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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • I rarely worked the window, and it was only when someone was on break, or we were under staffed and the other people on shift weren’t exactly capable of running a register.

    But we had a few regulars.

    My personal favorite was “farmer man”. Homie would ride through with his animals. Usually it was one of those pot belly pigs, named Harvey. But he had a goat named Bill, a rooster named Charlie, and sometimes a nanny goat called Maria.

    Why those names? No idea, it was drive through, so no time for long chats. But he’d order for them by using their names, as in, “I’ll have a whopper, and Harvey here’ll have a cheeseburger.”

    The awesome visits from him were when the cab of his truck was essentially full of critters. One day, the rooster was with him, along with a bunch of hens just chilling on the passenger side.

    Really good customer, he would roll through a few times a week, always polite and had his shit ready. He was literally a farmer, there’s plenty of them out here in the sticks. One of the normal window staff asked him if she could bring her kids to see a farm, and he was happy as hell to say yes. His critters were essentially pets, though the chickens were an egg source. Dude was a one man petting zoo lol.


    Then there was “coffee”. He’d roll up, and order “coffee”. That’s it, nothing else. And I mean that’s all me would say. You’d ask what size, and he’d just repeat “coffee”. At first, people just got mad, assuming he was fucking with them. But he kept coming back. Eventually the manager just said “fuck it, tell him he’s getting a large”. He got told that, and to drive forward. He’d take the large coffee, hand over his money, and that was it. But he never said anything. If you told him to have a nice day, he’d nod and smile a little.


    There was also “naked lady”. As the name might indicate, she would come through naked. There would be a visible pile of clothes in the passenger seat of her car, sometimes just a robe, but usually what looked like jeans and a t-shirt. Her order varied. But she’d been coming there for years by the time I ran into her at the window.

    It was usually only night time, fairly late, but every now and then she’d come through during breakfast rush. Story was that she had called in one day to ask if it was okay to come through the drive through naked, and the manager at the time thirty it was a joke and said she didn’t care as long as the money didn’t get pulled out of her twat, before hanging up. No idea if it was true or not. If you worked the window at her usual times and were new, you’d get warned amd asked if you were okay serving her. We were also warned not to be creeps about it.

    She was probably in her early forties, attractive, and friendly. Knew the window workers by name and would chat while waiting, when it was night. Didn’t really flash anyone, didn’t try and get any extra attention, but didn’t make effort to hide anything either.

    One guy asked for a better look one night, and she said that he could look all he wanted, but she wasn’t putting on a show. Manager gave him hell over it, though the lady didn’t complain about it.

    There was one lady that was usually on nights that wouldn’t deal with her, and that’s how I first encountered naked lady. Got called up from the kitchen and asked if I was okay taking care of a naked customer. I was in training to be a nurse’s assistant at the time, so I didn’t have an issue with nudity. It had already become just kinda unimportant to me. So I just shrugged and said sure. The manager warned me to be chill and that was that.

    Nice lady.

    What was weird was seeing her elsewhere in clothes. She was just as friendly if you ran into her at the grocery store or whatever. But it was always a little jarring, like she should be naked everywhere lol.


    Beyond that, it was just the usual drunks, potheads, and occasional crack or meth head that were weird enough to stand out.


  • Probably me telling my manager to go fuck herself.

    I think it was justified, but barely.

    It was a fast food joint, so not exactly a job I was willing to take shit over.

    I have long hair, and have since jr high. So did other employees, but only women and girls. A hair was found in food and it had to be mine, despite my hairnet, despite it being the wrong color, and not the same length.

    I pointed all this out and she told me I needed to cut mine. I asked if this was a new policy for everyone, she said just me. So I told her to go fuck herself. Now, I’d have just said no politely, and let her fire me for something bullshit and collect unemployment. But back then, I had less self control.

    After that, it was probably a dude I worked with at a nursing home. Weird dude, but a generally good partner to work with. Unfortunately, he liked stealing panties from patients. Why? Nobody knew. He said he didn’t wear them, and it wasn’t a sex thing. And that’s all he would say on the subject.

