It's important to slow down when the world stops.
When the world stops in its tracks, you gotta slow down and take a look around and say "Hey! I don't think this was ever movin'! What kinda world stays still?" And I'll tell you what kinda world stays still: our world stays still.

What an interesting feeling it was to be in motion. But I wasn't in motion, I was static, I was stationary. That was my position.

And the Colonel rang up, he said "What's your position? I forgot your name." I said "I don't have a name, but you can call me Stanley." I said, "I haven't got a position, just tell me your orders sir." He says, "Your orders are simple - I need you to retrieve the golden jewel." And I said, "That sounds like a funny colour for a jewel." He said "Don't fuck with me, buddy! I got systems and you ain't got papers, OK? Listen up, the golden jewel has gone missin'," and I caught him again, I said, "Hey! What's a golden jewel? That doesn't make sense!" and he said "Fuck fucker fuck!"

And I said "I don't know if I like that many swears in a row. You could curse a coupla times but three's a bit excessive in my view." He says "I'm not interested in your view," and I said "I am! I'm interested in my view because that's the only view I got!" And he said, "Don't you get on to me about views, I gotta hundred of 'em." I thought, that's a rich man there, he's gotta hundred views. So I said "What's my position?" and he said "You should know that," I said "We're constantly moving," and he said "No, you've contradicted yourself there 'cos you said we were stationary a minute ago," and I said "I don't know nothin'!"

No, I did know somethin' at that point, but it wasn't much. It was a little more than nothin', but it certainly wasn't much. Wasn't enough to open a bank account, I'll tell ya that.

"Can I open a bank account?"
"No, you don't have enough information!"
"What if I don't have the information? Can I never open an account?"
He said "That's the system."
I said "God damn the system, I've already screwed it over once but it screws me over every day!"

And the TV remote's fuckin' broke, so I gotta stick. I don't like to swear, but I do it all the time because it feels good. Some guy comes up to me, he goes "How come you're not smokin'?!" I said, "I am smokin'. Inside!"
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 23:52, 5 replies)

Waaaaay beyond gullible.......
At work a few years ago a new guy started- an incredibly shy Indian fellow named Jaiz who never said anything to anyone, but rather smiled and chuckled away at whatever anyone else had said.

Anoother coworker('W') was, and I suspect still is, a gullible moron. The character traits described allowed us to create a rich backstory for the former that the latter would swallow up as if God had dictated it to him himself.

Jaiz wasn't an Indian scientist over here for a year while he worked on some thesis, no. He actually came from Gateshead and had bred lurchers in his spare time. He boxed as a youth and had come down south following an 'incident' with some gangsters that ended with one of them being killed and the other one being confined to a wheelchair. The heat was on Jaiz (not his real name, apparently) and he'd come down here as part of a witness protection scheme. We had found this out after we found him pissed in a pub one night and he'd had 17 pints of Guinness. He was married to 'The lovely Sandra' who was a ring girl at one of his fights. Oh, and he was an accomplished downhill skier too.

It got to the point where Jaiz would get a Christmas card made out to 'J and Sandra' and would be greeted with 'Wai-ai man!' every morning.

Length? I wish it had gone on for longer but Jaiz had to go back home. (India, not Gateshead!) At his leaving do we got a confession out him him that he thought W was either stupid or insane and to be careful around him.
(FartThroughAWalkieTalkie wished you were dead in ditch on, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 20:57, 1 reply)

The Odd Sock
But probably subtler was the one I’ve been playing on my mate Dave.

Dave has the most immaculate flat in the world. Howard Hughes would happily eat off the floor there if he was still alive. Shoes are strictly banned, and everything has to be in its exact place. I think you get the idea.

One day he announce that the had thrown out all his socks and bought twenty pairs of new identical black socks. “Now show me the odd sock when I do my laundry” he said.

Challenge accepted. For the past eight years, probably every three or four months, I take one of my own odd socks out with me when I’m going around to his flat. And if the timing is right I sneak it into the depth of his laundry basket.

The thing is that he has never once mentioned the odd sock problem. And. It's. Very. Slowly. Driving. Me. Mad.
(strongp, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 20:16, 4 replies)

Michael Palin Would Have Been Proud
Another Africa tale I think…

It was in village market somewhere near Ketama in the hashish region of Morocco that I came across the alarm clock. It was exactly the same as the one that Michael Palin has used in Sahara. It was shaped in the form of a mosque with two minarets and a golden dome, and when it went off it played either the morning or afternoon call to prayer. This was a must have souvenir.

