i know what the difference between a duck is.
it's that one of it's legs is the same as the other.
( Ya What Skiddlyboop, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 13:09, 8 replies)

Gravy
Before I tell my tale I need to clarify that I am a shandy drinking southerner and sound like a great big poof.

When our daughter was learning to talk I asked her at the dinner table talk if she would like more gravy. Except I said it with one of those funny northern accents: Grairvih. She repeated this and it was very funny. She repeated it every time she asked for Grairvi from then on and oh how we laughed and thought it was cute.

She's now 8 and it was only this year with the school's intervention that she now says the word correctly.
( Mond, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 13:08, 2 replies)

My favourite book
is The Time Machine by H.G Wells

:|
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 13:00, 8 replies)

I tell girls I love them and care about them, and then act cold and distant later, and then come on strong.
It's an excellent way to break down their self-esteem and make them more sexually compliant.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 12:35, 15 replies)

In my experience
99% of 'messing with people's heads' would be better described as 'being mildly annoying and interpreting it as some kind of victory'.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 12:28, 4 replies)

movies
I regularly play soundtracks to classic movies, when my 4-year old daughter can listen to them. So that when she eventually sees the film, it will be fresh and amazing (because it's a classic) ... yet strangely familiar.
(Simian Typewriter Supplies Pty. Ltd. is house hunting in the neighborhood of infinity, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 11:58, 6 replies)

The Chicken Dance
I was handed the opportunity to really blow someone's mind -- they were literally running in circles and flapping like a headless chicken...

A mate of mine had met a Californian girl, Catherine, while visiting relatives in Ireland. She was travelling around Europe, and arranged to come and stay with him when she came to the UK a few weeks later. She duly turned up, and was introduced to his disreputable friends and depraved lifestyle. I got on well with her, and I was sad when it was time for her to go back to the US.

Then, on the day she was leaving, I got a call out of the blue with the offer of a month's work in Silicon Valley, if I could get there by the end of the week. This was entirely unexpected - I'd never been to the US before, and had no inkling that the job would come up. And by an even more bizarre coincidence, I'd be working the in same area that Catherine came from. And so an evil plan was hatched.

The first weekend after I arrived, I found my way to her address. She wasn't in, but once her flatmate had decided that this strange Englishman probably wasn't a mad axe murderer, she told us where Catherine was - a bar nearby.

As I walked in, she had her back to me. So I walked around into her field of view, and simply said "Hello, Catherine"

From her point of view, here she was back in her familiar environment, amongst her friends, and her travels were probably already seeming like a dream, the way travelling does. Then suddenly she's confronted with someone who should be on the other side of the world, and who she probably never expected to see again.

She did a marvellous comedy double-take, screamed, then started running around in circles, flapping like a chicken and gibbering incoherantly.

Comedy gold!
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 11:39, Reply)

Accidental headfuckery from the same festival as my post below
Aged about 17 at a free festival in a field near Camelford.
I was fairly into drugs at the time so I was overjoyed when some lady wandered up to me and my mates and asked if we wanted the rest of the acid she'd been selling as the police were searching people as they left.
We al sat round a fire and talked shit for a bit then she left.
About 5 or 6 years later I was a reformed character and doing some youth work for the council. A talk was put on about drug rehabilitation and this couple who were both ex drug addicts were speaking. I kept staring at the woman wondering where the hell I knew her from and then something clicked.

She was the same woman who'd given me acid at the festival. Now giving talks about how drugs are bad.

Chatted to her and her hubby afterwards and confirmed it. We both remembered the whole thing surprisingly clearly considering how off our faces we were. Haven't seen them for a while but last I knew of them they were running a halfway house for blokes coming out of prison. Pretty cool though also slightly loony people!
(teasus likes tea, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 11:38, Reply)

How long can you be in a job before it’s ok to be a Peado?

Being a dull-as-shite family man, I have pictures of my loved ones dotted about my office to help lift my spirits when the weight of the world crushes my soul (i.e. between 9am & 5pm, Mon-Fri). Nothing unusual about that I know, but I also have a nifty little gadget thing on my phone, which rotates through my photo gallery every ten seconds or so and creates a different wallpaper with each picture. It’s grand.

