» Dodgy work ethics


I worked in a shop selling hand-made fudge. (Please note, I have heard all the fudge-packing jokes I can cope with in one lifetime.) As part of the job we had to pour out 22lb of boiling sugar onto a marble table. This takes two people as the pan is heavy and sugar solution at 118-122C is not exactly good for your skin.
It's pretty entertaining for slack-jawed tourists and small children to see all the fudge being made, and we would talk to them and feign interest in their observations.
The boss made me pour fudge with a complete idiot who turned to talk to customers who were behind him, sending a panful of fudge slopping towards my face. If it had actually hit me I would have been blinded from the heat and needed skin grafts, or it would have killed me. The turd who came inches from maiming me for life couldn't understand why I was irritated, and I still had to pour fudge out with the same light-fingered moron.
The boss's boss took an entire week's pay from me to pay for a rather silly uniform which I didn't even get to keep when I left.
If anyone wants to make Jim's fresh fudge for themselves, I'll be posting a version of the recipe in the replies.
(Fri 8th Jul 2011, 14:17, More)

» I didn't do it

Jugged
I didn't attend an interview and assessment day while wearing a jacket hiding a very tight top and a wonderbra. I then didn't remove the jacket halfway through the maths assessment, as this would have given me an unfair advantage over at least 50% of the other candidates. I have also never used similar tactics to get free bike maintenance.
(Mon 19th Sep 2011, 20:27, More)

» Fairgrounds, theme parks, circuses and carnivals


When I was younger and messier, I worked briefly in a circus. I wasn't terribly good at my job, which was to fill an advertising blimp called an impar with helium and let it rise on a long cable. People would then see the blimp and decide that an evening watching clowns give children phobias would be entertaining.
The impar had an arrangement which meant I could let more helium into it without having to reel it in. I managed to get it up to eighty feet fairly regularly, which was a pretty impressive length.
One week a couple of clowns called Caane and Ecossis decided it would be a good idea to hang onto the ropes under the impar.
So I inflated the rig and up they went. I started with it fairly low, only about thirty feet up and they were going at it like mime artists in a mirror maze with all the glass taken out. Ecossis decided to 'tumble' off the ropes underneath and hang upside down by one foot, then Caane, not to be outdone, did the same thing. So I started inflating the impar a bit more to let it up to fifty feet.
I only realised something had gone wrong when the ringmaster started shouting at me: 'Enough air - ground the impar cos Ecossis and Caane fell!'
(Tue 14th Jun 2011, 21:58, More)

» Trolls

Sterilise the poor and bring back the workhouse!
(unlurks)
Hi all
Does anyone remember the Government Spending Challenge website, which was briefly active last year before drowning in trolls? I accidentally became one of them after posting this, which I wrote for my own amusement as a pastiche of the right-wing posts which were getting more and more ludicrous:

by LH on July 11, 2010 at 10:53AM

This would make the implementation of numerous ideas on this site easier. Men and women (even married couples) were separated in workhouses, thus reducing the number of children produced. This would mean the child benefit bill could be reduced. Work was compulsory, punitively harsh, and continued even into old age for impoverished elderly people. This would make going into a workhouse unattractive compared to getting a job (we all know there are jobs available) - and stop people living on the state from having an endurable life.

Food could be controlled by the workhouse, which would halt the problems associated with permitting poor people access to cash to buy food. Children would come under the direct control of the state and should they fail after such an auspicious upbringing they could simply return to the workhouse.

Teenagers who drop out of education and cannot get jobs could be automatically admitted on their seventeenth birthday and trained to do a job. They could be forced to remain until they find work. Elderly people who cannot afford care homes could be admitted and live out the rest of their lives in semi-prisoners. Asylum seekers could join them.

How the idea could be implemented

It would only be necessary to build one at public expense, the rest could be built by inmate work gangs. To prevent the problem of generations of poor people, release could be conditional on getting sterilised.

... which unfortunately was taken seriously by a number of people, despite my almost immediate admission in the comments underneath that it was a joke in poor taste. The Guardian columnist Laurie Penny even linked to my post then to a screenshot of it, clearly believing it to be a serious suggestion.

The mods then added to the problem by removing my original post, making it impossible for anyone to check my apology or see that my other posts were less than serious.

I have kept copies of my other posts, as I'm vain and things were starting to get a bit silly, so if anyone wants me to I'll put them in the comments to prove that I shouldn't have been taken seriously.
(Edit- I missed out 'how the idea could be implemented'.)
(Wed 25th May 2011, 21:15, More)

» The Best / Worst thing I've ever eaten

Oh the bovinity!
Veal, not free-range or rose, but proper calf-crated anaemic European stuff after about a decade of habitual vegetarianism. It was actually very tasty if I kept thinking of it as a funny sort of pork.
And Tesco's own gluten-free sausages, which really were a funny sort of pork. I think the texture could be best described as pre-chewed.
(Thu 26th May 2011, 19:42, More)