I am the Fairy MAB: to me 'tis given The wonders of the human world to keep; The secrets of the immeasurable past, In the unfailing consciences of men... –Percy Bysshe Shelley
It was a huge milestone of scientific and technological advancement. (Plus, at the time, politically significant). Humanity went to space! We set foot on a celestial body that was not earth for the first time in human history! That’s a big deal! I’ve never thought about it before but now that I have, it’s ridiculous to me that that’s not part of our everyday lives and the public consciousness anymore. Why don’t we have a public holiday and a family barbecue about it. Why have I never seen the original broadcast of the moon landing? It should be all over the news every year!
It’s July 20th. That’s the day of the moon landing. Next year is going to be the 54th anniversary. I’m ordering astronaut shaped cookie cutters on Etsy and I’m going to have a goddamn potluck. You’re all invited.
PITCH: We call it Moon Day, and then every 7 years when it falls on a Monday, that's an even BIGGER deal and we call that Moon Day Monday and go absolutely apeshit about it (the next Moon Day Monday is in 2026 so we have a couple trial runs first)
It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.
#shoutout to the one in Soul Music about the leopard that got thrown out of the circus because it couldn't hear the ringmaster#it was several months after my second or third time reading the book that I clocked it was a Deaf Leopard (via @morkaischosen)
My husband just realized (and shared with me) that the two noble families in Ahnk Morpork called the Venturi (what makes jet engines work) and the Selachii (taxonomical name for sharks) are just the Discworld Sharks vs the Jets.
my favorite thing about this post is all the people who chose to use the default icon defending themselves in the notes like no stop it just put a picture up
So, I lurk in some writer subreddits, and a frequent topic of discussion is prose: what constitutes good prose, how do you write it, how do you improve it, etc. And yesterday I stumbled across one topic about the difference between good descriptive prose, and purple prose. OP asks people to share some of their favourite authors who they think write beautiful prose without tipping into purple. No problem; people are happy to oblige.
One person says that Steinbeck is one of their favourite authors for prose, and then they share an example of what they would consider purple prose. It is so violetly awful that I think the poster must have written it themselves as a kind of parody of purple prose. Other people assumed the same.
But as it turns out, they are quoting from a book written by a YouTuber whose channel ia dedicated to talking about writing (namely, their own writing, which is genius, but often not comprehensible to the drooling plebs).
Naturally, I read the free sample of their book in awe and horror, and I'd like to share some screenshots with you. If you also have trouble defining or understanding what purple prose is, it's this.
Yes, every single fucking page is written like this.
Reading some more of the preview for this book, and I realise this is by far not the biggest problem, but I'm begging this guy to just use 'shadow' instead of 'umbra'. I promise I will not accuse you of being a philistine.
This…makes me feel so much better about my own writing. This guy is doing a service. Your writing might haunt you, but read these passages and you’ll realize that actually it’s fine.
Working an office job will truly make you have the wildest enemies, bc why is my nemesis rn a woman I’ve never met and who exclusively haunts me by sending diabolical emails, and also a specific guy who left my company before I even worked here and made the system so fuckass that it ruined procedures for like a year
Yesterday my nemesis (woman I’ve never met and whose face I’ve never seen) sent my office an email so rude, basically saying we had fucked up every project she ever ordered from us, one of the worst emails I’ve ever read in my life.
And it pissed me off so badly that I spent the ENTIRE WORK DAY today compiling evidence from every project my team has ever done for her, pulling past emails she’d sent us, putting together an entire case proving that she had been the problem all along. That she got projects mixed up, that she’d made requests that were nonsensical, literally everything you could possibly imagine. Screenshots of emails, reports we’d submitted, EVERYTHING.
This woman in particular has been terrorizing my team for years, her name is almost a slur in my office, I had simply had ENOUGH of her.
I put all of this evidence together and sent it to all of my bosses at 4:30pm. Then I took a long break to eat a sweet treat and drink some tea.
After my break, my bosses all called in an emergency meeting with me and they said they read my report and fucking loved it. And I sat on a teams call with my boss’ boss as she wrote my nemesis the scathing email I had always fantasized about sending, using the evidence I’d compiled, and hit send.
It was the most satisfying workday I’ve had since I got hired.
Hey. Listen. This is so important. When you’re washing the dishes by hand, don’t give up halfway even when the drying rack is full. You did that last time and now you haven’t had a pot for Mac and cheese for like a week. Wash all of the fucking dishes. I mean it.
I have decided that he has to concentrate and activate the bite like snake venom because a) that’s funnier that he still considers himself a useless mutant in the fighting evil category and B) otherwise he’d be put down by Wolverine like that one kid who could burn people alive just by being near them.
it strikes me that 'rabies venom' despite being extrordinarily deadly in principle is still kinda a useless power enpraxis.
Like, it has no effective combat applications since you can't make rabies venom lethal faster; but nor does it have any versitility since ya can't make it less lethal in the long term.
