» Accidental animal cruelty

He was minding his own business having a kip in a hollow log
And I was merrily chopping wood with my BRAND NEW chainsaw

I'm a massive animal lover so I was gutted.
But I guess not as much as mr possum :-(
(Sun 9th Dec 2007, 12:10, More)

» Impromptu Games You Play

Well it started off as impromptu
when a bunch of us were sharing a large house many years ago. One "mate" had tried to decorate the place by putting a godawful anodised gold-and-glass mini goblet shitful thingy on the mantlepiece. Probably bequeathed by some dead aunt. Anyway, as it was taking up valuable bong space, I decided to dispose of the hideousness by putting it in another mate's work bag.

Here starteth the game.

He reciprocated the next day and immediately arose the challenge household-wide of trying to get other people to unwittingly ferry it to work/uni for the day. It got to the stage of sheer paranoia as you walked out the door in the morning, wondering if you'd been goblet-ified.

South Korea was its first overseas trip.

New Zealand 3 times in a row (he finally stopped us giving him lifts to the airport, bastard.)

It's now bounced between Australia, the US and England god knows how many times over the last 21 years.

There is not greater joy than being woken at 3am by an international phone call: "You fucking sneaky prick"
(Thu 1st Apr 2004, 15:44, More)

» Where is the strangest place you have slept?

Oh bloody hell
This QOTW stirred something scary I thought was tucked away for good. To cut an insanely long story short:

I slept next to a corpse in a family-to-a-room dwelling in an extremely poor part of Singapore, as the 'honoured' guest.

It's not the sleeping, it's the dreams and the waking up...

*shudder*
(Fri 29th Dec 2006, 12:25, More)

» Debt pron

Serious Serious Debt
I made friends with a really cool Korean bloke through both work and friends-of-friends. We got on like a house on fire. Well, not like a concrete house, cos they don't burn very well. But I digress.

He wasn't a really close mate, but a friend enough to catch up with every few weeks or so. Then he decides to get married. To a Japanese girl. Who he wants to bring to Australia. (As this is where this story is being writ).

After one or two fateful lagers, he pops the question. To me! Would I please sponsor his future wife to come to Australia in holy matrimony. Of course I said yes, in the wisdom of never having met her, not knowing him uber-well, not knowing what it entailed, and not being really very aware of the infinite un-love in which Koreans and Japanese hold each other. And I was pissed.

--- skip paperwork and 3 months ---

The crux of the above skippage was that for 2 years after she got here I was liable for any costs the Aus govt may incur for her going on welfare, being a murderer, forgetting a library book etc. I'd never met the girl, but was assured she was lovely, and she looked lovely in the photos. And I had to sign legally binding stuff that said I knew her like a sister, even though they were living half a country away.

The potential cost to me? Oh, $200,000+ (invent your own figure, really) which is a shitload of quid/lira/drachmas.

It's the best debt I've ever been in - it's now 4 years on and they had their first kid 5 weeks ago. Beautiful, and I'm responsible.

I still haven't met her.

Maybe a sparkly sparkle in what appears to be an urky gloom of QOTW dread...
(Fri 24th Nov 2006, 9:40, More)

» The Onosecond

The Ono-week-and-a-half
Many years ago when the whole interwebemail thing was new and sparkly, I used to forward chukle-worthy stuff to everyone as I received it. As y'do.

One such was a pic of a Downs Syndrome kid crossing the finish line in a foot race, with the caption (and I strongly paraphrase due to the passage of time, and many reading this would have seen it), "Winning an argument on the internet is like winning a race in the Special Olympics. No matter what, you're still a retard"

I remember vividly the time, place, smell, number of people on the street, shadows across building faces, cigarette butts in the gutter, blood draining from my face... as I answered the phone call from my wife asking what precisely I had emailed to my sis-in-law and her husband.

You fill in the gap.

Yoikes.
(Mon 30th May 2005, 16:13, More)