As I was driving home through the forest recently, ahead of me I saw an old pickup truck pull over onto the shoulder and put its hazard lights on. A young woman wearing handmade clothing jumped out of the truck and ran 200 feet back up the road. As I passed, I saw her scoop up a newt she'd seen crossing the road, and carry it into the forest, before running back to her truck.
This made me smile, but the redneck behind me was outraged. "Damn hippies! Bleeding heart liberal treehuggers... only on Chauncy's Island... Friggin' oughta be a law... stoppin' for a damn lizard. What about the other cars?"
I looked him in the eyes and said, quietly but firmly, "You're new around here, aren't you?"
"I been here seven whole years, so, no, I'm not new," the redneck said. "What's it to you, anyway?"
I've been here 30 years, but I didn't mention that. I just said to him, "Seven whole years you've been here, and you still act like you're brand new. That's a shame."
And everyone else laughed and clapped as the redneck drove away without saying anything more.
@is-it-a-man But... if Amaury Guichon makes himself a really, really good pair of wings out of chocolate...
I swear to god one of these days were going to see a video of Amaury Guichon and he's going to be making some wings and they are going to look dope as hell, the detail of each feather will be breathtaking, he'll spray paint them to perfection, but as the video goes on, he's not building any sort of winged creature, just the wings. And then there's a human-sized harness (also made of chocolate, somehow, he can do it). And he's attaching the wings to the harness. And he's putting the harness on and he demonstrates how he can flap the wings. And then he'll be off. Out the window and up and up and up. And we'll be looking at the livestream (it's a livestream now) and we'll scream "No, Amaury, the sun! It's going to melt the wings!". But he knows this already. And he is free.
Not telling your kid they have a learning disability, chronic illness, mental illness etc. so they can “feel normal” actually does the opposite. They will not feel normal if they do not have the context to understand that their normal will be different from that of their peers.
--Hey, didja hear what happened to Brett?
--No, tell me!
--Well, last night, some assholes came out to his dock and ripped off his Johnson.
--What?! Is he gonna be okay?
--Yeah, he was in bed, he slept through the whole thing.
--How can someone sleep through getting their Johnson ripped off?
--Yeah, he's a pretty heavy sleeper, I guess.
--That's... so weird. But is he gonna be okay?
--Oh, he's not hurt at all. They never even came in the house.
--Wait, what?!
--They didn't actually make much noise. But now he needs to borrow your truck.
--To go to the hospital?
--Huh? No, to pick up his spare.
--His spare what?
--His spare Johnson. It's in his shop.
--Okay, why are you messing with me like this?
--What! He's got his spare Johnson up at his shop. He just needs your truck to bring it down here.
--He needs my truck. To pick up his spare Johnson. And attach it, right? After getting his original Johnson ripped off, and he didn't even wake up... or bleed out! Look, what the...
--Well, they didn't actually rip it off, I meant he got ripped off. They had tools, and they unbolted it from the back of the transom.
--...Transom??
--Yeah, you know, the board at the back of the skiff? Where the motor sits?
<long pause>
--You're talking about an outboard motor. A fucking Johnson brand outboard fucking motor.
--Uh, yeah? What did you think I was talking about?
I imagined a dyscalculic child, who isn't getting any help or support in learning math, nobody understands that they just don't get it...
Nobody understands that the child tries to solve math problems by making up stories about the numbers and operational symbols, fascinating, beautiful mythical or fairy-tale stories, and "drawing" the ending of the stories where the solutions should go.
Every math problem is a hypothetical situation involving stock characters, and the child believes they have to parse exactly what the situation is supposed to be, given the limited "shorthand" consisting of numbers and operational symbols and the arithmetical frameworks, and work out what the result would be.
And nobody, or almost nobody, ever gets to hear the stories.
I only figured out how to tell in late 2019, great timing, then it took me some time to learn to disambiguate between "thinks I'm cute" and "wants to do something about it," and I still have no idea how to signal anything back or how else to respond
And meanwhile I am just dying every time I re-evaluate weird old memories in light of the parts of the code that I have managed to break
“they were flirting with you” and how was i supposed to know such a thing when everyone speaks in codes and puzzles
There are books now that are specifically used as status symbols: people use them to appear to be the person they want others to see them as.
Consumer culture has the distressing effect of enhancing the human tendency to convince oneself that one liked something, for the sake of conformity and peace of mind. People tell themselves that they liked what they were told they should like.
Reviewers often wind up with extreme biases for and against certain types of works, for similar reasons to the above. It's also not too crazy to consider there may be some corruption in the literary review community.
Marketing is now a powerful discipline with cutting-edge psychology behind it. When used by trained professionals instead of incompetent corporate outcasts, it can essentially function as mind control, even for the well-informed.
Also, "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."
TL; DR: Don't feel bad about hating something everyone else seemed to love. There are many reasons why terrible books can get good reviews. And your own opinion is still a valid opinion, even if it's contradictory.
the sense of horror when you finish a book that was Ass Bad and you go to see what fellow haters are saying but all the reviews say it is the best thing they've ever read. feel like i just saw my reflection in the mirror move all by itself or something
I have thousands of shitposts, rants, and essays sitting in notebooks, left over from decades of not using social media or having many friends. Hold on tight.
166 posts