death mention

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

sinesalvatorem:

brin-bellway:

@sinesalvatorem, I was going to reblog your post [link], but I figure giving poverty advice in a reblog when the OP is about how one shouldn’t give poverty advice is asking for trouble (especially when OP has relatively few notes), so I’m pinging you on a fresh post instead.

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>>On that note, if anyone who reads this has any life hacks wrt saving money or earning extra income, or knows online resources that have compiled a bunch of them, please tell me! I already know of quite a few, but I’m always looking for more.<<

Hey, look, a special interest!

(or, well, part special interest, part coping mechanism)

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(Disclaimers: I acknowledge that for any or all of these things, you [may already do them]/[may not find them worthwhile]/[may not be able to do them at all]. If anything in the rest of this post sounds like I don’t, that’s just because it’s sometimes easier to get the words out that way.

A more specific version that I feel is particularly worth pointing out: while I have had plenty of financial difficulties and qualify as “poor” by many definitions, I have never (quite) been *broke*. Some of these tips will be stuff like “how to spend $800 in one day in order to avoid spending $1,400 over four months”, and if you never have $800 on hand at any given time feel free to ignore that (though maybe file them away for if/when you reach a point in your life where you can afford to tie up some money for a while in order to spend less in the long run).)

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This has been kind of a recurring theme on my blog lately, but: housemates are so important. Finances are best played as a team sport: going it alone is sadly necessary in some situations, but it’s definitely Hard Mode, and being poor is hard enough as it is without adding more difficulty modifiers on top of it.

(It *is* painful to have to watch people you share finances with spend money in ways you don’t approve of, but–I remind myself at such times–it’s still completely worth it for all the bulk discounts and such you can get. (Although I’m sure there are *some* people out there somewhere who are careless enough with money that this would not be true, and obviously you don’t want to share finances with such people.))

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People hate on Uber-type things a lot, but honestly, they really can be a lifesaver. Delivery gigs are what tipped us over into being in the black for March†. (Up ~CAD$230 over the course of that month! God, it’d been *so* long since our money had been on any kind of upward trend for any significant length of time.) Some companies in some places will also hire bicyclist or even pedestrian delivery freelancers.

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People also hate on advice to avoid bank-related fees because sometimes when you’re poor they’re unavoidable, but it’s still worth checking that each fee really *is* unavoidable before resorting to it.

(You know why I switched from annual statements to quarterly? Because I found out while preparing the 2017 statement that my parents had gone below their minimum chequing-account balance (which incurs a CAD$11 fee for each month it happens) *eleven months* out of the year, and had been quietly shouldering it *even though the household as a whole had enough money to cover everyone’s minimum balances*: it was just disproportionately in the kids’ accounts because at the time only the kids were employed. I immediately insisted on providing my parents with an informal, indefinite loan to help them cover their balance††, and started doing more frequent statements so we can catch shit like that sooner.

(Apparently Dad was embarrassed and Mom didn’t want to ~burden~ her children when she was ~supposed~ to be providing for them. And I was like “You can use the money you’re saving in bank fees towards buying me food.”))

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You make a remark about the restaurants in San Francisco being expensive, and of course in this part of Tumblr I hear plenty about how high the rents are. To what extent does the Bay have generally high prices across the board (or for groceries in particular: grocery prices are about to be important), and how far away do you have to get from the Bay for things to stop having that markup?

The New York trick (travel to an area with a lower cost of living, stock up on cheap groceries to bring back) is harder in a place with no nearby-ish country borders or similar clear markers of “you are now entering the Cheap Zone”, but it might still be doable there.

(I think the trick used by people who *live* in Cheap Zones is to use coupons *intended* for places with higher costs of living (with discounts sized accordingly), but which are technically valid there. Occasionally these can even be stacked: Mom almost always brings some coupons (from American websites) to New York.)

