#don't be a dumbass

[historicity-was-already-taken]

Remember: A Palestine vote for Stein is, for all intents and purposes, a vote for Trump; a man who would happily bulldoze Gaza and build a vacation palace for his oligarch and authoritarian buddies

[bomberqueen17]

cellulitis adventures

So on Friday I was cleaning in the barn, hosing rotting meat out of a floor drain. I tripped over the hose, and fell on the hand holding the hose sprayer, in a pile of moldy rat shit I'd tried to clean earlier but hadn't done a great job on. The hose sprayer scraped my thumb, opening up a little cut and tearing the skin, which was annoying and hurt a lot.

Naturally I was like, listen I need to clean this really well, so I did. But I was busy, so I washed it really well and then didn't bandage it, because I had a lot more grubby shit to work on and a bandage would just get soggy. I cleaned it again when I was done, but still forgot to bandage it. it was not a serious cut, it was more of a scrape, and it hadn't really bled much, it was mostly just sort of scabbed over. Not a big deal.

Drove home to Buffalo on Saturday, and noticed it was a little sore, maybe a bit puffy. Ah, not great. I cleaned it again, put neosporin on it this time. Went to bed. In the morning I reapplied antibiotic gel and put a band-aid on it, and went off to work, off to Dude's aunt's house where his mother is clearing it out. (Aunt had to go into a long-term-care apartment downstate near her daughter, after a stroke left her with poor working memory, and nobody's happy about this but the house needs to be gone through and her sister is the one to do it. And we are the ones to help her; her children live a few hundred to a thousand miles away, and wouldn't know what to do with the things in Latvian anyway.)

Anyway. Finished with that, took a nap, ran some errands. My thumb was a bit achy under that band-aid, but I was busy. It wasn't until I was making dinner and noticed a red line on my wrist that I realized I ought to give this more attention.

I finished making dinner, sat down, took off my watch to look at the red line a bit better. Now, I have really pale skin, and it shows red marks from everything; I expected it was red from steam from the cooking. But no, the line curved and went unaltered under where the band of my watch had been, and out the other side. It was under my skin, not the surface of it.

So I took a picture of it and sent it to an online buddy who is a nurse, who said immediately to go to urgent care, not to wait and see if it cleared up overnight because it was not going to. And now that I've come out the other side of this with some antibiotics, I thought I would write a little post and tell y'all what to worry about, because it was no big deal in my case but if I had waited it might well have been. So behind the cut will be a very non-gory photograph, which possibly will look more dramatic than it would on your skin because I have so little pigment in mine. But mine was a very clear textbook case, so I figure it's a good example. Again though, no gore, so I do encourage you to look even if you're squeamish, because it's really good to get an idea in your mind about danger.

For the record, urgent care turned me away so I went to the ER and while I waited a long time, the staff, rushed off their feet and far too busy, was still kind and reassured me I had done exactly the correct thing in coming in. This is the kind of thing it's trivial to fix up with a routine course of oral antibiotics if you catch it, but if it goes too long it can get into all kinds of bodily systems and become very difficult to safely eradicate, and can cause lasting, even permanent complications.

So I thought, for other dumbasses like me who would ignore a throbbing cut, here is a little PSA about Shit To Definitely Not Ignore, and thanks times several million to my online nurse buddy who told me so.

Behind the cut, a photo that does not include the actual injury or any gore or disfigurement, but very clearly shows the telltale sign, which is redness from inflammation from the infection traveling through the lymphatic system, and is like, a prime time danger sign and if you see this seek care and do not delay. I haven't been able to find good pictures of what this looks like on darker skin, alas, but here it is on me.

