» Have you ever paid for sex?

Cheap, fast and too soon.
When I was about 9 or 10 some of my classmates came up with a plan where if we each put some money in and came up with $5 one of the fairly hot girls in the class would lift her shirt and show us her tits. Of course we all pitched in immediately! When the shirt came up we realized our fatal error, which was in forgetting that 9 year old girls don't have anything to look at under the shirt yet. In fact with her shirt pulled up over her head you couldn't tell her from us.

Oh well. If we'd invested that money in stocks instead we'd all be retired now.
(Sat 21st Jan 2006, 2:34, More)

» Desperate Times

caloric calculus
When I was attending university I decided to take a year off midstream, out of general boredom and confusion. I went off to live on my own. Unfortunately, the "internship" I had arranged turned out to involve zero interesting work and less pay. I began looking around for a real job, but was thoroughly broke. At this point I came up with a new food shopping plan, which involved figuring out which foods contained the most calories per dollar. You may not be surprised to discover that my diet consisted of candy bars for some time; Mars for lunch, Milky Way for dinner. I could have easily asked my family for money, but for some time pride prevented me.

Until the day I found myself in the grocery aisle with a 5lb bag of sugar, marvelling at what a bargain it was and wondering whether it would be better to eat it with a spoon or dissolve it in water to drink. I called my mother later that evening for a handout.
(Sat 17th Nov 2007, 1:59, More)

» DIY disasters

Dad's Barbell
My own DIY disasters are legion, but most of them are very complex, irritating and boring so I can't think of a particularly worthy one. My long departed father however was a master of simple, majestic mistakes.

We were living overseas when Dad decided he needed a bit of exercise. He looked around for some weight sets but they all were very overpriced, and being a cheap bastard (an inheritable trait, apparently) decided why not make his own. He returned home with a bag of concrete mix. He found a sturdy bit of metal pipe somewhere and two paint cans to serve as the ends. He mixed up enough concrete to fill one can, set it under the center of the patio table (the type with a hole in the middle for an umbrella) and used the hole to position the pipe upright in the wet concrete.

The next evening on returning from work he tipped the table up, pulled the bar and first can out and satisfied with the result mixed up the second batch of concrete. This filled can number two, and the previous night's assembly was upended and positioned via the handy hole in the table to set up overnight.

The following evening on returning from work he borrowed a nieghbor's hacksaw and with much cursing sawed through the metal pipe, as having a barbell as a permanent centerpiece of the patio table did not appeal to him.

He was not the best handyman, but he was a wonderful man. I wish he were still around.
(Sun 6th Apr 2008, 1:29, More)

» Political Correctness Gone Mad

secret cabal etc etc.
Many people don't know that the genre of music called "the blues" was originally called "the jews." A bunch of over-sensitive twats got riled about it and had it all changed. Of course, lines like "can't lose these lowdown dirty jews" were a bit offensive, but "you left me alone with these jews" isn't so bad and "woke up this morning, jews all around my bed" could be seen as quite positive. But as you know, with jews controlling the entertainment industry (via the jewniversities and jewnited nations, etc.) they were able to completely change this important musical form. Find an old bluesman, take him aside and say "hows it going, jewsman" and the whole sordid story will pour out. Really tragic.
(Tue 27th Nov 2007, 13:45, More)

» Crap meals out

Early turd special
We'd never been to what was supposedly the best joint in the area. Very expensive you see. But when my inlaws were visiting they noticed there was a reasonable fixed price,, early bird special if you came in between 6 and 7. They offered to treat so why not.

I won't go into the non-existent "service", etc. Here, however, are the dishes we enjoyed.

Mother-in-law: Roasted pork chop on a bed of fall vegetables. The roasting must have been done with a blowtorch, as the meat in question had an almost supernatural quality being dehydrated and burnt on the outside and nearly raw on the interior. This effect is diffucult to achieve in a chop apparently sliced with a laser to a generous centimeter or so of thickness. The "bed" of vegetables could be found under this delicacy, with a bit of looking about.

My wife: Shrimp with penne pasta in a cream sauce. Oh look, theres the shrimp. He looks thin. Probably he lost all that weight during the cooking process, which must have been lengthy. Too bad they used all the energy on the shrimp, as the pasta might have used cooking too....

Father in law: Steak. Ahh, a simple man. You'd think with a simple order like that all would be well. He did better than the rest of us I suppose, enjoying what may have been a full ounce of something that you could actually chew. I think there may have been a potato as well.

Myself: carpaccio. In this case, three dried out bits of flesh rolled in an entire box of salt, carefully arranged on a wilted lettuce leaf and smothered in a whole can of remaindered capers apparently tinned in the 1920's.

For some reason we passed on dessert.
(Fri 28th Apr 2006, 1:44, More)