Remember kids, always ask your wife first.
Acquired a set of 5.1 surround speakers for the bargain price of £850 (down from £1500) only for Mrs number 5 to tell me to ditch the satellites as "they make the lounge look messy". Could have got a sound bar or something else but now I have a couple of expensive units sitting in a cupboard on top of the not cheap stands I also bought.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 17:22, 5 replies)

In hindsight
Buying a twelve pack of Durex at the age of fourteen seems a little presumptuous and not particularly good value. If I recall they were mostly very pricey water bombs.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 17:08, 6 replies)

Car
I'm a bit of a car lover (no, not in that way), and for my 20th birthday (last year) I thought I'd treat myself to a new car as my Clio was getting to be a bit of an eyesore. Plus, I wanted to impress the laydees with a swish new car that looked better than an oversized bubble with a massive scratch on the passenger door. I'd always wanted an MG ZR (don't judge me), as it's nippy, looks fairly decent and is really quite fun to drive. For a 20 year old, anyway.

So, I bought one. A 54 reg in Silver. I was delighted, and couldn't wait to drive it after my much needed 2 week holiday. Fast forward 2 weeks and I was ready for the maiden voyage to work. It was great, I could actually overtake people without rocking backwards and forwards for that extra motion, I didn't have to slam it down 2 gears to overtake, and it took corners like a beaut.

This was, until, it decided it didn't want to change gears. Yep, not at all. And it was in the best place ever to decide this - half way up a cocking hill, in the middle of the cocking road. Brilliant. I always enjoy sitting on my arse in the middle of the road, with a queue of angry motorists behind me. I eventually called the AA out who diagnosed it with 'clutch cable broken'. He fixed it temporarily and I was away. I took it to the garage the following day and got it replaced. Sorted!

Or so I thought.

The next day I couldn't actually reverse off my drive. Brilliant. Cue another call to the AA (definitely making the most of my monthly fee) to take another inspection. This time, however, it turns out the clutch arm (don't know the exact name) was actually broken. Yep, the massive thick, metal arm was practically bent 90 degrees. Off to the garage it went.

£400 later (gulp) it was fixed. Not happy seeing as I had already shelled out £2800 to pay for the damn car.

6 months in advance and I was just driving back from York with a friend, and noticed a bit of steam from coming out of my hood. I pulled over straight away and did a typical man thing and pop the hood and make it look like I knew what I was doing. I didn't have a fudging clue, but noticed the anti-freeze was all gone and the cap was not to be seen. Wonderful. Eventually I had to pay £150 to get my car back home as I was in Sheffield and the AA man didn't have an anti-freeze cap on him (that fitted my car). I was very fotunate in this case as all I needed was a cap, if I didn't pull over as quick as I did, my head gasket may have blown = more money to fix it.

Few months ago, my spark plugs went. 2 of them, to be exact. Luckily, lots of driving at high revs & speed fixed this over a day or so. Still, I replaced them to be sure.

The other week, my exhaust started blowing. Had to pay for that to get it fixed.

Praying that nothing else goes wrong before I buy another car (quite swiftly) after new year.

Soz for length etc. etc.
(Young Blood wasting 30 seconds of your time on, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:56, 15 replies)

Crapvendors, as me and my friends call them,
direct from Hong Kong gadgets and plastic wotnots and, well, just about anything they make over there, for a fraction of the price you would pay here, with an entirely random degree of quality on what arrives. I know of about 4 sites now.

Some of it is superb! Some of it is completely crap. Most of it is ok.

Biggest waste of money so far, £20 for an MP3 player that when it arrived wasn't the one I'd ordered and you couldn't work half the functions 'cos the internal hardware had no bearing whatsoever with the available buttons and their positions. It had a game of Snake but the left and right buttons were swapped and there was no down. Quality!

I just can't stop tho, I just got a tiny spy camera, it seems to take pics fine and will do video on auto-start (triggered by a noise) but won't record more than about a minute on normal record mode. But it WAS £7, so, erm, bargain!

*sigh* help me!
( ..wil, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:52, 8 replies)

Eoin Colfer's "And Another Thing"
Dodgy idea in the first place, attempting to get someone else to continue The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy after Douglas Adams died... but I'm a fan, and Eoin Colfer has a good reputation as a fantasy/comedy writer, so it's got to be worth reading, right?

Wrong. Unoriginal, unfunny and lots of other words starting with "un". Like bad fan fiction: all the interesting ideas and characters were taken from previous books; the very few new ones were uniformly dull.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:47, 7 replies)

TV Licence
'nuff said.
(stonersmurf stuckin' foned, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:45, 13 replies)

Oh arse, literally.
I wanted to vote for that lad who shit his pants in last week's Q.
Ok, so, waste of money. Let's see. There's lots of things for the kitchen with the suffix 'maker' that fit this, such as 'bread' or 'ice-cream'. The only one I was foolish enough to fall for though was 'pasta'. Never been used.

