jetcore500

[jetcore500]

An alpine subspecies of Killamoth; huge, intelligent predators from the world of Amphibia. Their social structures show sophisticated intra-specific communication and co-operation, extending in one case into a alliance with their usual prey among the coastal subspecies!

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testing testing new app and new tablet I got on christmasssss

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The real reason that genius detective characters in fiction change authors and actors so often is that without periodic hard resets, they eventually start figuring out that they're fictional characters. It's the metafictional equivalent of cycling an AI to prevent it from going rogue. For many years it was believed that killing them off in a suitably dramatic "final case" would indefinitely suspend the process, but this was later determined not to be fully reliable – as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned, to his regret.

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Someone in the Fort Collins Area owes me an explanation

So, I’m up at my parent’s house to return the power tools I borrowed and say hi, and I’m out walking the dogs. Got a leash in each hand, dual-weilding doggos. It’s a bit tricky but they’re used to this and don’t tangle as much and I’m the only person with good enough knees to stop them when they see snackable wildlife.

Anyway, we’re on the North end of the Poudre River trail, by overland, you know where that long bridge is? And I’m disposing of dog waste right before the bridge like a responsible adult when I hear what sounds like an ice cream truck playing “Yankee Doodle” at roughly five times the speed it’s normally played at and see the following:

There is a gentleman rapidly approaching our location who is also dual-weilding doggos, but in his case he’s got a pair of malamutes barreling down the trail at full Iditarod speed, clearly having the time of their lives. They’re hauling thier human behind them, whom I will describe from the top down:

He’s wearing a helmet, which is the only sensible thing going on here. He also has a magnificent handlebar mustache that is flapping joyously in the unusual October rain. He’s wearing a full body Spandex suit of such intensely clashing colors that is physically hurt to look at, but most importantly

He is riding

A unicycle.

It’s not a normal unicycle either this gentleman is towering over us mortals in an unreasonably massive unicycle, like he’d lost the back end of a penny farthing and decided that was an acceptable means of transportation. I see a device attached to the seat that looks like a pedal-powered music box which explains why my ears are being assaulted with the speed core rendition of Yankee Fucking Doodle. I do not see brakes.

I realize I have half a second to grab my own dogs before they decide to join or topple this strange Traveller from wherever Dr.Seuss books are set. I gather each animal under my arms and stand there with a collective hundred pounds of writhing canine under my armpits as the malamutes pick of speed and as they pass the gentleman cheerfully bellows something at me that I don’t hear because Arwen has already partially broken my hold and is attempting to climb on my head, presumably to launch herself at him.

And then he is gone.

We stand there, staring bewildered in the direction of his last known trajectory, listening as speedcore Yankee Doodle fades into the distance. Even after it is gone I still wait, because the trail ends in half a mile from here and I expect to here a crash, possibly even see a fire explosion. But nothing comes, only the sound of October rain and confused dogs.

So if you know of this gentleman and if he’s still alive/on the material plane, can you ask him something for me?

How the hell does he STOP?

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Lok’Tar Ogar

(As usual, all the names have been changed to protect people’s privacy.  LONG POST so press “J” to skip or start scrolling because I can’t make cuts work for Moblie, sorry.)

Back in 2004 I went to a cousin’s wedding and my mom got into Fandom.

Ruth, my Mom’s-college-roommate’s-daughter was getting married to a man of mixed reputability in what had been for several months had been the primary sitcom of the family- mushroom vs. champagne draperies, the bride wanted a small ceremony and the mother of the groom wanted to invite every business contact she had, and then there was the problem of the Rabbis- Ruth’s rabbi had mostly retired but had promised to marry her in her youth, David’s had promised the same and the current Rabbi of Ruth’s synagogue wanted in too, so they agreed to be married by all three Rabbis.  Furthermore, any Jewish wedding requires a Chuppah- a canopy under which the ceremony takes place.  Mom agreed to make one for Ruth and David’s wedding, (MUSHROOM-colored of course, not champagne) and escort it there personally as we were attending the ceremonies.

Alas, the wedding was in Columbus, a terrible place. 

Southeast Ohio is generally a rather nice place- on the far northern end of the appalachia it has lovely rolling hills of deep hardwood forests, a spectacular zoo and many other things a scientifically inclined teenager might enjoy but I was not going to those, I was going to a Wedding, where I had been guilted into being a flower girl on account of being the youngest available cousin, along with my sister.  I spent most of the drive from Colorado in a state of spectacular teenage misery, which was almost entirely obliterated when we got to the hotel.

