Don’t feed the Yao Guai!

https://youtu.be/3sry34AOwlU

All I can say is that my wife could live in squalor for weeks without batting an eye, but simultaneously believes I’m high strung for not being able to chill if my space is dirty. Tells me to leave it. But we both know how bad it gets if/when I leave it, and it ends up being me who cleans it one way or another.

First 17 seconds of Wheat Kings vibes…

https://youtu.be/il8sGYNdKbw

“This!”

“Thanks for the gold, kind stranger!”

Why do they have to say the things? People don’t say the things here.

I was a loser who didn’t seek a real job until I was 25, and didn’t get my shit together and move out until I was 30, but despite all that my dad always loved me and never so much as pushed me. Gentle encouragement from time to time, but always just glad to have his boy around. I live in a different country with my wife now. I have a beautiful daughter and a decent, stable job. We flew my dad out a few years ago and I’ve never seen him so proud of what I’ve become. He loved my daughter so much. We took him out to the Canadian Rockies. That trip meant the world to him.

He had a heart attack and died two years ago.

As tragic as it all is, I watched the emotional shit he went through over the way his father raised him, and his father’s suicide when I was too young to remember, and he made it a point to make sure I never had to wonder if he loved me or was proud of me. He was.

I hope his soul is flying through the universe somewhere and has seen how much my daughter has grown, and has seen my awesome new house. I sprinkle his ashes around my flower gardens every spring just to keep him around. I hope he’s around.

Love you, dad.

Ernie is the coziest of bottoms.

Thank you! Genuinely, that means a lot to hear. I’ve never heard anyone compliment my prose, but it’s something I value a lot in other literature, and have a hard time getting into novels that are lacking it.

I’ve been wanting/trying to write a fiction book for years, but I have a horrible habit of knocking out a few pages and then getting into my own head and picking apart my work. I’ll end up reworking it sentence by sentence until I hate whatever’s left. Your nice comment makes me want to try again. All the best to you!

My kid is the only one in the cul-de-sac with Minecraft. We have quite the popular couch this month.

You know, it absolutely does. It does look like him…

https://youtu.be/H6wl-EyhXl0

I thought this was a filthy paintball mask.

Thanks! Very kind of you to say.

Ah, the old Coon Hill Rd. special. Grew up near a wooded country road that was full of trash like this. People apparently came from all around the township to dump their trash and furniture up and down this road, and the county never bothered to clean it up. My family was never down with that, but my dad used to catch possums in his livetraps and relocate them on this exact road. I guess he didn’t know how beneficial it was to have possums around. Coon Hill may have been lined with trash, but it was likely 100% tick free.

I had to do a school project once where we took disposal cameras and snapped photos of things that we found beautiful, and things we found ugly. I knocked out almost all of the ugly ones just on Coon Hill, but I did snap a few beautiful ones off the beaten path a bit. It was in the dead of winter and mostly snow and rotting vegetation, but beautiful enough at the right time of day. There was a duality down Coon Hill.

I swear I wasn’t a redneck, but it sure sounds like it.

Can confirm. I manage a produce department for a living and it blows my mind that we get 3-4 days in the wall cooler but 24 hours at home. Moisture control goes a long way.

Fuck 'em up!

I always try to imagine the process of deciding, and it’s hard to take it seriously.

“Carnidal Donatello has done some great work for the church, and the nuns really like him.”

“Yes, sure, I agree with you there. However, I think that Mortimer has been much closer to God. I saw him the other day – Mortimer, that is, not God – and I swear he was radiating with light.”

“Mortimer truly does radiate with light, but that may have been due to his proximity to the CNPP back in '86, and might explain his extra appendages… You’ve certainly been quiet through these deliberations, Marco. What are your thoughts on the matter?”

“Me? Oh. Well… I kind of like Bill.”

Immigration Canada wanted proof of my wife and I’s relationship, so we dumped a packet of printed call logs on them as thick as a novel. Skype certainly served its purpose.

My daughter and I saw a video on YouTube a few years back where a kid with a nasally voice and a bad lisp shouted “PARATHOROLOPHUTH!”, and now every time we see one on TV or in one of her books, we have to say it exactly like that.

Like many others have said, the old, lost internet was really something special. Every website was crude and janky, poorly formatted for some specific resolution that you weren’t using, and both animated clipart and midis were exciting to collect. There were websites dedicated to them. My brother and I used to fill folders on our desktop with sparkling or flaming banners, signs that read “Under Construction” and more. Same with midis. I’ll never forget the first time I discovered Sublime’s Santaria in midi form. It may have been my first favorite song.

I wish I could properly articulate what that all felt like. It was a similar feeling to collecting Pokémon cards as a kid. Everything was just a neat spectacle on the mid-90s internet. Then over time, as everything modernized and monetized, it lost that weird magic and became what it is today. I can’t remember the last time I gave a shit about exploring a website. I no longer come across spooky animated images of a skeleton peering out of murky water and excitedly tuck it away for future viewing pleasure. The entire thing sucks now, but it probably sucked then, too.