» Pointless Experiments

There are many...
1. Ironing bread to make toast because the grill is a temporary grease reserve makes for a fabricy tasting toast.

2. Attempting to take a lightbulb out but leaving the screwy bit in to leave your friend in darkness in halls of residence will lead to everyone in the hall being in darkness if the light is subsequently turned on.

3. A dustbin full of water is very heavy and uncontrollable when lifting it over a barrier at height with a couple of friends. The bin missed the victim. Some of the water didn't. The clean up took hours.

4. Bike-fu should only be attempted by experts and even then away from expensive fencing.

5. Cats do not like English mustard.

6. Hiding in a dustbin to scare a friend only works if you manage to stay awake.

7. Starving yourself for a day before going to an "all-you-can-eat" restaurant doesn't mean you can eat more. In fact, you eat less and get a lower value for money.
(Thu 24th Jul 2008, 13:03, More)

» Going Too Far

Hall life...
Back when I was in halls at uni in 1994/95 there was a running (friendly) fued between myself and another lad on my corridor. It all started one Friday when I had the day off and had a big lie in after a heavy night out. I could hear something going on outside my room, but thought nothing of it as I was in a semi-comatic state. As I slept later and later I could hear people talking and sounding quite repulsed.

I continued to lie there, the hangover wearing off ever so gradually. Eventually, a combination of needing the toilet, curiousity and the fact that it had started to get dark again made me think it was about time to get up.

I opened my door and walked out of my room....stopped, and looked back at what had caught my eye. Pinned to my door was a skin of a rodent, most likely a rat. What really got me was that the ears were still attached to this carcass.

1-0 to them.

I needed revenge, and I needed it quick. Two nights later on the Sunday night I found myself with the opportunity to sneak into his room and think of something on the spot....so, I turned his light off and decided to unscrew it...not just from the light fitting, but the actual glass from the screw part with the hope that it would explode when he turned on.

Nice idea, except he came into the room and turned the light on just as I let go of it. It didn't explode, thankfully, put it did make a popping noise....and shorted out the whole corridor.

So, still 1-0.

He made it 2-0 when we were driving home from a pizza place one night a few weeks later. Knowing full well I hate going very fast in cars he managed to hit 80mph in a 30mph zone, and I was totally crapping myself.

Then he made it 3-0 a few days later by ramming a university sign under my door whilst I was out, which meant I had great trouble opening it.

I needed a big revenge....and I carried on with the signs theme. I wanted to stitch him up and get him in trouble. So, one night I was out and I proceeded to unscrew several signs from several pubs and businesses in the city centre. The intention was to take them home, tip off the pubs and businesses that he'd got them and then sneak into his room and hide them.

Best laid plans and all that - I'd even got a friend to help me lug the plethora of signs back (12 in total). Except we'd decided to walk, got spotted by the police, took the ill advised decision to run away and hide after dropping the signs. After crouching in some bushes for a good few minutes, we were eventually hauled out by a couple of burly coppers and dragged into separate vans and questioned about AN ARMED ROBBERY (!!!) for the next three hours before it became apparent that we were indeed just students messing around.

There were no more jokes from either party after that, just laughs at how stupid I'd been. Oh well.
(Mon 13th Nov 2006, 19:23, More)

» Evil Pranks

I'm generally not one for evil pranks...
But my evil streak shone through one lazy summer evening back in 1996. My and my sister were bored shitless sat at home - so bored we were watching a Fencing tournament on Eurosport. Yes, that kind of evening - skint due to not being arsed to find a job during the long University holiday period and bored because it was too warm to do anything.

The parents were out at some fancy dinner and we simply had one task to perform....to detail that task would give the game away. But, the trick would have served the parents right for not digging into their pockets to spare some cash for a pair of bored students to go out and have a night out.

Or so we thought.

As the plan was concocted in our minds, we both pretty much voiced the plan at the same time.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked my sister.

"If it involves what Mum asked us to do, then, yes....I think I am" she replied.

"How many? 5?" I queried.

"No....all 6...no, wait...yeah, just 5" she replied.

"No, got to be all 6".

