Don't Fuckle with Shuckle

‘eat something’

‘buckle up’

I’ve answered this question before but I don’t mind asking it again. Because a lot of the world is on fire these days. And it sucks

Generally as a blanket statement, I have a few good close friends that I can reliably laugh and cry with each time I’m with them. A source of community is the greatest buffer against poor mental health. We were meant to be in community with each other; if we’re not, we hurt. So find your community! Laugh with your friends! Be comfortable enough to cry with them! It works wonders💕

Also, connecting with nature is a big thing for me personally. I don’t go on walks super often because it gets pretty hot where I live, but even just driving and noticing the birds and the trees really helps. If you can go on nature walks this might help, and even if you’re in a big city, walking around and taking time to notice the people and their lives may help too.

That’s not problem solving. It’s barely catharsis, in practice. It doesn’t just create more problems than it solves, it destroys more solutions than it creates.

Put the apocalypse down, and back away slowly.

Voting as Fire Extinguisher

When the haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision.

The house was, after all, built on bones, and blood, and bad intentions.

Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge.

It’s tempting to just let it burn.

And then I remember:

there are children inside.

TO THROW A WRENCH IN THE BLOOD MACHINE: Five (Season-Appropriate) Metaphors for Voting

by Kyle “Guante” Tran Myhre

VOTING AS PRESSURE ON THE WOUND: After the battle against the killer robots, I become aware that my leg is bleeding. And I know that applying pressure does not, on its own, heal the wound, but it will buy time for the medic to arrive, for the healing to begin.

VOTING AS FIRE EXTINGUISHER When the haunted house catches fire: a moment of indecision. The house was, after all, built on bones, and blood, and bad intentions. Everyone who enters the house feels that overwhelming dread, the evil that perhaps only fire can purge. It’s tempting to just let it burn. And then I remember that there are children inside. 

VOTING AS THIS ONE SMALL THING I’ve tracked the werewolf to its lair, deep in the basement of the old doll factory just outside town. Upon entering, I have the option of flipping the light switch from off to on. Either way, the battle will be difficult. Either way, victory is not guaranteed. But the werewolf can see in the dark, and I can’t. So I will do this one small thing. I will summon what light I can. And I will keep going.

VOTING AS HIGH GROUND, CLEAR SIGHT LINES, AND MULTIPLE ESCAPE ROUTES It’s been said that during the zombie apocalypse, the undead are not the biggest threat, that the real monsters are the human survivors who will hoard resources, betray one another, and fight endlessly amongst ourselves. And it’s true: survival is about so much more than just not getting eaten by zombies. But not getting eaten by zombies is still an important part of the plan.

VOTING AS WRENCH IN THE BLOOD MACHINE Our village has existed in the shadow of Dracula’s castle for years, and has been the site of many battles against him. Now, he’s running for mayor. His platform: rather than turning into a giant bat to hunt his victims one-by-one, he will take control of the village’s resources, its watchmen and bureaucratic machinery, creating a system that will more efficiently identify victims and supply him with fresh blood.

Will defeating Dracula at the polls end his reign of terror? No. But what it will do is deprive him of one specific set of tools that he will otherwise use to hurt people. It will allow us to think offensively rather than defensively, because when the forces of darkness are not knocking on our doors, it frees us up to go knock on theirs.

And yes: there is always more work to be done. There is always more horror beyond that which is right in front of us.

And those who study monsters are right: if we only think short-term, we lose.

But those who fight monsters have taught me: short-term and long-term thinking are not mutually exclusive. We use every tool we have access to, every opportunity to shape the terrain of battle, every advantage we can seize. We don’t split up. We don’t leave anyone behind. We don’t wait for some hero to save us, whether a knight in shining armor or an opposition politician. We fight the monsters. And when the sun rises, we do the work of creating a world in which there are no monsters.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

So the only reputation he has is ‘that bastard con artist who banked 19 years of aw-shucks-wormie-ness and used it to outrageously fleece everyone who’s almost anybody.’ Vader reading the report like…damn you Kenobi did you get HONDO to raise my son??

