A life lesson learned
When speaking on the phone to a dear friend whose mother has just passed away after a long and painful struggle with cancer...

do NOT utter the words "How's your mum?"

especially if both you and they know full well that a) you were there when she died and b) you cried like a baby at her funeral.

Thank god they saw the funny side and responded "Still dead thanks, bit like your Dad."

I am an excellent example of how qualifications are no reflection of actual intelligence.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:21, 9 replies)

17 year old + Driving license = Mayhem
I had just passed my driving test, and my parents bought me a Ford Escort.

Being young and full of male bravado, of course, I drove it around like a bat out of hell (well, about as quickly as you can drive a 1.3 Ford Escort anyway).

One day, I was driving down a hill on my way to work. Windows down, 600bpm speedcore on the stereo, feeling cool as anything. I must have been doing, ooh, about 50 miles an hour. In a 30 limit. Over a blind crest. On a very wet, slippery road.

Just as I went over the hill, I realised 'Oh shit - there's another car there!'.

Now, part of having passed your driving test first time after not very many lessons also means that you think you know everything about controlling a car.

Which means that I somehow thought that slamming the brakes on (no ABS on this car, by the way) and attempting to steer
round the oncoming Citroen AX was a good idea.

My Escort buried itself in the front of the previously mentioned French Tin Can. And as far as I know, that's the last time it ever moved.

It's only when looking back at it now that I realise how stupid I was, and how close I came to hurting or killing someone (what if the car I hit wasn't a car, but a bike?)

Somehow, despite getting the bollocking of my life from the police, I managed to keep my driving license. Which remains clean to this day.

I now drive far more slowly.

Length? The skidmarks were a couple of meters long. Both on the road, and elsewhere.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:20, Reply)

Banzai!
Ahh a fond memory, brought back every time it gets cold and bits of me start to creak...

As if jumping out of aeroplanes wasn't daft enough in the first place, I decided to up the ante a little. I started parachuting using the big green round army issue jobs, where you had to do the proper hit 'n' roll PLF routine when you landed. No problem. Even landed on some rough torn up tarmac with nary a scratch (except the time I left my car keys in my pocket of course). Now the big round canopies were a bit slow, and not very manoevrable, so you tended to go where the breeze took you. Booooring. And then..... we got the square RAPS 'chutes. Speed! Manoevrability! Posey 'land on tippy toes' stuff! Twirly midair stuff! Yeehaw.

Much mid-air twirliness later, we decided that we wanted to turn faster. So we decided to loop the lines a few times around our fists to get sharper turns and more dramatic (lower) flare-outs on landing.

Now the idea is that you land into the wind, with your airspeed and the windspeed cancelling each other out, combined with the braking effect of the flare. Simple, eh? Naaah.

Hop into the aircraft with the windspeed pretty much at maximum permissible. Wind direction noted and stored in brain, as we were jumping 'accuracy'. Ageing plane wheezes upwards, eventually out lobs your narrator. After the pleasing 'fwump' of the thing opening (always a relief), time to get a few wraps in the lines and hit that target...

"Hmmmm this is going badly. I'm bloody miles away, oh bollocks looks like I'm going to land on the runway. They'll take the piss for ages now... Hey ho, 'cos there's no grass I can judge my height to a gnat's and do a really cool landing."

"Floaty floaty whooooooooosh ready ready ready gosh that tarmac's getting bigger really fast ohhhhhshhhiiiiii CRUNCH.


Wind had dropped to bugger all and I estimated later I had tried to land approximately 3 feet under the runway.

After the crash wagon had picked me up (apparently had been lying facedown on the runway for a few minutes and was making the place look untidy) I gingerly unzipped the jumpsuit to find I had neatly skinned myself. Arsebiscuits. And who's the first aider? Me.