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Target does ad-matching: if you show them that another store’s flyer has a sale on a certain food, they will sell you that food at the other store’s sale price, letting you avoid the hassle and transportation costs of running all over town chasing deals. (note that Target does not match produce) The Flipp app [link] will give you the flyers for a (U.S. or Canada) postal code of your choice.

Walmart does not do ad-matching as such (in America; Canadian Walmarts still do it), but if you scan your Walmart receipt into their app, they will issue you an e-gift card for the amount you *would* have saved if they allowed it.

There might be other stores in your particular area that do matching, but these are the only ones I found when I was looking this up in an Arizonan context recently. It seems to be less common in America than it is in Canada.

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Running ad videos and occasionally doing other stuff through Swagbucks is a nice way to get a bit of supplemental income. I recently helped Mom write a guide to using it [link], so I will direct you there. (please use the referral links, I’d very much appreciate it)

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If you have anything that gives you a discount on Amazon purchases and/or generates income in the form of Amazon credit (like, say, Swagbucks), bear in mind that Amazon has an ever-expanding selection of other stores’ gift cards [link] (including, notably, Safeway [link]), almost all of which can be purchased using Amazon credit.

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There’s this one program of incentives to encourage lower electricity use during peak periods [link] that I keep getting ads for from advertisers who don’t realise I’m not Torontonian, which is only available in Toronto and parts of California (weird list, I know). Is that applicable to you, or likely to become so?

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I haven’t done any freelance audio transcription for Rev [link] in a while, but you might be better suited to it than I am. (Maybe your picking-out-what-people-are-saying-at-crowded-parties ability would help you here?)

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>>At one point, I even had a list of which staple items are cheaper at which stores, but homelessness means I keep moving too much for that to ever stay relevant.<<

Some grocery stores let you look up their prices online, making it easier to collect data for such lists and less painful (relatively) to keep making new ones for new places.

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I recently systematically went through the websites of every cell company available in this area and determined the single best phone plan for getting our house phone to do everything we currently need it to do while paying as little as possible, and I am very glad I did. If we hadn’t been careful, we could easily have ended up paying twice as much or more.

Unfortunately, there is essentially zero overlap between my available cell companies and yours, so I can’t just skip you to the end result of “Public Mobile is great; Freedom Mobile *might* be even better *if* you’re planning to only use your phone in cities”: you’d have to either do the comparisons yourself or find somebody more local who’s done it.

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Some restaurants and the occasional grocery store will give you free food on your birthday. The selection is heavily location-dependant; there are various websites listing the available things for a given place (example: https://www.favoritecandle.com/free-birthday-meals/San-Francisco/CA), though their information is often out of date and you’ll need to check with each restaurant’s own website. Most require newsletter signups (I have a dedicated email address specifically for newsletters from people who might give me free stuff); many require you to buy something else in order to receive the freebie with it, but there are a few that are outright free (except transportation costs, of course: plan your route carefully, and ideally have them be on the way to somewhere you were going anyway). Last year I got a muffin (Starbucks) and a large fruit slushie (Booster Juice): this year Starbucks has unfortunately stopped offering freebies unless you buy at least one thing from them per year (any time during the year, though, not specifically your birthday! still suitable for lots of people!), but I’ve found a couple more newsletters and am set up to get a bag of chocolate-covered almonds (Giant Tiger) and a hamburger (Harvey’s), plus another slushie. (And who knows, maybe I’ll end up at Starbucks at some point between now and November and regain muffin eligibility for this year.)

(maryellencarter, if you’re reading this, note that I’m planning to give you a pre-sifted list of these for your birthday: you don’t need to go figuring this out yourself. I’ll probably compile and send it in October sometime, so that there’ll be less time for circumstances to change while still leaving room for the restaurants to consider you to have been on their newsletter for a sufficient length of time beforehand.)

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My finances tag, “adventures in human capitalism”, might have some other stuff that I missed or covered in less detail here.

