Not all who wander are lost. We however, might be.
@a-nonworking-cat-or-several
Caen system | adult | collectively he/they, please don't use you& | PRO ENDO | we block freely to curate our experience | we're friendly, talk to us | no set DNI but don't be a dick
As there are 150+ of us, not everyone will be listed here, just the ones most likely to post. Not everyone who posts here has a tag at the moment; that may or may not change.
I drew my half Bisaya half Sundanese character named Sriya. She lives in Sarangani with her sister, is a minor forest deity and shoots pink fire from her 6 hands. Design is inspired by the endangered green peafowl <3
Valeria Anyedimi is a philosopher princess from a land ruled by philosopher-kings. She is mastering the art of cartokinesis, an art that suggests that how we plot maps have an effect on the behavior of constellations and planets. Using her talents, she can move the grids of the map of the world to align her position under a certain constellation or planet and harness its energy. I was inspired by the concept of celestial parallax.
In addition to the café I'm in blaring syrupy pop covers of Ave Maria and Gloria in Excelsis Deo, the man next to me is listening to a sermon at maximum volume on his phone. I just want to eat my panini in peace.
My lukewarm Jewish take on this subject in general is: Christmas music in your house? Nice, enjoy that. In a church? Of course, choir hymns are very beautiful. Christmas decorations in your house? Love what you've done with the place.
Christmas songs and decorations in a store? i cast fireball
Hypothetical scenario: you are asked to cook/bake something to bring to a potluck or other food-based social gathering. You can choose to bring anything you want. You know for a fact that one person will be there who has food allergies/dietary restrictions (that YOU don't have). This person as well as several other attendees will all also be bringing dishes to share.
Assume you know the extent of their restrictions and it would be possible for the average person to accommodate without specialized knowledge; e.g. they can't eat gluten, or can't eat tree nuts, etc. (This isn't a "they're allergic to 20+ different things and I don't know exactly what's a problem" situation.*)
If you're bringing food to a potluck and you know one person there has specific dietary restrictions, would you go out of your way to bring something that's safe for them to eat?
Yes, I'll choose something to bring that's already safe for them by default
Yes, I'll modify something that WOULD typically have the problem ingredient
No, I'll bring whatever I want to and just assume they'll have other options
No, I probably wouldn't even think about it
It depends on how severe the restriction is (e.g. GF by choice vs. celiac)
Other
I would never go to something like this/wouldn't bring anything
Voting ended onDec 7, 2025
Already safe by default: for example, if the person can't have gluten, a dish of roasted broccoli can be assumed to be safe.
*This part of the premise isn't intended to make light of people with extensive allergies/restrictions; this is just to clarify. Anon has known people with complex lists of sensitivities that aren't necessarily "common sense" (e.g. based on specific chemical compounds the average person might not know about), which would be tricky to confidently accommodate without more specific guidance from the affected person. That is not the type of situation that this poll is asking about.
–
We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.
People on Tumblr love sharing information about themselves no matter how asinine it is. And I'm the same way. Everybody tell me what the last thing you drank was.
Imagine unexpectedly popping up in Valhalla with your pants around your ankles because just half a minute ago you were taking a shit so bad that the Viking gods decided that it should count as dying in battle.
Isn't it even worse? You don't just pop up there. You get carried there by a Valkyrie.
You're experiencing a gastrointestinal event, and are really not having a good time, and the suddenly, without any logical way to be present there's a Winged Woman in there with you, in Armor, with Weapons and Helmet, who looks like she could take down Sandor Clegane or Geralt of Rivia in the 10 minutes before waking up, just plugs you from your porcelain throne and doesn't even gives you the chance to pull up your pants before carrying you off.
If you have been fired or your job is in danger for speaking ill of the dead, you should know a few things about US employment law.*
1. The term “wrongful termination” applies to you even if you do not have a contract or a union. It means that if your company does not have a policy that governs what employees can and cannot post on their personal social media accounts, and you belong to a protected class (literally everyone does, but that’s a lecture for another day (about how many discrimination claims cishet white guys can file)), you may be able to claim wrongful termination — I.e., that you were fired for a reason not pertaining to your ability to perform your job duties or follow your employer’s policies.
2. Most companies, large or small, shit their pants when they see a demand letter from an ex-employee who they know was fired for a bullshit reason.
3. The cost of a lawyer to get a quick consult and a demand letter on their letterhead is almost certainly way less that what your former employer may be willing to pay for clean underwear.
*I am not a lawyer but worked as an HR investigator in a past life. I want to share what I learned from a Master’s degree and 13 years of experience, but I have also been out of the game for a year and a half, and a fuck of a lot has changed in that time.
10 year old Tim Drake: so anyway I was reading on the bench and Mark—
Jason Todd, Robin: *leaning on gargoyle to listen to Stalker Kid* who’s mark again?
Tim: the school bully. Remember? Anyway—Mark was like, “that’s a book for girls”.
Jason: *doing mental math* wasn’t the book your English assignment?
Tim: YEAH! so he’s like “are you a girl?” And I’m like “If you’re the paragon of masculinity as you suggest, then a girl seems the better alternative—“
Jason: *chokes*
Tim: and he shoves his middle finger in my face, calls me a bitch, and walks away like a coward
Jason: wait, hold up. Aren’t you like . . . Five years old
Tim: nine. And a half
Jason: you—he called a BABY a BAD WORD what the FUCK
Tim:
Jason: that’s it. I’m coming to school with you tomorrow. And I’m gonna bring my Batphone. It’s like a megaphone but it’s black—don’t ask. Anyway, if the little fucker does it again I’m gonna blow his ears off with so much abuse he hears my voice in his nightmares for decades
Tim:
Tim: you do know he’s my age, right?
Jason: do I look like I care?
Tim:
Tim: you know, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wanna see that.
Bruce, who has heard this entire conversation over the comms:
Alfred: *mildly* you know, I’ve not heard Master Jason curse once within the manor. That was certainly an interesting conversation.
I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
It's that time of year again and I think we should all enjoy this, as well as familiarize yourself with your local fireworks laws, the non-emergency line or see if there's a fireworks reporting hotline. I would very much like to not be in the path of a wildfire.
Well, despite being Told Off by God and then Fined To Hell in 2023 and missing last year due to being in the hospital with "The Flu", my pyrotechnically inclined neighbor seems determined to double down and also gotten his illicit wildfire-starting devices early this year, as this afternoon's dog walk by his garage revealed TWO palettes of fireworks.