It's nice to look at & you can make it as long as you like.
( Geoff the Clownfish You know Myra, some people might think you're cute, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:34, 10 replies)

Cigarettes......
8o years old and he's just finally accepted that he DOES in fact have Emphysema and COPD and a dodgy leg! At least 60 years of paying today's equivalent of about £5 a day.....about £110,000! Fucking hell Dad! I've been telling you it's a waste of money for the last 36 years and I'm 44!

Anyway........ he's decided to cut down a bit now!
(verynaughtyboy, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:30, 9 replies)

The cinema ticket for Star Wars Episode I
Still angry about that.......
( Bamboo Steamer, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:28, 20 replies)

Sky/Virgin
Mate of mine just told me he got a "right fucking bargain" by getting rid of Sky and moving to Virgin. "Only £85 a month for the telly, internet and phone.". He thinks thats normal. £1000+ a year for a load of shit. Sky's just as bad. I object to even paying for a freeview box when theres fuck all on.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:10, 1 reply)

Men are from Mars women from bonkersville.
I bought Mrs number 5 a Mulberry handbag specially designed to carry her favourite child (a Macbook Pro !) as a special Valentines surprise. It cost a lot but she is a wooomannn and therefore handbags are worth the money (or so I am told). She says she loves it and I have received many plaudits from her female friends but she has only
used it twice in eight months because "I don't want to damage it or get it wet." Why oh why did I bother?

Punches self repeatedly in face!
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 16:09, 3 replies)

Two Words:
Games Workshop.
( wangmaster2000, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:57, 33 replies)

I build my own PCs - it cheaper and I get most of my money.
For years the amount of noise the machine made sitting there rendering or playing a film really started to bother me.

So I bought some rubber grommets to reduce vibration and shut the HDD and DVD drives up. A bag of the little rubber washers cost about £1.50p. Once installed, I'd shut the thing up :) I didn't even know if the HDD was working or not. 99.9% silent.

The next problem was fan noise. Having had so much success with the washers I thought I splash out on a new case - to do the job proper.
I spend £105 on an Antec 183p. It’s solid and feels like £105 worth of case. I put it all together and - - NO!!! - - The hard drives rattle and the DVD drive is louder than ever!
So the Antec 183p case was a waste of money. Go to Maplin and buy rubber washers for £1.50p.
(waxdart hello., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:57, 5 replies)

Start a company
Sit back, and wait for yell.com to plague you with fucking endless calls. Do not sign up with these twats, no one ever gets a return from their ads and they'll hard sell you into a £700-£800 advert. Just tell them to fuck off.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:56, 4 replies)

Hospital Parking
Fucking £25 just to have a kid there. Nightmare stuff.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:54, 9 replies)

Another car one, to add
...to the inevitable long list of car stories.

California, 2005. New job, new direction of life, decided I needed some fast car to keep up with the septic tanks and their muscle machines. But ive never been one for Merkin muscle cars, so I opted for a brand new Jap Lancer Evo 8. Problem was I had no credit history in the USA and they were wanting $36k for the car. Hmm.

I scraped together $3k and the dealer found a company willing to take me on finance. The APR was a whopping 28% though. No problem says the dealer, just call the finance guys up in a year when you have a year of history with them and they will re-finance the loan at a better rate.

So a year goes by of me paying a 1/4 of my monthly salary to this car. Rings the finance company who promptly tell me they dont do re-financing and ill have to speak to a different company if i want to refinance. The loan balance (thanks to the interest id paid each month) was still high - $30k, and the car worth now only $28k used. After much ringing around, no other company would take me with one year of credit history and a negative equity balance on the car so I was stuck firmly with the original finance company and their interest rate. Thanks to depreciation, and the plummeting of used car values in the states, it took me 3 years of paying more than the monthly payments to get out of negative equity. Pretty crippling considering other costs of living in california. I think the thing cost me $56k in total in the end.

I look back on that and think was all that shit-your-pants driving worth that?

Half of me says yes. The other says what a waste of money.

I drive cars which cost me less than a grand now. Throw them away when they break, buy another. Much simpler
(shamen Geekius Maximus, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:50, 2 replies)

I was conned..
.. back when I was 17. I was on my merry way back from college when some fellas stopped in a van and told me they had been given too many packages to deliver. They had two that weren't on the list of deliveries that day. Turns out these packages were German branded "top end studio monitors".

