- My Earliest Memory Is From When I Was 4/5. I Was Sitting On The Passenger Seat Of My Moms Green Car

- My earliest memory is from when I was 4/5. I was sitting on the passenger seat of my mom’s green car and she was driving down the gravel road. I can remember exactly where we were which is odd because my memory doesn’t work like that. I remember turning from looking out the window to tell her that when I was in the other place I was allowed to pick any mommy I wanted and I picked her because I thought she needed me. Then I went back to watching the trees go past. I don’t remember how she responded and I know she’s only brought it up once since then when I was in my late 20′s. I was surprised she even remembered because in my memory it feels just, like, a random day and thing. Not at all important. To the point where I’m always a little surprised to remember something so insignificant. 

- I never had an imaginary friend growing up. I used to pretend I had imaginary friend. And I’d get so jealous that other people could just imagine something that wasn’t there. Occasionally my brother’s imaginary friend would come check in on me and reassure me that it was ok not to be able to imagine a friend. This never felt odd to me. It felt odd for my brother when I described the imaginary friend he had never told me about. 

- I don’t believe in psychics. My mom was seeing one to help with her grief about my brother’s death. I picked her up from the psychic once and the psychic insistent I not leave before she told me some things from a past life. I thought it was hokey but agreed to play along because she was helping my mom grieve. She said in a past life I was shot twice in the back. I nodded along but she must have seen I didn’t believe because she offered to show me where. I turned around and she tapped two places on my back. No more pressure then you’d use to press a button on your phone’s keyboard. I nearly collapsed from the icy burning pain of it. Then she said she wasn’t sure if it was the same life or another but my feet had also been cut off. My feet have always felt disconnected from me. To the point where I’d asked a doctor if I had circulation or nerve issues. Dr said no. I don’t remember ever telling my mom about it. The moment she said that my mind was like “yep, that’s what it is”. I believe now. 

- When I was a young teen and hanging out with a friend we found an ouija board. I don’t remember why but I asked my mom if I could play it. That stands out to me because it was a board game and I’d never asked to play those before. I just knew I could. Except I remember knowing that my mom had to give me permission first. Like, I called her from my friends house to ask if I could play a board game. My mom refused. Adamantly. To the point where she talked to my friends parents and said she’d come get me right that instant if they didn’t guarantee I wouldn’t touch it. They must have because she let me stay the rest of the night but they also took the ouija board away. When I asked her about it (in person) she refused to tell me why. I pestered her for days about it. Finally she said that when she used an ouija board for the first and last time (as a teenager) it said something horrible about me. She refused to say anything more since then. And I’m just now realizing I wasn’t even born then. My older brother and sister weren’t either. Well, that just got a little creepier for me. 

 - My sister has this weird empathy bond with my mom. She knows when my mom’s upset. I remember many many times I’d be hanging out with my sister and she’d just stop what she was doing, pull out her phone, call mom and be like “what’s wrong? No, don’t lie to me. What’s wrong?” It ranges from mom having had a nightmare to someone dying. For the longest time it was the one piece of evidence I believed that people could be psychic. 

i just had the weirdest moment, i was feeling my front teeth with my tongue because they’re the tiniest bit crooked, and then i had the thought “i’ll check if they’re also crooked in my other mouth” and then i realized to my shock and confusion that i have only one mouth, leading me to believe that in a past life i was a terrible monster with two mouths

My first thought was “It’s not a hobby because I’m not doing anything” but then I was like A) What a narrow view of hobbies and B) I totally am. I’m trying my body to fight by giving it tiny can barely fight opponents before making it fight progressively stronger opponents. It’s pretty much video game levelling system but it’s so idle I don’t know I’m doing it. My new favourite hobby.

why do you and others like vaccines so much?

not dying of preventable diseases is actually one of my favorite hobbies

i’m gonna make a movie where two normal ladies fall in love. everything’s chill, no age gap, they’re both out of the closet, their families love them, everything’s fine. the catch is that one lady has a cat and the other lady never figured out what the cat’s name was cause the Owner Lesbian ALWAYS uses a dumb nickname and now it’s been three years and they’re getting married and it’s too late to just ask

WHEN YOU SURVIVE THIS (AND YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS) IT WILL BE FOR YOURSELF

I am intrigued by this idea but my mind veered down a different path. 