Jabba’s reaction to Luke’s message is INFINITELY funnier if we consider the idea that ‘Skywalker’ amongst the wretched local villainy (who mostly ignore imperial and rebel propaganda) is actually synonymous with TWO things - that brat who totally messed up the podrace bookies 25 years ago, and the infamous Anchorhead Con. Jabba gets this message about ‘Jedi’ and is like LOL i think the other Skywalker tried to pull some hotshit with that too before wimping out.

Everyone openly laughs like sure you’re a Jedi and I’ve got a bargain vaporator farm I want to sell you. 

“So this fucking—SKYWALKER, dude, have you ever heard the name Skywalker? You know what it means? A FUCKING ASSHOLE, that’s what it means. Like. The first one was bad enough, this little shit named Anakin who was fuckin’ NINE YEARS OLD and he just WON THE FUCKING BOONTA EVE PODRACE and set SIXTEEN bookies out of business and if I ever meet him I’m gonna set him on fire for it—

“And then this new one, Luke? Fuckin’ nobody, raised by his aunt and uncle out in the Wastes, little aw-shucks hick farm kid, the kind you could give him a five-credit piece and a ten-credit piece and he keeps taking the fiver because it’s BIGGER, that kind of simple, and then he comes into Mos Eisley one afternoon and sells his aunt and uncle’s moisture farm, right, I’ve been out there a few times, several of us have, and it’s a nice place as far as moisture farms go, mildly profitable, and the kid is fucking happy to get like two-thirds its value, so he sells the farm, right? TO NINETEEN DIFFERENT PEOPLE! Do you have any idea how much Jabba’s finance people had to do to get that sorted out? Nineteen fucking mortgages on ONE fucking property, puts every real estate con Jabba the Hutt’s entire CLAN ever pulled and we were on the WRONG SIDE OF IT! We had every pirate and smuggler from here to Corellia laughing at us! And THEN! And THEN—!

“So he pops up via hologram message acting like a DIPLOMAT from the REPUBLIC, claiming a title and rank from an extinct, defunct, ILLEGAL order and wanting to bargain with Jabba—are you fucking kidding me, BARGAIN WITH JABBA for a smuggler who’s up to his ass in debt when he’s responsible for that farm scheme, acting like he doesn’t even fucking REMEMBER it and expects that Jabba’s forgotten it too. Like. Absolute fucking idiot, and anticipating that Jabba’s just as stupid. And he offers a pair of droids as a gift. Like, built-in-the-Republic-era, random-ass droids that he probably picked up from the Jawas that morning for a few hundred credits and a junked ‘vaporator.

“I mean, Jabba’s seething here, but hey, free droids is free droids. Whatever. He takes the droids, throws things, orders a fight to the death between two gamblers who owed him money, killed one of his dancers at some point … and then Boushh shows up with fucking Chewbacca in chains—he’s Solo’s first mate, so Jabba was all happy about that, but not happy enough to pay the full bounty—and what’s Boushh do? Pull some gonads out from somewhere after all these years, and also pull out a fucking THERMAL DETONATOR! Going to blow us all to fuck if he doesn’t get his measley fifty thousand, and, well, there’s no arguing with crazy like that. 

“So now, if you’re keeping score, Jabba’s lost an absolute SHITLOAD of money and had his bookmaking industry fucked all to hell for like three years after the stunt from Skywalker the First, got screwed out of ANOTHER shitload of money in the farm scam by Skywalker the Sequel, got all but called an idiot to his face and insulted six times over by the same dude who’s apparently scammed so many people he’s forgotten who he has and hasn’t scammed, and got threatened out of fifty thousand credits by a second-tier bounty hunter IN FRONT OF HIS ENTIRE COURT.

