dwinjohnsel

[dwinjohnsel]

So it's national Recreational Explosives, Hand Loss and Wildfire day, and unlike 2023, there is nary a drop of rain in sight.

Despite being slapped upside the head by God, my put technically inclined neighbor has acquired TWO pallets of fireworks this year.

The state is of no help: my city police department has made it pretty clear they don't intend to respond to any fireworks calls this weekend. I've sent the pictures I took to the county tipline and received and automated email reply saying that it will take several weeks to process my case. Perhaps he will get jail time later, but this does not actually you know. Stop him from setting the neighborhood ablaze. Going up to his door the week prior and very politely asking him to move- not cancel, just relocate - his celebrations was met with calling me a "nosy bitch" and "I'll set one off in your ass!".

Sometimes God needs us to make our own miracles.

My miracle comes with several layers, and plenty of opportunities to back down without losing face. We'll see how many are needed.

The first wave has already been deployed: a psyop directed at the Visiting Mother In Law of the miscreant.

I got up at 8:30 AM this morning to make sure I'd be in the front yard of my house, casually doing yardwork with Herschel. His participation was essential.

For those of you who are new here, Herschel is the world's most charming Cardigan Welsh Crime Tube, who thinks everyone in the world is his best friend and that people come to the house to see him specifically. So at 9:04 AM when the visiting mother-in-law appeared around the corner on her daily power-walk around the block, Herschel employed his natural Corgi instinct to make friends with everyone and cheerfully tossed himself on the sidewalk in front of her, belly up for expected tummy rubs.

"OH AREN'T YOU DARLING!!" My target coos, kneeling down to pat him while he makes him like snuffling noises of glee. She is at least 70. I think her bright pink leg warmers and terrycloth headband might be original from her jazzercise days.

"I'm so sorry! Herschel you're going to trip people doing that!" I apologize, going up to greet the woman. "I'm [REDACTED], I don't think we've met..?"

"No, I'm just visiting my daughter and her family- my name is Barbara. And who is this?" She asks Herschel, whose whole back end is waggling with glee.

"This is my service dog Herschel." I explain while he rolls around on the pavement. "I just wanted him to get some time outside before the pyrotechnics start."

"Oh. Yes." Barbra grumbles and I know I've got her. "My son-in-law is planning something extravagant." She says with such disdain it practically comes out of her nose. This is a woman who loves her daughter and dearly wishes she married someone, anyone else.

"Yeah, he got rained out and sick the last two years, so I think he's compensating." I agree.

"Oh he's definitely overcompensating!" Barbra spits, then shakes her whole body like a dog. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't complain. You said he's a service dog?"

I go for it.

"Yeah! I have... Neurological problems." I say and that is technically true. "I've um. Lost a lot of things, like a sense of time, or appetite, and his job is to remind me to eat or take my meds or alerts that I'm having an episode. My personal dog-tor!" I say, patting his adorable little head, and he leans on me, equally adoring.

"Oh, is that why-?" Barbra starts to ask, gesturing at the top of her head, but stops herself.

I hadn't planned this, but yesterday I'd shaved my head to deal with the heat and now only have a quarter inch of hair, which doesn't really hide the scars from when I got run over by a minivan. They're bright red with the heat and exertion of yard work.

I decide I'm okay with lying to a stranger to prevent my house from being set ablaze.

I sort of... Crumple to the ground and drop the rake I was holding, and Herschel immediately climbs into my lap to comfort me as I start to cry.

"Oh my God." Says Barbra.

"I'm sorry!" I gasp, tears streaming down my face. I've been stressed and this is honestly very cathartic. "I'm sorry to dump on you, I'm just so scared-!"

"Oh my God. It's bad." Barbra realizes.

"D- do you know what-" a pause as Herschel tries to manually clear my nostrils like a good service dog. "-oh, Herschel... It's - do you know what an astrocytoma* is?"

*An astrocytoma is a type of brain tumor.

Barbra turns white and sits down next to me. "I'm so sorry... I- one of my friends from church had one, it was agony but she's alright now!" She tries to reassure me.

"It hurts! Everything hurts all the time!" I sob. "And- and I'm scared, so he's scared and I feel bad for hi which just makes it worse and then there's the-" I gesture at the sky. "I have surgery in a month to remove as much of it as they can and do biopsies to see if I need radiation too but..."

"-but all that noise must be Hell on you and your doggy." Barbra nods.

"It'd be fine if he went down to the lake of something but, that house's driveway is like, a hundred feet from my bedroom, I can't sleep and it TERRIFIES Herschel..." I whimper pathetically.

"Well. I may be able to do something about that." Barbra decides.

"Oh no, I don't want to intrude!" I mock-protest.

"No, we're the ones intruding dear. I'll have words with him." She growls. I get the impression she's been waiting for an excuse To Have Words With Him.

"Th-thank you. Um. It's getting hot and I'm a mess, we should probably go inside..." I mutter and Barbra very kindly helps me and Herschel to the front door and tells me she'll be by later with watermelon as we wave goodbye.

From the porch, I watch her furiously power-walk back to her daughter's house, wrench open the front door, and issue a battle cry of "HEN-RY!!!" before it slams behind her.

Now I realize that this may not have been the most honest or ethical thing to do, but I figured it's more polite and ethical than the next step, which is chemical warfare, courtesy of Bath & Body Works :)

[dwinjohnsel]

[dwinjohnsel]

‘capitalism works’ factoid actually untrue. the 62 people who own half the world’s wealth are outliers and should be eaten.

