#cautionary

[yesterdays-xkcd]

This really is a true story, and she doesn't know I put it in my comic because her wifi hasn't worked for weeks.

Cautionary [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

Linux: A True Story: [Cueball talks on a cell phone.] Week One: Phone: Hey, it's your cousin. I got a new computer but don't want Windows. Can you help me install "Linux"? Cueball: Sure.

[Cueball's cousin sits in an office chair with her laptop on her lap. She is on the phone.] Week Two: Cousin: It says my XORG is broken. What's an "XORG"? Where can I look that up? Cueball: Hmm, lemme show you man pages.

[Cueball's cousin crouches on the floor with the laptop on her lap. She is still on the phone.] Week Six: Cousin: Due to auto-config issues, I'm leaving Ubuntu for Debian. Cueball: Uh. Cousin: Or Gentoo. Cueball: Uh oh.

[Cueball's cousin lies on her stomach with the laptop on the floor. On the floor are several pieces of paper and a book. Cueball stands to her left.] Week Twelve: Cueball: You haven't answered your phone in days. Cousin: Can't sleep. Must compile kernel. Cueball: I'm too late.

[Box with text:] Parents: talk to your kids about Linux... Before somebody else does.

[psychofreak-p]

BONES/PLSSENDBONES' SONGS ARE FINALLY ON SPOTIFY -- THIS IS A MIRACLE!!

I CAN FINALLY LISTEN TO CAUTIONARY, I KILLED JFK, WIRETAP AND THE QUICK BROWN FOX ON REPEAT AND NOT HAVING TO WAIT FOR A PODCAST TO UPLOAD THEM ANYMORE🔥🔥🔥🔥🙏🙏

[arthropooda]

My breathing is getting worse again. This will be the fifth antibiotic resistance I've had. It's by far worse than any bronchitis I've ever heard of. They said I don't have pneumonia anymore but almost all my symptoms are the same severity, and it's in both lungs now.

I can't sleep because I can't stop coughing and internally it sounds like a Geiger counter. I'm just really scared. I'm on 10+ prescriptions. I'm sure all of this is related to having covid in September because I have never before been a fraction of this ill ever in my life. I wear a mask virtually everywhere but finally caught covid doing odd jobs and errands for a wealthy person who did not wear a mask. I've felt weaker ever since that happened but really could not afford to slow down or take a break to get better. I couldn't even rest enough while actually having covid because I was living with a denier and my spouse would not let me come to our house during that time. I did at least get to take paxlovid but was pretty much forced to be active during that time and immediately go back to work after.

Then, a month later, I got extremely ill from a cold my coworker had. I went to urgent care for high fever but because I went during one of the only breaks in the actual fever, I was given nothing for it and it kept coming back until I had pneumonia.

Then, I went to a university hospital where I feel more mistakes were made, like giving me something too weak for too short a time, giving me antibiotics through a bad iv, and not releasing me with any oral antibiotic. They also would not let me have my blood pressure medication so I had extremely high blood pressure the whole time I was there (also a problem I did not have before covid).

Now I have two inhalers and a home nebulizer. Sometimes I feel like I just pass out from not having enough oxygen. It feels like physically moving my lungs to breathe is difficult, even beyond oxygen saturation. I have been to a marginally better hospital, but it takes longer to get to and I know if the ER were busy it would probably be as bad as the university one. I have an appointment with a specialist on boxing day, which was the soonest I could get since this started, even after being admitted (the university hospital made me an appointment for the end of January and I've been back in the ER twice since then). I don't know if I can even wait for five more days. Since the first time I went to the ER I haven't been out of the hospital for as long as a week without then feeling worse and needing to go back even more urgently. Based on all of this, I will probably have to go back by Saturday.

I know there are lots of stories like mine but I just wanted to make a longer post about it in case I feel too badly to do it later.

Cautionary advice:

wear your mask; only take it off if you are specifically willing to get sick from the environment/activity you're engaging in.

If you have persistent high fever, do not lie on your side if you are crying, laughing, or congested; this can easily cause an infection to spread to the lung on the side you're lying on. Also, if you already have an infection of that severity, don't even lean to one side while laughing or crying because that can make it suddenly worse and further spread the infection. I just feel like I need to include this because it can happen so easily.

Everyone probably knows this but if you have a busted vein, do not use an iv on the same vein, even if medical staff say it doesn't matter. It does matter, and getting an infusion that just leaks out of a busted vein instead of actually circulating intravenously will not have the same effect and will cause complications.

If you have antibiotic resistance and you get iv antibiotics and then leave the facility before you're in good health, you need to go home with oral antibiotics. Really this is probably a good idea even without prior antibiotic resistance since an incomplete course just makes resistance more likely.