So who is the first person that a course of nervous first jump students see as they arrive? Yeah. Me propped up on a bench mopping up my own claret and patching myself up. Never actually heard a collective sphincter-tightening event before...
(osok Rebel without a clue, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:16, Reply)

"Welcome welcome"
Remember Gamesmaster? I was in the fan club. I got to be in the audience for 1 show. Turned up and there was 3 other kids there. so we got to go backstage and have a laugh playing loads of computer games. A great morning. Then disaster struck.

Someone: "We have some recording space, want to be on the TV?"
Me: "sure"
Someone: "here's a game, this is what you do, practice it."
Me: "sure thing" /plays furiously
Someone: Ok now there's lots of poeple now so we can do the recodring. it's your turn"
Me:"murrrrr...." /panics and brain freezes up
someone:"go down those stpes and talk to Dominic
Me:"burrr..." /walks down steps
Dominic Diamond: "Welcome to Gamesmaster"
Me: /blank


months later at school I am famously known as the "Welcome Gamesmaster kid" aparrantly I responded to Dominic's welcome with a "welcome, welcome?" and it got worse from there.

Dumbest thing I;ve ever done? Agreed to go on TV. Now there's some b3tans who know who I am.
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:09, 1 reply)

When you were a kid
Did you ever climb into a sleeping bag, crawl down into the bottom and have your brother/sister/friend/cousin/etc push you down?

Well, i discovered the hard way that doing it by yourself is not a good idea.

I climbed in, but realised i wouldn't be able to push myself off bunched up, so i straighten my body out, and push off.

Just as I do this, my lovely(?) brother reaches down and grabs the sleeping bag by the string, and points out i'm being boring. I query. He reaches down and ties the string so that only my head is sticking out, and says "There we go!" and pushes me with his foot.

All goes well for about 4-5 stairs, when my heels catch on a stair. What happened next was a wonder of physics. I managed to change from sliding down the stairs feet first, to flying down them head first in the space of about half a second.

We used to have a wooden shoe cabinet at the bottom of the stairs, facing them. I went face first into it. I was lucky to only get a slight concussion, and chip 2 teeth.

Unbeknownst to myself, my Dad walked out from the living room next to the stairs (after hearing the noise), looks down at me, looks up the stairs to my shocked brother, mutters "Little shits" under his breath and goes back to his book.

Thanks Dad!
( Agnostic Antichrist Baltimora, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:08, Reply)

Curse my small flaccid appendage.
I'll admit it now, hence the return of my old sig. MY PENIS IS SMALL WHEN FLACCID!*
(Rest assured folks, it's perfectly reasonable once titilated! lol)

Anyway,

I wear loose fit jeans, the baggier the better as far as I'm concerned. The slight disadvantage is the extra care required when urinating. Yesterday, I failed to ensure that said appendage was clear of the 'bomb doors' and duly diverted a stream of warm urine down my leg.

Bollocks, that was stupid**



* Sometimes I'm just too honest.
** May have been the actual words uttered.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:06, 1 reply)

I win`
I've got two unplanned babies on the way with two wholly unsuitable women.

Good one Monty you spacker.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:05, 1 reply)

Stag night
Me and mates get back to the house after lots of drinking.
One of my mates falls head first down the stairs and slides to the bottom. That looks like fun, so I too took a dive.
Carpet burns are fun!.
(waxdart hello., Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:05, 1 reply)

Toilet face
I woke up a while back needing a shit something horrible but also needed a piss, top this off with a relentless morning glory. I sat down on the loo and tried bending it into the bowl etc but had no chance of making that work. I honestly thought I could squeeze the tip of my nob hard enough to stop the flow, I gripped hard, released my bowels and promptly sprayed concentrated morning piss all over my own face.
(el perro grande, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:04, 3 replies)

Tonight?
Is this the stupidist thing I've done?

Gone to the B3ta Christmas Bash planning on 9 solid hours of drinking in the full knowledge that I can't be late for work tomorrow or I'll probably be fired!

