Be Excellent To Each Other

SUPER MALI TO THE RESCUE

So, I'm sitting down, eating bacon and sausages and beans and scrambled eggs and watching the MotoGP.

The phone rings, which is an odd occurance at Mali Towers, as I just tell anyone that rings that they have a wrong number. Anyways.

It's the missus and she's got a puncture on her way home from Wychwood festival. And is only 50 miles away from me. So I hop on bike and make like Rossi and zoom to the rescue. Arrive and she's in a hotel car park and NOT A SINGLE PERSON had offered to change the wheel for her. So, 5 minutes later and I'm zooming home again.

Go me.

So, tell me about your superhero tales?

We get lots of wrong numbers. Mrs Chris got a phone call the other day that was a wrong number that, bafflingly, went like this:

Mrs C: "Hello?"
Mystery Caller: "Is that the Jenkins household?"
Mrs C: "No, I think you've got the wrong number, sorry"
Mystery Person: "Are you sure? Is that Mrs Jenkins?"
Mrs C: "No, I'm sorry, you've got the wrong number"
Mystery Man: "OH JUST FUCK OFF". *slams phone down*

A man of about 80 fell down in the road behind a bus which was reversing and couldn't see him. I jumped up and thumped on the bus to stop it, shouting, and helped him up.

Everyone else just sat, watching. (Which made me feel sad)



I helped up a man who had fallen over the other week and both his lenses had fallen out of his glasses, and I fixed his glasses to his great joy.

I also helped up an old woman who fell getting off of a bus that stopped too far from the kerb, she shot forward head-first into the grit-salt box and cut her head open. I stemmed the bleeding with my scarf and sat with her waiting for the ambulance who took her away for some stitches, but she was OK other than that.


I am SuperMimi, patron saint of fallen-over old ladies and gentlemen.

Of course there's always the plan where you teach her to change her own sodding wheel, thus allowing you to watch top motorsport action unmolested.

Don't emasculate me.

Hey it's your time, petrol and cold bacon when you get back

She's been shown now, so all is OK.

We get lots of calls like that, but mostly from indian call centres asking for Mr or Mrs Random Name.

Very often I say 'You have the wrong number', and incredibly the person says:

'No, I haven't got the wrong number, I dialled (repeats my number). Is that Mr or Mrs Random Name?'
'No, sorry, YOU HAVE THE WRONG NUMBER'
'No, I dialled the right number'

I mean, what kind of mentality is this? If the person you're looking for doesn't live at the number you called, ITS WRONG.

Of course, it's just a tactic. Its a random sales call, of course. Sometimes I hang up, sometimes I scream FUCK OFF, and sometimes I wait for them to hang up. A while ago I had a guy who just wouldn't quit, and after I told him to fuck off a few times, he kept ringing back, asking for the same person. Eventually I had to tell him that person was DEAD, at which point he apologised and didn't call again. I say again, what?

Turning this into a thread about wrong numbers (because I haven't done anything superhero-like).

I once had a woman phone me at work and ask for 'Steve', when I asked 'Steve who?' she wanted the one that repaired vacuums.
I pointed out we had no vacuum repair men working there (although I did wonder if anyone did it in their spare time), and she got pretty arsey and accused me of accusing 'Steve' of giving her the wrong number. Because I'm a helpful kind of guy I asked her what number she was trying to ring and established that she had 1 too many digits (she'd basically managed to ring my work number with another one tacked on the end). She was phoning locally, and I figured most people would be able to grasp how many digits were in a phone number, but I guess not. I explained this to her and that the set of double digits in her number should probably be a single digit and there was genuinely no vacuum repairers of any name here.
She phoned back straight afterwards and I had to get someone else to talk to her. She hung up as soon as they gave the company name.

I also had a really strange phonecall early one saturday morning, some guy phoned me about a job and got quite irate when I told him I had no jobs to offer him. Unusually for me, I got quite irate back (I'm not at my best first thing in the morning), and he just said something like 'Ok, fair play mate, well done.'
The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is that it was one of those practical joke lines, but I can't think of anyone that would have done that to me and you'd have though they'd have told me about it in the many years that follow. Although I suppose 'man gets annoyed at inability to dial the correct number' is actually a pretty rational explanation.

On Friday I saw a bag on a traffic island and ran after the stylish girl who had dropped it. She didn't ask me out on a date there and then, alas. The karma points will have to suffice.

Wrong numbers? Usually 'sorry, he's dead' shuts the other person up.

We get nothing but sales cunts. Typically, they ask if "Mrs. Stupidname" is in, we say no, and then they ask something that's none of their fucking business, like whether we own the place or are renting. I vary between making up an outlandish lie to fuck with their records, hanging up, and asking them whether they touch themselves when Crufts is on the telly.

As for superhero stories... well, I'm rescuing a lesbian schoolgirl this week and putting her up in an empty flat so she can screw her american catholic girlfriend from the internet without her parents knowing. Not only is it benevolent, but it makes for an awesome casual anecdote!

Her name isn't Joanne by any chance, is it?

You're not the American Catholic schoolgirl are you Gaz?

Really? I mean, is this really happening?

Well, only on Saturday nights.

And where are you hiding the cameras?


No, what you do is you say "I'll go get them", put the phone down, and go and play GTA 4 for a couple of hours.

If they're still there, tell them again it's the wrong number.

Repeat until they get it.

