Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

If I see one more fucking Blackberry advert on YouTube, I am going to start punching babies, I swear. Be Bold. Shut the fuck up.

If you’re familiar with the Paul Kelly song “Bradman” about Australia’s most respected cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman, it contains a particular line in it that Englishman Maurice Tate famously said to the Australian batsman.

“Hey whitey, that’s my rabbit”.

I was curious about the meaning of this quote, and it’s hard to find, but the best I can find is that Tate used to jokingly suggest that Bradman was his “rabbit” as a put-down.

While I was looking for the meaning, I found a few classic sporting quotes on an Aussie football site that I thought I’d share. Cricketers in particular it seems, have some of the finest wits in sport, so here’s a few random quotes.

“Nobody died out there today” – Pat Rafter

“There are two teams out there, but only one of them is playing cricket” – Bill Woodfull

“There’s more to boxing than hitting. There’s not getting hit, for instance” – George Foreman

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered” – George Best

“I never criticise referees and I’m not going to change a habit for that prat” – Ron Atkinson

“I always walk with a one iron in a thunderstorm because not even God can hit a one iron” – Lee Trevino

“I can sell out Madison Square Garden masturbating” – Mike Tyson

In response to a request from a reporter to “Give us a quick word”, Gordon Strachan replied “velocity”.

“Yes they’ll be having a party and they wont even be drunk” – Cathy Freeman after winning gold at the olympics.

Javed Miandad once said to Merv Hughes “You’re just a fat bus conductor”. A couple of overs later Merv gets his wicket. As Javed walks off Merv shouts “tickets please”.

During an Australia versus South Africa test, Daryll Cullinan is up to bat against Warne with Mark Waugh giving him a mouthful from first slip about “not being a batsman’s fingernail”. Cullinan truns around after a ball and lets rip with “At least I am the best cricketer in my family”… Bravo. That sure cut him down to size.

So there you go.. now I’ve talked about everything.. even sporting quotes. Oh and by the way, wasn’t the rugby great last night ? Australia trounced New Zealand. Yay !

I read this on XKCD today and laughed heartily. It is obviously a joke, but it’s also very true.

Honestly, Joanna and I loved each other very much, but it seems both of us were unhappy. I was secretly very content, but outwardly unhappy because I was frustrated that I didn’t have a better career and life to buy her everything she wanted, even though we did ok. She was outwardly happy, but after she left, claimed that she was afraid to tell me that she was unhappy.

Funny thing is, I’m so good at taking pleasure in a simple life sometimes that it wasn’t until we split up and I realised I wanted to do more with my life that it occured to me what a waste our time together had been. No friends, very little family contact, and Jo in particular had no ambition to do anything and openly admitted that she wanted a child so that peopole would stop telling her to get a job.

We did have something special… we had love, but as Patti Smith says… sometimes, love just ain’t enough. I miss what we had a lot sometimes. I always think I’ll never find a girl like Jo who loved computers, anime and Japanese pop music, so I consider her very unique. But I must admit, given the chance, I wouldn’t want it back again, because it wasn’t a healthy lifestyle and we were going nowhere, so it was best for both of us that we parted ways, despite poor Suki having to grow up without living with both parents.

But this comic sorta says how I feel in a humorous way. I’m not glad we broke up, but it was for the best. Jo wanted some richer guy who would support her and give her one of those boring lives she could show off to her friends and be a housewife, and I wanted to travel and do intesting things without being held back by someone. I imagine Suki would have wanted to live with both her parents, and I would have put aside what I wanted for that, but sadly Jo wouldn’t.

Still, it’s worth being lighthearted about it all, and that’s why this XKCD made me laugh. Sometimes you have to be philosophical about things and just take the hurdles in life with a grain of salt. You may as well sweat the little things in life, because the big ones are normally as inevitable and unstoppable as a diesel locomotive… like the one I’m on right now as a matter of fact. ;”)

This photo is from SO long ago. Like about 5 or 6 months. I took it when I was in Toowoomba to see a client. I had caught the train down and arrived at about midnight. Not knowing what to do and being reluctant to pay for a hotel for the night, I decided to walk the 12 km or so, dragging my suitcases to the university lodge where I intended to stay for the week. I had been a student of the university there several times over the years so I felt sort of reassured to go back to it, and I left my suitcases near the refectory entrance and scaled the locked gate of the university’s beautiful Japanese gardens where I had spent so much time many years ago. I curled up under a sakura tree and went to sleep.

I had been chatting online as I did this and I had my tablet and phone sitting on the ground beside me. When I woke up as the blazing sun started to make it unbearably hot to lay there and I heard other people wandering around the gardens I looked down and saw the most amusing sight.

My Samsung phone has an animated screensaver of sakura petals falling. While this was running, a real, genuine sakura petal had fallen directly onto the screen. Realising the beautiful irony of this I immediately grabbed my tablet and took a photo. It was just beautiful. Just looking at this makes me feel peaceful and happy, remembering all those many days I spend lounging in the Japanese gardens or helping the gardener rake pretty curved patterns into the sand on the footpaths or stones in the gardens.

It’s cute, because it’s ironic. But to me it means a whole lot more.

NOTE: This story, like all my stories on this site, is loosely based on reality. That means it’s not literally true. It’s just a story that I thought would be funny if I told it in this particular way. Don’t take it literally and don’t accuse me of recklessness or breaking the law because you have no idea what parts are true and what are pure fiction.

