#their stories more

[kavehater]

Oh my gosh *looking respectfully* sugilite …

[chongoblog]

Me, after forgetting to cut the top off an onion before dicing it: “Aw dammit”

The Gordon Ramsey that lives in my head: “Don’t worry there, this mistake isn’t going to ruin anything. No need to be too hard on yourself”

Me: “Wow, that’s…not what I was expecting”

Gordon: “Of course, you ought to know by now that I don’t shout at cooks just to do so. I do it because the people in hit television show Kitchen Nightmares are putting their services out into the public and claim to be good enough to have the title of head chef. You’re just some guy in your twenties making beef stroganoff for yourself and your roommate. I’m kind of a dick, yeah, but I’m not gonna scream at you for a minor mistake like this”

Me: “Oh….well…thanks”

Gordon: “You’re welcome…cunt…”

[arynneva]

wait do people read first person stories and think they're the ones in the story???

Saw people talking about not liking first person, which is fair, but their reasoning was like "I would not do that" and I don't understand that mindset.

First person stories are still about a character. A character making their own decisions. First person isn't about you???? At least I thought it wasn't. What am I missing? I've always seen first person as just a more in-depth look into a character's mind and stricter POV. Not as a reader stand-in.

[inbabylontheywept]

i did wrestling in middle school. on one hand, i was actually quite good at it, which was nice. being good at any sport was a new achievement for me. on the other hand, i was bi, and i was trying very hard not to notice that i was bi, and getting folded into knots by very kind, very muscular dorks made that task somewhat difficult.

adding fire to the problem was that my parents and my grandparents wanted to watch my matches, because they were very proud that their Gangly Nerd Son was actually Sporting, and they wanted to cheer me on. which would've been sweet and all, but if there are four people you do not want there during a key part of your Burgeoning Sexual Awakening, it is your mom and your dad and your grandma and your grandpa.

right? i mean, imagine some guy's got your head in his armpit, and you're going you know, old sweat smells bad, but fresh sweat has a sort of and then you make eye contact with your grandpa in the stands and you remember you're swearing spandex so if you pop a boner people aren't just going to be able to see the outline, they're going to be able to count the veins, and the only way you will be able to restore your family's honor after that would be by moving to siberia and renouncing joy, forever. that, or lift your entire body up by your kneck then twist 180 degrees without paralyzing yourself.

it’s a lot of pressure, is what i’m saying.

still it did motivate me to win my matches really fast. because i was so tall and skinny, i was stupidly good at the double leg takedown, and then once someone was knocked down, i'd just do the half nelson and kind of flip em over for the pin. then the ref would count to three and i’d win. EZPZ.

i had one match where that went great. won in the first ten seconds, sat back down, and prepared myself for a good hour or two of doing fuck all. didn't even feel bad the parents/grandparents were gonna be bored. the matches went up from me in 5 pound increments (i was in the 115 lbs division) and it was going great until we got to the 145 lbs division. the other school's wrestler stepped onto the mat, and she turned out to be a girl so our guy flipped, because for straight guys, wrestling a girl is not a pleasant experience.

i'm not entirely unsympathetic. my experience wrestling dudes was definitely a little traumatic. but also, i dealt. guy could've dealt too. instead, he refused to wrestle, and the coach went - fine. not even worth fighting over.

so he went to the 140 pounder, and that guy said, nosir, my mom said mormons can't wrestle girls. next guy down, 135 pounder, now he knew he could pull the same card and thus did. 130 pounder, 125, both tapped out. he got to the 120 guy, and that guy was catholic, but he said he was considering being mormon, and thus would have to pass. as a precaution.

coach blew up a little at that. he said "is there anyone - anyone - on this entire goddamn team that is willing to wrestle a girl?" and then he pointed at me and said "YOU. MAT. GO."

and i'll be real, if i'd been paying more attention, i'd have pulled the mormon card too, but i'd just been putting all that audio into a buffer file because i was reading, so i was halfway across the mat before i even processed what had been said and by then it was too late to turn back.

still i had a plan. and my plan - my beautiful, perfect plan - was to do what i'd always done. tackle, flip, pin, win. sit down. read. bore my family to death. move on.

i got the first part right. she was bigger than me, but she wasn't taller. just an incredibly stout woman. god built me like a snake with glasses, just as he built her like a combat cube. the problem was the half nelson. soon as she was down, i tried hooking my arm under hers from behind and for both genders, the defense for this move is just clamping your arms really fucking tight against your sides. if you're a guy, that's whatever, but if you're a girl - especially if you're god's chosen combat cube - that pins your opponents hand right against your boob.

so, i got the hook in, she clamped, my whole arm pressed against something soft, my coach was yelling THE HALF NELSON. BABYLON! JUST FINISH IT! FINISH THE HALF NELSON! and i was just trying to press hard enough to finish, when then my brain went

...oh.

and i flipped out. of course i flipped out. i like girls, and touching a boob is an elemental experience, and i was not ready. i was not prepared. i had not committed the sacred rites. i recoiled like i'd just brushed my arm against the surface of the sun, stood up, and backed away. nobody in the room knew why i'd given up. all they saw was me, right about to win, suddenly flailing around and scrambling. so everyone started screaming at me to just get the half nelson again, and i couldn't really yell back there's a fuckin' boob in the way and it was very distressing, and the only way i could think of to make them stop was just doing it over again the right way.

so i did.

i hunkered down and prepared myself for Wrasslin' Attempt #2: The Sequel.