(Before I continue, please note that I have only been in my new job for a month or so now, and my reputation as an utter fuck-knuckle has not yet had time to circulate around head office).

Just before Christmas I was thrust into quite an important meeting (with the accounts department and a couple of directors – oh yeah baby - it was about as exciting as it sounds) so whilst getting my shit together I thought nothing of having my phone next to my laptop as the mind-numbing preperations started. My mobile was therefore happily scrolling through my photo collection, when the lovely young admin girl in her 20’s (whom I’d only met a couple of times before), approached me to give me some invoices, and the pictures caught her eye.

At this point, fate decided to fart in my eiderdown (again), and at the moment she saw the photos on my phone it stopped showing the reel from last Halloween, and the reel from when we went to the Sea life centre…instead it started showing photos from last summer, when on one of the hotter days my two young sons were frolicking about in a paddling pool, wearing nought but tiny trunks. Now these photos are innocent enough, and when the young admin girl saw the gleeful smiles on their faces as they twatted about in the garden, she exclaimed: “Awwww, it’s lovely that you have photos of your kids on your phone like that”.

Now I don’t know what came over me, as it was not the time and definitely not the place…but I decided to fix her with a stony, serious glare and declare: ”Oh, I don’t have any children…” thus instantly making me look like a massive screaming peado who was unashamedly showing off pictures of young boys almost in the buff.

Her face dropped like a big stone...attached to a large, ripe hippopotamus. “But…..erm…but….” she stuttered, mindlessly pointing at my phone as the pictures scrolled on. I continued relentlessly: “Nah…I don’t know who those kids are…I just thought they……..looked nice…” and with this I started to smirk creepily and breathe a bit heavier.

The poor girl shuffled uncomfortably back to her side of the table, her gaze fixated on me as I grinned inanely back at her. As I continued to crank it up I considered to myself how funny this would be when the truth was revealed and I began to prepare for the moment when I could finally put her mind at ease.

Unfortunately, I got so wrapped up in my frankly pathetic and wholly inappropriate 'joke' that I totally forgot about the other, quite important people also in the room...the ones who had just given me a job, were party to this 'new development', and were now demonstrating by their sullen faces how they silently agreed with the flabbergasted young admin girl…who by the expression on her face seemed to quite rightly be of the opinion that I should by locked up, beaten with sticks, and chemically castrated.

By the time I realised what was going on I started to bumble and whimper through lines such as: ‘I was only joking…honest…’ but the damage had been done. At that point I merely looked like I was slow to realise their disgust and was desperately trying to overcompensate.

So in typical fashion, my feeble attempt to mess with somebody’s head backfired quite dramatically...and knowing my luck, could end up with me being stuck on the nonce register. What was that they said about first impressions?

Fucksocks.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 11:30, 16 replies)

Oh no I've dropped my E on the floor
A guy I used to know came across a skip with some old lettering in it from a pub sign and hatched a plan. He picked up the big plastic letter 'E' and took it with him to the druggie hippie festival he was about to go to (The White Goddess Free Festival in Camelford).
Then at one point he went to the rave field and dropped it on the ground, declaring in a loud voice 'oh no, I've dropped my E on the floor'.
Cue fifty drugged up ravers scouring the muddy ground for a little white tablet. After a while he picked up his large 'E', told them he'd found it and wandered off. The collective headfuck could have powered a spoon to mars.
I was at the same festival and though I missed this particular performance I went up to the rave field once. A police helicopter landed close by and one woman didn't even notice she was so off her nut. Slightly scary!
(teasus likes tea, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 11:28, 3 replies)

It was at a festival, there were drugs involved, OK?
During a fevered discussion about football late one night at InFest 2008, a friend of mine sought to back up his point by Googling something. Fumbling in each of his many pockets in turn, I quizzically enquired how he could not know exactly where his phone was at all times.

Quick as a flash he responded, "It's not a towel!"

Took me AGES to get it.
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 11:08, 12 replies)

My ex boss was a bit of a shortarse who suffered from short man syndrome.
Every year or so we'd had a staff group photo with us all lined up like good children. One particular year one of us printed it out on the colour laser printer and put it on the office notice board.