So I walked down to a greasy, dirty little Thai bus station in Phuket and showed them the receipt I’d gotten from my hotel concierge. Some Asian woman looked at it and then looked up at me and said “Ok. You wait outside”. I asked “Which bus is mine ?” She squinted at me and said “Outside. Bus will come”. Ok, I thought, and went outside and laid all my suitcases against a concrete pole. I sat precariously on a tiny stool, and fearing that my large western body was surely going to smash it into a thousand pieces (I’ve had this happen to me before in the sort of countries where people like to sit on tiny plastic stools) the woman rushed out with a bigger chair and ordered me to “Sit here”. I took the chair and sat down.

I was hungry. I left my less important suitcases and just grabbed my laptop and camera bags and walked to a nearby McDonalds. While I don’t make a habit of eating McD’s when I’m travelling in a foreign country, I was feeling pretty sick with a cold that I’d picked up a few weeks earlier in Penang and recent motorbike riding in the rain had made it worse, and when I’m sick I just don’t feel like shitty Thai food. I never understood why every other country makes Thai food that is so much tastier than what the Thai people make. It’s like they need to import foreign chefs to make their own national dishes or something. The fucking McDonalds was closed. I bought some overpriced snacks at the convenience store and wandered back to the bus stop. Some Indian guy was sitting on my suitcase. I didn’t really give a shit and sat down right beside it just so he became aware that he was sitting on my suitcase. Seems he didn’t give a shit either because he ignored me.

The bus came. It was a little minibus. I hoped that this was just the bus to take us to the bus station where we would board a real bus. It wasn’t. We spent the next 14 or so hours on this overly cramped minibus hugging our bags to our chests in order to give us enough leg room to avoid a serious case of deep vein thrombosis. I ignored everyone and tried to sleep. I was sick as a dog and I coughed and hacked and snorted snot back into my nose the entire way. I hope I made everyone sick. Not because I’m an asshole but at least it’ll be a lesson to them to always ask what sort of bus they’ll be travelling on before booking a ticket.

Some time around 4am we pulled up at a little cafe. The driver yelled loudly to wake everyone up and we all piled out of the bus, rubbing our eyes and wondering what the fuck we were doing. He came around and handed everyone arrival forms for Laos and told us in broken English to fill them out and put them in our passports because we’d be at the border in a couple of hours. I filled mine out without really looking because there was this gorgeous Korean girl sitting at a table of Koreans nearby. I knew they weren’t all on my bus so I wondered where they’d come from. Gathering my courage I walked over and smiled and sat down.

“You are Korean ?” I asked like an ignorant fuckwit. “Do you like So Nyeo Shi Dae ?” The girl gave me a puzzled expression and asked “Girls Generation ?” I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the tattoo I’d gotten in Bangkok of the awesome girl group’s name written in Hangul and surrounded by a love heart. Her eyes went wide and she said “Amazing !” and I grinned. “Normally only Koreans call them by their proper name, but you have it tattooed in Hangul. That’s so cool” she said. I rattled off the names of various other Kpop groups that I had seen in concert and I think I saw one of the Korean guys beside me facepalm. The driver came along and told us it was time to get back on the bus. Only the girl got back on with us. The other guys were travelling separately.

In the morning we arrived in Vientiane. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing there or what I intended to do during my stay. I had told everyone I was going to Cambodia, but for some odd reason at the last minute, I ended up booking a bus to Laos instead. Fucks me why. Fate maybe. We sat there at the bus stop yawning. The girl was there again. I took her photo a couple of times. I don’t remember what I said but I remember that she laughed easily. I was infatuated, though I couldn’t really think of much to talk to her about other than her telling me that she was travelling through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam on her own, which seemed like a rather bold adventure for a single girl who couldn’t be more than about 23 at most.

Some Canadian guys told me they were going to rent motorbikes and ride up to Vang Vieng where they had tubing parties down the river and you could consume lots of magic mushrooms. I wasn’t that phased with the idea of tubing. I’d done that shit before since I grew up on a boat as a child. The magic mushrooms sounded alright, but I was sorta interested in finding out what the Korean girl’s plans were. Apparently my assumption about Vientiane being her destination was incorrect however, because the driver suddenly yelled out “Back on the bus” and she said “Sorry, I have to go” and picked up her bags. I looked at her and my mind reeled. She wasn’t staying in Vientiane with us ?

Fuck. What should I do ? I couldn’t let this beautiful flower escape without at least torturing her to death with my boring stories and anecdotes about my love for Asian pop music. I stood up and looked from the bus, to my 5 bags and back again. Should I just grab my bags and jump on ? While wondering simultaneously if that was too spontaneous a decision even for me, and whether it would be awkward if the bus driver asked what the fuck I was doing back on the bus and where I was going and I had to sheepishly answer “Wherever that Korean girl is going”, the bus closed its door and the driver started the engine, and the Korean girl waved to me from the window. Shit. Too late.

I sat back down with a thud and looked at the suddenly very boring Canucks that I was sitting with. “Oh well” I said with resignation. “Let’s get some bikes and go to Vang Vieng then”. We wandered around looking for bikes that weren’t so shit that they had 60km limits imposed on them. We found a place that rented some brand new Suzuki scooters since we were told that dirt bikes had to be rented at least 3 months in advance. Ignoring for the sake of brevity various stories about me getting totally lost trying to find the hotel that I’d already booked and convincing the owner to let me keep my bags there and not charge me for the night I’d already paid for until I returned at some indefinite point in the future, I joined my new Canadian compatriates and hit the road.