Only one way to find out

Bill
(bill, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:57, 1 reply)

pffffftttt.....
...I once confused the gradient solution to a graphical curve equation with integration, instead of differentiation. God I'm such a tool at times...
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:53, 4 replies)

Rakkys back pain reminds me
I occasionally suffer some sort of infection in my ear. The first time I had it, a gland somewhere near the top of my jaw swelled to the point where I could barely talk and was unable to chew anything firmer than soup. It felt like I had a tennis ball wedged in my shell-like.

I was popping as much paracetamol and ibuprofen as is allowed (and a couple more for luck) but still required a more effective pain killer, so a trip to the doctors had me on a heavy dose of codeine as well as the off-the-shelf stuff. being unable to do much, i decided a nice bath and a couple of spliffs would boost the recovery of my morale.

While running the bath, as I'm sure many do, I sat upon the throne for a small movement and a swift chapter of Stephen King. Feeling a little dizzy, I thought nothing of it. I noticed the bath was nearing the optimum fill level so I stretched over to turn off the tap.

THUD!

The painkillers and THC combo had more of an effect than I had realised and I hit the floor like a sack of shit. Thankfully no shit smearery occured, so the only lasting effects were a broken pedal bin and a cracked rib.

Length? Just out of arms reach, I've leant over to do it hundreds of times.
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:51, Reply)

Oooh, Crap Little Monkey reminded me...
... of a Craft and Design class many years ago (long enough ago that us O-grade CDT pupils were allowed to use the bandsaw with minimal supervision).

Our techy teacher had a severely bandaged hand. "What did you do to your hand?" we asked.

Well. Said teacher had been explaining safety with planes (the kind used for shaping wood) when you're sharpening them. Since the blade is at an angle, you can run your hand from the back to the front of the plane and your fingers will just slide over the back of the (very sharp) blade harmlessly. "It's like stroking a cat," he said, "if you stroke it the right way, it's fine, if you stroke it the wrong way it'll bite you." All the while running his hand from the back of the blade to the front.

"Please sir," some smartarse pipes up (not me, I'll hasten to add), "My cat likes being stroked the wrong way!"

"What, your cat likes being stroked like this?" as he goes from front to back. The moment of realisation came just after the message from his fingertips...
(gordonjcp, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:50, Reply)

Once whilst running home...
I slipped on a banana skin.
My only regret is that I didn't have a kazoo handy to add a sound effect to the comedy cliche.
.
(sparks , oh, I don't know., Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:42, Reply)

Stupid thing my CDT teacher done
CDT. Craft, Design and Technology. ie Woodshop.

Teacher gave a us lecture on why not to hammer nails into the tables. How unless we were really careful we'd probably leave a small amount of nail head sticking up on the battered woden surface which someone might catch their hand/arm/cloths on and hurt themselves. 20 minutes later he'd finished. He then proceeded to place his hands on the table and lean over to deliver his parting words. Which turned out to be:

"Oops"

Yes our teacher had just given us a praticle example of why hammering nails into tables was a bad idea. He cut he palm open from the base of his fingers to his wrist on the nail he had hammered into the table himself as part of his lecture.

Do you think we learnt anything from that?

/hammers more nails into the table
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:39, Reply)

Bit Stoned
Was round my mates house for a smoking session. Got up to go home, went through my 'keys, wallet, phone' routine umpteen times - I was very wasted. Once I'd convinced my self I had all these vital items upon my person, I set off into the cold night. Stopped 100yards or so down the road and had to turn back...I'd forgotten to put my shoes on.
(I came for the penguins, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:28, Reply)

Bromine.....
I used to work for a company specialising in analytical chemistry. To pass the time we dreamed up all kinds of ways to abuse various dangerous chemicals. A good one was to put dead flies on a hot plate and pour perchloric acid over them. If you don’t know, perchloric acid will ignite and explode on contact with hot organic material. This would cause the fly to liquefy then explode like a fire work, very pretty.
However, one of the more stupid games we used to play was "catch the bromine". This was fun until I dropped a full litre bottle causing the whole company to be evacuated and the lab in question remained out of service for a few days while the mess and poisonous fumes where cleaned up.