[bogleech]

SOMETIMES when collecting wood you may find the manner of wood which grows within meat from a beast!! They call it “meat wood” and the beast uses it to hold the meat up. A beast without meat wood can be called an octo,puss and is  very dangerous in the forest but luckuly you only find it in water, where it gets almost regularly wet and so too tired to danger, thats when people look at it and say “no meat wood!!! thats octo,puss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

[spookyspaghettisundae]

Fucking Chuck

My body ached all over. Two shifts, back to back, working two different jobs. This shit had been getting to me.

My feet were barking so loud, my shoes felt like they were on fire. My fingers and hands were a reddish-pink from the actual fire, from the heat of the day. Burns from handling hot ceramics and metal cutlery to stack them up on carts as soon as the steaming machine’s conveyor belts spat them out.

I should have been home already. I should have been going to bed soon. But I wanted to spend more time up. There was a book I had been reading that I desperately wanted to finish so I could say I had finished reading at least one book that year. More likely, I was going to be stuck on my phone or the computer, wasting my time as I scrolled endlessly through waterfalls of verbal diarrhea and depressing news, until I was too tired to think farther than brushing my teeth and collapsing into bed.

The wiser thing would have been to go straight home and catch up on some sleep. But I didn’t pride really myself on wise choices.

Instead, here I was. Sitting in this coffee shop chain store, sipping a pumpkin spice latte while I gazed out the window, watching the city’s traffic and dreaming about better days. The coffee was supposed to get me through the bus ride home, and help eke out those couple of hours extra before I inevitably fell asleep for a solid four or five hours, only to get back up in the morning to bust my ass at the gas station.

The barista who had served me my latte slid into my booth, right across from me. I froze with shock. Didn’t know this guy. His nametag read “Chuck”.

He smiled at me. His expression was weird, like a mixture between a grimace and a smug grin.

A grinace, if you will. Sorry, but I’m going to keep using that.

“Can I help you?” I asked him. Even tired, I still had attitude. It’s how I made up for my other shortcomings.

I didn’t know this guy, and I immediately wanted him to leave.

His grinace widened.

“Hey,” he said, wielding the same voice as he had during our business transaction. Even when forking over cash for an overpriced latte, he had this sexy kind of smoky voice. Raspy in a pleasant way, bordering on the seductive. All told, I would have liked it under other circumstances, such as hearing it on the other end of a phone call. But as it stood, he was creeping me out with it. “My shift’s over. Mind if I sit here and chat a little bit? Grace?”

My name was written in black ink on the side of my cup. He had written it there himself. It wasn’t my real name, because I don’t give out my real name in settings like these, and exactly because of guys like him.

“I do.”

“You don’t mind, or you—”

“Yeah, I mind. Do you mind?”

His grinace faltered, if only ever so slightly. A simple twitch around the corners of his lips. Typical for his type—physically attractive, well-groomed, superficially polite—he probably wasn’t used to outright rejection. His features were way too symmetrical and sharp for that, and the rest of his silhouette spoke volumes to someone who spent a lot of time in gyms and in front of mirrors.

I’m getting carried away, but I would be remiss to not paint a proper picture.

This is a warning.

I was just slivers of self-control away from breaking out into a cold sweat.

See, I have had a nightmare of this before. Almost this exact situation. It wasn’t a “Chuck”, and Not-Chuck was not as good-looking, and it sure as hell wasn’t in this branded venue. It wasn’t even in the inner city.

It wasn’t real. It had just been a bad dream.

This, however, was real.

The awkward silence in lieu of any reply only added to the dizziness I was starting to feel over all this. My stomach felt like I had been punched in it and my guts and muscles were all knotting up in response.

I was just ready to bolt. I was even telling myself that: splash the latte in his face, and run.

“Sorry, I,” he sighed. “I went about this all wrong, didn’t I? I’ll go.”

So, I didn’t bolt. I was probably more paralyzed than anything, anyway, regardless of what he just said. A deer caught in the headlights, split seconds from getting hit by the speeding car.

“I’ll go,” he said again, tapping the table between us twice.

He slid back out of the booth.

And, you know? Good. I grabbed my bag and jacket and the latte and made to leave, but now he stepped in my way.

Blocked the end of the bench I was sitting on.

He rested one hand on the table, the other on the backrest of the bench. He stared down at me, and his eyes glittered, glinting with something strange.

Predatory.

“I’m sorry, but I just—I have to. You know, there’s these chance encounters in life, and, y’know—w-what are the odds we never see each other again? I can’t let every chance slip away through my fingers.”

I took a shuddering breath and whatever I said next, my voice quaked. Yes, I admit, there was fear swinging in it. Mostly, though, I was furious.

