I’m suddenly laughing at the idea of a cliche noir detective story written in the brutally concise style of Hemingway.
A woman walked into my office. She had legs. I noticed her legs. “I have a problem. I need your help,” she said. They always said that. I knew her legs weren’t the problem. I hoped she might want my help with them anyhow.
“Can you pay?” I asked. Of course she could. Her shoes were worth more than my rent. She could pay. “I can pay,” she said. Her eyes were wet. I wondered if anything else was wet. Probably not. I am not handsome. Not since the war. She was looking at my scar. Lots of people do. Most look away. Not her. She did not look away. She looked at my scar and I looked at her legs. There were two of them. I liked that about her. I liked that a whole lot. “Will there be danger?” I asked. There always is. This city bleeds danger, then drinks it right back up again.
“I’m afraid there might be danger,” she said. She had the voice of a beautiful woman. She also had the face and body of a beautiful woman. She was beautiful.
The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.
“I can handle danger,” I said. I patted the butt of my gun. My gun was a Colt. My gun and my scar were all that was left from my time as a soldier. My gun, my scar, and the nightmares. I looked her up and down. “I am good at handling things.”
By “majority” they mean “53.5%” which is an interesting number because more than 80% of abuse is carried out by a parent and if you check the proportions of families where women are involved v. families where men are involved it’s apparent that men are disproportionately likely to inflict abuse despite technically making up a smaller percentage of total abusers. Households with both a man and woman make up 69% of total parent arrangements, then 23% are single mother households, while single father households make up just 4%. So despite women being present in 92% of parenting arrangements while men are present in just 73% men still manage to commit almost half of child abuse, plus the data doesn’t analyse gender v. type of abuse and the figures cover everything from neglect to physical and sexual abuse and I think we can agree that these are not in any way equivalent forms of abuse (not that neglect is excusable but sexual abuse is clearly a worse offense). Yeah tho, this is why statistics matters, these numbers are meaningless without context.
omg so yesterday i put a salt line on the pathway to our front door because i was fucking around and my brother was pretending to be a demon
and today we ordered pizza and the salt line was still there
and my brother went outside to sign for the pizza
and the pizzaman refused to step over the salt line, like he almost did and then he backed up and handed my bro the pizza and left; which is pretty ridiculous because it’s far from our door
so a heads up to everyone i’m pretty sure domino’s is actually run by demons??? kind of like how in men in black the post office is run by aliens
demono
((”Not just pizza”))
((”but eternal damnation”))
Alternate theory: It wasn’t that the pizza guy couldn’t cross the line of salt himself.
He just saw the line of salt and assumed that it was the only thing keeping you and your brother in, and he didn’t want nothing to do with your demon asses
Harry Potter is a fairly well-written portrayal of an abuse survivor and you can’t change my mind about this.
He’s socially stunted, even by teenage boy standards. He’s extremely emotionally volatile, prone to swinging between stoic martyrdom and explosive outbursts. He has a black and white view of relationships and people. He’s too trusting, and arguably clingy, to people he views as “good,” and deeply paranoid about people he views as “bad.” He refuses to rely on others and is always legitimately surprised when people help him and care about him. He blames himself for everything and takes credit for nothing. He’s a sneaky rule-breaker, not because he’s a rebellious shit, but because he was raised in a world where “rules” were designed to make his life miserable whether he followed or broke them, and he could only survive by sneaking around them.
It’s a kid’s book written by somebody with no formal education in child psychology, so in-depth portrayals of the horrors of C-PTSD can’t be expected. (Though it is touched on and alluded to in several places.) But Harry Potter is a pretty accurate portrayal of a child abuse survivor and you can’t change my mind about this.
The exoplanet is about twice the size of Earth and is considered the closest “super-Earth” orbiting a sunlike star. For now, it’s known as HD 26965b, in keeping with naming guidelines set forth by the International Astronomical Union. But Ge said he planned to contact the Union to ask that the exoplanet be named Vulcan.
Y’ALL! They found Vulcan. Whom else on this good Earth is ready for First Contact? BRB gonna call NASA so they can put me in a canon and shoot me to 40 Eridani A.
It’s coming up on a year now since I got my current job as a pizza delivery girl, and I thought this would be a good time to delve into the little ever-expanding “WTFPIZZA” note I keep on my cell that helps me remember some of my more, uh – interesting deliveries.
So without further ado and in no particular order, here’s some pizza customers who left a lasting impression on me thus far:
– A bearded man who answered the door and periodically spat blood into a crusted Harley-Davidson coffee mug while counting out his cash.