Don’t tell the boss I was playing catch, I told him my gloves were wet and it slipped from my hand. Honest
(tedalaki - Like Purple Aki but better, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:28, 1 reply)

student pranks
Another story from my time as a student.

We had a spare room in our flat in first year which we'd fill with stuff we'd collect from our way home from the pub. This included various tyres, gnomes, and once we even got a bus stop in there. However, there was one particular night on the way home when me and a friend of mine spied a broken security light, still attached to a wall about 6 ft up. We thought this would make a welcome addition to our museum, and so I tried to wrench it from the wall. I pulled it left, right, up, down - nothing was going to dislodge it. So I sulked and walked away a bit, gazing at the clear starry sky while my larger friend took his turn at wrenching this light from the wall. He failed too.

God must have spoken to me while I was looking at the stars, because I looked at that light fitting with a fiery rage in my belly - I wanted this artifact for my museum! So I strode with drunken bravado up to the light, wedged both hands behind it, lifted my left foot up beside it, lifted my right foot up beside it (bear in mind this light was about 6 ft up), and then wrenched it.

It wasn't a very good addition to the museum, in all honesty, but my flatmate still speaks of the day he saw me turn into a human cruise missile
(witterquick, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:25, 1 reply)

This very morning...
I did my usual bleary routine of getting out of bed, putting my specs on, going into the bathroom, having a whizz and then brushing my teeth. Now, when I have done all of this I like to slap some uber-girly moisturiser on my face. I got a big blob of the stuff, got it all over both hands to put it on my fizzog... and slapped it all over my glasses.

Cock.
(LadyTramp79 Left a bit, right a bit..., Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:19, 1 reply)

Stunt Boy III and last
Not having learned at all from smashing my teeth in,, or watching my best mate rip himself to shreads in a killer hedge, we continued to look out for The Stunt to End All Stunts.

"I know," said a member of our gang, "I'll go as high as I can on a swing, jump off onto my bike and ride away."

Nothing can possibly go wrong.

"Ouch," said One-Bollocked Randall.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:18, 4 replies)

Stunt Boy II
Having not learned from having all my teeth knocked out, our little gang decided that the sunt to end all stunts would be to ride a skateboard down the massive slide and jump - via a wooden ramp of our own design - over the hedge that surrounds the playground.

We roared Matty on as he managed not to die as he sped down the slide, across the playground and....

....WHUM....

failed to negotiated the half-inch thickness that was the ramp.

Hawthorn hedge.

"Ouch", he said.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:15, Reply)

Simpsons moment
one day when I was small and innocent, I was out in the garden when my dad was cutting the grass there was a rake on the floor. Oh thinks me, I've seen this on the simpsons (with sideshow bob...you know the one). I stepped on the rake, making the wooden handle, the very hard wooden handle, fly up and hit me square in the face. Not my best moment
(Runningwithsporks Something something darkside, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:14, 2 replies)

A pain in the back. And the arse.
So many, many possible answers and only two weeks to tell them all. Jesus.

One bright, sunny morning, I’m getting ready for university. Shower, check. Brekkie, done? Clean teeth? Oh, right. Upstairs I pop, paste on brush, scrubby scrubby. Tap on, bend slightly to rinse mouth and… Aaah AAAAAHH AAACHOOOOOOOO.

Ow.

Pain soars across my lower back and I try to straighten up. I can’t. The force of the sneeze, coupled with the awkward angle I was leaning at had conspired to tear a muscle in my back and the rest of the muscles had responded by going into lockdown.

