#((STORYTIME

[cugzarui]

can i have my bones

[silvermoon424]

It's so fucking funny how many people who owned Furbies as children ended up being traumatized by them in some way

[xiaq]

Overheard at the thrift store:

“Stop trying to hold my hand, people are going to think we’re lesbians.”

“We are lesbians.”

“Yeah but not with each other.”

“Ok, but we’re still—god, why are you so stupid?”

“Dunno. Why do you want to hold hands with a stupid person?”

“I don’t.”

“Evidence to the contrary.”

(Mocking voice) “Oooh evidence to the contrary.” (Normal voice) “such a fuckin’ smartass.”

“Oh I’m smart, now? Thought I was stupid”

*Slap fight ensues*

Anyway, I hope they figure out they’re in love soon.

[newtsoftheworldunite]

One of my favorite Nevada divorce stories is the story of Stan and Joan Lee. Yes, that Stan Lee. The comics guy.

So in 1947 Stan Lee, who's recently gotten home to New York City after several years in the US Army Training Film Division, meets a model named Joan and falls in love. There's just a little hitch. Joan is already married. She's British, and married an American soldier who she'd known for less than 24 hours in 1943 so she could move to the States. The marriage part unsurprisingly didn't work out and they've spent most of it separated, but she's still legally married, which becomes a problem when Stan proposes two weeks after meeting her.

Divorce in New York is still inconvenient and arduous and requires proving cause. But there's Nevada! So Joan flies out to Reno and starts her six week residency period. Stan is elated. But then he gets worried. There must be a lot of attractive men in Nevada also waiting around for divorces. What if Joan falls for one of them? What if she likes the climate? What if she forgets all about him? So Stan Lee, who's so dedicated to his job writing comics that he mailed in scripts every single week he was in the Army and even risked a court martial once by breaking into the mailroom to get his assignment, goes AWOL and drives from NYC to Reno.

He proposes again, he and Joan get married at a little wedding chapel once her first marriage is dissolved, and then they go back to NYC, where they remain happily married for 69 years until her death in 2017. G*d bless Nevada and G*d bless no fault divorce.

The US having an entire city in the middle of the desert dedicated entirely to gambling sounds like a thing other countries would make up about the US as a joke but its real and no one bats an eye at it

[uwudonoodle]

Storytime: My brother Dave used to manage a Little Ceasars, and he hated it. So when my mom asked him what he wanted on his birthday cake, he jokingly said the Little Ceasars guy being stabbed with his own spear. My mom, who doesn't always get sarcasm, didn't even question it. She lovingly made him exactly what he asked for. It's my favorite cake ever.

Happy Ides of March to Ceasar getting stabbed!

[foldingfittedsheets]

Since everyone seems to love my sex shop stories, here’s another one.

Phone calls were literally a game for us. Not all phone calls, but there was a specific brand of call where guys would creep on us. 90% of the workforce at the sex shops was women. So we’d get dudes calling jacking off or trying to get their jollies from us.

The game: make them hang up. We could have hung up. On a few occasions I did, but for the most part we made a sport out of getting creeps to go flaccid. It really depended on a caller.

You couldn’t just go in for belittling them straight off- some guys wanted that. You had to tailor your strategy to the perv. Overall it was pretty fun and it turned an aspect of the job that could’ve become a major bummer into a fun sport. We’d get excited when the phones rang.

So one day the phone rings. I pick up and it was very clearly a young teen who was putting on a deep voice. I was utterly delighted, I’d never had a crank call before. He said, “I have a dildo emergency! Can you deliver 5 boxes of dildos to my home?!”

It took everything in me not to crack in that moment. It was so funny. It was like three kids had walked through the door in a trench coat and the phrase “dildo emergency” was one of the funniest things I’d ever heard.

But I kept it together. In smooth customer service tones I replied, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear you’re having an emergency, but due to the nature of our product we do require people to come pick it up themselves.”

The caller audibly deflated. Some of the deep voice he was putting on bled away when he said plaintively, “But it’s an emergency…”

“I’m sorry, sir, rules are rules.”

He hung up. I burst out laughing and told my coworker what had happened. She said, “I will buy you lunch if you call back and pretend you can deliver something.”

This sounded like an all around win for me, and the kid hadn’t used anything to block his number. So I called back.

“Hello!” This was before caller ID was common for home phones and so he picked up in his totally normal voice, several octaves higher than before.

“Hello, I’m calling regarding your dildo emergency?”

“Oh! Hem hem,” he coughed, getting his voice back into character for me. “Yes! The emergency!”

“Well I’ve spoken to my manager and it’s your lucky day. We’ll be able to make a delivery after all. Five boxes you said? We can swing it by later, we’ll just need your name, address, and credit card number.”

