» Ouch!

My balls cause untold distress to others.
Gather round, children, I'm going to tell you a story. The story of the most painful object ever designed by humans. A device whose sole raison d'etre is to inflict pain on unsuspecting individuals. And also on suspecting individuals who couldn't escape. This object is so horrific that even the US army dare not use it.

I speak, of course, of the Mouldmaster.

For the uninitiated, a mouldmaster is a football. Not just any football, it has a moulded rubber surface. This surface is not smooth. It's designed to be hard wearing, mostly as a training ball, and as such takes no shit from players. Oh no, it is the master of the pitch. The players are merely waiting to suffer, though they may not yet know this.

This question is about your ouchiest moment, so mine is simply as follows: I played football with a Mouldmaster. It's common for humans to boast of the pain they endured, as a badge of honour to say "This hurt soooo much, but I'm (more or less) not dead". With the sentence "I played football with a Mouldmaster" you can instantly get sympathy from any fellow sufferers.

We all shared the pain. Usually at school level or thereabouts, and always on a red ash pitch. All games took place on a freezing December morning, even if the calender read May. Mouldmasters had that effect. The game would start painlessly enough, with little warning of what was to come. After about 5 minutes, you'd go for a ball, but the defender would get there first and make his clearance. And the Mouldmaster would connect full force with your leg.

Medical science has no proof of the phenomenon that occurs when a Mouldmaster hits a leg, but we all know exactly what happens. Your leg instantly sprouts hundreds of microscopic penises, and each one of them immediately catches itself in a zip. There is no other explanation for the sheer waves of pain coursing through your body at the speed of light. The surroundings go black, for your brain has no capacity to process anything other than the pain. You pray for instant death to ease the suffering.

Later in the game, the same thing will happen, but this time the ball will not catch you full force. It will do much worse. It will catch you with a glancing blow. it is then you will realise that this is not a football at all, but a spherical belt sander on overdrive. The pain will seem like all the heat on earth has been concentrated on your skin, just on that one patch. You will, again, want to die.

The worst part is that as this is Scotland, you will be unable to show any pain, lest you be labelled homosexual by your peers. So there is the unedifying spectacle of 22 youthful males, all in chronic pain, all unable to say a word for fear that they'd be mocked. Only later in life, when reminiscing, can you admit the physical hell you underwent 3 times a week.

And I wouldn't change it for the world.
(Mon 2nd Aug 2010, 11:28, More)

» B3TA fixes the world

How to solve the conflict in Northern Ireland
1) Scotland declares independence from the UK.
2) Wales declares independence from the UK.
3) England declares independence from the UK.

The UK now consists solely of Northern Ireland. They can sort it out their fucking selves.
(Sat 24th Sep 2011, 8:58, More)

» What nonsense did you believe in as a kid?

Rutherford's got nothing on me
When I was but a youngster, probably about 8 or so, I was an inquisitive lad. I asked questions about how the world worked, and my parents would answer them. I forget what caused it to come up, but one of them mentions that Rutherford was the first person to split the atom.

Atoms! Even I, a small child, knew that everything in the world was made up of atoms. And now they can be split! So I went into the kitchen, put a Mars bar on the worktop, and then hacked at it full force with a knife, on the grounds that "There are millions of atoms in here, I'm bound to get at least one of them right down the middle"

Sadly for the world's energy needs, nuclear physics did not take a great step forward in suburban Glasgow that day.
(Sat 21st Jan 2012, 9:37, More)

» Morning After Souvenirs

Highway code
This is a tale of that moment when the situation you find yourself in causes your hitherto drunken state to be replaced in an instant with clarity and bemusement.

One night, many years ago, I had gone to the pub with a mate (he subsequently turned out to be an absolute bellend who got busted for drink-driving and we don't speak anymore. But that's not really important here). Please bear in mind that at the time, I lived in a dry area. It was 25 minutes walk from my house to the nearest pub, and about 45 minutes to the nearest good pub. We of course chose the good pub (it had its own brewery and even gave us loyalty cards, dammit!). So we find ourselves at closing time, 5-6 pints down and 45 minutes from home (which as any drunkard will tell you, equated to upwards of an hour's stagger)

On the way home, we came upon the scene of some road-based modifications. Namely some keep left signs that had been replaced that day. The new signs were installed and happily informing traffic not to drive into a traffic island, but the old signs were lying at the side of the road, discarded and not yet collected.

You've all seen the sob-story adverts on TV asking you to sponsor an abandoned dog. But you never see the adverts asking you to think of the abandoned keep left signs. What if the workmen never came back, and the sign was just left there to decompose? That would be a tragedy. We did the only thing we could do. We rehomed the signs.

I picked up mine (they're surprisingly light, if a little bulky), put it on my shoulder, and marched (stumbled) purposefully home. Once there, I carried it up the stairs, and left it on the landing, no doubt planning to do something with it in the morning. Then I went to bed.

Now, dear reader, as I'm sure you're aware, things we do when drunk can sometimes be forgotten when we're sober. What was logical at the time now seems as breathtakingly stupid as voting Tory. They can also be forgotten when we're still drunk but have had an hour's sleep.

And so it was that the pints from before had decided that my bladder need emptied, and I woke up. Running on instinct alone, I left my bedroom and walked down the hall towards the bathroom. Except halfway there, I saw a keep left sign. "Hmmm", thought my drunken self, "I'd best keep left". So I kept left. Left, sadly, was the closet that led to the attic. And that closet was where we kept the spare toilet rolls. "Toilet rolls! I must be in the toilet! Best get my cock out and start pissing then"

It was at that moment that I realised just what in the fuck I was about to do, and let me tell you that holding the end of it to try and avert disaster while running to the actual bathroom is what we refer to in the business as REALLY FUCKING PAINFUL.

Nevertheless, disaster was averted. I've since moved out, but the sign's still there, albeit in a less dangerous position.
(Fri 27th Apr 2012, 23:27, More)

» Awesome teachers

Suburban Glasgow, mid 1990s.
I was a little arsehole in 3rd & 4th year Chemistry. I could do the work easily. Indeed, I did the work easily, which left plenty of time each lesson for mucking about and ruining it for everyone else. Most teachers would have hated me for this. But not DM (the D stands for Doctor). Because DM was awesome.

Reasons DM was awesome:
1) He straight up told my mother at parents evening "He's a cheeky little shit, but he'll grow into his sense of humour"
2) He was the external assessor for someone's 6th year oral exam. They had done their project on the same area that DM had done his PhD in. He asked a few basic questions to check the kid knew his stuff (he did) then subjected him to a 20 minute ordeal of nightmarish questions, long since having decided the kid was going to pass anyway.
3) He taught me that the best way to annoy medical doctors is to tell them that if they don't have a PhD they're not a doctor, just a Bachelor of Medicine. I use this to this day, and it still works every time.

But best of all...

4) He gathered the class round his desk, and told us a tale. A tale of a friend of his, also a chemistry teacher, who was blind now. Did we know why he was blind, he asked? We did not. Because he put sodium into hydrochloric acid. Do you know why he did that, he asked? We did not know. He looked straight into my eyes
'Because of a little shit like you, constantly suggesting stupid ideas and goading him with a relentless stream of "Do it, sir! Go on! make it burn!"'

I don't think I've ever been happier.
(Fri 18th Mar 2011, 19:56, More)