I shuffled gingerly out of the bathroom. What to do? I’ll go to the doctors, I thought (not daft, me). But how to get there? Driving’s out, I couldn’t even sit down, let alone operate pedals. Taxi is a no-no. There’s no buses, so I’ll just have to walk.

The walk would normally take me 20 minutes. Two hours later I shuffle into the doctor’s surgery, crying and sweating like a fat man running after the pie van. I’m bent at about 35 degrees and clutching my back like a woman about to go into labour with sextuplets. The receptionist tells me to take a seat. Through gritted teeth I explain that due to the unfortunate nature of my injury, sitting isn’t an option and would it be okay to stand somewhere more private as people are starting to gawp.

Eventually she hustles me into an empty examining room where I prop myself up against a table and spend a pain filled hour looking at a map of the world pinned to the wall. It was not fun. On the plus side, my middle eastern geography is now excellent.

The doctor comes in, takes one look at me and says “Christ, what the hell did you do?” I explained and once he’d stopped sniggering, he wrote me a prescription for two types of elephant tranquilizer painkillers and some muscle relaxants. I shuffled out of the surgery and into a nearby chemists to get me some drugs.

But that’s not the stupid bit. By this time I was in so much pain I wasn’t really thinking straight. I picked up the tablets and a bottle of water and went outside, necked some much needed analgesics and the muscle relaxants and began the shuffle home.

Boy, those things work fast. Within what seemed like seconds (but was obviously much longer) I began to feel distinctly weird. Drunk, almost. You know on some packets of tablets they warn you to “not drive or operate heavy machinery”? These should have had “Don’t drive, operate machinery, walk or attempt to speak in coherent sentences.” Basically I was minced. The pain subsided to a degree and I could straighten to my normal angle. However I was now staggering like an idiot and had realized that the pain and clenching had been masking the fact that I was desperate for a poo. And you don’t want to need a poo when you’ve just taken muscle relaxants…

I entered the house in the same state I’d left, crying and sweating, only this time with the effort of not soiling myself in public. Once I’d unloaded, I got into bed and lay motionless for the next two hours until I felt well enough to drug myself again.

So the moral of the story is, when your doctor tells you “wait till you get home before taking these painkillers,” listen to him. There’s usually a good reason.
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:12, 5 replies)

Oh well, whatever...
And another student related tale of woe.

Again, the late 80’s (might even have been 1990). I was doing a two week stint of work experience. As the last two the college had arranged for me were crap, I decided to see if I could sort my own out. So I ended up doing two weeks in the design and publicity department of the Riverside Club (now sadly defunct, it’s some shitty techno place or something now) in Newcastle.

It was great. I’d design posters for the up and coming gigs, and get the thrill of seeing them plastered all over town. As the Riverside was run as a co-operative, they couldn’t pay me, but I did get dibs on any gigs I fancied going to (and this continued well after my stint ended – “anything you fancy, give us a shout and we’ll get you on the guest list”). Fan-fucking-tastic.

And so began a two year run of getting into gigs for nowt. Mudhoney, New Model Army, Danielle Dax, The Young Gods, Violent Femmes, Fugazi, Pixies, and, er, Frank Sidebottom, to name but some. Lovely stuff.

One day, as I was in town I decided to pop in for a chat with the guys in the PR dept. “Any gigs you fancy”, they asked. I looked at the upcoming bands list. “Nah”, said I, “I think I’ll give it a miss”.

“Sure? This band is really good”, said Hezzy, indicating the name on the poster. “They’re called Tad, and I hear the support are not bad too”.

“Nah, I’m sure” I replied, having heard of neither band. And off I went.

Six months later, the support act exploded into the worldwide mainstream, and it became impossible to get tickets for love nor money. And I kicked myself.

The support act were some obscure little grunge outfit called Nirvana.

Nevermind.

/sorry
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:11, 6 replies)

Stunt boy I
As a ten-year-old steeped in mis-adventure, I stood on the end of a playground slide where I would - in what was to be the stunt to end all stunts - jump up and over my brother as he whooshed past at high speed.