It was pretty late in the day, and the guys were on a tight schedule because they only had three days before their plane back to the land of elk and bison, so we rode at breakneck speed. I had only ridden a motorbike twice before in my whole life, but I was pretty sure that since my parents were bikies and that I’d ridden on the back of my mum’s harley many times on the way to school that surely I must be a natural at it. Besides, I’d survived traffic in Penang AND Phuket. That had to account for something. Unfortunately, what we didn’t know was that the roads in Laos were utter shit and they just stopped sealing them at random.

So even though I was riding second in line, I was going far too fast when the guy in front held up his hand to warn me of something. I realised what as I saw the bitumen under me disappear and the rocky dirt road underneath started some 6-8 inches lower. Specifically, the way I saw it was as I was flying over the handlebars, only to land unceremoniously, face-first, several meters from my bike. I quickly got up and checked my expensive Nikon that I had around my neck… Apparently not smashed. I said “I’m OK” without even checking and rushed to my bike, noticing blood running down my leg. I just covered my knee with my pants and hoped it wasn’t bad. We hailed down a guy in a truck who couldn’t speak English and after some miming, he got out and hammered my foot peg back into place so that I could change gears again and we all got back onto our bikes and rode off.

Not long after that, when the sun had gone down fully, I repeated the whole exercise a second time, only at a higher speed this time and with more damage to the bike. I landed sort of sideways this time and I heard my bag hit the ground hard and wondered how many of my laptops and tablet computers I had just destroyed. I emptied blood out of my shoe and got back on, but it was fairly evident that I wasn’t going to make it to Vang Vieng at this rate, so we stopped at a small hotel in a nearby town after finding a medical clinic where some Lao doctor patched me back up and wrapped a crude bandage around my leg. We haggled mercilessly with the woman at the hotel over the price, since she wanted to charge us an insane $8 for a room for the three of us. Not that I didn’t have money. But that’s just what you do over there. We got our way in the end and secured the room for about $6.50 a night. We ascended the stairs and I took a shower to wash the blood off me and threw away my tattered pants, which were the only ones I’d brought. One of the Canadians offered me a pair of the ridiculous baggy Turkish pants they had, which they had bought for a friend, and I accepted gratefully. In return I offered them some acid and marijuana that I’d smuggled into the country.

I still remember clearly the way my blood had run cold when the pilot came over the P.A. as we were about to touch down in Kuala Lumpur that drug smuggling carried the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia and I wondered if I was going to die in a foreign country when they discovered the 26 sugar cubes of LSD that I had in my suitcase. Fortunately they don’t check shit and I had walked straight through the “nothing to declare” line and noone was even there to look questioningly at me and wonder why I had purple hair and a bleach blonde beard despite having black eyebrows. So the Canadians dropped two cubes each and I dropped three and we smoked weed on the balcony and pondered the universe until almost dawn before getting back on our bikes and heading off just as the sun was coming up.

Unfortunately, about 30km from our destination, I got a flat tyre and fell behind. They didn’t stop for me as I’d apparently been enough trouble for them at that point and tubing and magic mushrooms were more important than this weirdo Aussie they’d picked up along the way like a leech that had attached itself to their testicles in some icy cold billabong. I limped into a service station and bought a bunch of Che Guevara stickers for my stuff and had a couple of beers while they put a new tyre on my bike. Refreshed, I continued on my way. At some point some young kid pulled up along side me and greeted me and asked where I was going. I prefer to travel alone as this sort of thing happens more often. He said that his aunt ran a hotel in Vang Vieng and suggest I check it out. I followed him there and checked in, and then decided to go into town. I was starting to feel more than a bit fucking sore by this time.

I didn’t see much of Vang Vieng because one of the first things I discovered was this little bar called “Happy Pizza” that was pumping out loud techno music and exclaimed proudly on the sign outside “Weed, Opium, Magic Mushrooms”. Obviously, I went inside. Inside they had a sign spraypainted on the wall graffiti-style that said “Don’t ask us to turn the music down, we like it like this”. Cool. My sort of place. I tried everything on the menu, and everything OFF the menu that I could think of that they might be able to provide me. Not once did they ever say “We can’t get that”. Everything I asked for, was delivered within 20 minutes for a reasonable price and of a high quality. I spent every waking moment in that bar for the next week.

On the second night, I was sitting there using my laptop, puffing away alternatively on joints of weed and opium and washing it down with magic mushroom shakes and then snorting lines of meth off the table, when the DJ leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder. I looked back and he was holding the line-in cable from his sound system. He asked “You want be DJ tonight ?” Blinking at him I almost refused, thinking all I really had to offer was a hard drive full of Kpop and I knew they were strictly a hard-house sort of establishment. Then I remembered some Japanese hard trance stuff I had by DJ Shimamura and some other artists. I accepted the cable and plugged in and started pumping it out. Two of the guys got up from their little table behind the counter where they gambled over card games and gave me a big thumbs up. Apparently I had their seal of recommendation, because from that moment on, I was DJ every night after about 8pm.