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†I don’t have a good picture of our finances after March yet: I’ve switched to preparing quarterly financial statements (formerly annual), but I haven’t finished collecting and processing the data from Q2, so right now it’s scattered around various bank accounts and credit-card records of four different people and I can’t see what it’s like overall.

††Honestly, I don’t really care whether they pay it back or not. Money used for things beneficial to me is mine for all practical purposes, and I’m not too concerned with whose bank account it happens to be in. (Mom expressed her gratitude at my “selflessness” recently, but I’m *really* not selfless: I’m just very aware that working together is in my own best interest. I don’t make anywhere near enough to survive alone: hell, often I can’t even contribute an equal share towards the group’s expenses, and have to find non-income ways to contribute like accounting and pest control. (I’ve gotten pretty good at killing houseflies. As long as they’re up against a window they’re easy.))

Thank you! Some of this may help me out.

Also, look @bendini1 and @kit-peddler

Tags:

#(July 2018) #conversational aglets #adventures in human capitalism #long post #death mention #food #home of the brave #our home and cherished land

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

blue-corvid:

dressesandalchemy:

hippity-hoppity-brigade:

ginathethundergoddess:

darlinghogwarts:

My favorite thing ever is how Ron just sent Charlie a random letter like “hey yo there’s an illegal dragon at hogwarts, could you come and smuggle it out of here, please?” and Charlie was just like “yeah sure, I’ll trespass into the castle and steal a dangerous magical creature, of course, lemme just hit up my friends”

It’s better if you imagine Charlie and co as a group of Grad Students trying to avoid their other responsibilities.

Charlie is drunkenly revising the third draft of his thesis on proper care and feeding of greenhorns when his family owl slams into the window. 

Three of his friends jump and look around. Glinda doesn’t raise her head from her folded arms; only groans, “Is that Baines coming to do me in?” 

Charlie totters to the window and fetches Errol from the window pane. “No such luck,” he says. “You’re still going to have to take the exam.” After some consideration, Charlie lays him on a clear patch of floor to recover. “Do owls take firewhiskey?” he asks the room at large. 

“It’s not fair,” Glinda wails into the tabletop. “I swear he didn’t say anything about Bridgewort’s handling practices when we did the review in class.” 

“Oh, Merlin,” says Ali, freezing over their notes like a Medusa wyvern had bitten them. “Oh, Merlin’s sweet saggy socks. Is he covering Bridgewort?” 

“That’s what he said when I went to his office hours.” Glinda sits up. “You know his lapdragon singed my new sweater?!” 

Charlie decides not to give Errol a nip of whiskey. Flying under the influence is really not done. He unties the letter from Errol’s leg. Ron’s childish spiky handwriting spells out Charlie’s name on the front. Inside is a hastily scrawled message. 

“Yes, we know it ruined your sweater,” snaps Ysabelle. “You told us twenty times. Why didn’t you tell us Baines told you we’re going to be tested on Bridgewort?” 

“I meant to,” says Glinda. “Sorry.” She flicks her pile of notes. “I was lost in the miasma of gloom and desperation.” 

Ali puts their head back and groans. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna say ‘fuck it’ and just fucking walk into a dragon’s mouth so I don’t have to do this.” 

“Hey,” says Charlie. They don’t hear him. 

“How much is this worth again?” Glinda asks her bottle of butterbeer. 

“Twenty-five percent,” Ali and Ysabelle chorus. Ysabelle adds, “and the thesis is fifty percent of our total grade.” 

“Hey!” Charlie repeats. They look at him. He waves Ron’s letter. “My littlest brother at Hogwarts has an illegal dragon he needs to get off campus. Anybody up for a midnight flight?” 

Ali slams their hands down on the table and stands up. “Fuck yes,” they say decisively. “Maybe I’ll fly into the Whomping Willow and die a quick death.” 

