Relentless Inferno

Why not psychological horror comedy? Something that titters just on the border of too-silly-to-be-scary but also too-creepy-to-be-funny, the characters are just a little bit too off-the-kilter to be goofily relatable, there's something actually wrong with these people. The vibe and the atmosphere is intolerable but in a way that makes you burst out in tense and nervous giggles.

The film never actually explicitly states what happens to the characters who don't make it, but as much as someone's slip and fall into The Thing is silly on first watch, the more you think about the varying possibilities, the more aware you become that there's literally no option here that wouldn't be a fate worse than death.

Seeing them swoop by day in and day out, you got used to the forklifts, which were all more or less identical with each other save for some scrapes and bangs and signs of wear, except for one, which had a tiny, sparkling Hello Kitty -sticker on the side, scarcely larger than my thumb.

One night shift there were only two gatherers at work beside me, and only one forklift operator. On a particularly quiet moment of that particularly quiet night, the forklift driver and I were the only ones in the break room, and though we'd never really talked before, I remarked that he got the Hello Kitty one.

He, a sturdy man in his fifties, grinned in a way that made the ends of his moustache tilt up, made a pointed look around the obviously empty break room and leaned in towards me like men that age do when they've got a great and splendid secret to share.

He asked me, had I ever noticed that it was almost always him who is driving the Hello Kitty forklift? I had not, but that did not swing his glee about this to either direction. He nodded. That was his favourite forklift, it's the one that turns the smoothest, the one with the most even brakes and most comfortable seat. He had put the sticker on it, he had borrowed one from his granddaughter.

You can’t make meth out of baby formula. You can stretch some drugs by cutting it with baby formula but “Drug dealers sometimes use the powdered formula to dilute heroin and methamphetamine or to stretch the product when supplies run low. However, experts say that more often than not, formula is stolen because of its high market demand among consumers rather than drug dealers.”

Because I was 18 and “parentless” we filed paperwork with the school granting me permission to write my own excuse notes. Which, of course, I had a fuckin ball with:

- Ralf was late to class because he was surrounded by panthers

- Please excuse Ralf due to a sudden and fatal illness

- Ralf needs to leave school early because he has a phrenology appointment

...and so on. They couldn’t do anything about it, since there was no rule saying the notes had to be make any goddamn sense, they only had to exist. And be submitted by an ‘authorized parent or guardian’ which, in this case, was me.

One day I showed up late for school and  -- as per standard procedure -- stopped by the attendance office to check in. There was a new employee or temp or something manning the desk that day, and they demanded to see my excuse note.

So I grabbed paper & pen, scrawled “Please excuse Ralf for being late to school”, signed it, and handed it over. She was NOT amused. 

“No honey, it needs to be from your mom,” enunciated slowly like I was mentally damaged.

“I’m authorized to write my own notes,” I replied.

“No you’re not. Sit over there.”

And they made me wait for the Vice Principal to show up, which eventually he did. Who took one look at me and hooked a thumb in my direction.

“What did he do?”

“Forged an excuse note!”

“He’s authorized to write his own notes.”

It interestingly starts turning up in literature in the period covering five major cholera outbreaks in the UK and US (this was obviously an English language Ngram search).

And peaks several times at epidemic peak points (1830s, 1850, 1880s), including its first peak in 1831/2, which corresponds with the first cholera epidemic in the UK. 

It also corresponds with the year William Brooke O’Shaughnessy discovered that a lot of people who were dying of cholera were severely lacking water and salts in their blood and urine. Dehydration was found to be a major cause of death in cholera patients. “Toast water” was suggested in the Lancet medical journal in 1832 as an initial treatment for cholera patients. 

Most of the recipes in household medicine guides I found suggest sweetening or flavouring the toast water with something if the patient could keep it down in order to cover the terrible taste.

Thought I’d update y’all! We’re currently fostering this bébé after trapping him when he was living under our deck for about five days.

We’ve been calling him Woodley; he’s about 9/10 weeks old with a really bad case of ringworm that’s resulted in almost complete hair loss of his tail. He had his first round of vaccines and dewormer and is being treated for the ringworm and some intestinal parasites.

He is an incredibly spicy foster baby. I’ve fostered around 28 feral kittens (most from the neonatal age) because I used to be a veterinary technician. Somehow even after my employment I just keep finding feral kittens. The curse of the vet tech lmao

Anyway, he’s getting boosters and his FeLV (feline leukemia) test in a few weeks and will have been about a month into his ringworm treatment by then and hopefully can get him into a rescue group while still fostering him because we have a cat dad extraordinaire adult cat who LOVES foster kittens and teaches them the all important cat socialization, grooming, and healthy play.

Unsure about coat length, I would guess he’ll be a medium hair. As for his color, he seems to be a chocolate colored kitty but who knows if it stays that way. We’ve had him for 2.5 weeks now and it’s some real slow socialization progression but he’s really made some strides in the past two days and demands snugs now (even though he forgets who I am the minute I put him down lmao).

"He said 'Have a look at this letter' - so I had a look and turned it over and our friends' address was on the back of it and on the front it just said England."

Mr Biggs said the card had been sent from a sorting office in Germany close to Gloucester's twin town of Trier and had not been opened.

"I said 'How on earth did you know it was for me?' and he said 'I didn't, I've been wandering around with this', said Mr Biggs.

"My wife and I are absolutely shocked but this puts posties at five or six stars and top of the tree for me this Christmas."

The card, it is believed, may have originally been addressed correctly and so was sent to the right area of England - but with an address label that fell off at some point.

A Royal Mail spokesman said: "Royal Mail's team of 'address detectives' are renowned for their ability to ensure poorly addressed items of mail reach their intended recipients however, even by their standards, this is pretty impressive."

So, this is ostensibly a subreddit where people post screencaps of the “good” bits of tumblr. You know, curated. If only there was a way to get good tumblr post chosen by a selection of people you trust to show you good tumblr posts!

And then the whole fact that this happens on reddit. Like, you get all the popular tumblr posts except with a comment section where unfunny reddit people say lines from other funny tumblr posts to each other and receive the most epic of upvotes.