The guests of the Hotel consisted thusly:

My family (4)

A small herd of fancy-suited businessmen there for some obscure finance meeting (30ish)

A jolly and boisterous horde of Gamers, Cosplayers, Geeks and Freaks present for the World Of Warcraft convention immediately across the street (several hundred)

I didn’t actually know a damn thing about WoW, other than it was something my geekier friends in middle school played, and that it had elves with ridiculous eyebrows, but I know how to make friends with the kind of people who wear nothing but bodypaint and prosthetic ears in public and started talking to the gang of Blood Elves at the breakfast bar while the businessmen huddled together at their table like a group of musk oxen forming up against a pack of wolves.

Eventually mom wandered over and joined in the conversation- after years of making Halloween costumes, stage props, miscellaneous fabric constructions like the Chuppah and so forth, she’d gained an extensive knowledge of what fiber can be made to do, but wanted to know what marvelous things these people were doing with plastics.  She hit it off particularly well with the Troll over his teeth, and they decided to confide in her.

“Hey, here’s a fun thing to do-” Said the blood elf, before trotting over to the edge of the mezzanine overlooking the lobby.  

“LOK’TAR OGAR!”  she bellowed as loudly as her tiny, corseted frame could manage. “FOR THE HORDE!!!” Roared back several dozen Warcrafters, shaking their con-safe weaponry and causing several of the businessmen to duck for cover.

“Yeah, if you need anything, just yell that.”  she nodded, before we parted ways.

Later that night, Mom slipped in the shower and sprained her ankle, which resulted in a moderately panicked but ultimately boring visit to a clinic to get it X-ray’d and acquire a wheelchair.  The next morning, however, we had to proceed to the wedding, and discovered that the elevator was out of service.

A Chuppah, if you’re not familiar with one, is roughly the same dimensions and weight as those pop-up tents they use at gentrified outdoor craft fairs, or about 9 feet long and close to 60lbs when folded up.  This one was closer to 100 once all the memorial images and sentimental fabrics and special tent poles had been added on.    Mom was stuck in the wheelchair, Dad was in a state of near panic at Mom being injured and also having to be somewhere On Time, and my sister and I were liquefying in the summer heat and the bride-mandated mushroom-colored seven goddamn layers of itchy-ass tulle flower girl dresses, barely able to lift the chuppah between us.

In short stairs were not happening and three quarters of us were about to riot but Mom is definitely the smart person in the family because she remembered-

“LOK’TAR OGAR!!”

“FOR THE HORDE!!”

“I NEED SOME HELP!”

Instantly the cosplayers from the night before were there, along with a dozen more.  Two beefy trolls carried Mom down the stairs and clean out to the parking garage, someone else got the chuppah, and the Blood elf managed to get concierge to bring our car around to the curb with our destination already programmed into the (VERY PRIMITIVE) gps.  I thought my dad was going to cry with relief.

“So [Gallus].”  Mom asked me on the way to the wedding.  “People who like videogames. Do they all have Magic Words?”

“Yeah most of them have some kind of phrase like ‘may the force be with you’ or ‘live long and prosper’.  Why?”

She just nodded, storing that fact away for later.

The wedding turned out to be an event in and of itself- The mother of the bride fainted when they kissed, the rabbis nearly got into a fistfight, the mother of the groom fell off the chair and needed stitches, uncle Larry tore his pants on the dance floor then elected to remove them and keep dancing- and I managed to forget entirely about Mom’s question.

*

Last year, we were doing theater set-in at the same time the local theater and culture complex was hosting the small city convention.  It was July, hotter than satan’s own asshole, and the stage pieces were too large for both of our 5’2-and-under asses to move.

I came back out from wresting a Magic tree into the complex to find mom squinting calculatingly at a group of Marvel cosplayers.

“What are their Magic Words?”

“Huh?”

“The words you say when you want to summon them- ‘Use the Force’ or something?”

I blinked a few times, as my heat stroke-addled brain translated that.  “…Avengers Assemble?”

“HEY AVENGERS!” Hollered Mom. “ASSEMBLE!!”

INSTANTLY, an Iron Man and three Captains America sprinted over.

“What can we do Ma’am?” asked one of the captains, sticking rigorously to character.

“We need help moving these set pieces in and you have muscles.”  she explained, and without question everyone pitched in to move a magical forest, the front half of a castle and a dragon’s cave into the Children’s Theater backstage.  The Iron Man politely answered questions about painting metallics on Cardboard for her and all three Captains America lines up and saluted her upon emptying the truck.

