Now Entering: My blog

I worked there three summers in a row, and every laborer from every nearby town would come there for whatever supplies they needed, and man could they gossip like there was an Olympic medal for it.

At 8 AM, every morning, every plumber, roofer, electrician, and landscaper in the county was at the door waiting for me to unlock it, and they’d come back throughout the day.

I knew every tradesman in a 30 miles radius, and I knew too much about everyone in town because of, like I said, the tradesman gossip. It’s shocking that people basically tune out an entire person in their living room and say whatever they want, because they don’t see the guy fixing their light fixture as real somehow.

Then your average citizens, the townsfolk, would come in to ask for labor recommendations. The cashier at the local hardware store is a god among yelp reviews.

A woman needs her roof repaired. A man wants central air installed in his 100 year old house. Someone needs to break into a safe they inherited without the combination.

And I would make recommendations. I’d take down names and information so when a plumber I liked walked in an hour later, I could say, “come here, I have a job for you” like I needed them to clear a village of Redcaps.

There is no difference between your local mom-and-pop hardware employee and Greed Karga sending the Mandalorian on bounty hunting jobs.

If Geralt of Rivia walked in, I could have found him something to do.

I believe all plumbers dual-wield drain snakes and arcane magic, because you’d be surprised how often Liches come up in septic tank repairs.

Kid one the bus next to me whose backpack starts moving and it turns out he's got three chickens and a painted turtle he caught in there? This is Perfectly Normal. Humans have been catching small game and transporting it home in whatever they had since we invented bags to put chickens and turtles in.

I traded him three king-size snickers bars I had on me for the turtle because I vaguely remembered that many freshwater turtles were toxic to eat (incorrectly, as it turns out, but this was when I still had a Nokia Brick that lived a blissful, internet-free existence), and didn't want him accidentally poisoning his family, but didn't want to just. Steal his hard-won turtle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans have been cautious about poisons, looking out for strangers kids and bartering shit since before we were technically humans, probably.

Having acquired a turtle, I now needed to transport the turtle to the on-campus pond that effectively served as an Invasive Freshwater Turtle Containment Zone, but did not have a bag that could adequately contain him so I had to sit the rest of that bus ride, at the station and all through the next bus ride holding the turtle like the world's angriest hamburger. Multiple people were curious about and delighted with the turtle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans love an animal, especially one that is capable of appearing grumpy, and hands are for holding things.

By the time I got back to Campus, the anthropology and child psychology building that the Invasive Turtle Containment Pond was in had closed, so I had to figure out how to climb the tree over the wall and get down off the roof while holding The World's Angriest And Sharpest Hamburger. I eventually ended up having to briefly shove the turtle into by bra to get up to the initial branch and off the roof without breaking an ankle. This is Perfectly Normal. Humans are, as a species, a bunch of barely-evolved arboreal frugivores and really good at Tree Physics, and I don't know a single titty-having bitch out there that hasn't used their bra as Emergency Pockets at least once, if not daily.

I released the turtle into the Turtle Containment Pond and then had to solve the problem of getting back OUT of the locked building, but Nokia Brick never loses a signal or drops a call (including that time I accidentally dropped it off a 13-story building in the middle of a call to my parents and the damn thing BOUNCED but kept the line open. I miss that phone every day.) and while campus security has been carefully trained to not let people IN to places without proper ID and a call to someone inside, they assume that if you got locked in somewhere, that you got in by legitimate means and not Lemur Shenanigans, so i just called them, apologized that I'd been working late with headphones on and didn't realize I'd been locked in. This is Perfectly Normal, people have been lying to cops since laws were invented, and will continue to do so because all cops are bastards.

They're probably quite worried about what will happen when they catch this guy, especially with the level of public support he has. If they catch him alive and he gets to air his grievances, he could unite the entire country against the private healthcare system. It could go to trial and result in jury nullification, which would basically send a message to the American public that catching a rich body comes without consquences.

If they kill him to keep his mouth shut, I'd say people will burn cities to the ground, and it could potentially provoke even more anger against private health insurance. In a powder keg, it only takes one person lighting the match.

I know it sounds over the top, but a figurehead is a powerful thing, and that's what this shooter is. The rich understand it. That's why Blue Cross just magically decided they were going to pay for anesthesia again. Those dead-eyed psychopaths were going to take everything they could until someone shot that guy and that's the gospel truth.