The Worst in Life

[GrahamB]

No worries, mate. It is a damn funny topic, actually.

Oh yes....

[Bär]

When I was a brewer a bunch of us were joking around at the brewpub and someone was telling a joke that began with "What's the worst thing in the world?" I don't remember the punch line to that, but when whoever was telling it asked our 75 year old Greek Cypriot kitchen manager that question he replied, without missing a fraction of a beat, "Dirty pussy!" except that it sounded more like durrrty poosy in his heavy accent. We laughed for hours.

[Interloper]

I love snakes. Used to keep them as pets, along with tortoises and other herps, when I was a kid. I'd love to have some now, but keep my house too cool to be healthy for snakes.

My snake story:
About 15 years ago I was in Thailand for a few weeks and spent some time in Chiangmai, where I met the owner of a small muay Thai gym with an outdoor training yard not far from where I was staying. I was looking for a place to work out, and he invited me to use his space and equipment. So I took him up on it. The first day there, I was working on a Thai heavy bag (definitely the densest bags I've ever hit or kicked) hanging under a tree in the yard... I was really making it rock... and the guy comes over to me and says, "I don't want to scare you or anything, but there's a six-foot house cobra that lives under our house, and during the day he likes to climb up that tree and sun himself." He kinda looks at me with a smile like he was saying "You kick that bag too hard, and the snake is gonna fall down on your head."

I told him that I'd use all due caution in kicking the bag, so that if the snake fell out of the tree my kicking vector would make sure it landed over on the side. Of course he was totally disappointed in my reaction. I could tell he was hoping that I'd scream and run. heh heh. I was really disappointed that I didn't encounter the cobra the entire week I worked out there.

[Michael]

The snake was thinking, "I am scare!"

[Andy_S]

Those "big lethargic snakes...?" Ian, have you seen the speed these things can strike and constrict when they feel like it?

At our local snake house, they have some very, very large Burmese pythons, un-cased, that just crawl around the place, so you can go and touch em at any time. I asked one of the keepers why they did not let the retics crawl around freely, and she looked at me in astonishment - they are far too aggressive. Yet I notice on YouTube that people still keep these things as pets...

There is a wicked docco (on Discovery a couple of years back) about a South African madman who travels the world in search of the world's most dangerous snakes, and in Indo, he pulls a huge retic out of its stream, and it chases him around for a bit. Amazing stuff...he also wrestled an anaconda (in water) and got bitten by a cobra in the Namibian desert. Could not find it on YouTube sadly but did find this: The same chap vs a King Cobra:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=x7XY3dMVN ... re=related

American chap gets bitten (on cam) by retic in Indonesia (this, I think, was "The Cave of Death" featured on that excellent docco "Ring of Fire" years ago) and screams like a little girl:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ItBJ6vyiY3Q

World's longest snake in Indonesian zoo:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa56tWDQ3Jk
(Surely they got this wrong though? 49 feet? Come on...29, maybe...?)

[Interloper]

Haha. A former boyfriend of mine spent a year in the Philippines, and the place where he was living had an outdoor privy -- with plumbing and a toilet, but in an outhouse. One day he was on his way to the privy when he heard a scream and the sound of the privy door slapping shut, and saw one of the other residents running the opposite way like his butt was on fire. My friend went to the privy and opened the door, to come across a 20' retic that had coiled around the toilet bowl, apparently enjoying the coolness of the porcelain on a hot afternoon.

I'm trying to imagine a snake neatly coiling all 20' of itself around the bowl.

[Andy_S]

"House cobra"? Good God, if that is what they need to keep the rats down...I'l live with the damn rats.

BTW, your Thai is excellent, or the bloke you were speaking to spoke better English than any Thai I have ever met (when you explained to him that you would change the vectors on your kicking to drop the snake in the appropriate places).

[Ian]

American chap gets bitten (on cam) by retic in Indonesia (this, I think, was "The Cave of Death" featured on that excellent docco "Ring of Fire" years ago) and screams like a little girl:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ItBJ6vyiY3Q

youtube comments

-2:08 wen he freaks out i laughed so much, haahhaha jesus what a pussy
-hes a fucking drama queen
-lol that bite was nothing, i've seen worse

O RLY? having these teeth in the back of your leg is no big deal?



btw, snakes can be pretty lethargic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMW7-pWNE-0

jack black talking about his fear of snakes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj9LIzfgm1A

[Andy_S]

SNIP
O RLY? having these teeth in the back of your leg is no big deal?
SNIP

Ian, the guy screams and panics like a big girl's blouse when he has only been slashed by a relatively little retic.

THIS chap, OTOH, gets chewed on by a 26-foot anaconda. His reaction? He gives just a mild yelp (admissable in this case), but stays cool, extracts his limb and does the damn job. Hombre!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v11NyeLjH1A

Your defense of the pouffe drops my respic' for you to sink a few notches, pal. MTFU!

[Chanchu]

When I was a young GI in basic training- we got "shanghaied" to move the furniture of a fighter wing to a new set of buildings out in boondock out near Hondo Texas took us out there in truck's- flat beds.. driving slow over dirt and gravel roads.
The ranchers out that way had been killing diamond backs and laying them over barbed wire fences fracking things were about eight feet long and fat looked like mini anaconda's.. I was real surprised how big the GD things were..

[Ian]

SNIP
O RLY? having these teeth in the back of your leg is no big deal?
SNIP

Ian, the guy screams and panics like a big girl's blouse when he has only been slashed by a relatively little retic.

THIS chap, OTOH, gets chewed on by a 26-foot anaconda. His reaction? He gives just a mild yelp (admissable in this case), but stays cool, extracts his limb and does the damn job. Hombre!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v11NyeLjH1A

Your defense of the pouffe drops my respic' for you to sink a few notches, pal. MTFU!

I was bitching about youtube commenters. You know, young males who could kick Steve Morris' ass after surviving multiple gunshot wounds and swallowing a school of live pirhanas for breakfast.

Props to the coppers, though. We discussed this in the dog attack thread. Don't pull against the teeth.

[Interloper]

"House cobra"? Good God, if that is what they need to keep the rats down...I'l live with the damn rats.

BTW, your Thai is excellent, or the bloke you were speaking to spoke better English than any Thai I have ever met (when you explained to him that you would change the vectors on your kicking to drop the snake in the appropriate places).

Come to think of it, there were no signs of rats in that place. Clean as can be.
And Andy, he was a Scotsman. Not that a Scots burr is any easier to understand than Thai. He was married to a Thai woman and they ran a little muay Thai gym on the outskirts of Chiangmai. I met him and we chatted when he was coaching some of his fighters at a local competition I attended.

[Andy_S]

A Scoootsman running an MT camp? Interestin' Hope he did not compete in his kilt....if he did, the locals would have been treated to the sight of a Scottish snake.

(Which would be wrinkled, short and harmless. English snakes, OTOH, are large, lithe and dangerous - rather like comparing a grass snake to a king cobra. This is all established fact - trust me.)

[Ian]

I trust Andy has BTDT enough times to know his snakes.