I really needn’t have bothered though. We were travelling during Ramadan when the morning call was at 4:30 am, and wherever our small covoy went we always seemed to end up sleeping next door to a mosque – I swear there must be some sort of zoning regulation in Morocco that ensures this. Personally I quite liked being woken up and I still find the morning call to prayer to be an immensely evocative sound. Brad Pitt on the other hand was being driven to distraction by it all. Every morning he’d be cursing in his roof tent and the bitching would continue until at least midday.

Rewind a bit. Brad, who was really a South African called Piet, was driving home in a shiny new land rover. He was actually quite a nice guy, but unfortunately the ladies in our travelling party spent most of the day swooning over him – and when he stripped off his shirt to work on his car it was like being at a Justin Bieber concert. So basically he had it coming.

Eventually we’d sorted out our visas at Rabat and were able to head out into the desert. We drove south east along a series of increasingly smaller roads, then tracks, and finally drifting sand until we found a perfectly isolated gap in the dunes and made camp. As space wasn’t an issue we would generally leave quite a space between vehicles for privacy, which fitted my plan perfectly. Finally at about 9pm Brad stretched and declared that it was his time to retire. As he walked back to his vehicle he said “At least we won’t get woken up by any fucking calls to prayer”. Half an hour later I crept under his landy and placed my alarm clock between the axles, volume turned up to maximum, alarm set for 4:30 am.

Over breakfast Brad was ranting like a man possessed. As far as I know he still hasn’t figured it out and I was even able to retrieve my clock just in case I felt a need to use it again.

Length? 18 months and 70,000km
(strongp, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 20:07, 2 replies)

Many of these stories
are like something Lex Luthor would do if he had Down Syndrome.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 18:50, 5 replies)

my dad loves to fuck with cold callers
One woman called from a company selling double glazing, but insisted that she just 'wanted a chat' so my dad says, oh alright then, and proceeds to talk about wife, kids, holidays he's had chatting on and on, while she's listening and feigning interest. Every now and then she tries to steer him back towards double glazing, but dadster keeps on going about some history and politics and whatever.
Eventually half an hour has passed like this, and the woman on the other end has finally had enough and just bluntly asks,
"So do you want some double glazing or not then?"
"Oh, no. We've already got it."
"OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE-"
(quibble, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 18:45, 3 replies)

Bruising the cucumber
I've been blessed with an incredibly dumb sister-in-law. She enjoys bragging about her Honours English degree, even though my wife and I wrote all the coursework for her first three years of university. She couldn't write a coherent sentence to save her life. She's taken up with a posh young man who has even posher parents, so she's decided to cultuivate a taste for Pimm's. Pimm's is not a popular drink in Canada, so one fatefull afternoon while we were lounging around in the back yard, she offered to mix us up a couple of cocktails. I took a sip of miine and politely asked if she had bruised the cucumber. Her face became even more vacant than usual.
'Bruise the Cucumber? she asked.
'Yes' I said 'Bruising the cucumber releases oils that bring out the full the flavour of the drink. A cucumber for Pimm's is tradiionally bruised.'
'Oh', she said 'I didn't know that.'
An hour later I found her in the kitchen studiously thumping a cucumber on the counter. I had to leave the room before I began to giggle uncontrollably. Everyone, including her boyfriend, has been sworn to secrecy in hopes that one day she'll be caught thumping a cucumber by her oh-so posh Pimm's swilling boyfriend's parents.
(parkiesgonnagetagun, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 18:40, 1 reply)

Nothing to see here.
I'm up to nothing, scout's honour.
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 16:35, 3 replies)

People of b3ta, I require your help!
Don't read if you're looking for an amusing story. However, if you want to help mess with my nosy neighbour's head, read on...

I live in the ground floor flat of a block of 6 flats. All of my neighbours are lovely, apart from the nosy old lady who lives on the top floor. The path to and from the flats leads people past our living room window, patio doors and kitchen window. Many, many times I have caught her staring in at me (mostly sat on the sofa eating in front of the TV) and recently a conversation with my landlady has revealed she's a terrible gossip as she has been talking to my landlady about whoever visits our flat. One night I was parking my car in our garage and I saw her staring at me throughout the whole process. In a word, irritating.

So great twisted minds of b3ta, I need a head messing solution!! I've thought about sitting on the sofa naked when she usually walks past, but this isn't really the best idea as I don't want my housemate seeing me naked or the young family who live across the corridor seeing me naked either. I've thought about various signs, but they leave too much evidence if she complains to my landlady. In essence, your mission people, to come up with a plan so ridiculous that if she tells my landlady she's seen it my landlady will just think she's going mad, and so elegant if won't upset any of my other neighbours or housemate.

