Humour

Suggestions for the ex-submariner that misses "the good old days at sea"

"Acquired and adapted" from the USN's "Golden Rivet"

1. Sleep on the shelf in your wardrobe. Replace the wardrobe door with a curtain. Two to three hours after you fall asleep, have your wife whip open the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack".
   
   
2. Loudly repeat back everything anyone says to you.
   
   
3. Spend as much time as possible indoors and avoid sunlight. Only view the world through the spy hole on your front door.
   
   
4. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bath and move the showerhead down to chest level. Shower once a week. When using the shower, turn it on, step in, get wet, turn it off, get out, stand in the hall, soap up, get back in, turn on the shower, rinse off. Use no more than 1 gallon of water per shower. Get dry using a small dirty hand towel.
   
   
5. Buy a garbage compactor and use it once a week. Store trash in the other side of your bathtub.
   
   
6. Sit in your car for six hours a day with your hands on the wheel and the motor running, but don't go anywhere. Install 200 extra oil temperature gauges. Take logs on all gauges and indicators every 30 minutes.
   
   
7. Put lubricating oil in your air humidifier instead of water and set it to "High".
   
   
8. Watch only unknown movies with no major stars on TV and then, only at night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, then watch a different one.
   
   
9. Don't do your washing at home. Pick the most crowded Laundromat you can find.
   
   
10. Leave the lawnmower running in your living room six hours a day to simulate the proper noise level.
    
    
11. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
    
    
12. Take hourly readings on your electric and water meters.
    
    
13. Invite guests, but don't have enough food for them.
    
    
14. Buy a broken exercise bicycle and strap it down to the floor in your kitchen.
    
    
15. Eat only food that you get out of a can or have to add water to.
    
    
16. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter sandwich on stale bread. (Optional- cold beans and cornflakes canned ravioli or soup).
    
    
17. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your food cupboards or fridge.
    
    
18. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run to your kitchen with the garden hose while wearing a scuba mask.
    
    
19. Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and then put them back together. Ensure you have parts left over.
    
    
20. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours before drinking. Never wash any coffee cups.
    
    
21. Invite at least 85 people you don't really like to come and visit for a couple of months. Limit showers to weekly for all guests. (Unless they are interested in electronics.... force those guests to shower three times daily and wear a bottle of stale cologne following each bathing).
    
    
22. Store your eggs in your garage for two months and then scramble a dozen each morning.
    
    
23. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.
    
    
24. Check your fridge compressor for "sound shorts".
    
    
25. Put a complicated pad lock on your shed door and wear the key on a lanyard around your neck.
    
    
26. Lock-wire the wheel nuts on your car.
    
    
27. When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then spread off-white icing really thick on one side to level off the top.
    
    
28. Every so often, yell "Angles and Dangles", run into the kitchen, and push all pots/pans/dishes off of the worktop onto the floor. Then, yell at your wife for not having the place "secured for sea".
    
    
29. Put on the headphones from your stereo (don't plug them in). Go and stand in front of your cooker. Say (to nobody in particular) "Cooker manned and ready". Stand there for 3 or 4 hours. Say (once again to nobody in particular) "Cooker secured". Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.
    
    
30. Tag out the steering wheel, accelerator, brake pedal, clutch and cigarette lighter when you change the oil in your car. Ensure all your neighbours have tagged out their cars if they are within three hundred feet of you.
    
    
31. Use orange squash on all your corn flakes for 2 months.
    
    
32. Fill laundry tubs with oil. Lay in them, on your back, and change the washers on the water spigots.
    
    
33. While doing laundry, replace liquid fabric softeners with Hydraulic Oil... savour the aroma of OX33.
    
    
34. Install four more toilets in your bathroom. Serve greasy meals and demand the entire family go to the bathroom together.
    
    
35. Buy bunk beds (3 high type) and convert the narrowest hallway in your home into a bedroom.
    
    
36. Just for fun, rig 150-PSI air to the bottom of all toilets. Hold a lottery to determine who gets to control the air valves.
    
    
37. Knock a glass of water out of someone's hand and yell 'WATER SPILLAGE'. Shout at them the entire time they clean it up, tell them how worthless they are, then do it again.
    