With the aid of copious amounts of drugs, I was able to mostly ignore the now searing pain in my chest (which I was later told at a Laos hospital was because I had broken two ribs), and it was only when I decided that I really should get moving and try and see some other countries that I realised how much I was going to miss the guys there. Because I spent so much time either DJ’ing or sitting behind the counter snorting lines of speed or smoking bongs (You were only supposed to smoke joints in the visible area of the bar, despite the fact that the bongs were hanging on the walls as decorations), most people who came in automatically assumed that I was the owner. I remember approaching a couple of gorgeous girls from Sydney and telling them I was journalist and asking if I could ask them a few questions and take their photo and they said “Oh, we thought you were the owner”. When I told the staff that it was my last night and I was leaving in the morning, they all came outside and lined up for photos together and with me. It was very special and I almost cried and felt so sad about having to go.

Getting back to Vientiane and not having any drugs harder than a large supply of weed I’d bought before I left, I basically just lay in my hotel room in agony popping codeine and smoking weed and sleeping all day for two weeks solid until I got over the worst of the pain. I fapped a lot and thought about the Korean girl and wondered how my time in Laos would have been different if I’d followed her down the rabbit hole instead of the Canadian guys who had ditched me. Who knows. Next time I’ll follow the girl instead of the curly haired freaks, I’m sure. I might not always remember the girl, but I will always remember that split second of indecision where I was caught between wanting to follow her to the ends of the earth and wondering if that might be too crazy a thing to do. Next time I have that choice, I’m going down the rabbit hole after the girl. You only live once.

But the real moral of the story isn’t about split second choices or how much fun you can have snorting lines of meth off a dirty table at an opium bar in the countryside of a foreign communist country. The important moral of this story is:

“Don’t ride a motorbike in Laos at night”

Here is a picture of the Korean girl to prove to you what a heartbreaking moment it was to see her disappear in that dirty minibus. So at least that part of the story is true.

You’ve heard of the YouTube channel Epic Meal Time ? Well, it’s a show where they make really stupid, but really epic meals. Normally including about 2 kg of bacon strips in every meal. Well, today they’ve made “Candy Sushi”. This could give you a heart attack just watching it. Do not try this at home kids !

Postal workers are bastards, right ? I know what they’re like. They’ll toss your fragile package onto your verandah from your front gate. They will lose your mail and not give a crap. But I guess from time to time they will go above and beyond the call of duty. Like this one postal worker in Russia who found this package.

I know. You don’t get it, right ? Well let me explain. This package contains a Harry Potter book. It was sent by a French girl to her friend in Russia and she wrote the address on it exactly as her friend had emailed it to her. The problem is that her email client wasn’t setup to display Cryllic character sets and her email program substituted regular western diacritic letters instead which bore no relationship to the actual letters that she SHOULD have written.

When this arrived in Russia thanks to the fact that the only legible bit of information was the postcode, they must have been scratching their heads going “What the HELL is this meant to be ?” But apparently some bright young nerd said “I think that’s western special characters. I think someone’s computer has screwed up and they’ve written the address in the wrong character set” and the postal workers set about typing those characters into a computer and figuring out which Russian characters they corresponded to in order to decipher the address.

What she wrote was in the standard Windows character set was:

òÏÓÓÉÑ íÏÓË×Á, 119415

ÐÒ.÷ÅÒÎÁÄÓËÏÇÏ, 37,

Ë.1817-1,

ðÌÅÔÎÅ×ÏÊ ó×ÅÔÌÁÎÅ

But what she should have written, in KOI8-R, and which the postal workers deciphered it to say was:

Россия Москва, 119415

пр.Вернадского, 37,

к.1817-1,

Плетневой Светлане

Apparently the package did indeed reach its destination and one young Russian student was not denied his wonderful works of J K Rowling. Just goes to show, sometimes postal workers do give a shit. Enough of a shit to spend hours deciphering an address written in the wrong alphabet.

Good story, right ?

So I know everyone is dying to know.

Did eating the tinned tuna that I’d left sitting out open for 28 hours make me sick when I ate it ?

Did I spend all night on the toilet crapping blood ?

Nope. It was yummy. No ill effects at all !

I’m TOUGH !

So you should enjoy every last sandwich Zevon said, right ? What if it really is your last sandwich ? What if it’s the sandwich that killed you ?

It’s raining. Heavily. Has been for hours and I don’t have an umbrella which means I can’t go outside to eat or to drink or anything. I could call a proper taxi, but fuck that. So I’m sitting here with the munchies and I look around for something to eat. There’s this can of tuna that I opened yesterday and ate a little of and then sorta closed up again.

Mmmm, I would like tuna and biscuits. I start eating it. Then I think “Is this really a good idea ? Am I going to get really sick from this ? I know. I’ll ask Google. Google will tell me”.

Well, I came across a funny thread where people were debating that same question. Whenever someone posts a question involving them doing something potentially dumb, people are divided on whether to say yes or no, and some people will always say “Go on ! Do it you pussy”. Here’s the question this person asked:

I made a tuna sandwich for lunch and left it at home. Will it still be edible?

And here’s the “advice” he received. I love the final comment. Scroll down to the very bottom to read whether I ate my tuna or not.