“You’re dangerous.” I teased her as they returned to Con.

“Tell me more Magic Words- I need that tall one in purple to help with the lights.”  she said, gesturing to a Waluigi that was about to become familiar with the Children’s Theater Lighting System.

_________________________________

(If you enjoyed this story, please consider supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon where you can pre-order my upcoming Family Lore illustrated Anthology.  Thank you.)

[jetcore500]

Let’s Have Another Bullet Point Story, Courtesy of a Friend

So I have a friend that used to be in the tumblers troupe at the renfaire as a contortionist

We were chatting online and she told me to tell you all this story.

I love Kat dearly

but she forgets that she’s stupid strong and hypermobile

so one day she throws her back out

bad enough that she needed painkillers and couldn’t stand upright

“But also I needed Tampons and like.  A Burrito, real bad.”

she’s flat on her back in her apartment when she decides this

and, in an

impeccable

leap of reasoning, decides

“I can’t roll my back forward to sit/stand up like normal.

But I can ARCH my back just fine.

SO 

I’m going to do that and get on my hands and feet in a stomach-in-the-air this-shit-belongs-in-a-horror-movie-type pose,

And amble on down to the 7-11”

“And get me that Burrito”

It is, 

for context, 

after midnight in July during a wildfire so it’s hot as satan’s own asshole and the moon is red and shit’s already generally cursed.

Imagineyou are some poor sap working nights at the world’s deadest 7-11, and you hear the door jangle but you don’t see anyone’s head over the counters.

Whatever.

Except you keep hearing noises like there’s someone in the next aisle over.  

Fucking around in the burrito section

It’s also worth mentioning that Kat

1. sings whatever earworm is currently running through her head when she’s not paying attention

2. sounds EXACTLY like some kind of creepy child from a horror movie when doing so

tonight’s song is something from veggietales.

DUDE ACTUALLY STANDS HIS GROUND

and/or is really fucking high and isn’t sure if he’s tripping balls or notanyway

Kat goes up to pay for her burrito and tampons

She realizes the counter presents something of a challenge, and then demonstrates for me on her kitchen table at 4AM during a different july wildfire, 

exactly 

how she used the shelves to climb up the counter 

like one of the boston robotics beasties

dude stares at her for like, five minutes and says.

“Register’s broke.”

“Oh No!” Says Kat. “Just Take ‘em.” “Really?  I can leave cash-you don’t have to give me change I don’t want you to get in trouble with your manager.” “…Nah.” “Oh!  OK!  Thank you!” “Yeah ok bye.”

Shortly after she arrived back at the apartment, she got a text on her phone from the campus security about  "A Suspicious Individual” at tle 7-11. 

It took her 

FOUR

FUCKING 

YEARS

 to realize she was the suspicious individual

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what are your general thoughts on wyoming?

Before working at the greenhouse in FoCo, I didn’t understand people’s obsession with tomatoes.  I still don’t understand WHY people are like this, the plants are fussy and unpleasant to work with and tomatoes taste like concentrated mouth sores to me, but as least now I have some inkling of the depths of madness edible nightshades can drive people to*. I watched a pair of octogenarian women get in a fistfight over the last Amish Paste we had that week, another man break down in tears over the fact we were out of Mortgage Lifters until next Teusday, and my own manager wax poetic about recent developments in hybridization.

*I could understand if it was Potatoes, THOSE are amazing

The greenhouse I worked at grew ours in-house, to the tune of four long arched green houses and 40 different breeds of tomato, started in February and staggered to last most of the season. We sold something to the tune of ten thousand mature plants per season, and four times that in starters, the manager explained with pride, the two anatolian-ridgeback mixes drooling happily on my leg during employee orientation.

“Who buys That Many tomatoes?” I asked, naieve. 

My manager’s dark laughter should have been a warning.

During one of the hailstorms in late May, the greenhouse was, briefly, blessedly deserted, if deafeningly loud as the sky hurled balls of ice onto the cheap plastic roof.  My manager had left early that afternoon and so I was left to manage that fifth of the business largely unattended.   I was watering the Fucking Tomatoes when two of the roundest miniature Australian shepherds I’ve ever seen appeared at my feet, wheezing happily.  Looking up, I found a pair of equally gleeful humans behind them, sun-burnt and wearing matching Jimmy Buffet shirts.

