#i dont go here so i dont want to make a full post about it

[goodguydotmp3]

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[98chao]

truly i love all of you and i'm so grateful for all the support i get on my vanilla milkshake posts here because i've just seen the way people talk about vanilla milkshake and mysticao on twitter and its genuinely taken 50 years off my life. now i've been reminded as to why i should never join the crk fandom on twitter

[discjude]

Hi prequel community. If I said that I think the reason why there were only two prequels compared to the three that the other parts of the series got (3 TSY books and 3 TCY books) AND the reasons why Rhian's eye colour changes miraculously from Rise to Fall from green to blue (I think he's described as having green eyes in Rise? someone might have to correlate me on that) is because in Rise he's supposed to parallel TSY Sophie (green eyes, doubtfully good, multiple boyfriends) and then in Fall he's supposed to parallel Japeth (blue eyes, fratricidal, insane, gets cool one liners) how would you react to that

[sodaf]

being mentally ill is so cool

[readymades2002]

trying to do some financial math for if i move out and getting sick to my stomach

[toytulini]

i dont want to give in to Modern Shapewear but i really hate when im trying to have a Fun Outfit and theres fucking Distinct Lines from various under wear bands (bra, undies, maybe a pair of tights?) all at separate points? that are impossible to hide bc the outer wear is fucking form fitting spandex

[cosmicdenro]

thsc fans made me a kinder person wowie

[midniallsnack]

*wakes up in the morning to wipe my tears* so we're just going to keep living like this???

[butchvamp]

honestly my blog being fucked and this website overall just becoming so actively hostile (the userbase and the staff/website itself) might actually finally make me log off

[pens-and-paperbacks]

"Nobody wants to work! Everyone is so lazy! No one has any work ethic!"

That's all a lie and I'm sorry you've been made to believe that. The truth is people are applying and many people have great work ethic or can be easily taught but the jobs they're forced into are so trash that if they had the choice, why would they ever actually apply there? Why would they want to work there?

My current workplace, a gas station, is sitting on at least a dozen applications but my boss won't hire any of them because, "they're welfare fodder, they've only kept a job for six months or less." We're finally hiring someone in now because, "they looked put together and have a nice looking car," but only because one of my coworkers is leaving, having out in a notice a month ago which my boss hasn't forgiven her for and is spiteful about. All of this doesn't even touch the HUGE mouse problem we had for MONTHS, the heavily leaking ceiling with a huge hole over its door, or the mold that's just everywhere throughout the fridges and the ceiling tiles. And even THAT doesn't touch on the surprising amount of racist and homophobic comments I hear from customers (or employees/my boss sometimes) here and there.

At another job I worked from the stores opening, through orientation, and watched everyone that had miraculously lasted the first two years leave because two of my managers had an affair, lied about it to everyone, fired someone over seeing their text messages and kept messing up our supply orders. When my actual boss finally stepped in he was so out of touch with what actually needed to be done in the store that it caused worse problems. I also heard at some point, when people had to take on second jobs, that this boss was flat out doing everything he could to get rid of people because, " they were making another job their priority instead of this one."

The second job I had to take during the one mentioned just above (because I was one of those people not getting enough hours) was flat out a horrible, toxic work environment. Everyone had a bad attitude, did not want to be there and even if it seemed like they were having a good day, one wrong work or work slip up made their mood flip on a dime. I had to flat out ask to not be put on the schedule with one of the employees because they were that mean to me, and I can get along with anyone so that's saying something. The labor cost they had was absolutely ridiculous there (meaning they could only keep so many people on at a time to afford being there, possibly only two even during a lunch or dinner rush with a fully packed drive through and lobby) and when one manager decided, "I have to send my help home and work by myself for an hour, otherwise I'm gonna get yelled at about the labor cost," and singlehandedly handled one of those lunch rushes on their own. They were written up for it. They left that morning after signing that paper because, despite not being allowed to be there on your own as an employee, our boss was adamant about labor costs and could have covered for her or not told anyone. If she hadn't have some what she did, she would have actually been yelled at. It was an incredibly disrespectful move done in the name of corporate.