Any and all ideas welcome, and if I do act on any of them I promise to either gaz you the results or post them in the next suitable QOTW!
(Petite chien is going to do science to it, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 16:34, 40 replies)

The littlest wookie
We had a lovely Japanese lady doing a post-doc in our lab, who was very small and very quiet. At a conference, I told everyone who'd listen the surprising fact that despite her tiny stature and retiring nature, she did an amazing Chewbacca impression. She was so shy though that she'd only do it if she was really drunk. For three nights, I watched people she'd just met (including, at one point, a couple of bikers) buy her drink after drink (that she was too polite to refuse) and beg her to "do Chewie", while she pleaded with them in broken, slurred english that she didn't know what they were talking about. Which was true, because she'd never even heard of Star Wars.
(cubby2, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 14:07, 4 replies)

Sponges
My brother has a crippling fear of sponges and baths. He hates them. Can't stand them.

Only myself and him know why.

When he was a young man I convinced my brother that if you stayed in the bath too long you turned into a sponge.
Even back then he was no fool and immediately assumed that this was one of my many mind-fucks. This was only the start.

I presented evidence, in the form of a large, flesh coloured sponge that I Dad used to wash the car. I told him that this was the spongified leg of the people that used to live in the house. I even dug out a photo of the former inhabitants and explained her sad fate. She fell asleep in the bath.

I brought my friends in on my lot and over the following months made sure that my brother 'accidentally' overheard me discussing the dangers of turning into a sponge with them.

Whenever he had a bath I would knock on the door and tell him to be careful. The dreaded sponge effect would start at your fingers so you need to check them and get out as soon as they started to turn into sponge.

I'm an ace brother.
( WormuIus, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 11:50, Reply)

Chuddy
It took until my first year of my degree in Nutritional Biochemistry before I realized that chewing gum couldn't actually stick to my heart if I swallowed it. Thanks mum.
(proforce, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 11:35, 3 replies)

Terrible bullying
My brother's school was blessed by a new student joining in year 9. His name was Sam Wong and as the teacher's explained he didn't speak much English and everyone was to help Sam settle in.

My brother and his friends befriended Sam and proceeded to spend the next few months using him for entertainment.

Classics include:
In the dinner queue Sam asks 'What food I should get?'
'Chips and bastard' say his friends
'Chips anna bastad' Sam tells the dinner lady
Sam is send to see his head of year.

Sam is placed in a bin and only allowed out when he can state the contents of the bin in English.
'What's in the bin Sam?'
'FUCKING RUBBISH... and a wasp'
( WormuIus, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 11:33, 6 replies)

I spent a large part of my teenage years
using a certain insult to mess with my younger brother's head. Rather than merely calling him such obvious things as a gimp, a fucknugget, a cross-eyed badger-botherer and so forth, I took one day to calling him something that made absolutely no sense, and had no basis in reality that he could figure out.

I began calling him a 'peeler' at strategic intervals.

Now, he'll tell you that he saw through this ploy right away, greeting it with the casual disdain due someone who's clearly talking absolute nonsense, but in reality it drove my poor brother Gritty (name changed to protect the helplessly confused) to distraction.
"What? Why am I a peeler? What are you talking about?" he'd say, for example.
"That's exactly the sort of question I'd expect from a peeler like yourself." I'd reply.
"Are you comparing me to a 19th century policeman?"
"No, you're just a peeler. Can't you see why?"
"But what do I peel?"
"Gritty?"
"Yes?"
"Don't be such a peeler."
"AAARRGHH!!"

I did this for years (I mean, obviously I took breaks occasionally to sleep, or eat, or do a degree), and the effect was remarkable. For a very long time, nothing wound him up like the word 'peeler'. It didn't even need to come from me after a while; I heard where one of his friends suddenly called him it at a party, and he literally screamed and ran out of the room.

(Obviously, I'd shared my secret with this friend earlier in the day, and put them up to it to fuck with his head. I just like to imagine the scene...I'm nowhere to be seen, he thinks he's safe, and suddenly that word comes out of nowhere to surprise him. I've never been so close to laughing till I was physically sick as when I heard that it had worked.)