Each week we'd then photoshop our boss a few pixels shorter than everyone else and replace the previous copy. From time to time we'd notice him taking a look at the photo.

Took him about 10 weeks to notice he was now the size of Jimmy Crankie in the line-up. He didn't take it to well.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 10:50, 1 reply)

My grandmother's last sane words.
This might actually be a reversal to the question, because it could be interpreted as - at least momentarily - de-messing with someone's mind.

Over the course of the final couple of years of her life, my grandmother demented quite quickly. (We think that she had a series of small strokes, each of which left her that bit more vulnerable to another, and each of which made her mind evaporate that bit more.) Eventually, she had to go into secure accommodation, where she lost touch with reality almost completely. Oddly, while she couldn't remember who my brother was, she did always recognise his fiancée, whom I don't think she'd met while compos mentis.

Anyway: it was Christmas day, and my parents and I paid the dutiful visit to her. It being Christmas, there was going to be a big lunch for the residents; this would involve them going into the larger dining area in the non-secure, downstairs, part of the home. We tried to explain to my grandmother what was going to happen; none of it was going in.

Aware that nothing we were saying was going to make much difference to her, I tried again. Only this time, I explained - with great patience and in great detail - how the first floor of the building was built as a sort of concertina, and would be lowered down to ground level, thereby minimising the risk to the residents.

My grandmother looked at me.
"Oh, you are a daft bugger," she said.

It was the most clear-headed thing she'd said in months, and possibly the last clear-headed thing she ever would say.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 10:46, 4 replies)

a long time ago i set fire to a friends hair
So there we are all sat in a friends VW GTi in a lay by near our local small traffic airport (Baginton in Coventry) tripping our bollocks off whilst watching some wierd green airport light flash on and off
whilst chatting complete and utter rubbish to each other.

I pull out my lighter and start sparking it behind my Gel filled friends head of hair.
He keeps getting pissy saying "don't fuck about" "guy's seriously now im watching the plane's" " enough... you're ruining this for me"

My mate next to me in the back of the car keeps egging me on "do it again do it again" and we are laughing like loons. Next minute the lighter sparks up and sets a small head fire going on my mates head.
My concerned accomplice immediately starts raining down blows on my mates head trying to extinguish the flames which were a wierd green colour as i remember it (may have been the drugs looking back).
" FUCK FUCK MAN WHATS WRONG WITH YOU TWO FOR FUCKS SAKE ? "

Everyone exits the car and a massive argument ensues whilst my mates head is slightly smoking and because of his seriousness he's making us laugh even more.
We then drive home in a car that stinks of burnt hair and the next day i have to try to apologise to my pal who has had to get his mrs to shave his hair number 1 style with some hair clippers.
(Cov Boy, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 10:26, 4 replies)

Where I used to work..
in an IT dept. we had a colleague who was (a) irritating beyond belief and (b) had pretty bad OCD. To the extent of not only tidying his desk every night, but making sure *everything* on it was perfectly straight.
So after he'd gone home my mate would move odd things ever so slightly, maybe shift one end of the keyboard a bit, etc.
Every morning he'd come in, sharp intake of breath, turn red as if about to explode, and then say......nothing.
This went on for months. I guess he thought it was the cleaners.
(localboy purveyor of pisspoor puns, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 10:10, 3 replies)

Drugs bust
I used to work for a charity, and one of the things we did for a while was respite type stuff for kids with ADHD etc who had been excluded from schools. We had two sessional workers who basically took this kid out to ostensibly educational trips every weekday until he found a school place.

One of the workers (i'll call him Dave) was bright, on the ball and able to function, the other (Chris) was a little bit more naive.
Me and another colleague hatched a plan that we got Dave involved in. We told Dave we were going to do a fake drugs investigation that we wanted Chris to go in the frame for. I gave him a wrap containing talcum powder,, which he kept on his person.