No.
posted by FlamingBore at 11:55 AM on March 16, 2007

Were it just tuna, it’d be iffy. I’d probably eat it, my g/f wouldn’t. But with mayo, no fuckin’ way.
posted by notsnot at 11:58 AM on March 16, 2007

Food safety rule in my domicile:
When in doubt, toss it out.
If you have to ask if the food is safe to eat, it isn’t worth the risk. Can of tuna: $.39. Spoonful of Mayo and Pickles $.10. Night in the ER with food poisoning: priceless.
posted by leapfrog at 12:03 PM on March 16, 2007

I wouldn’t eat it for dinner. But I probably would put it in the fridge tonight, and eat it tomorrow. But, uh, I guess that’s bad.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 12:04 PM on March 16, 2007

My childhood must have been insanely risky, since I regularly had tuna fish made in the morning in an unrefrigerated brown bag until afternoon.
posted by smackfu at 12:09 PM on March 16, 2007

Agree with smackfu. I survived my childhood after eating tuna left in a locker at school in a brown bag until lunchtime. It was fine. This sounds like it would be twice the time though. Also agree with just toss it/not worth potential puking.
posted by zackola at 12:14 PM on March 16, 2007

I’d probably eat it, but I’m not necessarily advocating that you eat it…
posted by ob at 12:22 PM on March 16, 2007

According to the above, here are your variables: (1) where you left it, (2) the kind of mayo, (3) whether you like to puke.
I say, think outside the box. If you were to drop the sandwich in your deep fryer, it would be right as rain.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 12:28 PM on March 16, 2007

I would refridgerate it (because warm mayo tastes icky) and eat it the next day, if it’s canned tuna and mayo from the grocery store. I’d sniff it first, to make sure it passed the “smells alright?” test.
posted by muddgirl at 12:33 PM on March 16, 2007

OK, so it also depends on (4) the nature of the tuna, and (5) whether you live in an igloo. I would now add: (6) whether you own a cat, and return home to find the bag open and the cat a-puking.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 12:36 PM on March 16, 2007

I’d eat it.
posted by dazed_one at 12:52 PM on March 16, 2007

Student Rule No. 1: Never Waste Food.
posted by cardamine at 1:14 PM on March 16, 2007

If I were trying intentionally to make something with the absolute highest probability of giving me food poisoning, I’d just do what you just did.
posted by ikkyu2 at 1:20 PM on March 16, 2007

That tuna was cooked, canned and treated too. It has spent ten hours out. What could possibly be wrong with it?
Unless you are an elderly person with a compromised immune system you will not have a problem. I will personally mail you a new sandwich if you get sick.
posted by OldReliable at 1:30 PM on March 16, 2007

“I will personally mail you a new sandwich if you get sick.”
The next day we read this:
Dear AskMe: I got a sandwich in the mail. Is it safe to eat?
posted by phatkitten at 1:41 PM on March 16, 2007

Eat it. Eaaaaaatt Iiiiiit!
That’s what I would do, to my wife’s great dismay
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 2:08 PM on March 16, 2007

I’d eat it. And have!
posted by theredpen at 2:09 PM on March 16, 2007

I’m unsure of why there are so many ‘should I eat it questions’ on askme. It strikes me as odd that people with enough intelligence to operate a computer, use language and other related skills cannot distinguish the edible from the non-edible.
That said, eat the damned sandwich already.
posted by elwoodwiles at 2:36 PM on March 16, 2007

This is bound to happen again, so if you don’t eat it, at least experiment with it. Bring it to work on Monday and put it in the break room refrigerator with a sign on it saying “Do Not Eat.” Observe.
posted by Clyde Mnestra at 2:38 PM on March 16, 2007

Just to clarify my earlier point, I have had food poisoning many times. It’s miserable, no worse possible feeling than uncontrollable vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. Yet I will consistently err on the side of eating questionable food rather than not eating it. Why? Because my empiric research on the subject demonstrates that well over 90% of questionably spoiled food will *not* cause bloody diarrhea. So when I hear you food poisonazis tell me not to eat that week old chicken, I will greedily gulp it down laughing the whole time, safe in the knowledge that 9 times out of 10 I *won’t* end up in the hospital.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 3:02 PM on March 16, 2007 [2 favorites]

eat it already.
posted by vronsky at 3:33 PM on March 16, 2007

Well, its 6:33 pm here on the east coast …. (not sure where you are) so, you gonna eat it?
posted by R. Mutt at 3:35 PM on March 16, 2007

People are so paranoid about stuff like this. I’d eat it. I’ve eaten it. Hell, I’ve eaten it the next day. Numbers of days with stomach upset or food poisoning in my life? 32 years on. Zero. I love warm mayo. Mmmmmmm…..
posted by brautigan at 4:48 PM on March 16, 2007

IANAD, but if you don’t eat that, we’re all gonna come to your house and call you a wuss.
EAT THE SANDWICH, EAT THE SANDWICH
posted by Greg Nog at 4:49 PM on March 16, 2007

If money is that tight, I’ll send you two dollars NOT to eat it! ;P
posted by JujuB at 9:03 PM on March 16, 2007

Honestly, I’m a little uncomfortable that we live in a world where people wonder about that kind of thing. Eat the sandwich! Eat it tomorrow! Eat it in two days! I’ve done it, millions of others have and would. STOP WORRYING ABOUT IT.
posted by blue_beetle at 9:58 PM on March 16, 2007

THE INTERNET SAYS EAT IT.
posted by Harry at 5:24 AM on March 17, 2007

boooooo I hope you ate that sammich.
posted by Lizc at 1:13 PM on April 16, 2007

Are you dead?
posted by dersins at 4:48 PM on November 1, 2007

“Are you dead?”
He hasn’t posted a follow-up in over 8 months so I’m assuming the answer to that is “Yes.”
posted by dersins at 10:27 AM on January 4, 2008

Did I eat the tuna ?

