blooper-boy

[blooper-boy]

We have exactly one Christmas tradition in my house, and it feels very important to share it. I've been a cat person basically forever and for most of my adult life, my house has had more cats than people in it. They've all liked sleeping under the Christmas tree and all that, but other than that, they always just sort of ignored it.

But in 2018, we got Natasha.

There are about a dozen pictures like that, but I always adopt adult cats, so we figured this just came with having a kitten in the house. She was just this tiny little fluff who still fit in my cupped hands despite being about six months old, so we put away the ornaments, shrugged it off, and took advantage of the opportunity to have a really cute Christmas card the next year.

Then, 2019 came around.

Natasha escalated to sleeping in the tree in between trying to eat all the branches, and honestly, it was too funny to make more than a cursory effort to stop her. My partner and I assumed that since she was still pretty tiny, she had more growing to do and would surely get to a point where her own body weight would keep her from doing this. In the meantime, we left the tree without ornaments that year and just called it good.

But then 2020 came around, forcing us to acknowledge that:

Natasha was not going to get too big to do this. At this point it had become clear that she wasn't developing slowly. She was just a really tiny cat. She's less than half the size of any other cat I've ever had.

Natasha was also not going to chill out enough to stop doing this.

But hey. Who needs ornaments with a face like that poking out of the branches at you all the time?

Sure enough, 2021 Natasha also had zero chill about the tree, but at this point it would have been weirder if she did leave it alone.

I thought I had seen everything, but this year I'd been kind of down and my partner decided to surprise me by setting up the tree and stuff while I was at work. It was an incredibly sweet gesture considering they don't actually even like Christmas decorations. It also meant I got to come home to this.

I kept expecting her to fall out, but she just chilled there, surveying the room until she got bored. And yes, that is absolutely a big, fancy cat tree she's ignoring in favor of scaling the Christmas tree.

Two days before Christmas, she has finally gotten bored enough that I'm making my first attempt in ages to actually put up ornaments. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll be more disappointed if they have to come down or if they don't.

[blooper-boy]

WIBTA for taking advantage of my boss’ possible manic episode?

I know this already sounds bad but hear me out.

So I (30M) am the sole employee of this guy (62M) who’s honestly just a miserable boss and an even more miserable person. It sucks so bad working for him—the pay is horrendous, he’s verbally abusive, and the working conditions are awful (in the winter I literally have to stay bundled up the whole work day because he refuses to put the heat on in the office). He wouldn’t even give me holidays off if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s basically nothing to do those days because everywhere else is closed. I’m almost positive he unironically thinks poor people should die if they can’t work. His nephew (aka his only living relative and just the nicest guy) came by yesterday to invite him to Christmas dinner and he told him he’d see him in hell.

I cannot stress this enough—it’s BAD. I’d quit, but it’s been hard finding a better job and I’ve got four kids at home, including one with special needs.

Anyway, so here’s where I’m wondering if I’d be the asshole. Today was Christmas Day and he showed up at my house out of nowhere (huge red flag, I know). At first I thought he’d forgotten I had the day off and he was here to chew me out, which was worrying enough, but then his whole demeanor changed and he was super happy and excited and talking about how he was going to raise my salary. He even mentioned possibly making me a partner in the firm.

Now if that was it, I’d feel a little weird about the suddenness of it but it’d be fine. I’m not going to complain about having more money to feed my family. But then he started talking about how he wanted to pay our mortgage off. He talked about wanting to pay for our son to get the very expensive medical care that’s probably going to save his life. He mentioned at one point that he was going to be donating a huge amount of money to charity too—I knew he was rich but it staggered me. All this from a guy who doesn’t (didn’t?) even want to turn on the heat or the lights because it costs too much money.

It was such a sudden and drastic change that happened very literally overnight and now I’m kind of concerned he’s having a manic episode or something. I really, really want to accept his sudden generosity (I probably will; my wife is all for it and thinks he owes it to us), and I would love to believe that he’s truly had a sudden change of heart (an actual Christmas miracle lol) but I’m just worried about the possible consequences of accepting huge financial gifts like this from someone who I believe might be experiencing some kind of break from reality. Even if there’s nothing legally wrong with it, I’m worried about the ethics of it.

TLDR, my asshole boss might be in the middle of a mental breakdown. WIBTA if I accepted his offer to pay off my mortgage and my son’s medical expenses?

[blooper-boy]

[blooper-boy]

I was finally made fully aware of the gay giant robot anime and its way better than I expected

And this clip isn’t false advertising or queer baiting. It’s really that gay while also being hilarious with great action and surprisingly realistic reactions to what’s going on. Like one guy gets waterboarded by the CIA and actually gets PTSD to the point of only feeling safe inside the giant robot but not in a cool way but more in a curled up in a paralyzed ball on the floor of the cockpit way.

But for a more in-depth review without spoilers here’s the video that made me aware of the show

I rarely want to watch an anime to the end but this one got me good and I highly recommend it.

[blooper-boy]

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this post on reddit fucking killed me the other day

[blooper-boy]

★ 【キャロット】 「 Falin 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me! insta • x • bsky

[blooper-boy]

Morning Glories and Puppies (details), set of four sliding door panels, Edo period, 1784 by Maruyama Ōkyo (1733-1795) from the Tokyo National Museum

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cant talk rn obsessed over the design concept of this 2017 production of pinocchio as a stage play where pinocchio is the only character played by a human actor and the rest of the cast are portrayed as puppets ,,,

[blooper-boy]

Love seeing something from TikTok and going “girlie that is literally what led to the downfall of the Papal States”

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nobody asked me my headcanons on Bill's weird alien shape gender but that's only because you didn't know you wanted to know

of course he has gold bricks and pronouns

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no no No No No NO NO NOnONONO

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sometimes you just want to look at the qing dynasty jadeite cabbage again

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This man's an expert

[blooper-boy]

hard cider was invented when someone decided to make beer that tastes good instead of bad