    
38. Give your wife more free time. All the ironing goes under the mattress.
    
    
39. Ask for 'permission to enter' whenever you go into the kitchen.
    
    
40. At night, replace all lightbulbs in the livingroom with red bulbs.
    
    
41. Buy all food in cardboard cases and line the floor with them.
    
    
42. Replace all doorways with windows so that you have to step up AND duck to go through them.
    
    
43. Rope off a small area of your living room, turn up the heating, put on a suit made of garbage bags and mill around inside the roped off area for an hour with a plastic bag tied securely around your head.
    
    
44. Whenever someone enters a room you're cleaning, shout "up and over" at them so they'll go through the attic to get to the kitchen.
    
    
45. Paint numbers on every button, valve, tap, switch, etc. make all the kids memorise them all, then stop pocket money if they can't walk through the house blindfolded naming each item with correct usage and number.
    
    
46. Whenever the postman steps up to your front door, shout "MAILDROP" so that everyone in the house can hear you.
    
    
47. Paint the windows of your car black. Make your wife stand up through the sunroof and give you directions on where to drive. Drive through as many big puddles as possible.
    
    
48. Have your kids stand at attention every time you enter the room and make them state quite loudly, "Attention on Deck" or "Make way for the Captain".
    
    
49. Start every story with "This is no-shit".
    
    
50. Clean the chimney then tell your family that there will be no leave until every thing in the house passes the white glove test.
    
    
51. Tell your kids there will be a pressure test in the garage next Monday night. Kid who can take the most turns in the vice will get to stay out later Friday night.
    
    
52. Hook-up an air compressor to the sewer pipe to the house and blow a shit fountain ten feet in the air. Come in side and tell you wife "calmly" that you forgot to shut the valve.
    
    
53. Make her and the kids clean up the mess.
    
    
54. Install a Furnace and an Air Conditioner that blows directly on you while you are sleeping. Have the controls so they will cycle to hot and cold in a matter of seconds. Also install a multi-channel entertainment system over your bed that doesn't work.
    
    
55. Install the system above where it will cause a 6-inch vacuum in the bedroom.
    
    
56. Set up an engine in the living room to run through all this. So when you secure harbour stations day, run like a bat out of hell to shut down the engine.
    
    
57. Make your kids some Orange Squash and add 5 times more sugar than normal and then set it out to get hot.
    
    
58. Serve cold food on cold days, and hot food on hot days. Serve breakfast at the end of a hard day's work, and a good roast dinner just as everyone wakes up. Then alternate the routine.
    
    
59. Hire about 20 drunks to come into you house about one in the morning and start cooking.
    
    
60. Have someone bollock you over nothing, hourly.
    
    
61. Go to the supermarket and buy 100 pints of milk. Pour them into a large white trash bag and secure. Put the bag into the refrigerator and rename it "The Cow."
    
    
62. Remodel your house so as to rebuild your kitchen in the hall closet. Have your family meet there several times a day to walk around in the closet and bump into each other.
    
    
63. Post the Queens Regulations on the wall across from your toilet. Highlight the parts that begin: "penetration however slight..."
    
    
64. Take the car jack handle out of your boot and install it in the ceiling over your stove. Several times a day, give it 112 turns and yell: "main induction valve secured."
    
    
65. Every Friday morning at 7:30, wake the whole house up and inform them someone is trying to steal the car, then make them clean the whole house for 3 hours, then serve them lunch with consists of 2 burgers that have enough grease in them to change the oil in the car for a year, baps that weigh more than a TDU weight, and French fries. Then run various drills in afternoon so that you have to burp into your scuba mask reliving the lunch.
    
    
66. Practice walking quickly with your back to the wall.
    
    
67. Rope off a small area of your living room, turn up the heating, shut all windows and doors, put on a thick white woollen suit and mill around inside the roped off area for an hour with a plastic bag tied securely around your head. Ensure the family critiques your actions afterwards.
    
    
68. Work at golf course maintenance so you can water golf cart batteries.
    
    
69. When your wife throws open the curtains in your closet make sure that the sewer vent is piped into your rack.
    
    
70. Cut a hole in the floor of your house and install some batteries. Go down there once a day and take specific gravity readings.
    
