Wuckfittery
I spent years very carefully levering DVD disks out of their cases, muttering curses and convinced it was an evil plot by the manufacturers to make you snap them and thus have to buy another. Someone one day showed me if you press the little button in the middle, it releases them. Argh. Bugger. Never did break one tho'.
(redexile, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 23:48, 3 replies)

I believe my mum
once spent about 10 minutes trying to get a scale to read as zero so she could measure out some flour or something. Because it wasn't calibrated it read as 10g or whatever with nothing in it, so she started cleaning it, dusting it, washing and drying it, I can only imagine this was because she thought the dust was adding the extra weight. She was putting pressure on it and letting go, I don't know what this would achieve. Cue me walking in and telling her to zero it.
(MikeyNiv can coin snatch 32 pennies, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 23:39, 3 replies)

MEN don't read instructions
While at uni in Edinburgh earlier this year, I mentioned to my mum on the phone that my can opener was a bit old and dodgy. A few days later I opened my post to find a shiny new can opener, sent all the way from darkest Suffolk (mums, eh? gotta love 'em). Delighted with my latest aquisition* I rushed into the kitchen to begin making a huge pan of chilli. The can opener didn't work. I got my flatmate in from the other room, and he couldn't work it either. Eventually we gave up and went back to the dodgy but still useable original opener.

About a month later I had gone back to Suffolk, taking my flatmate with me so he could catch a cheaper flight back to Lithuania. We were sat in my living room when I mentioned to mum that the can opener didn't work and was useless. "Oh yes?" she said. "Are you sure you're using it properly?". "I am in the middle of a Physics degree. I think I can use a can opener" I replied in overly smug tones. "Good" said she. "Because you do know that it removes the entire top of the can, rather than just cutting a circle in the lid?"

I'm still being laughed at half a year later.


*May not have actually been delighted, but then again, I hadn't been out in a while.
( MatJ LOOK, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 23:10, 8 replies)

Chinese red bean buns
You're not supposed to eat the paper on the bottom.

Mr Cakelady and I have been doing it for months!

Actually I thought it tasted quite nice...
( cakelady, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 23:02, 6 replies)

Scissors
I'm right handed (for most things...) but whenever I pick up scissors I always get them the wrong way up (not the pointy end, the handle bits...)

It took me until my twenties to work out that one handle was bigger than the other - how did I not notice that sooner? - but this was a result of always getting my thumb stuck in the narrower 'fingers' scissor handle and having to shake them off (I think I might have fat thumbs...).

Anyway, once realising that there is a proper way to pick up scissors so that your thumb does not get stuck, for some reason, I never ever remember this until I try to put them down again.

And by the laws of chance, you would expect this error to be a 50/50 occurrence, but I never (ever) fail to pick them up the wrong way round. I've tested it and noted it. For the past 20 years, I have *never* picked up scissors the correct way round.

Which means I must do it unconsciously. Work that one out Freud...
(the itch Forsooth! What fryeth fryar?, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 22:40, 2 replies)

Cheesecake
I found out last month, after years of avoiding it, that cheese cake doesn't contain cheeses like cheddar or red leicester but mascarpone, a sweet cream-like cheese. I was unnecessarily put off by non-existant sponges coated with cheddar. Genius(!)
(52486 office lolled on, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 22:12, 11 replies)

Just been reminded of this one
If you must do a pub quiz, pick your four smartest friends. Not your four dumbest and most drunken. Also, attempting a pub quiz directly after a three day beer festival is not to be reccommended. Especially when they ran out of beer on the last day, leaving you with several barrels of lethal cut-price, high alcohol scrumpy to deal with.

If you do all this do not, upon arriving at the pub, decide that what you really need is a bottle of their finest cheapest red, before drinking the lot.

If you must do all this as well, then when you win the booby prize of a bottle of white for being too much of a drunken mess to answer anything, don't think "Great! MOAR WINE" and drink that too.



It was nearly a year ago, and I still can't touch wine. Awesome beer festival though.
( MatJ LOOK, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 22:09, Reply)

My ex-boyfriend's Mum...
used to have pretty heavy periods. One day we were all going out in the car to visit their family and she'd been whinging about sanitary towels etc leaking on long journeys and I'd said to her about Tampax and how they were great if you were having a really heavy day you could double up and be secure..

