» Neighbours

'love thy neighbour'
(story doesn't involve sex or humus... don't want anyone misled or feeling their time has been wasted :P )My cousin stayed with me throughout august, sleeping on my couch while he attended this years Edinburgh festival getting some experience on stage as a comedian. Didn't ask for any money or anything because, well... you help family out right? Towards the end of his stay he flooded the bathroom and consequently the neighbours flat below us. Kind of destroying his bathroom and kitchen ceiling.

I spoke to the neighbour, said i'd pay for anything the insurance didn't cover. trying to do the right thing etc, he was my guest and as such anything happening in my flat is my responsibility. For the next couple of weeks I didn't hear anything, but put aside what money i could knowing a bill of some kind was gonna land on the welcome mat soon.

While waiting for this bill, i ended up in a minor road accident. A Bin got blown onto a main road as i cycled past. Knocking me off my bike and resulting on my getting clipped by a car from behind. queue one minor skull fracture and muscle damage in my right arm... plus a trashed bike.

So while i healed my bike went in for repair... knowing how much cash i had, and thinking 'if i set aside £250 for this flood thing, that'll be ok...' i later picked up my bike and paid them for the repairs. New gear cassette, new front transmission, new bike chain, front wheel bent back into shape, new front light. total bill £180. not happy with the cost, but i cycle everywhere and without my bike i just feel stuck.

The day after picking my bike up the neighbour drops the bill on me of £510. oh shit! I'd discovered last night i couldn't cycle, because the damage had left my right arm weak, so when cycling i kept veering off to the left and wasn't safe on the road. So the timing was bad... if i'd known this i would have done without the bike i can't use and been in better shape to pay this bill (i reckon i could have found the extra £80 somewhere). But as it was, being currently unemployed i find myself buggered.

Then this week (a few days later) my sister tells me she's moving out to live with her boyfriend. I'd been letting a room out to her for £200 a month including ALL bills (very cheap... family rates etc). I'd always known she'd move out and all i'd ask for was a months notice. I got 6 days.

So being in pain, with a hefty chunk of my income pulled out from under my feet I spoke to my neighbour. Explaining my situation and asking if i could pay him £300 now and £210 over the next few months... him being a devout practising christian, and well up on the 'love thy neighbour' stuff said 'no', and made it clear he'd take me to court for the full amount if i don't pay up.

September has just been shit beyond belief. Learnt my lesson though... don't accept responsibility for anything, don't trust family, don't pay for anything you can get away with not paying. lovely world :S
(Thu 1st Oct 2009, 18:05, More)

» DIY fashion

Sacked
I'm lucky enough to be suffering a very long distance relationship, in which my lovely lady flies over to visit a couple of times a year (and visa-versa) from Tokyo.
I miss her terribly when she's gone and once she'd rather carelessly left one of her skirts behind after a visit... and a (rather odd) mixture of curiosity and loneliness convinced me it'd be a good idea to wear the skirt to work. So i did... once there i realised it looked rather crap so i tried to pass it off as a joke by raiding the 'props' box, that was left over from a recent fancy dress theme day.

the result: www.vacant-cs.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/1142295716.JPG

The lovely officey type area behind me is Scottish Gas HQ, my attire was deemed inappropriate and i was sacked soon after. Though i've since changed my mind and decided i do look good in a skirt, so not a total loss. :D

oh and for the sheer hell of it i might aswell confess i've and odd habit of wearing 'her' underwear on my head, for no apparent reason it's both relaxing and devastatingly stylish at the same time. dubious? fear not... i present the most stylish headwear known to man, a pair of hotpant thingies, fondly dubbed "period pants" - i15.photobucket.com/albums/a396/r3c/95.jpg

hmm... i'd better stop now.
(Mon 28th Aug 2006, 2:29, More)

» Personal Hygiene

Ad nauseum
I knew a truly great guy, genuinely funny, patient and intelligent. Because he was such a diamond i'll not give out his real name for 2 reasons:

1. So as not to offend him, he's an I.T geek and for all i know visits the site
2. Because it makes me giggle to think of some b3ta reader i've never met thinking "omg does he mean me?"

So we'll call him Paul.