    
71. Cut a twin mattress in half and enclose three sides of your bed. Add a roof that prevents you from sitting up (about 10 inches is a good distance) then place it on a platform that is four feet off the floor. Place a small dead animal under the bed to simulate the smell of your bunkmate's socks.
    
    
72. Set your alarm to go off at ten minute intervals for the first hour of sleep to simulate the various times the watch-keepers and night crew bump around and wake you up. Place your bed on a rocking table to ensure you are tossed around the remaining three hours. Make use of a custom clock that randomly simulates fire alarms, police sirens, helicopter crash alarms, and a new wave rock band.
    
    
73. Have week old fruit and vegetables delivered to your garage and wait two weeks before eating them.
    
    
74. Prepare all meals blindfolded using all the spices you can grope for, or none at all. Remove the blindfold and eat everything in three minutes.
    
    
75. Periodically, shut off all power at the main circuit breaker and run around shouting "fire, fire, fire", ensure this is timed to coincide with sleep time, and then restore power telling everyone they were "crap" and would have died if it had been "real".
    
    
76. Remove all plants, pictures and decorations. Paint everything grey, white, or the shade of hospital smocks.
    
    
77. Buy 50 cases of toilet paper and lock up all but two rolls. Ensure one of these two rolls is wet at all times.
    
    
78. Smash your forehead or shins with a hammer every two days to simulate collision injuries sustained aboard Royal Navy submarines.
    
    
79. When making sandwiches, leave the bread out for six days or until it is hard and stale.
    
    
80. Every 10 weeks simulate a visit to another port. Go directly to the city slums wearing your best clothes. Find the worst looking place, and ask for the most expensive beer that they serve. Drink as many as you can in four hours. Take a cab home taking the longest possible route. Tip the cabby after he charges you double because you dress funny and don't speak right. Then vomit all over your bunkmate (wife).
    
    
81. Use fresh milk for only two days after each port visit.
    
    
82. Keep the bedroom thermostat at 2 deg C and use only a thin, dirty green, sleeping bag for warmth.
    
    
83. Ensure that the water boiler is connected to a device that provides water at a flow rate that varies quickly from a torrent to a weak trickle, with the temperature alternating rapidly from 2 to 95 deg C.
    
    
84. Use only spoons that hold a minimum of 1/2 cup at a time.
    
    
85. Make sure every water valve in your home has two backups, in line, which must all be operated to obtain water.
    
    
86. Repaint the interior of your home every month, whether it needs it or not.
    
    
87. Every four hours check all the fluid levels in your car and log the readings. Check the tyre pressure and replace air lost from excessive pressure checks. Be sure to place red tags on ignition stating "DANGER: Do Not Operate" while you perform these checks. Inform your neighbour as to placement of the red tags, the results of the checks, and have him repeat the checks because he did not see you perform them. Only carry out this routine late at night.
    
    
88. Lock all friends and family outside. Your only means of communication should be with letters that your neighbours have held for at least three weeks, discarding two out of every five. Mail should be dropped down the chimney, having first been dragged through the goldfish pond.
    
    
89. Surround yourself with 120 people that you don't really know or like: people who smoke, snore like constipated rhinos, use foul language, and fart regularly with the statement "better out than in".
    
    
90. Unplug all radios and TV's to completely cut you off from the outside world. Have a neighbour bring you a Telegraph, Sun, or Navy News from five weeks ago to keep you abreast of current events.
    
    
91. Monitor all home appliances hourly, recording on log sheets all vital information (i.e. plugged in, lights come one when doors open, etc).
    
    
92. Do not flush the toilet for five days to simulate the smell of 40 people using the same toilet.
    
    
93. Lock the bathrooms once a day for a four hour period, whilst spraying liquid fertiliser around the house, to simulate "blowing slop drain and sewage.
    
    
94. Practice taking a shower with two pints of water, using one piece of soap for every ten people.
    
    
95. Work in 19-hour cycles, sleeping only four hours at a time, to ensure that your body neither knows nor cares if it is day or night.
    
    
96. Listen to your favourite CD 6 times/day for two weeks, then play music that causes acute nausea until you are glad to get back to your favourite CD.
    
