Be Excellent To Each Other

SHUSH, YOU.

I keep thinking, now, about the episode of Powerpuff Girls where the 'Boogieman' and his monster cronies take over, and featured quite prominently is a maggot in a pimp hat with a very toothy grin (in its sightless mouth)

Grrr. I knew when I wrote it that it was wrong, but I bloody mindedly went ahead with it anyway.

But do not task me sir, I say! Do not! For I am very busy today with a huge avalanche of complicated inter-library music score loan enquiries, and it is pulling my noggin' apart.

That and we now have false widows, which can kill. Even if you're not one of the rare unlucky ones, the bites are pretty nasty. I'm led to believe by the popular newsmedia.

Gah. That makes me think of the nightmarish task of trying to collect all the score pieces in Eternal Sonata. And then when you meet someone who wants to perform with you, having to try all 20 or so in your posession to find which combination gets the 'S' rank.

Ooh! Ooh! That was me! It was ace.

No, hang on.

I wonder if I've still got the close-up video.

Man, you really wouldn't like how insanely flexible my fingers are. I can quite happily put them back 90 degrees unaided.



Not sure quite how it started, but apparently from an very early age, I'd always point out broken lightbulbs, as if they bothered me. As it turns out, I found any exposed lightbulb distinctly uncomfortable, particulary when alone. Which was unfortunate as all the toilet lights in France seemed to not have any kind of shade, and I was invariably on my own. This meant that I'd spend two weeks of holidays every year trying my best to never go to the toilet. Thankfully, it's certainly subsided over the years.

Well, ta for not demonstrating this when you had the opportunity, then.

It's not so much them being flexible as it is the very end tip being obviously dislocated to make an 'L' shape. I mean, I know the end can bend a bit both ways but not that much!

Also, I used to be able to get my thumb to my wrist.

Not sure quite how it started, but apparently from an very early age, I'd always point out broken lightbulbs, as if they bothered me. As it turns out, I found any exposed lightbulb distinctly uncomfortable, particulary when alone. Which was unfortunate as all the toilet lights in France seemed to not have any kind of shade, and I was invariably on my own. This meant that I'd spend two weeks of holidays every year trying my best to never go to the toilet. Thankfully, it's certainly subsided over the years.[/quote]

Oh that's the same as me! I used to point them out ot my mum and make scared noises
I am proud to say I can just about hold them if they are in a box and I can look at them without feeling ill

centipedes are as disgusting as spiders. I forgot to mention that

When my parents lived in Barbados, the underside of their house (which was on the side of a hill, so I think it was partially on stilts) was filled with nasty tropical creepy-crawlies.

Either my dad or a neighbour chopped a centipede in half with a shovel, and both halves ran in different directions to escape.

All these things about plane crashes and horrible nasty tropical bugs in Barbados... you're all doing it on purpose, aren't you?

I HATE YOU ALL.

Storms, I really hate storms, all lightning and thunder. It all stems from being caught out in bad one in Greenwich Park as a kid, sitting in the park shelter with my mum, and it being really cold and loud, and it never seemed to end. If there's a storm, I generally have to wait it out with fingers in my ears and wait for it to die down.

Talking on the phone, I'm generally shy and empty headed, so its more like getting up the courage to talk or forgetting something important cause your mind went blank.

I used to have a needle phobia, but now after having dental work, plus oral injection am generally not a wuss with them as I used to be.

I'm generally good with spiders and creepy crawlies though and find them quite interesting.

As part of my job though I have to change communal lighting, once after unscrewing the cover to the lights, I looked inside to see a mass of dead wasps. They had obviously been trapped in between the light and the cover and died. The real scary thing is that the cover was on tight, but they had obviously gotten inside somehow.

Don't talk on the phone during a thunderstorm.

I have been to Barbados loads of times, and I never once saw a centipede. So don't worry.

We did get chased by bats out of Welchman Hall Gully, though, so don't go there.

Haven't you gone yet?

News to cheer you up from Rake Magazine's clown article 'They Smell Fear':



So you should be safe there, and you could always hire a magician to escort you.

3 out of 5 people leave Barbados alive so the odds are on your side. You'll be fine.

You can increase your odds by remembering that when you order a roti, get the version WTIHOUT BONES.

I heard about this couple who went to Barbados once and had a really nice holiday. When they came back the guy noticed this weird blister just inside his ear so after a while he goes to the doctors and they couldn't figure out what it was and just gave him some cream for it. But a week later, right, the blister splits open and a whole family of little red spiders hatches out!!!!!!11111111

Once when I was there, I got so sunburned that my forehead and other parts of my face were covered in water-filled blisters, while I was able to tear sheets of A5-sized pieces of skin of my chest.

(before)

(after)

Unsurprisingly, the pretty girl I asked to dance on the Harbourmaster cruise turned me down.

Shin: Would it not be quicker to list things you aren't afraid of. How do you get by day to day.

I have always assumed that he maybe choked on one as a toddler (having found a loose one and put it in his mouth, as toddlers like to do with everything), but this is based off of nothing more than a random guess.

Actually, I stumbled across his Wikipedia entry the other week and it's even more disgusting than that. Because his knife wasn't anywhere near strong enough to cut through bone, the bugger had to bend his wrist backwards to snap the radius and ulna, then slowly hack through his arm, in a procedure that apparently took an hour to do.

The guy had a pretty strong will to live, that's for sure.

I just pretend it's happening to someone else

I'm pised while typing this yaazzaaaa

aaaaargh fuck sake that's horrible!

