I'm going to shoehorn
something I heard at work today into this qotw; I have a colleague who has a talent for getting the wrong end of the stick. (see what I did).
He had some work recently in Germany, and was taken on a tour of the town where he was staying. The tour guide took him and some others around a big castle, and was pointing out various features.

"Over here we have the tower, and these doors are over two hundred years old. Around the roof here you can see all these cages. This is where we used to keep, erm.... we used to keep... what's the word?"

"Jews?" suggested my friend helpfully.

"Um, no - bags of grain".
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 18 Nov 2010, 23:06, 5 replies)

ui can tpyoe..-.-..-
..l, weitjh m,y cvocvk
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Fri 19 Nov 2010, 14:58, 6 replies)

Finding Swiss people.
My unusual talent is an ability, almost unerringly, to find Swiss people.

I discovered this talent while I was at school. I had just made a mildly abusive comment about the Swiss - I think that this is justified on the basis that the Swiss are really quite weird. "I'm Swiss," said one of the people with whom I was talking and whom I'd known for several years.
Really?
"Yes."
Oh.

Since then, all I've need to do to find the Swiss person in any room is to make a disparaging remark about Switzerland or its paranoid, wealthy, and obsessively clean citizenry; the Swiss person will be the one standing next to me - possibly the person with whom I had been conversing when the comment was made. Part of me thinks that, owing to some strange phenomenon at CERN, Swiss people are actually created by the things I say.

I'm like a laser-guided St Bernard, with a barrel not of brandy, but conversational awkwardness.

Recently, I've developed a parallel talent with Germans. Not so long ago, I made a poor joke about German Measles and swastikas to someone who turned out to be married to a German... and questioned whether the DDR had really been as bad as all that within earshot of someone who grew up in East Berlin and whose parents had spent time in a Stasi prison.

She wasn't too impressed. But at least she's not Swiss.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 19 Nov 2010, 9:42, 10 replies)

Keepin things Calm like
I work with troubled youths. One of my talents is my unique approach to de-escalating aggressive kids. One situation involved me walking into a room with a kid armed with a kitchen chair standing on a table with two youth workers trying to talk him down.

My weapon, a cookbook. The suspicious child inquired as to what the fuck did I expect to accomplish with the book. I then proceeded to read recipes for twenty minutes until the kid said enough was enough and that he'd get down.
( dazbrilliantwhites has been meaning to change this..., Fri 19 Nov 2010, 13:33, 5 replies)

Behold, the Human Etch-a-Sketch!
I occasionally suffer from Dermatographic Urtecaria, which is basically a different way of phrasing "Odd skin allergy". I'll randomly get a histamine build up in my blood which when the allergen makes contact with my skin causes all of it to bubble up in the one spot under my skin, and stay there for about half hour. It used to burn at first, but after a few weeks I got used to it and it now doesn't bother me at all.

So why does this make me special? I can only trigger it willingly on my arms. So much so that I can actually draw and write on my arms out of histamine "hives". Fuck me when I discovered I could do this I felt like an X-Men, but on a limited budget.

But what's the point of having super-powers if you can't share it with the townspeople? First thing I did was I went into the office wearing a short sleeve shirt and sat within sight of the office arse-licker. I wrote a few letters on me arm, and the histamine took effect...

An hour later when he reported me to a manager for calling him a cunt by writing it on my arm I sat there with blank arms looking at him as if he was a right odd-bob, and the manager looked oddly at the cunt too. Result!
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 18 Nov 2010, 22:03, 2 replies)

Autofellatio
No, I can't do it, but read on.

Several years back, I stopped by a party late one night, around the time people were snorting coke (not something I partake in). One of the guys there was well known for claiming he can put his own penis in his mouth. Everyone demanded a demonstration.

The guy was no stranger to showing off this fact. One time at our favourite dive bar, he snuck into the women's washroom, pushed one of our female friends into a stall and locked himself in too, and started fellating himself in front of her. She was screaming and everyone else thought he was raping her, but, well...

