Poll: if your mom remarries when you’re 26 years old is that guy still your stepdad or is he just your mom’s husband.
The poll winner seems to be “depends on whether you like him” which is super valid.
Mine watches fox news so “mom’s husband” it is!
My family has a great way of distinguishing between a new spouse you like and new spouse you disdain!
Your mom/aunt/grandma/etc remarries and they are actually a cool person, you use their first name. So if you were to introduce them they would be: Aunt Jane and Bob.
If your mom/aunt/grandma/etc remarries and they are a fuckwad you introduce them as: this is Aunt Jane and her second husband. The implication being that they are very replaceable and that we’re all just waiting for her to wise up to the situation and serve you divorce papers, she did it once, she can do it again.
MAGNIFICENT
Alright, but what if my mom on her third marriage found a decent man, but my mother herself is shitty
Holy shit a lightning bug got in the house and I almost pissed myself because there was suddenly a random floating light and my dumbass sleep deprived brain went: ALIENS??????
Sir please stop illuminating in the kitchen please it’s one am
So it’s like a couple days later and guess who just had a lightning bug land on their hand while they were sitting in the dark watching tiktoks and consequentially jumped a mile in surprise, throwing the cat laying on their chest up into the air?
It was me.
You would not believe your eyes if one random firefly, flew into your house as you tried to sleep.
Cracking up at the idea that OP saw a firefly in their house and was like “Oh damn, one of the slowest and most easily-catchable bugs on planet earth that literally gives away its location with a blinking light. Welp, no way I can get that thing outside. Might as well just leave it.”
they became friends you meanie
You. You’re my new favorite addition to this post.
my uncle brought his one night stand to meet me in the hospital when i was born
i guess they’d just gotten back to his house when he got the call from my dad and they detoured to the hospital before i would assume going back to his place
but like imagine your otp
“i know we just met like half an hour ago and we definitely came here to hook up but like my brother just had a baby so would you mind putting this on pause for a bit? you can come meet her too she’s probably a really cute baby”
when my sister was born, apparently my parents just ran into him in the lobby of the hospital
they thought he’d somehow magically found out my mom was in labour and he thought they’d gotten his message to come pick him up
he’d possibly broken his arm playing beer pong apparently and was very drunk
apparently there was a confusing conversation in the lobby before my uncle decided to skip the x-rays he was supposed to be heading for and sit outside my mom’s delivery room and occasionally bring in vending machine snacks
i guess there was a minor panic probably considering he didn’t actually make it to x-rays until a few hours later after deciding labour was taking too long and the people at x-rays were really concerned on how long it’d taken this drunk guy to make it from the er to the x-rays
anyway, he made it back to my mom’s hospital room after my sister was born with a cast and the x-ray tech’s number
You are a time-traveler from the 3000s on a historical vacation to the cusp of the year 2000. Midway through your trip, you suffer a slight misunderstanding of ancient traffic signs. The motorist doesn’t see it so kindly. He blares out his horn and screams ancient profanities at you as he whizzes within a hair’s breadth of your nose. You tumble back on instinct, and topple flat, and crush the poor life out of your time travel device. You’ve busted the flux capacitor. It now only goes backwards.
You collect yourself. You curse your luck. It really is busted, as you flip and flop and toggle all its little toggles. All backwards and no forwards. Luckily, you’re no rube. You know how to repair a flux capacitor. But getting the materials in these ancient times is its own challenge. Namely a very specific crystal that did not enter the stage of modern science until about 2500. Before then it was only an extremely niche collector’s item.
You find a terminal (computer) in this age’s library (library) quickly enough. You figure out this age’s bartering system (eBay) just about as fast, and to your joy you find a single listing for the crystal. You put down a bid. You wait. Anonymously, you are outbid. Sweating, you put down another bid. You wait. You are outbid.
More nervous, you leave the library and return to your motel. You wait, and wait, and wile away your remaining vacation anxiously waiting. You wait for days until the auction is almost up, and you return, and you put down a bid for all the 2000s currency you exchanged for your trip here.
You are outbid.
You curse at the screen, yelling and pulling your hair. It’s fine. Maybe you can negotiate with the seller. You send a message to the seller, explaining that crystal is of extreme importance. You can offer a lot. Future information. Superbowl winners. Stuff that’ll get you audited by the Travel Commission, but you’re desperate.
Days pass. Your vacation is long over. You don’t hear back.
It’s fine. It’s fine actually. Your flux capacitor will still send you backwards. You saw the winning bid amount. Just go back, pick up odd jobs in this age, accrue enough 2000s money until you can outbid that bid. And then win the crystal. Easy. Easy.
You crank the capacitor back two weeks, and you figure out what services you can offer for cash.
The listing is live. There is a single bid on it. You wait. You wait a bit. You bid over it. You wait. You are outbid. You wait. You wait days, once more, doing more odd-jobs, accruing more cash, until the auction is almost up. And then you put down your full cash-in-hand amount. $100 over the winning bid.
You are outbid.