The one job that paid me well did so because they appreciated my work and everyone else kept leaving. I saw three raises in three months because I was essentially THE kitchen manager. That was great. Thing was, even though the people I worked with and for were good to me, it was a bowling alley/restaurant/arcade/bar where you were expected to prep, cook, take reservations, set people up on lanes via computer, serve people if your manager was busy, do light maintenance on the bowling machines and arcade machines, keep up with dishes and get the end of the day cleaning done which sometimes meant vacuuming the carpet across all eighteen lanes of customer seating and cleaning the tables/chairs stationed there too. All of that, despite the raises, was done for minimum wage starting and the place was almost always packed. I'd often get asked to stay because they kept a few employees that while good at their job they just missed shifts constantly because they knew they could, since this job had on-call shifts too. There were nights my husband picked me up that I was so sore and overworked that I would get in the car and just start sobbing. I wouldn't stop for ten minutes or more, either until we were mostly home or we got something to eat since I was normally too hungry to keep crying.

The very first job I ever got was at a pizza place. Over all it was the most laid back, despite being run by one of the Mafia families in town (of which there are a few but tbf they're very low key). The problem there was that the boss was a fucking scumbag who thought that in his case the Mafia status made him a big shot. It didn't. On a side note, his self important scumbag attitude made the other families in the area see him for the joke he was. He would make passes at the waitresses in exchange for streak dinners and money, only ever hire girls who were cute/pretty as waitresses so he could have a chance at doing so with someone cute/pretty. When we had a lot of money coming in he would spend it on improving the bar that was attached to the restaurant, as in getting new flat screen tvs or new glasses, some trivial thing that he didn't actually need. Not the kitchen ware that needed fixing, which at one point caused me to get a third degree burn because someone ended up running into my arm with boiling hot lasagna out of an oven we didn't normally use. There was also a point where I had to deliver a pizza to him, which he ordered drunkenly and over the phone while he was in the bar only twenty feet away, but when I went to deliver it to him and grab a jug of wine I needed for the restaurant, his grandson (very politely) had to stop me from doing so because his grandfather was doing something with a woman in the backroom of the bar in the middle of the day.

Currently, I have to move out of my house and in with friends a state away with my husband because even with two people working nearly 40 hours each at a minimum wage job still isn't enough to live and thrive off of. It's nothing we can make an actual life off of. We have to leave our house behind for a season, get new jobs and save money in this new place, just so we can afford to come back and fix up and sell our house/land. Our combined income is about $30,000 flat, in a small town where everything was just affordable enough to get by. It isn't anymore.

I sent out five job applications in one month only to hear back from one with a no, the others ghosted me completely until just the other day, literally the month after.

"No one wants to work! Everyone is lazy! No one is applying!"

You don't know how bad it is and has been even before COVID. Add inflation onto the long list of fucked up, unprofessional or flat out cruel things that can be done or said in many workplaces, which you have to deal or else your fired, on top a work chore/task sheet that probably keeps you overworked and exhausted the entire week/month/year and I ask you-

Would you want to work?

[godsfavoritescientist]

I have a draft saved somewhere talking about my classpect headcanons for everyone, I really need to finish that sometime so people can see where I'm coming from when I say "fidds is a mage of rage". I have Ford down as a prince of light, stan as a thief of time, and bill as a lord of hope, but I think those are a liiittle bit more self explanatory

[vaguenotions]

Oh, yes, I just love your unannounced sleepover where you both come back from the bar after carefully avoiding telling me that's where you were going, and also neglecting to tell me when you'd be home! I definitely do not want to knock you on your ass and take a bat to your dome! That would be rude and unnecessary :)

Oh yes, please do start talking about shit amongst yourselves and make me feel isolated and othered in ny own room! These moments are what I live for, of course. Naturally. Who would ever have any issues with this arrangement at all?

[bowtiestash]

dawg im so sick of weirdos on the internet defending really problematic shit and saying "it's fiction" cause like, while i do get where they're coming from, shutting down an argument with it sucks. sure, fiction can be used to explore problematic things, its just that i have an overall issue with how these people expect it to be consumed without any thought at all??

it also doesnt even address the nuance when it comes to this kinda shit (which is why i dont like the pro/anti labels bc wtf do those labels even fucking mean. i hate it)

[arolesbianism]

Ok I finally stopped being a wuss and read that last Moca banner story and fuck. Fuck.

[drchucktingle]

my masks

hey there buckaroos. due to all of the attention the TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION situation has gotten i am going to take a minute to talk about my personal way as an autistic buckaroo. im going to tell you about my masks.

im doing this for a few reasons, some are good FUN reasons full of love and some are not so great. 

lets start with the GOOD STUFF. first of all, i am talking about this because speaking on my way can help other buckaroo feel more comfortable speaking on there own way, ESPECIALLY if they are good at ‘passing’ for neurotypical like chuck is. 

unfortunately the NOT SO GREAT reasons im talking about all this dang stuff are two fold. reason one: i have been put into a position of having to explain and justify my needs and boundaries by the TXLA. this is not something that i WANT to be taking up all of my time, but when large organizations do not make space for those who they have pledged to support, it puts us smaller buckaroos into position where were have to defend our existence. it is not plesent but it is necessary.

the second NOT SO GREAT reason is that ‘passing’ bisexual and autistic people like myself are ALWAYS just seconds from being gatekept from folks both outside and inside these communities. there will probably be a day on chucks deathbed where i take off my mask and say hello to this timeline (mostly so you can all see how handsome i am under here but I DIGRESS). i KNOW with absolute certainty (the same way other bi and autistic buckaroos are probably nodding along right now) that when that day comes i will STILL be accused of ‘not being real’ and ‘faking’ because i ‘dont look autistic’ and i have a beautiful ladybuck partner in sweet barbara.

ALL THAT IS TO SAY, i am taking a moment today to talk FOR THE RECORD about my neurodigence and my particular needs. hopefully i will not have to keep diving this deep every time an organization takes a discrimantory action against me, but i will also say this: at least it is a good fight on an important battlefield

anyway buds, here is the story of my way on the spectrum

when i was a young buckaroo i knew that my thought process was different. i could socialize easily, which is unique in contrast to many autistic buds (it is a spectrum after all), but my social ease was for an interesting reason. I ALWAYS KNEW WHAT OTHERS WERE ABOUT TO SAY. it was like a strange ‘human game’ where someone would say one thing and i would think ‘well you actually mean something else’ in a sort of logical way (this is why i later related to DATA from star trek so dang much). at first i remember thinking ‘well i am just NOT going to play along with this human game’. i quickly learned neurotypical buckaroos do not like this, that there is a BOB AND WEAVE to social interactions that must be learned. 

later i realized ‘actually if i WANT to make friends and prove love is real then i can do this like an expert because i can SEE the game where most cant’. this got chuck many buds and took me on many adventures. please understand, i am not saying these connections are not important to me, they are just different. they are full of love, but i express this in my own unique way.

HOWEVER, while growing up i felt disconnected from this timeline in other ways, like an alien or a reverse twin trotting along in a world that is not quite my own. i did not feel emotions the same way my buds did. they would get upset over the ‘human game’ interactions and i would not be moved at all, HOWEVER i could see the way sunlight hit a window and start crying my dang eyes out over the beauty. so my emotion was still there and VERY STRONG, i just felt it in more existential ways (like hearing the call of the lonesome train). these days that feeling has progressed to where i am pretty much in a constant blissed out state of cosmic emotional connection (make of that last sentence what you will, but it is the truth). when i make existential posts online i am not just FIRING OFF SOME CONTENT, i really mean every word. this is really my trot.

anyway as a young buckaroo these feelings made me worry sometimes. i thought about various mental health dianosises and marked the parts and pieces that matched with myself. am i this? am i that? sometimes, instead of just being’ different’ i worried i might actually be ‘wrong’. 

