Saturday, 1 August 2009
Some Embarassing Tales
Some wise guy seemed to have come up with a bright idea to set up a competition about....."The most embarrassing moments in Your life"
Well here are the first ,second and third best stories (Podium finishers)
Unenviable people
There was a World wide survey of “Most Embarrassing Moment in human life” and the final three incidents are ….
Third Place
It was the day before my eighteenth birthday. I was living at home, but my parents had gone out for the evening, so I invited my girlfriend over for a romantic night alone.
As we lay in bed after making love, we heard the telephone ringing downstairs. I suggested to my girlfriend that I give her piggy-back ride to the phone. Since we didn’t want to miss the call, we didn’t have time to get dressed.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, the lights suddenly came on and a whole crowd of people yelled “SURPRISE!? My entire family, uncles, grandparents, cousins and all of my friends were standing there!
My girlfriend and I were frozen to the spot in a state of shock and embarrassment!
For what seemed like an eternity. Since then, no-one in my family has planned a surprise party again.
Second Place (A Lady)
While in line at the bank one afternoon, my kid decided to release some pent-up energy and started to run amock.
I was finally able to grab hold of her after receiving looks of disgust and annoyance from other patrons. I told her that if she didn’t start behaving herself right now, she would be punished.
To my horror, she looked me in the eye and said in a voice just as threatening, “If you don’t let me go right now, I will tell Grandma that I saw you kissing Daddy’s pee-pee last night!?
The silence was deafening after this enlightening exchange.
Even the tellers stopped what they were doing!
I mustered the last of my dignity and walked out of the bank with my daughter in tow.
The last thing that I heard as the door closed behind me was the screams of laughter.
And the Winner Is……
First place
This one actually happened at Harvard University in October last year. In a biology class, the professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen.
A young female (freshman), raised her hand and asked, “If I understand what you are saying, there is a lot of glucose in male semen, as in sugar?” “That’s correct.” responded the professor, going on to add much statistical data.
Raising her hand again, the sweet young thing asked, “Then why doesn’t it taste sweet?”.
After a stunned silence, the whole class burst out laughing, the poor girl turned bright red and as she realized exactly what she had inadvertently said (or rather implied), she picked up her books without a word and walked out of the class, and never returned.
However, as she was going out of the door, the professor’s reply was a classic. Totally straight-faced, he answered her question, “It doesn’t taste sweet because the taste-buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not in the back of your throat! “
Well here are the first ,second and third best stories (Podium finishers)
Unenviable people
There was a World wide survey of “Most Embarrassing Moment in human life” and the final three incidents are ….
Third Place
It was the day before my eighteenth birthday. I was living at home, but my parents had gone out for the evening, so I invited my girlfriend over for a romantic night alone.
As we lay in bed after making love, we heard the telephone ringing downstairs. I suggested to my girlfriend that I give her piggy-back ride to the phone. Since we didn’t want to miss the call, we didn’t have time to get dressed.
When we got to the bottom of the stairs, the lights suddenly came on and a whole crowd of people yelled “SURPRISE!? My entire family, uncles, grandparents, cousins and all of my friends were standing there!
My girlfriend and I were frozen to the spot in a state of shock and embarrassment!
For what seemed like an eternity. Since then, no-one in my family has planned a surprise party again.
Second Place (A Lady)
While in line at the bank one afternoon, my kid decided to release some pent-up energy and started to run amock.
I was finally able to grab hold of her after receiving looks of disgust and annoyance from other patrons. I told her that if she didn’t start behaving herself right now, she would be punished.
To my horror, she looked me in the eye and said in a voice just as threatening, “If you don’t let me go right now, I will tell Grandma that I saw you kissing Daddy’s pee-pee last night!?
The silence was deafening after this enlightening exchange.
Even the tellers stopped what they were doing!
I mustered the last of my dignity and walked out of the bank with my daughter in tow.
The last thing that I heard as the door closed behind me was the screams of laughter.
And the Winner Is……
First place
This one actually happened at Harvard University in October last year. In a biology class, the professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen.
A young female (freshman), raised her hand and asked, “If I understand what you are saying, there is a lot of glucose in male semen, as in sugar?” “That’s correct.” responded the professor, going on to add much statistical data.
Raising her hand again, the sweet young thing asked, “Then why doesn’t it taste sweet?”.
After a stunned silence, the whole class burst out laughing, the poor girl turned bright red and as she realized exactly what she had inadvertently said (or rather implied), she picked up her books without a word and walked out of the class, and never returned.
