I’m working earlier and this guy comes in and seems anxious. We usually wait until people need help to ask, but he comes over and tells me, “I’m cosplaying Bowser and need spiked wristbands.” I immediately start heading towards the jewelry / accessories and try to strike up some friendly conversation
I respond, “Ah, cool. You doing NonCon at all?” remembering that our local convention is this coming weekend.
He looks at me super seriously and replies, “no, my friends and I are going go-karting downstairs and we’re all dressed up as Mario Kart characters.”
There’s six guys who live in this flat and all they do all day is play WoW and watch movies. Waking up at 2pm every day and there’s always just someone asleep on the bed near all the multimonitor computer setups. There’s always music playing and it feels like a recovery day every day, padding around blearily in pyjamas or underwear. Old hoodies from defunct school teams. They’ve got this system where they’re selling their excess computing power to companies and hosting all this warez, and they’re stealing the internet from the business next door anyway and getting welfare on top of all that. They’re self sufficient and never go outdoors except to buy more fast food, and even then only in the dark. But then one of them wakes up dead some heavy afternoon. He’s just dead and they don’t know why but maybe the floor covered in fast food wrappings is a clue. They don’t want to tell the cops because of the purgatory den they live in and the illegality that supports it, and as far as they know he never had any actual parents. So it’s trouble. It’s taking a long trip out to the forest and thinking about how stars are so far away for the first time in a long time. It’s sweating in the cold air and digging a hole all night with your brand new shovels to leave him alone in. And it’s a long few days cracking all his passwords to keep his identity and associated payments persisting. Until the rhythm of waking up every day at 2pm to play WoW for nine hours and half watch a movie on your other monitor takes over again. It’s the same as it ever was except now there’s a room no one ever goes in.
I groom one of these guys every week and he’s quite possibly the love of my life. We play a game called “brush, brush, kiss” because as long as I say “brushbrushbrushbrushbrush” he’ll stand nicely, but the second he gets impatient or I need a break I say “KISS” and he explodes into a ball of joy and kisses my entire face and anywhere else he can reach. It’s the best part of my week sometimes!
Well this is the best possible comment on any photo ever.
My dad told me a story recently about how he was in Boy Scouts or something and they went on a hike and were each given a rifle and one single bullet to practice shooting with (idk, it was the 70s or whatever). One of his friends, whom I’ll refer to as Steel Balls for reasons that will soon become clear, beckons my dad to a part of the woods and points to a giant hornets nest up in a tree. SB announces that he’s going to shoot it, waits for my dad to take cover (as one should in this situation), and fires off his only round into the nest. Sure enough, a swarm of pissed off hornets descend upon SB, who stands stoically and perfectly still at the base of the tree. Dad maintains that, despite their buzzing right around him, none of the hornets stung his friend, and they soon calmed down and returned to their newly renovated nest. SB turns back to face my dad and imparts this chunk of wisdom: “That’s the secret to dealing with hornets, Jim. They don’t know humans make rifle shots; they don’t know where the noise came from. You gotta stand still and don’t move, and they won’t chase you. If you run, they know you’re guilty.” Apparently dad was so awed he gave up his single bullet so SB could shoot the nest a second time, with the same results.
Long story short: hornets can sense guilt and there are people in the world who have tested this theory.
It was a regular Saturday evening and I was doing the theatre cleaning gig and had some downtime before the next show got out. There was a popular R-Rated movie playing in one of our back theatres, so we had to keep an eye on it to make sure people didn’t sneak in (I think it was 8 mile or something). Enter the group of 5 teenagers, 2 guys and 3 girls. They had tickets for some other god awful kids movie, and on their way down they all magically had to go to the bathroom (a common sneak trick). Seeing this, I went inside the door to the 8mile theatre and waited.
Lo and behold not 2 minutes come by when the group walks in. I ask for their tickets (now our tickets were more of a regular sheet paper quality than the normal card-stocky kind) and surprisingly none of them could find them. I tell them straight up I know what movie they’re bought tickets for, so they have to go there or get out. The lead a-hole, who has a small soft drink, just steps up, looks me dead in the eye and says, “Have it your way … oops, my hands are slippery” and just upends his cup which goes spilling all over the floor. “I guess you’ll have to clean that up now”
Holding back rage, I motion for them to get out and they start huffing and puffing that they’ll tell a manager that I did this and that. So finally I ask for their tickets or I’ll call security. They finally produce the paper stubs. I grab each ticket, ball them up together, put it in my mouth, chew and swallow. They just stared at me.
I then radioed my manager to call security because I had some unruly teenagers that snuck in and refused to leave. When the security guy comes with my manager, they are all explaining that I ate their tickets, blah blah blah. My manager looked at me, scoffed and kicked them out. The best part was that one of their parents paid for the tickets, so when they went by box office, my manager asked one of the girls if they remembered them … and of course they didn’t.
In the dog world, humans are elves that routinely live to be 500+ years old.
“They live so long…but the good ones still bond with us for our entire lives.”
“These immortals are so kind we must be good friends to them”
My heart wtf
Not gonna lie, this fucked me up a bit.
POV Fantasy slice of life book when?
“Now I am old. The fur around my muzzle is grey and my joints ache when we walk together. Yet she remains unchanged, her hair still glossy, her skin still fresh, her step still sprightly. Time doesn’t touch her and yet I love her still.”
“For generations, he has guarded over my family. Since the days of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather he has kept us safe. For so long we thought him immortal. But now I see differently, for just as my fur grows gray and my joints grow stiff, so too do his. He did not take in my children, but gave them away to his. I will be the last that he cares for. My only hope is that I am able to last until his final moments. The death of one of his kind is so rare. The ending of a life so long is such a tragedy. He has seen so much, he knows so much. I know he takes comfort in my presence. I only wish that I will be able to give him this comfort until the end.”
All tests should be open book. It’s not like your future boss is going to say, “I need those tax returns finished by noon, but don’t look at any of the financial statements. Do it all from memory.”
Exactly! You should be tested on application of a concept not memory
I’ve told this story before but idc I’m doing it again.
My dad once taught some class at a conference. He gave everyone a worksheet and after watching them flounder for a few minutes on their own he said, “You guys know you can talk to each other and work together, right?” These were industry professionals who suddenly reverted back to that must-not-collaborate mentality when put in a classroom setting.
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