Fake Grass Rug

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...." Jamie sat cross-legged on a rug in the Hufflepuff common room, ... gardens. You could see the grass and the stars. There were ... about Asphodel having been a fake name. He added it to ...

... victim flopped onto the shop rug with an unnecessary bounce. Like... save them," Ding wiped a fake tear from his eye. The... flames. The wind through the grass. A crackle of electricity. From ...

... by the same old messy rug that lay on the bottom... stuff. Ahead of the old rug, there were the two beds..., Poison Powder, Fairy Wind, Charm, Grass Whistle Still as descriptive as.... That's where I got my fake smile from…though, mine is... my feet hit the soft grass, I felt the cold night...

... make for a bitchin' bathroom rug. "The idea remains on the... I happened to have some grass for it. "See!" Percy exclaimed... in one mighty talon. A fake out, I realized. A bluff...

.... Some failed. Some tried to fake it and were caught. One ... started twirling together in the grass, holding hands, laughing and shouting, ... quiet alley. Maybe get a rug. But do not ruin your ... ribbon he was braiding from grass, muttering sweet nothings to it. ...

... whined. Kevin wasn't gonna let grass grow under his feet while... life, only to pull the rug out from under them? They'd ... of questions you've been dodging." Fake Ben crouched down to pick ... the trainyard. "Nice ride, Kevin!" Fake Ben said "Already done up ... even recognize the alien that Fake Ben used this time! Hustler ... far, you've seen most of Fake Ben's aliens: Icebreaker, Conductor, Chemtrail, ...

... their heads and eat the grass and let other wolves eat... to sweep it under the rug) and was ready to move ... me emerge. I dropped the fake Brocktonite accent that probably fooled ...

... their heads and eat the grass and let other wolves eat... to sweep it under the rug) and was ready to move ... me emerge. I dropped the fake Brocktonite accent that probably fooled ...