For those of you who aren't familiar, I live in an exceptionally flammable part of the United States, and despite the fact that every goddamn year multiple parts of my state catch fire, destroy homes and kill people, the local assholes insist on getting drunk and setting fire to a bunch of illegal explosives anyway.
In 2023, God granted me a Miracle that prevented my house from burning down.
Last year, I had to resort to Psychological and Chemical Warfare to keep the patriotic arsonists at bay.
This year is apparently An Important Birthday for the clusterfuck we have the nerve to call a nation, so despite the fact there is so much smoke in the air that the sun has literally been blood red for the last week, the pyrotechnic fetishists are out in force.
Last year, I hit upon the concept that if my neighbors were going to act like problem animals, it would make sense to use the management techniques on them that you might use on say, a Bear that was doing serious property damage. Thusly, I created The Stench, a nontoxic but FOUL smelling concoction that I could discretely spray around the flammable gatherings and render the area extremely uncomfortable to occupy for the rest of the night, forcing them to give up or move on.
If this seems harsh:
There is no story from 2024 because a grass fire was started by fireworks less than 12 miles from me and the high winds put me in the evacuation zone in under an hour.
Over fifty people lost their homes.
Errant fireworks burning my house down is a very real possibility, and I pay the price in anxiety and insurance premiums.
The Stench is noxious but harmless, and also very effective at building a buffer zone around my home. But sneaking up to parties on foot in this heat is both exhausting and nerve-wracking. There have to be more effective ways to do this
-And there is!
It involves Weeds and Business Cards :)
All of this spring, I've been battling Bindweed and my City Code Enforcement Officers.
The city code people have been professional, but the truth is that one of my neighbors is calling them on use because one of my housemates is transgender. It's extremely grating to get these notices, having to explain repeatedly that I *AM* working on the weed situation, I just have a heart condition and No Money. It's also deeply paranoia-inducing to know that the city is regularly coming by and photographing my house.
The Solution to the Bindweed is 1 gallon of high-concentration vinegar, half a cup of Borax, a quarter cup of salt, and a couple tablespoons of dish soap. Get one of those weed sprayers from a hardware store and mix it up in there. Spray it on your thistles, bindweed, kudzu, garlic mustard or whatever your local herbaceous invasive is on a day with bright sunlight, and in a few hours the entire part of the plant above the soil is Deceased. It's non-toxic to insects, pets and wildlife (just wait a few months before trying to plant anything in the area for the traces to wash out).
The only real downside to this stuff is that it smells HEINOUS.
Sure, The Stench is nauseating, but WeedFucker 5000 is genuinely painful to inhale. Again, it wont hurt people- even my asthmatic housemates can use the stuff- but boy howdy it sure smells toxic. I've got the ingredients for about 40 gallons of WeedFucker 5000 prepared and ready to go.
I've also got a disposable hazmat suit, rubber boots and gloves, respirator, goggles and a shitty little golf cart from the free section of craigslist to haul my shit around in.
I also have Business Cards!
See, the very nice officers from the City Code department left some Very Nice business cards so that I may contact them about "the fucking bindweed is gone, get off my back".
So I scanned the business card into my computer, fired up Clip Studio, and made my own business cards. I've turned my City's Abstract Triangle Logo into an Eye of Providence and the slogan of "E Pluribus Unum" to "E Plurbis Anus", Changed my city's name to a dumb pun, and stated the card originates from "The Department Of Public Nuisances".
Crucially, where the name and contact information of the real city employee has been replaced with the name and business email of the neighbor who has been bragging on facebook about calling the city code department on my home because he hates my housemate :)
It looks, at a glance, very much like the business cards of city employees. If you look at it for like 5 seconds though, there's no way it could be mistaken for the real thing.
I've printed out 500 of these bad boys and will have them on hand as I, a put-upon employee, am forced to work overtime on a national holiday doing weed mitigation, because my boss can't manage deadlines for shit.
You're mad about it? I've been out here since 5 AM! But if we don't finish by the deadline we lose the contract and I could get fired. You know what the economy is.
Here, this is my Boss's Business card- how about you send him an email about how this has ruined your barbecue?
It's golden hour now, so I'm Suiting Up and preparing to embark on some civil service in the form of Noxious Weed Eradication, and by coincidence, Fire Mitigation.
I'll report back later Tonight🫡
(If you'd like to support your local disabled storyteller in their Acts Of Public Service, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or supporting me on Patreon)
Well.
It's not quite an hour into July 5th.
I am very tired, may have destroyed my sense of smell, and am not sure if I'm proud of or VERY disappointed in my fellow citizens.
On one hand: FAR fewer fireworks parties this year!
- Only nine to last year's thirteen
- three of them had the good sense to be firing their recreational explosives out over the local reservoir
- That's far from foolproof
- and really bad for the fish
- also y'all are RIGHT NEXT to where the Bald Eagles are nesting
- but congratulations on at least attempting some risk mitigation!