Well the day of the journey came and I knew she'd bought some as I'd been with her... we set off in the car and she is wriggling a bit and fidgeting.. at the first services we stopped at (two hours later) I said to her "how you finding the Tampons they're great aren't they" and she said

"yes but how long does it take for the cardboard to dissolve"
( Sallyrsm, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:50, 5 replies)

First job, 17yrs old : Pizza hut likes pizzas delivered from inside the car, not on the roof

(McDazzle Knows not what he does, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:35, Reply)

sex education
I was 10. One afternoon a week at school the class had to go to a special room to watch those black and white sex education films. Young Spit had a trumpet lesson at the same time so I had to join the class afterwards. I would only get about half the sex lesson but I pretty much managed to keep up. I knew where babies came from and knew that eventually I would get very hairy.
Then one afternoon the lesson came to menstruation. After trumpet lesson I sneaked into the darkened room and learned that once a month the uterus lining broke down and was expelled from the body in the form of blood.
Unfortunately I missed where this blood was actually expelled. Being of an intelligent and scientific bent I thought long and hard about this and finally came up with the most logical explanation.

Once a month, during menstruation, blood would seep from every pore of a womans skin.

I was about 16 before I discovered the horrific truth.

(first post, please be gentle with me)
( spitsticker is not working on, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:32, Reply)

Doing Geography wrong.
For years I thought that Milton keynes was up near Liverpool somewhere. It was only when I happened to be on a London to Birmingham train that stopped in Milton Keynes that I was enlightened. (Although that was only after one of those soul-blasting moments of horror when you realise you might be on entirely the wrong train.)
Also, in my defence Culdrose and Falmouth sound like they ought to be in Scotland.
(Big D, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:27, 10 replies)

Having spent a day refelting a shed
with the "help" of my 4 year old nephew, my brother later discovered him playing with his bob the builder saw and hammer hitting things and muttering "for fucks sake"...
(Littlesirjohn sprung up his head and so amazed them all., Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:22, 4 replies)

An open letter to the learner driver on Slateford road in Edinburgh earlier this year
If I overtake you on a clear road in a 40 limit while I am coasting along on a pushbike, you may be doing it wrong.
( MatJ LOOK, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:18, 4 replies)

High school job
When I was in high school I was a chef in the kitchen helping make little dog treats. (It was for a company called "K-9 Krunchies") Whenever it was my job to use the cookie cutter, I kept using it wrong! I had the sharp side up and not down on the dough. Let's just say my manager walked up to me, took a rolling pin and smacked my hand and said, "You idiot you're doing it wrong!" I got laid off after that day..
(ami2weird4u I have 10 penises., Thu 15 Jul 2010, 21:01, Reply)

Car trouble
I started to notice that often when I took a turn at a fairly slow speed a "gooing gooing" noise would be heard. It sounded like an over-stretched wire, or a spring, and seemed to be coming from the driver's side of the car. I took it into the dealership and drove around with the mechanic for 20 minutes while he listened to it. He finally told me that he'd never heard anything like it before, but "we'll find it and take care of it."

Got a call later from the dealership. The cashier read me the report from the mechanic: "Customer reports 'gooing' sound when turning. Removed half full water bottle from under driver's seat. Sound gone."
(ras, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 20:55, 3 replies)

Broken Britain
After reading in the Sun that Britain was all broken and that, I decided it was about time somebody did something about it. The thought of Britain being broken had been the most upsetting thing I'd ever heard ever since I found out about it that morning.

"I'll do something about it!" I triumphantly announced to the postman as he delivered yet more gay porn magazines. (I'm not gay I just enjoy people thinking they have 'one' in their neighbourhood)
"Something about what gaylord?" Answered Postie.
I gave him a proper camp wink and went "you'll find out handsome!" and went back inside.

Pleased with myself for two reasons - 1) my new mission (fixing broken Britain, remember?) and 2) I could put another tick on my 'people who think I'm a homo' wall-chart.

The internet was my first port of call in finding out the best way to sort this shithole out. I needed to know what was wrong with Britain first of all, cos as far as I was concerned it was a pretty decent place. We've got Lemsip, swimming, gay porn mags, Peter Beardsley, T'pau, The Crankies, loads of pigeons, drunk people in town centres with tattoos of their kids names on their necks, Canon & Ball, John Venables, Findus Crispy Pancakes and TGI Friday waiters who tell you their names. All brilliant.