Well paul... you know the "fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down" phrase? We paul fell out of said tree, and after dusting himself off ate the tree and all the wildlife it contained. Then casually discarded the bones and leaves (he didn't 'do' greens). Suffice to say the guy was ugly, large and messy. (but still funny, intelligent etc... just to remind you :P)

His flat and specifically his bedroom would have been a goldmine for anyone wanting to do accelerated research into how sedimentary rock is formed. Alternating layers of cigarette packets and pizza boxes, interspersed with effects pedals like oddly musical fossils. You literally stepped up a foot when you entered his room to walk across the sea of waste.

The reason i endured this was both because he was a legend, and because we 'jammed' together, and i couldn't play drums in my flat (btw like the musical signposting earlier with 'effects pedals'? THAT'S structure... no? oh never-mind) So i'd travel over on weekends to muck about, learning new beats, and also learning that you could play drums with coke bottles.

Always willing to help a mate, one day when he was out me and another friend decided to do him a favour and clean the flat. After stocking up on several rolls of bin bags we dived in peeling back layer after layer, and disgusting as it was once we reached bedrock (sustained metaphor huh? pfft anyway...) anything that had gone before looked positively rosy in comparison.

The stench was bad enough, but we'd obviously aquired an immunity over the afternoon... but the particular brand of hell paul had fermented in his room came in two flavours. The first was areas of the carpet that had literally been eaten, melted or decomposed until the bare floorboards showed through. The second was under several of the pizza boxes (+half eaten pizza), the denizens that had done the corroding/eating of the much abused carpet. Loads and loads of maggots.

I don't know if paul ever knew this, i've never been able to mention it to him and i've not seen him for four years. more than likely it's all back to the same state by now. But when your filth can support colonies of large multi celled organisms, and the filth is in such huge quantities that this goes by unnoticed... then THAT could be considered a hygiene problem.

erm... never been sure, is there meant to be a punchline to QOTW's? If you require one please email [email protected] and i'll endeavour to reply :)
(Thu 22nd Mar 2007, 15:27, More)

» Awesome Sickies

Brief
I worked for british gas and it was shit.
I decided at dinner time i wanted to go home.
I told my manager i had diarrhea.
He told me to prove it.
I asked if he'd like me to shit in his hand.
I was sacked the next month for some vague commitment nonsense.
The End.
(Sun 11th Jun 2006, 14:34, More)

» Dentists

Dentists... all of them... in a queue
Because lady luck is an ugly cunt she tends to be a tad bitter, and occasionally wreaks havoc on the meek and helpless for idle kicks. When i was born i drew the short straw and ended up her victim de jour (correct spelling? ha! unlikely). The result being i was born with a 'cleft palette' or "Hairlip" as the more lovely people call it.

For those not in the know a cleft palette is, oddly enough, where the palette (roof of the mouth) is still in two halves, and hasn't joined in the middle whilst in the womb (hence 'cleft'). So my first visit to the dentist was the day i was born, with it going down-hill from there.

I spent the first year of my life with a couple of cm gap in my upper lip, and surgery twice. Then surgery every few years until i hit my teens, with the aim of slowly shuffling my teeth about in preparation for final surgery later (oh how i waited with gleeful baited breath).

As a teenager from about 13-16 i visited Manchester dental hospital once a MONTH for brace, adjustment, occasional recreational teeth pulling and general checkups... until they rolled out the big guns.

In the middle of my A-levels i was finally 'ready' to have the final ops. Which were to break by upper jaw away from the rest of my skull; remove chunks of bone from my hip and put the bone fragments in the newly created gap betwixt jaw and skull.

This had the bizarre effect of waking up from the anesthesia and having a newly shaped head. It took months to learn how to chew properly again, and various speech therapy sessions to learn how to speak properly again. I've forever been grateful that this coincided with desperately trying to lose my virginity.

All operations over, and it HAS been an improvement, not sure it was worth 18 years of pain though... and for some reason i still have wire retainers behind my teeth. apparently they "weren't worth taking out"... fair do's.

Such long term treatment meant quite an odd relationship with my dentist, i'd been with her since birth... and seen her go from trainee to UK's leading paediatric orthodontist (i'd like to think i taught her everything she knows :D)

No apologies for lack of hummus, or extreme length... after all b3ta is cheaper than therapy. ;)

(note: after all this i STILL never went emo... fuck knows what awe inspiring suffering they must have endured to be such miserable twunts :P)
(Mon 6th Nov 2006, 0:58, More)