Hey! Wanted to create this post to share my observations of Tallinn & Estonia. Trigger Warning: it’s a personal opinion, therefore please take it with a grain of salt. In the text I am going to compare it with my home country of Lithuania. At times I will go into, what others would call it, insane specifics that people usually don’t pay attention to or deem unimportant, so hopefully this is a somewhat interesting read for all sides. Trigger Warning number 2: this post tends to paint Eesti in positive paint of comparison canvas. Therefore, if you are easily offended by strangers’ opinions on the internet, it would be wise to skip reading this post. What I am hoping from creating this post - initiate a discussion. Not everyone will feel the way I do about Tallinn and Estonia. Some people will start defending Lithuania/Latvia, providing examples. And I love it, that’s what I want - collective sharing of perspectives, I find it very interesting. I do believe that all 3 countries are great in their own ways and I feel connection to all of them, so here it goes… I am a male in my twenties and I have recently spent a few days in Tallinn. I’ve been to Tallinn a few times. And I have lived all my life in the Lithuanian capital. Each time I come to Tallinn - it’s like a breath of fresh air. No, seriously. The people, the infrastructure, the general feeling is making me feel like the country has never even been a part of the soviet union and has advanced way ahead. If it weren’t for the commie blocks, you couldn’t even tell. And even then, similar commie blocks existing in Sweden (Rinkeby neighborhood) & Finland (Itäkeskus neighborhood) It’s about how you upkeep them - news flash, Estonia seems to be doing a good job. Law & Order, Ordinance I consider all Baltic states safe. I have felt nothing but safe in all three capitals and various times of day. But something different stood out to me in Tallinn. I got the impression that there is way more and consistent police presence in Tallinn. I would often see Politsei driving through the Old Town streets in walking speed. It actually adds to the safety feeling, especially for foreigners in a new country/city. Of course, coming from the Baltic region myself, I knew that Estonia is super safe so I don't really second guess it, but it still feels nice knowing the authorities are routinely scanning the streets and being on the look out in the medieval streets of the Tallinna vanalinn. One cute moment I observed was when I was sitting outside of the restaurant "Old Estonia" in the main square "Raekoja plats", soaking up the sun with a glass of white house wine in my hand - an unmarked gray Škoda Kodiaq slowly drove up to the middle of the square, parked up, an uniformed man existed the vehicle and took out, what it seems a ≈6-month German Shepard on the leash. He then walked the dog to people just hanging out on the square, where tourists were able to engage with the puppy a bit, creating a nice atmosphere for everyone. I suspect this was a K9 animal in training, which looked very wholesome as the doggy appeared very young and in the initial phases of learning his duties. Then another evening, I was making my way from a great restaurant called "Rataskaevu 16" back home to my Airbnb when I saw a car parked in the middle of intersection of Niguliste and Harju tn. The SUV was marked as "Korrakaitseüksus" - I think that means municipality police/public order. Two officers were engaging with russian-speaking flame spinning performers. When I tell you - there was a crowd gathering to see what is happening right there, and of course I was eavesdropping. The officers engaged with the performers for a few minutes, then they went back to their car. The street performers, with a deep disappointment told the crowd (in russian): "we did not get a permit, the show is not happening". a few russians in the crowd sarcastically clapped to the officers in the car, cursing them a bit. The ladies packed their flame equipment and left as I saw the back lights of the Korrakaitseüksus car disappear behind the facade of St. Nicholas' Church & Museum. You could say - "Why are you so surprised about all of this?" In Lithuania, I rarely see police routinely patrolling the streets of the Old Town. That leads to a lot of people feeling a bit too "relaxed". Would it be flooring your old BMW going 60 km/h spitting out black smoke through a pedestrian street or people behaving in a unruly manner. I think with more attention to this we can have a more welcoming and civil place for both locals and tourists. By the way, we also have our "Viešosios tvarkos skyrius" (public ordinance unit per municipality). These guys are responsible for parking violations, public ordinance and similar things. But my experience with them hasn't been the greatest. It's a hit or miss most of the times. There have been people notifying them about cars obstructing sidewalks in the Old Town and sometimes you get an answer saying: "So what do you want us to do, do you want it towed, give them a fine?" - that alone feels like you are disturbing public sector employees to do their job. I can almost bet 5 times out of 10 that in Vilnius, nothing would've been done about illegal street performers or noise violations - because everyone is just used to it being this way - this closed loop of lenience is grand. Naturally, it was very shocking for me to see Estonian authorities react to something like this unprovoked and ensure ordinance - aka do their job. While I haven't had encounters with police in any of the Baltic countries, I get the sense that the Estonian police might be more thoroughly trained and more professional. Recently, Estonian police has been creating videos on YouTube "Patrullis" you can check them out here. Police officers are followed into real life occurrences and calls. Lithuania has a similar TV show called "Farai" - or "Cops" in English. I just get the sense that the Lithuanian police is a bit more confrontational, rough