A lot of people on the internet were of the opinion that knives were the problem so I started a petition in favour of forks. Nobody wanted to sign it though, so I filled in 56 pages of fake signatures and sent it to Simon Cowell. Didnt get a response. So it was obvious knives werent the answer.

Next I went round my next door neighbours gaff and asked him what he thought was up with the country.
'All the fucking indians mate' was his instant vociferous reply.
I nodded slowly (fast nodding is for schizos and sex offenders) and went off to buy a cowboy outfit. 'I'll sort those Indian fuckers' I vowed, 'how dare they twat up my country?'.

So there I am, dressed as a cowboy, waiting with my cap-gun all ready to go. About 3 days pass and not one pissing Indian turns up?
Where are they?

I just popped indoors to have a waz and write this account of my mission to let you all know how it's going. Hope I havent missed any Indians while I've been here. The sneaky cunts.

I'm not gay.
(Andrew Avetoom, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 20:43, 11 replies)

Wiring plugs
I can never get it right. When I was younger, I assumed that blue=live because blue is the colour of electricity, brown=earth because earth is brown and yellow/green is therefore neutral.

No matter how many mnemonics I learn or times I have to look it up, I always, always, have to phone my father.
(Unit, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 20:35, 15 replies)

Ultimate roulette rong!
A mate of mine (lets call him "G", shall we?) is often best described as "odd". Napoleon Dynamite odd. In fact, he even looks a little like Napoleon Dynamite too, but I digress. It would take too long to go into all the many, varied ways this person is odd, so just try to imagine having Napoleon Dynamite as a friend..... a good guy, but weird.

Occasionally (very occasionally) he can be persuaded to go to the pub for a game of snooker. One such night, around two or three years back, we discovered a new games machine had been installed...... roulette! Now, unlike the usual rigged bandit, this machine was basically an automated game of roulette, which gave out a reciept for winnings which had to be cashed at the bar...... suffice to say it lasted about a week before they got rid of it because it was shitting money out like a senokot addict with food poisoning.

But this was the first night the machine was there, so we were intrigued. "G" wandered over and started playing it. We were in the middle of a game of snooker, so I was slightly annoyed, but he came back with a tenner (although how he did that is a mystery, as you shall soon see.....)

We finished our game and he started drifting back towards the machine. Sniffing an opportunity to make some money out of G's obvious idiot-savant ability at roulette, I gave him a pound to play for me.... we'd put £2 and split the winnings. It would probably keep us in snooker lights for the rest of the year, it was perfect.

So he inserted the coins and made his selections...... £1 on red, £1 on black. And hit spin.

I laughed. It was a good joke, thought I. He seemed genuinely relieved when he got our £2 back, exclaiming "Well, we never won anything, but we never lost anything either!" before again placing £1 on each colour and hitting spin.

After four times, I tried to explain that the only way we wouldn't get our £2 was if he landed on 00. He looked puzzled. "But I've not lost anything yet!".

"I know" said I, patiently, "but you've not won anything either, have you. You CAN'T win anything this way." He again placed the same bets.

"Look" I said, "Unless the ball lands on double zero, it's BOUND to land on either a black or red, isn't it?"

"Aye" he said, but I knew he wasn't sure.

"And if it does, we'll lose the pound we placed on the other colour, but win a pound on the colour we chose, meaning we'll always get £2 back. See?"

"Ooooooh!" he said, the penny finally dropping, "I get ye! I see what you mean!"

"You'll have to play it a bit more risky if you want to win anything" I said, and with that, he turned back to the machine, a new resolve etched on his face, and placed a far riskier bet.......

50p on red, 50p on black, 50p on odd and 50p on even.

I swear to God I don't know how he remembers to dress himself most days.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 20:10, 7 replies)

Swearing fail
As a young teen I happened to learn how to say a wide array of bad things in various languages. It gave me the ability to curse like a sailor in front of my mom and other adults, secure in the knowledge that they had no idea what I was saying. This led to a habit of cursing in French, Italian, Spanish, Russian and German on a regular basis.

As an older teen I worked in an amusement park. You're supposed to be polite all the time to the customers, of course, so if someone really pissed me off I'd say a few words in something other than English.