    
97. Buy old beer barrels, cover them with a piece of old curtain and use them as dining room chairs.
    
    
98. Have the family work in two watches (Tom and Jerry), each watch is six hours, and let them get settled then change the times around.
    
    
99. Wash your laundry in a detergent that could be used as an insecticide or sheep dip. Make sure you lose at least one sock and one pair underwear every other week.
    
    
100. Run a tube from your car's exhaust pipe into your living room, yell "prepare to diesel", and start the car. You must breathe the fumes for one hour.
     
     
101. Stand on your roof once every four days for six hours in the winter and don't let anyone in your house.
     
     
102. Spend 3 or 4 hours waxing your floors to perfection. Then, just before they dry, invite all the neighbours over to walk across them. Then do it again.
     
     
103. Vent your drains into the house and yell "venting sewage tank inboard".
     
     
104. Shut off all the breakers in the house and yell "reactor scram', sit in the dark for at least an hour.
     
     
105. If any light bulbs should inadvertently go out (i.e. reactor scram above), make sure you hang danger tags on the light switch, fuse or breaker box, lamp plug or cord, home master breaker panel and also notify the local utility company (manoeuvring) of what you are doing and demand their approval. Make sure both you and the wife sign the tags. Next tie a rope to yourself and have someone who just as soon see you dead hold the rope in case you get electrocuted while changing the bulb.
     
     
106. Ensure that no matter what kind of job you are working on, there is someone standing over your shoulder instructing you on how to do it better/faster even though they can't do it themselves.
     
     
107. Write a procedure in triplicate for every job you do around the house. Have a friend check your work and make a minimum of 5 changes. When you have finished and the new forms are ready, have your wife verify that the procedure is correct but make ten changes anyway.
     
     
108. Find out how long it will take to do a job. Give yourself half the time it should take then have someone scream at you for not working fast enough.
     
     
109. Ensure that every room in your house is drastically different in temperature. If no condensation appears when you open a door, the temperature difference is not great enough. Make sure your bedroom only has two temperatures (100F or 20F) and nothing between. Make sure of hourly cycles throughout the night.
     
     
110. Paint all windows black and never go or think about looking outside.
     
     
111. Make sure all your personal belongings will fit in a 2' x 2' space that has lots of cables running through it.
     
     
112. Mount as many sharp-cornered lockers as you can in all the most travelled halls of your house. Leave almost room to squeeze by. Then turn the lights out and make the family run down the halls.
     
     
113. Drills:
     a. Yell "Torpedo" and run through the house knocking over everything that isn't bolted down.
     b. Yell "Man Overboard" and throw the cat in the goldfish pond.
     c. Overflow the bath and yell "Flooding in the bathroom".
     d. Put your stereo headphone on (don't plug them in), stand in front of the stove and yell "Action Stations Torpedo".
     e. Install a very steep ladder in your living room so you can practice yelling "Stand by Collision" while the wife runs down the ladder as you time her. Always shout "too slow, if it was real we'd all be dead" if she didn't manage to shut and clip the front door within 4 seconds of your first shout.
     
     
114. Fill a sock with white hand cream to simulate your drunken best mate's sexual frustration (after being ditched by big Nancy), and his continuing attraction to your sock
     
     
115. Ask to share your neighbour's shower, while he's using it, take it in turns to get wet, soap up, and shower off, all the time talking about what "wimps" skimmers are for washing in private. Ensure your neighbour is a heterosexual with no leanings the other way, or DO NOT BEND DOWN TO PICK UP THE SOAP!
     
     
116. Continuously pop your ears to simulate running diesels.
     
     
117. Sit up from 1130 to 0530 in front of your Cooker to ensure it doesn't turn itself on by accident.
     
     
118. Block up your Front Door and rig up a ladder (spiral version) that runs up through the chimney fit a large very heavy hatch top to the top. Connect a water hose to the top, and set it to pour on you when you open the chimney top. Use this as the only exit/entry to your house.
     
     
119. Always ensure that your telephone is sitting in water, if it does work ensure that you talk very loudly and stand in the shower while talking. If you get a small electrical shock, swear loudly and blame it on a greenie!

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