Welcome to grad school

Charlie’s friends: I want to die

Charlie:

Tags:

#Harry Potter #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death mention #suicide mention #dragon

Variations On A Theme

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

aaronsmithtumbler:

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam fashioned an axe, and he cut down the Tree of Knowledge. And God asked “Adam, what have you done?” And Adam said “I refuse to be complicit in my own temptation.”

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. So Adam picked the fruit of the tree and planted it in the ground. A few years later, another Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil grew from the place he had planted it, and Adam ate the fruit of that one.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. But the serpent told him this was lies, and that if he ate from the Tree of Knowledge he would not die, but would become as God. “How do you know?” asked Adam. “Have you eaten the fruit?” “Yes,” said the serpent. “I have tasted of it, yet I did not die.” So Adam ate the serpent.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. So Adam picked the leaves of the Tree and made a delicious Good And Evil Salad. 

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. Adam desired to taste of the fruit, and he decided that if he was going to get in trouble for breaking a commandment he might as well go all out. So he waited until the tree was heavy with fruits, then binged on all of them in one sitting. And the Lord definitely cast him out of Eden – but on the plus side, thousands of years later his descendants had excellent moral compasses and always knew the right thing to do in any situation.

God said to Adam: you may eat of any other tree in the garden, but you must not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, for when you eat of it you will die. And Adam obeyed the commandment, and instead he ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Cool and Uncool. Then he saw his own nakedness, and found it unfashionable, so he made a snazzy jacket out of leaves and bark. And the Lord saw the jacket, and said “Adam, have you eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Cool and Uncool?” And Adam said “You’re not my dad, you can’t tell me what to do.” And the Lord sent him forth from the garden, but Adam just said “Laaaaaaaaaame”.

Tags:

#fun with loopholes #death mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

strawberrypatty:

lotstradamus:

finnhudsoninoz:

c-is-for-circinate:

…hey Harry Potter fans, we’re all in agreement that Dumbledore brought the Philosopher’s Stone to Hogwarts in Harry’s first year as a test to see whether Voldemort was paying attention and what sort of state he was in, now that Dumbledore’s chosen champion was old enough to hold a wand, right?

Like, Harry learns what magic is and it’s time to start moving towards the full and final destruction of Tom Riddle Junior, so Dumbledore has a chat with his long-time alchemy friend who’s been keeping this thing safe for literally six centuries straight, and ‘borrows’ the easiest source of immortality he can find as bait for a trap to lure Voldemort out into the open so Dumbledore can get the lay of the land to prep for the next seven years.  This is canon, right?

Yes, this is canon. In none of the other books is the climactic array of trials set up as a video-game dungeon perfectly tailored to the skillsets of three specific children. Hermione and Ron are drafted into this war quickly.

Draco gets so much shit for trying to kill Dumbledore but honestly who wouldn’t

Also: Dumbledore gave the DADA position (one he knew was LEGITIMATELY CURSED so someone could only last for a year) to a guy who had been travelling in the last known place Voldemort had been seen. 

Dumbledore set up Quirell to die full stop.

Tags:

#Harry Potter #meta #death mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

mysharona1987:

 

thes3nator:

Try to do all of them. Here’s my take:

Prologue

Gregg Grimmsby, special agent Space FBI, stumbled out of his space cabin with a space mug of space whiskey in his robot hand. The sound of laser battles throughout the rocky landscape had woken him, and he put his hand up to block out the light from the binary suns as he squinted across the horizon.

The iridescent, crystalline landscape went on for miles, but he saw no sight of the battle. “Oh well,” he grumbled, “time to go get some space herbs.” He took a few steps forward, only to see the ricocheting light bounce off several canyons in the distance before turning through his torso. He fell to the ground, killed instantly.

Gregg shot up out of bed in a cold sweat.

“Agent Grimmsby.”

He looked out to the corner of the space cabin. It was Agent Slater, his longtime lover and boss. He was shirtless and standing in the light of the multiple moons that illuminated the room from the window.

“Come over here and kiss me, you son of a bitch.” Grimmsby growled, growlingly. And as Slater approached, Grimmsby woke up again. This time he was in a hydrotank, surrounded by doctors monitoring his vital signs.

