Glasgow Urban Myths (7 page)

David MacGregor

______________

Dear Mr MacGregor,

I have informed our housekeeper, Elaine Magillicuddy, of your soap problem. I cannot understand why there was no soap in your room since our Maid persons are instructed to leave 3 bars of soap each time they service a room. The situation will be rectified immediately. Please accept my apologies for the inconvenience.

Martin L. Davidson, Assistant Manager

______________

Dear Mrs. Magillicuddy,

Who the fuck left 54 little bars of Camay in my room? I came in last night and found 54 little bars of soap. I don’t want 54 little bars of Camay. I want my one fucking bar of bath-size Imperial Leather. Do you realise I have 54 bars of soap in here? All I want is my bath-size Imperial Leather. Please give me back my bath-size Imperial Leather.

David MacGregor

______________

Dear Mr MacGregor,

You complained of too much soap in your room so I had them removed. Then you complained to Mr. Davidson that all your soap was missing so I personally returned them. The 24 Camays which had been taken and the 3 Camays you are supposed to receive daily. I don’t know anything about the 4 wee bars you mention. Obviously your Maid person, Senga, did not know I had returned your soaps so she also brought 24 Camays plus the 3 daily Camays. I don’t know where you got the idea that this hotel issues bath-size Imperial Leather. I was able to locate some bath-size Lifebuoy which I left in your room.

Elaine Magillicuddy, Housekeeper

______________

Dear Mrs Magillicuddy,

Just a short note to bring you up to date on my latest soap supplies. As of today I possess:

– on shelf under medicine cabinet, 18 Camay in 4 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 2.

– on Kleenex dispenser, 11 Camay in 2 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 3.

– on bedroom cabinet, 1 stack of 3 wee soaps which don’t have a label, 1 stack of 4 hotel-size other wee soaps with a different label, and 8 Camay in 2 stacks of 4.

– inside medicine cabinet, 14 Camay in 3 stacks of 4 and 1 stack of 2.

– in shower soap dish, 6 Camay, very moist.

– on north east corner of the bath, 1 unidentified wee soap, slightly used.

– on north west corner of the bath, 6 Camays in 2 stacks of 3.

– on bedroom window sill, 1 bath-sized Lifebuoy, which I hate.

Please ask Senga when she services my room to make sure the stacks are neatly piled and dusted. Also, please advise her that stacks of more than 4 have a tendency to topple over. May I suggest that my bedroom window sill is not in use, apart from the Lifebuoy, and will make an excellent spot for future soap deliveries. And to keep you further up to date, I have obtained another bar of bath-sized Imperial Leather which I am keeping in the hotel safe in order to avoid further misunderstandings. If you have access to this, please do not tell me.

David MacGregor.

A myth is a good as a mile

Recounting urban myths as though they had happened to you can improve your social standing immensely and make people like you and buy you drinks.

An urban myth is not just any apocryphal tale that is told as true. To qualify as an urban myth, a story must be officially sanctioned by the seven-member Urban Myth Committee of Glasgow University. Committee members are selected on the basis of academic achievement, pubic service (or possibly public service) and capacity for strong drink. Whenever a new president is elected, wee red flags are flown from every rooftop in Hillhead, while the ashes of the previous president are thrown into the Kelvin.

The story about the Maryhill gangs who drive with their lights off and shotgun drivers who flash them was written in 1875 by Charles Dickens.

The comparative rarity of the Maklouf-effigy £2 coins (the ones with the necklace) mean that they are much more valuable than the other coins, and if you place it in the freezer overnight, the cupro-nickel centre will pop out.

Every year, on the first Sunday in October, candle-light vigils are held in small towns around the world for the baby who was put in the microwave to dry.

The rumour of the rat in the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken in Bellshill was so distressing to Colonel Sanders that it led to his suicide in 1981.

The Paisley woman who originated the tale of the man who awoke in a hotel bath with his kidneys removed went on to write a folk song about how she came up with the idea. On the recording, she accompanied herself on acoustic guitar and harmonica, and was sued by Dylan for plagiarism. The song was a hit during a brief period in the winter of 1974–75, but only in Govan.