However, as she was going out of the door, the professor’s reply was a classic. Totally straight-faced, he answered her question, “It doesn’t taste sweet because the taste-buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not in the back of your throat! “
Black Holes And How They Can Eat You
Stellar black holes are so-named because they are only "sort of" more massive than our sun, in contrast with supermassive black holes that can stomp an entire galaxy into oblivion because they feel like it.
There are thousands of these stellar black holes floating around space. The problem is, we have no way of finding them unless they interact with another stellar object and we happen to see it. One way they interact is by completely annihilating the object (in fact, that is their preferred method--they're kind of dicks about it).
In other words, a black hole could be right next to our solar system and we wouldn't know it until it starts snacking on the sun.
The sun will suddenly start unwinding itself, and then everything will go black. Soon after the black hole will begin the process of collapsing all matter into a single point. So you, your mum, your couch, your porn, the Pacific Ocean and a billion Chinese people will all be crushed into an area the size of a golf ball.
It'll look like this, only less photoshopped.
The good news is that you won't live to see that. The first thing that happens to you after you get sucked into space is that you get "spaghettified." That's the actual term used by scientists, and I'll let you use your imagination as to what it means. Hint: it has nothing to do with the black hole feeding you lots of delicious spaghetti.
Lost: The $800,000 Stradivarius
Lost: Have you ever sat your coffee on top of your car, intending to grab it before you get behind the wheel, only to forget about it? Then you go driving off and it falls onto the road somewhere while you stare confused at your empty cup holder?
What would you say is the worst possible scenario for something like that? Other than, say, leaving your newborn infant up there?
That brings me to the story of The Duke of Alcantara, which is not a person but a 267-year-old Stradivarius violin (when an instrument is valued at $800,000, they tend to give it a pimp name). The violin was donated to UCLA at some point in its long lifespan, and wound up in the hands of David Margetts, the second violinist for the UCLA string quartet. He borrowed the violin on August 2, 1967 from the university for a rehearsal in Hollywood.
An $800,000 loaner? Yeah, UCLA apparently trusted the shit out of David Margetts.
They shouldn't have. He was on his way home and stopped to get groceries, leaving his car unlocked. When he got back, he was minus one violin and was in some serious shit with UCLA. Surely some thieves had stolen it, recognizing it for its rarity and extraordinary value! They were probably selling it to sophisticated international criminals that very moment!
Found: Fast forward 27 years to 1994. A violin dealer repairing a (you guessed it) violin, realized that, holy shit, he was working on a Stradivarius two and a half centuries old and worth more than he made in a decade.
He looked up the particular violin and found out it had been missing from UCLA all this time. The violin was now owned by an amateur violinist by the name of Teresa Salvato, who had gotten it in her divorce settlement.
Wondering how the musical equivalent of that guy who always "totally has to show you a song he wrote" at parties ended up with an $800,000 violin, UCLA did a little asking around and found out the violin was given to Teresa's husband by his aunt... who found the Stradivarius on the side of a freeway one evening in 1967.
So what I was saying earlier, about the cup of coffee? Yeah, it appears that's what David did with the violin.
How To Fail Spectacularly
The Goal
To break a row of coconuts open as quickly as possible with his bare hands, thus proving once and for all man's dominance over nature.
What Went Wrong
Imagine if coconut breaking was your ultimate goal in life. Practicing long and hard on the lesser, punier fruits, calculating the ideal point at which to hit a coconut for maximum destruction, trying to find someone who actually cared about your hobby...these are all part of the trials that a coconut smasher faces in life.
Imagine the anticipation when the big day comes, when you finally get that chance to join the hallowed ranks of famed fruit and vegetable destroyers that Guinness World Records has produced.
So you invite your friends and family to watch. You get the TV cameras there to record your triumph. You line up many, many coconuts...
...And while you manage to break both your spirit and probably your hand, you break not a single coconut.
Lesson Learned
Look, I know coconuts aren't free. But when you try to set a record of some kind, you might want to, you know, practice doing it at least once. And don't practice on, say, rotten watermelons or eggplant. Spring for a couple of real coconuts, and do a dry run before the cameras get there. You'll thank yourself later.
To break a row of coconuts open as quickly as possible with his bare hands, thus proving once and for all man's dominance over nature.
What Went Wrong
Imagine if coconut breaking was your ultimate goal in life. Practicing long and hard on the lesser, punier fruits, calculating the ideal point at which to hit a coconut for maximum destruction, trying to find someone who actually cared about your hobby...these are all part of the trials that a coconut smasher faces in life.
