Hell is empty

From Jerry/The Creator #2:

"Of course. One version of the project looks like this: we establish Strip Search as a series of penels, similar to the Omegathon. For the uninitiated: The Omegathon is a kind of tournament that goes over the width and breadth of [PAX], where [attendees] play against other attendees until they were winnowed down and two people then play a secret [final] game [for a prized trip to another, usually Australian, PAX]. I can seee a version of Strip Search that focused exclusively on Battles, judged by Gabe and I in our "Creators" guises. I don't thiink that would be too crazy and could, in fact, be cool. If it were Sexy also, we would be fulfilling TLC's ancient prophecy."

Link to the OG Strip Search Competition if you missed it, big recommend

Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??

Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??

gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"

Meanwhile, I only have a part time job. I've been trying to pick up as much freelance work as possible but that well has been pretty dry for a while, and full-time opportunities have been... well, you all know what the job market looks like right now. Even minimum wage service jobs would rather just put pretend to be hiring but stay permanently understaffed.

So my financial situation while looking for a new place is dire, to say the least. Also I don't have a car, and haven't even had a license since the early 2000s, so moving is going to involve paying someone to haul a bunch of stuff around. Or else taking ten thousand bus trips to my storage unit on the other side of town, and living out of a suitcase at the new place.

Anyway, any help would mean the world to me, whether it's a donation, sharing the link, or just sending good vibes out into the universe on my behalf. Thanks for reading.

Meanwhile, I only have a part time job. I've been trying to pick up as much freelance work as possible but that well has been pretty dry for a while, and full-time opportunities have been... well, you all know what the job market looks like right now. Even minimum wage service jobs would rather just put pretend to be hiring but stay permanently understaffed.

So my financial situation while looking for a new place is dire, to say the least. Also I don't have a car, and haven't even had a license since the early 2000s, so moving is going to involve paying someone to haul a bunch of stuff around. Or else taking ten thousand bus trips to my storage unit on the other side of town, and living out of a suitcase at the new place.

Anyway, any help would mean the world to me, whether it's a donation, sharing the link, or just sending good vibes out into the universe on my behalf. Thanks for reading.

Thanks for the adventure!

So ok look. The point is not the flared leg by itself. These cannot be yoga pants. These are, and you have to understand this if you are too young to have worn them, BLUE JEANS. And this was the last years before all jeans were 70% spandex.

They were denim, and they weren't bell bottoms. They hung loose from the knee in a way that would make a wizard envious. We all walked around like we were wearing hakama. And they dragged on the ground. That was important. Ragged cuffs. If your jeans weren't so long that they had ratty cuffs, they were embarrassingly short.

And the thing about denim is that it's a twill weave and it's cotton. So not only does it hold a lot of water, it wicks. Walking around in these suckers on a wet day could get you wet to the knees even if you never stepped in a puddle.

Then you'd go inside and take off your shoes and try to avoid letting your freezing, wet, filthy pant legs touch your skin.

As we were waiting at the bus stop though we had an idea - behind the bus stop was a grocery store and a post office. If we went into the grocery store and bought a bunch of snacks at real world prices instead of movie theater prices, we could strap them to my buddy's shins under his enormous JNCO jeans using the free packing tape at the post office. This was South Florida in the 90s and everyone was so used to goddamn weird stuff happening all around them at all times that no one even blinked when we went into the post office and taped a couple 2-liter bottles of coke and a bunch of bags of chips and candy to my buddy's legs.

Once the cargo was secure, he could drape his pant legs back over it without looking at all different. His walk was a little weird, but only if you knew what his walk normally looked like. So we went back to the bus stop barely in time to board and headed towards the theater.

But then as we were getting off the bus, he stood up to get ready before the bus had come to a complete stop, staggered a little, tripped, and banged one of his shins against a bus seat. A bottle of shook-up cola ERUPTED up his pant leg, making it look like he was having some kind of reverse-diarrhea with a stain that somehow started at his knee and grew upwards. Within seconds he was surrounded by a puddle of foamy brown liquid, while everyone on the bus stared at him like they thought he was going to literally die.

We staggered off the bus and ran into the park by the movie theater, where we knew there was a public bathroom. And then instead of seeing The Matrix, my buddy washed his jeans as best he could in the bathroom sink then handed them to me to drape over a park bench in the sun while he sat in the toilet stall in his underwear. Except that it was still South Florida, the humidity was always 90%+, and his pants were never ever going to dry. So three hours later he put his soggy JNCOs back on and we called his sister to come pick us up, and she yelled at us the whole way home because we hadn't thought to warn her to bring a towel for him to sit on.

A few months later we tried the experiment again, but that time we strapped a whole rotisserie chicken to his leg (in a plastic bag) because we knew that if we were going to attempt such a disastrous experiment a second time, we needed to kick it up a notch to justify the risk. We got the whole chicken into the theater, but got kicked out because of COURSE they noticed when we took it out and started eating it.