Skills you really shouldn't have... but do (and vice versa)

[WOM]

But a firm 'no' on the skid-steer, right?

[Gerontophile]

The joint was an 8/7, but I did make a fair size roach (with a shotgun), so that it would smoke ok, and not bend too much. And it was pretty even all the way down. I did cheat, and use some extra gummy bits of riz to strengthen it, but to limit the amount of paper burning.

Joint rolling became a speciality of mine, because when I first started smoking I was forced to roll (everyone in our wee gang did), but if you made a fuck-up of it, you had to smoke it all yourself, which was really not good on the throat (or the eyes, which would get you in shit with parents etc), so I got good quickly. And just took it from there.

I was never a fan of king-size riz, mainly because you could make a longer doob with 3 small skins. Nowadays, I can barely get through a single-skinner without feeling wiped out. Admittedly, I use miniscule amounts of tobacco, and joints are easier to smoke outside, rather than whipping a bong out in the middle of the Strip.

[Sporting]

The joint was an 8/7

I am probably the only person on here who has no idea what this means, even though (long in the past now) I have smoked my fair number of joints.

[Gerontophile]

8 small skins long, with 7 other small skins overlapping (to strengthen it, and stick it together). Oh, and flaps on the inside.

[Sporting]

Thanks, A Sudanese fisherman I used to know would occasionally roll a joint in the shape of the letter Y. Googling just now, I see that there is such a thing as cross joints.

A pipe is easier, for me at least!

And I'm still amazed about that backwards speaking German upthread,

[WOM]

My friend Lina's party trick is writing something with her right hand and simultaneously writing it in perfect mirror image with her left hand. It's really quite something to see.

[NickSTFU]

I never knew rolling a joint was such an art form, with its own language.

This is what I like about OTF, by the way.

Marvellous.

[Simon G]

The joint was an 8/7

I am probably the only person on here who has no idea what this means, even though (long in the past now) I have smoked my fair number of joints.

Not true - It has never been something that has ever appealed to me so I've never touched the stuff myself.

[treibeis]

Not true - It has never been something that has ever appealed to me so I've never touched the stuff myself.

Same here, despite being a cigarette smoker and despite having a (German) local in which 90% of the guests and staff bogard up a toke pot shit spliff* almost all the time.

* The main reason I don't touch it is that I'd then have to use the silly jargon. And, well, bollocks to that.

[Jah Womble]

I don't recall ever having used - or even heard - that jargon before. It all sounds a bit 'Super Hans' to me.

Prefer a hashpipe anyway.

[treibeis]

I don't recall ever having used - or even heard - that jargon before. It all sounds a bit 'Super Hans' to me.

Prefer a hashpipe anyway.

I exaggerated, for (non-)comic effect and to indicate that it's all mumbo-jumbo to me.

I've heard all the individual words before, I've just never had occasion to use them (properly).

[Sporting]

I should really be much better (or even very poor rather than completely crap) at those activities traditionally and lazily called man-skills, such as putting up shelves, building sheds, knowing what's what inside car engines, understanding electrical circuits. etc. My partner does all this stuff while I do the cooking. It works. However, the first page of the Mundane page has someone buying new "shocks". I sort of guessed that this refers to shock absorbers and then this morning it occured to me that I would not be able to identify a shock absorber if it was screwed into my neck. Now with googling I know - sort of. as really it looks like just another weird tool/engine part I'm never going to be able to use - what one looks like. I suppose there are other blokes on here with the kind of zero d-i -y skills that I possess, but there can't be that many!

[ursus arctos]

*raises paw*

Automobiles are a particular black hole for me. I don't even have a driving licence (though I do know how to drive).

That said, I know what a shock absorber looks like because they used to be advertised quite heavily over here (see also sparkplugs and air and gas filters).

I am also the primary/exclusive cook for our family and always have been when not traveling. I have no idea if that is somehow linked to my ignorance of automotive mechanics.

[Sporting]

I haven't driven since 1995, apart from 5 minutes in the deserted car park of Ontinyent Railway Station in 1998. Don't miss it in the least and would be terrified now if forced to do it.

On edit: not as terrified as any potential passengers would be.

[ursus arctos]

I'm somewhat surprised that the car park at Ontinyent is large enough to drive aimlessly in.

I last drove regularly during the last two years of my father's life, as he lived in suburban Long Island and doing so was an absolute necessity. I also don't miss it at all (except for slight pangs when we are in California) and wonder if the subconscious association with that less than happy part of my life has something to do with that.

[Sporting]

I drove round and round accompanied by my ex-girlfriend who was interested to see if I could really steer a car and not make it stall. I succeeded.

Ontinyent Football Club ceased to exist about three weeks ago after 90 years of existence. Now that's sad.

[ursus arctos]

When ms ursus tried to teach me how to drive a stick in her beloved Karmann Ghia, I managed to drive it into a field of raisins-to-be in Madera.

Various accounts of this incident have provided her and her extended family with decades of entertainment at my expense.

[Sporting]

You see, I don't even understand what to drive a stick means. And I thought that Karmann Ghia might have been some Indian food speciality.

[Gangster Octopus]

A stick, in this case, is a gear lever.

[ursus arctos]

Oh man.

You've set the cat amongst the pigeons now, sir.

[jdsx]

Virtually all electric cars are 'automatic' (in the sense that they have no gear lever), so it's only a matter of time.... I always hated automatics because I like to decide when to change gear, not to have the car decide for me, but my current plug-in hybrid has no gears as such.... Ms jdsx's car is automatic (CVT) so that's essentially the same idea, but it is rather 'droney' when you put your foot down on a motorway...

Back to the topic - used to smoke a few joints back in my boarding school days (!), but I don't recall ever rolling one, so maybe I just scrounged off other people. But I can still blow a mean smoke ring if I'm pissed enough....some people seem unduly impressed by this.

On the downside, I'm a professional musician, and have perfect pitch, but I really can't sing a note... well maybe if the Jags are winning and launch into song but that doesn't happen often these days...

[San Bernardhinault]

I'm broadly of the opinion that modern automatic gearboxes are basically good enough most of the time, and there's little reason to drive manual transmission. But! both my current cars have really annoying gearboxes - the smaller one seems to wait for ever when shifting from reverse to forward, like it's uplinking to the cloud for permission; and the bigger one revs way too high when accelerating normally and doesn't downshift nearly soon enough.

Anyway, this is pretty much the limit of my knowledge about cars. I don't think I could change the oil or sparkplugs on a car, let alone do anything else. The missus bought both our cars knowing that I fundamentally don't care what I drive provided that its practical, and I have no knowledge of the innards.

I also have almost no DIY skills. I do some DIY-ish stuff, but it almost always involves hours of looking online to see what I should be doing, followed by a trip to the hardware shop to buy tools that I don't own, only to discover that everyone has some really expensive automated version of the same which means that I job which takes them 3 minutes will take me 2 hours. And then I discover that I'm missing things and need another trip to the hardware shop, and then when I'm finished the job looks shitty and shoddy. But I can't outsource these tiny jobs.

So, there's lots of skills I should have but don't. I'm not sure there are many skills I shouldn't have but do. Cycling drunk, perhaps?

[treibeis]

I can do an (English) accent-free impersonation of Uwe Seeler, Herbert Grönemeyer and the newsreader Claus Kleber. Yet I can't speak English-accent-free German (nor accent-free English, come to that).

[Sporting]

What is accent-free English?

[treibeis]

What is accent-free English?

What I meant was: When I speak English, people know roughly that I'm from west of Membury Services and south of Birmingham.