Most people relate to the story of the Oriental rat that was mistaken for a Chihuahua and adopted by a Blackhill family because, at one time or another, they have mistakenly adopted rats themselves.

Over 50% of all traffic on the Internet consists of urban myths.

POLICE WARNING

Police are warning all men who frequent clubs, parties and local pubs to be alert and stay cautious when offered a drink from any woman. Many females use a date rape drug on the market called ‘Beer’. The drug is found in liquid form and available anywhere. It comes in bottles, cans, from taps and in large kegs.

Beer is used by female sexual predators at parties and bars to persuade their male victims to go home and have sex with them. A woman needs only to get a man to consume a few units of Beer and then simply ask him home for no-strings-attached sex. Men are rendered helpless by this approach.

After several Beers, men will often succumb to the desires to perform sexual acts on horrific-looking women to whom they would never normally be attracted.

After drinking Beer, men often awaken with only hazy memories of exactly what happened to them the night before, often with just a vague feeling that “something bad” occurred.

At other times these unfortunate men are swindled out of their life savings, in a familiar scam known as “a relationship”. In extreme cases, the female may even be shrewd enough to entrap the unsuspecting male into a longer form of servitude and punishment referred to as “marriage”. Men are much more susceptible to this scam after Beer is administered and sex is offered by the predatory females. Please! Forward this warning to every male you know.

If you fall victim to this Beer and the women administering it, there are male support groups where you can discuss the details of your shocking encounter with similarly affected, like-minded men. For the support group nearest you, just look up “golf courses” or “public houses” in the phone book.

Doctors are blaming a rare electrical imbalance in the brain for the bizarre death of a chess player whose head exploded in the middle of a championship game. The normal chants of, “Come and take a pawn if you think you’re hard enough!”, and, “Anatoly Karpov! He’s a wanker! He’s a wanker!” were silenced as bits of bone and hair showered the crowd.

No one else was hurt in the fatal explosion but four players and three officials at the Glasgow Masters’ Chess Championships were sprayed with blood and brain matter when Snakehips McGunnagle’s head suddenly blew apart. Experts say he suffered from a condition called Hyper-Cerebral Electrosis or HCE.

“He was deep in concentration with his eyes focused on the board,” said Snakehips’ opponent, Vladimir MacDobrynin. “All of a sudden his hands flew to his temples and he screamed in pain. Everyone looked up from their games, startled by the noise. Then, as if someone had put a bomb in his cranium, his head popped like a melon hit with a hammer.”

Incredibly, Snakehips’ is not the first case in which a person’s head has spontaneously exploded. Five people are known to have died of HCE in the last 25 years. The most recent death occurred in 1991, when English psychic Barbara Nicole’s skull burst. Miss Nicole’s story was reported by newspapers worldwide, including the
Herald
, which ran with the headline, “She Didny See That One Coming, Ha Ha!”

“HCE is an extremely rare physical imbalance,” said Dr. Peedie Penis, famed neurologist and expert on the human brain, who did the autopsy on the brilliant chess master. “It is a condition in which the circuits of the brain become overloaded by the body’s own electricity. The explosions happen during periods of intense mental activity when lots of current is surging through the brain. Victims are highly intelligent people with great powers of concentration. Both Miss Nicole and Snakehips were intense people who tended to keep those cerebral circuits overloaded. In a way, it could be said they were literally too clever for their own good.”

Although Dr. Penis says there are probably many undiagnosed cases, he hastens to add that very few people die from HCE. “Most people who have it will never know. At this point, medical science still doesn’t know much about HCE. And since fatalities are so rare it will probably be years before research money becomes available.”

In the meantime, the doctor urges people to take it easy and not think too hard for long periods of time. “Take frequent relaxation breaks when you’re doing things that take lots of mental focus,” he recommends.

Although HCE is very rare, it can kill. Dr. Penis says knowing you have the condition can greatly improve your odds of surviving it. A “yes” answer to any three of the following eight questions could mean that you have HCE:

Does your head sometimes ache when you think too hard? (Head pain can indicate overloaded brain circuits.)