“Chuck, I’m only going to say this once. Get out of my way, or I’m going to scream. Or do worse things to you.”

Other people in the café were all out of earshot. Neither me nor Chuck were talking loud enough to eclipse the surrounding conversations between patrons and people at the counter, so nobody had any clue what situation I was facing here.

He did the smart thing. He backed away, with his hands raised in surrender. He let his head hang, but the grinace stayed plastered to his face.

“Okay, okay, I get the hint. Again, I’m sorry. Can I, at least, you know, if you change your mind, give you my nu—”

“Get out of my way,” I repeated.

Was he stupid? I never wanted to see him again. He had raised so many red flags that I was seeing all red through my growing dizziness. If I was a bull, I was about to charge at him and spear my horns through his fucking heart.

I glared at him with the fury of someone who wished him to drop dead on the spot. I also wanted to run, but I didn’t want to show any weakness.

His slimy presence made it feel like he was the kind of guy who pounced on weakness.

Getting smarter by the second, he backed away another step and afforded me plenty of space to leave. I snatched my items and stormed out of the place, vowing to never return. Maybe not even to this part of the city until I had slept on this once. Or slept on it a thousand times more.

He returned behind the counter where he talked to one of the other baristas in hushed murmurs, and the girl there shot me furtive glances while he did that.

I didn’t even want to know. I pushed my way out of the place, full steam ahead.

Making my way to the bus stop, I both appreciated the bite of cold air as much as I hated it. Though I blamed it all on Chuck. Because of how I stormed out of there, I didn’t have the hands free to sling my jacket on until I reached the bus stop bench, but that cold sensation helped me feel alive. It was cooling me down, because my head was on fire, and spinning a million miles a minute.

Fucking Chuck.

That creep had really gotten under my skin. It had taken him so little to accomplish that.

While I plunked my bag and coffee down on the bench and finally slipped my jacket on, I mentally cursed him and wished all kinds of ill upon him. Maybe he could do everybody a favor and get his dick trapped in between two bricks smashing together?

Fucking Chuck. Made my blood curdle and chills run down my spine, especially as the temperatures clashed and I zipped up my jacket, and—

Chuck was following me.

I noticed him round the street corner that I had rounded. He no longer had his store apron on, no longer bearing any nametag to label him as Chuck. He immediately pretended to not be following me once he spotted that I had spotted him, and awkwardly turned around to hide.

I considered calling the cops, really. But I dreaded him overhearing the call, and how that might escalate the situation, maybe provoking him into more overt and aggressive action.

Instead, I just wanted to wait for the bus.

I plopped down next to an elderly lady whose face was partially covered by a bright blue scarf. She shot me a glance like I had something on my nose, then ignored me. I was tempted to tell her about what was going on. But with all my fire, I was still a deer in the headlights, and my head was spinning, and I was feeling sick.

I was mostly staring down the corner, hoping not to see Chuck ever again in my entire life.

And yet, I could feel his presence nearby. A real nightmare connection.

And the cold, well, it wasn’t really doing it for me. I was not feeling any better. In fact, I was getting dizzier by the second.

This took me back to the aforementioned nightmare. It all bubbled back up to the surface. The Not-Chuck in that nightmare had asked me something so terrifying and relevant that it now began to melt into this slice of reality.

“What would you do if I laced your drink with poison? The drink you’re drinking right now?”

And in the nightmare, it all happened so fast. That Not-Chuck just laughed and watched while I started transforming into disgusting ooze, helpless, melting into a puddle of mud.

But that was the nightmare, and this was reality.

I spied Chuck from the corner of my eye, while the streetlights dimmed. It looked like Fucking Chuck had horns? The streetlights weren’t dimming, my vision was fading. Was it just exhaustion?

Was I hallucinating? Had this creep really spiked my drink?

The bus’s brakes whined as it came to a slow stop in front of us.

But I couldn’t get on the bus. Its doors hissed as they opened, and the elderly lady got on board while I just sat there, stunned. Lost in thoughts and sinking deeper into my dread.

What if he followed me onto the bus, and I fell asleep, and he dragged me off, claiming to bystanders that he was just helping his drunk girlfriend get home?

No, no, no, no-no-nononono—

The bus doors hissed as they closed again and the big vehicle’s engine rumbled, taking off again.

The nightmare of reality was beginning to evolve into something worse than my nightmares.

I got up and staggered and stumbled my way down the sidewalk, past the blurring lights of traffic, and faces of passersby melting into demonic visages.

I had to get away from Chuck.

But the world was spinning all around me, getting worse by the second. This piece of shit had definitely done something to me, definitely drugged me. There was no other explanation.

I felt like stopping and puking, but it didn’t stop. I didn’t stop. Couldn’t stop.