“Fuck, not again,” he blubbered underwaterily, in the water.

Tags:

#storytime #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death mention

Hidden Walmart guide

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

gomjabbar:

i’ve been getting a lot of comments about how i pulled off my last Hidden Walmart exploit so i thought i’d go ahead and make a basic guide on how to do it. i’m no expert and be aware that you do this at your own risk

What is a Hidden Walmart?

most people have at least one walmart in their city. but what if i told you that there’s nearly always an extra walmart that you can’t see? to understand why, you need to dial the clock back to 1967. the founder of walmart, sam walton, had finally begun mass expansion across the US. it had already opened nearly 30 stores, and was at no sign of stopping. sam walton was projected to become a tycoon with his fair prices and business skills, but there was one thing holding him back: bubble-gum.

sam walton was a fervent believer that bubble gum was made from spider eggs. he was convinced that spider eggs were ground up and mixed into the sticks of chewable candy, but also was sure that bubble gum companies would cut back costs on their spider-proofing technology with the anti-sugar hysteria that was still sizzling in american suburbia, causing some embedded spider eggs to make it through the proofing process. sam walton theorized that the spider eggs would be mutated by human bodily fluids and give birth to a race of giant superspiders that would hatch from the inside of its victims and wreak havoc on his country. but sam walton was also notoriously circumspect, and was determined to preserve the legacy of his grocer chain at all costs.

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after only a few years into the expansion of walmart stores, sam walton signed a behind-the-scenes contract with the stuhler construction company. the agreement obligated the construction firm to build a near-identical, underground walmart directly underneath the original. the only differences between the “Hidden Walmart” (HWM) and the “Root Walmart” (RWM) are that the Hidden Walmart is devoid of entrances and exits of any kind. in addition, every Hidden Walmart is fitted with a very primitive scanner designed to detect the presence of any arachnid buds, which would then lead to the underground building to saturate itself with high doses of gamma radiation if the scanners read anything.

the intention was clear: sam walt wanted to create a series of underground walmarts designed to persist and thrive while the surface world was ravaged by overgrown spiders. obviously, the spider apocalypse never happened, but for legal reasons the walton family today is still obligated to honor sam’s corporate order, so even the newest walmart stores today have hidden counterparts. the walmarts themselves are devoid of any staff, and it’s unknown how exactly anyone was supposed to enter the buildings (the area around the Hidden Walmart is always filled with cement), but this is where my tip comes in, because believe it or not, there is a way to get into your local Hidden Walmart.

Preparation

if you do not prepare for your venture into a hidden walmart, you risk death, or at least serious injury. thankfully, prep is minimum, and can change the outcome of your exploration. it’s advised you wear thick clothing, because the Hidden Walmart will be at least one mile underground, and devoid of sunlight. anything warm will do, but it’s crucial, and i mean crucial, that you wear a pair of reebok walking shoes. it’s not known why, but they seem to be one of the main things that allow you to enter any Hidden Walmart. anything made before 2001 will not work. generally, white pairs work the best, but i don’t think you need to be a stickler for color.

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the other thing you’re going to need is a bag of flaming hot cheetoes. just trust me on this. i’ll explain why later.

Queering the HWM

now you have the necessary stuff, so let’s get to Hidden Walmart spelunking. first you’re going to need to pick a walmart, which shouldn’t be hard. once you’ve arrived at the Root Walmart, you’re gonna need to find the hardware section, which will either be labeled simply “Hardware” or “Home Detailing Appliances”. find a nail gun in the aisle, generally any will do. after finding it, you need to lie it perpendicularly against the bottom part of the rack, at least between 90° and less than 180°. from there, you’re gonna want to find a corner in the aisle. if there is no corner, you’re probably just gonna have to find another store. when you get to the corner, you need to bend over, rear facing the wall, and touch both feet with your hands. hold that pose for about 20 seconds, and you’ll feel a weight pulling on you. keep holding. what’s happening is the nail gun‘s mapping is starting to collide with yours, causing you to build up speed. at exactly one minute, let go, and if you do it right, you should clip through the ground at long enough of a distance until you suddenly pop right into the Hidden Walmart. you’ve done it.

