» Conversation Killers

Freudian Slip
My husband and I had been invited to attend a wedding of a then-friend - it was to be a wiccan ceremony which i thought was pretty cool as i've never been to one and was quite curious as to what goes on. Then the actual invite came and it read the guests were to attend in medieval dress - i'm not too keen on fancy dress at the best of times, but since it was a wedding i was certainly not going to be a wet blanket. So hubby got it together as a knight, myself as a generic princess-type with the big upturned cone on my head (all very stylish, visited the costume shop etc).

Come the day of the wedding, i'm standing in the front yard talking to other mates whiles waiting for the bride and bridesmaids to arrive (yes, the wedding was held in their backyard, but in an attempt to fancy it up the bride had insisted on a horse and carriage to drive around the block in before turning up at her own front door again).

The guests are still arriving, and one of them appears in a vision of lace and mantilla. Now, this girl is *quite* huge so i can only imagine it was quite an effort for her to find something appropriate to wear for the day and, to be fair, she sort of pulled it off as an old-timey spanish senorita. As my eyes fell on her i commented to the bloke i was chatting to 'Doesn't she look lovely?' Then promptly, in full hearing of everybody there, i greeted her with 'Marie, you look absolutely awful!' Meant to say awesome not awful dammit!

Silence. Shocked silence as a matter of fact as everyone is wondering how i can be so horrid to this poor girl... Thankfully the guy i made my 'Doesn't she look lovely' remark to mere seconds ago was able to back me up that i must have had a slip of the tongue, but the damage was done. No matter how much i apologised and tried to explain my word salad, my protestations seemed unconvincing even to my own ears.
(Fri 13th May 2011, 1:46, More)

» Neighbours

My neighbours are ace
They kindly call my husband to come get me (through their giggles) everytime I drunkenly crawl under their diningroom table and won't come out.

The last time my neighbour was under there with me, her husband couldn't coax her out either. We built a fort together. ACE

I don't know why, it just happens when i've been drinking apparently.
(Mon 5th Oct 2009, 8:51, More)

» Family Feuds

My sister and I
I’m three years older than my next sister down, and growing up we were very close even if my dad did play us off against each other in an effort to vie for his attention. It didn’t help matters much that she was Dad’s favourite by far (read, she got much less beatings than I ever did), or that he forced me to always have her tag along when I visited my friends making me rather resentful towards her. So I would blackmail her given the smallest opportunity / naughtiness on her part – eg. I won’t tell on you if you don’t tell on me for this. Having a spectacularly violent father as our example (which is another page worth but I’m not going there today besides to say he’d broken some of my mother’s limbs, he’d thrash me at least once a week with one of his boots or belts (I got to choose the weapon), and towards the end of it all he’d regularly rape my mum – not to mention the other wives with their children he had living with us in a true (illegal) polygamous situation), when sis and I fought it would often degenerate into some kiddy violence (and don’t be fooled because we’re girls) – mostly me on her because I was, after all, three years older with a grudge.

I’m about 13 when my mum finally gets the nerve to leave my dad. He insists on displaying his true bastard colours and chase us across the country - we do eventually escape by all of us changing our names and going underground (of course, we kids were under 18 so couldn’t legally do it – we were going to school for years and I even started uni with aliases).

Come the teenage years and the tables are turned – sis is now my size and I’m the one who’s getting the black eyes / pretty bruising. Surprisingly I find myself unwilling to fight back now that we’re older (maybe I figured it’s her turn to have a go)… so instead of putting up with her uncontrolled violence and ‘rolling with the punches’, I move out at 15 and refuse to speak to her for just over three years.

Roll forward to when I’ve just turned 19, sis is 16, and we’re starting to slowly make amends. We’re finally talking again but with heaps of arguments about boundaries – guess we were finally dealing with the issues of the last few years.

Then one night that February I was driving home, past the local fish ‘n chippie, and I see an ambulance parked there. Remembering my sister lives just around the corner, I think “hope that’s not there for her. And if it is, I hope she’s okay”. WTF? Why would I think that? Turns out she was coming out of the shopdoor with her tea, getting into the car on the sidewalk side, when a car crossed the medianstrip, hit the car she was getting into… which impact threw her against a concrete electricity pole, she hit her head against it and died on impact.
It’s now 14 years later and I am still extremely thankful we at least started talking again before that happened. I have so many regrets now because looking back, I reckon the reason we argued so much was because we were so very close but my dad effectively ruined our relationship with each other.

I was the one to have to tell my dad about my sister’s death – my mum was way too scared, sure he’d blame it on her somehow and kill her – the first time I’d spoken to him in about 10 years. Flash forward to today, I’ve only spoken to him once since then – and he was playing the same old games. That last time I left in tears, quite inconsolable, because we fell back into our original roles so easily – him the dominating, violent man and me the child who would always be too afraid to speak up for fear of my safety.

So it’s now been 20 years since we left him, and I’ve only spoken to him twice – he has had five new families since, all the women end up fleeing him with their children. His current family consists of my three half-brothers and a half-sister all under 10 still, and I’ve seen him play the oldest and next oldest off against each other in just the same way as he did me and my sister – and dad’s well into his 60s by now. Nothing’s changed. His latest wife has also confided in me that he beats the crap out of her regularly - but it seems she can take it?! The first and last time I saw the older half-brother, he was begging me to take him with me, away from his/my dad.

So even though I would always tell friends to talk to their family because you never know whether you won’t have that chance again… I doubt I’ll speak to my dad soon. He wasn’t invited to my wedding and he’ll probably never see his grandchildren. I’m currently waiting for his latest set of sons to grow up, have enough of it and finally kill him (they’re already big boys – half Samoan).
(Mon 16th Nov 2009, 22:49, More)

» Mobile phone disasters

BOOOM!!! (note the three exclamation marks!!!)
When deep on the Northern tube line departing Borough on 21 July 2005, ie. a fortnight after 07/07, I received a message on my mobile phone. On hearing the beep I think, what's this? Not because I have no friends and so am surprised to receive a text message, but because there's no reception once you're on the tube. I picked up the phone only to see a bluetoothed business card reading one world only: "BOOOMM!!!" That was actually the sender address, there was no business card details attached. Hmmm...obviously it was sent from someone close by, due to having been bluetoothed (my phone was set to send and receive business cards from phones in the vicinity with the same setting). I scanned the carriage and there was only one other person I could see - belonging to the bluerinse brigade. So the business card sender was either somewhere on the train, maybe the next carriage, or on the station I just left. I decided, not surprisingly getting teh Fear, to get off at the next stop, Elephant & Castle. On exiting I showed the nearest tube attendant/security man/village idiot in a uniform the business card. He said "Oh that must just be one of your friends playing a trick by sms'ing you a joke", to which I pointed out it was a business card that could only be sent within bluetooth range. At this point his radio crackled and he then informed everyone within earshot that the station was now shutting down and to leave the station. We later found out this was the day when the second round of bombings had failed... I wonder to this day whether this was another, unreported, failed bombing or mere fuckery on some chavs' part. oh well then.
(Thu 30th Jul 2009, 13:06, More)

» The Apocalypse

I'll sneak this in here
Seeing as it has to do with the New Testament (so only a few chapters removed from Revelations' apocalypse):

Jesus drove a Honda. He just didn't like to talk about.
Proof: John 12:49 'For I did not speak of my own accord'.

I bet he also didn't mention the supermodels for obvious reasons.
(Wed 20th Jun 2012, 5:15, More)