Anyway, he finally relented, but he said due to shyness reasons he'd only do it in another room with three people present. It didn't matter that one of the people would have a video camera.

I somehow made it in for this demonstration. I can't remember what my reasoning was for wanting to go along, but I think I'd probably have made the same choice again today.

We went into the unfinished basement laundry room. He was, uh, high on coke, so he couldn't really get it up. He ended up having to stretch it out so it would meet his mouth. It was an insane feat of flexibility mainly in the upper back region that I thought only my cat capable of.

It was not very nice to see, somewhat resembling a man eating a limp piece of bacon out of his fly. I didn't like what I saw, so I turned around and smashed my head through the nearest drywall, creating a not insignificant hole.

For months after, people would come up to me and say "Hey Race, I saw the video. You were amazing!" Never mind the guy autofellating himself, we all want to see Racetraitor putting his head through a wall.

My spinally gifted friend at another point told me that autofellatio is great; no cleanup afterward. Later, he had a brief relationship with my sister, and then tried to become a Buddhist monk. Last I heard, he was telling people seriously that he's a time-travelling Nazi from the past.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Thu 18 Nov 2010, 15:05, 10 replies)

I can predict the future...
and I predict that this post won't get enough clicks to make it on to the most popular page.
(ParaSitius is an Optimistic Pessimist, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 13:55, Reply)

I am really good
at growing body hair and then beautifully shaving it into complex artistic shapes.

Photo in replies.
( Mr Nerdy-Speccy-FuckNuts Ouchy ouchy wa wa!, Sat 20 Nov 2010, 15:25, 13 replies)

I can
fart the first line of Puff the Magic Dragon.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 18 Nov 2010, 16:26, 5 replies)

I can still do this...
(...big piccies, so will post in replies)

The pics are 23 years, five stone and male pattern baldness ago, but I still have the screwdriver somewhere.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 19 Nov 2010, 14:24, 9 replies)

My sense of timing... (Deserted me now...)
Many years ago I worked in Crawley.

There was a pub I used to frequent on a lunchtime, sitting quietly in the corner whilst reading a book, smoking a cig, and nursing my pint of beer.

This pub was a little bit of a "local" pub. If they didn't know you, they'd watch you.

Now, reading passed muster, as it was deemed a non-offensive pastime, and failed to upset the pool-cue wielding, Elvis listening locals (both teenagers and retirees).

Anyway, I digress a trifle...

One day, an encampment of pikeys had taken up residence nearby, some of whom had the habit of popping into the pub, sidling around to the loo, using it, and leaving it like a herd of Hippo had been in there, crapping and spraying shit around.

Well, I'm sitting there reading, smoking and drinking, when the landlady unceremoniously evicts one of said miscreants with the aid of a mop.

"I hate pikeys," pipes up one of the regulars.

I carry on drinking, smoking and reading as the discussion raged around. "Arrest them all!" "Make 'em pay taxes" etc...

Finally I hear, "We should bring back the fucking concentration camps!"

*BANG* *WHIZZ* *POW* - Timing kicks in...

I put down my book and cigarette. Stand up. Look at the speaker and announce...

"I take real offence at that! My grandfather died at Belsen!"

Cue a hush...

"Sorry, mate," the speaker says, "I didn't know..."

"Yes," says I, "he fell off one of the guard towers..." I sit down, resume drinking and smoking.

Total...
Silence...

Followed by cries of "you wanker", "you twat", "git", and much mirth.

Didn't go back to work that afternoon.

Was I beaten up?

No, just too plastered on the free beer all day.

I know the joke was old. But, for once, my sense of timing was gold.

It has never been as good.

Ahh, I miss The Samuel Johnson.
(SatchmoR No, mummy, don't put knitting needles in my ears!, Fri 19 Nov 2010, 11:02, 2 replies)

medically dead
I can slow my heartbeat to a standstill through force of will alone. As I write this, I am technically dead. I am able remain cogent and upright purely through that same ferocious effort of will.