[Image description: the right forearm and hand of a pale-skinned person, lying on the edge of a table with the fingers loosely closed, thumb upward. The thumb goes off the top of the frame, and a bandage is just visible circling it. A red line wavers from the side of the thumb down along the back of the heel of the hand, curves down along the inner edge of the wrist, and then curves down to the underside of the arm. Several blue veins are also dimly visible through the skin, not following quite the same path as the red line, which is wider and blurrier than they are. The red line is quite blurry and hard to see in some places, clearer and more distinct in others, and in one place clearly but briefly splits to follow two channels before reuniting into one. There's also a faint dent visible in the skin at the side of the wrist, where the buckle of a watch was; the red line is not otherwise interrupted by where the skin had been covered by the watch.]

Again, the injury itself was a little gnarly but not anything I would have sought treatment for on its own; it was a bit sore to bend my thumb, it was getting a bit red and swollen but I had it under a bandage and wasn't monitoring it. The red streak was what made me look, and it's good I did. For the record, i don't know if this is typical, but pressing down at the point right on the side of my wrist where that red streak was widest was tender, like pressing a bruise, and isn't this morning; that was what really convinced me this was something from the inside and not a weird mark left by touching something from the outside. I don't know if that would be universal, and it wasn't tender along the whole length of it, but right there it's going over bone so I could really feel it. It's not raised at all, not a rash, it felt like bruising deep under the skin but if you pull your finger across it didn't fade or change color or have any kind of texture to it at all. This morning it's not tender anymore either, though the injury itself is a bit more painful than it was.

They gave me a dose of antibiotics last night around 10pm, and the streaking has faded, but the injury itself is more angry and swollen and is affecting my grip strength with that hand. I plan to follow the course of antibiotics, of course, and am grateful for modern medicine, which makes this mostly just an amusing anecdote. Who knew scraping your hand in a barn full of rat shit was dangerous! (Well, I did.)

Anyway-- off to see about filling this prescription. I gotta take it four times a day but like, y'know, I can handle that in exchange for not having sepsis, LOL.

[bobwess]

If you conceal carry a gun, but you don’t carry a first aid kit, you don’t care about saving anyone, you just want to shoot someone. 

And you’re stupid. 

This is something I said before, and I always get a chuckle out of the one moron who came into my comments with “If I shoot him, I’m sure as hell ain’t gonna go try to patch him up.” because in his hero power fantasy, I guess he saw the guy with the gun and shot him before any single other person got shot. Which is a nice fantasy, and sure it’s possible, but it’s idiotic to think that it’s always gonna be that neat and clean. 

I don’t think you’re gonna be patching him up, I’m assuming you killed him. I think the 12 year old down the road who got hit in the arm could use some patching. I think the grandma with a hole through her leg could use some patching. I think the gunshot wound you sustained before you managed to get a shot off could use some patching. 

A tiny first aid kit with a tourniquet and some gauze is small enough to keep into your pocket. Given the prevalence of car accidents, other types of assaults, and other disasters/accidents, you’re far more likely to encounter someone you could save with a first aid kit and some skills than someone you could save with a gun.

If you’re hot under the collar, I’m cutting off last time’s “Wah wah wah, but what about my first amm--” Let’s work on your reading skills. Conceal carry. Sure. Do it. I teach active shooter survival classes. Half the people I know conceal carry, I ain't against it. Great. Go get ‘em, tiger. 

But if you’re out here with a gun and no first aid skills, you’re just a fucking idiot playing pretend at being cool.

[melodromacy]

Also, if you have a problem with my partner, don't sneak around and and try and talk to me. If you have a problem with him, you should actually discuss it with the person you have a problem with. As in, HIM.

[ant1quarian]

Even I come from a happy, laid-back country that jokes about a bunch of serious shit and we still don't fuck around with suicide. It's just not funny.

I want all you people out there to know that if you tell someone to kill themselves and they actually do, that's blood on your hands.

YOU caused that. So don't be a fucking dumbass man.

You can dislike people. Disagree with things. But know for a fact that if you tell someone to kill themselves genuinely,

You are the scum of the earth and you have some serious lessons you need to learn.

About a week ago I posted this.

