» My most treasured possession

miraculous escaping corn snake
This is probably a good place to tell you about my amazing snake.

About 5 years ago a friend was getting rid of his corn snake. As I've always wanted a snake I asked for him, and Huzzah! I became the happy keeper of a beautiful corn snake. He had a small scar from when My friend had lost him and found him with the hoover, but was lovely looking and having been brought up in a house with very small children was very tolerant.

A year or so later, we had to move house, and couldn't find a new one before we had to move out of the old one, so we went to stay with some people we knew,and put most of our stuff in storage. Three days after we got there, we returned to their house to discover smoke pouring out from under the floorboards in the living room. After wandering about for a bit trying to work out what was going on, we open the hall door to go upstairs and met with a wall of smoke. yup, their bloody house was on fire. We later found out the floor had collapsed over where we were wandering around shortly after we got out. Hurrah for not dying!

Among our clothes and other replaceable essentials, my snake was upstairs in his tank in our bedroom. the fire was upstairs. Arse. Not much I could do about it though.

After a few hours of worrying that the fire was our fault (it wasn't - woo!) and watching the firemen go in and out, the fire was vanquished. One of the firemen (in full kit) was nearly killed by the backdraft when he opened the door into our friends bedroom where the fire had been caused by a dodgy electrical socket sparking. The heat had been so intense it melted all her jewellery and stuff. My snake was in the next room. Again, arse.

Then a nice firelady asked whose the snake was. Sadly, I said he was mine, expecting to be shown a blackened crispy dead thing. She said she didn't really understand why, but he was OK. He was a bit brown and sticky (like a stick!) from the smoke, but he was otherwise fine. Still, 4 years on, when he sheds his skin (more often than he used to) there's always a brown smudge along the top of it. For a couple of days afterwards he was quite sluggish, so my guess is that he slowed down his breathing or some other reptilian trickery. I dunno.

2 years later he escaped. He had been prowling around his tank looking for a mate, refusing to eat anything for a few months, when he managed to prise the lid open and get out. The front door happened to be open, and he was gone by the time we realised. Arse!

A whole year later, I was coming in from the garden, when there he was! My wife came running because I bellowed 'SHIT!" so loudly she thought I was hurt. When she saw me with Rusty around my neck she was speechless. I should probably mention here that we live in the North Cornish countryside, in England. He'd survived a whole year, including a fairly harsh British winter. There were feathers in his poo, so he'd definately been hunting, etc. There had been an unconfirmed sighting of a corn snake over a mile away from us while he was gone. I like to think that was him. Now after another escape scare (kids left tank lid off, he got out but was under my daughters bed) he's curled up in his tank in my office.

So huzzah for my amazing cornsnake - he's survived fire, the English countryside, vacuum cleaners and small children.

Length? about 5ft now!
(Tue 13th May 2008, 10:52, More)

» Pointless Experiments

My father in law was legendary at dangerous experiments
As a child/teenager he created TNT and various other explosives, resulting in various craters, burned science blocks and more.

My favourite one, however, comes from when he was an adult in charge of a nuclear reactor. They had a major problem with seagulls, so he got hold of some sodium and put it in a jar of fish oil (in case you don't know, sodium is kept in oil to prevent it oxidising and exploding). He then cut it into small pieces and put them on the roof. Seagulls come swooping down, swallow the pieces whole, fly off and BOOM! No bicarbonate of soda needed thanks!

Picture the environmentalists reaction seeing seagulls flying over a nuclear reactor and exploding.
(Fri 25th Jul 2008, 2:47, More)

» Irrational people

oh yes of course - religion! Definitely irrational... A rambling story of my descent into and eventual escape from religious fundamentalism
I used to be a full-on bible believing tongue talking evangelical. In fact, I joined b3ta whilst still (just about) part of it all and one or two of my previous qotw answers make me cringe immensely!

I was converted at the age of 17, having just about survived a thoroughly unpleasant childhood, the high point of which was finally escaping into care at the age of 14. Actually the children's home I went to was utterly amazing but I digress! Social Services don't get it all wrong believe me...