In fact, I am able to control my pain receptors so that I feel nothing. As I write this, I am half-trapped under a combine-harvester that has fallen through my roof from a passing cargo plane.

I could of cousre use the internet to attempt some kind of contact with the emergency services, but why would I bother? I am already dead and feeling no pain. More to the point, my head has been severed completely from my body. I am communicatiikng with my typing fingers purely through the force of my will.

And I can bend my thumb back at an unnatural angle. So, unnatural, indeed, that I can scratch my pancreas. Through my perineum.
(Brand name, Sun 21 Nov 2010, 21:19, 4 replies)

boiled or fried?
There are many things for which I have no talent, such as leaping into a bed of nettles without regretting it, or glimpsing any part of Simon Cowell without wanting to eat my own feet. I draw not, neither do I paint. I can just about ride a bike, but I'm not exactly Lance Armstrong.

However, there is one thing I excel at. I am top of the range, Oscar-winning, First Class Honours, Tesco's Finest and make no mistake. If it was an Olympic sport, I would be the Steve Redgrave of it.

I can cook rice. Any kind of rice.

Perfectly.

Every single time.

The best thing about this talent is that it takes no effort whatsoever. I suppose you could call it a gift. I can have thrown a couple of handfuls of rice in the pan, then added some water, which I won't have measured out according to any instructions, stirred it a bit, picked a heat setting on the hob at random, left it, forgotten about it and gone to do something more interesting, and then, and then, and this is the best bit, when I eventually remember that I am the one responsible for the rice cooking on the stove, and while everyone else about me is frantically throwing chillis into the lamb curry or hunting desperately for the fresh coriander for the homemade raita or burning the naan breads or dropping the handcrafted samosas on the floor, I just breeze in and there is the rice, perfectly cooked, not sticking to the bottom of the pan like a singed, sullen wet lump of emo rice misery, not burning, not gone past the point of no return into sticky mushy rice pudding territory, it's just sitting there all beautiful and fluffy like a spring lamb on a freshly squeezed morning, waiting for me to drain it and pour a careless kettle of hot water over it, and it's as though Jesus or Delia Smith or even Uncle Ben himself has magicked this rice up straight from heaven, it's so awesome.

It's still fucking rice, though. Probably the most tedious food ever.
(bagofpinenuts, Fri 19 Nov 2010, 22:09, 12 replies)

I can make hot coffee go cold
just by staring at it for a while.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 18 Nov 2010, 17:07, 5 replies)

The hymen is broken.......
Okay, deep breath.....After three years of (mostly) chuckling at all the goings-on here, I've finally bitten the bullet and joined in. Like all great athletes, I shall be starting off with a warm-up exercise, nothing too strenuous, before 'going for gold'.....probably in another three years time. I always was a slow worker, so please bear with me.

