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)
public libraries have so many manga options and also movies and video games to rent! some have 3d printers you can use and free wi-fi. library cards are so important, guys
people treat it like a blackpill - younger people especially - but it's a sign of maturity that sometimes things that seem "worse" are better because they are not mortgaging short term frictionlessness for the cost of long term stability
Thomas Midgley Jr invented a lot of fantastic products that solved a lot of problems and unfortunately those inventions were dangerous. the alternative to chemicals like Freon are a little bit shittier for the end user but are better in the long run
Uber/Lyft/Doordash/etc were dirt cheap for the first couple of years of their existence because the companies were actively losing money on the service. they were being kept alive by constant infusion of venture capital during zero interest rate periods because the idea was if they obtained total market domination, they could then safely raise prices. which is, indeed, what happened.
TVs have become so stupid cheap because all your user data is being sold by the manufacturer, which allows them to sell the TV to you at or even below cost. a TV that does not sell user data will necessarily be more expensive than one that does, because you will not be benefiting from the subsidy.
apps are free because you are not a customer, you are the product: the customer is advertising platforms and data brokers. if you want an app that is free, where you are the customer, your options are 1) paid service where the costs of building and running the app are funded directly by you, the user, or 2) completely free software run by unpaid volunteers in their spare time where new features are limited to how much free time Anders or Lunameow0 have that month. you can complain about how much those alternatives suck compared to Profit-Driven Platform but hosting 4k video for all of your friends gets really expensive fast. part of the cause of the data center explosion is due to the significant storage+delivery demands of 4k video lol
part of the reason modern society is so [gestures] is because frictionlessness is like the One Ring and humans will absolutely sell out their privacy, safety, health, and the environment to have as little friction in their lives as possible
It would do all of us a lot of good to actually ask the question, "How can they afford to do this?"
Because as we're seeing now with, say, Youtube and its onslaught of ads, it's exactly as above. And the moment they no longer can afford it, the moment they need to actually start making money, everyone else gets it in the shorts.
You've gotta have good biodiversity in your reasons for not killing yourself. Rotate them out like crops when the yield gets low and the soil poor. We're mixing our metaphors. Whatever helps it stick.
You like warm blankets. You like the sound of birdsong. You have a pet that needs taking care of. You have someone to outlive. You have a loved one. You think death would be boring. It's coming for you anyway. Death is patient. When was the last time you had cake? Your favourite musician is going on tour. Or maybe just a halfway decent band at your local bar. You've never seen an elephant. Isn't it amazing that the sky is blue? Aging is a gift not afforded to most. Don't let the bastard grind you down. You can't mend any suffering in the world with your death. You want to see if you can grow herbs on your windowsill. Killing yourself seems like so much effort. What does tiramisu taste like? You're trying to be curious. You're angry and spiteful. What you want more than to die is to rest. This sandwich is so good you don't want to die. Not so long as there are plums to eat and somebody, anybody who gives enough of a damn to haul them to you. A stranger on the internet is holding their hand out and asking.
I do love the thought of body swap stories that highlight when characters have like, chronic pain or other bodily issues
Like two characters swap bodies and one immediately turns to the other and is just like "You really need glasses, man", and the other one's just like "Holy shit I can see"
The villain is always going on about how "Life is pain" and everyone assumes its because he's evil and trying to kill everything... until someone gets bodyswapped with him and they just go down screaming from the chronic pain he lives with, while the villain in a new body is confused "You guys DON'T hurt all the time?!"
What those anons need to realize right now - regardless of how THEY feel about those with Schizophrenia or such effects - is that humans have bodily autonomy. If someone feels it's best to stop taking those meds, NO ONE should be allowed to stop them.
Unless they want someone controlling THEIR body, they shouldn't be trying to control other people's.
I think part of the problem is that they don't really view schizophrenics as full human beings. In the eyes of these people schizophrenics are a dangerous other to be managed, with force and violence if necessary. Which is how you get angry people insisting I "know nothing about schizophrenia" simply because I refuse to dehumanize us. The idea that a schizophrenic could possibly be participating in conversations about mental health is so incomprehensible to them that they don't even consider it as a real option.
tangentwithtanner
turnnoffyourmind
prguitarman
origamiaround
gummygunk
titsay
jbbartram-illu
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