» God

666 behind my left ear
My name is Damien. Not a good start, but the movie 'The Omen' isn't famous at all where I am from (France) and people don't think "Devil" when they hear it.
That said, when I turned 11 or so I felt like travelling the world and after watching a documentary about missionaries I believe that this was what I was meant to do. And so Damien worked on becoming a priest (I'm sure a little kid in Africa dies every time somebody reads that last sentence out loud).

At the time I really enjoyed female company but my thirst for adventure was overwhelming and so I started attending church (more than I did before) without really questioning any of it but really just to get brownie point with the priest (not literally, no). To me the idea of having people do good around them was a great one, whether or not the stories were true and whether or not god existed. What I didn't like was the fact that the church would scare people into being good people (do this or you ll go to hell), something which worked in Medieval France, but not quite in modern days.

I went on to march a pilgrimage, 114K one, with 1000s of people, in 3 days, I was 12 and my feet were quite literally fubar after the 3 days of intensive walking. Most important of all, my faith had left me by the end of it and here are the reasons why:

1- I got my butt kicked by a bunch of extremists, for listening to my portable tape player (with headphones on I'd like to point out) while walking as I was ''not giving 100% of my thoughts to Christ''...what. They made such a big fuss that the marshals had to move me to another group of pilgrims and told me I'd get kicked out if I didn't stop being a little shit. Now keep in mind I only said one word during the whole thing "what?"; and that, and I kid you not, some people were singing in the background about "loving thy neighbour" I was rather upset. I was listening to Queen.

2- "Christ wants you to be in pain" a woman said to me "That is how you show him you love him". To which I replied "That's quite mean; If I were Christ I wouldn't want anyone to be in pain for me" - cue shitstorm numero deux; and another bollocking, this time I was kicked out of the last few Kilometres of day 1 and had to finish them on the bus with the loonies singing happy Jesus songs and a couple of women crying next to me while reciting prayers.

3- I had to cope with constant slagging of other religions are they are not the "true religion". The constant, borderline hatred, that was going on between groups of believers were so intense that a fight broke out between a black lady and a white man; something which in itself is quite ridiculous when you are meant to be praying for world peace. This story wouldn't be what it is though if it wasn't for the racist comments that followed later on that day about "the black one staying in her cage" classy, love thy negro Jesus once said. I was quite literally speechless.

The rest of the journey was really difficult and ended with a mass in Latin (studied the language for 4 years and I hate it with a passion) where the priest would turn his back to the crowd constantly, speaking to the cross for a couple of hours, something which I found to be rude and also very unfriendly. At that point people started falling asleep and were asked to leave - Jesus has no time for sleepy people!!

That was enough for me to realise that most of them were a bunch of hypocrites and cocks who, without a doubt, are fully aware of their inner animal and feel obliged to pray daily in order for god to send them to heaven (or in order for them to feel better about it). It just wasn't for me.

On another note, my grand-mother found out that I changed my mind and did not want to become a priest, she was really upset and a few weeks later told that me that I had the devil in me, and that I was possessed (she is half gipsy and full on Virgin Mary fan and unfortunately not aware of the movie The Omen otherwise they could have sued her for plagiarism). I haven't spoken to her since then or to any of my christian friends, family members.

So, Damien has since then followed his passion (and vocation) which is to make love to women, while smoking weed, and eating chocolate whenever he feels like it. Credit goes to god for creating all of those natural things for him to enjoy.

GG
(Tue 24th Mar 2009, 18:00, More)

» Accidental animal cruelty

Crack addict bunny
On my final year at Uni, as a birthday present from my housemates I was given a little bunny which I called “Dave”.

I always loved animals and had rabbits before, unfortunately being at University and absolutely skint it was quite tricky for me to feed the little thing as I had to spend a lot of money on wood chippings and other necessary vitamins.

