Life Tools

The Sobriety Shocker

From The Online Dating Game, Part I:

Description: When you are not drinking and you realise that you’re still equally prone to doing stupid things, saying stupid things, or acting like an idiot.

When I quit drinking there were Sobriety Shockers everywhere. You always assume there are certain things you do or did only because you were inebriated. Like getting your phone out at the work Christmas party and saying “right who wants to see a photo of my cock”. Perfectly normal behaviour when you’re drunk. The shocker is you realise you are often equally susceptible to doing such things when sober.

You realise soon that all those occasions when you regretted doing things “when you were drunk” are not over. And you can be equally stupid, childish or thoughtless when you are completely sober. After enough of these occasions you realise … you were not just a daft reckless fool because you were drunk, but that it’s an inherent part of your personality and you cannot change it.

The Sod’s Delivery Prompt

Description: Avoid waiting excessively for a delivery by pretending to have a shower, go to the toilet or pop out for 5 minutes, thus making your delivery man appear instantly.

From The Nudist, the Nutcase & the Earthquake:

I’d taken the day off work and awaited the delivery of my new laptop. After a few hours of waiting, I decided to deploy one of many variatons of The Sod’s Delivery Prompt to make my package appear.

We all know that when you are told that something will come between 8am and 5pm, you will be waiting all fucking day and it will either arrive at 5pm or not at all, especially if you booked the day off work, and even more so if you are looking forward to its arrival. We also know that if you take a shower, pop out to the shops or become embroiled in an uninterruptable defecation process, the delivery man will arrive while you are unavailable to answer the door.

The Sod’s Delivery Prompt trick can be used to fool the cruel sodding world we live in into thinking you are currently unable to answer the door, triggering the arrival of the delivery man.

I ran a bath, it didn’t seem to work. So I took it one step further and stripped naked, cunningly leaving a t-shirt and jogging trousers by the door, both capable of being put on hurriedly as I dashed down the stairs. I tended to the bath and sure enough, the buzzer rang. I grabbed my clothes and bounded down the stairs, acceptably dressed by the time I answered the door.

The 419 Addendum

Description: Avoid being caught by internet scams and hoaxes by imagining they all end with a Nigerian 419 hook.

From The Internet Dumbfuck Virus:

I have used the “419 Addendum” to weed out internet falsehoods. The 419 scam (named after a Nigerian law relating to fraud) is the one where someone tells you you’ve been given a huge sum of money and they need your bank details and/or an admin fee to release it to you. In my 419 Addendum technique, I apply this to any internet rumour or statement. So when I read something on the internet I treat it as I would if it had a Nigerian money scam tagged on the end.

“Hey, did you know that the little guy from the Wonder Years grew up to be Marilyn Manson, and he’s got $4,000,000,000 waiting to be transferred into your bank account.”

Doesn’t sound that plausible anymore. So I would do an internet search to try to find out how Josh Saviano from The Wonder Years acquired such a fortune and why he would be bequeathing so much of it to me. Along the way I’d probably find out that he wasn’t Marilyn Manson.

Celebrity deaths are also common. Morgan Freeman, Sandra Bullock and many others have had that lately, both tragically killed, with Facebook pages set up in their honour. Do people check it out before reposting? Course not. Must be true. What’s that? Morgan Freeman’s dead and he left me $4,000,000,000 in his will? See, works every time.

The Flat-Chested Nipple Bonus

Description: The tendency of flatter-chested girls to wear a bra slightly too big for their breasts. Look out for it (girls, you too, we all know you love nothing more than laughing at other girls’ wardrobe misfortunes…)

From I Saw Five Nipples On The Tube Today:

This is something common with, if not unique to, the lesser-endowed girls out there (of which I am generally a very big fan). Fact is, smaller girls can have a bit of a tendency to wear bras that are a little bigger than they need. This exposes them, quite literally, to the risk that in certain situations, their boobs will be as free to view as ITV2.

This particular girl with her open-buttoned blouse and her arm stretched up had a good inch and a half’s gap between her nipple and her bra, and from the angle I was at she might have well been shoving it in my face. I tried not to look, failing miserable for about 4 stops worth of travel. She was particularly cute and this was the first time I’d seen a real woman’s breast in some years.

The Mutton Alarm

Description: The sub-conscious warning that the hot and sexy woman approaching you from afar may may be a much different kettle of (rotting) fish close-up.

from So I Stole A Random Girl’s Handbag:

She was still quite far away, walking towards me, when The Mutton Alarm went off in my head. The Mutton Alarm is a key cognitive function which I have developed out of necessity over the years. Named after the “mutton dressed as lamb” idiom, where something less appealing is dolled up to look more attractive. Now, I find cute things about most women so I am by no means a Beauty Nazi, but this kind of woman has been the cause of much annoyance for me in the past.

Picture the scene, you are walking along and you see a woman who has taken great pains to tart herself up beyond all recognition. In that second that you look at her, she makes eye contact, then swishes her hair to look away as if to say “oh I see you’ve noticed how great I look, but sorry I’m not interested, I get this all the time looking the way I do.” Wait a minute. Um, no. I was noticing you, not “looking” or giving you the eye, or imagining us together, or thinking “phwoar”. If anything I saw you and said “Oh good Lord no!” or “Yikes, that is a convincing transvestite but a transvestite all the same.”

Sometimes I’ve felt like stopping and going back and saying “Excuse me, you um, you sort of acted just then like you caught me checking you out. Trust me I wasn’t. I was looking at you the way I’d look at someone in the circus. Or how I’d look at someone who’d accidentally left the house wearing her granddaughter’s boobtube.”

I have no problem with women dressing up to look nice – I generally prefer the natural just-got-out-of-bed look but it’s fine. But the arrogance of some people to assume that just because they copy their make-up tips from Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert, that somehow I must be lusting after them, just really winds me up. Get over yourself, just like I would notice a dead horse caked in Max Factor walking down the street, or a tramp in high heels with his cock out, that’s how I noticed you. Save your egotistical self-adoration for the nightclub you’re going to. It’ll be dark in there and people will be drunk, you might get away with it.