Fast forward a few hours when the parents return - my sister and I have decimated my Dad's beer supply and we're onto the spirits. We're in the living room watching some awful horror film on Sky when we both her this yelp. Then a whoop! Then a "We've won the fucking lottery!!!!"

At that instant, I knew we should have settled for 5 numbers rather than 6. It wasn't even funny - I felt sick to my stomach that I'd tricked my poor mum into thinking she'd won a share of £10m all because she wouldn't lend/give me £20 to go out.

The fallout was considerable. I sheepishly went to bed whilst my Dad consoled my mum and called us "ungrateful little shits". I sneaked off the next morning back to Uni before anyone had got up and it was a whole two weeks before my Mum would speak to me and accept an apology. She accepted it, but said that the next time she saw me that I better make a "proper fucking apology, face to face - like a man".

My sister managed to crawl out of her spot with a "I told him not to do all 6" and bought her some flowers. Instant fucking forgiveness!
(Fri 14th Dec 2007, 11:14, More)

» Tales of the Unexplained

A shout in my head...
Several years ago when I was working in a job I hated - a job I hated every single minute of, including the bus journey and the walk to and from the bus stop. A job that made me less aware of surroundings.

Every night I would cross the busy road - ring road busy with plenty of rush hour idiots - if there was no traffic and the red man was on I would be still wary about crossing....but, as soon as the green man came on I'd cross without looking knowing that the cars would all be stopping anyway.

Except one day I was waiting for the green man to come on. When it changed I gave it a couple of seconds and was just about to step into the road when I heard this voice in my head that sounded like my sister just shouting "STOP!!!!".

I stopped....and no sooner had I stopped when a Transit van zoomed past at gone 50mph right in the road I would have stepped out in. I would have been almost certainly killed instantly.

I've spoken to her about this and she doesn't recall anything - no sudden shout in her head, no sudden flash of me dying - nothing. It was definitely her voice though and although I'm still here to tell the story, I'm still freaked out about it.
(Thu 3rd Jul 2008, 15:33, More)

» Accidental animal cruelty

A History of Violence......
Well, not quite....more like sporadic accidental cruelty and the odd moment of pure evil (reserved only for insects and molluscs mind you).

I'll get the evil out of the way first.
Slugs - I pour salt around them and leave them the choice of offing themselves.
Flies - boiled alive, batted with tennis rackets, pinned down....you name it. Occasionaly I've pushed them into Spider's webs and watched with glee as they were slowly cocooned.
Ants - boiled, burnt and cemented alive.

Now for some accidental cruelty:

Hamster #1 - Fluff. Fluff was a nice hamster, bought by my parents from an old dear who could no longer look after him, he was presented to me on my 12th birthday in his, well, birdcage. I take care of him, clean his cage out day in day out and let him out to roam once in a while. Except one day I didn't shut my door and he ended up in the mouth of the family cat. Thankfully I got to the cat before he was torn to pieces.

Later on in his short life he was in his hamster ball....again, I left my door open. The cat left him alone this time, but in his blissful state of happiness he totally failed to notice the 15 steps in front of him as he bounced his way down. He survived that, but not for too long. Whether it was age or fright that killed him, I do not know.

Hamster #2 - Truffles. Yeah, a pretty awful name I'll admit, but Truffles was one of those Golden Hamsters that turn viscious the moment they hit puberty, which is pretty much as soon as you get them home. He bit me so much that I actually had to use him as an excuse for not doing my homework once "Sir, my hamster bit my pen gripping fingers and I could not apply pressure to write".

Thing is, Truffles was a tough cookie - determined to live every second of it's allocated life on Earth...and more. 5 years later, by which I kept my fingers far away from him and cleaned his cage out once a month and had no social interaction with the little shit other than to feed him and replenish his water every few days.

You can probably guess that this lead to a situation like that guy that lay dead in his flat in Birmingham for 6 years. I just didn't think he was hungry as the water was going down (leaky bottle....) and he regularly stored food in his bedding. The smell wasn't that bad - a bit like chicken a week past it's use by date, according to my mum who found his corpse as I was too busy with exams to clean his cage out. He could have been dead for anything between one month and one day.....
(Fri 7th Dec 2007, 16:02, More)