I Was Reading About Superstitions And Apparently If There’s A Bird In The House It’s A Sign Of Dea

cherry lips, crystal skies, i could show you incredible memes

don’t tell me this hasn’t happened to you

“Not use collective punishment as it is not fair on the many people who did nothing and under the 1949 Geneva Conventions it is a war crime.”

new aesthetic: man covered in cacti, surrounded by confused police

what happened to old youtubers you watched as a kid

good endings:

they’re still making the same content but with higher production values and they’re still enjoyable

they stopped making videos but successfully moved on to bigger and better things

bad endings:

they turned out to be really bigoted and are now pandering to the alt-right/center-right

they hardcore sold out and now they shill for like 12,000 separate products

neutral endings:

they’re still making the same content but it turns out they were never funny and you just had a bad sense of humor as a kid

they became a twitch streamer

they removed themselves from social media entirely and you find out after a bit of digging that they fucked off to the woods or some shit

And so a month after they built the fifth Wal-Mart in our county, a little coffee shop opened just a few yards away.  

My coworker Rick said it looked like a giant amoeba just waiting to absorb any surrounding properties.

“The coffee shop?” I asked.

“No, Wal-Mart is the amoeba.”

“Oh.”

When I got back to my desk, I typed ‘amoeba’ into Google and realized that I had incorrectly pictured a centipede.

“Fuck Rick,” I thought. “I don’t need any more friends, anyway. I’m on friend overload.”

At dinner that night, the Wal-Mart came up again when my wife Diane mentioned how ugly it was to see another gigantic shopping center taking up space in our town.

“It looks like a giant amoeba just waiting to absorb that little coffee shop,” I said. “And then the coffee shop is like a centipede.”

“I don’t think amoebas eat centipedes. And besides, that’s the point.”

Diane went on to explain that the coffee shop, though legitimate and functioning by all measures, was really an art piece constructed by a group of private donors in response to the new Wal-Mart.

“The idea is that we’re intentionally not supposed to go to the coffee shop. That way, Wal-Mart customers will be forced to observe the gradual decay of a local business every time they enter the store.”

“Well, I’ve been going there all week,” I said. “I think the coffee is top-notch stuff. Plus, it’s on my way to work.”

“The coffee is supposed to be mediocre,” said Diane. “Keeping within the budget of most struggling businesses. It’s supposed to be virtually undrinkable.”

“Hmm…well I really like it.”

“Well, you can’t keep going or else you’ll ruin the project.”

“This is America,” I said. “And if I want a cup of mediocre, overpriced coffee, by god I will have it!”

Over the next several months, I kept drinking the coffee. Some days I even went twice. The quality of the coffee, I was told, gradually worsened as a result of my unwavering interest, but I never noticed and so I had no choice but to doubt the rumors.

My doubt remained intact even after overhearing a private conversation between the coffee shop’s manager and the cashier. I was standing by a tree and watching a teenager back his car into another car and I guess they didn’t see me.

“I know,” said the cashier. “I’ve tried that, but it’s like he doesn’t have taste buds.”

“Well, he’s single-handedly fucking up this entire thing.”

“So what then, poison? Would he even drink poison?”

“Now, that’s an interesting idea.”

“Stupid teenage drivers,” I thought.

In the end, they poisoned the coffee. I made it a month after that, but my failing eyesight and ravaged kidneys eventually left me bed-ridden.

“Well, they just opened another location,” said Diane. “Business is booming. I hope you’re happy.”

And I wasn’t happy, but I was somehow content and I thought about everything: Wal-Mart, art projects, even little amoebas crawling through the forest, one-hundred legs working beautifully in tandem.

“Nobody ever wins in these kinds of things,” said Diane.

“But if you had to pick a winner, you’d probably pick me because the coffee shop was on my way to work.”

Diane sighed and left the room. I dozed off and in my dream, they did pick a winner. They picked me and I was led over to a small stage to choose my prize: A brand new recliner or two new kidneys!

“The recliner,” I inquired. “How far back are we talking?”

If you want to discourage this behavior, it’s probably easier to talk about it in gender-neutral terms.  “In crowded spaces, it’s rude to take up more space than you need.”  I think most people can agree on that.  I think if we called it something like “seat hogging” very few people would come out of the woodwork to defend it.

But as soon as you turn it into a gender discourse–”manspreading is a symptom of toxic masculinity teaching men that it’s manly to take up more space than women”–then you find people willing to go waaaayyyy out on a limb to justify it.  What about men’s hip shapes?  What about squishing their balls?  Why are you demanding everyone sit with their kneecaps perfectly touching at all times?  You can’t prove that 100% of men do this and 0% of women do this! Suddenly “is it okay to be the human equivalent of a BMW parked across three spaces” becomes a live debate.

And I don’t really know what the answer is here.  It’s easier to not bring gender into it if you just want a damn subway seat that isn’t 50% knee.  But it’s not the whole story, and it’s letting people push you around by means of obnoxious discourse.  And if we concede ground here, does it make it harder to talk about issues that can’t be discussed without admitting some kinds of gender disparity exist?

…Aw man, now these guys have even got their metaphorical knees in women’s way.

the internet has redefined cringe for me from “the general feeling when you suck air through your clenched teeth and veins on your neck pop up” to “feeling second hand embarrassment because someone is being stupid on the internet” so this didnt make sense to me at all

She was poetry, but he couldn’t read.”