Yes. I ate the tuna. The whole tin. I enjoyed it. But I promise I will report back on the result. If I don’t report back. Well. Don’t eat day old tuna.

Parodies are cool right ? I stumbled across a really really good one the other day. There’s this bunch of guys who make these funny videos, mostly parodying popular songs, and they do it very very well and they hire professional actors and everything. At one point, one of them pointed out to one of the others “Hey did you know you look EXACTLY like that bald Cuban dude who sings that new dance song that’s really popular ?”

And thus the Pitbull parody was born and become one of their regular characters. Pitbull ? You know Pitbull. You’ll know his song at least. It’s everywhere. Everyone knows it. At first it was one of those songs I fucken hated because I just thought “God that Pitbull guy is such a DICKHEAD”, but the song grew on me. It’s good. Ne-yo is a great singer and he features heavily in the song so it’s actually really good. First, let’s watch the original.

Ok, that’s a good song, but it’s in pretty dire need of having the piss taken out of it right ? Fear not ! The Key of Awesome to the rescue !

I mean that has to be the best parody I have ever seen in my life. Eat your heart out Weird Al. These guys get Pitbull and Ne-yo down so well. Not just Pitbull’s idiotic dance poses, but some of his bizarre mannerisms. One odd thing that Pitbull does is he says the word “Dale” a lot at random for no apparent reason (apparently it means “Go ahead” or “move” in Cuban and it’s used a lot in Miama as a general slang way of greeting or saying goodbye to someone in the sorta way you might say “bro” or “brother”), so they take the piss out of that too. First he points at random and says “Dalek”, then he’s holding a doll and goes “Dolly” and then when he asks Lassie what breed she is and she tells him he goes “Oh.. Collie !”

I especially love when Ne-yo sings “Call the fire department tell em HEY !”. And how they came up with the scenario of Pitbull getting stood up at the club by all his friends and Ne-yo getting stuck in the elevator with that chick he’s just banged. My god that is creative. That is just pure genius, don’t you think ?

I recommend you look up all their videos on Youtube. Other than impersonating musical celebrities they also do a lot of hilarious skits with puppets. If you enjoy these, go look up the rest on YouTube. Here’s another Pitbull video that’s quite funny. If you search YouTube, you can actually find a very funny video with deleted scenes from this video. Pitbull’s actor has his own channel as well which is very funny and features some great stand-up comedy. Search for “wombatron”.

I don’t watch a lot of TV. In Australia or in Vietnam. I’m just not a TV watcher. Hell, even when I download it I don’t always watch it. I still haven’t seen the Doctor Who finale for 2011 yet.

In Australia we don’t have much of a selection of TV channels. We have five networks and they used to only have one channel each until digital came along and now they each have two or three active channels, but it’s mostly the same shit, only delayed, or else they are channels of repeats. Even when you get Pay TV in Australia, the best you’ll get is about 30 odd channels, most of which are just bullshit like the Shopping Network and all sorts of other crap noone would ever watch.

Since I don’t have a TV in my apartment I miss out of my fix of Yan TV, so when I stay in a hotel it’s always a real treat to be able to turn on the TV and let Yan TV play music videos for me all night long. At this hotel though I had a bit of trouble finding it because they had so many bloody channels.

“How many channels ?” I hear you ask. Eighty-fucking-two. 82 bloody channels. Mostly they’re Vietnamese. Some pay tv networks here do supply English channels but most don’t and on this network the only English channel I found was The Australia Network, and as much as it’s nice to get a touch of home, I didn’t come to Asia to sit here watching documentaries about Australia did I ?

Anyway I finally found Yan TV and turned it up and grooved to some Jpop they were playing. I wish they streamed their programming online. I would gladly pay $20 a month just to subscribe to Yan TV. I guess it’ll come. Broadcast TV is archaic and it’s really time to do away with that shit. People want to watch TV on their iPads and laptops and phones nowadays. Hurry up and provide that shit for us, will you ? We’re waiting.

In the meantime, I’ll just flick through these 82 bloody channels some more. I like watching the news in Vietnamese. I can’t understand what they’re saying but it’s obvious what the stories are about due to the media they show with them. You don’t always need to understand the language to enjoy a tv program.

The other day when I was at Hoan Long waiting for my new laptop to be conveniently packed full of pirated software they were playing a comedy show on TV. It was a riot too. So bloody funny. Vietnamese comedy actors really ham it up and overact and they portray funny stereotypes. In comedy shows the men are all pussy whipped and stupid as hell and the women are always wiley and controlling and the actors always stand facing the camera rather than each other as if they are acting on a stage.

There’s this one skit that came on that had me absolutely cracking up. The setup is this dude is eating some fruit, and I guess whatever this fruit is, it’s known to make you fart. He eats it and then gets a stomach pain, but he lets out a big fart and he feels better. Anyway he’s headed to see his girlfriend and a couple more times on the way there he clutches his stomach and then farts and gets a smile of relief on his face.

He gets to her house and she says she has a surprise for him and she puts a blindfold on and takes him upstairs and gets him to sit in the kitchen while she goes to make a phone call. While he’s sitting there, he gets the urge to fart and lets one out. Then again, and again. He starts mucking around and pretends to draw a gun out of a holster and then farts when he pulls the trigger.