i knocked her down again, EZPZ. i went for the half nelson again, but she knew what i was about to do so she super clamped, and i knew she was gonna super clamp, so i wound my arm back like a pop-eye cartoon punch before swinging my arm through the gap between her bicep and her side, but the amount of time i spent winding back super signalled what i was about to to do, which gave her time to clamp even harder, which somehow redirected the entire force of the popeye punch to the bottom of her bra.

it spat out a single boob the same way an action hero might spit out one single tooth after getting a solid crack across the jaw. as if to say:

*ptooie.* "that all you got?"

i did not actually see this. my experience was that first there was an arm, then there was a bit of boob, but i was braced, i was ready, forward at all costs, tatakae motherfuckers, and then the boob went away, and i didn't know where it went but my team, and the audience, and everyone who was in front of me, they all gasped like i just kicked them in the stomach. except for my coach. he was behind me, and thus one of the four people in the room who did not see the boob. now my mom, my dad, my grandma, and my grandpa, they all got flashed but nooooooo, coach thunderbutt was behind me, and he didn't see shit so he was still yelling NOOOOOO BABYLON WHAT ARE YOU DOING JUST FINISH THE NELSON! GO FOR THE KILL! BABYLON! BABYLON!

but i did not go for the kill. i stood up and she stuffed her boob back real fast, and we just kind of circled each other awkwardly until time ran out and i won on points. that's not technically allowed, but the ref had some mercy on me.

my coach did not.

i barely had time to sit down before he strode over to the bench to chew me out.

"babylon," he said, in that very calm way people get when they're too pissed to yell. "why didn't you pin?"

and i didn't know how to say well coach, i tried, but there was a boob, and it kept getting in the way, and my mom was watching, and so was my dad, and so was his dad, and his mom, and god (like bible god) and that's a can of worms because i'm pretty sure he was already mad at me, and i'm wearing spandex, and i think i might have to move to siberia, so instead i said

"i uh. i forgot how to do the half nelson."

which is actually impossible. forgetting how to do the half nelson is like forgetting how to swallow your spit.

and he looked at me, like i was the dumbest person in the entire world, and i looked through him like i'd just survived my 250th day in a trench at verdun, and he said: fine.

fine.

but we're all going to practice it for an hour tomorrow because you forgot.

and then he left.

and my buddies had the gall to be salty about it. i got so many comments saying "dude, why didn't you just tell him the truth?" and i said "you can if you care so damn much. you could've wrestled the girl too. maybe someone else should do the hard thing today."

but they didn't. so the next day, we did an hour of half nelson drills, and i spent a decent amount of time getting thrown around the mat, and it was pleasant in exactly the way that i hated and the year after that, to the surprise of everyone but myself, i quit wrestling and joined the trivia team.

and if you want more reasons to love my mom, my grandpa joked after the match that i might have to talk to my bishop about it, and my mom told him he would be allowed to make jokes after he stood in front of a crowd of 110 people in spandex underpants while wrestling a woman that was not his wife.

he paused for almost five seconds after that. then he said: aw. hell. sorry babylon.

and i'd have preferred my apology from god, but getting it from him was pretty good too.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

License to Kitty.

[aholefilledwithtwigs]

I once had a landlord offhandedly mention that his mother had set this house on fire before. He and his wife lived on the first floor, and i rented the third.

Apparently his mom didn’t like his wife. So she set their house on fire. The house i was living in.

He assured me that everything was fine now and that this was years ago, just kinda laughed, smiled, and said ‘You know how moms are’

Yes. I know how moms are. I know how fucked up moms are as well. I have known many fucked up moms and fellow children of fucked up moms.

Attempted murder through arson is not typical mom behavior, even for a fucked up abusive mom

Oh, and his mother lived next door 🙃

[kayiiin]

They idiot

[iwasbored777]

We're not appreciating the Weird Barbie enough. It's said in the movie that she helps everyone who need help while they always see her as someone who's not as good as them. She was friends with all dismissed Barbies and Kens, was there to offer support and safe shelter for everyone who needed it in Kendom, without her nothing in the movie would've been alright. When Stereotypical Barbie calls her "ugly and unwanted" she still helps her.

She was representing a woman in women's world who was pushed aside by other women because she didn't fit in but still had more wisdom and kindness than everyone who thought they're better than her.

[achamocha]

english is not my first language please have mercy

[gatorinator]

“Walrus on your doorstop” this “fairy’s more unrealistic” that my professor just uttered the sentence “there was one day I found a real octopus in my backyard” this man hasn’t left Utah his entire life. How was there an octopus in his backyard in Utah. He then said “I do not have time to elaborate we need to cover a lot today in class” GIRL WHAT DO YOU MEEAN

[chloesimaginationthings]

Death looms over Vanny's shoulder in FNAF..

[stellarglowsquiiiid]

Parkour Civilization 1 is about how capitalism incentives the people living within it to keep moving up its ranks (even though it’s functionally impossible to do so), believing they’ll be safe if they just get a bit richer, only to be in a situation that’s even more difficult to maintain. How one bad fall can cost you everything, and how it’s much easier for the rich to avoid making that fall.

Parkour Civilization 2 is about getting betrayed by queercoded bitches (you are parkour Jesus Christ).

[codecicle]

Whar does rpf mean 💔💔💔

historians aren't quite sure. Albert Einstein's last words were "rpf is fine" and we've been searching ever since

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[notherpuppet]

Radiorose 📻🥀

Based on a true story where I deadass just started digging through a new friend’s purse because I’m a psycho who forgot how to have any goddamned manners 💀