he/himbo-read superpowereds by Drew Hayes im Vince

Like. Swans are gigantic, territorial, feather-clad balls of muscle and hatred. Also, magic is expensive and complicated and makes you grow an ugly little goatee - although maybe that’s just my uncle. Why would you even bother? Like, poison is right there. 

Of course, unfortunately, my uncle has always subscribed to the philosophy of ‘why be evil if you can’t be dramatic about it?’.

A comic based on a dream I had the other night.

So.

Actually this is insane I'm not even entertaining the rest of these points

Cooking is absolutely a skill that requires some effort in terms of time money energy. But like. It's a survival skill.

If you can only cook simple cheap dishes then you can put in the effort to find and learn simple cheap dishes.

But like. Cooking is a skill that pays off. Once you know how to cook something you can do it forever. You can learn meal planning and substitutions. You can make up your own recipes.

When my mom and I were poor as dirt when I was a kid, she'd just make buttered noodles because that's all we could afford. We didn't order takeout.

Now that I'm an adult that can cook anything your heart desires? And has fed crowds for Thanksgiving and Yom Kippur breakfast?

My go to meal each week is just... Baked chicken breast or fish. Whatever was on sale. Then some kind of roasted fresh veg or microwaved can veg. I cook for an hour on Sunday and eat for the week.

Yeah learning to cook on my own was hard and intimidating and it sucked and took me a couple years and sometimes I'd fuck up and make something incredible and end up wasting money and ordering pizza.

Grace going “oh!! But!” and teaching them about starfish, to their absolute delight

How to spring-load your bow!

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.