Unfortunately, the effect - and how often I could be bothered to use it - diminished over the years, and the whole thing was laid to rest recently when I 'fessed up to him about why I'd been saying it, and the trivial and completely irrelevant circumstances that had made me pick the particular word I was to hound him with for half his lifetime. So that's a closed chapter now, I suppose.

Still, if you're reading this, 'Gritty'?

You're a misty.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 11:32, Reply)

Capital numbers
5th year of school, one afternoon in registration, we're being asked to fill in a form of some sort
"Uh" says Gareth "It says fill in using block capitals...is there such a thing as capital numbers? Help, I've only been using normal numbers!"
"What!" Says Paul "Capital nu- errr, of course there is! God Gareth, don't you know anything?"
"Well what do they look like? I need to do a four..."
Paul and Jim proceed to do an off-the-cuff explanation of Capital Numbers ("No, make that top bit of the five flatter, that's it" "The four is like the four of channel four..." "A one has that little flick...")
"God, how did you not know that, Gareth!"
"I dunno! I'm not in the top set for maths like you lot!"
( Peapod Has returned to the fold on, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 10:30, Reply)

Messing with people's heads...

( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 9:52, 3 replies)

Madonna
Saw Madonna on Graham Norton last night. She is a hot MILF. Wish we could shag our brains out. Does that count as messing with people's heads?
(viderick, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 9:39, 3 replies)

Humiliation
Once upon a time I was strolling through the Smithfield Market area of Dublin with Willie, my pal, when we decided to go for a pie and pint. I chose a likely hostelry. "No, not that one," said my chum, "they are all bastards in there."

I had to know.
Turned out he had gone in there and as he was about to take a stool at the bar he spied a £20 note lying on the floor. Willie quickly took stock of the situation; the pub was silent, with a few guys around, quietly supping their stout. No one had noticed the money.

So he took out his Evening Herald and 'accidentally' dropped it on the floor on top of the note. He then stooped down to pick up the paper intending to retrieve the banknote at the same time.

Just as he was about to pick up the money, the note shot across the floor and poor Willie instinctively stumbled and lunged after it, falling flat on his face accompanied by the roars of laughter from all the punters and the barman. The twenty quid was on a fishing line, pulled by one of the innocent looking customers.
He was so embarrassed he walked out of the pub, never to show his face there again. Now THAT's being dicked with!
(reinvented, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 6:24, 1 reply)

Party Payback
Scene : A house party
Date : Early 90's

At a house party in the early 90's one particularly drunk guest, we'll call him Rob, started getting louder and expressing his opinions at the top of his voice. One of Rob's opinions was that gays were the scum of the earth and he would be happy when they all died of AIDS. Now, this particular asswipe wasn't part of the gang whose house the party was(he was a classmate of a friend who has tagged along) and was not familiar with most of the people there. Especially the two gay guys.

Obviously everyone else at the party knew these two guys were gay and it was no big deal. Much offence was taken by everyone to Rob's comments and a plan was hatched.

As Rob was well lathered it was very easy to get him to drink more and more. I seem the remember the final nail in Rob's coffin though was him drinking about a pint and a half of bong-water when challenged. Within about 15 minutes he had gone very quiet, rather green and had slid down the wall to collapse in a dribbling heap.

Now for the payback......

Rob was taken upstairs to the bathroom and his trousers and boxers rolled down to his ankles. A condom was then obtained and a split was made in the end of it. This was left inside Rob's underware. He was left on the bathroom floor in this state sleeping like a dribbling, shitfaced baby.

As was the way in our youth most of the people at the party stayed over. Sleeping where they dropped or copping of with one of the other party-people. So it was that there was a fair audience for Rob's reappearance the next morning.

He was looking pretty rough. He stumbled into the kitchen where he was met with a round of applause. He couldn't work out what was going on and obviously had no memory of any noteworthy achievement. Until someone explained that he had pulled last night. Rob looked pretty pleased with himself until he was asked whether "Michael" was as good a shag as he sounded. The look on his face was priceless as he was told that he'd kept the house awake shagging "Gay Mikey" in the bathroom all night.

I imagine he's still trumatised by this revelation. In a way I kinda hope he reads this as after 20+ years it'll probably fuck him up all over again. Never saw the chap again after that night but can't help wondering what longterm effect it had on him.