In the mid-nineties, I had the 'pleasure' of being a driving instructor based in North London. One crisp, winter's morning, I was driving up Colney Hatch Lane on my way to Muswell Hill for my next lesson. All was well with the world. The rush-hour traffic had finally cleared, I had a shiny, new motor, money in my pocket, and my next pupil was a blonde in her early twenties, who on her first lesson wore a tracksuit which would have put Vicky Pollard to shame, but was now, following a few weeks of outrageous Clinton/Lewinsky-type flirting (but minus the cigar), wearing progressively shorter and shorter skirts and cleavage-enhancing tops. Lovely stuff!
I'm listening to Russ and Jono on Virgin (in those halcyon days before that (other) fat twat Moyles came along and fucked radio up the shit-pipe). They make a little joke, play a few risque sound-effects, a crap jingle or two, they may have even, heaven forbid, played a 'record'. Then they ask people to call in if they can do an impression. Obviously they were running out of material of their own. That type of comedy gold doesn't grow on trees, you know? Glory be, my chance for fifteen minutes of fame (again...but that's a story for another day. Don't you remember me saying this was merely a 'stretching' exercise? Do keep up).
I'm a little ahead of schedule, so I immediately check my mirrors, give the appropriate signal and park the car at the side of the road in a safe and legal place. Straight onto the phone, call the number, and whaddyaknow? I get through to a nice lady in the studio. I'm going to be famous....ish! Only problem is, in my rush I haven't actually thought of what it is that's going to make me as big as Yarwood. The nice lady asks me my name, where I'm from, etc, then the dreaded, what/who can you 'do'? ''I can 'do' Flipper the dolphin'', says I quick as a flash, and then give her a three second sample of said sound-alike. (Forefinger and thumb together, kiss the crack like it's your nan's cheek, if you want to try it yourself and impress members of the opposite sex.) She laughs and says to hold on, as I'll be on live as soon as the other two contestants are found.
So there I am, parked at the side of the road, practising my Flipper impression , nervously waiting. Finally, the moment comes. I'm up against a woman who ''makes the sound F1 cars make when they go past you'', and if I remember correctly, ''a sheep with a hiccup''. ''It's in the bag'', thinks I...and it turns out that Russ and Jono think so, too.
Okay, I admit the competition weren't exactly the Linford Christie's of the impressions world (i.e they didn't cheat and took massive drugs), but I like to think my unusual talent brought a little bit of laughter into somebody's dark and dreary life.
My prize? A Virgin Radio goody-bag, which I waited..and waited...aaaaand waited for, but never arrived. I'm pretty sure that baseball cap would have made a fine addition to my wardrobe. For weeks, I wondered what happened to that bag of goodies. I found out about a month later when, just as I was about to send Russ and Jono a stern letter from my lawyer threatening legal action, I saw my postman a few streets from my home, proudly wearing his bright red, Virgin FM baseball cap.
Okay, that bit I made up, but the rest is true. I did get to nail the blonde, though. After she'd passed her test of course. I am/was a professional, after all. Apologies for the length (fnnaarrr!), but these stories don't seem anywhere near as involved when they're in the old noggin!
(Mao's stepson is doing his bit for East/West relation's, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 16:33, 20 replies)

student loan
I didn't pay a penny of mine back until 12 years after graduating.

How?

Because I earned too little the whole time.

That's less of a talent and more of an abject personal failure.
(Brand name, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 14:00, 3 replies)

i can do the splits
which i proved to unbelieving friends whilst drunk last christmas. as i hadn't pulled this particular trick in quite some time, i was a bit rusty and it took me a minute or so to do it.
getting back off the floor was another matter. my legs locked in place and i had to be physically lifted off the floor by a couple of burly revellers.
you may think that's embarrassing enough, but it gets worse. i was laughing so hard when they lifted me up that i farted, really quite loudly.
i found out later that i'd also weed a little bit, too.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 19 Nov 2010, 18:03, 8 replies)

Insane ideas
My brains is not wired as a normal person's is. Other people come to bad, mad or outright wrong ideas through experimentation or expediency.
I come up with them out of nowhere, for no reason.
Witness:
A: Polish menial workers' fight club. The only weapons allowed are ones found on the job.
B: The toilet that congratulates you on weight of refuse produced and keeps a leaderboard, identifying contestants by arse-print.
C: Beermats with Shuriken inside, for when enough is enough.
D: A cult based around Cliff Richard (The smiling one, the never-dying master. I'a, I'a Cliff Richard P'Tagen.)
E: A movie about a screenwriter whose existential epic is bought by a porn studio. A meditative study of the creative process and the concessions one has to make for one's art, with lots of tits.
F: A mobile phone virus that eliminates your phone's ability to play loud hip-hop on the bus through the speaker. If the Black Eyed Peas are detected on the device, it self destructs.
G: Car-to-caravan missiles. Mounted on roller skates, these delightful weapons of mass destruction roll under the caravan and explode, simulteneously killing all occupants and blowing it up and away from the road.
H: Slow-release booze filled gel caplets, so you can pop one at work and be nicely merry by the time you get on the bus.
I: Piano-wire-lined neck tie, for workplace garottings.

I could do one of these for every letter of the alphabet, if I wanted to.

