» Nativity Plays

Joseph was a crap part anyway
After being cruelly snubbed for the role of Joseph, I got to be 'Shepherd #1' instead. This, of course, meant that I had just the one line, "Let's follow that star!". This also meant that in the rehearsal time there was nothing much for the other two shepherds and myself to do other than sit at the edge of the stage making rude noises and twatting each other with the crooks.

Oh yes, we had proper crooks, none of your poncey cardboard affairs. Some misguided old woman donated her dead husband's walking sticks to the school, allowing for hours of fun having epic duels with your mates.

Anyway, it came to the final performance, and we shepherds had decided that we'd had enough of being second-class parts, so we waited until the very last scene, when Mary and Joseph take a bow.

And then I am very sorry to say that I tripped Joseph up with my crook and sent him flying off the stage and facefirst into the audience, while Shepherd #2 pulled Jesus' head off and cracked it with his crook, baseball-style, into the back row.
We tried to blame it on the three Wise Men but The Innkeeper grassed us up. The wanker.

The school got rid of the walking sticks the next year, and we were demoted to livestock.
(Fri 27th Mar 2009, 7:20, More)

» When Animals Attack

Llama
A few years ago I was visiting the Isle of Wight (lovely place, incidentally), and made a trip to a zoo, can't remember which one.
Anyway, I wandered over to the llama enclosure. While I was stroking the nose of one such beast, he decided to test my shirt for edibility. Unfortunately, I thought he was trying to get at my juicy flesh, and so I punched the poor thing on the nose. He relented and I got out of there as fast as could. I still have the shirt, and there is still a green stain, which still smells of llama dribble despite multiple washes.
(Thu 24th Apr 2008, 19:01, More)

» Guilty Pleasures, part 2

I like to put on my Superman T-Shirt
Then put on another shirt over that.
Then put on the Superman Theme as loud as my stereo will go. Then strike a heroic pose and rip off the shirt to reveal my 'secret identity'.
I have destroyed at least 3 good shirts in this way.
(Mon 17th Mar 2008, 20:56, More)

» God

The Bible is a scary scary book
When I was a wee lad, just knee high to a very small thing, I went to a CofE primary school. This meant, obviously, that we sang proper hymns in assembly, said the Lords Prayer every morning, went to church at Easter, Christmas and that other one with the oranges whose name nobody remembers. Anyway, in year 4 (age 8-9 I think), we got a teacher who was fervently religious (as in, quoted scripture at any given moment). She told the class that we should all study the Bible, as it was the only way to get in God's good books.
Now, for most small children, a Goosebumps book is enough to put the willies up you. The Bible is a different thing altogether. Being 8, of course, we didn't actually read the whole sodding thing, we watched cartoons of Bible stories instead. They were all in claymation, and they were all a bit like this but, you know, with Bible stories.
For children with overactive imaginations, watching Lot's wife turning into salt as God nuked Sodom and all its inhabitants is enough to give you nightmares on its own, and that's before we get to the disturbingly graphic representation of Revelations, complete with naked women on three headed dogs above lakes of fire. Moses' plagues were pretty terrible too.
The whole thing gave the impression that God and his pals were just waiting for an excuse to kill you in the most violent possible way with very little provocation. It got to the point that kids just stopped coming in on the days we watched these films. To this day, I have never seen anything even remotely like the cartoons we watched that year (admittedly, I haven't tried that hard), but I still firmly believe that the Bible is the scariest book ever written. Except for Night of The Living Dummy, that one was just terrifying.
(Fri 20th Mar 2009, 20:35, More)

» Blood

Toenails
My big toenail was ingrown and for whatever reason the doctor wouldn't do the fancy operation to remove the nail. After a while it got to be really painful so I thought "Fuck it, how hard can it be to cut the bloody thing out?".
It turns out, it is really hard. I figured you could just cut the nail normally then sort of go in at an angle and shear it off bit by bit. Unfortunately I hadn't taken my spacker coordination into account. I ended up cutting most of the nail plate off and driving the scissors (No poncy nail scissors, only proper, manly ones) into the soft flesh. You wouldn't believe the amount of blood you'd get out of a single toe, and hitting the nerves underneath hurts like a bugger as well.I had to go to A&E and tell the doctor how I managed to amputate half my toenail.

The bastard damn near laughed his head off. On the plus side, I did get the ingrown part out, so once it healed and the nail grew back, no more pain.
(Fri 8th Aug 2008, 22:55, More)