When I was about five years old my grandfather took me to visit my mother for a weekend. She lived in a block of flats where the front doors were all accessed from outside via long communal balcony type arrangements, the way that a lot of 1970's blocks of flats were made. I didn't like visiting my mother, so I was chewing on a button on my cardigan when it came loose and I swallowed it.

I thought this meant that I was going to die. My grandad said goodbye to me and that he'd pick me up on Sunday, but I knew this wasn't true because I would be dead by then, so I started to cry and told him that I loved him, and to tell Nan that I loved her too, and then I very solemnly said goodbye and watched him get into the car through the railings of the balcony, before I walked into the spare bedroom and laid down and went very quiet.

After about two hours my mum's husband of the time came in to ask me what was wrong - was I missing Nan and grandad, I'd see them in just too days... Well, that just got to me, because I wouldn't - I'd never see them again! The whole story came tumbling out, about the button in my tummy and how I was upset that I was going to die and that Nan and grandad would be so sad and upset.

Oh, poor Ian was half laughing half crying when he explained it was just a little button and that I wasn't going to die and why hadn't I told him?!

I still feel a little sad about it now, actually. I remember just how terrible and lonely I felt - how scared I was and how I was so far away from nan and grandad, and that they would miss me so much, but that I just wanted to be quiet and be all alone.

That strange parasite... could it have been... GUILT?!

Mimi: Wow, that is quite a powerful story. I remember a similar thing as a kid in that I told my parents I wished I could die for a day so I could see a certain person. Don't wanna talk about it too much but it freaked my parents out big time. I always considered that a death that you new coming to you would be quite peaceful and embracing.

Now I know that you have to fight for every minute of life you have. I don't know which is better.

Is that embracing or embarassing?

Yes embracing, as well you know.

That'll learn me for not quoting your post.

I swallowed some chewing gum when I was four and because I'd been told very forcefully to spit it out when I was done I was convinced I was going to die. I wasn't quiet like Mimi, I was a wailing, crying monster until my mum managed to calm me down.

I think I would have been a lot more noisily upset if I was with my grandparents, but I just felt sad that I wasn't going to see them again, and I knew how upset they'd be that they wouldn't see me again, and I felt bad because it was all my fault for biting my cardigan...

Not completey related, but there's another incident that it always reminds me of.

When I was about the same age, and on another visit to my mother's, she (my mother) and her then husband used to have a little wall, about a foot and a half high, that ran all the way around the front room. On this sat the TV, stereo system, etc.

I stood on there and decided to jump off, like superwoman, and I landed awkwardly. Ian went o stand me back up again, but my legs wouldn't support me. They tried and tried to get me to stand and I couldn't, so they phoned an ambulance. They phoned through to my grandparents who were now in Chelsea visiting my Uncle. The ambulance crew didn't know what I had done to myself and I was whisked to hospital. My uncle, aunt, cousins, grandparents etc actually got there before us - I was on a stretcher, quiet.

They took me into a consultancy room and my grandparents etc all waitied outside, very worried.

About quarter of an hour later the doctor came out and my Nan rushed up and asked what was happening, and the doctor said 'she's dying'.

Screaming wailing nan was looked upon with much confusion, tears bursting from her face as I come bounding out of the doctors office with a lollipop in my hand. The doctor had actually said 'she's fine' and my nan's dodgy hearing had misinterpreted it as the worst news. I have no idea why I couldn't/didn't stand, but I do remember that day, and the fact that I was wearing a yellow striped dress and that my lollipop was a green flat round lime flavoured one.

Amongst the many small objects swallowed by my youngest brother when he was a toddler was once a 5 pence piece. I always remember that it had turned a very shiny green colour when it *ahem* came out the other end.

On a injuries related note, my parents once took us all for a day trip to Bath. Whilst walking around I kept picking this same brother up and swinging him by his arms... until he started screaming. He kept crying and screaming, so Mum & Dad took him into the A&E department of the nearest hospital. The doctors decided to take an X-ray of his arm, but as they prepared him for the X-ray, the crying and screaming stopped. Turns out I'd dislocated the poor bugger's shoulder and the doctors manhandling him for the X-ray had inadvertantly popped it back in. I've never been able to live that down since, and it happened nearly 20 years ago!

Oh I thought it was an urban myth. Oh well

I remember the guy who was bitten (or something) on the head by a fly which laid its eggs, and then hatched a maggot in his head. If I recall they had to make a small hole and then lure the maggot out with a bit of meat, enough so that they can get tweasers on it and pull it out. Guy was left with a giant hole in his head.

If anyone can clarify this story, preferably with the pics that I recall to be ace, then 934829 bananas to you.

This is all quite horrible.

Those ticks that you get in the countryside from cows are bad enough. They latch on and start sucking blood, and their little jaws are so strong you have to burn the fuckers off once they've got their mandible in you. This is reason #1056 why I wish the National Trust would buy a fucking lawnmower for the Common.

I seem to remember it being bacon. Can't remember where I saw it though, probably on one of those Fwd: FW: FWD: !!!!!!111 emails.

Heheheheheheheh. Norty.

That maggot in the head bit is in The Wasp Factory, except worse.

You can get a special tick-remover tool, I have one because the cats occasionally get them. The burning method works but it's painful.
On a related note, never go walking through heather on Benbecula.

Yes. It is rather painful.

I have also used the "tweezers and scalpel" method, which is marginally better.

Yeah all I had to deal with them out there was a blunt swiss army knife. Don't squeeze them though or you get a shot of lime-disease-infected deer blood.