- So far in my life I have super glued my fingers together on more then ten separate occasions.
- I have also super glued my fingers to other random objects no less then three times. One was the tube of superglue itself.
- I’ve fallen into two canals on two separate occasions but neither of them where in Holland.
- I found out the hard way that the sugar supplement in sugar free wine gums can acts as a laxative if eaten in large quantities.
- I once decided that the best way to demonstrate to my parents what I wanted to be when I grew up was to climb onto the sofa and jump as high and as far as I could while shouting, “Look at me. I’m a stuntman.” This might have been the start of a successful career if it had not been for the glass of water that I had left on the floor while watching cartoons a few moments earlier. My parents had the fun job of pulling the bits of glass out of my leg.
- I once spent four hours trapped in a lift in a deserted building with no contact to the outside world under the impression that I would be there for the whole weekend (Full story).
- I have only broken one bone in my body. However, I did spend eight hours lost and drunk in Holland walking around on it with out a clue that my ankle was broken (Full story).
- Most of my fingers have been slammed in a door at some point in my life apart from my left thumb. That was just nearly bitten off by a donkey when I was a toddler.
- I once set fire to a table in a fondue café in Amsterdam by spilling the oil burner used to melt the cheese over it. I had to get the waiters help to put it out before I was officially labelled as either the arsonist or the idiot who burnt the whole place down.
- I lost part of a tooth during a game of tag at school by turning a corner too quickly, running straight into another student and smashing my mouth into the top of their head. The missing part of my tooth might still be stuck in his scalp. It seemed rude to ask for it back.
- As a child I managed to give myself concussion while chasing my great grandmother’s dog around the house. The K9 obviously had a better sense of spatial awareness then me because he was able to successfully run through the door into the living room. I on the other hand ran directly into the door frame and knocked myself out.
Amazingly I am still alive and in possession of all my original body parts.
1) If you are using an empty coke bottle to clean your brushes while painting never put the full coke bottle that you are actually drinking from with in reach. If the watery paint taste does not make you realize your error the paint brush hitting you in the back of the throat will.
2) The tutors don’t appreciate it when you drink all of their coffee and it is hard to hide guilt when you are really hyper.
3) Toy frogs are good at politics.
4) If you are making a life size dummy for a project never ever leave it hanging in the studio over night to dry. Security will really freak out when they see it through the window in the middle of the night and think a student has hung themselves.
5) If you put your bake potato lunch down on your chair while you clean some space on your desk for it, what ever you do, don’t sit down.
6) If an attractive girl asks you for help with something find out what it is before you say yes. Having your eye lashes dyed brown is not worth it, especially when you don’t end up getting her phone number anyway.
7) Never agree to play strip poker if you are so drunk that you think you are about to play black jack.
8) Never drink the punch at the pre summer ball party. You’ll only wake up in a corridor, wondering how you got there and why your vomit is fluorescent pink.
9) If a tutor falls asleep during the lesson he is giving, there is no harm in letting him sleep for a little while.
10) Keeping score of how many times a tutor says ‘er’ or ‘um’ during a lecture is fun but you might not be able to stop your self cracking up and being found out when they break the 200 mark.
11) Be quick with the alt + tab keys so tutors don’t see you playing solitaire when you should be taking notes.
12) Never ever take the bare wires from a computer fan, stick them in an electrical socket and turn it on. If you do, don’t be surprised when there is a very loud bang (not me).
13) Never use the disc sander to sand a peace of wood the size of a coin. It takes a while for the skin to grow back and they have to change the sand paper (also not me, the same not me).
14) Never super glue a doll on the ceiling above the desk of the girl with a doll phobia. If you do, don’t be surprised when she gets very, very angry.
15) No one died in the old studio theatre, it is not haunted and it is wrong to tell the new students that it is.
16) Never super glue your fingers together, especially while doing number 14 (it makes it harder to hide your guilt).
Believe it or not I graduated student of the year and had to give a speech at the graduation ceremony. The audience was laughing a lot but the college deans were not to happy that I turned it into a stand up comedy routine.
Anyone who has ever overindulged in the consumption of alcoholic beverages will have more then a passing familiarity with the condition known scientifically as drunkenness. Symptoms can include slurred speech, impaired balance, poor coordination, reduced inhibition, memory loss and uncharacteristic behavior. In my case this list also includes the rather odd ability to get inanimate objects and their functions mixed up.
A few years ago after a night of drinking I found myself having great difficulty opening my front door. Normally this could be blamed on the degradation of coordination coursed mainly by the consumption of alcohol. However, I think at the time my problem was else where. The main root of my dilemma (if I had to guess) might have had something to do with the fact that I was attempting to open the lock with a 50p coin. After a while I realized my mistake put the 50p away and took a 20p coin from the collection of currency in my hand and tried that instead.
I know I did this because when my parents heard what probably sounded like an incompetent burglar they opened the door to investigate and found me. They asked me what I was doing to which I replied with a slur, “I’m trying… to f-find… the… r-right one to open the… door.”
Either my intoxicated brain had mistakenly thought the front door worked on a coin slot system or maybe I was planning to melt the coins down in some kind of MacGyver or A-Team fashion to forge a new key. All that matters is my parents had a lot of fun retelling the story to family members to embarrass me.
However, when I returned home drunk again a few months later I had learned from my mistake. Realizing I was far too drunk to attempt opening the door again I decided to delegate that responsibility to my friend who had accompanied me and seemed far more sober. I handed him the keys happy in the knowledge that I had save myself from an embarrassing repeat of the previous events. At least I might have if I had not handed him my bank card instead of my actual keys.
It must have seemed like I was suggesting that he slide the card between the lock and the door frame, allowing us to slip in like cat burglars. Luckily he was sober enough to inform me of my inebriated mistake. When we finally got inside I am happy to say I did not try to make hot drinks by putting tea bags in the washing machine.
Although it might seem like I have an almost Freudian association between keys and money these moments of confusion have not been limited to keys alone. After a night at a friends house that involved a few movies and a rather large bottle of Vodka things got very confusing for me and probably the driver of the bus I was trying to get home.
When I stumbled onto the bus the driver asked me to show my bus pass. I started to rummage around in my bag looking for it but suddenly produced a copy of A Bugs Life on VHS cassette instead which I then proceeded to present to him. He was obviously not impressed with my taste in movies and informed me that I still had to pay. I then found out he was not a fan of Toy Story either. Eventually my friend had to pay my fair because I found the task far too confusing in my intoxicated state and I was running out of videos to impress the driver with.
It’s probably a good idea that I have never tried to write a blog post after a few drinks. I might end up attempting to type it on the microwave or even the cat.
Before I got involved in the games industry and moved to Holland I spent a lot of time working in the theater business in England. However, I never got to play Romeo or even Juliet because I was one of the many people working behind the scenes as a member of stage crew. It was a great job but for someone who can be a little accident prone it was work that should have come with danger money.
I’ve been made deaf for two days after working on a music concert, I’ve fallen into a lighting rig and I’ve had a speaker dropped on my hand which in itself was not as worrying as the rather camp first aid person who tried flirting with me as he bandaged my hand.
However, the most cringe worthy incident probably happened during my work on ‘They shoot horses don’t they?’ It was a show about a marathon dance set during the 1930s great depression. Since the stage crew was going to be seen quite a lot as they changed the scenery the director decided to incorporate us into the show by having us in costume as janitors. It was a chance to move from back stage to center stage.
My real chance to show my star power came when the crew got to play an integral part in one of the scenes. I got to play a post, a boxing ring post to be more accurate. The scene required the actors to race around the inside of a boxing ring so four of us (the crew) stood in each corner and held ropes between us. It was my big chance. There might have been talent scouts in the audience looking for someone to play a tree or lamp post in the next Robert Deniro movie.
During the rehearsal the director warned me that several members of the cast would collapse at my feet as they ran around. Using my method acting I stood as still as a post should when this happened and resisted the urge to flinch. Every night the scene took place with out a problem… Until the night my parents came to see the show.
The actors fell at my feet with out incident as they had done every night but on the following lap one of the cast members tripped for real and fell towards me. It is a natural human instinct to reach out for something to steady your self with when caught off balance but another person’s genitals are not a good choice. Her arm flung outwards in an attempt to break her fall but her fist connected very hard and painfully with an area that she did not know me well enough to be touching. She had twisted her ankle but was not in as much pain as me who suddenly had a new career option as a Bee-Gee impersonator. I had to stay on stage trying to look like I was not in deep and intense pain. Dogs from miles around probably heard my high pitched sounds of suffering. When the scene was over we both limped off the stage but unlike her I could not sit down for a while.
Sitting behind a desk might not always be as interesting as working back stage but at least it means my genitals are a lot safer.
Politics has never really been my subject. It’s one of the topics that makes my head hurt if I think about it too much. Maybe that is one of the reasons why I decided not to run for the position of Student Council Class Representative when I was at college (as a theater design student). I left that responsibility to my fellow class mates who had more political ambitions. There were three candidates but only one clear winner once all the votes had been counted, Malcolm.
Malcolm had won by a land slide but there was one small problem, something that made it difficult for him to for fill his new position in student politics (or any thing else for that matter). Malcolm was an inanimate green amphibian, a stuffed toy frog to be more precise. He was our class mascot who had been nominated because we needed a third candidate.
He would have been more at home on the Muppet show then in a meeting room debating what should be available in the college canteen. It had been amusing to vote for him but we had to face facts. Malcolm was not capable of representing us (something that was fundamental to the position as the title suggested). His muteness would impair his abilities and influence on the student council. We were forced to take another vote.
Once all the votes were counted again the winning student was awarded with his new title. However it was not the title of Student Council Class Representative. That would have been unfair to Malcolm. Instead the chosen student was crowned, “The Voice of Malcolm.” He became Malcolm’s emissary, his vessel, his voice.
The Voice of Malcolm took Malcolm to every meeting of the student council and spoke his wishes aloud for them all to hear. I never attended one of the meetings myself but often imagined Malcolm perched on his shoulder while whispering ideas into his ear like something out of a Philip Pullman book. However, some suspected that The Voice of Malcolm was only speaking for himself. No one showed any signs of being unhappy though (even if it would have been a great injustice).
Then one fateful day disaster struck. Malcolm had been left by the studio’s open window. As he sat their minding his own business (either thinking about the pond out side or his dreams to climb the political ladder) he fell out of the window into the car park bellow. By the time we had reached the car park to rescue him he was gone. We will never know if it was a simple accident or a political assassination attempt that led to his disappearance.
We tried to find a replacement but no other toy frog was worthy of filling Malcolm’s shoes. He had become more then a class mascot, he was our leader and he was mourned. You might think the story of Malcolm I have told you is far too strange to be true but we really did vote for a stuffed toy frog to be our Student Representative, someone really was appointed as his voice and he really was lost the day he fell out of that window (we were strange/typical students). I like to think that maybe he is still alive some where (as alive as an inanimate green amphibian can be) living like a king and leading some small country we have never heard of to a state of prosperity. Long live Malcolm.
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