One day a guy did something that angered me (I don't remember what) and I muttered "Chingada tu madre, maricone." A passerby understood Spanish and reacted predictably.

Bad things ensued.

Just because it's not commonly used doesn't mean that others won't understand a foreign language.
( Wanderer, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 19:56, 1 reply)

Italian speaker's LOL only
Hanging out with a group of cousins and their friends in Sicily one evening, someone asked if i could speak any Italian yet. Modestly, I held my thumb and forefinger about an inch apart and replied, in a clear voice, "un porcino" which, roughly translated, means 'mushroom'. Hilarity ensued.

(Of course, I meant to say "un poccino" which means "a little". By uncanny coincidence this was exactly how much I'd had to drink that night.)
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 19:42, 3 replies)

Women...
Oh! DONT'T trust anything they say or do! *slaps face, red with embarressment*


This may contain hint of bitterness...
(Rebooted Frazer Smoothly scrolling since, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 19:26, 6 replies)

My pearoast - illness abounds
My former student pal was ill constantly after leaving home for the first time. In fact all of his 5 flat mates kept on having periods of nasty tummy bugs, diahorrea (yeah spelled correctly first time sans google) and vomiting bugs. No doctor could cure their symptoms without them returning a few days later. No-one was very happy, some left.
The solution was, gaggingly,found upon a sudden return home by my pal - only to find his youngest and most clueless co-habitant washing up using the toilet brush just as he had seen his mom do the same in her kitchen.
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 18:59, 10 replies)

For years I opened wine bottles by screwing in the corkscrew and trying to pull it straight out through manual force
not by putting the little arms down. They just got in the way.
( AgentMuu hentai coordination, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 18:46, 2 replies)

real faceslap moment over pool
many years ago, on holiday with my family, my sister and i decided to have a game of pool. i'd only learned how to play it the day before, but i wasn't too bad at it.
now, being left-handed(or cack-handed, as my mother calls it), i hold the cue differently to my right-handed siblings. this wasn't bothering me or spoiling my game. in fact, i was actually winning.
suddenly, my arse of a brother turns up. "you're doing it wrong, you fat spaz!" he yells, trying to snatch the cue off me. "fuck off!" i retorted, "i'm winning!" undeterred, he continued to wrestle the cue off me.
there now follows two accounts of what happened next:

MY VERSION a.k.a the truth.
after finally wrestling the cue from my pudgy mitt, my evil-tempered hellspawn of a brother hit me in the side of the head with it, missing my eye by less than half a centimetre. much pain ensued.

MY BROTHER'S VERSION a.k.a bollocks
"honest, mum, i was trying to help her, but she wouldn't let go of the cue. i could see it bendsing, so i let it go and it sprang back and hit her in the face!" despite the fact that the positioning of the marks on my face and head clearly showed that i'd been whacked side-on, not hit by a backfiring cue, my parents decided to accept the bullshit version entirely. i spent the rest of the holiday with a black eye and red tramlines up the side of my head.
doing it wrong or not, i'd never ask for his help.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 18:45, Reply)

Banoffee Pie
I was 22 before I realised that Banoffee wasn't a town in Austria famous for its delicious sweets
(sarahahaha, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 18:33, 2 replies)

Geriatric geek guidance
Now I'm a geek. I'm proud of the title and I've worked in the IT industry for nearly 20 years. But until recently to our mum my job description was “he does something with computers.”

But in recent years she'd been thinking about upgrading from her Amstrad PCW (I'm not kidding) to something that would allow her to use “some of the internets,” as she'd heard you could play bridge online. Mum is to bridge what women are to Warren Beatty's fingers. So for her 60th I gave her a laptop. We don't go big on presents in our family, £20 maximum, but I'd upgraded and had enough doorstops so why not?

There was one problem, Ihadn't used it for a while and couldn't get the sound to work on the thing. The sound card seemed to be working, so I replaced the drivers. No joy. Spent a few hours (and a few beers) running diagnostics to check that the thing really was functioning and they came back all clear. Had another beer and decided on the Aliens Approach and just wiped the system and reinstalled from scratch. Call it an hour's work, with that again updating all the software. Would it play? Would it buggery.

So eventually I ran out of time and had to give it to her crippled. She was still thrilled to get a laptop but the failure rankled. What was I doing wrong?