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Arrival

i’m not gonna lie. there isn’t much to do at a Hidden Walmart. the merchandise at it will be as old as the walmart above it, meaning you won’t be finding anything new unless the walmart is ~2 years old. visiting Hidden Walmarts is a way of exploring the untouched and, depending on the walmart’s age, traveling back to the past. one thing i forgot to mention: if you visit the Hidden Walmart and you have eaten in the past 3 – 5 hours, do not enter the makeup or book sections of the store. those are generally where the spider-egg scanners are positioned. it’s a primitive technology that hasn‘t been developed since the 60s, and it’s been known to mistake still-digesting organic matter in a person’s body for spider eggs. if you pass those areas after recently eating, you risk enduring lethal amounts of radiation.

Finishing the Adventure

so you’ve explored the Hidden Walmart, and seen everything there is to see. but there are no doors or exits! how do you get home? this is where the flaming hot cheetos bag comes in. technically, when you’re in the Hidden Walmart, you’re still in the Root Walmart as well. consider it like the Root Walmart unknowingly giving you a “preview” of the Hidden Walmart, although your body in the Hidden Walmart is very much real. however, when someone “previewing” a Hidden Walmart makes a sound at a high enough decibel, the Root Walmart automatically reacts by ripping the visitor in the HWM out of the store and back into the original. the human voice isn’t capable of that, but the loud popping sound of a flaming hot cheetos bag is. i don’t know why it’s specifically flaming hot cheetos. some of my friends have said the capsacin in the snack make the air inside more brittle and loud, but i don’t know if that’s true. at any rate, it ought to take you back to the original walmart so you can return home.

this is an amateur guide, like i said, but hopefully this should give you guys a kickstart into the world of Hidden Walmarts. if you have any extra advice you’d like me to add onto the guide, please message me! happy HWMing!

EDIT: fellow HWMer circutspit has just notified me saying that it’s also for the best that you avoid all canines for at least a week after visiting your local Hidden Walmart. for some reason, the process of noclipping leaves an odor that’s undetectable to most animals except dogs, and they just happen to attack anything that smells of it. thanks for the tip!

Tags:

#unreality cw #death mention #food mention #spider #body horror #storytime #I often enjoy reading video-game guides even if they’re for games I don’t play #and I’ve found that this can extend to fictional video games

Berkeley: being other people

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

worldlypositions:

Sometimes I enjoy understanding better what it is like to be other people. You can do this somewhat subtly by talking to people for ages about other topics, and making inferences. Lately I’ve been asking more directly, something like, ‘what about your experience do you think other people would be surprised by?’  But that’s hard to answer, because one doesn’t necessarily have things cached in that way, and many of one’s own idiosyncrasies are probably like water to a fish, and it involves imagining other people imagining you.

Another way to learn about such things is to ask a bunch of people about the details of a common experience. For instance, I have enjoyed:

Going to evensong in Oxford with a bunch of people from the office, then later discussing what we thought about when we got bored: 

  • The very old but humorously hateful notes in the song book
  • The possible friction between the church’s commitment to the poor and their lavish church decor
  • The fact that each of the people in the choir is conscious right now and looking back at us, and later will go and collect their children from school and make dinner in their kitchen and go on living their lives forever
  • The skull decorations

Learning about the YouTube genres that different people are into: 

  • How things work, e.g. how cherry plantations are dried
  • People accidentally dying in extreme sports
  • Marriage proposals
  • Movie trailers
  • Giant pimples being popped
  • Video game reviews
  • Planes crashing
  • Obscure dances

Hearing different people’s views of the monkey waiter sculpture in my house’s foyer 

  • Somehow problematic
  • Creepy in a fun way
  • Never noticed it, but it has a nice face
  • Is a novelty object and therefore disturbs the neutrality of the foyer

One thing I take away from this kind of thing is that different people are paying attention to different things about their environment, and thinking about it in different terms, and getting different kicks out of it.