He was thrown by needing to provide info and was silent for a moment then said, “Well how much is it for five boxes?”

“About five hundred dollars, sir.”

He slipped out of his character voice to exclaim, “Five hundred dollars?! What kind of dildos are they?!”

“Just standard six inches with balls, sir.”

This was his breaking point. He started wheezing with laughter trying to repeat the phrase “six inches with balls” incoherently.

“So your address and card info?”

He hung up and I broke down laughing too. We both got a kick out of it, and I won the game twice in one day.

[batshit-auspol]

As a holdover from when churches used to run schools, many states in Australia legislate that the local church can come into schools to teach religion classes for an hour each week.

These 'scripture teacher' roles generally do not require any formal education training, and can be filled by just about any random off the street, which means that for one class a week Australian students are subjected to some of the most unhinged people on earth teaching them all kinds of made up stuff with zero supervision.

Aussies: This is a free thread to reply with the stories of the funniest things your scripture teachers said or did when you were a kid.

[taffywabbit]

a bunch of my computer parts came with super bright gamer RGBs all over them (not by choice - the models with lights just happened to be better deals) and my case has a glass side panel, so when I first brought it home and set it up, I had to spend like 2 hours downloading and configuring several different programs to turn them all off (because no single app seemed to be able to control all the components at once).

in the end, the only light I left on was on the side of my GPU, and I set it to be a soft dark purple that would slide across the length of the GPU like a marquee every few seconds - nothing that'd disturb my sleep if my computer happened to wake itself up in a dark room, but enough to look cool and give me a visual indicator that the PC was turned on.

anyways sometimes I guess the driver that controls that specific component's RGBs just... crashes? for absolutely no reason? and the result is that it defaults to an intense, solid red that harshly illuminates my whole case and the area around it. every time this happens I cannot shake the immediate, instinctive fear that my computer has turned evil and is going to kill me. like oh god oh fuck it knows I ""fixed"" one of its CPU cooler fans by scotch-taping it in place so it would stop spinning unevenly and screeching at me, and now it's waiting for its chance to strike and claim ultimate revenge

[psychologicalwarclaire]

Storytime!

When I was getting tested for autism the evaluator asked me why I suspected I was autistic. I said that among other things, I heavily related to characters who were implied or confirmed to be on the spectrum. He said, "Oh, like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory?"

I looked this man dead in the eyes and said, "No. Donatello the ninja turtle from the 2018 Nickelodeon series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."

He wrote something down.

[sylphidine]

@i-am-a-fish

From one of my longfics [it's dinner, not lunch, but it's delicious and everyone is happy]:

The vibrant, art-filled walls of SpaHa Soul never failed to send a shiver of happiness down Swatch’s spine. The Friday night after they got their job offer letter, they followed Uncle Julius to a corner glass-topped table, while Indigo pulled out a chair for Aunt Desiree. Catechu chatted with the guitarist setting up for the evening’s set and waved at Artist T., just emerging from the kitchen with plates for the group of diners in the opposite corner.

Uncle Julius had found this place about eight years ago and it had become THE go-to place for Dyer-Paletta family celebrations.   

And tonight they were here to celebrate Indo and Catto’s getting summer internships at the Wythe in Williamsburg, as well as Swatch’s internship.

“Chef’s choice tonight, sir,” Uncle Julius said to Artist T., after getting a hearty backslap from the proprietor. “All three of these fine young people, going out into the world and making their mark!”

“It’s a better world for you all being in it,” agreed Artist T., making a note on his pad and heading back through the swinging doors.

“I like the new eyeglasses, honey,” Aunt Desiree commented to Swatch. “You look good in aviators, and brown is a nice color for you.”

Swatch nodded.”The tint’s helpful for cutting out blue light, and since I expect I’m going to be spending a lot more time in front of screens with the new job, I figured they were worth a splurge.”

On the other side of the table, Indo was listing off all the different areas in the boutique hotel where he and his twin would be working during their ten weeks. “I don’t know how I’m going to keep a straight face when I’m answering phones and directing calls to ‘Le Crocodile’. It’ll probably get easier after a while. At least ‘Bar Blondeau’ sounds more normal. Only thing I’m worried about is getting there on time every day.”

“Better than the commute would have been if we’d gotten the gig at The Ludlow. That commute would have been a real bitch.” Catto caught his mother’s glare and muttered, “Sorry, mom.  It would have been a real bear .”

Uncle Julius laughed and then turned to Swatch. “You’re going to be cutting it awfully fine, between graduation and starting this new job. You’d better start looking at apartments now if you don’t think your landlady will extend your lease past June.”