Father’s tone was even as he explained why this was The Right Thing. His lip was firm even as mine trembled with every breath. “This is the way things are done. Dogs like Fish, well, they get old quickly. Look at how grey her muzzle is. Wouldn’t be right to make her suffer the pain of her old joints just to keep her with us.” Father’s shifting side to side as he says it. Mom said when he was young he had an accident, broke his ankle and he’s never been able to stand on it long since then. You wouldn’t know, it happened before you were born. Same with his hair turning grey and the wrinkles pulling down his face. Mom also said that the empty farm up by Suzie’s place had a school on it where Mom went when she was little to learn. You and Suzie’d spent weeks looking all over that farm for that school. Suzie said maybe it was just really really little, like the size of a bird house but your eyes were sharp enough to spot a Chickadee in a bush two houses away so you were sure you’d have found it by now. If it existed. 

“But I don’t want to!” Your voice is high pitched due to how tight your throat is. Father’s face gets all blurry until you blink your eyes clear. “She’s mine and I wanna keep her.” 

Father sighs and runs his trembling hand through his grey hair. He leans heavily against the wall and lifts his foot up. “Look, kiddo, I know you love her.” His voice is hard, tight but not with fear. He starts shaking his foot and looks over to where the smell of Mom’s cooking is coming from. “But she can’t do what she used to. It’d be cruel to let her try.” He pulls at his shirt, stained with sweat and sticking to him even though he’d only went to work after lunch. “Now are you gonna do this or do I have to?”

He’d asked that same question last week. “You gonna put your toys away or do I have to?” Father’s voice was sharp and hard like it is now. Suzie had been over and you’d chased each other around the yard, Fish nipping at your heels, until you were red in the face with laughter and panting with joy. You’d said “you can Dad” as you sat down to supper with a smile on your face. After supper, and homework done squirming under Mom’s steady eye, you’d pulled your toys out again. Mr. Rabbit’s vest was ripped. Ms. Bear’s eye was missing. The Great and Terrible Mouse only had half a foot. Father watched silently, a small curl at the corner of his lips. Your hands shook then too, throat too tight to say anything. Not that you’d known what to say. 

“I will.” You squeaked out through your almost closed throat. Father held a hand to his ear. “I will.” 

It’s loud enough that Mom hears and shouts from the other room, “What’s that dear?”

Father bares his yellowed teeth at you, mouth curling up. “Nothing dear.” He calls back to Mom. 

The shotgun is heavy against you. You have to bounce it a bit with your hips every time it slides down to far. The metal is cool where you hold the barrel as Father shows you how to load it. He demonstrates the click it makes when it closes then opens it up with a scrap of metal against metal to show you again. Click. Ssshh. Click. Ssshh. Click. 

Fish sits when you ask her to, tail wagging slowly as she waits for you to decide what happens next. Words rush to your mouth and stay there when Father places a heavy hand on your shoulder. “Ready?” You narrow your eyes at the ground, jaw aching as your teeth grind against each other. You nod, a short stiff nod. 

Ssshh. Click. Bang. 

***

You find the book years later. Leather bound, something softer than any cow hide you’ve ever touched. Heavy. Heavier than any other book that size you’ve ever picked up. The writing is a reddish grey that’s faded into the soft yellow of the pages. For some reason it’s easier to read by candlelight than sunlight or any of the electric lights you tried. You flip quickly through it, just as you had when you first found it. As always, the pages stick together in odd asymmetrical clumps. As always, you pause in flipping through the book to reposition it and discover it’s opened to the one page you were looking for. 