Many of my friends say they think they are pretty legible, so there would not be much surprising to others about their internal life. My guess is that they are thinking their experience is mostly a sort of standard one, with this window of visual experience, and some accurately represented sounds, and some reasonable thoughts about the things going on in their lives, and so on. But I guess that actually the same visual scene looks in some sense very different to different people, because of things like where their attention goes, what abstractions they use to think about it, and what associations and emotional flavor things have for them.

If you want to play this game with me, what do you think about when you are waiting in the grocery line? What YouTube genres do you come back to? What about your experience do you think other people wouldn’t guess?

>>what do you think about when you are waiting in the grocery line?<<

Some common categories (with example details that may or may not match any particular trip, but are definitely plausible and in-character):

Optimal payment methods. *My* loyalty card has *these* offers on it, and *Mom’s* loyalty card has *those* offers on it, and my credit card only gets 0.5% cashback on everything but hers gets 2% on groceries, and she almost has enough loyalty points to turn in for $10 off but I’m nowhere close…okay, I’m going to get in this line with just the items that have offers on my card, and you get in a different line with everything else. Wait, shit, I still have an unused bread card [link], give me, um…$19.05 of stuff-with-no-loyalty-offers for my batch. Yeah, stuff with price-matching on it is fine, though try not to spread it out among multiple flyers more than necessary.

The things on the tabloid covers.

  • Pitying the people with the divorces and terminal illnesses (their sadness now compounded by having to deal with paparazzi).
  • I…guess it’s nice that Random Celebrity I’ve Barely Heard Of is having a baby? Assuming she wants it?
  • Wondering what it would be like to actually be into any of the things in Cosmo. Wondering if even vanilla-ish heterosexuals are actually into the things in Cosmo. Presumably *some* of them must at least *aspire* to be into that, or it wouldn’t sell. What a strange world they live in. I suppose they’d say the same of me.
  • I can at least understand why people might buy the food magazines. I don’t want to Lose 15 Pounds This Fall (lower fat reserves would just leave me more vulnerable to starvation damage the next time I contract a “”48-hour”“ stomach bug and can barely eat for 11 days), but the pumpkin thingy does look tasty.

The song currently on the radio is ending. God, I hope they don’t play anything triggery next; honestly, who thought it was a good idea to force people to listen to music in order to be in a store, and those earmuffs I tried didn’t help a damn thing with this…oh, okay, it’s just “Call Me Maybe”. I can deal with that, even if part of me is weirded out that it’s not “Thus Spoke Carly Rae” [link].

Why don’t they sell single-serving packets of plain M&Ms at the checkout anymore? They make great emergency-backup chocolate for keeping in my bag (the candy coating keeps them contained, so repeatedly melting and resolidifying doesn’t make them stick to the wrapper), and these days it’s so hard to find a replacement packet after I eat the current one. Makes me overly reluctant to resort to eating it. At least the convenience store has started carrying them now, though their batch is nearly expired and still has a bunch left, so I suspect they’re going to stop carrying them soon.

—

>>What YouTube genres do you come back to?<<

I mostly don’t watch videos, though I’ve been watching some Honest Trailers lately.

I guess questionably-legal music would also count. I tend to treat Youtube as a kind of musical library, borrowing songs in order to decide whether I like them enough to buy, or songs I only need once or twice. I haven’t been trying out music much lately, though, and I was never *all* that big on doing so.