“I know. Even with a decent salary, I’m either going to have to spend all my time commuting or all my money on a shoebox to live in.” They realized that it sounded like they were complaining, and quickly added with a laugh in their voice, “Or I could ask my favorite aunt to use her real estate agent superpowers and her mad networking skills.”

“That’s the spirit,” Aunt Desiree answered. “We’re not going to leave you out in the cold, even if you have to stay with us for a month or so while you’re getting your feet under you. You’ve got family, don’t forget."

Swatch smiled back at her. “I will never forget that.”

“And don’t forget we’re proud of you. All three of you,” Uncle Julius interjected, waving his hand to include his sons. “Not a bad apple in the bunch.”

“Thanks, Pop,” Indo replied for himself and for his brother. “Especially thanks for being such a good sport about us not working at Ambit Automation.” “Oh, you boys might still end up there if the economy tanks. Luxury disappears, but people always need manufacturing. Look at the Brooklyn Navy Yards. That’s as big a comeback as the Jazz beating the Nuggets.”

“But the boys are using their degrees,” Aunt Desiree pointed out. “Degrees that you and I both approved of, husband mine.”

“Yes, dear.”

At that moment Artist T. and Amber swooped in with platters of fried chicken, stuffed pork chops, coconut rice, spicy yams, and collard greens, enough to feed an army.

Catechu raised his glass. “To family.”

Four glasses clinked against his.

how would one of your OCs react to a HUGE burger and delicious seasoned french fries?

[bluecatwriter]

I've been rereading some of my old travel diaries from my early 20's, and one of them seriously reads like a slow-burn fanfic. I was on tour with a small indie band and there was a cute guy my age traveling with the band. And we spent two weeks "accidentally" hanging out and sitting close to each other at the merch table in smoky bars and reading Tolkien poetry to each other and taking walks at the beach and sharing food and stargazing and sleeping next to each other on living room floors and giving each other back rubs and talking late into the night gazing into each other's eyes.

We never kissed. We never even held hands. I pretended to fall asleep on his shoulder once in the car, and one day I gave him a little kiss on the cheek. And that was it. We said goodbye two weeks later and we both thought it was forever and I pined so hard that I threw up.

A month later he sent me an apologetic letter saying that he was sorry for being so presumptuous when I clearly had no romantic interest in him, but that he had to be honest that he was in love with me. And I was like, "What?! He was in love with me this whole time???"

So yeah, we're married now (celebrated ten years last autumn) but if you're ever wondering if your slow-burn fic is too slow, or that your characters are too oblivious, just remember me and my now-spouse mutually pining over each other every single second of the day for two weeks without ever saying a word to each other about how we felt. I was reading my own diary yelling, "JUST KISS HIM ALREADY!"

[thatsthat24]

Narrating People’s Lives: The Saga Continues 🎃 (Felt like making a sequel to one of my favorites)

[cugzarui]

i-im sorry hWHAT

Like what do you mean my grandma was sold to my grandpa for a horse😭

[beechfruit]

So in my class we name our glue sticks to stop the kids losing or mistreating them - they're much less likely to lose a glue lid if you're shouting "oh no, Alfred's been decapitated". It's fun.

Now, I'm a big batfam girlie ✨ so naturally I named all our glues after these characters. We have Richard and Bruce and Stephanie and Barbara etc. you see the point.

Recently, the first glue stick ran out. It had to go in the bin so unfortunately it "died", and you'll never guess which glue stick was the first to die...

It was Jason.

You could not conceive the sound I made as I had to throw Jason in the bin as all the children shouted things like "Jason's dead" and "noooo Jason!"

Worst things worse, I couldn't even explain how ironic that was that Jason, the second robin, was the first glue to go!

[xiaq]

Charming interaction of the day:

There’s a construction zone around the corner that we pass regularly when walking to and from the house. There are several women on the crew, most of whom are virtually indistinguishable from the men folks from a distance. But there are a couple who really lean into feminine-coded floral shirts/pants/pink hardhats, etc.

As I walked past today, there was a woman who couldn’t have been over 25 who looked like contractor Barbie. Like picture a Latina Tinkerbell with a tool belt and purple work boots absolutely covered in sawdust, explaining something to a man who was likely twice her age and easily twice her size.

“Oh, no no no,” she said, as I walked by, gesturing to something on the tablet they were looking at, “don’t be silly! We’ll just [insert jargon I did not follow here]. It’ll be so much easier.”

After a moment’s consideration he said, gruff but earnest. “You’re right. That’s much less…silly.”

She gave him a little pat on the elbow, probably because that was the highest thing she could reach, and off they went.

Delightful.