Length - non-existant (but Rob didn't know that!).
(whoopsydoo, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 4:15, 2 replies)

I used to sneak up behind people and touch them very very softly on the back of the neck.
They would think it was a gnat or random itch and maybe scratch it, but then I would do it again a little harder and they would freak out.
( I smash things in my sleep uruk-hai ...and I'll look low. Now where'd they go?, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 3:29, 1 reply)

A few years back I had a van that everyone would pile in.
Now this van has something going on with the aerial where if the stereo was playing and I touched the outside of the window frame the sound would go out. Something to do with the earth being attached to the frame or sommat like that. I discovered this by tapping on the rim in time to the music. When I had mates in the car I would point with my other hand in a wanky way along with the beat and could cut the music seemingly at will just by pointing. At first people thought I'd spent ages fucking about with tapes so that I could fuck with them but it even worked when there was no tape and it was just the radio playing. It really would a couple of people up as they could just not work out how I was doing it. They eventually would guess sort of right but never exactly and as long as I had one hand tapping on the outer rim of the window and one hand pointing along to the beat it would drive them crazy thinking I was some type of weird wizard with an otherwise completely useless power.
(Wagane, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 2:46, Reply)

French swear words
A friend and I used to play football over the park a lot when we were 14. One day we ended up playing with a group of 10 year olds and after about 30 minutes we were approached by a bunch of French kids and challenged to a game, English vs. French.

The French kids were our age and a little more physical in their style of play and before long the English kids were complaining about the game.

"Just tell them to Fuck Off in French" we said, "The French for Fuck Off is 'J'taime'"

After that every hard French tackle was met with a frown and a fierce declaration of love. It was *SO* hard to keep a straight face.
(moistness, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 2:18, 1 reply)

Being super smart and good at computers didn't prepare me for the knuckle dragging joke coworkers played on me.
Because I rebooted twice, tried different mice/keyboards, and cursed a few times before I realized they had taken a screenshot of my environment and set it as the background image, and closed all other windows, so nothing appeared to work.
( I smash things in my sleep uruk-hai ...and I'll look low. Now where'd they go?, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 2:06, Reply)

Alan the bragger
Alan shared a house with a 2 other men, one of whom was a friend of mine, which is how i got to hear this story
Nice enough chap generally but a bit prone to bragging about anything and everything.
One january he comes home from the sales with a new pair of jeans and proceeds to bore the other guys with talk of what a bargain he got and how he was still wearing the same size jeans after several years.
Richard ( my friend) in the guise of feigning admiration asked where he bought them from.
On being told, him and the other guy pooled resources and went and bought 2 identical pairs, one a size smaller and one a size bigger.
Then had great fun swapping the jeans over and stifling smirks when Alan got all confused and shouty that sometimes the jeans fit right and other days they were either too tight or too big.
It took the silly sod nearly a month before he looked at the label inside and realised he'd been had
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 1:22, Reply)

My mother's just about alive and she said, "Do you want the citrus fruit? Because I gotta fuckload of it."
I said, "I don't want no citrus fruit, it makes my hair go funny!" She said, "Are you a serial killer?" I said, "No! I'm not a fuckin' serial killer!" I said, "I ain't no serial killer. I killed a bunch of people but they were one-offs, there was no series." "How many people you kill?" she say. I say, "I don't know, 210? 215? I lost count! I don't like countin'!" She said, "Where did you put the bodies?" I said, "I just let them go - released 'em into the wild."

So one guy that I killed came up to my house the next day, he said "What the fuck?" I said, "Quit whinin'! Back in my day we didn't whine, we didn't get nothin' from whinin'."

I went back down to the System office and I said, "Why are they all whinin'? Every fucker's whinin' out here. What's goin' on with the systems?" and he says "Hey, I don't know nothin'!" I said, "You know somethin'! You gotta know somethin'!" and he said, "No, I don't know nothin'!" I said "How'd you get this job?" and he said, "I was born into it!" I says "When were you born?" and he says, "About 25 minutes ago." I says "OK! I'm gonna give you to the count of fifty-four! And I want you to learn somethin'!" So I counted to fifty-four, all the numbers were there, one two three four five six seven eight nine, all the way to fifty-four. And by fifty-four I said, "You motherfucker! You better have motherfuckin' learnt somethin', dicksucker!" and he said "I have." He looked in the dictionary, and looked up a word. I can't remember what the word was, but I said "Good!" He said, "Have you ever killed anyone?" I said "Shut up! I don't need your accusations around here, I gotta lot of things to do, I got Jeopardy to watch and I gotta go to my job!"