I might even have planned some sort of mid-air forward roll to impress a small crowd of onlookers.

Instead, he caught me with his feet, and while I did indeed perform a perfect mid-air forward roll, I landed teeth first on the shiny metal slide.

"Ouch," I said, spitting teeth and blood.

The dentist, I must say, was a bloody genius for putting them all back in for me...
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:09, Reply)

Cheese grater
When I was 14, I had a work experience job at the local Italian restaurant. They stuffed me in the kitchen and made me do all the grunt work, like sweeping up or prepping food. The worst task was gutting squids for calamari.

One day they had me at work grinding down blocks of parmesan cheese with a cheese grater. This was some kind of industrial cheese grater; I tried doing a GIS for it but no such luck. Anyway, this was a big machine that stood on the floor and was as tall as me. You put the cheese in a chute, and then you press it down using a lever, where it is pressed against a spinning serrated plate that would grate the cheese and allow fine particles to pass through. Got it? All you really need to understand is that this serrated blade spins very fast and grinds up anything.

I was finished a block of cheese and just the rind was left, so it wasn't being grated. So I...reached inside. My nail chipped against the serrated blade and I pulled it out easily. Chipped nail, no problem at all.

So I got braver. I touched the spinning blade again, and this time it caught hold of my fingertip. It trapped my finger between the spinning plate and the edge of the chute, and really cut in. I yanked it out and they bandaged my finger heavily.

For the next few months I had to have it bandaged, and I also had to always have that finger pointing up or it would start to feel strange. It helped me out during a football match when I was playing defence during a corner kick. I was standing on the goal line when the ball got past the goalkeeper. It was going to go in over my head, but I deftly moved my hand, blocking it with the bandaged hand. The other team was pissed but the ref didn't give us any penalty because he considered it accidental contact.

To this day, 13 years later, I still can see the marks of the blade on my index fingerprint, and whenever I go swimming I can still feel discomfort in my fingertip. Also, typing kind of sucks.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:04, Reply)

Being of the female persuasion
I am required to perch delicately on the porcelain throne be it a no1 or a no2 situation.

I found myself requiring the former, and as I did the deed, I looked around my pleasant little bathroom, contemplating it's clean white tiles and attractive marble floor. And then onto my boots, which to my horror had a little mud on them.

Leaning forward to examine the mud closer, and plan of action re: mud removal, I nutted the radiator on the wall next to me.

In work the next day: 'Owch! Sam! How'd you get that black eye?!'
Me: 'I did it on the toilet'

:(
(Northern Lovely, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:04, 1 reply)

Tabs
That's what we call them (not cigs or fags) so it's as good a title as any.

When my teens were dawning, all of my family smoked. My mam had for as long as I can remember, when my step-dad moved in, he liberated everything and I learned that not only my 3 step-siblings (older teens), but my older brother smoked too and it was all out in the open. The only mammals in our house who didn't smoke were myself and my 2 dogs.

I came to (what I thought at 11, was) a rational and well-reasoned decision, that if I was going to suffer all the negative effects through passive smoking, then I may as well enjoy a proper smoke.

Persevering with cigarettes until I was well and truly hooked on nicotine. Surely the single most stupidest fucking thing I've ever done.

*Goes off for a smoke*
(Greencloud Wanted to go fishing on, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:03, 5 replies)

Magic Shopping
Doing a lot of mushies and then going shopping in Marks-and-Spencer's-Foodhall-cum-Intergalactic-Spaceport for lunch.

The only thing I could find to eat that was *safe* was crisps.... but in my confused state I couldn't get the rubber-grease-coated-coinage out of my pocket to pay!

So, I shoplifted! Never before, never since, even though I never got caughted. Yay!
( Piper Alpha is being a grumpy northerm bastard on:, Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:00, 2 replies)