when i saw david byrne on letterman in my younger days i immediately recognized something connected to myself. i thought ‘wow this is the mystery being solved before my very eyes.’ i could hear it in the music of talking heads too. i started doing research and realized that i might be on autism spectrum, something that was later confirmed by a therapist (back then the diagnosis was called asperger's). it was a glorious and fulfilling moment. i was SO EXCITED TO BE AUTISTIC LIKE MY HERO. i felt very cool because of it, and i still feel very cool because of it.

one of the big reasons i talk so much about being autistic these days is because i want to make sure OTHER buckaroos can have that same moment that i did. they can see chuck and think ‘wow i really like this autistic artist, maybe being autistic is cool’

so what does an average day WITHOUT wearing the pink bag look like for me?

my thought process is exactly like ROSE from CAMP DAMASCUS, which is part of why i wrote the book. we have the same stim (complex order of finger taps), we prepare for social interactions the same way, we analyze things in the same logical trot that neurotypical people might think feels ‘detached’ but for me feels natural (certain reviews of camp damascus are very funny to me in this way. you can tell when a reader is just very confused by existing in an autistic brain for 250 pages.)

from the outside you would not be able to tell that i am on the spectrum. in fact you would probably find me very socially adept. 

the problem is, all of that masking can take its toll. i spent years trotting in and out the emergency room, talking to confused doctors who could not figure out the chronic phantom tension and pain that radiated through my body. i eventually accepted the fact that i would either live a life constantly on heavy painkillers or just stop living altogether.

eventually, however, i started noticing a correlation between the way that i felt, and the space that i allowed for chuck and the pink mask. i was exercising that tension, allowing my mental mask of neurotypical existence to take a rest. i started practicing physical therapy and this time THE RESULTS STUCK because i was approaching from two sides, MIND AND BODY. after a while, i got my pain down to about 5 percent of what it once was. i still have flare ups in times of stress, but the healing has been very real and life changing.

lets get VERY specific now. if i attended the TXLA confrence without a mask and gave my talk i can tell you this: i would do a dang good job. i can work the heck out of a crowd and (not to reveal too much about my secret way) I HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO DO THIS ON OCCASION VERY WELL. however, going home from this event i would very likely be in pain. i would likely need to do physical therapy. i would likely need to stim for a while. i would NOT be emotionally fullfilled in the same way. in other words, without my pink mask i can charm the heck out of buckaroos, but THE SPACE OF CHUCK TINGLE IS NOT THE SPACE FOR THAT. the pink bag is a place for me to not have to put up with that tension. it is a place for me to unmask mentally by masking physically.

this pink bag space SAVED MY LIFE and i am not going to risk blurring these lines. if and when that ever happens it will be MY decision, not someone elses. that is my boundary. the part of me that neurotypically masks could handle a library conference in a purely technical sense, but the part of me that chuck represents absolutely cannot and should not be asked to do that without the pink bag. unfortunately, the complexity of this point makes it even MORE difficult for me to think about and takes up even more of my time, because it forces me to START QUESTIONING MYSELF and my own needs. to be honest, that is the most insidious part of other people questioning your identify and refusing to accept your accommodation needs without ‘proof’.

the thing is, while all of this discussion of disability and accessibility is important, i have a much larger point to make by writing these words.

a conference should not uninvite someone with an unusual physical presentation or a strange way of speaking REGARDLESS of it being classified as a disability. it does not matter WHY i look the way that i look and wear what i wear. i should not have to spend all day writing this post instead of writing my next book, just because my sensibilities are unique and my presentation is unusual. 

fortunately the solution is very simple: let other people be themselves. its not hurting you to simply accept and nod at the buckaroos you think look strange. let us exist

[toytulini]

everyone gotta be fuckin around tryin to do ai now im so fucking tired. shut up stop it. i wish i was a worm. if microsoft or discord tries to tell me one more fucking thing about ai im going to combust