You scream and yell at the screen, thocking the plastic beast until the librarian hushes you. Something changed. You curl in your seat and pull at your hair. You’re very tired of the 2000s and all their un-automated manual labor odd jobs. If only you could reach out to the winner and offer more, but the bidding is anonymous. You have no username to go by. You have no leads.
It’s fine. You go back further. You pick up more jobs. More cash in hand. You downgrade from a motel to a hostel. You eat rice and beans every day. You have 3x the winning bid amount in hand on the day the auction ends. Within moments of the auction’s close, you bid it all.
You are outbid.
You wrap your hands around the monitor and haul it off the desk, tearing cords. You scream and throw it at the ground. Disappointingly, it does not shatter. But the librarian has fainted.
It doesn’t matter. You’re going back in time anyway.
You do it again. You don’t eat. You don’t sleep. You beg for money. You pick up every odd listing you can snatch off Craigslist. You do it more. You do it harder.
You wait until the near-close of the auction to bid everything you have.
You are outbid.
The library patrons are almost fortunate to witness of breakdown of your magnitude.
You go back. You get a knife. You start emptying the wallets of people you can corner in back alleys.
You are outbid.
You go back.
You steal someone’s identity. You take out a life-altering loan in their name.
You are outbid.
You go back.
You rob a bank. Three people die in the cross-fire.
You are outbid.
You go. Back.
You go back far enough to dedicate every waking moment of literal years to learning every exploit that exists in this age’s “internet”. You find a weakness in eBay’s user interface and use it to inject an auto-bid that will trigger at the millisecond before the auction ends. You have millions to bid with all your ill-gotten gains from the ransomware schemes you invented.
The auction ends.
You’ve been outbid.
You
GO
BACK.
This time you hack into the crystal-seller’s account. You’ll hold it hostage! You’ll get her information! You’ll show up to her house and take the crystal by gunpoint if necessary. You’ll get her. You’ll get it. You’ll kill her or everything or the whole world or these whole damnedable 2000s you don’t care you don’t care you don’t CARE.
You’re going.
To get.
The fucking.
Crystal.
You open up the bid page from the seller’s view. Your hot righteous bubbling evil maniacal breakdown is dampened a moment. You stare at the history of bidders, no longer anonymous, now all unmasked. And stare. And stare a little longer.
…
Margaret Hallinger moves with the muted tinkle of windchimes dangling from her earlobes as she takes her seat. She stares over a set of bedazzled spectacles as she sips her chamomile tea in the dim lighting of her computer room, lush with hanging plants. Leroy, her black and white cat, slinks into her lap and molds his head to the open palm of her hand. She pauses to smile, and pet him, and Leroy nudges closer. She scratches his butt.
Margaret is excited. She has an eBay auction ending soon for one of the nice little crystals she found in Auntie’s attic. This one is truly exciting, because it has gotten a few bids on it since the other day. She knew people would like Auntie’s crystals. She knew this one was special.
A flicker on screen catches her eye. She looks, and nearly drops her tea. A storm of bids roll through. A siege of notifications. They swallow the screen. Tittering up. Jumping hopping zigzagging up like a seizing stuttering single-breath scream. Margaret’s eyes dart about to keep up, seized in the storm behind the pale white reflection in her spectacles.
On each bid is a username.
Each username is different
But only, at most, by one single letter.
Together they beat out a storm of near-perfect mimicry, like a few-dozen ever-so-slightly-off clones screaming out in unison to outbid outbid outbid outbid outbid outbid each other.
It ends all in a moment.
The auction caps out with an offer in the tens-of-millions.
Margaret stares. Margaret stares. Margaret sweats. Margaret’s hands shake. Margaret has forgotten how to breathe. Margaret moves one hand forward to place on the mouse and move the cursor.
Margaret is forcibly logged out of her account.
The log-in page stares at her. Margaret stares back.
The tea drops from her hands and startles Leroy.
Margaret faints.
And her mug, and her body, and her Leroy all hit the ground at the same time. In perfect unison with a few-dozen library computers hauled off a desk and come crashing down.
(also I didn’t want the winner to deal with eBay’s atrocious international taxes so I just had them donate the amount to the National Cervical Cancer Coalition and screenshot me the receipt while I send the book to them directly LOL)
ETA: Xiran Jay Zhao identifies as nonbiinary. The titular Iron Widow Wu Zetian
does not. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks to the folks who kindly sought to clarify this. 🙂
I found a copy of my mom’s favorite book from childhood! It’s called Striped Ice Cream and I’m gonna wrap it in plastic and then some foil and bury it in a gallon of Neapolitan.
And I’ll say “look, mom, I got you that striped ice cream you’re always talking about!” and convince her to serve it up for dessert.
I’m gonna wrap a layer of waxed paper around it too, so that the marker doesn’t rub off and it’s easier to fish out. I’m not sure how I’m gonna excavate the ice cream, exactly. I made a template. I’m hoping to like… cut around it and then peel back a layer about an inch deep that I can just put back on top.
