» The B3TA Confessional

Steve, I'm sorry I ruined your birthday.
Back in the mists of time, when I was merely 20, a friend of mine turned 21. It happens to most 20-year-olds at some point, but Steve was slightly special as he was the oldest in our circle, and therefore the first to reach this milestone.
His birthday plans were modest: himself and 15 of his friends would meet for a few beers, we'd go for a Mexican at 8ish (this was winter, so no need to book) and then meet up with another dozen or so after. More beers, then spirits, then nightclub. Flirt badly with people we know, dance badly with people we know, go home alone. Standard Saturday night really, apart from the Mexican restaurant.
Ah, yes, the Mexican. Me being me, I was already slightly pished by the time we got to phase 2 of the evening. I ordered margaritas and shots of tequila for Steve and myself before I'd ordered food, and my inner drunken arse was only around the corner.
There being 16 of us meant that this little restaurant was slightly unprepared, and there was a good ten minutes between the first and last food being delivered to our table. Plenty of time for me to get bored.
I'm sat there drumming idly with my knife and fork, Steve sat next to me ignoring his tacos in favour of turning his napkin into a hat for the girl opposite him, Alix (who was similarly ignoring her fish), when I notice a gloroious, mysterious thing. There's a bee stuck in the tiny fake flowers in the middle of the table.
I carefully reach out with my knife, all thoughts of cutlery percussion banished from my head, and wiggle it under him. He stumbles, grips on... and sits there. I have a bee on the end of my knife.
The sensible thing to do would be to say "look guys, I've got a bee on my knife" and carry it outside.
Instead, I put it on Steve's taco. This'd be funny, right?
Right?
Wrong.
He reached down without looking, picked up his taco, actually took a bite (missing the bee, thankfully) and only noticed it when it was inches from his eyes.
He panicked, and threw it across the table, hitting Alix, who was just reaching over for a drink. She recoiled, and the glass in her hand collided with her plate, dragging it into her lap. She screamed: understandable really, since she was covered in Steve's taco and her own grilled fish.
Then she noticed the bee. The angry bee.
She jumped almost vertically, overturned her segment of table (3 or 4 had been pushed together to accommodate us) and screamed.
Then she screamed some more.
Her dress was ruined, her and Steve's food was ruined, the night was probably ruined, and I was suddenly very sober.
Incredibly, no one had seen me plant the bee in Steve's taco, so to this day, no one knows it was my fault.
Steve: The ballsing-up of your 21st birthday was all my fault.
So was the bee taco 'n' fish on Al.

Many apologies.
(Wed 1st Sep 2010, 10:36, More)

» Messing with people's heads

Many years ago my friend bought a Nokia N-gage.
One of those poncey (yet crappy) gaming phones. He wouldn't shut up about it for the week beforehand.
"I'm getting a new phone in a week - a Nokia N-gage"
"I'll have my phone in 4 days"
"2 days time I'll be playing better games than that on my phone"
"18 hours and I'll picking up my N-gage"
Just generally being a complete technotwat about it. You know the kind.
For that reason I waited 'til he'd owned it for a couple of hours and sent him a text that went something like this:

Hey! Did you get the Ngage? How i# ## ######
**MESSAGE CORRUPTED**
**ERROR 843**
**REBOOTING MESSAGE**
Hey! Did you get the Ngage? How i# ## ######
**MESSAGE CORRUPTED**
**ERROR 843**
**MESSAGE TERMINATED**

A few minutes later I got a text back asking me to repeat myself, because my text was all garbled. I replied with:

Garbled? I was aski# ## ##### ##
**MESSAGE CORRUPTED**
**ERROR 843**
**CRITICAL SIM ERROR**

And then, nothing. No reply. I waited about an hour and called him.
Turns out he was already on a bus back into town with his malfunctioning phone...
(Mon 16th Jan 2012, 12:00, More)

» Asking people out

Oh god, I'd forgotten about this.
Me and a few friends were in a dingy meat market of a nightclub. The drunken knobhead of our group sidles up to two girls. One was hot, the other was... less hot*.
He walks straight up to the ugly one of the two and says "do you wanna dance?". She nods enthusiastically, bingo wings aflappin', a look of mingled joy and surprise spreading across her face.
She turns to head for the dance floor but my mate doesn't move. She looks back in polite incomprehension, and he drops the bomb: "go on, then. I'm trying to chat your mate up".
Bingo wings or not, she had a fantastic right hook on her.
Totally worth it, he reckoned.

*Wouldn't have looked completely out of place in a circus.
(Thu 10th Dec 2009, 16:26, More)

» Lego

My dad recently sold his house
and before he handed the keys over he asked me to clear all of my junk out of the loft.
There was a lot of it; dozens upon dozens of books, a working Megadrive with 20-odd games, old issues of FHM in surprisingly unwanky condition, CDs, cassette tapes, a minidisk player, old school projects and, to get back on topic, a pretty big box of Lego Technic. 1x1x2 feet, full to the brim.
A tiny voice at the back of my mind said "Kerching! There's probably a couple of hundred quids worth there!", but sadly the tiny voice didn't point out that it would be a pretty big operation to get it into a sellable condition.
Thus what I thought would be a couple of hours works ended up stretching over several days, as I sorted it into colour-coded beams and panels. There were bowls of gears and axles all over the living room, a coffee table full of tiny pieces that would go missing if I left them on the floor, a completed test car, a half completed black hawk plane and a general feeling of "I wish I hadn't fucking started this".
About four days into the carnage the wife finally pipes up (yes I'm married, it could happen to you too one day if you stop trolling on internet forums and go out into the big wide world):
"I hope you finish sorting all of this out soon..."
"I know, I'm sorry" I reply, "this is all taking longer than"-
"...because I want to build a digger..."

She's a keeper.
(Sat 26th Oct 2013, 17:01, More)

» Asking people out

Stay calm and concentrate.
I'd been quietly ogling her from the other side of the room for a couple of weeks now, and it had taken me nearly as long to grow the balls to ask her out.
As I walked across the room I toyed with two possible sentences: "Do you want to meet me for a drink some time?" and "Do you want to go out on the piss?".
I'm getting nearer, and my lust-addled panic-stricken mind still hasn't decided.
Closer, closer, out on the piss or meet for a drink, out on the piss or meet for a drink, out on the...
Too late. She's right there, right in front of me, she grins, says hi, plays with her hair, do it! Now's the time! Say it! Say something! Say anything! Don't just stand there!!
"Uhh. Hey, look, I've got Friday off, I wondered if you wanted to meet me, maybe we could go for a piss together?"
Imagine my desperate cheesy grin.
Imagine her look of confusion.
Imagine the look on my face as I replay my sentence in my head.
Imagine me slowly realising that she thinks I'm a piss fetishist.
...
Imagine my surprise upon discovering that some girls really do like a GSOH.
(Thu 10th Dec 2009, 12:52, More)