“WE’D LIKE SOME TOMATOES.” The man bellowed over the roar of hail.

“WE HAVE MANY TOMATOES.” I shouted back, gesturing at the wall of tomatoes behind me.

“GREAT!” howled the woman. “CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THEM? WE’VE NEVER DONE TOMATOES BEFORE.”

Since I was alone, I spent the next forty-five minutes screaming the attributes of all forty breeds of tomato at them, unable to hear myself speak over the rain, hail and wind, and already dissociating from the noise. I have no idea what I actually said to these people. I might have claimed they were bred on the moon. We got to the end, my throat raw, and fat little Aussies drooling on my shoes.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT MARIE?” The man asked.

“I DON’T KNOW, THEY ALL SOUND EXCELLENT.” Marie considered. “LETS GET THEM ALL HOWARD.”

what.

“GOOD IDEA.  WE’LL TAKE FIVE OF EACH.” said Howard.

WHAT.

That’s 200 plants and at $10 a pop, $2000 dollars worth of tomatoes. Why.  I get the extra-large cart out and start loading the tomatoes on. How. I wonder as It takes me three lumber carts to get them all up to the register to scan them.

“WE’RE FROM CASPER.” Howard said, like that would explain anything. “THE BIG BLUE HOUSE, YOU CAN SEE IT FROM 25.”

Having driven through that part of Wyoming several times to and from Grand Teton, I actually knew about the house in question. “OH YES. WE USE THAT HOUSE TO KNOW WE’RE HALFWAY TO TETON AND TO GET LUNCH.”

“YOU SHOULD STOP BY NEXT TIME YOU’RE AROUND.” said Marie.

“OKAY.” I said, for some reason, and helped them out to the parking lot where I discoved they’d apparently driven down in an actual Short Bus, modified to be a sort of camping vehicle, with seatbelts and custom dog-beds for the Fat Aussies, apparently named “Florence” and “Mashmallow”.  I waved cheerfully to them, ears ringing and white lights flashing in my eyes from the continuous noise and feeling like I’d stepped out of my correct timeline.  I found one of the other managers and told them I’d just made them $2k, had a migraine and was going home.

A month and a half later, the seasonal job had ended and I was driving to Washington to see a friend and I happened to be passing through Casper.  In need of a break and eternally curious, I decided to try to find the Big Blue House and see if any of the tomatoes had survived.  It took me a bit to find the correct frontage road but as I was driving by the front yard-

“[REDACTED] HOW ARE YOU?” bellowed Marie. somehow spotting and recognizing me. “I’M SO GLAD YOU CAME, COME SEE THEM!”

Apparently they just talk like that all the time, but I had a lovely half hour in which Marie and Howard took me on a lovely tour of their experimental self-sustaining farm with the trout pond and chickens and the 200-still-alive-and-apparently-thriving tomato plants.  Given that tomatoes are happiest when hydrated But suffering, Casper turned out to be a good choice.  They’d also gotten some 30 varieties of corn, 15 types of potatoes and 12 types of carrots and Howard was looking into Beans and Squash for next year.

“IT WAS VERY NICE OF YOU TO COME OUT.” said Howard.  “HERE, HAVE SOME HAM.”

I thanked them, took my three pounds of sustainably-farmed Loud People Ham, and excused myself as I still had to get to Bozeman by that evening and they waved me goodbye from the driveway.

We’re still facebook friends.

(if you enjoy hearing about strange people I meet, please consider supporting my Tip Jar so I can buy groceries)

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When I had the idea of drawing toxic yuri and a warm comic about siblings for Christmas at the same time

I chose to draw both🙂

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Merry Christmas have a Santa 🎅

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this will be the year I finally convince everyone to abandon New Year's resolutions in favour of Yule Boasting, the clearly superior tradition

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So one of my neighbors has a lawn Roomba or whatever they're called, and this thing trundles around looking like a background robot in the background of the original trilogy, and ABSOLUTELY BAFFLING THE DOGS.

They have concluded, I think, that it's some kind of prey animal because right after this video ended they decided to crouch down and stalk it, which means I'm 90% sure I'm going to have to stop Arwen from eating it at some point.

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NEW !!! SNAKE DISCOVERED

ITS CALLED THE LIMESTONE EYELASH PIT VIPER. THAT iS SO CUTE. ITS SO PRETTY

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Wishing everyone a beautiful holiday season of peace and happiness🎄🎁✨

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some bugs i drew hehe : ]

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day 152: techwear

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