I’ve been getting horrible messages like this in my ask for months, including:

and my personal favorite

After getting the message saying “Just go kill yourself” I was completely done dealing with this person’s horrible messages and replied with just an “Okay.” and logged off tumblr.

About a week later I logged back on with 17 messages in my ask, most of them from the anon. I scrolled down and at first when I logged off, the anon messaged me things like

I scrolled up more and all of a sudden they started sending me more and more messages like

This was extremely surprising to me. I thought “After all those horrible messages you sent to me for MONTHS about hating me and wanting me dead, you say ‘sorry’ and that you ‘cant be responsible for someone’s suicide’?”

But I guess the lesson goes like this:

DONT TELL ANYONE TO KILL THEMSELVES UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED FOR WHAT MIGHT ACTUALLY HAPPEN

[darthbreezy]

6 weeks before I'm supposed to leave for my holiday, that was 8 months in the planning, my dumbass roomate gets himself FIRED because he slacked off too much.

[fckingflaminghomosexual]

in the current political climate in the u.s.

vote blue no matter who

[squeaks-reactions]

Luckily, there are no children here.

[darthbreezy]

Don't turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the FACT that the Ferret-Wearing, Melty face Shit-Gibbon has out-right stated he would ''Wipe Palestine off the map'' when you're looking for an excuse not to vote for the Sane one...

In before the ineffective leftists who actively work against their own future and the futures of others jump in: Yes, Kamala did indeed defend Israel's right to exist and ensure their safety and reiterate the United States' support for them. She also said she would work toward a ceasefire in Gaza, and work toward the Palestinian "right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination." Those were her words. So if you refuse to vote for Kamala at this point, or go balls to the wall insane and vote for Trump, know you're not actually abstaining/"revenge voting" for or in support of Palestine because one candidate is calling for their freedom, and the other wants them obliterated—and it's not Kamala.

[oni-1-oni-none]

bonus sketch too under the cut

[scapegods]

he ran out of canvases

[soup-mother]

in the same vein as that last post about cottagecore and American colonialism, there's this incredibly pervasive attitude in Australia that "everyone (settlers) live on the coast and noone (important) lives in the interior", so you get genius ideas like "let's divert a river and flood central Australia for farmland!" and "lets sell of huge swathes of land to mining companies" like people haven't been living there about longer than anywhere else on earth. it ties into the colonial view of deserts and lack of care for ecosystems but it's genuinely such a mainstream idea that noone lives there and it's just going to waste, terra nullius still alive and well unfortunately.

diversity win this gay coloniser wants to "move into the bush" with their fifteen cats they let run wild and will go straight to the governor general if someone shoots them for being invasive. this sure doesn't look like the frontier wars! it's cottagecore!

[egophiliac]

so on the subject of the "Crowley is secretly Revaan/Laverne/Levin/please Twst give us his name" theory, I think my feelings are best summed up as "I don't really buy it, but it's funny". like, in all seriousness, I'm not opposed to it; I have enjoyed the writing in Twst so far and I'm willing to trust that whatever happens will, you know, make sense and not be terrible. but I'm just not really convinced by the current evidence! maybe that'll change once we learn more, we'll see!

with that said, may I propose a few alternate theories about the possible Crowley/Revaan connection:

[found--family]

cas would not kiss dean first. dean would also not kiss cas first. this is their tragedy. but a shapeshifter or some kind of monster clone or djinn dream would initiate the first kiss and they would 100% return it. or the real dean and cas would've just simply fallen together somehow like tripped and fell and gravity would bring their mouths together whoops anyway they'd both take it from there - and that's not fate pulling strings it's just dumb luck for these two dumbasses (affectionate)

[dantes-infernal-chili]

Long ago, the ten fingers lived in harmony. Then everything changed when the fireworks attacked.

[lotus-pear]

bsd rewatch w my friend means obligatory art of my fav found family ever