around the edges when it comes to assessing situations - but again, only my observations. Units in Estonia are visible and professional, which has a psychological effect: people follow the rules because the authority is clear and capable. Korrakaitseüksus service vehicle Road Quality & Drivers Ah, where to begin? Road quality & surface is better than in Vilnius. Plain and simple. It's hard for me to say it, but it is true. Road markings make sense. A lot of one-lane roads like in Kalamaja district. Traffic calming measures are in place that inevitably make drivers slow down before intersections and cross walks. Less chaos, more structure. In places where pedestrian traffic is large, e.g., Balti Jaama Turg road is shared with pedestrians, creating this psychological effect of: "Okay, I have to slow down, people are everywhere, have to be smart now". Lack of stroads in inner cities, and where there are bigger roads, they have adequate speed limits, video surveillance - (which helps with highlighting bad driver behavior on Politsei- ja Piirivalveamet social media page for awareness - we should do that more in Lithuania). I want to give props to Lithuania and Vilnius on this though, road infrastructure, traffic calming measures have improved a lot in the last 10 years - a fruit harvested by mindful municipality officials - well lit intersections, lack of unregulated pedestrian crossings on 3+ lane roads is contributing to lower death count on roads. I hope we keep the momentum. Driving in Tallinn is calm. So I rented out a Bolt Drive car to get off the beaten track and visit more of Tallinn and it's surroundings. Cultural shock incoming..... So I am driving on Pirita Tee - straight, beautiful road towards the north. The speed limit is 50 as is lit on the digital signs overhead. Guess what? I am driving at 50 on the right lane and no one is flying past me, everyone is driving the speed limit and keeping distance between each other - no flashing high beams in sight. This was probably the most shocking factor throughout my trip. Mind you, the Waze did not show any radars or average speed measuring, yet everyone was being safe and considerate. In Vilnius, on a good surface, straight road like this you would have people flying at 70-80+ km/h, overtaking each other and being very dangerous.....just for all of us have a picnic at the next red light :) I am glad to say the momentum continued on other streets, no matter the speed limit 30/40/50 km/h etc. It was a beautiful thing to witness. If I have any Estonians reading this, can you explain why this is?: are fines extremely high, points on your license, a lot of unmarked police cars/people learn quickly that going over the limit has a tangible consequence, so they self-regulate? I would love to know the recipe. A few other points: I think Vilnius still does cycle paths a little bit better. They rarely transfer from a real path to cycling next to cars on the actual road. Your Bolt/Wolt food couriers are overwhelmingly local? In Lithuania most food deliveries are done by foreigners (not that it is a bad thing, but just an observation) Cars seems newer on average and often times more upscale. One interesting thing I noticed that Estonians love American cars/trucks way more than Lithuanians. At one intersection I had a Chrysler Pacifica in front of me, Dodge Ram next to me and an Escalade behind me lol. Felt out of place in a small Bolt Toyota Corolla in this setting! Taxi drivers actually drive newer, road-worthy cars. Not old Priuses like in Vilnius. Drivers are overwhelmingly local. But I might be mistaken. https://preview.redd.it/870e0qii1spg1.jpg?width=2048&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=42e6d5ead4ffc69609db652a85bfac14dfd7f4bf https://preview.redd.it/k0bqghco1spg1.jpg?width=2000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eaedf29e95b48e6e3b467bfab1731a7c960ed367 https://preview.redd.it/vsf9ym702spg1.jpg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0d0015de57948e535a191e735f080642edba29ee Old Town and Surrounding Areas The Old Town is absolutely beautiful. Very well upkept when it comes to facades - freshly painted, historical wooden doors and windows are in tact. If there is no space for a normal-sized sidewalk + road - it is all one level surface prioritizing pedestrians and making sure drivers feel they are not in the priority setting. Loved the atmosphere in both upper and lower Old Town. I would throw out souvenir shops with matryoshkas out though, lol. Cleanliness is the standard. Since my flight landed very early and I had time to kill until check-in time, I walked around the Old Town when no one was out. There were literally workers picking cigarette buts one by one next to Niguliste muuseum, with that long grabbing tool (if you know what I mean) out of the grass. I also saw interior cameras installed on the inside of the apartments looking over the trash bins - do you have a problem with illegal dumping or people using your trash bins without permission? 😁 Central Train Station - often a sketchy place in many places of the world. Lithuania & Latvia included. It is a breeding ground for people you don't want to encounter often. It has been getting better in Lithuania - which is great to see. There are actually new bars open which attracts younger, nicer crowd - this replaces the russian-speaking drunk antisocial crowd. Latvians, let me know how it's going in Riga. Tallinn though - again ⭐a surprise⭐. Felt modern, not sketchy at all & safe, clean and inviting to everyone. I can attest, I did see a few drunks here and there, but overall it is a big difference from Vilnius. Balti Jaama Turg does a great job with the surroundings. Going near it I was expecting the regular "babushka meat combinat" vibes, but I was positively surprised - it had the meats but it also had a very diverse culinarian choice. It was filled with places you wanna sit down in. In the vicinity of the Train/Turg station there were a lot of nice places to grab