Dave's job was to make subtle ish references to a cocaine habit throughout his day with Chris, which he did very well.
When they got back sans the autistic kid, me and my colleague called them both aside and I said "look, we need to have a word with both of you separately. I imagine one of you knows what this is about. Dave,, you first" and then walked to the office.
Dave then took out his talcum wrap and discreetly said to chris "look are this for me mate, they know it's me, I must have left some lying around but they have wanted rid of me for ages" Chris stored it in his pocket.
We sat in the office for half an hour as Chris waited outside, then eventually let Dave out, still laughing and joking with him.
We called Chris in, explained that we had found some cocaine in the kitchen, and we had just interviewed Dave and he had told us "I didn't want to get him in trouble, but Chris is always going on about taking coke, I think he might have even done it at work"
Chris's face literally drained of colour.
"empty out your pockets please Chris" : he actually did so, even putting the wrap down along with his keys "honestly, it's dave's, it's not mine"
At that point, my colleague pulled on a pair of rubber gloves used for when staff did personal care, and said "we will have to check whether you have anything else hidden. You do understand that the police are on their way, and it is better if we have found everything first" Poor chris then put his hands palms down on the desk, and me and my colleague both cracked at that time and couldn't keep it going any longer.
"You cunts", Chris said.
(clinteastwoodbradfield, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 10:08, Reply)

Look at the sky.
Take a tennis ball and hold it a hundred metres away. That looks pretty small doesn't it?

At night, find a piece of sky that size, the darkest bit of sky you can find. A tiny, tiny patch of sky with no stars, planets, nebulae or whatever visible, even with a decent telescope.

Now... point the Hubble space telescope at this dark bit of sky, and take a photo. Because it's dark, you're going to need a long exposure. Try a MILLION seconds. Not a misprint - leave the shutter open for eleven days straight, pointing at a patch of sky that under normal circumstances looks completely empty.

This is what you get: panoramicuniverse.com/images/2010/08/hubble-ultra-deep-field.jpg

Every dot of light in that picture is a *galaxy*. Every one of those galaxies contains at least a hundred billion stars. And what you're looking at there is about 0.0002% of the sky - all of the rest of it looks just like that, in every direction.

Feel small?
(SonofRojBlake, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 9:37, 26 replies)

I've never met a nice South African
I used to work at a desk next to a South African guy that I hated. With a passion. We both had 'L' shaped desks connected at a point to make a half rectangle. We sat back to back. One of his worst crimes against me, the one that really pissed me off, was reading my paper without asking. Yes, I got annoyed about a simple thing like that, and yes, it was only The Sun, but by God it annoyed the shit out of me.

Every morning, about 10:30 when he went to make his coffee, he would come back to his desk, slide over next to me, pretend to make conversation and then reach over and grab the paper whilst saying 'Well, let's see what's going on in the world today then', or something similar, but never 'Mind if I have a quick squizz of your paper there'?

After a while I tried to test how far he would go. I would put my paper further and further out of his reach to see how far he would go before asking. He never did. At one point I was pretty much placing it behind my CRT monitor, so much so that he would be pretty much leaned over my head, balancing on my shoulder, but at no point would he ask me to pass it to him.

Eventually there were a few snide comments pointed his way, most involving the word cunt. From this point on, he would read the paper when I stepped out of the room for a smoke. So I started taking it with me everywhere I went.

One day I must have left it at my desk after I went home for the night. The following morning it was in the bin - he had waited until the following morning to read it rather than politely ask me on the day. Hence a plan was hatched.

For a period of a few weeks, rather than leave them behind at work, or throw them away, I started stashing them in my drawers (not pants) at work. Built up a reasonable collection - a couple of weeks worth at least. And then just left them there. For about 6 months.

Once I felt enough time had passed, I began once again to leave my paper behind when I left work (he used to leave before me) safe in the knowledge that he would read it in the morning. Only before I left I would replace the inside pages with an issue from about 6 months ago leaving only the front and back cover as current news. I only did this every couple of days, just to fuck with him a little bit.

He never said anything. The cunt.
(Jboy, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 9:19, 6 replies)

For comedic value I once led someone to believe something that was in fact not true

(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 9:14, 7 replies)

So, you are the product of your parents' genetic material
Probably not something you particularly like to think about, but you grew out of the combination of your father's spermatozoon and your mother's ovum.