The solution was simple, Dave would have to eat what I ate. This is how Dave became a well fed rabbit, eating pasta, rice and even trying out crackers with rabbit liver paté sent from France by my caring mother (which technically made him a cannibal).

Everything went well, he slept in a cage in my room, and we were a happy couple.
Until one day a local supermarket had some Cookie crisps cereal on special, ideal for students as you can have them at any time really. So I bought quite a few boxes and went home.

Next morning Dave was treated to a few Cookie crisps and he loved them.
Next morning same thing, he ate them all in no time and would scratch his cage when he smelled them. It wasn’t until he started being really active day and night that I suspected something was wrong with him, but some bunny expert on an online bunny forum told me that it was most likely because the little thing was dying out for some action, I was asked to check his testicules and indeed they were quite big and fully out (apparently a sign that he was ready for it), so fair enough I left it to that.


After a few weeks of being fed cereals, one morning when I was late for work (good timing) Dave attacked me when I opened his cage to feed him. I threw him back in the cage tapping him slightly on the nose to tell him to stop, he (instead of calming down) jumped at my face again so I put him back in gave him his treats and magically he calmed down. At that point something clicked in my head and I was wondering if maybe the sugar in the cereals had something to do with it.

After some advices from a vet, I was told to gradually cut down on the stuff and replace it with apples as Rabbit have a very very sweet tooth but could be killed pretty much instantly by eating chocolate (thankfuly this only applies to dark chocolate). Unfortunately he was having none of it, he did eat apples eventually, after weeks and weeks of going cold turkey; but never came back to the Dave I knew before.

He was always way too hyper for me to handle him, would rarely sleep and eventually died of a heart attack one sad evening.

I blame it on the paté.
(Wed 12th Dec 2007, 17:38, More)

» How nerdy are you?

Video Games over A-levels
I used to play an FPS (First person shooter) called TFC; I used to play it on a national level (this alone should be geeky enough, but there is more).

In order to be one of the top EU players I had to train every day for a minimum of 3 hours, which actually wasn't a lot compared to the Swedish team which would often sack players for not training enough (they would require you to train for 5+ hours per day minimum, geeks…).

Anyway, once during an important match I got a phone call from college; my dad picked it up as I was busy playing of course. It turned out that I forgot to turn up for my math’s A level exam as well as some other one I cannot remember. My father was too puzzled to shout at me, plus as we are not from the UK he didn’t know how important those “A levels” were and thought they were just some small pointless exam (which they are of course, merely a 'good-boy' gold star on your cv).

I rushed to school once I was done with the match only to find an upset head teacher shaking his head in disappointment. He reminded me how much of a loser (not his words) I was for not turning up to my final exams. I tried to explain that I genuily forgot about it as I was too busy getting my fragging skillz up and didn't wish to take it again as "I couldn't see the use of it for my future" (actual quote). Needless to say he didn't care about my online prowess and hinted that I would most likely grow up to be a bum as my only strong points were: Art and .... Gaming.

I'm now a Games Designer for a top UK company - and I love my job - Geek all the way
(Thu 6th Mar 2008, 12:25, More)

» PE Lessons

shower boys get all the hugs :(
As a kid I was never very good at sports, I was always picked last for everything and did not really care about it. For some reason, even though I could hardly run 100 meters, I somehow could throw the javelin like a pro and always beat everybody at it with little effort.

And so I was part of the small group of javelin throwers (3 of us..)

I was always upset that I did not need to go get changed with the others as the javelin guys apparently did not sweat enough to require a shower compared to the football, rugby and gymnastic students. So we would go back straight to class.

For that reason I never felt part of the team.

2 years later I found out that 'the team' would often get a surprise shower visit from the teacher, Marcel (it was in France - not the monkey from Friends) who would caress them in strange places.

The guy was sacked as soon as somebody had the guts to tell their parents.

Javelin throw is a beautiful, beautiful discipline
(Sat 21st Nov 2009, 1:28, More)