[dwinjohnsel]

Today I saw a leaf that looked like a frog and I was like haha nice and then it hopped because it WAS a frog and I started crying bc life is really full of everyday miracles including but not limited to experiencing frogs

[dwinjohnsel]

they;re gonna give me an extra row of teeth bc ive been good

[dwinjohnsel]

to get revenge on Tim for being a little stalker back during his Robin days, Jason just decides to stalk Red Robin. the problem is that Tim realises Red Hood is stalking him and just goes ‘ok that’s fair’ and instead of getting annoyed about it he starts treating Jason like his own personal twitch chat.

Jason: *hacking into Tim’s apartment’s security cameras*

Tim, trying to cook in his kitchen: -so what do we think, chat? is this good or should i add more salt? and what should i make for dessert, any requests?

Jason:

Jason, seeing the rest of the apartment completely empty:

Jason: we really need to give him an MRI scan.

after a while Jason just starts going along with it and it becomes less of a revenge attempt and more of a keeping-an-eye-on-my-little-brother attempt, because it’s literally the only form of surveillance on Tim from the batfamily that Tim doesn’t immediately find and destroy.

Tim will be out on patrol with no coms connected, completely alone, and he’ll still pause outside a sting job and talk to nobody just like ‘chat do you think i should go in?’ and after a moment his phone will ping and it will be Jason who as far as he knows is in fuckin italy or something on a job, just ‘do it and i’ll donate 10 dollars’ and Tim will just be like ‘bet’ and it’s completely normal for them.

[dwinjohnsel]

Tried to take a pic after I just realized my big ass creeper glows in the dark but it came out looking like a ghost sighting pic like you can just barely fucking see him

[dwinjohnsel]

"ooh shoebills are so scary looking" yeah that's because you're getting the scary angle on purpose. apologize to him right now

[dwinjohnsel]

he is blogging

[dwinjohnsel]

this is frying me so bad

[dwinjohnsel]

[dwinjohnsel]

Your grandfather has the most nonspecific midcentury visage I have ever seen

A man made to say one line before Bob Hope walked on the screen.

He used to scam Dean Martin's guest table in Vegas while he was running a show for Orson Welles.

Married to a stone cold fox who did his marketing AND kept a roof over their heads because "magician" is not generally a lucrative career path.

[dwinjohnsel]

great! now do the same medical study with women

[dwinjohnsel]

okay now that we’ve a had couple lesbian blockbusters and milfs are having a romance moment, we need to bring back the manic pixie dream girl. she was never fuckin suited to fixing all the problems of some boring twenty year old everyman, but you know who could actually benefit from a quirky free-spirited blue haired girl with pronouns (she/they)? a newly divorced forty-something mom who’s trying to learn how to be herself for the first time in her life

[dwinjohnsel]

follow for some more sick text posts that I reblogged from someone else

[dwinjohnsel]

speaking of peeing the bed it's been long enough that i can tell this story publicly. in high school i went to a party at some house with no adults, as you sometimes would, and at the end of the night like 10 people all clonked out together in the same bed. fully clothed, one of those teenage moments where you're like wow heehee how rule-breaking, because sure a lot of our parents wouldn't like us sleeping in a bed with a bunch of other teenagers and no adult supervision blah blah. fond memories. anyway.

i'm an extremely light sleeper, so i barely slept, and sometime around 6 am, i woke up to a girl totally panicking, very quietly, because she peed the bed in her sleep. and listen. this wasn't a group of mean kids by any measure. but there's no level of kindness or understanding in the world that will make peeing the bed when you're 17, surrounded by people you only sort of know, a gentle blow.

so i sat up and she was like "oh my god" and I signaled at her to be absolutely silent and I said I'd be right back. And I crawled over everyone and out of the bed like a stupid cat.

and the thing is, by senior year i wasn't getting bullied much anymore. i was generally pretty well liked by my peers, but, if this makes sense, people still didn't always expect very much from me. i was still figuring out how to mask (autistic) and i still often said or did something that made everyone remember i'm weird and they'd just be like "well. that's story for you. i guess." and for the most part i'd become pretty secure in that.

so what i'm saying is i had nothing to lose and this girl had everything to lose.

so i went downstairs and i made tomato soup. and by "made" i mean i put a whole can of tomato soup in a too-small mug and microwaved it until it was lukewarm so as to be convincingly "made" but not so hot to burn someone.

and then i walked back upstairs, and no longer like a cat, i clumsily "attempted" to crawl back into bed, loudly lost my balance, and spilled tomato soup all over the girl and her lap and several other people's laps and heads and the mattress.

everyone woke up confused and anguished and i was like, "oh my god, I'm so sorry. I just got really hungry and it's all i could find."

and everyone immediately accepted with absolutely no further questions that I would go downstairs, make tomato soup at 6 am,and bring it back to bed. everyone just begrudgingly climbed onto the floor and went back to sleep while I put the bedding right into the laundry.

i don't even know this girl's name. i only remembered this story recently because i'm in my hometown for a few months and recently a high school acquaintance said, "hey. do you remember spilling soup on everyone after prom? why did you do that?" and for a moment i genuinely did not and i stared at them completely dumbfounded while the memory loaded and then i started laughing too hard to answer for 2 minutes.

the best part is i can tell this story, and even if it reaches the people who were there, none of them will know which one of them peed the bed. thanks to tomato soup.

[dwinjohnsel]

why are cyberpunk tabletop things so obsessed with decency and personhood being tied to how many surgeries you haven’t had