» Conversation Killers

I blame Rag Mags for this.
When I was a smallish wertperch, around fourteen or so, I'd found a Nottingham University Rag Mag. For those not in the know, these consist of old, bad-taste and disgusting joaks "edited" into a magazine and sold by students, allegedly to benefit charity.

Now most of the jokes were too foul to remember, but one of them was a delight of surreal humour, so I memorised it.

Some time later, I was at a dinner party thrown by my father (at the time an RAF officer), and decided, in a lull in the conversation, to tell the following:

Q: What's grey and comes in pints?
A: An elephant!

In the stunned silence that followed, I realised that Something Was Wrong in a Big Way. Thankfully, everyone put it down to childish misunderstanding, which it was, and no-one said anything to me. It was only much later that I finally understood the joke, and even now, I cringe as I recall this incident.
(Mon 16th May 2011, 3:01, More)

» Bodge Jobs

My Dad did a number...
...well, rather the house numbers were agley on the front of the house. Not wanting to drill new holes and screw them into the wall, he wadded up some BluTack™ and fixed them with that, purely as a temporary measure.

Years later after all that Nottingham's climate could throw at them, the numbers were still there. Dad was so impressed he wrote to the company, who thanked him by sending a whole batch of fresh BluTack.

Genius, my Dad.
(Mon 14th Mar 2011, 18:47, More)

» Sex Toys

Moderately off-topic but I don't care
Despite my never having made the pleasure with artificial aids I nonetheless enjoyed writing a "history" of the Fleshlight as a joak: everything2.com/user/wertperch/writeups/Fleshlight

Hope you enjoy.
(Tue 22nd May 2012, 18:03, More)

» Sorry

Dear Morgan Major...
I am so sorry that I deliberately piddled on your shoes after you had kicked me in the arse. I am doubly sorry that your housemaster saw fit to punish you for your misdemeanour. Even sorrier that you injured yourself when you sought revenge on the rugby pitch.

Yes, you were indeed a sorry bastard, even at age 13. You're probably doing tme now, and I'm sorry about that, too.

EDIT: Morgan Major was the senior of two brothers at boarding school. Git. I am amused to discover today that Morgan Major was also a kid's toy, described as a "handheld children's organ". Well, he was a prick to me.
(Fri 18th Jan 2013, 12:19, More)

» Saying the Unsayable

BO *and* wrinkled shirts
I used to work as a trainer in a large technical support call centre in Nottingham. A good part of my job was training new staff in both computer tech support and customer service and telephone skills. 

One Monday I had just such a new intake, one of whom was a man in his 40s, a large chap. To call him disheveled would be an understatement; his shirt looked as though it had been taken out of the washer and allowed to dry out in a crumpled heap. I made a note to have a word with him about the company's dress code at the first break, and took him on one side to give him a dressing down. So to speak.

It was only then that I realised the seriousness of the problem. He had clearly been living in the same clothes for weeks. His trousers were also wrinkly, and to be honest, he stank. I pointed out that for reasons of antisocial lack of hygiene and violation of the dress code, I was sending him home to shower and change.

The odd thing was that he did not see any problem with wearing disgusting clothes and not bathing.

Length? Several years. When I left to move to California, he still worked there, and was as clueless at the end as he was at the start.
(Thu 10th Jan 2013, 20:53, More)