a bite in, one of those - Ülo, definitely recommend for those who like a small plate concept to try a lot of yummy things. So good job, Estonia - a train station area done right. Lithuania has their own Balti Jaama Turg - Paupio Turgus. But it lives in an area further away from the train station. Halės turgus is more near to the train station and it is somewhat similar, but not up there. Telliskivi Seems to be a revamped older industrial area to an artsy food/bar scene. Pretty neat, I liked it. We have similar places like that in Vilnius, e.g., "Menų fabrikas Loftas" very similar vibe. I bet during summer it gets very busy and lively. At least that's what the bartender told me when I was ordering a negroni in a place overlooking Fotografiska Tallinn museum. For some reason Tallinn felt bigger than Riga or Vilnius. I know it is illogical. Maybe it has to do with the coast line and infrastructure around it. Water and coastline psychology, you know? Tallinn often feels more spatially spread. Balti Jaama turg People Now we are in a dangerous territory. I might get cancelled. People felt calmer, more reserved, civil, quieter. Dressed in more neutral colors. It could be a bad or a good thing - that depends on you, reader. Myself, I do identify with that - being an introverted individual felt at peace in Tallinn. People speak great English! Servers were very attentive, smiley and positive. It seemed genuine, considering they don't expect a 25% for their service and are just doing their job. Service workers in Lithuania for some reason have this inherited frown and that can feel off-putting. I am not saying that everyone in Tallinn was great, but the general feeling I received is that people in businesses appear friendlier. Damn, even the TSA workers at Tallinna Lennujaam were not angry or shouting. I did not hear any: "SHOES, BELTS, IPADS OUT - NOW!!!!". (Joking, they don't scream like that in Vilnius Airport either, only in Atlanta). But all jokes aside, in Lithuania people are more lively, expressive, they show it by their behavior, clothing and make up choices, their car picks, interior design. Not all but some like bright colors. I guess that has to do with geographical and cultural position closer to the central Europe (Poland, Czech Republic etc.) Suburbs / Soviet Blocks This is oddly specific and weird, but I like to get out of the tourist traps and go visit where the locals live, just to observe the reality of the country or a city. I went to Mustamäe. What shocked me is that it looks very upkept too. 90% of soviet blocks are renovated. The ones that are not renovated they have staircase doors replaced and balcony siding unification. Meaning that if a house has red balcony siding - that applies to all balconies. That way, even though the house is from the 80s, it still looks like a decent place to live. In Lithuania that is not the case. Majority of the soviet block apartments have different siding colors, some people put windows in their balconies - some don't. It makes the apartment building in Europe look like a soviet favela. I am not sure if Estonia highly invested money into this universal upgrade/clean up of soviet blocks or what, but it looks actually decent. I am jealous. Also the courtyards of these houses - parking spaces clearly marked. Sidewalks clear. Zoning is correct. In Lithuania the often occurrence is cars parking on sidewalks, on grass. It gets extremely bad in spring (now) when the soil gets soft and residents park their cards on the mud picking it up everywhere they drive to the streets, essentially making sure their poor parking choices dirty up the whole city. Coming back to law & order, there are apps and groups people report traffic offenses to. Like actual citizens doing municipality work and reporting offenders blocking the sidewalks because the elderly cannot get through the cars parked illegally. Haven't seen this in Tallinn. Individual houses - I went to Peetri. A very neat area outside Tallinn. I can tell by the people taking walks, cycling - that they enjoy living there. It must be an overwhelmingly "Estonian" area to live, judging by the amount of flags flying in each yard. I love the way you guys do a small, skinny flag instead of the regular sized Estonian flag - funny observation I had. In Lithuania suburbia is also very popular, it comes with disadvantages. Lack of public transportation makes you dependable on a car, lack of sidewalks and common areas. But even then, it is often a go-to place to live for many who enjoy calm and their own area to chill at the backyard. Also, an often setting is that in Vilnius people or corporations build gated communities with beautiful houses but they don't invest in a paved road/driveway? That is mind boggling to me as to why people don't invest in roads when they have a new Tesla and a 2 story new-built house. In Tallinn, I observed a neighborhood road already paved before houses even being built, the only view in sight was the communications and the paved road - meaning houses will be built in the future with the existing infrastructure already there. Soviet apartment building completely revamped (I believe Mustamäe) Balcony siding unification - Pelgulinn. This is a standard for Estonia Merivälja - driving up north along the water made me feel like on the Pacific Coast Highway in Cali lol! A minimalistic Estonian flag. Very tastefully done. I think this trend comes from the Scandinavia, since this setup is very popular there. I have only seen one Lithuanian flag like this & it was in Estonia! This was cute to see, I am wondering if that's a Lithuanian living in Estonia :) Marketing / Ads / Estonian TV Okay this is oddly specific, but I warned you. This may seem funny to some people. I am literally chuckling while writing this. But the people that get it, will get this too. I will add some visuals as well. Advertisements are not too crazy, still have a color palette appropriate for eyes. They are not hung up on every