Then the camera pans out and you realise the girl’s entire extended family are seated around the table with him and he has no idea. He’s farting like mad and every time he draws his imaginary gun the entire family holds their nose and shakes their heads in horror. Finally, he has the urge to do a really big one and he pulls an imaginary grenade out of his pocket and rips off the pin. The family are aghast and they all hide under the table and the girl’s mother lifts her hand above the table and waves a white handkerchief in surrender just as he lets out a whopper.

After the air clears the guy’s girlfriend come back and smiles at him and wonders why the entire family is hiding under the table. She takes off his blindfold though and says what I presume is “Surprise ! My family is here for dinner”. The guy goes white and says “Oh my god !” and facepalms. The family wave hello from under the table.

Fart jokes are clearly universal and I was just sitting there in this waiting room with all these people cacking myself laughing. The receptionist is just chuckling and grinning at me thinking “Oh yeah, you like a good fart joke do you Mr Aussie ?”

Come on. It was hilarious. I wish I could show you the skit. They did actually have a YouTube link at the start but I didn’t have the foresight to write it down because I had no idea it was going to be so funny. Wish I had. Anyway. Fart jokes. Universal humour. That’s all I’ve got to say.

So the other day I went to the pharmacy to pickup some codeine because I had a bit of a headache. This place in Pham Ngu Lao isn’t the cheapest little place but it’s convenient. So I wander in and produce a post-it note for the pharmacist girl with the word “Codeine” on it. She nods and points to some packets of the dissolvable stuff but I know that it’s only like 9mg codeine like the crap we get in Australia and I know that some places sell this really good stuff which has 500mg of paracetamol and a whopping 30mg of codeine in it, so I write “30mg” down on the piece of paper.

She nods again and holds up a little packet of four tablets and asks “How many ?” and I say “Hmmmm, give me 20 please. Hai Muoi” and she says “You want box ?” and I say “Ok sure, give me a box”. Normally they come individually and you just buy however many you want, but I guess they sell boxes sometimes too. She says “120,000″ and I’m like “Thoi oi ! Expensive. Ok, no problem” because it’s only like $5.50 and I’d pay anything to get rid of this headache.

This is the box she handed me.

Now THAT is a book of painkillers

I’m just like “JESUS H CHRIST !!! Is that legal ?!?!”

My friends tell me that in America you can’t even buy codeine without a prescription, but you don’t need a prescription for jack shit in Vietnam. You just walk in and say “Yo girl. Gimme sum dem powerful painkillers” and you walk out with 2400mg of codeine for $5.50. I mean seriously, that is enough codeine to kill a football team. I showed people that photo online and they were like “You just asked for codeine and they gave you THAT ? No prescription ? No warnings ? No asking you what you were taking it for or checking your ID ? They just handed you a fucking CARTON of codeine” and I’m like “Yep”.

God my ex-wife would be in heaven here. She’d be just like “Ya I’m out of codeine. Here’s $20. Gimme like 4 cartons of the most powerful shit you have”. She’d be dead in a week. Oh get off my back. I’m just joking. Maybe. ;”)

So I should probably tell you some stories about my birthday celebrations. I was staying in Pham Ngu Lao in a little room above a travel agent across from the Rhum House. It was a pretty shitty little room considering it was $11 a night, but the aircon worked and it had a TV and a bed and it was right across the road from where I was planning to spend the night drinking.

I had a good afternoon cruising around doing shit, mucking around with my cute new little netbook. I went to a Kodak store to get a photo of the girls at the Rhum House printed and framed for Cyril. I just thought he would appreciate a nice photo of the first night that his bar in Saigon was open and it only cost me 70,000 dong to get it printed at 20×30 and put into a frame. I cruised around the laptop and computer district all afternoon looking at shit.

Then I headed to the Rhum House to get my drink on. By 4pm I still hadn’t had a beer… on my birthday ! So I turned up and ordered a bunch of Tiger Draughts and knocked them back pretty quickly. Just before the end of happy hour I ordered like four beers since they were two for one even though you’re not supposed to be able to order more than one at a time.

I gave a couple away. I was drinking with an American guy named Mark who lives in Hanoi. He was trying to juggle limes. Someone asked him if he could do it and he decided to stand up for the challenge and tried to juggle three limes at once. He failed miserably but it was great entertainment so after he picked them up from the ground for the hundredth time I said “I think you deserve a beer for that effort” and I passed him one.

Everyone fucking bought me drinks. I mean eeeeveryone. I mean, not to say I didn’t manage to spend 560,000 dong on my own, but the next day when Cyril showed me the bill I said “Wow. That’s not bad. I would have thought I spent more than that considering how sick I feel today” and he said “That’s because after about 10pm everyone just bought them for you. There were these girls at the bar and one of them kept saying ‘I want to buy David drinks’ and she bought you drinks for hours. But later, I got a very big glass and I poured in one of every different flavour of rum that we sell into one glass and you drank the whole thing ! Then you went outside and passed out on the chair out the front.”

He continued and told me that when I finally woke up and decided to go home, I stumbled across the road and started knocking on the wrong door. I was knocking on the door of the bar next door and Cyril kept saying “Hey. That’s not where you live. You live next door. That place there” and I said “Fuck off. I know where I live. You’re taking the piss”. But after 10 minutes of knocking, he came over laughing and knocked on the door of the travel agent and they opened up and he said “See ? Your room is here. Not there” and I was like “Oh. Yeah. You’re right. Thanks”

The next day I’m sitting around outside the bar and Loan comes up to me and says “Are you ok David ? You very drunk last night” and I just laugh and say “Not very ok, but I’ll be better after you get me another beer” and she says “Ok. One more !” While I’m sitting out there talking to the American and the French guy who hang out here who are ex-Number 5 residents, we see some crazy shit.