*EDIT* Browser Challenged me to actually do it. So here we are!*Edit*

A is for automated ant-boiling robot, Roomba-based nightmare of all crawling things
B is for beermats with internal shuriken, for when you’ve hit on the girl of the ape with the bling.
C is a caravan-seeking warhead, putting road-blocking pillocks six feet in the ground,
D is for dog-whistle producing lipstick, and my big pack of trained, ladies-skirt-seeking hounds.
E for electroshock collars for tourists, primed to go off when they tread on my toes,
F is for fuck it, I’ll think of one later. What will it be? Don’t ask me, I don’t know.
G is for goldfish (The robot variety) No need to feed! Inbuilt pervert-cam lens!
H is for Horses (Best of all the animals.) I love horses, they’re my friends.
I is for igloo, made out of ice-cream: snug cozy home, well-stocked larder to boot.
J is for jarring blank-verse stanza plonked in the middle of a different verse-form for arty-farty effect.
K is the faithful King-cobra bazooka, lending new to terror to death from above.
L is for living shit, which will be the product of the king-cobra bazooka, (and the victims thereof).
M is for madman, as some FOOLS have called me! But I will show them! Oh yes, I’ll SHOW THEM ALL!
N is for Nemesis, I’ve still yet to gain one, must be cunning and suave, with a deep, throaty drawl.
O is for Orgy (of senseless destruction), the correct application of the kit on this list.
P is for Party, (When my ideas make me wealthy) It’s also for Pratfall, Blood Poisoning and Pissed
Q is for Quantum defabriculator. And what does it do? You can’t know till you’ve measured.
R is for Ricin, the noblest of gasses, all-purpose poison for business or pleasure.
S is for Syzygy, an alignment of planets, which heralds the coming of the Smiling One: Cliff.
T is for Toilet that awards points by turd-weight, bonuses awarded for texture and whiff.
U is for ultrafast-acting booze caplets, which lend a new pleasure to the train-journey home.
V is for virus, sim-card shredding e-lurgy, burning kids who play Black-Eyed Peas on their cellphones
X is for X-ray specs (they don’t let you see through things, but the people you give them to’s eyes will fall out).
Y is for Yeti, the well-trained snow-devil, protector of my barbed-wired mountain-top redoubt.
Z is for is for Zone, (Of the dangerous kind), in which you will tread if you dare thwart my wiles.
And that is my list. I didn’t start it for evil, but the thing about evil is: evil beguiles.
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Fri 19 Nov 2010, 12:42, 8 replies)

of very limited use and not a talent that would get you laid
When studying A Level maths at college a few years ago, I could tell if a quadratic equation could be factorised and if so give the solutions within pretty much the same time as it took to write down the equation in the first place.

Teacher: "ok, 6x² + 7x - 3 = 0. So first.."
Me: "we factorise to give (2x+3)(3x-1)"
Teacher: "Eh?"
Me: "So x = -3/2 and x = 1/3"
Teacher: "Eh?"
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 14:47, 17 replies)

3D ...
I can see in 3D - so bollocks to you Sony
(Biff..., Sat 20 Nov 2010, 22:40, Reply)

I have a world-class imagination, and have often been told I'm a master storyteller
And, well...that's about it really

Yep
(Godwin's Lawyer is more evil than Hitler, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 2:28, 4 replies)

I can see you
through the internet. Put some clothes on and brush your hair!

I can also survive temperatures of -200 degrees C and plu 3000 degrees C, fly, become invisible at will and create anything out of sheer force of will - drugs, supermodels, Honda Accords, the lot. I can travel through time, beat Chuck Norris in an arm wrestle and the sight of one of my pubes is sufficient to ensure any woman comes so hard she turns herself inside out.

My other talent is that I'm completely incapable of telling lies. Especially on the internet.
(rampants, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 18:39, 2 replies)

Kareoke, late 90's, Welsh field trip
Ever do French exchange as a kid? I never. My family were poor & couldn't afford for me to France. Instead I had to make do with a Welsh exchange trip. Which was shit. As at the time I lived in Wales.

