caedogeist-rights

[caedogeist-rights]

in the sixth months after graduating from college, with my very expensive degree from a good college, i ate nothing but bread. i worked at a bakery / cafe / restaurant and got half off one meal per shift but it was still too expensive even then. but at the end of every night we would throw out all the bread loaves that hadn’t sold, which was most of them, every night. we would fill up ten boxes to give away to a shelter and then we could take anything we could carry, and i couldn’t afford a half off deconstructed sandwich, but i could fill the cabinets of my apartment with bread. everyone who worked there was just like me, subsisting on discarded, overpriced bread. 

(when the managers’ backs were turned i was taught to leave the trashbags of bread behind the dumpster rather than inside it, because it was locked after everyone left to prevent people from stealing from it. we would say we were going out to stack chairs and instead stack prepackaged salads prepared that morning in the narrow space between wall and dumpster, but that’s not what this is about.)

we were working valentine’s day, a little bit miserable about it, because customers are somehow worse on a holiday about love ,and even if we were single we didn’t want to be here, and most of us had people we’d rather be spending the day with, and the snappish, hardass manager was working that day, and everyone could not wait for the day to be over. 

we had a boxes of those bakery tissue sheets around and i was twisting it in my hands and i thought about how the first night my uncle spent with my aunt he had to get up early for work but didn’t want to wake her and the whole thing hadn’t been planned, exactly, so he (a roofer by trade and a golden glove boxer by sport) went into the kitchen and took some paper towels and twisted them between his big, scarred hands until it formed a sweeter shape and when my aunt work up it was to a paper towel rose on her pillow. 

so i used a couple sheets of bakery tissue to make a rose and walked up to my coworker who stared at me with a rictus smile and i gave it to her, trying not overthink if it was a weird thing to do. her smile slipped and she asked “you made this?” holding it carefully, like it wasn’t something her two year old son could have made with his pudgy hands, and i shrugged and got more milk from the back. 

then another coworker held the steamer too long when frothing milk, not on accident but because he was irritated, so i rolled another rose and tucked it in his apron pocket as i walked by. then it was just one more of us up front and it was nothing, thirty seconds of twisting paper to take the stack of cookies out of her hands and hand her a tissue paper rose, her lined face lifting into a grin as she proudly tucked it into the chest pocket of her shirt and i may as well have been standing in front of the ovens for how hot my face felt. 

it was such a silly thing to do, i felt ridiculous, giving away hastily constructed tissue paper roses on valentine’s day, clumsy artful garbage. then one of the servers walked by and noticed and so i made her one too, and then other servers came by, leaning over the glass, and complimenting the flowers with big eyes, and i laughed and made more, still not sure if it was sincere, but even if it wasn’t, i figured making them one and handing it over was better than saying no. 

then i went to the back again and the dishwasher yelled out “where”s mine? what about us?” and he was too sweet to ever be anything less than sincere, so someone kept an eye on the door to the manager’s office as i stood in the sweltering kitchen and rolled clumsy tissue paper roses, enough for everyone 

and by the time the day ended, everyone had one, everyone wore one, tucked in their shirt or their apron or stuck in their hair or taped to the top of their pen. everyone was a little less miserable, smiling like we were all on in on the joke, although i don’t think any of us knew the punchline 

this story doesn’t have a punchline either. i just sometimes think of how much better some crumpled tissue paper made things and think that it can be that easy, sometimes, if we’re sincere and don’t overthink it too much

[caedogeist-rights]

i logged on to twitter.com and saw somebody say “plutonium is fictional because it doesnt exist in nature”. which, one, i dont think is entirely true, im fairly certain trace amounts of plutonium exist in natural uranium deposits, and two, that is such a frankly wonderfully incorrect definition of fictional and im deeply intrigued by the implications. concrete is fictional. polyester doesnt exist

[caedogeist-rights]

Top 3 ways to pronounce "worms":

woims (old-timey New York gangster)

wurrums (Scottish)

weuhrms (bad French accent like the narrator from spongebob)

[caedogeist-rights]

do you think people in the hannibal universe were intimidated out of serial killing by how much thought and care was put into all of the big serial killer's serial killing. like yeah man i'd loveee to get into serial killing but i don't have access to the facilities where i can flay someone alive and make roses with their skin unfortunately :/ also i have a day job :/ if i was a serial killer in the hannibal universe i'd get imposter syndrome while reading articles about other killers like fuckkkkkkk man he sewed them together in a grain silo to look like a giant fucking gradient when viewed from above. why do i even try this shit. and i'd cry myself to sleep every night

[caedogeist-rights]

good news! you're an animorph! bad news! you didn't know about the two-hour limit and got stuck in your first morph, which is whatever this wheel lands on

[caedogeist-rights]

there is a 60% chance i will get to see the second mononoke film in theaters. in tokyo. premier day. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[caedogeist-rights]

although I find both institutions detestable I think they should force the vatican to compete in the Olympics. let's see what those priests can do

[caedogeist-rights]

I love the random replacements for clichés writers insert in science fiction shows. like when a 21st-century human would say "stop pacing you'll wear a hole in the floor" but in a space show the alien/future human says "you're oscillating like a Betelgeusian night badger" or some shit. like fuck yeah he is. amazing drive-by worldbuilding. I'm gonna spend the next half hour wondering why the Betelgeusian night badger evolved to do that

[caedogeist-rights]

Sometimes, when you play dnd, the question isn't "Is this an effective and economical use of my limited spell slots?" but rather, "Would this be really fucking funny?"

[caedogeist-rights]

rip to my brothers friend if not for being a homophobe he would have loved ErHa.........

[caedogeist-rights]

yall you wont believe this but zombieland saga is very very good and cute. im only 4 episodes in but i would cherish it with my life.

[caedogeist-rights]

sundays rule number 1: DON'T THINK ABOUT YOUR LIFE

[caedogeist-rights]

i feel like we as a digital society have forgotten the important rules of the internet

Don't feed the trolls

Never give out personal information

Anonymity is the best defense

Don't click suspicious links

Don't click popups and ads

Just because it's written doesn't mean it's true

You are responsible for your own experience

There is porn of everything, act accordingly

[caedogeist-rights]

Not to randomly talk about Apothecary Diaries, but almost every time Mao Mao talks about Jinshi she uses the most romantic and poetic terms possible but says them with the banal factuality of a nature documentary narrator, and it is absolutely sending me. Like:

Mao Mao, completely deadpan: He is such a heavenly beauty, people would start wars over him.

Mao Mao, legitimately concerned: I best not put makeup on him. If he were made any more beautiful it would topple nations

Mao Mao, watching girls fawn over Jinshi: This makes sense, he has such otherworldly beauty that he would be irresistible to any woman or man

Mao Mao, as if taking a scientific observation: Something must be amiss with Master Jinshi, usually he glitters like the sun

(I’m not overdramatising, these exact narrations happened)

[caedogeist-rights]

the first rule of being on the internet is you should have other stuff going on, besides being on the internet

[caedogeist-rights]

spin the wheel for a random location!!

[caedogeist-rights]

>"this land was uninhabitable desert before we came and fixed it!"

>look at the land

>inhabitants