Not quite sure why I wanted them or where I would put them.. I think it was because it had a 'liquid cooled tweeter', which just sounded cool to me at the time. I said "Alright, how much?", "£100 for the pair" .. Shit, I only had £50 hanging about to last me the month, so I said no. "Well how about you buy one then? We'll give you a lift home too". For reasons that I still to this day cannot understand I said "Oh, alright then!" .. I handed them over fifty notes, hopped in, they unloaded the speaker and pissed off.

It wasn't till I took it out the box, sat down, looked at it and thought "What the shitty arse clangers am I going to do with 1 speaker and no amp?". A little bit of research shows that this "high-end studio monitor" was actually a complete piece of fucking shit and I had indeed been fucked in the arse, giving two random fellas their drinks money for the night.

I'm 22 and it's still in the loft.. It reminds me every time I go up there how much of a stupid twat I was.

Cheers!
(MrNorm, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:43, 11 replies)

Sega Mega CD
Ever since I saw this video (selotaped to the front of Mean Machines Sega Magazine early 1992): www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhO-4Ymgk0M at the tender age of 12, my single goal of life was getting a MegaCD. Despite the magazines telling me otherwise, I was convinced that the full motion video and CD quality sound would translate into some sort of futuristic gaming experience. So I was a bit distraught that they wanted £250 for one, knowing full well I could never convince mum and dad to fork out that much for one, I sadly carried on playing with my Megadrive.

About 18 months later at a car boot sale, joy of joys, I found a well used MegaCD for £100. After much persuasion, I finally got mum to get out her cheque book which the chap running the stall greedily accepted, and even threw in a copy of Road Avenger (as demoed here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NXGlQt7s6Q) I swear I could hear him laughing an evil laugh as we walked away.

As soon as I got it home I raced up the stairs, hooked it up and started playing. For the first couple of months, I was amazed by Sewer Shark www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1WEq3dhnnI and an arcade perfect remake of Final Fight (my favourite arcade game ever)

But then I realised the awful truth. 99% of the games were just Megadrive games with a little bit of grainy FMV crowbarred in, or running cartoons that gave you the thrilling option of pressing left or right every so often eg: (Time Gal: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY6dgxHcSEQ)

It was fun while it lasted, within 3 months I was back playing my Megadrive again :o/
( h3donist tryin' to play me out as if my name is Sega.., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:42, 5 replies)

Fucking guidance counsellors
A while ago Ms Foxtrot and I were having some pop-pop problems. Sexwise. Nothing to do with aged grandparents, I've no idea who wrote that first definition but they obviously don't have as excellent a knowledge of Arrested Development as I do.

Anyway, things had fizzled - we've been together a long time, all our energy was spent dealing with the stresses of work and dancing lessons, and look at me for gods sakes. All the usual stuff that makes a couple less inclined to get jiggy with it (everyone dances, right?). I couldn't quite bring myself to ask the advice of any of my male friends - I get enough in the way of gay jibes as it is without admitting that I was finding it difficult to muster the energy to fuck a woman none of my mates can work out how I managed to pull - so I decided to seek professional help.

I had my doubts to begin with, which I seriously wish I'd heeded. Basically I was going to cough up my hard-earned in exchange for advice on how to cough up cock yoghurt from my hard-boned. Christ that was laboured. Sorry, everyone. I'll start again.

I had my doubts to begin with, which I seriously wish I'd heeded. Is paying a professional for sex advice tantamount to hiring a prostitute? Of course it fucking isn't, I hear you spluttering from behind your strawberry cream frappucino. But that's the sort of spent, frazzled headspace I was in. I was desperate to put the lead back in my pencil so I braced myself for the mockery, the embarrassment, the bill, and went to see a guidance counsellor.

The experience itself wasn't bad at all - my counsellor was very understanding, made lots of platitudes about how it happens to a lot of people, and gave me some unusual advice. Highly unusual, however I figured that was what I was paying for - thinking outside the box (hehehe). Newly determined to remind Ms Foxtrot of the man she was first attracted to all those years ago, I strode home and left her a message to meet me, when she got home from work, at a farm a few miles up the road (unlikely? I live in Norfolk. Thousands of the bastard things).

Things did not go as planned.

Ms Foxtrot entered the barn, presumably thoroughly excited by my note promising an atypical sexual adventure. I suppose she was expecting an al fresco roll in the hay. She was most distressed to find me oiling up a piece of farm machinery in a state of undress, performing a sexy striptease and eyeing up the exhaust pipe in a most unseemly fashion.

Apparently my explanation clarified matters but did not make things any more palatable. My counsellor's expensive advice was that in order to seduce Ms Foxtrot, I should do something sexy to a tractor.

