Fnog the Blog

- the cashier scanning your groceries is not being careless or bad at her job, this store times the cashiers so she is clearly trying to stay on time and not get in trouble. This blew their minds that someone would be timed at a "no skill" job (their words not mine)

- the drive thru employee is not trying to be rude or annoying by greeting you too soon: they are required to greet you within a few seconds of your car setting off the sensor.

- the employees at this retail store are not trying to be pushy: they are required to greet you within a few seconds of you entering the store

- the cashier is required to ask you every single question they ask. And they hate it more than you do.

- the cashier is not dumb or "doesn't know how to X" because they had to call a manager for it. Every place I've worked for the past 5 years has been rolling back what employees are authorized to do, and they HAVE to call a manager. They know exactly how to do the thing, they are not allowed to and the computer likely will require a managers code to unlock that function. This confused them.

- the cashier knows the line is long, you don't need to tell them that. If they could call up another cashier they would have already.

- and a more work/life balance related one: my dad scheduled a family thing and assumed i could get the time off. What shocked him was that 1. It wasn't paid time off, and 2. It was denied, so I couldn't come til after work and thus was late. He has worked a job with generous PTO and accrued vacation days that schedules 6 months ahead for the past nearly 30 years. He absolutely was horrified to find out that I have to ask permission for unpaid time off and still couldn't be approved.

- funny followup to my dad's shock: I had been at my most recent job nearly a year and he was asking why they haven't promoted me yet. I was thrown off because why would they. He apparently assumed that since i 1. Showed up on time/early to every shift. 2. Had received positive verbal feedback wrt my performance from managers. And 3. Hadn't quit. That they would automatically start to move me up the ladder. It hurt my heart to shatter his wholesome view of how workplaces work now.

I feel like much of this is common knowledge for all of us, and yet my parents and many customers who haven't worked in the service industry in the past 10-20 years have no idea how this stuff works now.

living for a year and a half in a rural area with a sudden feral cat colony explosion on the property.

i moved in with my folks for a bit and at that time, one (1) stray cat mama had taken up residence on the property, but was too feral to let my mother anywhere near her. but especially after she brought three kittens around, mom fed her and the kittens in hopes they'd grow trusting enough she could catch for spay and neuter at the minimum. momcat stayed mean and hella wary, but the kittens would hang around a little nearer and play with my mom via long stick, but still wouldn't come close enough to touch or catch.

unfortunately, two of the three kittens were girls and started having kittens of their own before further progress was made, shortly after i moved in. and that was pretty much instant doom.

there were so many kittens. SO MANY. multiple litters. every time we turned around, more kittens.

we fed them. we hunted for and located the kittens every time anywhere on the property and would move them to a repurposed doghouse anytime a mama cat had them somewhere else, so that they could grow up human-socialized and we could spay/neuter them when they were old enough. (also it was a handy tactic to push the issue of the mamas getting more used to/trusting of us themselves. only really worked with one of them, though.)

and we watched them die.

we watched litter after litter of kittens never make it to the age they could be spayed or neutered. the moms stayed, for the longest time, too skittish to more than briefly touch, much less catch and crate for a vet visit.

it sounds like a silly joke to say i have kitten-related ptsd, but i absolutely do.

too many goddamn times i'd walk out of the garage and find the carport and gravel drive strewn with tiny bodies. others simply went missing, never to be found.

one in particular, i wish i hadn't found, and the visual literally haunts me still, almost a decade later.

i saw so many kittens die of snake bite, spider bite, wild dogs, birds of prey, hit by cars, respiratory illness, covered in fleas and eyes crusted with infection.

and we loved them all. scrimped for antibiotics if the vet could be convinced to give it to us despite our being unable to bring them in. bought flea collars and ointments. we cared for them and fed them and petted them and played with them, brushed their fur and cleaned up their little faces, put ice in their water in hot summer, rigged a heating lamp in their house in the winter.

and they died. horribly. that property is pocked with unmarked graves of kittens and cats.

all the best intentions, not enough resources, and it didn't matter anyways because the population went from three to almost twenty (at times, over thirty) in the blink of an eye.

they died and died and died. our hearts broke over and over again. the stress and anxiety wore us down like sandpaper. i think, by the end of it all, we managed to find less than 10 of them all homes, including batman the disabled kitten i found a home across the country through tumblr.

it was carnage and tragedy, frankly. and we were helpless.

it only ended because they started dying faster than they could be born, and because we finally caught the two remaining mom cats in traps and got them spayed.

the points about outdoor cats being invasive predators devastating to local wildlife populations is true and valid and important.

but i know cat people, and cat people who don't know better than to let cats outdoors. what matters to you is the cat itself, generally. the cat being happy and taken care of.

keeping cats outdoors, letting them outdoors, is not taking care of the cats. it's not protecting them. it's not giving them any happiness or invigoration that couldn't be provided to them as indoor-only pets with just a little research and effort.

they die. they get ill. they get hurt. they're at risk of predators, and cars, and disease, and carelessly cruel children and deliberately cruel adults. they're at risk of disappearing on you because someone else saw a cat outdoors and intervened to give it a better, safer life not in conflict with the local environment.

and if that offends and angers you that someone would just take a cat they saw roaming outdoors, even collared, and that it sounds like i'm endorsing that, i am, but not if you intervene and be that person yourself for your own cat.

if what matters to you is doing right by your cat because it's family and a living creature whose happiness and health and safety is important to you,

Novelty oven mitts

A child is polite: wow! such a good kid

A child is polite (China): the Chinese are taught from a young age that any individuality will be punished.

A child is polite (Japan): This can be explained by the Shinto concept of ゲイのセクシ, a word untranslateable into English,

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For the record, 1. "ゲイのセクシ" (gei no sekushi) is Google Translate screwing up "gay sex" apparently (and the author of the tweet was very sleep-deprived when they made this)

and 2. that was in response to this:

It’s plant-based diets and regenerative livestock farming and insect protein and lab-grown meat.

It’s electric cars and reliable public transit and decreasing how far and how often we travel.

It’s growing your own vegetables and community gardens and vertical farms and supporting local producers.

It’s rewilding the countryside and greening cities.

It’s getting people active and improving disabled access.

It’s making your own clothes and buying or swapping sustainable stuff with your neighbours.

It’s the right to repair and reducing consumption in the first place.

It’s greater land rights for the commons and indigenous peoples and creating protected areas.

It’s radical, drastic change and community consensus.

It’s labour rights and less work.

It’s science and arts.

It’s theoretical academic thought and concrete practical action.

It’s signing petitions and campaigning and protesting and civil disobedience.

It’s sailboats and zeppelins.

It’s the speculative and the possible.

It’s raising living standards and curbing consumerism.

It’s global and local.

It’s me and you.

i’m at the transfem picnic

- guy at work "Yes, and -" ing the bit me and my coworker were doing where we pretended to be owners of a fantasy medieval tavern not minimum wage retail staff

- at the gay club when Die Young by Kesha came on and two hundred people, all dancing and drinking separately, jumped up and down to make the "- beat of the drums *STOMP STOMP*" as loud as possible

- person who watched me stomp round the beach singing a made up song about breakfast foods to name a cat after and suggested more breakfast foods that would be good cat names

- guy who started a dance off with everyone across the road while waiting for the lights to change