Mom thinks I’m at the park with the dog but I’m out in the garage burying a children’s book from the 60s in a gallon of ice cream. This is one of the weirdest ways I’ve ever wrapped a present.
Well, shit.
Modern problems require modern solutions.
Now to work on smoothing the top a bit. It’s not going to be perfect but it’ll still be a good surprise.
“What have you done to this ice cream??”
AND THEN MY DAD TOLD HER IT WAS A BOOK BECAUSE HE WAS TOO EXCITED
You know who else is excited about this ice cream based enrichment puzzle? MY MOM.
when I am emperor I will demand that you put the tracking number directly in the shipment confirmation email, and if you make me go to your website and sign in before I can access any tracking info, you’re going straight into the coliseum to fight for your life
fight for your life against the FedEx muscle guys who throw my precious packages at my house like they are the football
My FedEx people just leave the package on the ground 50 meters away where I can’t even see, with no notification, in a high traffic place. I am constantly having to figure out how to get USPS or UPS delivery, because FedEx gets stolen almost every time.
Yeah recently we got a new batch of FedEx guys and instead of hurling my packages like the football (bad!) they no longer come to my house and just leave them on the ground near the end of the driveway, in the rain, with no shelter, where I can’t even see them from my house (worse). Multiple packages have been destroyed since they started doing this.
Have you heard about what FedEx was doing in Alabama? A couple of delivery drivers were throwing all of their packages in a ravine in the woods. My mom called me the day it hit the news and went “guess where my dog food is!”
Good times.
wh
why…..
The FedEx debacle was just one dude. The faster they finish the route the faster they go home, but that guy claimed he had lost a family member and had other issues and just didnt wanna deliver them. 6 times. That’s why there were so many, he did this 6 times over the course of a month
Have any of you heard of the Harvard MIT Pigeon Prank?
An MIT student dressed in a
black-and-white striped shirt went to the Harvard football stadium every
day of one summer, blowing a whistle while scattering breadcrumbs or
birdseed to coax neighborhood pigeons down onto the field. At
Harvard’s opening game of the season, upon the referee’s first whistle,
it’s said that hundreds of pigeons descended onto the field, causing a
half-hour delay.
My DARE officer was arrested for possession with intent to distribute.
in elementary school the DARE officer mentioned that you shouldnt sniff sharpies or white-out and everyone in the back two rows immediately took out their sharpies and liquid white-out to see if they would get high DURING THE DARE PRESENTATION
Again, congrats to drugs for winning the war on drugs 🙂
1) he isn’t a professional photographer, he’s a dog groomer with a camera which he used to take nice pictures of his clients for social media who agreed to be the photographer as a favor because
2) he was invited to the wedding but they took his place off the seating chart once they hired him (!)
3) he was paid $250 for the day and at the point he got fed up was totally out of water and hadn’t had a break or anything to eat for TEN HOURS
4) the groom told him he couldn’t even have 10 minutes while everyone else was eating to go to the bathroom, sit down for a minute, and refill his water bottles, they wanted him taking pictures of Aunt Marsha eating chicken apparently
4a) it was in an old VFA hall and the A/C was broken and it was like 100° so being out of water and without food was actively dangerous
5) they also had him babysitting people’s children for free
6) when he said he really needed to at least get water, the groom said no, or he’d be fired, and at THAT point he said “fine, this isn’t worth it, this was a favor to all of you, I’ve been following your new wife around since early this morning and I’m starving,” the groom basically told him to suck it up, and THEN he wiped his memory card and left.
And honestly, good for him.
I followed this story heavily when it first came to light and I wanna point out that the gender of the photographer has never been revealed – they’ve kept their whole identify anonymous (tho it actually does seem the majority of the articles written about them reference them as a she). But there’s nothing the photographer has posted that reflects their own gender identity.
but also some more updates:
7) The photographer was originally friends with the wife and only knew the husband who they dealt with the entire day through the bride.
8) The husband lied to the bride and told her that the images were lost due to camera malfunction. After the honeymoon when the bride contacted the photographer, they told her the truth.
9) The photographer offered to have the SD card restored at the cost of the bride and groom, but the bride refused.
10) Despite the shit they were put through at the wedding, the photographer agreed to do a re-shoot later in the season for the original price with the condition that they bail the moment they get any “crap” from either of them.
11) The photographer made the wife correct the fake story her and her husband gave facebook of the camera malfunctioning so that people would stop blaming and giving the photographer hate.
12) The re-shoot was scheduled for November, but they got a last minute request from the wife and husband to do it in October, a couple of days after the request, to which the photographer agreed to.
13) All dressed and readied up, the couple meets the photographer at their car when at the destination. While unloading their equipment, the photographer tells the couple their plans for the shoot and the scenes they wanna set up. They ask the husband while they do for help carrying sandbags, to which he declined, saying it was their job to do all that, not his.
14) The photographer immediately loads up their stuff, gets in their car and drives home. They blocked both the husband and wife
mc1303 