How Hannibal got started?
I took a year out between school and Uni, spent it living in Montreal where I worked in a cafe. I was utterly incompetent, as the following incidents clearly demonstrate:

- I ignored the clear advice NOT to leave the long-handled spoon standing up in the milk beaker (for making cappuccino), a choice which led directly to my knocking said beaker over and spraying my arm with boiling milk
- I dropped a bowl into the soup tureen, then tried to retrieve it by putting my hand into the boiling hot soup
- I electrocuted myself on a fridge door while trying to clean it
- I managed to tear my thumbnail off while juicing oranges

But my crowning glory was the time I was asked to make up a salad...

Lettuce: check.
Red cabbage: check.
Radish: check.
Carrots: "Hmm..." thinks me, "that lot'll take bloody ages to slice." I pondered for a moment and then my eyes fell upon the rotary meat slicer. You'll have seen these at the butcher: big bastard metal things with a circular blade, you put your ham joint in the chute, shove it back and forwards and presto! nice neatly-sliced wafers of hammy goodness come out the bottom.

"Well," my thinking goes, "it works for ham, why not carrots?" So I load up a handful of carrots, and get ready for some rapid slicing action. But wait, I can't use the metal safety guard because the carrots just wobble around...

Can you see where this is going yet?

"No problem, I'll just steady them with my hand."

It works a treat! Chop...chop...chop...chop chop chop chopchopchopchopchopchopchopARGHFUCKINGFUCKITY

Gone are the tops of all the knuckles on one hand. Surprisingly little blood, really, given the circumstances -- little enough that I'm able to mop up the worst of it, cover my fingers in plasters and carry on without anyone noticing.

Now OK, that's pretty stupid and all. But the bit that should have got me fired was what happened next...or rather didn't.

Looking through the big tub of salad, not a trace could I find of my recently-sliced skin. It must've been in there somewhere, but I was buggered if I could find it. I was also buggered if I was going to throw the whole lot in the bin and start again.

So somewhere in Montreal is someone who has, literally, eaten my flesh. And since they were eating salad, it's quite likely they were vegetarian.

Har har!
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 9 Aug 2007, 16:14, Reply)