So anyway, probably because my nickname was Jesus (long hair, bare feet, hippy clothes and permanently stoned) the evangellyfish at my college latched onto me and concentrated their efforts at getting me to one of their church meetings. Once there, I had a very powerful religious experience (probably an ill-timed acid flashback to be honest) where I suddenly and intensely felt the presence of some beautiful and very other being. All my defences fell down and when the guy leading the meeting asked if I wanted him to pray with me, the word 'yes' came out almost involuntarily.
I was rapidly absorbed into church life and suddenly found myself among what seemed to be (and genuinelt was in some ways) a loving family group. I happily handed in my brain and heart at the door and believed the whole thing. hook, line and fucking sinker. I destroyed various things I owned that were considered by various people to be sacrilegious, such as my lovely collection of chinese idols, which I kind of understand, and also lots of music. Including for some reason, a Tracy Chapman CD. I mean what could be blasphemous about that? But anyway, I was baptised and 'filled with the spirit'. The first sign of weirdness was when I got it together with a single mum who was also a believer. I was very young - I was 19 and she was 21. But rather than just point out that maybe I was a little young for parenthood, the bloody Christians decided to brand her a hussy and a whore, distracting me from my holy calling of something or other.
We ended up leaving that church, but we were hooked by that point, so we just went to another one... We got married (in church) and I decided to bible college to learn to be an evangelist. Well, that was an eye opener. The idea of the people there being 'shepherds of God's flock' was quite frankly, terrifying. I was having serious doubts about the whole thing by then, but saw these as temptations sent my way by the devil (yes really) and did my best to ignore them.

In the end, it took several more clashes with scary power loving pastors and other utter dickheads before I came to the conclusion that it was all a big steaming pile of dogshit. Funnily enough I only managed to leave my religion though, once I actually found a church run by genuinely decent human beings. I guess I realised that if I still didn't believe it even then I'd better get the hell out. It still took me a while, though, and was a long drawn out process. I was a born again numbnuts for about 19 years all told...

Not long after I jacked it in I managed to convince my wife that it really wasn't all it was cracked up to be. She promptly realised that religion was the only thing keeping her married to me, so she buggered off with another bloke. Still worth it though! Actually not long after she'd gone I kind of realised the same thing, so everyone was better off. Especially the kids...

All the years of wonderful insightful Bible knowledge, church history and doctrinal understanding is a little wasted on me these days, but it has occasionally come in handy at pub quizzes or more occasionally when arguing with religious idiots... I can honestly say that losing my faith has been one of the best things to happen to me. I'm happier, more fulfilled, more secure and I enjoy life more. I'm even more thankful for what I have somehow. And I get to choose how I live my life rather than trying to shoehorn it into some semblance of bronze age thinking!

TDLR - I used to be an evangelical Christian, but I'm better now.
(Wed 16th Oct 2013, 14:28, More)

» The nicest thing someone's ever done for me

guitar
Several years ago, not long, in fact, after my last story, we were involved in getting a new church set up.

(You can keep all your 'all Christians are thick religious twonks' thoughts out of this, by the way. You might be surprised if you actually met some of us.)

My wife is very gifted musically and led worship most Sundays with her beaten up old guitar. Sometimes she would borrow other people's guitars because hers really was nasty, but she couldn't afford a half decent one.

The pastor arranged for her to play at another church one Sunday, and while she was there they had a secret offering to get her a guitar. They then told me they'd collected £500 to spend on one for her. Now they wanted to surprise her with a new guitar, but didn't know which one.

So I said to her "look, you've been asking God for a guitar for ages - why don't we go to the guitar shops and have a look around. Then you can pray for a specific guitar and maybe even save up towards it." I somehow managed it with a straight face, and she somehow took it at face value, and we looked around the shops and found one that she loved.

She was utterly shocked when she was presented with the exact guitar she wanted a week later, with lots of love from the whole church.
(Fri 3rd Oct 2008, 16:52, More)

» Council Cunts

What really happens
is that council workers are bred in special tanks by the government. The rejects go to call centres.

100% true
(Thu 26th Jul 2007, 13:31, More)