Yep! Well, strictly speaking they're meeting somewhere else first, and will use the flat on a future visit if it goes well, so it may not happen. In fact my instincts are telling me it's going to go as badly as you'd expect anything involving the words "american", "catholic" and "lesbian" to go, and I trust said girlfriend not a jot, but it's what my friend wants, so. She's got to make her own mistakes, right?

Her name's not Joane, though.

I was involved in a multi-vehicle pile-up on the M6 when a lorry was blown over by the wind. I tourniquet / plugged up two or three people before the ambulances arrived, at least one of which (apparently) would have died otherwise. However, I did manage to make an arse of myself when trying to help the driver of the stricken artic - he was stuck in his seatbelt and had a broken rib or two (he said) so he couldn't get out. His windscreen had a big crack in it so I, running on shitloads of adrenalin by then, kicked it in. Well, I tried - what actually happened is that the insanely strong windscreen damned near broke my ankle Idiot boy!
Pleasingly tying into the first post, I smashed the windscreen with my wheel nut spanner in the end.

Presumably you've already done the wiring of the cameras?

I have a couple of wireless webcams I could bike to you?

I know it's been hinted at already, but the phrase "What could possibly go wrong?" doesn't even begin to be strong enough for this...

Although, hurrah for making my life seem simple.

Didn't you pin down a stabber, too?

I don't think I've ever been a hero, really. I gave my top to a cold girl yesterday, then she spilt ketchup on it. Does that count?

After my 17 year old next door neighbour was squished against the wall of his house by a car full of angry drug dealers, I and others pulled the car off him, cleared the blood from his airway and managed to keep him breathing until the ambulance arrived.

That was a failed superhero effort though, because he died on the way to hospital.

It's a top floor flat with a loft. Thankfully, neither of them has seen Shallow Grave.

Also, anyone getting any ideas, have a read of the child porn thread. You'd be on the register for life, chaps, even though she's more mature than a lot of people my age, and actually joining in wouldn't be a crime. Hey ho.

Yeah, on the Northern Line. But that was quite a few of us.


Arse

I've got a 17 year-old brother. If he does it, is it still illegal?

Hey, you didn't specify ages

He said "schoolgirl".

18 year olds can be schoolgirls.

Hell - this is the internet. 30 year olds can be schoolgirls, apparently.

As long as they're dressed as schoolgirls, nobody will ever suspect they're under-aged.

Yeah. I'm keeping back a tenner this week so that I can go out for a drink/have a night in with her later in the week if it goes badly. To pick up the pieces, I mean, not to take advantage.



Yep. She can consent to screwing 300 men and it'd be fine. One person takes a picture of her tits, though, and they're a paediatrician. All hail THE SYSTEM!

That was no failure! You did all you could. Failure is when you fuck it up. Someone else fucked it up, and you nearly fixed it. Good work.

Remember to pick up her cardigan, if she leaves it behind. There could be a BETEO discarded outerwear collection.

The man in front of me at the tills in Tesco on Saturday night left his dried peas behind, so I ran after him shouting "Excuse me, you've forgotten your p-eeeeeeeeees!" Very embarrassing failure of pronunciation.

Somehow not as satisfying an act as I'm sure some of these others must have been.

I pulled over on Saturday to come to the aid of a distressed cat who had one of his front paws trapped in his collar.

Then the shop exploded, thrusting you both forward in an awesome action-leap. Mimi appeared out of nowhere to help the man up, and you gave the peas to him. "Thanks, chap!" he said, as he made his way home.

Then Grim... was instantly there pulling people out of the burning building, while Craster was pulling cars off people.

Somehow "Giving man his peas" seems like the worst super power ever.

Oh my gosh, Craster. Did they run him over by purpose, or were they arguing and hit the pavement by accident? I don't know if it matters but that's suc a trahgic thing to see.

My brother saw a terrible thing on Saturday, someone jumped from the bridge he was approaching, onto the North Circular road. A 14 year old girl I think he said it was. He was about 50 yards from there and thought someone had chucked a bin bag at first, and all the cars started swerving, and a couple collided, but it was a girl, jumping into the traffic.

My brother, who is about to turn 14, was quite calm when he was telling me this. He's quite sensitive, but seemed more intrigued as to why someone would ever come to the conclusion to do this. Then he wanted to play Rock Band.

Interestingly coincidentally, my mum's partner's son threw himself off a bridge into the river the other night. He was on anti-depressants, and they'd been making him do strange things; he doesn't remember any of it.

He's okay, though, fortunately.

But that's awful, Mimi.

Don't suppose you know what type?

Shit. Seroxat by any chance? Had he been taking St John's WOrt as well?

Haven't a clue what he was on, sorry! I've never actually met the chap.

edit: which is probably why I'm coming across as distanced.

A real world case of 'watching peas in queues'.

I see you've had pretty much the same thought as me. Both Fluoxetine and Paroxetine had less than good results with me, similar kind of things.

I believe it was a Trestle Strut type of bridge.

Very much on purpose. We'd only moved into the house 3 days before, too.

Sorry to hear that Nynfortoo, it must have been a terrible shock for your mum and her partner. I'm glad he's OK, though, that's very lucky.

I simply cannot imagine how people like that can live with themselves.

I hope upon hope that they were caught and punished. I mean, I wonder how many others they have hurt or killed? Unbelievable.

Yeah they were. We were due to be secret witnesses until the last minute, when they confessed.

9.5/10