    Dude was lifting them after they got back from laundry services, stuffing them in his pocket. He had taken enough that it was noticeable, as in the rest of the staff was having trouble finding them for the patients to wear. You expect some loss of clothing via laundry, or wear and tear, but not just underwear, and not in bulk unless there was some kind of accident in laundry, like a bleach spill.

    The laundry staff were questioned about it, and it was pretty obvious it wasn’t them since they could have just said items were too damaged or stained, and nobody would have questioned it. They would have had records of tossing them, even if they were stealing them and faking it.

    Dude got found out when he fucked up and pulled a pair out with his keys in the break room. You can’t mistake a pair of big cotton panties for anything else, and the patient name was inked on.

    With that, he was questioned by the head nurse, then the administrator, and gave no satisfactory answer. He did, however, return the pilfered panties when threatened with a call to the police. Not that it would have amounted to anything, but he didn’t want the attention.

    When I talked to him later on, he still wouldn’t say why he did it. We had all kinds of silly theories cooked up, and I suspect that the one that he had some kind of mother or grandmother fixation was true, minus the bit about him being a budding Norman Bates taking them to dress up his mom’s body.

    Last I heard, he left the state, so I doubt I’ll ever run into him to try and ask again.


  • Absolutely the hardest part was the shrinking. Most of the damage, I had access to both sides of the panel. Which means you can use a hammer and a block thing called a dolly. But you have to hold the dolly on one side and hammer on the other. Which is awkward as hell. It’s slow work, or was for me; I suppose a pro can go faster. And you have to be careful because if you overdo it, you can end up hardening the metal and end up with cracks.

    All the videos and tutorials say to practice on some scrap sheet metal, but I didn’t have any, so it was trial by fire.

    This was back in the summer, but my left shoulder is still being pissy about the positions I was in to reach the dolly to the middle of the roof and still see what I was hitting with the hammer.

    Tbh though, it was much simpler than I thought. There’s plenty of good tutorials out there,and the concepts aren’t complicated at all, it’s the skill that’s fiddly and detailed.


  • Body work on my car.

    I’m poor as fuck and had tree branches fuck me up. Decided I’m not willing to deal with the bullshit of finding a new one, especially with all the bullshit privacy invasion on top of buying the damn thing.

    So, I borrowed tools, looked shit up, and while the car isn’t fully dent free or anything, it was good enough to replace windows and you have to get close to see the warping that’s left.

    Took my crippled ass damn near two weeks because I could only work maybe a half hour, 45 minutes at a go once or twice a day. And I wasn’t working fast.

    While it was much simpler than I thought it would be, those auto body pros deserve their damn pay. Shit is hard physically. Just replacing the side mirror had my back cramping and spasming for hours after, even with meds. And that was the easiest job involved.

    Dunno that I learned enough to exactly say it’s a true skill, since it really only applies to my car, and the kind of damage done, but the parts of the frame that were bent are back in line, and the dents that needed shrinking are damn near invisible, which I’m proud as fuck of.

    The painting sucks though lol. Couldn’t get a good sprayer on loan, and the one I could get was a bitch about not giving an even coat. The blending is not great. Visible from even a dozen feet away. A few drips too. But I ain’t worried about that with a car that’s damn near twenty years old.

    Dunno what the hell I would have done without good neighbors and friends loaning me the gear. No way could I have afforded rental for the air compressor after the supplies cost, parts, and glass. Came out to a few hundred all told, but the estimate was damn near 1.2k



  • Well, tbh, we don’t bother with it at all now. There’s not enough kids doing it to merit the expense or effort involved (and it ain’t like either are high enough to matter, which shows how bad Halloween has gotten).

    But, yeah, back when kids still did it, who cares about costumes? Halloween isn’t dressupday. There’s other traditions involved, including kids running around and having fun just for the sake of the fun itself.

    Besides, who am I to determine whether or not someone needs a costume? They might not be able to afford one. They might have some weird religious thing about masks or whatever. They might have some medical issue that prevents a costume. They might have had a costume, but something happened to it. I don’t know why they’re not wearing one. But if they show up at my door, they’re celebrating Halloween. They’re taking part in not only a community activity, but a very human activity. That’s worth some candy by itself.

