Green Great Dragons

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

I’d never shown Rocky the cards and drawings that were sent with me before. “Eridian drawing?” I look at the symbol he’s pointing his texture gun at. “What do you mean?”

“Is simple way to draw Eridian. Like simple human next to it.” The simple human in question is a stick figure. And — rotationally symmetric, five equal limbs — yeah, I can see it. The Eridian stick figure equivalent. “Not possible for humans to know we meet,” Rocky says. 

All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.

—Quote from Catch-22

Textless version below cut:

Kind of a weird time for this maybe but I made a comic essay about the video game Blue Prince and my experience playing it. Very, very good game.

Thought y'all might like to see the CHAOS that is Bug Time every evening before bed. I fill the puzzle feeder with 15 roaches and 20 superworms, and let Bug find them for the clowns kids. She will eat one or two of the bugs while the kids are busy, but for the most part, she just opens the doors for them and points out the bugs if they miss them.

Honestly, it's still hard to believe these two can hork down an entire adult male dubia roach. It's as big as their head. But it fits in their face, so down the hatch it goes. They'd eat more than what I give them, but dubia roaches are $$$. I'm VERY lucky that there's a lady nearby that offloads her extra/older/damaged adult males to me for cheap.

https://href.li/?https://www.pixiv.net/stacc/menkichi