Glasgow Urban Myths

by Ian Black

  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 b
e recycled and used again.”

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

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  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.

  “He was able to squelch the rumours in the past, but now it looks like we have found the smoking gun,” says a State Department source.

  Al-Sabah claims that Saddam, then a struggling law student, acted in porn to make ends meet, as it were, and because he was addicted to gay sex.

  In the newly uncovered 86-minute prison movie, set in Barlinnie, Saddam, then just 34, plays a naive young man who is wrongly convicted and sent to jail. He is initiated into homosexuality by a series of older and more experienced cons.

  “Saddam’s acting in the picture is actually quite good,” al-Sabah notes. “One scene, in which he buries his face in a pillow and cries, is so touching you can almost forget you are watching a low-budget sexploitation film.”

  The trial continues.

  Harry Potter is the creation of a former English teacher who promotes witchcraft and Satanism. In the first book, Harry is a 13-year-old wizard. Her creation openly blasphemes Jesus and God and promotes sorcery, seeking revenge upon anyone who upsets them by giving you examples (quoting author and title references) of spells, rituals, and demonic powers. I think the problem is that parents have not reviewed the material.

  The name seems harmless enough – Harry Potter. But that is where it all ends. Let me give you a few quotes from some of the influenced readers themselves: “The Harry Potter books are cool ’cause they teach you all about magic and how you can use it to control people and get revenge on your enemies,” said Bearsden pupil, 10-year-old Craig Davies, a recent convert to the New Satanic Order of the Black Circle. “I want to learn the Cruciatus Curse, to make my muggle science teacher suffer ’cause she’s a pig.” (A muggle is a non-believer in magic.)

  Or how about the really young and innocent impressionable mind of a 6-year-old when asked about her favourite character? “Hermione is my favourite, because she’s smart and has a beauty wee kitten,” said 6-year-old Jessica MacDonald of North Kelvinside. “Jesus died because He was weak and stupid.”

  And here is Ashley, a 9-year-old, the average age of a Harry Potter reader: “I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School,” said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of Hell. “But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies.”

  Or how about a quote from a High Priest of Satanism: “Harry is an absolute devil-send to our cause,” said High Priest Joe Egan of the First Church of Satan in Sauchiehall Street. “An organization like ours thrives on new blood – no pun intended – and we’ve had more applicants than we can handle lately. And, of course, practically all of them are virgins, which is brill.” (Since 1995, applicants to Satanic worship have increased from around 100,000 to 1.4 million children and young adults.)

  I think I can offer you an explanation as to why this is happening. Children have been bombarded with action, adventure, thrills and scares to the point that authors and film makers can produce nothing new to give them the next high. Parents have neglected to see what their children are reading and doing, and simply seem satisfied that Wee Peem is interested in reading.

  Still not convinced? I will leave you with something to let you make up your own mind – a quote from the author herself, J. K. Rowling, describing the objections of Christian reviewers to her writings: “I think it’s absolute rubbish to protest about children’s books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan,” Rowling told a Glasgow Evening News reporter in a recent interview. “People should be praising them for that! These books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic Son Of God is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes, while we, Satan’s faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Wee boys and other creatures

  There is a prevailing myth in Glasgow that all wee boys are smart-arsed experts in repartee, not to mention banter and talking back.

  There is the standard story of the chap parking his car outside the football and being asked by mini-blackmailers: “Watch yer car, mister?” This is, of course, an implied threat that if you don’t give them a quid or whatever the going rate is, that something nasty, like disappearance, especially if you are in Ibrox or Parkhead, might just happen to your vehicle.

  The story goes that a guy points somewhat condescendingly to the Dobermann/Rottweiler/Irish Wolfhound in the back of the car and says: “I think my dog can watch my car for me.”

  I can find no one to which this has ever happened but the mythical replies grow year on year. So far I have heard:

  “Yer dug pits oot fires, does it?”

  “Yer dug blaws up tyres, does it?”

  “Yer dug fixes broken headlights, does it?”

  and the classic, “Paints oot scratches, does it?”

  The new one this year is, “Worth much, that dug?” which, given that people are spending a fortune on the above breeds, really is pretty smart. You lose your car and your pet.

  The other variation I have been told about was a couple of smart kids actually juggling bricks, a bit like saying, “I hope I don’t drop a brick on it.”

  Throw them a rag and say: “Wash the windows and meet me here after the game.”

  A couple of guys are out one night in town on the bevvy, with a few drugs thrown in. They’re highly illegally driving their car back to Easterhouse in the middle of the night, when something runs in front of the car and on to the other side of the road. For whatever reason, possibly because they are both steamboats and possibly because they have both seen The Hobbit, they agree that it was a goblin, and they pull the car over and attempt to apprehend the goblin in the interest of science.

  They manage to catch the goblin and put it in the boot of the car. They get home to one of their houses, lock the goblin in the kitchen, and then pass out. When they awake, they wonder if the evening’s events were just a dream, a drug trip, or if there is in fact a goblin in the kitchen. They open the kitchen to find a frightened 5-year-old boy who has Down’s Syndrome. They called the police to report the boy, and end up being h
eroes because the boy had been missing for days and his well-off parents were frantic. They received a decent-sized cash reward for his safe return.

  Two guys were walking in the Campsies when they came across a big hole. The two saw that it was a deep hole, but wanted to know how deep, as you do. They threw stones in and then bigger stones. When they heard nothing hit the ground, the two decided to use something heavier and bigger. Just at the edge of a farm field they found an old railway sleeper. It took both of them to lift it, but they finally got it to the hole and threw it in. Just then a goat came running towards the men at full speed. It went past the two, jumped up into the air and into the hole. The two looked at each other in amazement. Behind the men, a farmer came out from behind a dyke and said, “Have you seen my goat?” The two men looked at him and said, “Aye, we did. It jumped into this hole.” The farmer looked around and then said, “No, it couldn’t have been my goat. It’s tied to a sleeper.”

  A cat that had helped itself to some salmon mousse, prepared for an upcoming dinner party, later turns up dead in the garden. The hostess, fearing her dish is poisonous, convinces her guests to rush to the Western and get their stomachs pumped. Later that evening a neighbour comes over to apologize for backing his car over the cat, which ran away injured.

  For the final exam in a philosophy class at Strathclyde, the professor took his chair and placed it on top of his desk. He gives each student a blank piece of paper and said: “Prove to me that this chair does not exist”. Most papers handed in were essays explaining how nothing was real or references to ancient philosophers. The paper which received top marks was just two words long:

  “Whit chair?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY