Duct-Taped Breasts, Hairy Mangoes, And New Kids On The Block
WAH(web)Mommy tagged me with a 7 Weird Things About You meme thing. If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know I’m not exactly in the mood to work, so I figured I’d do this instead.
1. I did not read Sark for five years because she has a book called Eat Mangoes Naked and I find mangoes offensive. (For those of you who are wondering what I have against mangoes, it’s that they’re hairy. Yes, coconuts are also hairy but they aren’t hairy on the part you eat.)
2. My best friend when I was growing up was a notebook. Well, not a notebook, a specific page in a notebook. I drew a computer on it in crayon and I consulted it by pushing random buttons before I did anything. I thought this made me like Penny from Inspector Gadget. This went on for approximately four years.
3. When I was about nine, my cousin and I were listening to New Kids on the Block together on a walkman, each of us with one half of the headphones. When I heard the word “sexy” in the lyrics I screamed at my father to stop the car (which he did, in the middle of downtown Dublin) because we had to go to the police station and have the band arrested for vulgarity.
4. My real dream is to write Harlequin romance novels, ideally Christian ones.
5. I never finished high school but I am considering going back to school for seven or more years because it would be cool to be called Dr.
6. There was a time when I was very broke and unemployable. (I’m still unemployable, but not so broke.) I realized that the only two ways I could make any money quickly enough — Michael was two and would eat a person out of house and home — were stripping and waitressing. I had no experience in either, but as I am only an A cup, I was entirely unqualified for the former. I set on a quest to get a job as a waitress.
I figured that the only way I could legitimately have a lifetime of experience in waitressing but no references or resume was to be from another country. Having spent three years in England as a child, I figured that was as good a place as any. I watched three episodes of Coronation Street back-to-back, duct-taped my tits together — yes, I totally had Michael hold the duct tape — put on a low-cut top and set out for a job.
I had a job by that evening and faked being English for nearly six months. The jig was up when we got a new beer on tap. Bass is a British ale, and has been since 1777. I would know that if I’d been working in British pubs for six years. I offered a pint of it to my boss when the new kegs were installed. Bass, by the way, is pronounced to rhyme with ass. Not face. I probably should have known that, too. I was actually escorted off the premises in my little kilt. My now-husband will tell this story to anybody who cares to listen, duct-taped tits and all.
7. I hate surprises of almost every variety. Nobody has every thrown me a surprise party because they know I would actually leave.
Some bonus features: I don’t know how to drive. I was the youngest person to ever win the National High School Science Fair — I was 12 — and I did it in Computer Science. Often in summer, I sleep with frozen peas on my feet. Sometimes I refreeze them, sometimes I just buy more. My father thinks this is a sign of kidney failure. Oh yeah. And I have a home business. You might have heard of it.
I don’t really know how to tag people because I don’t get memes. But if you have weirdness, you’re welcome to share it in the comments.
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we all have weirdness. just maybe not sleeping with peas on our feet kind of weirdness. is it weird that you are running so hot that you need to sleep with frozen veggies on your feet or weird that you might eat them later?
i think my weirdness might just be the thoughts that go on in my head that occasionally escape!!
Okay, ummmm hmmmmm. Weird. All right, I’ve got weird. I am physically allergic to exercise. Really. Break out in hives, the whole thing.
This is the most interesting thing I’ve read all day. Seriously.
I remember drawing a screen and a keyboard and pretending it was my laptop, too. I actually pretended that things happened on the screen as I pressed the drawn buttons..
Did you like waitressing? After 4 years and 3 restaurants, I hate it and never going back no matter how good the money was.
Tip your waitress, people!
@ Kate - I didn’t eat them. I refroze them for use on subsequent evenings. Dude, what kind of weirdo do you think I am? :-)
@ Amy - Read the last post! There’s TONNES of ideas on how to get rid of rashes!
@ Tanya - See? You get it. And no, I hated waitressing. I hated waitressing because I hate people. I liked making $200 a night, but in hindsight, I was getting tipped like that because I was walking around dressed like a fucking schoolgirl.
Yeah, I hate people in general, too. Especially the majority of the ‘regulars’. It just took me working at three different restaurants to realize that I didn’t just hate the restaurant and my co-workers. And co-workers is a whole other story.
Coronation Street is actually a documentary.
Not that it’s anything like where your mum lives - dahn sarf and oop north are very very different.
I never finished High School either. Never waited on tables, but I’ve driven an Auto Parts delivery truck and worked in warehouses. Computers changed everything :-)
For many a year, I thought “lbs” (American abbreviation for pounds) was pronounced “libs”.
I have a broken front tooth because I dropped a railroad tie on it.