I thank you
(Darth Foxtrot A one-man army dedicated to making fetch happen, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:42, 5 replies)

VHS
When I was 'but a child' I had a bad addiction to films and TV shows. Specifically, to my shame.........Star Trek TNG & DS9. I bought every video at a stupid £17 per tape for 2 fucking episodes! A few years ago my mum wanted the attic cleaning, I found them and donated the tapes to a charity shop I counted them up and worked out that in total they cost me approx £2380 (2 series times 7 seasons and roughly 10 tapes per season, most of them had their prices attached averaging at about £17 each). The shop sold them for £1 each........

I also bought a Dreamcast and an N64, I loved them, but alas they were a waste of money. Except for the PSP, it was and still is the most useless thing on the market, I don't know why I bought one.

Don't get me started on my mum buying stuff from The Franklin Mint........
( Bamboo Steamer, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:25, 7 replies)

Czesc!
I met a Polish girl online and over a few months (including about £300 in phone calls, plus broadband fees for webchats) we 'fell madly in love' and she decided she would like to come and live with me in UK.

"Great!" thought I, so proceeded to spend another £300 in plane tickets and bus tickets to get her here.

I then for the next 2 years spent about another £1000 on flights for her/us/her family to get back and forth to Poland for her Masters graduation and visits.

About £3000 in clothes to make her feel 'special', ALL mortgage/food/bills as she 'couldn't' find a job, and about £1000 to send back to Poland to help her parents keep their house/eat/buy essentials.

£1000 in total to get to Poland with 'impressive parents' for her family for last Christmas/NYE and £500 to buy an engagement ring (she said YES!), then another £300 on a Christmas and Birthday present for her.

2 weeks later she left me to move to Birmingham as it 'wasn't working out with us'.

She still has the ring.

I'm stil a gullible cunt.
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:22, 31 replies)

Taxis
Why, oh why do I take taxis when I know that their knuckle-dragging drivers want to rip me off?

It's become such a pain that I get them to drop me off outside the nearest cop shop, 5 minutes walk away from home.

Nevertheless, I thought taxis were supposed to be a convenience.
(roysin, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:16, 1 reply)

Baby alarm
Bought one of these - she still got pregnant.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:15, 3 replies)

Tales of HSDBE and Woe
Gentlemen and ladyfolk, this story involves Half-sane Delusional Bint of an Ex - hereafter known as HSDBE. Therefore, you must expect a certain amount of vitriol.

HSDBE and I have been going out for a while, and the monsters of neurotic doubt are threatening to creep in. Usually, this is a bad thing, and the cause of many a bad break-up. However, in this case the monsters of neurotic doubt are right on the money.

It was when I had to cut a phone-call short (Had to go to work) and she threatened to stab herself with a screwdriver that I began to get the first warning signs. You see, I'm good at picking up on subtle details like that.

HSDBE wanted a corset coat. Ye gods and little fishes, how she wanted this coat. It started out on £30 on EBay, which seemed like a good price for a night of lights-on nookie. However, after bidding on it for a while, the price rose to £80. At this point in my life, I'm earning £150 a week, so £80 is a not inconsiderable sum, but it's worth it to keep harmony in the home.

£90

£100

£120 - Success!

And so the coat is bought and I present it to my beloved.

My beloved has lied about her measurements.
My beloved did not think I would buy this article for her.
My beloved thinks I'm trying to make her feel self-conscious about her weight.
My beloved is, in fairly short order, a HSDBE.

Anybody want a coat? Slightly tear-stained and fag-burned, not to mention stretched out.
Free, if you can prove you're going to use it to line a dog's basket.
Did I mention the vitriol?
(universalpsykopath loves what you've done with your hair., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:11, 2 replies)

I bought a strawberry trifle from Tesco on Tuesday
The bag broke and it fell on the floor,leaking everywhere
Cost £1.50

I was sad after
(gaylord stinchcomb Ridicule is nothing to be scared of. AIDS is., Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:09, 5 replies)

Drugs
Ket and chop. I hate to think the amount of cash I've spunked over the years on nose sweets but I'd probably have a deposit for a house by now. This is in no way a boast it just makes me a prat.

That said off to see a man about a horse later!
(Shitquest is as shitquest does, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 15:08, 2 replies)

Capitalism = CRAPitalism, actually.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:47, 8 replies)

Ricky Gervais - Science

(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:47, 2 replies)

The pregnancy test I brought recently for Mrs Arrow
£10 for two goes and she wasn't even pregnant
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Thu 30 Sep 2010, 14:42, 18 replies)