» B3ta Villain of the Year 2010

We, the people
For letting ourselves be conned into believing that, even after decades of political corruptness, we could trust a politician to keep his word,

for letting society get to a point where a man can be jailed for telling everyone what the people who run our lives truly think,

and for, yet again, letting X Factor take the Christmas Number 1.
(Tue 28th Dec 2010, 11:58, More)

» School Assemblies

Three spring to mind (sorry for long post)
1 The way my primary school worked was that everyone sat on the floor apart from year 6, who got to sit on benches (lucky sods). Unfortunately that meant the rest of us were so tightly packed that you couldn't really adjust your seating position once you'd sat down. Cue year 5 me realising just as I was due to get up to leave the hall at the end of assembly that I had developed a rather bad case of pins and needles in one of my legs, causing me to trip over and practically land in the lap of the boy I'd fancied for about 3 years. However, this pales in comparison compared to what came next-a year 6 girl who was in my violin class was convinced that the best way of curing the pins and needles was giving me the heimlich manoeuvre. Just outside the doors to the hall. As the rest of the school filed past.

2) Fast forward to year 7, where my new school gives our year the task of putting together a few sketches on "fairness" to make an assembly. My friends and I devise a sketch resembling a G8 summit of sorts, where representatives of a 3rd world country were deemed irrelevant, but Camilla Parker Bowles was given enough money for a new dress. I was Vladimir Putin. Curtain up on President Bush dancing on a table with Tony Blair to Touch My Fire by Javine.

3) In my secondary school the headmistress stood on the stage behind a table with the stage curtains closed behind her. On one fateful Muck-Up Day, the then year 13s hid behind the curtain and, during hymns, stuck cardboard cutouts on sticks of the headmistress's face out from the sides of the curtains and waved them about. After about 20 seconds the head stopped the hymn and shouted at them to come out from behind the curtain, at which point they all rather sheepishly trooped off the stage. We weren't allowed a muck-up day after that year.
(Fri 14th Jun 2013, 18:06, More)

» Awesome teachers

Mr Macauley
In year 4 we had a teacher called Mr. Macauley, from Canada. This man was an absolute legend; he taught us about interesting stuff like dry ice and let us draw all over our workbook covers. He was a massive fan of Daredevil, and the time we had a horrible cover teacher he let us write a story about all the mean things she'd done in "fictional story" form. He also introduced us to the wonder that is root beer, and let us read Calvin and Hobbes comics when we were done with our work. I can't once remember him raising his voice; he didn't need to, he commanded total respect from a room full of 8 year olds just by being himself.

At the end of the year he made us all yearbooks, before he left to go back to Canada. I have lamentably lost mine, which is really sad seeing as I'd like to contact him again, but at the least I'm glad I was part of the only class at my school he taught.
(Thu 17th Mar 2011, 22:36, More)

» DIY Surgery

When I was little,
about 9 or 10, we went to visit the new house we'd just bought and were about to move into. The house had fallen into a state of disrepair, seeing as the previous owner was a very sweet old widow who didn't do much in the way of keeping the house looking not derelict. After a bit, I was dicking about on the front driveway, when my mother called to me that we were about to head back.

What I failed to realise was that overhanging the driveway was a large tree, which was practically dead and therefore had dropped nice curvy branches all over the driveway entrance. I foolishly stepped on one end of one of these branches, causing the other end to go upwards and for me to trip over said branch, pile-driving hands first into some very sharp and rather questionable looking gravel.

My mother, laughingly ignoring my pleas to take me to the hospital to get butterfly stitches, despite a similar incident a few years previously and a similarly shocking amount of blood, applied Savlon magic spray and a small patch of gauze, adhered with some tape.

The result? A rather ominous looking black bit in the palm of my hand. We have no idea what it is, but we're guessing muscle. And, miraculously, no infection!
(Sun 23rd Jan 2011, 18:22, More)