Although I have 20/400 vision (really bad!), I faked school eye exams for years by listening carefully and memorizing the answers of kids in front of me.
Until they realized I was blind without glasses, the school thought I was retarded. Concurrent with the glasses, they gave me IQ tests, and then moved me into “gifted and talented”. Shoulda seen the looks on the other kids faces when this scary retarded kid was added to their class :-)
. .
gettin’ popular is hard work man…
Well that didn’t turn out right… TAKE 2
–insert comment vaguely related to topic post — hope people think im clever and visit my blog –
Spammy…. yes. Yes it is.
Hope you start feeling better soon Naomi, maybe get out of the house and away for the weekend?
“hope people think im clever and visit my blog”
Well, Michael: I visited your blog. I RSSed it. Happy now?
If I want people to visit my blog, it would help a lot if I’d remember to fix the Firefox Autofill that keeps putting my email into the “Website” slot.
Not that you’d find anything interesting. Too techy. Don’t bother. In fact, I’m taking out the link so you won’t even be tempted to waste your time..
There. Now you CAN”T visit.
Makes you want to, doesn’t it? :-)
@Anthony
Yeah, thats techy. My HTPC, desktop, laptop and media server are about all the *nix I can stand. Will RSS when I get back from breakfast.
hairy fruit is gross. is this the same thing that shane wrote on shane and peter and called peeps out on? i posted my responses on my blog, but i don’t recommend that anyone read them because they kind of suck compared to naomi’s (or jarkko’s, or shane’s, or….).
PEACE!
@ mb - Yeah, same thing, dude. I don’t subscribe to Shane’s blog because he doesn’t subscribe to mine, so I didn’t know he’d done it. :)
I liked yours. ‘Specially the kids thing.
How to meme tag in 3 short steps
1. At the end of your post, say something like, “Michael, John, Dave, Tanya, Amy…, You’re It!”
2. Those folks are compelled to post.
3. You read what they post. Conversations start, hijinx ensue.
I am sitting here with sudden onset hearing loss all week, had an MRI last night and hardly able to read the screen because of extreme dizziness and itty biz is the only email i’ll read first every day (trash the rest, okay… sometimes I read zen habits but NOT every day and not this week—sorry). Why is that? It’s because you’re weirder than me probably. And I love it. Keep it coming please, more.
Itty Bitty Fan
@Diana
I’m weird too!
I personally like magoes, never noticed that they were hairy inside. I used to cut them into slices and put them in my sun-tea jar. Of course, when I lived in New Orleans I saw/did lots of weird things.
1. I paid $10 to whip a guy that had chained himself to a cross. Naked. (He was naked, not me)
2. I used to skinny-dip with strippers at the Bienville House hotel. For free. With benefits.
3. I lived across the street from the Real World New Orleans crew, and never, ever, saw them out and about. They were the biggest lames ever.
4. I once ate 57 raw oysters on Bourbon Street at a $0.25 each special happy hour. Then I went home and passed out. I do not recommend eating more than 20-30 raw oysters at one sitting.
5. I went to several NO Saints games in 1996 at the Superdome. Those were the only games they won. All season. After the games I partied with my Hooters-girl friends who were paid $50 to stand outside the stadium and pass out coupons for free wings.
6. I can’t tell you about this one because my wife might find out.
7. Vicki, if you read this and you still remember me, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to put it in your eye. I am really, really sorry.
What is a meme? Are we talking about tits here?
Sheesh, I just had a 10 minute talk with my kid yesterday explaining how Penny’s notebook wasn’t real. “But it’s in the show!!!!”
Side note: Never tell your kids how vapid and one-dimensional their favorite cartoons are, then proceed to show them the toons of your past because they are AWESOME. You will see that the Transformers, Voltron, Inspector Gadget, etc. are no different. And then you get to have your nostalgia shattered forever.
I know that a post will be good when I find enough to respond to that I need to start Notepad so I don’t forget anything.
a) I think that Penny was simply accessing the web via a transdimensional interface that allowed her to use it even though it (technically) didn’t exist yet. All YOU were doing was simply using the interface already demonstrated at MIT that allows simple drawn lines to be interpreted by a computer system. Hence, you were piggybacking on her work, and therefore, you were, in fact, being like her. Go go gadget rationalization!
b) A Christian Harlequin novel? Would that mean that it wasn’t so much a bodice-ripper as a surplice-ripper, or does it simply mean that after all of the fire and fury of the romance scenes, they get married?
c) You don’t have to go back to school in order to be called Doctor — you simply have to find a diploma mill that will essentially grant you a doctorate in something vague, such as Transdimensional Interfaces.
d) I don’t regard A-cuppage as being a preclusion for being a stripper. Its elegance, not overkill.
e) Taking off the duct tape after six months must have been quite painful.
f) Re: surprise parties. Me, too.
