How to have a good time after returning from a tiring holiday and even more tiring return journey:
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Return home delighted to see that Paul has tidied up your entire house.
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Relaxed and refreshed, throw yourself backwards into a soft, comfy chair.
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Talk to a friend about a sensitive issue in a safe, relaxed environment, making use of a whiteboard as an aid to discussion, knowing that it’s easy to remove the evidence afterwards with a bit of paper towel or a board wiper.
How to fuck up the above plan:
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Throw yourself backwards into a soft, comfy chair that’s just a few inches to the right of where you remembered it was, banging the back of your head quite painfully against the wall.
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Accidently write all of the most sensitive details of your discussion on the whiteboard in a permanent marker, because during the house tidy up, all of the permanent markers have been mixed in with the whiteboard markers.
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Scamble to find a solvent with which to remove the data from the whiteboard before somebody sees it who shouldn’t.
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Find paraffin. Accidently get it in your eye and have to wash it out.
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Have to scrub hard at the whiteboard to remove the rapidly-setting permanent marker lines, working hard to ensure that the information is removed in order from most to least incriminating/embarassing.
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Push the whiteboard too hard, dislodging a large metal sign mounted above it, causing said sign to plummet down into an empty pint glass (which shatters). The sign’s fall is broken slightly by your head, which is cut and begins to swell.
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While applying first aid to your head (now injured front and back and somewhat grazed by it’s collision with the sign), hurt yourself by swinging your elbow into a door handle.
I’m convinced that my house doesn’t like me right now.
In other news: if anybody fancies a post-BiCon, post-Edinburgh catch-up natter session, get your arse around to The Cottage!
Shave your chest, you beast.
–Jon
get well soon Dan’s head and elbow, they will be required for liberal amounts of Q-boogying! Glad you both had such a wonderful time at BiCon and look forward to hearing all about it.
I am aware that some people do talk out of their arses, but wouldn’t the whole of somebody be more appropriate? Also, isn’t it quite difficult for an arse to move on its own? :p
Feel quite bad about your head, given that it’s my fault said sign is above the whiteboard in the first place. On the plus side, the plaster is nicely symmetrical, and could be used for any number of amusing purposes…
Not sure its much use now, but Acetone would have been a better choice of solvent.
Nail varnish remover is probably the most readily accesable version of it you might have had around. Generally shifts permanent pen fairly fast.
Kit
I thought that scribbling whiteboard marker over permanent marker would then allow them to be removed. Is that an urban legend?
Point at Matt In The Hat, … “what he said!”
Not an urban legend! We do it here all the time at work when someone mixed the markers up again. However, it does sometimes take 2 or 3 times going over it. Of course, the removal is not ‘magic’, it’s just
that the solvent in whiteboard markers (which, if I remember correctly is triphenylethanol) is simply able to dissolve both
the ink in the permanent and non-permanent markers (I think that’s
because it’s probably the same ink).
Anyway, other good solvents are:
– acetone (if you don’t have it, try nail varnish remover, that’s mostly acetone). However, this might also dissolve the whiteboard (IKYN!) so try it on a corner first
– alcohol (if no medicinal or cleaning alcohol is present, vodka should work the same)