emotionally abusive, and though that sort of abuse leaves no bruises, it can take a happy confident girl and transform her into a self doubting depressed wreck. He had me convinced that everything I liked was "silly" or "dumb", that the fact that I have a sex drive made me a crazy bitch, and that my friends were wastes of space that I should no longer hang out with. I isolated myself from the world, trying to please an unpleasable man. The slightest error on my part would send him into deep depressive sulks, and the only way to appease him was to beg and plead for forgiveness. When I say "errors", I mean such dastardly deeds as putting his newspaper on the wrong side of his plate during dinner ("Don't you pay attention to ANYTHING? Do you even CARE about me??"), and offering to give him a blowjob while he was playing video games ("Can't you see I'm busy? God, what is WRONG with you??").

It was 5 years of this hell, day in and day out. I am STILL, a year later, picking up the pieces of my mind and soul.

You know what, though? If I could go back in time, I wouldn't change a thing. Not because I enjoyed the hell of my previous relationship, but because everything I have done in my life thus far has lead me to my new one. My new man is everything I could ever want. He's my best friend, my confidant, and is always on my side. He has supported me through difficult times, and has made it quite clear that he isn't going anywhere. I can actually rely on him! Also, he is both as goofy as I am and has a sex drive as high as mine (even higher sometimes, and that's a feat!). Add to all that the fact that he is devilishly handsome, extremely talented (both in and out of the bedroom), bilingual, and well hung, and I'd say I'm a very lucky girl.

If I'd known then that on the other side of 5 years of hell was a man like this, I think I would have been skipping and whisling the whole damn time!
(Audienda, Mon 27 Sep 2010, 14:59, 12 replies)

Peas!
When I was 17 I was going out with this girl who was also 17, and she was - well - 17 - she was absolutely bloody gorgeous.

And obviously we were very horny.

And we fooled around an awful lot, BUT

She said she was saving herself.

And, because I'd been brought up right, I respected that. I have two older sisters, who had told me in no uncertain terms that when I came of age I was to respect a girl's decision when she says stuff like that, as she would feel pressured and then awful and dirty and used and stuff afterwards if you didn't.

And this girl I was seeing, one evening when we had some time to ourselves, sat across my lap, with just my shirt on, completely unbuttoned, and whispered, "Screw me".

And verily I didde think, "Ah no - for the woman hath been infected with LUST, and she knows not of what she speaks!" and I did notte doe thee dirty deed to her, for I thought of myself as honourable.

And woe was me, for she dumped me as a result.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 12:09, 3 replies)

For a school talent show...
I must have been, ooh, 8, and as this was the spring of '95, a small band called Oasis were being hailed as gods by every music publication. You may have heard of them. This is relevant. Anyway, at my primary school, it'd just been announced there was going to be a talent contest the following week, with EVERYONE performing. The maximum amount of time we'd have was going to be five minutes, in which we had to wow our audience, which was the rest of our class. Each class would have a specific day in which they were performing, during that week. My class was to perform on Monday.

Crap.

I was 8, I had no real talents then.

So, being brainless, I went home, and didn't tell my parents about the talent-show, figuring I could just wing it somehow. I pass through the week in my usual absent-mindedness, and come Sunday night, I'm bricking myself, as the talent show was the next day. So I potter around the house, wondering just what I can do, wandering from room to room. As I tended to do this anyway, my parents thought nothing of it. I happened to wander into the living room, and find a few magazines on the coffee table. These provide the idea for the talent show that, 15 years on, is still haunting me.

I go to school the next day, attracting a few odd looks from, well, virtually everyone, parents included. I pass through the day with the occasional "Are you alright?" from the teachers, and stares from my mates, but I don't care. My masterplan is in fruition. And then, it's time for the talent show. By random chance, my name is called out first as it's drawn first from the hat, and I swagger onto the stage. Or attempt to. I'm only 8.

And proceed to randomly bellow out "GONNA LIVE FOREVER!".

In my best Liam Gallagher impression. I hasten to add that I had a west country accent. After my (awesome, or so I thought) impression, I stand on stage for a good thirty seconds, whilst everyone continues to stare at me, before deciding to just leave the stage. Without saying anything else. There was utter, shocked silence from everyone.

I had spent the entire day wearing a parka. In the middle of summer. Just to look like Liam. Hence the strange looks. I'd also tried to recreate Liam's smoking habit, but without actually using cigarettes, instead figuring that a lollipop looked roughly the same as a fag if I had only the white stick showing. So somehow, I'd combined Liam Gallagher with Kojak. Except back then, I also wore glasses. Massive, thick glasses.

In essence, I looked nothing like Liam Gallagher, sounded nothing like him, and I'd just tried to impersonate him in front of about 30 odd kids. And the teachers.

15 years on, and I'm still haunted by this.
(Ghost Atreides enjoying incontestable health benefits on, Tue 28 Sep 2010, 22:36, 5 replies)

I'll just say this..
Don't ever, EVER, put milk through a Soda Stream..
(bassmeister Proud Patron Of The Alan Ladd Memorial Heel Bar, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 22:11, 13 replies)

Precious.
For those who may have missed this one, it's about a young morbidly obese black girl living with her abusive mother and who has two babies already before her sixteenth birthday. Not exactly an uplifting little flick. I saw it with the missus.

