archaicmaniac - Tumblr blog

[archaicmaniac]

Seeing people decide to watch Breaking Bad based on the Tumblr memes is especially funny when they do it specifically for the memes about Jesse, because... well, let's put it this way. Aaron Paul, the guy who played Jesse, was nominated for a Primetime Emmy award for best supporting actor in a drama series for his work on Breaking Bad on five separate occasions, including twice in one season, and won three of those nominations. He was the first person ever to win that award three times for the same role. Like, Jesse's storyline is so viscerally unpleasant that it set industry records.

[archaicmaniac]

[archaicmaniac]

Everybody say thank you Ian McKellen. The old queen of all time. For a lot of reasons but right now I'm just obsessed with actors being gay and making the things they're in gayer. Gandalf was whispering in their ears like make sure you hold his hand. The people looking for it will notice that. Our samfrodo warriors. And he played magneto like that. She ate. Where would we be without him

[archaicmaniac]

i feel like it says something about us as a species that somebody worked real hard to invent 3D printing when i think anyone who has ever used a printer would agree with me that we have not really gotten our arms around 2D printing yet. we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

[archaicmaniac]

im not saying office jobs aren’t bad in some ways but its always very telling when people treat it like the WORST job at the bottom of the rung…because they have never had to face manual labor as a real option they would ever be forced to take.

[archaicmaniac]

YES HI I CAN SEE YOUR "RETURN TO THE TOP OF PAGE" BUTTON JUST FINE THANK YOU

[archaicmaniac]

One of the scariest things that ever happened to me was when I was working at Red Robin. I was around eighteen and I worked as a host. I answered phones, opened doors, and seated people. The job wasn’t strenuous.

One night, the phone rang. It was fully dark outside. My shift was almost over and my mom was picking me up because I still didn’t have a car of my own. She was waiting in the parking lot when the store phone rang.

I picked up with a chirpy greeting and slammed into a horror movie when a gruff voice informed me that he could see me. He had a shotgun pointed into the building and I’d see brain matter sprayed across the walls if I didn’t do what he said. My brain froze in blind panic. I couldn’t believe this terrible thing was really happening to me.

The restaurant was all windows, visible on all sides by the parking lot except for the kitchen. He could be looking in from any direction, shotgun leveled on customers, or coworkers, or me. “Do you hear me?” he asked.

I stared in blank terror, not answering until he yelled, “Do you fucking hear me?!”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“Do you have a cellphone?”

“Yes,” I was so transfixed with fear it hadn’t occurred to me to lie.

“Give me the number.”

My mind suddenly whirred into panicky circles. I couldn’t give some crazy man my phone number, I needed to do something else but I couldn’t make up a number either because my head was pounding with adrenaline. My frightened head latched onto the only other number I had memorized.

I rattled off my mothers phone number.

“You’re going to hang up the phone, walk to the back dumpster with your cell phone in your left hand, and I’m going to call you. No one has to die tonight.”

I stood shaking with the phone pressed to my ear.

“Hang up.”

I hung up the phone. I was trembling, but I knew there was no windows in the kitchen. If I got to the kitchen I’d be safe, and that’s where he told me to go so I could make it there if I just held it together.

I made it to dry storage and met one of the assistant managers exiting. I broke down in sobs and started garbling in incoherent fear. He looked utterly flabbergasted by this, as I had the reputation of being the most level headed of the host staff.

He asked me to wait at the bar. He rushed off to try to finish what he was doing so he could deal with me. I was too scared to leave the kitchen hallway; I huddled as close the end of the bar as I could get without leaving the safety of the wall.

I was sobbing when the bartender looked over and saw me. She gasped in outrage and had me into the managers office in a blink, arms around me asking what was wrong, what was wrong.

I was finally in an enclosed room with a locking door. The gibbering in my head calmed to the point that I relayed the whole thing to the bartender. Near the end, the manager returned. He had my mother in tow.

She was furious, hearing the tail end of my death threat call. Apparently, while sitting in the parking lot she’d received the call I had been too scared to get.

The man had asked if she was me, and she was instantly combative. She didn’t tell him anything, just demanded to know, “Who’s This?” He hung up.

He’d called back once just saying my name and she’d angrily asserted, “No.” He hung up.

My mom was furious and confused and marched into the building. Part of her anger was that I’d given away her phone number. She’s a violently private person. My manager had been making sure the servers knew they didn’t have a host when my mom burst in on a mission of vengeance. He quickly escorted my rampaging mother to the back room and they were both in time to hear I’d received a death threat.