Anyway, one cold Monday we were packed onto the minibus and headed to Abergervenny (I lived in Colwyn Bay) to meet my family, the wonderfully stereotypically Welsh Dafydd Jones.

Geography for you. Colwyn Bay - although Welsh - isn't that Welsh. People think I'm scouse due to my accent, and most of my friends don't sound Welsh. So we had to speak English to these Anglo fearing Abergevenny residents, whereas I'd proceed to learn more of a language which I'm still semi fluent at.

Anyway, one night, the Friday night, was Kareoke night. Or as it's known in Wales: "Nos Carioci". We had to sing in Welsh. The amount of songs I know in Welsh is 3:-

- "Don y Meicrodon"
- "Jambori!"
- The Welsh National Anthem

None of them was on the Kareoke. Instead I spend most of the evening translating with a Welsh dictionary my favourite song at the time - the 1995 one hit wonder "You're Gorgeous" by Babybird.

Surprisingly, syllibilacally (if that's a word), the Welsh translation fits the song perfectly. I was the last song of the night, and with an A4 sheet, I tore the house down.

Well, no fucker cared in reality.

So yeah - I can sing Babybird's "You're Gorgeous". In Welsh.
(rhyswynne - on every social network mullarkey known to man, Mon 22 Nov 2010, 14:04, 7 replies)

I can
Stand on one leg for a long, long time. Without sticking my arms out for balance. I'm not sure how long, because when I tried to time it I got bored after the first hour. This is a totally useless talent, unless I ever get a job as a flamingo.

I can also breastfeed and hoover at the same time, which is really quite handy.

And I know a lady *cough* who can hide a can of Super Lager in her quim.
(Timorous Beastie, Thu 18 Nov 2010, 19:18, 7 replies)

Coming first on QOTW every week....
because I have all of you fuckers set to "ignore".........ha ha WIN!
(stonersmurf stuckin' foned, Wed 24 Nov 2010, 11:55, Reply)

I can give multiple orgasms to over thirty women
in a single wank-fantasy.
(StapMyVitals wouldn't mind a bit of that, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 15:55, Reply)

I am one of the few people in the country
who can train and drive a team of oxen. They are not stupid as popular sayings suggest but learn voice commands much quicker than dogs, and after a few times of re-tracing a route you don't have to tell them where to go. It's true that they can be very stubborn though.

I'm quite proud of it, especially since I'm a girl.
(DiscoStew, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 12:25, 13 replies)

Inventing
I invent all sorts of things, but I never have the resources to get them patented/marketed/on Dragon's Den. My latest invention is a penis-disguise kit which, with a rubber band and some flower-petals would make one’s penis look like a flower. The idea being that bees would come along and drink semen thinking it was nectar and then use it to make honey that could be given to people you didn’t like.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 10:25, 16 replies)

Ambigrams
I don't post as much on B3ta as some people, but when I do it's often an ambigram - a word that can be viewed in more than one way, often upside-down as in

I've made these for years and I don't know why I can do them. It's a pretty good party trick to do with people's names, and in fact was something I did at a party to impress a young lady who since became Mrs Flatfrog and the mother of my two Flatspawn.
(lots more examples on my profile page - I make them on request when I get a bit of spare time, so feel free to gaz me)
( flatfrog Staring vacantly into space, Tue 23 Nov 2010, 10:14, 11 replies)

Ah! I've just remembered, I do have a proper talent.
I can look at a CRT computer monitor and tell if it's set at 60hz refresh rate. In fact if there's a screen set at 60Hz on my field of view I'd have to change it because it makes me feel a bit oochy.

I'd go so far to say that if an international terrorist hid a dirty bomb inside a computer with it's screen set to 60hz, in a room with a thousand computers set at some other refresh rate, I'd be able to spot it instantly and save the residents and workers of Manhattan Island.
( Ring Of Fire A petty, drooling belming butthurt retard., Mon 22 Nov 2010, 19:57, 3 replies)