My job's quite an interesting job, not quite as interesting as his job because he's part of the System. No, my job's part of the Corporation. I went to the boss of my Corporation, I said "Hey boss! What gives?" and he said "I dunno! I don't know nothin'!" I said, "Oh, not this again. Not this again!" I started countin', and by god, by fifty-four he knew somethin', and he said "I know loads of stuff. Ask me anythin'," and I forgot was I was gonna ask him, but I certainly did ask him somethin'.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Sat 14 Jan 2012, 0:31, 4 replies)

Youthful Misguidance
I sometimes like to just throw in a lie about my past with co-workers and one of the best reactions I got was when i was out for dinner with a group from work, one of whom was a rather credulous 22 year-old (I was a grand old 29) lady called Jane.
everyone was rather impressed with my method of pouring wine without spilling a drop (turn the bottle as you finish pouring), so I casually lied that I learnt the technique when i was briefly a Somelier in Paris.
"REALLY?!" was the reply.
(sleekloon Curing Cancer one cell at a time., Sat 14 Jan 2012, 0:10, 1 reply)

I read somewhere that you can make someone think their cat has tapeworm by sticking a grain of rice to their tastehole.
And then ask them to taste their cat. "OMG! OMG!" they'll say, hilarious.
( I smash things in my sleep uruk-hai ...and I'll look low. Now where'd they go?, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 23:36, 5 replies)

Two weeks of paranoia
Back in 1998, myself and two colleagues (Mr P and Mr L) flew over to Houston, Texas for a two week training course. I hired a car for us to use. Now Mr P had never been to the US before, and on the flight we found out he was slightly paranoid about the police having guns. He was quite convinced we'd be lucky to get back to the UK without being shot for something.

While I was driving us from the airport into the city, it became clear that Mr P was completely unaware of the rule that permits you to go through a red traffic light if you are turning right and the way is clear. I turned right on a red and he went into a blind panic, yelling "ARE YOU CRAZY?! WE'RE GOING TO GET SHOT!!" I feigned total indifference, and replied "Don't worry, there's no cops around... they won't be able to catch us anyway." My other colleague Mr L knew about this rule and played along, while trying hard not to laugh. We continued doing this for the entire two weeks, winding Mr P up more and more, leaving him a nervous wreck in the back seat on most journeys. Once we went through a red with a police car right behind us... he was physically shaking after that one!

We finally told him the truth on the plane home. He was NOT amused...
( calibrax loves teh hamsters (not in that way), Fri 13 Jan 2012, 22:52, Reply)

A ten year wait is nothing compared to 16 years for "The Phantom Menace"
1996 was not a great year. Amongst many jobs I had that year was working for 6 weeks for a industry computer / IT firm in an unheated garage in Birmingham (where, amongst other things, I found "Dans Gallery Of The Grotesque") and was a phone monkey trying to sell IT kit by cold calling endlessly off an infertile list of jaded purchasing staff and IT helpdesks. In the midst of a biting rainstorm, I - and most of the other new staff - decided to congregate away from the wind in the entrance hall which had a buzzer for visitors to announce themselves. We discuss the utter hopelessness of our careers and the frankly absurd targets we had been set. One by one, we were marched in and made jobless within an hour of returning to without being given a reason. (I even asked explicitly to be told "No reason".)

The reason being, of course, that the man who had built this company up from dirt with his bare hands had spent the hour in his office listening to our conversation about his utterly hopeless way of running a business. The kind of person who, if his name was incorrectly spelt on a letter ("Steven" spelt "Stephen", for example), threw away any letter from anybody, no matter how important or expensive the consequences of that were. His ego was matched only in size by his uncomprehending denseness.

Fast forward 10 years, and I am leading the purchasing decision for a major IT Project for my employer worth millions of quid. Said firm - and in fact, the self same person that fired me a decade earlier - submits a gloriously hopeless (and piss poor) bid to provide the service. When I signed the rejection letter and awarded it to someone else, I almost smiled. I wonder if he ever connected losing the biggest contract he had bid for that year (which was three months total revenue for his entire firm at the time) with the kid he fired without even providing a reason a decade earlier.

But as I intimated, to call him "thick as pigshit" would be an insult to the pigshit.
(retroboy, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 22:45, 3 replies)

A good friend of mine is Japanese.
When he was still in the earlier stages of speaking english we used to mess with him, only occasionally though. One day there were a couple of flies in the kitchen and when he asked, we told him they were called giraffes. Later that evening at the pub, the local shopkeeper told us about some japanese lad confusing the young girl that worked there by asking for giraffe spray, trying to explain that there were too many giraffes flying around the kitchen.
(yourmumonastickwithmintsauce, Fri 13 Jan 2012, 22:39, Reply)