Do you ever hear a faint ringing or humming sound in your ears? (It could be the sound of electricity in the skull cavity.)

Do you sometimes find yourself unable to get a thought out of your head? (This is a possible sign of too much electrical activity in the cerebral cortex.)

Do you spend more than five hours a day reading, balancing your cheque book, wondering about Motherwell’s chances in the Scottish Cup, or other thoughtful activity? (A common symptom of HCE is a tendency to overuse the brain.)

When you get angry or frustrated do you feel pressure in your temples? (Friends of people who died of HCE say the victims often complained of head pressure in times of strong emotion.)

Do you ever eat too much ice cream, Midget Gems or other sweeties? (A craving for sugar is typical of people with too much electrical pressure in the cranium.)

Do you tend to analyze yourself too much? (HCE sufferers are often introspective, “over-thinking” their lives.)

Do you ever unzip your head with the zip at the back?

Here is the advice of Dr Peedie Penis if you are doing even any one of the above:

“Don’t, ya eejit”.

Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new study reveals. In fact, those fools can kill you!

Stress is one of the top causes of heart attacks, and working with stupid people on a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to researchers at Glasgow University Medical Centre, in the Western Infirmary.

The author of the study, Dr. Wilma Anderson, says her team studied 500 heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62% had relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly blamed for heart attacks.

“Then we questioned them about lifestyle habits, and almost all of these low-risk patients told us they worked with people so stupid they can barely find their way from the car park to their office. And their heart attack came less than 12 hours after having a major confrontation with one of these oafs.

“One woman had to be rushed to hospital after her assistant shredded important company tax documents instead of copying them. A man told us he collapsed at his desk because the woman in the next cubicle kept asking him for correction fluid. This was for her computer monitor.

“You can cut back on smoking or improve your diet,” Dr. Anderson says, “but most people have very poor coping skills when it comes to stupidity. They feel there’s nothing they can do about it, so they just internalize their frustration until they finally explode.”

Stupid fellow-workers can also double or triple someone’s work load, she explains. “Many of our subjects feel sorry for the drooling idiots they work with, so they try to cover for them by fixing their mistakes. One poor woman spent a week rebuilding client records because a typist put them all in the recycle bin of her computer and then emptied it. She thought it meant the records would be recycled and used again.”

Dr Anderson’s advice regarding these idiots is simple. She says, “Kill them, they deserve it.”

No fatwahs re Saddam, please, or burning crosses on my lawn re Harry.

These are myths. Perhaps.

Incidentally, what do you call a Muslim flying an aeroplane?

The pilot, you racist.

Saddam Hussein has been caught with his trousers down – literally. A shocking 1968 porn film has surfaced at his trial, in which the flamboyant former leader appears performing raunchy homosexual acts.

The image quality of the grainy 16mm film is poor, but experts who’ve taken a close look at the hairy-chested actor are “100 per cent certain” it is a younger, trimmer Saddam.

“There is no doubt in my mind that this is Saddam. There’s no mistaking those eyes and that distinctive nose,” declares Hussein biographer Sadiq al-Sabah, who has seen the eye-popping footage first-hand.

It may be hard to believe that a man who led one of the most powerful nations in the Middle East once acted in blue movies, but to anyone familiar with how reckless and sexually promiscuous Saddam was in his youth, when he lived in Auchenshuggle, this will come as no surprise. It’s also a known fact that the young, desperate lad did anything for money.

“Saddam appeared in as many as 85 of these films under a variety of stage names, most frequently Omar Studdif,” reveals the researcher.

Still photographs from the sizzling X-rated film, La’iba al-Waladaani (The Two Boys Played), were leaked to a news magazine after authorities found it amid a stash of illicit porn in the desk of a recently deceased Glasgow MP.

But rumours that Saddam appeared in gay porn films in his younger days have dogged him for decades and almost torpedoed his political career when he was a rising star in the Baath Socialist party.