“And then the next morning, what the fuck? Jabba’s favorite sculpture is gone, the one with Solo as its main ingredient that Boba Fett brought him. And Boushh is gone. And Jabba’s got a brand-new dancer chained up next to him. Night duty guy tells me Boushh unfroze Solo, and the new dancer girl IS Boushh, which, okay, you’re dealing with people like that and you look like that? You definitely need a helmet, but I feel like pretending she didn’t breathe oxygen was overkill. Anyway, then Skywalker shows up. All alone, no weapons, nothing, like he really believes in this Jedi shit. Arrogant little bastard, and we’re all laying bets on how Jabba’s going to kill him.

“So he talks a little, and fwoop! goes the trapdoor, and okay, everybody who bet on “Rancor” is doing a little happy dance, but then! BUT THEN! He fucking KILLS THE RANCOR! Drops its own cage door on its head and punches right through its skull! And—fucking NOBODY bet on that, which is a damn shame because everybody else would’ve just torn the winner apart out of sheer rage at that point and we coulda used some good bloodshed then, y’know? I mean, I dunno if you’ve ever met Jabba the Hutt, but he’s the kind of boss that’ll just go off and kill you for failing him or just because he’s angry at something. Just complete fucking asshole. I mean, he was pissed enough that everybody was worried for their safety, and so somebody dying messily right then would’ve calmed him down a bit.

“So Jabba’s big mad, and he gathers Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca all together and says he’s gonna feed them to the Sarlacc, which is a nasty tentacled carnivorous plant out in the desert, so we all board the sail barge and have a nice little pleasure cruise—have you ever been to Tattoine? I’m fuckin’ kidding, it’s brutal. But hey, we get to see Skywalker executed, right? Wrong.

“Jabba offers them the chance to beg for their lives, and Solo calls him a slimy piece of worm-ridden filth, which, I mean, I could do better, y’know? If I’m about to die? Anyway, Skywalker goes up first, gets prodded to the edge, flips a salute off to who-knows-where, and does this little twist in midair, catches the fucking plank, and fucking SPRINGBOARDS himself back onboard, CATCHES HIS LIGHTSABER FROM MIDAIR where the one DROID shot it to him, and starts sending guards over the side, usually in pieces.

“So more guards rush forward to help, and there’s this huge fight, and fuckin’ BOBA FETT falls in, and while that’s going on? The fucking dancing girl has grabbed her chain and is FUCKING STRANGLING JABBA WITH IT! Like, I look over and he’s bucking and struggling and she’s pulling on that chain like anything, and then somebody hits me over the head with a bottle of Corellian brandy, and by the time I look again he’s pitched over dead! And nobody freaking bet on that!

“And then? Off they fucking go, Skywalker and Solo and Chewbacca and the dancing girl and the droids and one of the guards who I played sabacc with the other night and he owes me twenty credits! And that fucking Skywalker just cost me my job, and if I see him again I’m going to burn him to cinders myself!”

The man subsides, eyeing the gigantic ebony figure in front of him who, except for a couple of momentary starts as though he might say something, has been silently listening to him all this time.

Size-wise, Darth Vader has nothing on Jabba the Hutt, but somehow, he is scarier.

Finally, the dark form speaks. “You said you could do better.” A moment’s silence, and he clarifies. “If you were about to die.” He gets the impression that whatever monster lurks behind the helmet is smiling. “You are about to die now. Because you are a criminal, and because of what you have said about my son, Luke Skywalker. You have an opportunity to do better. Use it.”

The so-condemned criminal, late of Jabba’s palace guard, lets his jaw hang open unflatteringly for a moment while his brain catches up with events. HIS SON, which means …  

“YOU’RE Anakin Skywalker’s HUSBAND?”

The steady, hissing rhythm of Darth Vader’s rebreather actually stops dead as the Dark Lord straightens up as if stabbed with an electroprod.