‘To Reclaim What Is Yours: Gone, Not Forgotten, and Not For Long’ shines brightly in the moonlight. The page looks almost white in the bright light of the full moon. Your eyes scan the words, mouth twisting and flickering as they tumble out of you. They fall into the air and the air twists at their presence, starting to tug and pull at your clothes. You stumble slightly at a particularly strong yank and shout the words louder still. The air echos them back, moaning then howling then shrieking them at you. Your ears feel stabbed with the air and you can no longer hear your own voice. Your jaw tenses and you shout louder. The last word kicks you in the teeth as it leaves. 

Bang. 

The air stills. Utterly silent. No breeze. No animals. Not even the sound of your own breathing as your chest aches with your held breath.

Click. 

The sound of metal hitting against metal. You turn around, breath still held tight to your chest.

Ssshh.

 Fish’s tail wags once, slowly. 

concept: story that adamantly refuses to address any of the themes that its topics lead it directly toward

uh, if you think you are going to need a new computer in the next six months and you have money to buy it now, and you have been able to find it in stock someplace, go buy it now.

It is my actual, professional, real-life job to buy computers for businesses and right now that is basically impossible.

I found one computer that will kind-of work for someone who has been waiting on an order that WE'VE been waiting on from our vendor for a month and when I placed the order for that computer it was almost sold out. I don't even know if I'm going to get an email tomorrow saying that the order was cancelled due to stock imbalances.

Look at this:

My Lenovo rep sends me an inventory of what's in stock with the big resellers nationwide every two weeks. This shows that there were about 400 Lenovo Business desktops stocked through the whole of the US. There are normally at least a couple thousand split up among various vendors and part numbers.

This inventory is from a month ago, all of those part numbers are currently at approximately zero. When she sent me her inventory update last Friday it was all for chromebooks, no desktops or laptops.

I have to get monitors for an office, a total of 8. The main vendor I use was out of stock and so were two of the other ones I have accounts for, so I waited a couple days. I saw on Wednesday at 10am that the main vendor had 197 of the monitors in stock at $134 each. I went to place the order at 11am after I was out of the meeting and there were only 4 left in stock and they were at $158. I managed to find 8 monitors for my customer today, but they were not the models that matched the ones currently in her office and she had to choose between keeping the same price but getting monitors that need a converter and only having a one-year warranty OR getting the same brand (though a slightly different model) with the same inputs and the same warranty but paying $50 more per monitor.

It has been a pain in the ass to buy graphics equipment for years, and there have been ups and downs with HDDs and SSDs and RAM, but this is the biggest overall "everything computer related" shortage that I've seen and that includes the run on laptops last year and various other floods and disasters that have taken out big chunks of the supply chain.

SO my advice is to try to keep your current devices running as best you can, do some preventative maintenance and make some backups and make sure they aren't getting heat stressed.

If you can afford a computer right now and you think you'll need one and you've found one for a good price, go get it.

Black Friday/holiday sale computers are usually pretty crap but if you think you may need to get a computer at a discount, that's the time to look for one and now's the time to start saving for it. Just make sure you're getting a relatively new processor because a lot of people are unloading stuff with older processors at low prices because they won't be compatible with Windows 11.

RAM, HDDs, and SSDs are actually pretty stable at the moment so if you think you can get your computer to limp along for a while longer with an upgrade instead of a replacement, try that.

Remember: if you kill your laptop screen you can always plug it in to an external monitor, and if you kill the keyboard or trackpad you can plug in USB devices instead of using the built-in components. If your battery is dead but the computer still works when it's plugged in, you can often replace the battery cheaply. If your battery is swollen, remove the battery and discard it, but remember that you will likely still be able to use your computer when it is plugged in.

Try to take care of your tech and treat it gently for a while if you can; don't yank out cables, don't drop shit, don't keep drinks around your devices and if you have pets or if you smoke, consider opening up your device and cleaning up accumulated ash/dust/dander/hair etc.