» Faking it

When
my sisters and I were but slips of children we would regularly have to spend hours crammed into the back of my fathers latest crappy vehicular purchase on our way to visit our grandparents in South Wales or, if were especially lucky, to go on holiday to Aberwystwyth (bear with the spelling I'm slightly drunk).

Anyhoo, my middle sister would sit next to the window and stare out, whilst childishly humming and (probably) blowing bubbles. She was 4 see? One long afternoon from North Yorkshire to South Wales she spotted the recently pasted remains of a hedgehog that had come second in a contretemps with a car.

"What is that Daddy?" she piped up. My father took a drag on his cigarette and began explaining that the squished remains you see on roads are actually the splattered remains of lobsters. She was afraid of Lobsters you see?

As far as I can remember, he explained how lobsters when they were young lived free high in the atmosphere, swooping, diving, and generally having a great lobstery time. However, when they grew older they had to return to the sea and so had to make themselves parachutes to gently float down. Most made it but some, unfortunately, got blown off course and hit roads - becoming the puddle of blood and gore that she could see.

This started an 8 year paranoia for my sister. Hating lobsters she was continually afraid that one would parachute down on her. My father helped her by screaming that a lobster was above her when she was annoying him (about 3 times a week if I remember) and she would run crying to shelter.

I'm sure that faking a species of aero-lobsters to gain some measure of control over an unruly child is covered by this question, and you'll be pleased to note that I believe that at least part of my sisters subsequent psychological problems is down to having been prone to 'parachuting lobster' fear whenever she pissed the Old Man off.
(Sun 13th Jul 2008, 3:35, More)

» When Animals Attack

Evil
I'm sat in my room next to the window, overlooking the back garden and road next to our house. I'm sat here working on my thesis, now due in exactly three weeks and beginning to prey somewhat on my mind. I have been living, eating, sleeping (and possibly sh*tting) my thesis recently. As you can imagine life has been very, nay, ultra boring. To top off the fandango of enjoyment that has characterised my grey and dull existence the girl I love is not interested, making the whole past month or so an exercise in heart-wrenching academic futility.

So, to set the scene, this is the somewhat despondent, possibily even pessimistic, frame of mind that I currently inhabit. Next to a window.

Through this window I can see a tree in our back garden. This tree is not a paragon of trees. In fact its rather nonedescript. The tree equivalent of Alastair Darling, rather than a racy sycamore, or a hippy willow. In the tree live a family of grey squirrels. The squirrels are in the habit of frolicking in the garden and generally doing squirrely things. I'm sure that Squirrel Nutkin himself would be proud to call these squirrels his compatriots, proud in the knowledge that for nose twitching, acorn burying, tree climbing and general bushiness of tail these squirrels are at the forefront of the squirrelverse.

Anyway, I digress. My housemate just came back from class. As usual he brought his bike into the back garden, rolled it over to the squirrel tree, and started to lock it in place.

At which point a squirrel dropped out of the tree, like some squirrel version of rambo, and clung on to his bike helmet with all its tiny tiny might. My housemate was somewhat perplexed by this unforeseen turn of events, and began flapping at his own head to remove his new squirrely appendage.

This merely enrages the Die Hard Squirrel, which began attempting to chew through the helmet. My housemate takes this somewhat amiss and, becoming slightly concerned, begins to scream oh so softly. The squirrel doesn't really like this shrieking mannikin it appears to have attempted to bring down, and so redoubles is effort to gain unlicensed access to his brain. Now panicking, my housemate, with an audible toot of the sphincter, drops to the ground and rolls around the wet grass, trying to crush the squirrel. This, fortunately for him, works. The squirrel abandons ship post haste, and retreats, probably swearing, back up the tree. My housemate staggers inside covered in grass and mud, swearing he will kill the squirrel.

I'm pretty sure I can see the thing now, on a branch at the same level as my window. My bored mind posits that its sat there, a rolled up cigarette dangling from one corner of its mouth, swigging from a can of stella, flexing its arm muscles... the crazy Begbie squirrel of our garden.
(Mon 28th Apr 2008, 15:17, More)

» Advice from Old People

My
granny is a bit of a piece of work. At 91 she's still sharp, lewd and active.

Advice given has included:

"Remember to fuck around a lot, when I was growing up we weren't allowed to" (aged 89)

"Don't trust priests... they're cnuts." (aged 90)

"The best way to get a baby to sleep is to give it gin and milk" (as she was feeding gin and milk to my then 2 year old sister)

"If anyone in Brazil (where we were living at the time) tries to mug you, kick them in the balls till they drop to the ground, then stamp on their throat." (aged 84)

She's also advised me never to do cocaine, and also that marijuana brownies are great.

EDIT: My great uncle also once told me to never try shitting in a wicker waste paper bin. I'm not sure how that topic came up in our conversation.
(Fri 20th Jun 2008, 0:51, More)

» PE Lessons

PErversion.
The rather elderly, yet still hard as iron, head of PE at my school was renowned for his advice and wisdom on growing up and being a man. Such gems included:

PE Teacher, standing hands on hips, groin thrust forward: "Boys there's no better feeling than when you come inside your wife"
Class of 14 year olds: "Erm..."

PE Teacher, hands moving salaciously and expressively: "Now that you're getting older, and things are growing, you'll want to stand in front of a mirror and just let it all swing out."
Class of 15 year olds: "Erm..."

PE Teacher, slight drool at one corner of his mouth: "Jenkins, was that you I saw trying to finger some girl in the park last weekend? Good work boy."
Jenkins: "Erm..."

PE Teacher, hand worryingly in pocket, 'playing with his keys': "Roberts, you are a horrible little bastard, but your mother is a doll."
Roberts: "Sir! That's my mother!"
PE Teacher: "To think you crawled out of that..."

True story.
(Fri 20th Nov 2009, 12:14, More)

» Banks

Bank Robbery
I used to live in Rio de Janeiro a few years back, and still stay in contact with a few friends who live there. One of them emailed me 2 years ago with this story, which he swears is true (I've been trying to find a news report or anything on-line but can't at the moment).

Rochina is the largest favela (slum) in South America - its HUGE. A veritable parallel society has grown up there given years of governmental, municipal and societal neglect. Enterprising members of the community have built up business, rented out property to other favelados. At the same time, the ubiquitous urban drug trade has not left the place alone, and a large measure of control is exerted by the drug gangs.

Much like Mohammed Yunus' Grameen Bank, one local group had set up a bank, in which favelados could deposit money, and take out loans to fund business they were setting up (laundry's, grocery's etc). All very organic and within the community (although to what extent the drug gangs were/are involved is questionable). Anyway, one day all is proceeding well in the favela, the bank is open, people are doing their business when rushing in comes a gang of armed men, who proceed to rob the bank. They clear it out and make off with their loot. Thinking quickly, the owner of the bank alerts the local drug dealers, who form a posse and start chasing the robbers.

After a short while, and still in the favela, the posse of drug dealers catches up with the bank robbers. As you can probably imagine, the prospects for a group of out of favela bank robbers being caught by the local drug gang is not a particularly good one. Then, the case got more complicated...

The ad hoc law enforcement group (the drug gang) recognised most of the robbers - they were off duty city policemen. So, here you have the weird situation where a bank robbery carried out by some policemen is stopped by a gang of drug dealers. I'm not sure what happened to the police, but there's no love lost towards them, so I suspect they probably got seven bells of shit kicked out of them before they got out (if they were lucky).
(Fri 17th Jul 2009, 0:19, More)