Fast forward to dinner with her colleagues and some friends. The subject of movies comes up, and I express how much I hate Serious Movies With Important Social Messages, and used "Precious" as an example. I may as well have said that Mother Theresa was a useless old pile of wrinkles. The temperature dropped at least thirty degrees, though the men present agreed with me.

"Why would I want to watch a movie about that when I can go to Wal Mart and see it in person?"

I apparently offended every female present, though one of the guys bought me a beer for saying what all of us males were thinking. But that doesn't get me laid more, does it?...

I am still in deep yogurt for that.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 23 Sep 2010, 19:07, 12 replies)

The brain makes odd decisions when panicked.
Mine does, anyway. The following will not make you cringe, but did make me question my own thought process...

I was cooking dinner for my housemates before I went out. I had a recipe I wanted to try and various things to use up, including a block of beef dripping. What better medium to fry some pieces of steak in than beef dripping, I thought? So I popped some into the wok to heat up, turned away to tend to another part of the recipe and then approached the wok with slabs of beef at hand.

The moment I popped them in, it was quite apparent that the dripping was hot enough - I was able to make a crude assessment of the temperature as a quantity of it had spat out of the band and distributed itself all over my wrist and forearm*.

As you can probably imagine, this was quite painful, and I'm sure one lonely lobe in my brain was telling me to get that hand under some cold water, pronto. Unfortunately, all the other lobes appeared to be screaming entirely different commands at a generally greater volume. The one that won the shouting match said something along the lines of
"Well, that was a daft thing to do, wasn't it, you great pillock? Anyway, you'll want to run some cold water on that, but - wait, wait...you've got a pan full of hot fat sitting on that hob..."
And my mind's eye recalled those lessons when the fire brigade come to visit your school and explain the horror of chip-pan fires. Despite the fact that my hand was slowly being turned into crow crackling, I returned to the pan and made sure it was steady.
"Well done," chirped my brain, "now you're probably in a lot of pain, it certainly feels like it to me. Because I am you. I should know. But before we go selfishly tending to our wounds...you wanted those bits of steak done rare, if I recall - better turn them, hadn't you?"

I duly turned the steaks, made sure the wok was steady and then finally ran a quick blast of cold water over my arm. Oh, that felt better. Of course, I promptly returned to the wok to toss in the other ingredients and finish off the recipe and serve it before making any proper attempt to cool down my seared flesh. For some reason my brain had decided that my injury was a less pressing issue than the prevention of a kitchen fire (understandable) and making sure the food was cooked properly (a little harder to rationalise).

The most bizarre bit was picking the solidified pools of beef dripping off my arm. In hindsight, I probably should have left them there as I have been left with three or four impressive little scars around my hand and wrist, as a permanent reminder of what a malcoordinated gastropod I am.

*_{I'm no stranger to having warm goo over my wrist and forearm, but it's normally closer to a comfortable 35^oC and hasn't been produced from the carcass of another animal...}
(LongJohnBaldry, Thu 23 Sep 2010, 15:25, Reply)

Far too long ago..
When I was young we lived in the middle of Dartmoor (great place to raise kids by the way - I loved it) Our washing line sloped slightly downhill and my childish mind decided it would be an awesome idea to use my skipping rope (proper one, with the big wooden bobbly bits on the handles) to make a kind of ad hoc zip line.

Being very young, and therefore quite short, I decided it would be best to swing one of the handles round a bit until it gained some momentum and then let it fly in the vague direction of the washing line while I clung tightly to the other handle.

Success! I watched with glee as the rope flew over the line, silently congratulating myself on my ingenuity.

My joy was shortlived, however, as the handle completed its arc by planting itself firmly in my face.
(Freakmandu, Mon 27 Sep 2010, 16:29, 5 replies)

what's in a name?
So... where to start?

I was a wee nipper, probably no more than 6 or 7 and had just learnt about pushing the bit of skin on your fingernail back, and how the best way to do it was once it had softened up in the bath or some other activity that involved warm water.
Now not quite the articulate and learn'd person that i am now.. i was just getting to grips with the name of different part's of the body.

Fast forward to one evening when my family had just been out for dinner with another family. At the end of the meal I had pleaded to get a lift home in my friends family car instead of mine... so we could carry on talking about the A Team / M.A.S.K or whatever it is that 6 and 7 yearolds chatted about in the 80s.

No problems there... however somehow the conversation got onto hurting yourself and, thinking i had a good one, i loudly piped up "oh yeah its like when you try and pull your foreskin back when its not wet and hasn't had a chance to get soft!"

I was immediately aware of a change of mood in the car and yet couldn't quite put my finger on what had happened.. Not until i had been dropped off at home and was expalining the strange events to my mum, did it become apparent exactly why there had been a long silence before a rapid chance of topic. I think it is my earliest memory of utter embarrasment.

Forskin and cuticles should never be confused.

Length... dosen't even cover the end
( lucosade is counting down the minutes until, Mon 27 Sep 2010, 14:13, 5 replies)

I had everything I wanted,
A nice warm place to stay, food on tap, didn't have to work for a living and nobody bothered me.

After 9 months I decided to leave and it's been downhill ever since.
(Vigilante Man weeps because you're stupid., Mon 27 Sep 2010, 0:11, Reply)