On the other hand.
Absolutely NOBODY questioned why the hell I was out spraying weeds.
- In a Hazmat Suit (technically it's a coverall for painting rooms, which is much more breathable, but looks the part)
- In a Residential Area
- After Dark
- On a Federal Holiday
Like I'm glad I didn't get into a fight or something, but like.
I was Ready.
I had that conversation locked and loaded.
I MADE BUSINESS CARDS.
...But instead of Very Reasonably asking What The Fuck I Was Doing, the crowds at these parties saw me (5'0" flat, potato-shaped, sweating profusely) trundling up on the slowest and least-intimidating motor vehicle in the county*, hanging a bit out the side to spray thistles and bindweed on the streets and sidewalks**, and instead of raising a rival stink, I was instead greeted by some derisive muttering and a couple of "OH COME ON!"s, but the groups dispersed and retreated indoors or at least away from the general direction of my home.
*Like genuinely, I think Barbie's Dream Car has more horsepower than this golf cart. This thing doesn't have horsepower. It doesn't even have ponypower. It's running on duckpower. It waddles, something I didn't know a wheeled vehicle could do.
**Actually completely legal and a welcome community service in my city. Thank you Neighbor Barbara for telling me the exact part of city code that details what civilians are allowed to do about weeds on public roads, which is apparently "LOTS". Theoretically I could bill the city for my time tonight.
Do people not know how to Make A Scene anymore?
I was absolutely sure I was going to get filmed and shit thrown at me, or someone would call the cops. My beloved was terrified I was going to get shot. I at least had ONE woman shout "YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!" at me, which isn't quite as good as being told I'm ruining Christmas, but she said it with a genuinely heartwarming anguish while gesturing to a homemade "HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!!" banner, with an attempt at rendering The Evil Orange that as so enthusiastically yet talentlessly executed I almost stopped to get a picture of it. He looked like he'd been put in a wafflemaker.
I promised my beloved that I would turn around and come home at midnight, and I did, having eliminated every fireworks party and Scottish thistle in a five-block radius despite the lackadaisical maximum speed of my Steel Steed.
The complete lack of protest is honestly shocking to me. My flabbers are completely gasted. I waddled home on the golf cart in a sort of stunned silence that this HAS worked so well. The whole world is almost eerily quiet, and reeking of vinegar.
...Which is maybe why I didn't notice the cop pulling up beside me at a red light until he rolled down his window and leaned out at me.
"WHAT'RE YOU DOIN'?" He asked, in a voice that could be used as a foghorn in emergencies.
I probably would have jumped were I not currently melting into a semblance of the Chernobyl Elephant's Foot in the heat, which was the first thing that saved me.
The second was the voice of my Grandfather, coming to my aid through decades of generational memory, to tell me his words of wisdom, usually spoken right before doing something wildly inadvisable:
The Age Of Miracles Is Not Yet Over.
"Weed Mitigation!" I called back.
"CHRIST ON A BIKE, THEY GOT YOU GUYS WORKING THE HOLIDAY TOO?" He said, in the same fontissimo as before. Apparently Officer Foghorn just talks like this.
"Yep." I nodded.
"SHIT." He blared in solidarity. "WHEN DO YOU GET OFF?"
"Just finished."
"MOTHERFUCKER. THEY GOT ME OUT HERE UNTIL GODDAMN 5 AM." Officer Foghorn whined in THX.
"Shit." I commiserated.
The light turned green.
"ALRIGHT YOU GET HOME SAFE! GOD BLESS!" He waved, and drove off at something significantly above the speed limit, and I trundled on home.
I must have still looked shocked when I came in, because My Beloved immediately got up to hug me and ask if I was alright.
"The Age Of Miracles Is Not Yet Over." I nodded slowly as the animals all battered me about the legs for attention. "...For real though, absolutely nothing happened."
"What?" he squints, wobbling slightly as Charlie tries to shove him aside for better access to me. "That's... Is it weird to say I'm almost disappointed?"
"I mean, I confirmed that I inherited my Grandfather's supernatural ability to get out of trouble for no good reason, but we knew that from the code enforcement people." I shrugged. Selene finally noticed the smell of vinegar and retched in disapproval.
"How about a shower and some Ice cream?" My Beloved suggests.
So now it is July the 5th.
- My house is not ablaze
- There are four medium-sized carnivores sleeping on me
- I am freshly bathed
- and I have a pint of Americone Dream all to myself
Here's to you, your health and your happiness, and a reminder to go make good trouble. Goodnight all.
---
(If you enjoy reading about my adventures (and the occasional curious non-adventure) I'd appreciate it if you could tip me on Ko-Fi. Apparently my Patreon link is fucked but it's basically 1 in the morning and I can't be arsed.)
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