—

>>What about your experience do you think other people wouldn’t guess?<<

I seem to have a more limited emotional range, with fewer buckets. There are things that others report as being entire emotions in themselves, like “frustrated” or “horny”, that for me are sub-types of other things (“angry” and “tired”, respectively). And we *react* differently because of this, too: they tend not to snap at people for coming to their attention too soon after stubbing their toe (the target-less anger latching on to whomever’s available), or oversleep when they’re ovulating (which doesn’t actually help; some well-meaning bit of my brain just gets confused, I think).

Tags:

#reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #disordered eating #people who can distinguish between their drive for sleep and drive for sex fascinate me #death mention #nsfw text? #food

spoonierbard asked: You have an ear for meter as demonstrated by your rewriting of various poetry or lyrics. Do you ever write any of your own verse?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

slatestarscratchpad:

Not seriously. I can’t bring myself to write serious emotional poetry because it always sounds overwrought and pretentious to me; I’m also pretty private about my serious emotions. I do occasionally compose things for fun. Here’s a poem I wrote a long time ago which I don’t think is online anywhere anymore, called “The Battle Of The Nouns And Verbs”:

The Nouns and Verbs go off to war
Nobody knows what they’re fighting for
No one has heard any insult or slight
But they gather their armies and go off to fight

The Nouns stand resplendent upon the field
They have swords, they have spears, they have many a shield
They have grain, they have meat, they have beer beside
They have valor and honor and courage and pride

They have horses and banners and many a lance
But they stand in one place, and they will not advance
They stand as if they have grown roots on the spot
The Marshal cries “March!”, but his armies march not

The Verbs fill with joy at their enemies’ plight
They yell and they jump and they shout and they fight
They pierce and they hack and they mow and they slash
They thrust and they bust and they shatter and smash

But their army, though valiant, is short of provisions
They lack food, they lack water, they lack ammunitions
They faltered and grumbled and groaned and retreated
Distressed, disappointed, disheartened, defeated.

The Nouns and the Verbs both pitch their tents
And they dig up some trenches and take the defence
The war hasn’t stopped, but they both feel afraid
So they summon their allies to come to their aid.

The host of the Adjectives comes from the West
They are brave, they are daring, the greatest and best
Their weapons are shiny and sharp and long
Their horses are fast and their soldiers are strong.

But out of the East, to the beat of a drum
The Adverbs, triumphantly, finally come
They have carefully planned after war was declared
They are really extremely completely prepared.

Boom! Smash! Pow! Smack!
The Interjections launch their attack!
Yikes! Whoa! Alas! Alack!
The Interjections get beaten back!

You and I, hand in hand
Come all the way from Pronoun-Land
The king there wants this war to cease
So he sends us off with his plan for peace.

But the king of the Verbs sees through our lies
Says the Pronouns are merely the Nouns in disguise!
So you and I, hand in hand
Journey back to Pronoun-Land.

A month and a year and a decade go by
And hundreds and thousands and millions die
And the carnage and terror and bloodshed don’t cease
Till there’s just the verb “make” and there’s just the noun “peace”.

The two of them ponder the cruelty of life
And in vain seek a meaning from all of the strife
And at last, come together, and take a deep breath
And they bow,
And shake hands,
And they…
Fight to the death!

Tags:

#poetry #language #death mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

kramergate:

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intro to the dril book is just real good

Tags:

#this…this is a thing? #the more you know #(is it just me or would this book be a massive pain in the ass to proofread?) #(”is this typo an *intentional* typo or an *accidental* typo?”) #death mention #infohazards?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

cipollakate:

would y’all like to know what I fucking realized

in X-Men film canon, Magneto tried to stop the Kennedy assassination

and in MCU film canon, the Winter Soldier killed Kennedy

and now the MCU is obtaining the rights to use the X-Men

which means that’s entirely possible that Erik Goddamn Lehnsherr lost a fucking fight TO A MAN WITH A METAL ARM

SHOOTING A METAL GUN

WITH METAL BULLETS

AT A MAN IN A METAL CAR

Tags:

#Marvel #I didn’t actually laugh aloud but it still amused me enough to reblog #death mention