I Might Actually Use This One, Someday.

Blitzø: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Adrealphus: I assure you, that is not possible.

OSP Red, over on her Tumblr blog Comicaurora, posted a brilliant and refreshingly frank analysis of "Fable of the Dragon Tyrant."

I can't believe I didn't figure out it was an allegory about death, but we all miss something sometimes, I guess.

Go read the whole post.

If I wrote a zombie apocalypse story, guns and ammo would be hard to come by, because all the gun nuts and survivalists and preppers looted them first thing, and hoarded them.

Most of the guns and ammo that remain are rusting away in the zombie-infested ruins of these people's compounds. Most of them made up their own little stories about where the zombies were coming from, and paid the price.

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.

m-a-a-a-a-h

Happy Yule! by Abigail Larson

I actually liked the Australian animated version of Transformers better... It really improved the dynamic of the show, that they made the human characters a group of bush mechanics, who, after every fight with the Deceptacons, fixed the Autobots up with duck tape, scrap metal, and "she'll be right!"

My local library has thrown away its reference section. "That stuff is all online, now."

They have thrown away most of their archive. What remains is buried in the basement under junk, and all record of its contents is lost. They have no interest in doing anything with it.

For job hunting tips, we direct you to the three biggest job hunting websites.

Homework help and tutoring comes from a local NGO, when they can afford it, although they do use our building.

We do finally have crafts, though! We turned the quiet room and the young adult reading area into a luxurious crafting station.

Legal aid isn't available. We can refer you to a local lawyer, or that local NGO. But you can look up documents online, and print them for free!

I tried to provide compassionate human connection when I worked there, but that's one of the reasons I was let go. Apparently that's something patrons are supposed to provide each other.

And we still have books! We have more and more books about fewer and fewer things, and soon we will have more fiction than ever, we just have to get rid of all the useless nonfiction that's not about hobbies, home renovation, cooking, or poetry. Nobody ever reads those books, they're just taking up space we could use for James Patterson novels!

Truly, there's no better time to visit your local library.

Pro tip:

Never confuse the Fifth International with the Third Lateran.

What if real life is the Eldritch Apocalypse, and we have all but forgotten earlier times, before The Planets Aligned, before we discovered Things Humanity Should Not Know, Dug Too Deep, and ruined our world by making it... this?

What if the true Eldritch Horror is... normativity? Conformity? Regimentation? Dullness of mind and experience?

What if we could remember what "whelming" felt like, or when cars still needed to be quarzyk-tested? What if squirrels reminded us of those times, because even though they used to also come in some of the colors that are now missing, they're pretty much the same, otherwise?

It says very clearly, right under the map:

That would be the joke.

Yes, it's their latitude transferred over to the West coast.

Cannot believe the number of people who are either freaking out or trying to dunk on this, because they think OP is claiming that's where these cities actually are.

It's just a geography joke.

Eastern cities on the west coast