Anyway, the next night we watched a thing about some pig man who is supposed to live in Vermont. People said it had claws and a pig nose but walked upright like a man. Now, I happen to know that sideshows used to shave bears and present them as pig men. So every piece of evidence they gave of this monster sounds to me like a bear with mange.

So now the running joke in our house is that everything is bears. Aliens? Bears. Loch Ness monster? Bear. Every cryptozoological mystery is just a very crafty bear.

Read the email.

Read the whole email thread.

I am -sadly- not joking. The amount of people I work with that ask me questions covered in the fucking email is boggling.

So kids (and not kids)! If you want to get ahead and impress your boss, try this one, easy work-hack!

Offer alternatives: IE, “Sorry, nobody’s allowed to hang out over there, but we have seats over here you’re welcome to use”. I recommend getting familiar with local parks, public seating, free food programs, outreach, mobile aid, etc., just in case those are needed.

Be polite: IE, “Excuse me, sir”, “I beg your pardon, miss”. This should go without saying but everyone deserves dignity.

Avoid phrasing requests as orders: IE, “Don’t stand in front of that” VS “Excuse me, could you move a bit to the side?”. This works best with an explanation, like, “There’s a sign behind you”, or, “you might get clipped by someone”. This helps communicate that you are asking for a reason, not just throwing your weight around. If you don’t have a reason, rethink whether or not you need to be doing anything.

Avoid directing blame or fault. Don’t say, “The owner says you gotta go” when you could say, “I’m not supposed to let people be here for X period” or “do X thing”. Again, try to have alternatives ready so people can use other resources or do something else instead of just abruptly changing plans.

Come from a place of compassion whenever you can. People are gonna tell you to get rid of the crazy screaming guy. They say that because they’re frightened and don’t know what to do. Your best approach is, “Hello sir”, followed by, “How are you today?”, “how’s it going?”, “are you doing alright?”, etc., depending on what the person is ACTUALLY doing / saying when you get there. You can offer help from there if needed, or leave them alone if they’re not in danger or a risk to anyone.

Remember you’re not a cop. This can mean whatever you need it to mean. For me personally, that means that with incredibly rare exception (like trying to sell to kids, contaminating other’s food or drink) I won’t report you for drugs. If I find you doing drugs on my site I’ll tell you a different place where you can do them instead and ask you to do them there. I have interrupted drug deals to ask the client and the salesman to both kindly move 15 feet to the left, I’m not kidding, I do not care.

Know who you can throw under the bus. Sometimes you gotta enforce rules and be the bad guy and if that’s the fault of some dipshit in a suit 200 miles away, you can say that. Sorry man, I can’t let you park your car on the lawn. I know you’re not hurting anyone and frankly I think lawn culture is stupid but there’s other parking stalls and if my boss sees you I’ll get a write-up for not doing my job. Shit sucks sometimes but if it wasn’t me telling you it’d be the new guy, and between you and me he’s an idiot and he’ll probably just report you to bylaw.

Don’t just act like you’re their friend, genuinely try to be a good friend. If you know that someone is doing something that will only result in a bystander phoning police, don’t let them go down like that. Let them know, “hey man, you seem like you’re having a shit time and I get it, I’ll do what I can, but we gotta have this conversation somewhere else ‘cause we’re freaking out the old ladies.”

Swallow your tongue. You can’t fix the world. People are gonna bitch at you about communists and 5G and gangster rap ruining the neighbourhood, that’s just part of the deal. Nod along, remain neutral, shut down any hate speech, redirect if you can, and keep a limit in mind where you’ll have to shut things down.

Accept that sometimes there are no solutions. Yes, that angry guy who blasts music will be back tomorrow. That homeless woman who asks you to help her find her dog that she hasn’t had in 30 years will ask again, and yes, you’re still going to take a description and promise to keep an eye out. That kid who smokes crack behind the building has been clean for a few weeks and still stops by to say hi, and you hope he’ll get his life together and be happy, but he also might relapse and OD before he hits 25. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can, even if nothing is guaranteed.

Be kind to teenagers. Being a kid is hard, and everyone’s on their ass all the damn time for everything.

Remember that the vast majority of bad people aren’t bad, just unhappy. The guy who keeps showing up drunk and puking on the carpet is unhappy. The lady who bitches about the service every single time and keeps coming back anyway is unhappy. The guy who leaves trash everywhere is probably unhappy. If they were happy, maybe they’d do better, but they’re not, and that’s kinda sad. You don’t have to let them get away with their shit, but they probably aren’t actually a worthless human being either.

It doesn’t matter if 12 is true or not. You need to believe it or you will become a harsh and bitter person. Look for evidence that people are not terrible and invent it if you have to

A couple nights ago, my roommate and I got home and found a strange car in our reserved parking space with its flashers on. I went into the nearest building lobby to ask if anyone owned a blue Thingy parked in space X with the flashers on, and nobody owned up, but a security guard got interested. When I said that yes, it was my reserved parking space I was trying to use, he tried to call a tow truck.

And I said no, I didn't want the Thingy towed. If the driver wasn't playing cards in the lobby of this building (a thing that happens, hence my checking there first), they were probably delivering for Doordash or Amazon, and getting their car towed could ruin their fucking life. They'd be back soon enough, probably before the tow truck could arrive, and literally none of this was worth destroying some poor schmuck. I would park in one of the open spaces on the other side of the complex that nobody liked to use, the security guard wouldn't issue me a citation for doing that instead of parking in my own space, and I'd move my car in an hour because there was no way anyone with their flashers on would be here longer than that. I didn't want white-lady vengeance; I wanted the dude to move his car and nobody to have their night ruined over a parking fuckup.

This speech caused the security guard to fully bluescreen because lots of residents here WOULD demand to have the Thingy towed and probably no one had brought up the whole delivery-driver-can't-afford-impound-fees thing before.

And while he was rebooting, a dude in a vest ran out of another building, said, "Oh, shit, I should move my car," got in the Thingy, and drove off.

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

the last time I reblogged this post right before I got a great job, in a permanent work-from-home position, with benefits, retirement, and a salary literally 3x what I was making before, doing something I really like. 

So you know. 

Here is a free pdf of xanathars guide to everything

Here is a free pdf to monsters manual

Here is a free pdf to tashas cauldron of everything

Here is a free pdf to dungeon master’s guide

Here is a free pdf to volo’s guide to monsters

Here is a free pdf of mordenkainen’s tomb of foes

…oh wait no I went one further than considering it I did do it…

I ended up not going with the front fly closure, in part because the shortest opened ended metal zipper I could get was 40cm long and also TWELVE DOLLARS(!) but also because I got annoyed with trying to work out the equivalent of a waistband for the bust curve - this one has a button closure at the centre back but I think next time I would go to the effort of sewing a proper bra hook-and-eye closure because it is a bit hard to wrangle on and off.