23 . they/them. Please call me Aspenđ Married to @quietlesbianthoughts Queer. multidisabled. I like Wildlife biology writing and art. I'm also a practicing Pagan and Animist. The world is alive and I am in love with it.
I’m so financially fucked rn
Please please anything for food. I don’t want to starve @ lumophobia on cash app dm me for any other money app bc deadname and all that
wish i had a bit going where whenever i said “the prophecy” like three of my friends would repeat “the prophecy” in different tones while squinting into the distance and rubbing their chins like sages deep in thought. i would also do this for them, im a team player
okay, so, be me, 27 years old at the time, an adult by any definition in the world
be me at the los angeles zoo, one of my very favorite places in the world, because i love animals. i am immedietly 8 years old when presented with a little creature. i can’t help it.
okay, wait, go back. we must establish two things for this to hit right
first:
the year before, i’d gone to the san diego zoo with my aunt and grandma and! they let you feed giraffes there!!
how wonderful a world and how wonderful a life, where for $10 I can hand feed a giant creature three crispy biscuits. i go “i am feeding the giraffes right now” and go in line to buy the biscuits and return moments later triumphant, 3 biscuits in my grasp
“oh good!” my grandmother says, “one for each of us!”
“yes,” i say, despondent, “one for each of us.”
i wanted to feed all three to the giraffes myself but since i am an actual adult and not a child i do not say this and share the biscuits
second:
my friend group echoes. a lot
someone tells a story and ends it with “and that’s what happened!” and the rest of us will repeat “and that’s what happened!”
often in unison. and it’s constant, all the time, even to little stuff. often said in the tone of “they don’t even have dental”
ok, so we’re back at the los angeles zoo. they have opened the giraffe feeding
i am not going to be thwarted again
my two friends (K and M) get in line to feed them and i go to buy the biscuits. i return with nine biscuits because i am going to give the giraffes three biscuits myself and i do not want to hear a word of protest. i am being fair. i am being equitable. i am sharing. no one can judge me
“wow!” says K. “that’s a lot of biscuits!”
“the cult provides,” i say generously, handing over their share, because what is a friend group if not a small cult
and then, automatically, in unison, like they have so many times before and thinking nothing of what exactly they’re saying, M and K reply, “the cult provides”
two different people in line turn to stare at us while we all blink at each other and then M nervously shouts, “we are definitely not in a cult!” which sounds like something someone who is in a cult might say
and ever since it’s been a running bit where one person says “the cult ____” and everyone echoes it as seriously as possible, no matter where we are or who we’re around
which is to say, OP, that you could be living the dream if your friends weren’t cowards
I have watched COLUMBO with my grandpa so many times when I was a kid and I never knew Lieutenant Columboâs first name was Frank! Frank Columbo! Frank!
Delete this quickly, before Light Yagami sees this post
Do not attempt to out-malicious-compliance the staff at the malicious compliance conference.
Some dipshit decided to pay the conference fee ($250) in quarters. He handed us a wrapped plastic bag full of loose change. âItâs all there,â he said with a shit-eating grin, âyou can count it.â
Oh buddy. Weâre going to count it. What were you expecting?
At about the time I got to $60, he offered to give us $300 collateral so he could get his badge and go to the conference.
No, bud. You get to watch the most dyscalculic staffer count to a thousand while all your friends go in to the breakfast and find seats for the first talk.
âRuining someoneâs dayâ is the favorite hobby of everyone here. Why would you hand us the perfect opportunity to wreck your shit and think that was an own? Half the con is calling him âUntraceable,â the other half is calling him âQuarter Boyâ and nobody cares what he says his handle is.
I spent an hour counting that and made him go fetch me baggies to hold it every fifty dollars.
This ended up being a good bonus prank for me too, because when the counting was done I wrapped the bags in gafferâs tape and spent the rest of the day handing it to people very casually while saying âoh here, hold this for a secâ and then watching they werenât ready for the weight (I only did this to people I know well enough to know this wouldnât hurt them).
Itâs an infosec conference, so itâs a weekend in a hotel full of people whose favorite thing is breaking the law and whose second favorite thing is following the letter of the law while cheerfully violating the spirit.
Theyâre calling him âuntraceableâ because he was hanging out at a hackerspace and talking about how he didnât want to pre-register for the con because that could be traced back to his real name, so he was going to pay cash. Then someone else was like âbills are serialized, if you really wanted to be untraceable youâd pay with dollar coins like Redacted did a couple years ago,â and Quarter Boy was like âI have an even BETTER idea. Iâm going to double down for the meme potential,â and then put a note in his bag of quarters that said âBlame Redacted, I had to beat his high score,â so this wasnât even an *original* troll. He wanted to be a legend and instead became a cautionary tale. He wanted to get laughs and instead he got laughed at. He wanted everyone at the con to know who he was, and now everybody knows heâs Quarter Boy.
Legitimately I donât have any idea why he thought this was a funny joke that would make him look good, and there are very few things you could do that would draw more ire from attendees than inconveniencing the volunteer convention staff during the registration rush when everyone just wants to get through the line (and in spite of diverting me to counting quarters and loudly explaining the reason for the delay to the massive line, we managed to get 150 attendees checked in over the course of 25 minutes while ALSO selling 50 shirts).
And I mean. Of course we could have put him aside and counted the quarters later, but then fewer people would have witnessed the legend of Quarter Boy, the untraceable hacker who realized exactly how much heâd fucked up about four minutes into hearing us answer âwhatâs with the quarters?â with âsome asshole thought it would be funnyâ over and over and over again.
You know what *was* a good joke this convention? One guy made stickers that were almost-but-not-quite exactly the logo for a hackerspace (one letter off) and stuck them all over the convention area, prompting outrage and a spur-of-the-moment Easter egg hunt from the hackerspace guys that escalated until he was covering their logo on their merch with his stickers and was using sleight-of-hand tricks to sneak his stickers into their pockets and bags.
bob going all in on descriptions of gertrudeâs magic is on the level with oscar describing rueâs fits like the power of a first time player who knows how to perform and is thrilled to get to do it in a dnd context