Imagine the anticipation when the big day comes, when you finally get that chance to join the hallowed ranks of famed fruit and vegetable destroyers that Guinness World Records has produced.
So you invite your friends and family to watch. You get the TV cameras there to record your triumph. You line up many, many coconuts...
...And while you manage to break both your spirit and probably your hand, you break not a single coconut.
Lesson Learned
Look, I know coconuts aren't free. But when you try to set a record of some kind, you might want to, you know, practice doing it at least once. And don't practice on, say, rotten watermelons or eggplant. Spring for a couple of real coconuts, and do a dry run before the cameras get there. You'll thank yourself later.
Rags To Riches: Bill Gates
Bill Gates was a college dropout who finessed his way into the upper echelons of IBM to sell his operating system. Now he sleeps on a bed made of solid gold. According to the media, Bill Gates is the Rocky Balboa of the business world. They've compared him to other college dropouts; from Kanye West to some guy who runs an airline and media group, Richard somebody or other. Gates proved that if you're smart and willing to work hard, you can build an empire! And you don't even have to go to college! Yay!
What a load of crap.
First of all, the college Gates left was Harvard, not the community college that most of the people who cite his story are thinking of leaving. He entered Harvard by scoring 1590 out of 1600 on his SAT--the man was, and still is, a genetically mutated genius. But one with the type of parents who could afford Harvard.
In fact, Gates's parents have a lot to do with his success, and even why he was able to drop out of school. At a very young age, Bill was staying up all night experimenting with computer programming. Keep in mind, this was the late 60s and early 70s, so having access to a computer was like having access to a helicopter. He gained incredible amounts of experience because his upper class parents were able to enroll him in an exclusive prep school that had a computer available. This was only possible because Bill's father was a prominent attorney, and his mother's side of the family wasn't exactly poor either.
Later, Gates left college because it didn't provide the training in computer programming that he needed for the software business he was running on the side. It wasn't that Gates couldn't keep up at Harvard; Harvard couldn't keep up with Gates. Again, this is the kind of risk you can take when you have well-to-do parents who can get you right back into school if things don't work out. If the dude scraping by on student loans and corn dogs tries the same thing, he's probably going to wind up bussing tables at Chili's the rest of his life.
Of course here is where Gates used his genius and creativity to invent the modern operating system...
Oh, wait, no. It turns out he bought the program that would later become MS-DOS from another programmer, for a one-time fee of $50,000. He then took it to IBM and other PC manufacturers and made a pile of money big enough to ski down it.
Now, I'm not saying Bill Gates isn't a smart guy or that he didn't work hard. By all accounts he puts in more hours working than most people put into being awake. But, an "Upper Middle Class Guy With an Extraordinarily Fortunate Background to Riches" story is a completely different deal than a "Rags to Riches." The guy wasn't exactly an orphan begging for scraps. And it's not like he was turning tricks as a male whore to put his start-up capital together, the way Richard Branson did [citation needed].
Taking Aspirin Stops A Hangover.......Maybe
Drinking to the point that you have a hangover the next day is kind of like taking a peaceful drive through the majestic countryside only to arrive at your destination and find your wife nailing your best friend. It's a great trip, but the ending sucks.
Naturally, throughout the ages people have come up with all kinds of harebrained schemes to avoid that dreaded hangover. One of the more timeless techniques is popping an aspirin or two prior to drinking. Sort of makes sense, in theory.
However, it's all a load of old tosh. First of all, what kind of magical aspirin are you taking that has the tenacity to still be fighting a headache well into the morning? It's not methamphetamine. Even if popping an aspirin before drinking did do anything to fight a hangover, its powers would have run their course well before you needed help.
But wait, it gets worse. A study by the American Medical Association found that ingesting aspirin actually slows the rate at which your body metabolizes alcohol. Not only does that increase blood alcohol levels, but it makes the effects of the alcohol last longer. So if you feel better than usual when you wake up in the morning, it probably means you're still drunk.
And while that may sound like a pretty awesome solution, especially if it gets you to work in time, you'll think differently when the delayed hangover hits you like a truck a few hours later. Or alternately, when you literally drive head on into a truck on the way to work because you're both drunk and hungover.
What You Should Do Instead:
When it comes to a hangover, dehydration is the real enemy. Try drinking eight ounces of water between drinks. It won't completely prevent a hangover, but it will make it a hell of a lot more manageable. Alternately, you could also just do what some do and drink indefinitely.
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