» Ripped Off

Pretending to be a drug dealer
When I was at high school, I was best mates with a guy we'll call Edwin. Edwin smoked a not inconsiderable amount of weed during his tenure at high school, and acquired something of a reputation in the lower years. He was derided as "the stoner" of our year, even though there were others who could smoke him under the table. It's just that Edwin made no secret about his habit.

Anyway, the younger kids would jeer at him. "Stoooner! Why don't you go home and smoke some pot?" Intellectual stuff like that. Then, one day, one of the kids who had once lead the jeering came up to Edwin. He had all the hallmarks of someone who knew nothing about drugs trying to buy some.

"So...err...Edwin. You...you smoke weed, don't you?" he says.

"Yeah. What's it to you?" Edwin replies.

The kid verbally shuffles around for a few minutes before asking to buy some weed. Edwin thinks for a moment and then agrees. Now, bear in mind that he's never sold drugs and he's never actually been a dealer.

"Yeah. Come and see me tomorrow and I'll have some for you. Bring $50."

Later that afternoon, I'm at Edwin's house for some reason or other, probably to play GTA or listen to Ulver or something. We're in the kitchen, raiding the pantry for possible sustenance, when I ask him "Are you actually going to sell that little shit some of your stash?"

"Ha! Fuck no!" he replies with a scoff. "I've got a better idea. I'm going to sell him the most expensive oregano he'll ever buy." Edwin replies.

And so he does. $50 for a tiny little bag of oregano. The kid came back the next day and told Edwin how "totally chronic" it was. Fucking idiot.
(Fri 16th Feb 2007, 6:46, More)

» My first experience of porn

This CD doesn't look very burnt to me!
My first introduction to pornography was not in the form a pile of Swedish wank mags that somehow found their way under a hedge. No, my first introduction was far less erotic, involved more '80s computer games and was far stupider.

Now, my shady primary school friend (let's call him Martin) and his even shadier father (who liked to chase his son around with a can of WD-40 and a lighter, laughing all the while, but that's a story for a whole other b3ta thread) had assembled a burnt CD of assorted warez games.

This was about 1996, back when having a CD burner made you look hardcore. Martin came to school one day with a CD. This wasn't anything out of the ordinary, we were always bringing our PC games to school to exchange with our mates. "I'll give you 'Red Alert' if you let me borrow 'Sim City 2000'!" That sort of thing.

But this CD was different. "This...is a burnt CD. It's got every game you could ever want on it," Martin told me. I took a look at the CD, turning it over in my hands. I thought to myself that it didn't look very burnt; there wasn't a single mark on it. For some reason I thought maybe this meant Martin was cheating me, maybe it's the fire that lets these special CDs hold so much (I was seven at the time, we're allowed to be idiots when we're seven). Had Martin just given me a normal CD? I'd soon find out.

I took the CD home after school. I'd hidden it at the bottom of my bag, and conducted the journey home with the sort of paranoia and secrecy usually reserved for international drug smugglers. I put the special CD into my relatively new CD-ROM drive. It was 2x or something, one of the really old ones. I opened it up in my brand spanking new copy of Windows 95, and found all these folders. Martin had been right. An amazing selection of games.

One of them was "Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards". I'd heard vague bits and pieces about it as a result of playing other Sierra adventure games; "Space Quest" being my favourite series at the time. So, naturally, my inquisitive mind caused me to play the game. It seemed pretty boring at the time. I mean, first of all, it was made in 198-fucking-7, so naturally the graphics were hilariously bad. I lead Larry around, carrying filthy, evil tasks. It seemed to involve a lot of softcore porn and attempts at seducing women. This wasn't at all titillating at the time, indeed, I had no idea I was being a perv. It was just what the game had you do.

Then, during a rather steamy scene where Larry is in a bedroom with a prostitute who's taking her clothes off (or something along those lines, it was over ten years ago), my mum walks in. She stands there, horrified. All I can muster is a guilty sounding "err...".

I then proceeded to get "the talk" from her. And that's my dull and laughable story.
(Thu 1st Feb 2007, 8:00, More)