    Shit, I’ve given candy to adults that rolled up and said trick or treat because it isn’t only about kids. I’ve handed extra candy to adults and kids that asked with the explanation there was someone that couldn’t make it. IDGAF if it’s true or not, it isn’t about me.

    I fucking miss Halloween the way it used to be. You’d think in this bumfuck nowhere semi rural town, we’d still have people out and about. But no, we haven’t had a single visitor on Halloween since covid. Even before that, it was two or three the entire night and had been for years.

    There was so much fun in putting on a Halloween playlist, or movies, or whatever and waiting to see or hear someone coming. Even if I didn’t dress up myself, it was fun to see everyone out and enjoying the night. Hell, back when I was still in physical therapy, on a bloody walker, I was in the living room ready to go. Hopped up on pain meds, but still.

    I’m envious that you live somewhere it’s still a big thing, costumes or not.




  • Well, I’m not in a situation where I can go otc for headaches. I’m already using acetaminophen (paracetamol for the brits) non stop for chronic pain, and I have to save ibuprofen for stuff that never responds to other pain control methods because I’m an old fuck and I’m not supposed to take it at all, and it causes problems when I ignore that and take it anyway.

    Luckily, my headaches almost always stem from stress and/or muscle tension in my neck, so it’s very rare they don’t respond to non chemical methods, and I happen to have prescription meds that are prn for those things if I want/need.

    But, for headaches, I used to find caffeine more effective than analgesics, nsaid or otherwise. Even when I wasn’t drinking caffeine regularly (which means I know that it wasn’t just caffeine withdrawal causing the headache to begin with), a cup of coffee usually got rise of a headache faster and more thoroughly than NSAIDs.

    But it was usually acetaminophen that would be my first pick when I went the OTC pill route. Less likely to irritate my already irritating bowel syndrome issues.

    Tbh though, none of the OTC analgesics are great at getting rid of a headache. Some of the older studies and double blind tests I saw put them about the same as placebo for headaches, though that’s been years since I looked up anything about it.


  • Is this really Linux drama though? It seems more like political drama that ended up jizzing on Linux.

    I mean, yeah, there’s been drama after the decision was made based on legal issues brought about by political drama, but this part of it isn’t, if you get the distinction.

    The only real linux drama part, as far as I can see is the crappy way it was announced, which isn’t what most of the people involved in the drama after the fact are complaining about.

    I dunno, I’m not complaining about the post here, just talking about the overall issue itself using the post as a jumping point.

    Anyway, I guess what I’m getting at is that foss development can’t be immune from political fuckery (no matter how justified or unjustified it is). Everyone that’s going to be involved in development is going to live under some nation’s thumb, and is vulnerable to any legal ramifications of that nation. So there’s no way to prevent a project being strongarmed; all that’s possible is having enough people that can review the code do so, so that any fuckery that affects the project is known, so that everyone can decide what they want to do about it as individuals.

    As long as individual people have the ability to use any foss software they want on their own devices, there’s a limit to how bad the fuckery can get. Tbh, I’m more worried about corporate fuckery in foss projects than governmental



  • I dunno, the browser lags when I scroll down it.

    It’s trivial to build huge ones up. This account is only as old as the reddit bullshit in 23, and I know I’m over a hundred at least.

    Humans are assholes. On the internet, they don’t work as hard to pretend they’re not. And, they’ll often go harder at it than anywhere else. So you block a lot if you want to avoid future interactions with the same asshole.


  • Anecdotes okay? If so, read on.

    So, I’m cishetero, but have been involved with gay culture in specific, and broader LGBTQ+ culture generally. I was also a beard multiple times over the years, including for a lesbian couple that ended up being a bit more intimate.

    But, yeah, there’s definitely dynamics with lesbians akin to top and bottom. Afaik, the terminology isn’t used often for lesbians, but it’s there in that regard too. Back in my younger days, an exclusively “top” lesbian was sometimes called a butch, whether or not they were butch in the more common sense if presenting in a more “masculine” manner. And, that was true of “bottom” lesbians being referred to as femme, even when they presented masculine.