The next night I got a call from mum.

“I've solved that sound problem by the way,” she faux-casually dropped into the end of a 15 minute monologue on her calendar of events for the next month and previous fortnight. I'm usually on autopilot by this time, or carrying on a game of Civ2 on mute, but that statement was the mental equivalent of a high pressure hose up the jacksie.

“How,” I spluttered.

“There's this little volume knob on the side and it was turned down. I'm surprised you missed that, working with computers and all,” came the oh-so smug response.

There are faceslap moments and then there are the other times when you just want to headbutt the nearest wall until sweet oblivion comes. For every Christmas ever after we have a new tale of the geek who did it wrong.
(paxvobiscum, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 18:30, 4 replies)

Culinary Cnut
Being a bit of a gastro-snob I have maintained for years that black olives are superior in every way to those nasty bitter green ones and only a prat would ever grow the greenies. About two years ago I learned from Rick Stein's telly programme that the blacks are ripe green ones. My face? Red as a ripe anything else.
(Captain Spod, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 18:12, 5 replies)

In which my housemate learns about the magic of electricity
One day I shall write a webcomic called "The Hilarious Adventures of M****** B*******" (name censored as he works in the interwebs and would probably find this post) about my erstwhile Merkin housemate. It will be completely unbelievable and no-one would ever credit it, but every word would be the absolute truth of the six months we shared a flat in Bethnal Green Road. The following story takes place about midway through the overall narrative, but is worth recounting.

At this point we'd been cohabiting for about four months. I was staying over with the missus one night when I got a call from the sharp-witted Sherman at about 10pm.

"Hey man, do you know where the fusebox is in our flat?" he enquired.

My heart immediately sank; I just knew what followed was going to be a tale of fuckwittery of the highest order, nevertheless I persevered and asked him why he needed to locate such a thing. He explained that the bulb in his room had gone - indeed it hadn't worked since we moved in - and in attempting to remove it he'd managed to shear off most of the outer glass bulb, leaving only the metal bit stuck in the socket and the pointy glass bits sticking out. Consulting that wisest of oracles, teh interwebs, he'd learned that the best way to remove a lightbulb in such a state of disrepair was to take a potato, cut it in half, jam the half-potato onto the protruding glass bits and twist, hopefully freeing the bayonet and releasing the bulb from the socket. Unfortunately we didn't have any potatoes in the kitchen, so our plucky Septic chose the next best thing - an onion - which didn't work because due to the, well, circular nature of a cut onion the spiky glass bits were just going round and round inside it.

Undeterred, he repaired to the Ikea toolkit sitting on top of the cupboard in the living room and extracted the pliers. Reasoning that they would give him the grip that the onion failed to achieve, he stuck them into the socket, got a hold of the protruding glass bits and twisted. The resulting flash melted the (metal) ends off the pliers and threw him across the room; our American't hero's life was saved only by virtue of the fact that the pliers had rubber handles. At this point he called me - having blown all the fuses for the flat he was sitting in pitch darkness unable to see anything except for a single, massive, bright blue spot in front of both eyes.

Did I mention he had a first from Harvard in computer science? That he spent a year studying electronics there? Lectured for a year in robotics? Yet they never taught him to turn a light switch off before inserting metal items?
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 17:50, 1 reply)

Sham Pain.
A group of friends and myself were celebrating the end of exams (being the tax dodging wankery student twunts we are) and it fell upon me to open the bottle of bubbly I'd bought as a token of celebration. It was a bottle of cheap tescos own brand and all of that kind of lark, but it was more the fact that we were drinking champagne like real people must do to celebrate stuff. So anyway, I'd never actually opened a bottle of champagne before. I'd never paid much attention to it being opened at family do's and whathaveyou, more concerned with getting at the booze itself. I was rather trolleyed and simply saw a corked bottle. A cork. Obvious thing to do, Cork screw. Sorted. I pierced the cork and the bottle started to fizz. Rapidly.

What ensued was chaos reminiscent of basra. I'd drenched myself in champagne as the cork (and corkscrew) pinged out of the bottle and clobbered me in the face. I don't think my friends minded the loss of champagne just to see me come in with a bloody nose and covered in champers. Good times.

I finished the bottle by myself.
(spiderslut, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 17:30, 1 reply)