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To The Person Who Was Sitting Near Me On The Train - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is out Nov 7th and is available to pre-order here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

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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?

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Insane to me that certain comic book creators who shall not be named dismissed Jonathan Harker as a "milk sop" and a boring character. White-haired avenger with ambiguously vampiric superstrength Jonathan Harker. Most violent and unhinged member of the vampire hunters Jonathan Harker. Ran at Dracula with a kukri knife without skipping a beat and then tried to climb out of a window to pursue him Jonathan Harker. "Like a living flame" Jonathan Harker. Calls his bond with his wife "the holiest love" and determines that if she becomes a vampire, even if Dracula calls her to his side, "she shall not go into that dark night alone" Jonathan Harker. You know. That one.

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medicare duo?

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i want to live (all origins)

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God. I love characters whose main motivation is wanting to help people and wanting to make the world a better place, characters who legitimately care about other people, but the way that they try to enact their idea of “good” is by making the worst fucking decisions possible. Characters who are righteously determined that what they’re doing will ultimately serve some greater good, even if it hurts the people they care about. Characters who are so certain that the responsibility to fix the world falls on their shoulders, to the point that they’re willing to make decisions for other people, in the effort of helping. I fucking go CRAZY for characters who do bad things with legitimately good intentions. With the most pure intentions possible. Characters who would genuinely never want to hurt anyone, but keep managing it anyways. OHHH IT MAKES ME SO INSANE.

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the arcane stirs within you

(art prints)

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Justice

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detective au where basira is a sleep deprived, weathered, beaten down PI who spends her days so heavily stressed that a good hug might physically snap her in half and jon is her (comparatively) plucky assistant who is psychic and keeps trying to tell her that he knows who the killer is but she just says "shhh quiet jonathan can't you see the weight of the world is on my shoulders" before staying up for another three days and accidentally getting lost in the london sewers looking for clues

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NANA (2000) Illustrated By: Ai Yazawa

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At least, that’s the word on the street from those what saw what went down at Calypso’s…

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ᴇᴢʀᴀ ᴊᴀᴄᴋ ᴋᴇᴀᴛs Artwork from his 1962 book The Snowy Day.

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Buggerup Busters Phone Wallpaper! Have had this in my brain juuust shy of one entire year, and only decided to actually make it within the last few days.

All character art and each individual word bubble are from Widdershins by Kate Ashwin (which you should read if you haven’t already) and this is the original post that is the middle text:

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talking about impenetrable accents/dialect just reminded me. when I was in Milan a couple of years back I was staying in this little rathole hotel and I had the biggest fucking migraine, so I was like non c'è problema I'll just go buy painkillers. of course every pharmacy on the map in a three block radius was closed, so my stupid ass just starts wandering around trying to figure out on the fly if you can get OTC from supermarkets in italy.

I walk into this little everything store (to my foreign eyes the kind of place that back home could sell you a bunch of carrots, a 6-pack of beer, pantyhose, bleach and a screwdriver set) and I see some household basics in the back but not what I need. with the confidence of a person who is only in the city for 3 days because he got bored and packed a bag and booked the cheapest flight available the week before (<= MENTAL ILLNESS), I was like no worries I know some italian, I can just ask.

I grab a bottle of water, walk up to the counter, and I'm like Ciao, hai il paracetamolo? And the guy is like che, and I'm like paracetamolo. Per la mia testa. And he's like che?

This is where I would have said 'aspirina' except I can't take aspirin for medical reasons, or 'antidolorifico' except I don't know that word and I've got no phone data for google translate and also I'm stupid. So in my fucked up leith-glasgow-italian accent I'm like paaa-ra-cetta-mollll-ooo. He's like ohhh bene, bene, and he calls another guy out of the back and asks him to go get something. Other guy then walks out of the store into the street, and before I can be like hey, che la fuck, he comes back and hands me a huge bundle of herbs.

At this point I'm like okay this entire interaction has been a bust, but these guys have been very nice and patient and they're both smiling happily at me because they've been of service, so I'm like ahh perfetto, grazie, pay them a couple of euros and leave.

EVENTUALLY I find a pharmacy that's open, and my head is fucking killing me, and my phone still isn't connecting, and now I have this small shrubbery poking out of my coat pocket, so I don't even bother looking around the shelves. I just walk straight to the counter and I'm like uhh ciao, scusi. And hearing my nightmare of an accent the guy answers in english and I'm like thank christ, do you please have paracetamol. Not aspirin, I can't take aspirin. And he's like yeah yeah hold on, goes into the back, comes out with what I need.

Only when he comes out he gives me this look, and then he starts laughing. And then he pretends he's not laughing and rings me up and I pay, and as I'm leaving I can see him losing it. But I don't care, my head is going to explode, I'm going back to the rathole to close the blinds and fall comatose for four hours.

When I get back to my hotel room I take off my coat and remember the huge bouquet of herbs in my pocket. They smell amazing, and I'm like I'm pretty sure this is parsley in which case I can just get some tomatoes and mozzarella later and make it work. but since I have no idea what that interaction was, I want to make sure. I bring out my phone to get a visual reference of what parsley leaves look like, and because I was using it for google translate earlier I put 'parsley' in the wrong box like a dope and translate it to italian.

prezzemolo

I wish I could have been the pharmacist in the moment he looked at my tired pissed off anglophone ass, heard me say 'paracetamol' in my fucked up accent, and turned around saw what was in my pocket. I'd have lost my shit too.

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The guys seated at the back of the classroom: