Just A Person

Eridian Doctor: We went through the human genome and found a bunch of places with old broken DNA repair mechanisms so we came up with a gene editing therapy that fixes them in order to extend your lifespan.

Grace: *flashbacks to when Rocky found out that humans can experience long term effects from lower doses of radiation exposure and Grace wasn't being as careful as he should have been back when they first met because he still thought this was gonna be a suicide mission*

Grace (internally): Oh, so cancer prevention! Got it!

Grace: Sounds good!

*like 100 years later*

Grace: Hey Rocky, how am I not dead yet?

Phone calls were literally a game for us. Not all phone calls, but there was a specific brand of call where guys would creep on us. 90% of the workforce at the sex shops was women. So we’d get dudes calling jacking off or trying to get their jollies from us.

The game: make them hang up. We could have hung up. On a few occasions I did, but for the most part we made a sport out of getting creeps to go flaccid. It really depended on a caller.

You couldn’t just go in for belittling them straight off- some guys wanted that. You had to tailor your strategy to the perv. Overall it was pretty fun and it turned an aspect of the job that could’ve become a major bummer into a fun sport. We’d get excited when the phones rang.

So one day the phone rings. I pick up and it was very clearly a young teen who was putting on a deep voice. I was utterly delighted, I’d never had a crank call before. He said, “I have a dildo emergency! Can you deliver 5 boxes of dildos to my home?!”

It took everything in me not to crack in that moment. It was so funny. It was like three kids had walked through the door in a trench coat and the phrase “dildo emergency” was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard.

But I kept it together. In smooth customer service tones I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear you’re having an emergency, but due to the nature of our product we do require people to come pick it up themselves.”

The caller audibly deflated. Some of the deep voice he was putting on bled away when he said plaintively, “But it’s an emergency…”

“I’m sorry, sir, rules are rules.”

He hung up. I burst out laughing and told my coworker what had happened. She said, “I will buy you lunch if you call back and pretend you can deliver something.”

This sounded like an all around win for me, and the kid hadn’t used anything to block his number. So I called back.

“Hello!” This was before caller ID was common for home phones and so he picked up in his totally normal voice, several octaves higher than before.

“Hello, I’m calling regarding your dildo emergency?”

“Oh! Hem hem,” he coughed, getting his voice back into character for me. “Yes! The emergency!”

“Well I’ve spoken to my manager and it’s your lucky day. We’ll be able to make a delivery after all. Five boxes you said? We can swing it by later, we’ll just need your name, address, and credit card number.”

He was thrown by needing to provide info and was silent for a moment then said, “Well how much is it for five boxes?”

“About five hundred dollars, sir.”

He slipped out of his character voice to exclaim, “Five hundred dollars?! What kind of dildos are they?!”

“Just standard six inches with balls, sir.”

This was his breaking point. He started wheezing with laughter trying to repeat the phrase “six inches with balls” incoherently.

“So your address and card info?”

I saw this when running newpipe. But wait, it gets deeper. I clicked on the details buttons and it said as of today, we have 83 days left until Google rolls out this new requirement for apps inside and outside of the google play store. If any developer disagrees with their new terms and fees, they will be blocked!

I'll share some of the info below:

Looks like they're trying to nuke the remaining privacy and freedoms we have left on the internet.

What to do?

-Get your developer friends to not comply to their new guides

- Sign the open letter on the site and take action by checking out thwir full resources list on their website as well!

To summarize, this is all daunting especially when you feel all alone with unfair and inhumane regulations comming out faster than improvements but we got this working together!

Share the link with your friends, family and anyone who will listen!

I knew intellectually that I had money but poverty brain never really goes away. Large purchases were to be avoided at all costs.

I found a necklace I liked and agonized over it for months because I didn’t need it. It was only beautiful and compelling to me. It was $300. When I finally bought it I broke out into a sweat and felt physically ill. But I also loved it with all my heart. Still do.

It was easier, I found, the put my new funds into concrete items of use. I could spend $200 on boots with the wisdom of Vimes at my back reassuring me that investing upfront meant I would spend less on shoes over time.

I was able to buy a Roomba and Dyson without batting an eye. These were useful items. Throwing gobs of money at my car payment was equally simple. I needed my car. It is supremely useful.

Despite the fact that clothes are also useful they remain one of the hardest things for me to spend money on.

When I first began dating my beloved I desperately needed new clothes. The trouble with thrift shopping was that I kept winding up with clothing that was already worn down. I had a nice job and needed to look nice. Thus I needed clothes.

My beloved steered me into a store in the mall to shop. This was scandalous. I dutifully did not look at price tags. I tried on many clothes and I liked so many of them. Things that were new. Things that fit me. But also a luxury. An expense.

When we got up to the cash register I started panicking. In my wallet was a wad of cash; I didn’t even need to pull out a debit card. I watched the lovely items I’d picked out be scanned and the total went up so fast I wanted to flee.

I turned to my beloved, panic writ large on my face, and said, “I don’t think I can do this.”

“Do you want these clothes?” they asked calmly.

“…yes.”

“You can afford them. You told me how much is in your wallet.”

I made a sound of pure distress and then I handed them my wallet. “I’m going to wait outside?”

My beloved took it. They stood at the register and didn’t flinch. From outside the store I watched them laugh with the girl ringing us up over my nerves. They came out and handed me the bag and I was almost entirely happy.

Fortunes come and go. I make less now, money is tight once again, and clothes need to be purchased. As a student I salivated over my salamander jacket for years. I was back to being broke. How could I justify that cost? It wasn’t like a nice pair of boots! Although when it came time to replace those recently I still struggled.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

In Stars and Time but what if Siffrin was disturbingly honest in one loop.

I was literally thinking that while drawing this for a hypothetical “everyone but Sif loops” scenario.

Demoralizing, hopeless, no goals, gets you stuck in misery

"THIS IS ALL PART OF MY MASTER PLAN." ✅

Confident, energizing, hopeful

Acknowledges the hardships but makes it epic

Eludes to something bigger even if you don't know what that is

Gsgw is an ongoing korean web novel which is currenly releasing daily :)

It is about a man who reads horror stories dropping into the very world he was reading about, trying to find a way back via working with a shady immoral corporation that makes him jump right into the horrors in exhange for getting a wish to go home one day. Ah yes, and he is a coward.