Note that I used the singular in both cases: that ovum was one of maybe 500 that your mother would mature and release during her lifetime, and then, if you'll excuse me for being graphic, your father spaffed somewhere in the region of 80 million sperm into your mother to go and seek out that one particular ovum. If they'd done the deed a couple of weeks earlier or later, or if a different sperm had swum a bit faster, you could have been a very different person from the one you are now.

Your parents met through a series of fortunate coincidences (fortunate for you, anyway). Maybe they were at college or university together, maybe they were colleagues, maybe they met through mutual friends. Depending on how you define "meeting people," and, I suppose, how gregarious you are, various estimates suggest you'll meet between 100,000 and 9,000,000 people in the course of your life. So it may not be such a massive coincidence that your parents met in the first place - but what are the chances that, out of all the people they've met in their lives, they should meet under such circumstances that they were able to get to know each other well enough to get jiggy with it?

Extrapolate this one to their parents, and their parents' parents, and so on ad infinitum/absurdum/nauseam (delete depending on how bored you are reading this), and these probabilities start to get fantastically small. And let's not forget that your grandparents and great-grandparents were lucky enough to survive through world wars. Hell, if your ancestors are predominantly British, there's a good chance one of your male ancestors had to survive the Battle of Hastings to enable your existence.

I mean, if you take it back far enough, isn't it remarkable enough that our species appeared in the first place? There are thought to have been quite a lot of proto-human species that preceded us - how come we got so lucky and the others all died out? There seems to be increasing evidence that we co-existed for a long time with Homo neanderthalis - "Neanderthal man" - before we dominated and they went extinct. Did our ancestors drive this stronger, hardier rival species to extinction, or did we just get really, really lucky with the environments we were both trying to thrive in?

We are, of course, living in what some call The Age of the Mammal, (or Cenozoic for the geologists) which has lasted for a good 65 million years. (Oh, but the first human-like ancestors only appeared about 5 million years ago.) Before that, the planet was dominated for a couple of hundred million years by gargantuan, upright-walking reptiles. Some small mammal had to evade velociraptors long enough to give birth to your next ancestor down the line. And that one's descendents would eventually have had to persevere through a massive extinction, when the planet tried to kill off life once again.

There are many more steps of life we have to trawl through, but let's skip straight back to the primordial soup...aren't we lucky that a particular combination of molecules was able to come together in such a way as to replicate itself? And to keep replicating itself? Aren't we lucky that the prevailing conditions allowed this to happen? Come to think of it, aren't we bloody lucky that of the various swirling masses of dust and gas blown out from the formation of our Sun, one spun down into a neat little ball which, fortunately, had a ferrous core whose magnetic field shielded its surface from most of the crap constantly blasting out of said Sun, and which developed conditions that would enable a self-replicating molecule to develop in the first place?

Feeling small yet?
(LongJohnBaldry, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 8:51, 6 replies)

Just because you've got asthma doesn't mean you can be a bastard
I went to university ‘oop north’ and shared a house with four other durty students. One of them was a chronic asthmatic. Whether it was the steroids he took for his condition or not, he was also an insufferable drunk and could be a mean little bastard when he wanted, which was pretty much most of the time.

One night when he was being more bastardly than usual he had a sudden turn for the worse and needed to go to his room for a quick session on his nebuliser. After about 5 minutes I went in to check on him. It seemed that the nebuliser had not only dealt to his asthma attack but it had also placated him and he was now in a much less bastardly mood. Don't ask me how these things work, I didn't know then and I don't really know now. What I did know was that he was using his last remaining nebuliser capsule.

Anyway, we got to talking as his breathing steadied. We chatted about the grand old history of the four storey house that we students were slowly destroying and what an absolute shame that really was.

We talked about some of the original features, the damp coal cellar, the musty attic, and the fireplace in the ground floor room that was now his bedroom.

We imagined how it must've once been a grand old sitting room, bookshelves full of leather bound adventures, perhaps a well-worn comfortable sitting chair and side table complete with decanted wine next to a roaring coal fire - rather than the single bedded, pot noodled, rat holed, shit box with bars on the windows that it had become. This got a chuckle out of him and his breathing became more rapid as we talked over the possibilities.