My mom rounded on my manager demanding to know why they hadn’t called the police and he pleaded that this was the first he was hearing about it. The police were called.

My mom and I waited in a booth while my nerves jangled with anxiety. No one had checked the cars outside for shooters and now I was sitting here exposed, surrounded by windows. She tried not to be mad about me giving her number given my emotional state, but she wasn’t thrilled with me.

A police office showed up an hour later. I answered her questions and my manager asked if I wanted anything. Everyone at the table looked astonished when I requested a root beer float. But by god, I wanted one.

The officer assured me that most events like this did not happen on site, that the caller wasn’t here. I didn’t believe the dowdy woman sitting across from me had even bothered to do a security sweep but I drank my float and tried to forget the darkness of the night staring in from all those windows. The clear line of sight on me from every side. The image of brain splattering against the glass divider. I drank more root beer.

I got a day off to calm down. On closing shifts after that my heart would pound when the phone rang and the bartenders all agreed to be on phone duty for me. A private investigator came in one day and I recited the whole event again. He’d been hired by the company as Red Robin’s nation wide had been targeted by the same caller.

The investigator told me he was working on it. That dozens of other businesses across the country had been called. He told me that if I’d given the caller my real number I would have been subjected to sexual assault over the phone.

I was starting to feel stupid. Everyone I told was so sure that he’d never even been present. That I’d never been in danger. The only thing I could console myself with was that many other girls had given him their number, but I hadn’t. I started forcing myself to pick the phone back up on closing shifts.

A few months later I was notified that he’d been arrested. The private investigator hired by a fast food restaurant had done what the police force hadn’t and tracked him down to a small town in the Midwest. My testimony was one of dozens used to convict him and for a while I received checks for 0.23 cents as reparations for the mental distress.

[archaicmaniac]

I had this one coworker at the sex shop with the worst taste in men. We’ll call her J. Truly, she was a very sweet girl who would date absolute trashbag men. They’d crash her car, steal her shit, and generally treat her very poorly.

That didn’t mean the rest of the store didn’t play “Who Has the Shittiest Partner” because if there was any stereotype about the kind of girl who worked in a sex shop it was girls with absolutely atrocious taste. Not just the straight girls, either. The lesbian and bi girls had just as shitty stories. I was an outlier who always sat out these conversations because my partner at the time was so precious.

So we were all surprised and delighted when J’s newest guy came in to pick her up. He was nicely dressed, very charismatic, a widower. He was a bit older than her but we were all ready to overlook the age gap because he was so charming and J was so happy.

I only met him once or twice when he came to pick her up for a date but things were going well. She told us he was sad sometimes about his wife who’d gone missing several years ago but that he treated her like a princess.

That was great! We were happy.

Then the cops showed up one day. They asked if J was working and I got the manager. We never gave out schedules, not even to cops. But they did catch up to her eventually.

She came in distraught the day after. It turns out that her dreamy widower was wanted for questioning. Because apparently due to some new forensics process they were able to apply it turned out he very probably killed his wife.

I’m not sure if he still had the rug or whether they searched his house but apparently a rug from his possession was now testing positive for having had A Lot of Blood in it.

He ghosted J so she didn’t know where to find him but turned up not long after in police custody. We commiserated as best we could but anytime someone complained about their partner to J she’d just give them a look and instantly won the shittiest ex debate.

[archaicmaniac]

[archaicmaniac]

Life imitates Art???? CHAPPELL ROAN AT THE VMAS... DARE I SAY I AM PROPHETIC?!?

[archaicmaniac]

Please don’t take your pets for granted. Even if you’re frustrated that your dog has been barking all day or your bird has been screaming for attention, remember you are all they have in this world. Give your fish that extra water change. Give your dog or cat that tummy rub they’ve been begging for. Chop up some fresh fruit as a treat for your rodents or reptiles. Just spend some time with them. Be compassionate to your animals. They are living creatures that are alive simply because you wish them to be. They may only be a small part in your life, but to them, you are their everything.

[archaicmaniac]

community notes are so brutal. tumblr needs to add that feature to escalate our pvp capabilities

[archaicmaniac]

not daily pokemon: scolipede

[archaicmaniac]

at the strip club like “do you wanna be my friend??”

[archaicmaniac]

If you find draining the fat off of ground meat to be annoying just cook it in one of those sauce pans with a strainer lid.

These things. They don’t just work for pasta.

Also don’t pour your fat down the sink. Pour it into a can or something.

[archaicmaniac]

[archaicmaniac]

Me in the year 2600 talking to my new iShower applebot