I kept seeing Chuck. In reflections in windows and metal; seeing him in glances I shot over my lurching shoulders. Always following me.

And the distance between us kept shrinking. He was gaining on me.

The rest of the path became a blur. I pushed my way into some random pub. Temperatures clashed again, someone swore at me when I bumped into them, and glass clinked. Warm lights, soft lights, dark corners, eyes on me, and I was sweating like a pig.

Next thing I know, I’m puking out my guts. Wet splashes. Stinging smells, chemical and acerbic.

Next thing I know after that, I’m hugging a toilet and peeling my cheek off a sticky floor tile. Someone was banging on the stall door. Yelling at me to come out.

Checking my phone, I had lost hours, almost my entire night. I felt like I just gotten hit by a truck.

I felt like shit. Saved by a fucking bathroom stall door.

Fucking Chuck.

[rawralittlerawr]

Whispers: The United States of Christ | Kindle Vella

Serial stories to read one short episode at a time

LGBTQ+ fiction/Dystopian/Alternate History 

A story of the trials of a gay couple in 2028. Set in a dark and deeply divided America where love didn't win in 2015, leading to a devastating coup of power, and the end of democracy. Thirteen years ago a radical religious group bribed and blackmailed three Supreme Court Justices in order to control the outcome of the civil rights case Obergefell v. Hodges. After their success in swaying the opinion of the court, the emboldened fanatics set their sights on the White House.

Read the first three episodes for FREE!

Episode 3 coming soon!

I haven’t been able to publish new episodes for going on three weeks now due to a technical problem. I’m working diligently with technical support to resolve it. Hopefully it will be fixed soon!. Episodes 3 and 4 are ready to go as soon as it’s figured out. 

[rawratinyrawr]

So close to reaching my goal on Kindle Vella for the first time!

Only 9 reads away from my October goal of 100 reads between my two serials. Anyone wanna check out at least the first 3 episodes of one of them (for FREE) and help me reach my goal for the first time since I started in July? :)

Here is a snippet from the journal entry in Episode One- "Dear Diary" and I won't lie, I cried as I wrote it. This story (I'm writing) feels personal, and timely, on so many levels. -April Washington (writing as Octavia Ambrose and referencing the Kindle Vella Serial, Whispers: The United States of Christ)

"When I found this notebook yesterday, I thought about that diary for the first time in years. I can’t help but wonder what may have happened to it after my parents were killed. It was in a tote of my childhood possessions in their attic, and the militia group that killed them is known for scavenging after their raids now. They leave behind a couple of their lowest-ranked members and some of the stronger men from the camps. 

The armed militia guards treat the men like slaves, forcing them to sort and salvage whatever they can while they themselves smoke or play cards and watch. 

Did they find my diary? If they did, did they toss it immediately, or did the guards read it out loud as entertainment? All I can imagine is them laughing as they slap each other on the back, mocking the young “sinner” who wrote it. 

That thought brings tears to my eyes. Maybe I’m silly. It’s just a diary. With one little secret. But it was mine! My secret to keep. My right to keep it or share it. Without fear. 

When I wrote that diary my secret wasn’t illegal. 

I guess it’s not the diary, but the reminder. 

Once upon a time, I was free. To live and love without fear."

***

“I think having a beautiful, brilliant black family

in the White House for eight years,

absolutely drove a lot of people crazy.”

-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Professor, Harvard University

“In the End, we will remember not the 

words of our enemies,

but the silence of our friends.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Alternate history/Alternate reality/Dystopian/LGBTQ+ fiction/ Cautionary tale/TW

Whispers: The United States of Christ

Dystopian / LGBTQ+ Fiction

The haunting story of the trials of a gay couple in 2028. Set in a dark and deeply divided America where love didn't win in 2015, leading to a devastating coup, and the end of democracy. 

Welcome to The United States of Christ!

A cautionary tale.

Meet the main character (the author of the journal entry in episode one: Dear Diary) in the first three episodes, who has thus far remained nameless. Some episodes will be in journal entry format, and some will be told in a format from the point of view of the main character and/or the main character's wife, Amora. Later on, there will be episodes with other characters' points of view.

Whispers: The United States of Christ | Kindle Vella

Serial stories to read one short episode at a time

[alostparadox-blog]

Walking away...

It’s hard to walk away,

especially when you know you’re walking away from someone, someone so dear, 

someone who makes you feel home. 

As you continue,

you’ll feel the desperate desire to look back,

you’d want to ask them to come with you,

you’d want them to just suddenly grab you from behind, or even, waiting a shout of your name,

asking you to come back,

to be with you again,  to still be with you. 

But something will keep you going,

the thought that, you,

walking away,

will lead them to what they truly desire.

Something that may occur,

once, and only, when you let them go.