We imagined what the person in the chair next to the fire might have looked like, perhaps a war widow, longing for her husband to return from distant poppy-laden lands.

An old lady to be sure, once full of life and vitality but now confined to that chair, staring deeply into the fireplace - the only remaining feature in the room - wondering when death would come to collect her and how disappointed he'd be when he realised that she was chained forever to this place, this house, this room, and that she would never leave, could never leave.

His breathing became sharper, he looked at me uneasy and then back at the fireplace.

I said to him: "Can you feel her very presence in this room right now?"

He managed to breathe a heavy but simple "yes".

I swiftly replied: "Good, you little bastard. Now try to breathe easy and give my regards to her when she visits during the night". I then popped off his lights and shut the door, jamming it from the outside.
(durtydriscoll, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 3:17, 8 replies)

About two and a half years ago
when I was still in the early part of my relationship with my current wife, I took her to New York to meet my family. We had been together for about six months, so it was appropriate. I had been divorced for quite a few years, and she had been separated for about nine months and was in the process of filing papers- so at that point we had no really serious plans, but we knew it was getting to be more than a fling.

We stopped at a rest area in West Virginia as we traveled north, and as we walked toward the building she put her arm around my waist, so I put mine around her shoulders. Standard stuff in a new relationship.

An old guy with a cane coming out saw us and said, "Newlyweds on your honeymoon?"

She quickly replied, "No, we're not married."

I added, "Well, she's married- just not to me."

Pandemonium ensued.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:53, 15 replies)

Tih Durnay, Lord Vader
Back when I was in the middle grade of junior high school, my best friend Chris was considerably larger than me, far less intelligent, and incredibly deluded. He often would choose a new hero and take on his identity.

I remember him being several WWF wrestlers--we had to call him the Nature Boy for a time, and the Narcissus.

He was also a huge fan of science fiction, and when we went to an IMAX theatre on a field trip I remember the teacher giving us a strange look when Chris sat in one of the fancy chairs and said "This reminds me of my seat on the Enterprise." During that period he even named me his Vulcan science officer, which I naturally played along with.

His longest-running identity was as Lord Vader, though a bit of the Star Trek bled through. My mom had bought me the Klingon Dictionary for my birthday, so Lord Vader asked me for some useful Klingon phrases. Roughly around that time, I'd asked my Ukrainian grandmother for some Ukrainian swears, and she taught me "tih durnay" which means "you stupid." So, I told Lord Vader that "tih durnay" is Klingon for "Hail the Lord." I then proceeded to let the rest of the class in on the joke.

So, for over three months, everyone would address him with "tih durnay" and he'd reply graciously with something like "Thank you," or "That's right, I AM Lord Vader" and so on.

The jig was finally up when one of my friends was angry with me, and immediately told Lord Vader the truth. I think around this time he was coming out of his Lord Vader phase, so the joke had lost its novelty. Still, he wasn't so happy about it. I offered to make it up to him in a couple of ways.

First, I allowed him to be involved in the next prank of the same type. I taught him "shusnak," the Ukrainian word for garlic, but I told him it meant something insulting I can't remember. I also told him that I'd convinced my other friend Greg that it was Klingon for "Nice hair." So then, I told Greg that if Chris ever said "shusnak" to him, he would have to run his hand through his hair and say "Thanks!" Greg really doubted me, but it only ever came up once and then was forgotten.

Also, I offered to do Chris' homework. We had these annoying two-page fill-in-the-blank assignments every week, and while they were no problem for me they were a huge pain for someone with, say, half my IQ. So, I took his sheet and filled it out, giving him mostly the wrong answers.

The sheets are marked in class with the teacher reading out the answers and asking us what we get. As Chris was marking his paper, he was glaring at me from across the classroom. He was understandably upset, so I offered to do the next worksheet and give him 100%. Next week, and he's marking his sheet in class and glaring at me in murderous rage. So, I offered to do the worksheet for next week. The only reason the cycle was broken was because he was absent the day we were marking it.

