i spent $32 on this fucking bowl at the moma and at first i felt bad buying it bc it was so expensive but ive had a terrible day today and every time i look at my lil bowl im like :o) you know what. i can get through anything with this bowl by my side
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Time seems to pass differently. But the place is cozy and private so I have no complaints. And whenever I’m hungry, I go outside with my bowl and walk down the hill to the shore. Sometimes the lake is made of soup. Sometimes it’s huge pasta noodles the size of barges. Sometimes it’s breakfast cereal. Sometimes it’s dumplings the size of great whales. I dip my little bowl and take a portion and carry it back up to the house.
Today I found a new bowl! In its center is a little hill with a little house. I will carry it down to the shore and fill it up, and whomever lives in that little house can have a tiny portion of my meal. I hope they have a nice bowl to put it in..
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)
If this person joins your servers soon, especially if your server is listed on DISboard, she is an AI scraping piece of shit who tries to get comms through plagiarizing other people's art and not disclosing her (lack of) work as AI-generated.
Proof:
We realized something was off when we could see a barely faded watermark:
When we dmed her for proof the art was hers via WIPs, she provided this shit:
She then stepped back on claiming it was her watermark she just "lost the original file for it", instead claiming she purposefully put someone else's watermark on her own work:
We then banned her ass.
There are a LOT of these fake pieces of garbage running around discord servers advertising commissions, often for several hundred dollars. Be alert and know what to look for, even if the art doesn't return on TinEye or Google Images as directly stolen. If they don't have WIPs of it either readily available and they don't have a legit comms sheet, chances are they're garbage stealing other people's art through AI generation.
Name and shame people like this imo. Chase em off discord, off tumblr, and make them ashamed of being thieves and plagiarists.
seeing fanworks in general get less and less engagement here is making me so sad but i wanna say this: if you are still giffing, still drawing fanart, still writing fanfic your work is absolutely cherished and important. your time is never wasted.
You’re a renowned portrait artist, painting portraits for politicians, celebrities, you name it. Late one night, there’s a knock on your door. A nervous young man stands outside, pale, with elongated canine teeth. He’d like a portrait. Hasn’t seen his own face in over a century.
“They say it’s the silver backing but that’s bullshit.” He didn’t drink any of the tea they set out, but he held the warm mug as though it were a lifeline.
“Really?” They smile softly, sipping at their own mug. It wasn’t every night a vampire knocked at their door and politely requested a portrait, and this poor young man seemed in desperate need of someone to talk to.
He wonders if his General came because they were comrades, or because the intel in Wolffe’s head was much too important to fall in enemy hands…but there is something in the way Plo calls him son…
-
After being captured by Separatists and losing an eye to the Sith, Wolffe struggles to come to terms with the worth of a clone.
i’ve been receiving an uptick in harassment (which tends to happen when i post a lot about trans/nb stuff), and one of the common things i get mocked for is for making any money off my blog. this is frustrating when:
I’m unemployed, disabled, and living through a global financial crisis like everyone else
I consistently spend 20-40 hours a week (depending on health) making & organizing content, checking & replying to feedback, or in some other way dedicating my time to this platform. however you do the math, I’m not even making minimum wage
other people are making more money off of my content than i will ever see (through third party sites, content aggregators, people who put my posts in YouTube videos etc). I get sick just imagining the amount I have unwilling made for random assholes off of ad revenue alone
(this blog is free of ads btw? I don’t do ‘sponsored content’ or try to convince people to buy random shit)
yes I will make posts like 'gimme a dollar and I will tell you the Original Meaning of Life from before it was Redacted from Canon and/or this weird ass pic of a wet koala’ but that is literally just a means of getting my ko-fi page some traffic.
you do know that people aren’t actually paying me to post a random photo they can easily google, right?
it’s the shitpost equivalent of a Tip Me Jar. some people appreciate & spend a lot of time reading my (free) content. so I look for ways to incorporate my ko-fi link into some of my posts, so people can tip me if they feel like it. i try to keep these posts fun for the rest of the audience too.
when someone tips me $2, it’s never just for a shitpost.
the $2 does not mean “show me the wet koala you hussy”
it means “over the months & years I have followed you, I have (sometimes against my will) received something meaningful or strangely helpful from your blog. so here, have 2 bucks as thanks, and also show me the wet koala you slutty excuse for an expired block of sentient jello”
yes, I know most people don’t get paid to shitpost. yes haha isn’t it gross that gaud’s asking for money for shitposts.
(though an account of my size would have no issue monetizing on any other platform–instagram, youtube, twitch, twitter, I would easily be making real money anywhere else. enough to pay rent, even.
but ultimately I like this platform, and I like the people here, and this is home)
yes, I shitpost. I try to make people laugh. I also share things I have researched and find interesting/delightful/important, and I talk about autism and lgbtqa+ and mental health education. it may not seem like much, and maybe I am just a slow writer, but it takes up the majority of my time and energy, and people seem to value it.
we are finally learning the importance of supporting small creators when it comes to artists and writers, and also yes even youtubers and streamers. we are learning to support the people who bring us joy with free content, and I think that’s nifty
I know what I do doesn’t seem as important, but I would like to think it applies to people like me too, to some degree.
Because I am trying to do it to the best of my ability. Because I believe it has value. Because of the thousands of messages I’ve received telling me “this helped me, this means something to me, please keep doing what you’re doing”
I would like to keep doing it
so if I include a ko-fi link in 5% of my posts, please bear with me.
Egypt's first female ship captain Marwa Elselehdar has been falsely accused as being the captain of the Ever Given by some foreign media, in a story that went viral and garnered a lot of hate towards her.
The only problem? She was 370km away at the time, acting as the first mate of another ship (Aida IV) and had nothing to do with the situation in the Suez Canal.
I think we should all help spread this, since some people are still sharing the malicious slanderous fake posts about her!