– A woman who slipped me a business card (in lieu of tip) for a laser tattoo removal clinic, explaining “In case you want to bring your mutilated skin back to how God intended it to be.”
– At least three Batmans so far, but only one who did the voice.
– An elderly Spanish woman who meekly presented me with a (rather classy) pearl-handled .32 snub nosed revolver and asked if I knew how to load it (I do) and also, if I could load it for her (I didn’t).
– A group of EMT’s hanging out in the back of an ambulance at a recently extinguished (but still smouldering) house fire.
– A man with a thick Alabama accent who admonished me for standing in front of his mailbox while I waited for him to answer the door. He then explained how this was a federal offense because I was “obstructing the mail system” and demanded my social security number so he could “report me to the proper authorities”.
– A group of young teenage girls (like 14-16) who begged me to buy a case of Bud Light (ew why) and bring it back to them.
– A hotel room full of badass middle-aged women all dressed as Professor McGonagall from the Harry Potter films, who were also completely wasted on Jello shots. They kept encouraging me to stay and party with them.
– A 20-something dude who answered the door with an unsheathed katana dangling through a belt loop on his jeans.
– Multiple instances of people asking if I would sell them pot. (bitch get your own dealer sheesh)
– A guy who slipped a twenty directly into my shirt because I apparently was the “spitting image” of his deceased daughter.
– A woman who admonished me for driving a Mazda, and wrote “get a real car” in the tip portion of my credit receipt.
– A very drunk dude who gave me his iPhone and had me take a bunch of Myspace-esque pictures of the both of us. He did the duck lips thing in every shot.
– Multiple prank deliveries (joke’s on you motherfucker, I get paid for the gas AND I eat the pizzas you ordered)
– An elderly man who wrote “FUCK OFF” as his signature on a credit receipt.
– A thirty-something guy who begged to get his order for free because he “works so hard”. He visibly teared up and sniffled when I told him I couldn’t do anything.
– A dudebro wearing a bath robe and socks + sandals (indoors) who straight up wordlessly yanked the pizzas out of my hands without paying and shut the door. Multiple knockings were of no avail.
– A woman who angrily demanded to see my ID because she refused to believe my claims that I’m female. She proceeded to snatch my driver’s license out of my hand, run back into her house and show it to her children while pointing back at me.
– A kid no older than 14 who desperately tried to convince me to play WoW on the free custom server he was playing on. (But it has double XP!)
– A guy who spent the entire time I was there digging a (impressively large) booger out of his nose. He proceeded to smear it on, thankfully, HIS copy of the receipt.
– An on-duty cop who flagged me down by intercepting me on the road before I got to the police station and pulling me over to get his pizza.
– A drill instructor looking-guy who filled out his entire credit card receipt, specifically wrote “0.00” in the tip portion, then proceeded to write out a check for seventy-eight cents and handed it to me. It said “pizza tip” in the “For” section.
– A furious lady who yelled at me for a solid five minutes (I kept track) all about how long it took for her delivery to get to her. She then tipped me an extra ten bucks on a six dollar order. I dunno.
– An incredibly stoned teenager trying and failing to look sober. When I complimented his Adventure Time wallet (which was super cute) and asked where he got it, he immediately looked terrified, sat down on the floor and muttered “I… I don’t know….”
– Obligatory naked man with unimpressive penis
– A chick at a house party who answered the door and immediately turned to vomit into her mailbox.
– A surly Korean mom with an amazing shoulder tattoo of a baby giving birth to a full-grown woman.
– A man who lived in one of those mini-mansions inside a gated community, who sported a seemingly massive collection of what appeared to be solid glass spheres of varying size and color. I only got a quick glance in his house but there had to be hundreds of them in display racks, tables, shelves – everywhere.
– A group of 20-something guys who challenged me to sing the original Pokemon theme song, which I did. And perfectly, I may add.
– A completely iced-out musclebound gangster kid who was blaring Regina Spektor so loud and with so much bass I actually couldn’t hear anything he was saying.
– An elderly guy who deadpan asked me if I knew anyone who could score him hollowpoint bullets.
– An adorable older lesbian couple who were mortified that they didn’t have any extra money for a tip, so they gave me a big sack of pistachios instead. It took me three weeks to finish the bag.
Honestly if you’re female and you’re called for jury duty and during the elimination process you’re asked if you’ve ever had any adverse experience with a man (harrassment or rape or any other male violence) just fuckin lie and say no. Then vote that fucker guilty
Women survivors are barred from serving on a jury but rapists are not even questioned. There can be no doubt that this is a major reason rapists walk free. Men have never played fair. It is time for women to start beating them at their own game. Our lives depend on it.
Death By Catchphrase 