Last I heard of him, he'd been expelled from high school for stealing computers from the lab to pay for cocaine.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:44, Reply)

Pearoast!
Many years ago I taught myself to read and write in runes. What can I say- I was bored, and thought it would be cool.

The best part of that was when I went to a Renaissance Faire. Runes are a very popular decorating motif at those, and it amused me to decipher them- most of the time they were gibberish, but sometimes there would be meaning to them.

I went to one booth that sold rings with runes engraved in them, and studied them for a moment before concluding that they were a random jumble of characters. I moved on to inspect something else, and as I did so a pudgy, pasty ginger kid in his early twenties approached and said in a hushed voice to the woman behind the counter, "What do the runes say?"

"They say everything and nothing," the pretty little brunette replied. "They spell out no words known to man, yet each rune has its own meaning..." She continued on like this for a minute or two, with the kid hanging on her every word as though she were telling him the secret spell that would win him Deanna Troi's heart.

As she paused I sidled up next to the geek and said in a conspiratorial voice, "Don't believe her- they copied some graffitti off an old Irish boulder. It really says 'Sean smells of cheese'."

The woman burst out laughing and the kid looked at me like I had seven antlers. When she could stop laughing she said, "You know, a lot of the time I'll tell people that they say 'You're about to be struck by lightning, so please hold my cheese sandwich.'"

Together we intoned, "Behold the power of cheese!"

I thought the kid was about to have a stroke...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:41, 1 reply)

My parents have a house in the Adirondacks
which is where I grew up. It's up near the Canadian border, and winters are brutal at times. So all of the beds have electric blankets.

My sister and brother-in-law were sleeping in the king-size bed with a huge electric blanket with a separate control for each side. When they were out I went in and plugged the control for the right side into the left side of the bed and vice versa.

All that weekend they couldn't understand why, no matter how much they adjusted the controls, she was freezing while he was roasting...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:22, Reply)

My oldest son
had an ingrown toenail problem. It happened to him twice on the same foot, so I took him to the doctor's office.

The practice we went to was a teaching practice- that is, they got interns from the local medical college, and had three senior doctors who were there to supervise.

So my son gets this young girl who takes all of the information down and inspects the toe, then decides that she's in over her head with this and gets a senior doc. He brings in another girl to watch as well, and kept a running commentary going about using Lydocaine for the local anesthetic, and how he was injecting in three locations do achieve digital blocking before cutting the sides of the nail off and destroying the strip of exposed nail bed so the problem wouldn't recur.

After all was said and done a middle-aged nurse was wrapping gauze on his toe when my son asked, "What does digital blocking mean?"

The nurse replied, "Nerve block. Making the entire toe numb."

I leaned closer. "Actually when you weren't looking he hooked up a USB port to your toe and downloaded a couple of Carpenters MP3s into there. If you hold your foot near your ear you should hear 'Laaaaaa, close to you...'"

The nurse stared at me a moment, then said to my son, "Is he always like this?"

He glumly nodded...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:17, Reply)

My first year of university
was spent in a co-ed dorm, with girls on the second and fourth floors and guys on the first and third. Over the course of the year I got to know quite a lot of the girls on the second floor, and was friends with most of them.

One day at the end of the spring semester Cathy comes down to the laundry room where I was washing a load of clothes. She dumps in her laundry and says, "Man you find out some weird things at the end of the year."

I looked up from my book. "Like what?"

"You know, things that you did while you were drunk. I blacked out a few times this year, and they've been telling me about the things I did that I don't remember at all."

"What!" I put down my book. "You mean... you don't remember us?"

Her jaw dropped. "Wha..."

"I'm really hurt! I thought we had something good together that night, and was wondering why you weren't coming down to my room. I'm insulted! You don't remember?!?" And I flounced out of there and upstairs, leaving her gaping behind me.

I ran into Cindy and quietly told her what I had done, then got a change of clothes and went to my girlfriend's dorm across campus for the weekend. Apparently they played it up and told her some stories of the sounds coming from Cathy's room that night and how they saw me doing the Walk of Shame early in the morning with a big grin on my face.

They let her believe it for over a day before someone finally told her the truth. When I came back to my dorm she greeted me with "I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:04, Reply)