    Mind you, there was predominance of butch lesbians being tops in a sexual sense compared to being bottoms. It was fairly unusual to run into the stereotypical butch lesbian and have them not also want to be the more active partner, and even to the extent of not wanting any sexual acts being performed on them at all. By no means a universal thing, but it was common enough that people would be surprised when a butch lesbian wanted to receive head.

    Being masculine presenting or feminine presenting isn’t a reliable predictor of sexual dynamics, but it’s not far off from reliable in my experience. Men and women, not just women. I’d say 8/10, the closer to a generic "masculine"presentation a person is, they’re a top in the bedroom. Mind you, that’s based on people willing to talk about such things fairly casually, which could leave out a ton of people that aren’t that way, but just don’t like talking about their sex lives in a group at work or party or other gathering.

    The best lesbian friend I’ve ever had, that literally saved my life at least twice, was butch as hell. Flannels, boots, truck, went hunting, and mirrored male mannerisms with zero effort. But she was most definitely a bottom sexually. She would complain like hell that everyone wanted her to do all the work, every time, and all she wanted was some hot making out where the other woman was in charge, followed by “my pussy getting ate like a fat kid at a pie eating contest”. She didn’t mind reciprocating, but what made her most happy, most satisfied was being “bottom” in a sexual sense. But, being butch as hell, the women into her tended to assume she was going to be in control and be the active partner exclusively.

    It seemed to me that the butch lesbians had a harder time with being stereotyped sexually than the femme/lipstick lesbians. It wasn’t as big a surprise to people when a feminine presenting lesbian wanted to be the more active party, or to be in charge even from the bottom. Power bottom lesbians exist in the same way laid back tops do, though a bit more frequently from what I’ve seen and heard.


  • Hmm, the movie choices are easier. My kid isn’t quite ready for Kubrick’s more intense movies like a clockwork orange, so that kind of thing.

    Reading wise, when I’m reading to just chill and enjoy escapism, I gravitate to fantasy and urban fantasy. Right now I’m going back through the Laurell K Hamilton stuff. Kinda trashy for the most part, but there’s some nice light reading in there. I’m flipping over to Stephen King when I get tired of the trashy parts of Hamilton’s series, which have fantasy, but close enough in some cases. But I’ll also reread my favorite Vonnegut and Palahniuk books too, when I’m wanting comfy reading rather than new stuff.

    Music though? Damn. I’d probably start with metal since that’s the genre I most enjoy loud. Hit up my playlist with my absolute favorites, then take a break and do some deeper cuts. If/when I came back, it would probably be either bluegrass or old school hip-hop. Again, that’s because I like feeling the music as much as hearing it. If I still had time and a break for the ears to relax, over to classical for the same reason; I always start with tocatta and fugue in D minor with that. There’s some superb recordings of it that can shake the fillings out of your teeth with a decent subwoofer.

    Gotta take breaks when cranking the volume though. Ear fatigue is a thing, and actual damage is possible too


  • Heh, I actually get those sometimes. I’m disabled, so the only real barrier to complete freedom is family, and I can sneak in a few days a year where I’m alone all day, and sometimes over night.

    For real, the only thing I’d do that I can’t do when everyone is home is crank the fuck out of the music. My wife gets migraines easy, and my kid seems to be following suit unfortunately. So really turning it up until I can feel the bass in my guts is a rare treat.

    But you can only do that for so long before the ears get tired. So the rest of the time would likely be reading without interruptions.

    I’m pretty fucking easy to please lol.

    I sometimes house sit for my best friend, and that’s essentially what I do there, just not that loud with the music because the pets don’t like it past a certain point.

    Sometimes I’ll pop in a movie that isn’t to the liking of the family instead of music, and enjoy the more immersive sound. Which, I could also watch things they don’t enjoy as much with the sound up, but why not have both factors my way?

    Mind you, I can do those things with everyone home, but it takes planning and I’ll still have interruptions. But doing them always has the risk of causing my wife hours or days of pain and misery, so it’s something I prefer to just wait for. Kinda makes it more enjoyable tbh.