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)

light switch
I'm sure your American housemate was a hazard to life and limb in many ways, but it is only fair to point that in the USA light switches work the opposite to in the UK. Maybe this had some bearing on events!
(jethou1, Thu 15 Jul 2010, 23:10, closed)