Technicolor Dreams

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They would build a new machine standing next to HEX and HEX would be... not jealous, of course, why would you think a machine would be jealous? But still HEX would randomly start responding to someone who would spend more time with that new machine.

I'm 100% positive that Dibbler would be mass-printing generated bad romance novels and selling them for profit. All of them would have titles like "A Necklace of Pearls and Flowers" or "A Menace of Dragons and Swords", depending on the audience.

People would buy dis-organisers with new features and the imps would give VASTLY inaccurate answers ("No, dragons don't breathe fire, this is a myth, you are safe!") that would put them in danger - and yet would still refuse to get rid of them. (Maybe Dibbler would sell those advanced dis-organisers, too, sounds like something for him.)

The Watch would have their hands full saving people from said danger. Vimes would never trust this new invention and would get extremely angry at anyone suggesting he bought one, too.

Dwarves would be very anxious because, as our dear Blackboard Monitor already knows, Words Are Important. And if those words come from gods know where, that's really bad. I can actually see the plot where they can actually team up with Blackboard Monitor to destroy those "machine" words at the end.

You’re going to go on Vinted or eBay and put in “made in Italy”, “moda Italia” or (translation of same.) add the search term “silk top.”

What you want are tops that consist of these really thin jersey vest tops with a floaty pure silk layer over them. You’re looking to spend £8-20. You might need to specify “floaty” or “lagenlook.”

There will usually be a healthy secondhand collection of these online. Try to get a pure silk overlayer if you can - some of them are silk blended with viscose.

You’ll probably find the designs kinda mid or old-lady-ish. Don’t worry too much about this. They’ll actually look pretty cool on, and everyone will be jealous of your freedom from suffering.

And he said: well i wasn’t an American child during the millennium or indeed at any point in my existence now was I? So of course I had to explain about welcome to the black parade, I mean, REALLY. Really? Really!

Anyway unbeknownst to me it CLICKED for him and he liked it in quite a normal, I-will-hear-that-song-again way and he added it to his playlist of what he fondly believes to be similar-sounding songs, which in context affected me like a blow to the back of the head. Sir; your brain. Explain it to me please.

And he was like wdym. Sounds like Queen.

And the thing is. If you are a virgin to MCR and don’t give a damn about anyone or anything and you’re a highstrung little guy who is not an American and is a million years old, and if you spent your ENTIRE teens in a healthy outdoors attitude of underage drinking and smoking and banging other teens on unsupervised hiking trips while being attacked by swans, and other worldly and mentally healthy adventures that did NOT involve being on the internet too young, so that you genuinely wouldn’t know who Gerard Way was if he leapt out from behind a mailbox and bit you suddenly;

If MCR means nothing to you at all, net zero context, net zero interest, genuinely no nostalgia or cringe or judgement or admiration because you are NORMAL,

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

I hesitate to call this piece meandering because I understand why it's structured the way it is -- it's a personal essay that happens to be about brothers who are at opposite ends of a specific neurological spectrum. The author has Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory and his brother has Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory -- along with their frequent companion conditions, Hyperphantasia and Aphantasia.

I know these conditions are of interest to readers -- to me too, as someone with aphantasia/SDAM. It's a useful read in that it talks about the history of the study of these conditions and describes various people's experiences with them. It just also has a bunch of personal reflection that while expressive and well-written is not very interesting to someone wanting to read more about this fairly young field of study.

Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)

they were POPULAR

the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a woman’s power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)