This has to be the funniest list of 7 unknown facts that I’ve read so far. Another job to make good money quickly…phone sex. Yep, I got myself out of grad school debt (major debt) in about 6 weeks.
I am so weird that I never quite know what autobiographical facts will count as weird for other people. However, I did publish 3 romance novels and a novella, so there’s that.
You only find mangoes offensive because you live in Canada, land of crap mangoes. I miss the mangoes we could get in San Francisco (if you went to the right markets) with physical pain.
The flavorless mango-esque objects we get in Colorado are like virgin pop stars, entirely pointless.
Oh, I have another one, this is bragging though really, so avert your eyes. But Nicholson Baker once asked me what it was like to write a real novel.
I had the world’s worst crush on him, and not just for that.
[...] Duct-Taped Breasts, Hairy Mangoes, And New Kids On The Block: Naomi from IttyBiz posted her answers to the odd secret sharing meme that I participated in last week as well. [...]
[...] I write titles that frequently utilize words like “topless”, “thong”, “shitless”, “breasts” and “toilet.” Suffice it to say, the people who come here from Google leave very, very [...]
This post had me laughing out loud at my desk. Which is a little embarrassing. Both because it’s just funny, and because it reminded me of when my family thought to throw me a surprise (I detest surprises) birthday party 5 years ago (I’m still not over it) and I, upon figuring out what was going on, ran to hide in the corner.
Some things just don’t change, viscerally. Like the feeling that if you can’t see them, they can’t see you.
It all just came rushing back, and as I stood there, with my hands over my face, turned to the corner, with my back to 100 (yes, 100) of my nearest and dearest, I believed for a little minute that they COULDN’T SEE ME.
Oy.
Did you hear, New Kids on the Block are reuniting. On their website it says 8hours 33min 48sec. http://www.nkotb.com/ I bet you are excited, right?
That’s just weird! Their pic looks good, but the name doesn’t really fit anymore, does it? Do you think people will take them seriously or laugh hysterically at them? Now it says 9 hours 56 minutes and it’s counting up. So I don’t know if that was a countdown.
[...] Where they ended up: Duct-Taped Breasts, Hairy Mangoes, and New Kids On The Block [...]
since when are mangoes fucking hairy?! *sorry for the outburst, I’ve been thinking that since the beginning of this post*
Weird things about me:
I’m a texture person, and will not eat things if I don’t like their texture.
I refuse to hug my parents anymore (they used to make me hug them before bed EVERY night as a kid)
I won’t cry in public
I like watching Monster Hentai (dirty, dirty japanese cartoons)
I used to write very graphic short stories for boyfriends, but without using any names, so I think they all probably still have them. LOL
I am a stickler about grammar when people speak, but not when they type.
I’ve had a crush on Marilyn Manson for years but I don’t know why.
[...] we all know how I feel about memes. (Although if you want to read a meme IttyBiz-style, check out Duct-Taped Breasts, Hairy Mangoes and New Kids on the Block. You know you want to.) But 90% of you are recovering from The Great Turkey Incident of 2008 and I [...]
Hilarimo in seven different ways.
Meanwhile, on all things hairy mango-ish, my parents used to own a mango farm. Maybe that’s why I’m kinda fruity. But I don’t think mangoes are hairy. Dude, what kind of space alien hairy mangoes do they have over there?
Second meanwhile, I hope you are back to consuming SARKly goodness. Check out her newest ones - “Juicy Pens, Thirsty Paper.” I’M IN IT AND AM STILL SO EXCITED ABOUT IT I COULD WET MYSELF. DAILY.
“I never finished high school but I am considering going back to school for seven or more years because it would be cool to be called Dr.”
Yeah, well, I did the grad school thing (grad being short for “gradual”). Ended up with my doctorate after ten years, actually used it for around 15 years, but when the PhD-related gig finally ended many years too late, I didn’t miss it.
My wife also did the grad thing, got her PhD, but her adviser was such a prick she decided to leave the field before she graduated. We were busy having kids then, and she did the traditional Mom thing.
Now both of us are doing new things, each starting careers at about the same time. She teaches 8th grade math, I do computer consulting. I no longer acknowledge my doctorate, though I don’t regret going that route. Cynthia uses her doctorate at work, but only because principles love having teachers with advanced degrees, and hers is a real doctorate, not a cheesy Ed.D. All her kids call her “Dr. P”, which is a total hoot.
I also hate surprises. Bastards. Jumping out at you when you least expect it.
I don’t have any control issues. Oh no.