There’s a ladyboy nearby and I’m desperate to take a photo of her.. err.. him… whatever, but I’m too embarrassed about taking a photo of a transvestite so I wait till she turns around and I get one from behind. She does a good effort too. She’s quite attractive and you probably wouldn’t pick that she has a penis except for when she opens her mouth and speaks and instantly you’re like “Oohhh. That’s a guy”.

Also there’s this crazy dude. He’s been walking up and down the street talking to himself for hours. These two dudes grab him and tie him to a street sign. For lulz I guess. We all got lulz out of it anyway. It was funny to watch. Seeing a guy get tied to a pole in Pham Ngu Lao. I guess that’s just another day in Saigon.

Anyway I may elaborate on this story later as people tell me more details of how fucked up I was last night and what I did, but for now, you can just look at some photos.

I get some odd emails now that I’m in Asia. People know apparently. Maybe they get my email from my blog or from websites I post on. I don’t know. I just know I get some odd spam now. Like this one.

Dear Client

Please do not hesitate to contact our sales team at: sales@goldencharcoal.com ; they will be delighted to hear from you.

Really ? I’m pretty sure I’ve never visited that website or given them my email address. Even if I was drunk I doubt I would have visited a website for a Chinese company that makes charcoal and chopsticks. But you never know. I do get pretty drunk sometimes.

Still that’s odd. They want to sell me wholesale chopsticks. Well that beats the usual penis enlargement and viagra spam I’ll say that at least.

So I was sitting outside GO2 bar in Bui Vien street today having a beer because I was waiting for someone there. It certainly wasn’t for the beer because that place is the most expensive this side of Secret Bar. It’s even more expensive than Number 5 out of happy hour. It’s in a very good location though if you want to observe Pham Ngu Lao, because it’s on a busy corner near the main bar and restaurant district and you see a lot of interesting things if you sit outside.

Today I saw lots of fascinating things, but the most amusing, and which inspired me to dig out my camera in a hurry was when a local Vietnamese guy got off his motorbike and challenged a couple of the staff outside the bar to an arm wrestling contest to prove who was the toughest. I could tell you what happened, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll just show you the pictures. Watch this little security guard get his arse handed to him by the motorbike guy and end up on the ground. I swear I laughed so hard I nearly pissed myself. It was a great moment in Pham Ngu Lao and it made the 48,000 dong beers worth it.

What’s a communist lollipop ? Is it one that is enjoyed equally by everyone ? Perhaps it’s a lollipop that is owned by the whole country ?

Whatever it is, apparently this is one.

Show your patriotism with this communist lollipop

Everyone loves Engrish, right ? You know what Engrish is. It’s that mangled mistranslation of other languages (typically Asian) into English, with humorous results. Urban Dictionary defines it as :

A form of English characterized by bad translation from Japanese by someone who is decent at translating vocabulary but has a poor grasp of English grammar. Tends to be a word-by-word literal translation with humorous results for native English speakers. Engrish is most common in old video games and anime subtitles.

In my opinion, mere misspelling counts as Engrish as well, as long as it’s funny.

Well, there’s this segment I watch on YouTube by a couple called Simon and Martina who just show off weird stuff they see in Korea, and today they were showing off a cup with some classic Engrish on it like

“I’m do glad we’ve found each other”

and

“When you need someone, remember that I’ll be rhere”

Anyway, I have a better one. I don’t have a photo of it sadly, but god I wish I had taken one. It was in my very first week in Saigon and I was at a clothing store buying stuff for Suki and I saw this guy’s t-shirt hanging up with this slogan on it:

Yes, really. Tell him you’re his “gril”. You can imagine how that happened. Some Vietnamese guy in a design shop with bad English was copying that from a book of phrases he’d been given to put on t-shirts and he typed it in wrong, but then his English was so bad that he didn’t notice it before he sent it off to be printed. And then the printers didn’t notice because their English was so bad, and they sold it to a shop who didn’t notice because their English was even worse. Now they are going to sell it to some Vietnamese guy who also has terrible English, and one day he is gonna be walking down the road wearing it and some native English speaker is going to see it and crack up laughing.

Engrish. It works, bitches.

This is just to share a funny but insightful quote someone told me today. I’ve been talking about women and divorce. Ian has a story very, very similar to mine. Well, apart from the fact that he was cheating on his wife, but that was after they had divorced. Anyway. The quote. It’s a little sexist, so you have been warned. But it’s sorta true. No offence. But it is.

“Women are like monkeys. They don’t let go of one branch until they’ve got a firm grip on the next one”.

Ok, you can lynch me now.

Fuck… it’s 1:23 pm and i’ve been drinking scotch and smoking weed all morning since i woke up. maybe i should slow down. i don’t want it to end up like last night where i spent a few million VND and ended up doing drugs with two russian guys who didn’t speak english at 2am

Just sayin’

I mean look at this shit. Apparently I photographed a taxi driver last night ? Why ? Fucks me. It’s not a horrible photo though.

Ok, these two photos Colin emailed me are too funny not to share with you. Some people just know how to have fun, don’t they ?

Look how strong I am ! I can lift a 40kg woman !

Epic Facepalm - "You idiot Colin !"