corner, building, intersection as in Poland. In Lithuania it seems to be regulated as well, so I happy for both of our countries about this. When it comes to TV, I have this fun tradition to check out each countries' morning shows - and that's wherever I go. Each country has a morning show and it outlines the quality of the TV production, social climate, personalities of hosts and aesthetics. And when I tell you there is such a difference between Estonia and Latvia, it is kind of hilarious. Less difference between Lithuania and Estonia, but my vote still goes to Estonia - sorry not sorry. Estonian morning show has decorations, zoning is dictated by carpet & a table between the host and the guest (Cozy living-room style set (rug, plants, table decor). Chairs are angled inward, encouraging interaction. Decorative elements make the space feel warm and human. In Estonian "Terevisioon" the hosts are not afraid to go off script, joke a little, be human - like all of us in the morning. We just want to wake up and slowly ease into our day. That's what morning shows are about. Estonia's are tastefully done. \"Terevisioon\" Latvian "Rīta Panorāma" on the other hand - their morning show is held in the same studio as their nightly news. A big no - bright white LEDs and fluorescents at 6:30 AM in the morning? No thanks! Also, why is everyone so stiff and awkward? At least put a table between the hosts and the guest, it looks too awkward and sterile, Jesus! Haha. I mean, the table cannot cost that much. And maybe a fake plant? And next time put people a bit closer, COVID-19 is over, I think...right? \"Rīta Panorāma\" But jokes aside - Massive empty space, the floor area is huge and mostly empty, so the guests look like they're sitting in a conference hall or airport terminal. Human brains expect talk shows to feel social and intimate, but this looks institutional. Chairs are extremely far apart. The guests are spaced very widely: Harder for them to make natural eye contact. Conversation feels formal and distant. Viewers subconsciously feel the social gap. There's nothing connecting the participants, so the composition feels visually disconnected - no central anchor: table, decorative centerpiece. Please tell me I am not the only one thinking this looks weird? Lithuanian "Labas Rytas, Lietuva" sits somewhere in the middle. The lights are too bright for a morning show, but hosts are fairly close together, which encourages natural conversation. small table between them creates a conversation focal point. Bright background but still visually contained. \"Labas Rytas, Lietuva\" What could be better in Tallinn No city is perfect, Tallinn is no exception, these might not be major cons or even pros for some, so suit yourself. Night Life Friday & Saturday night felt quieter than Riga or Vilnius. I've visited clubs, bars in the Old Town, Telliskivi and others across town. It did feel a bit more dead. Usually on Fridays/Saturdays a lot of places in Vilnius are so packed you find yourself bar hopping a lot just to breathe for a moment, that's how crowded it gets everywhere. Clubs, bars are literally booming no matter the season. I did not feel this in Tallinn each time I visited during the Friday and Saturday nights. Maybe drinking out/clubbing culture is not as big here? Greenery Vilnius is a more green city I would say. Vilnius: about 61% of the city is green space (forests, parks, meadows). Tallinn: about 19.5% of the city land is park space. For people enjoying forests, greenery inside the city this could matter a lot. But you have the sea to compensate for that. Even in Tallinn, sometimes you have a challenge of using a sidewalk Cost of Living & Prices It's expensive to live in Tallinn, no surprise. Groceries, rent is more expensive. And salary gap between Estonia & Lithuania is closing fast. Looking at some regular items I buy back home and comparing the prices to Estonia's I sometimes gasped. A grocery store in Tallinn, Estonia To wrap things up - none of this is meant to say that Estonia is “better” or Lithuania (or Latvia) is “worse”. All three Baltic countries are incredibly successful stories when you zoom out historically. Thirty-something years ago we all started from a very similar place. But sometimes it takes leaving your own environment for a moment to notice small things that work differently somewhere else. Maybe that’s actually what makes the Baltics interesting: we’re similar enough to compare, but different enough to learn from each other. Estonians - do you agree or do you have a different opinion about your city/country? Latvians & Lithuanians - I am ready for your thoughts as well! submitted by /u/Better-Parfait-9196 to r/BalticStates [link] [comments]

Welcome to the r/stupidpol town square. Anyone, no matter their account age or karma, can discuss anything they want here, as long as our rules are followed. Sports, hobbies, your dating life, your culinary experiments, travels, hikes, feedback for the sub, the meaning of life - it's all game. You can even post image comments. If you find yourself unable to comment underneath other threads, go to the flair request thread. Finally - if you think there's anything else that should be included in the body of this thread, drop your suggestion below. 📣 Moderator Announcements 100k survey results AI posting is banned u/brother_beer has died Video posting now allowed for selected flairs! ✊ Recent Initiatives None. Get doing stuff! 📅 Upcoming Events None. 📜 Recent Megathreads WW3 Megathread #40 🗣️ Debates We have a semi-automated system for running debates on the sub. u/bbb23sucks is responsible for maintaining it. Debate Suggestions Thread Debates Feed new UI Debates Feed old UI ⌛ Historical Records This subreddit has been through a lot. Below you can find lore-relevant links. Drop a comment if you think anything else should be included. Twopidpol museum, the anti-guccists' refuge during the Covid Wars. Gucci-era moderator discussion logs [TW: 'tism] Alden Global Capital Saga old.reddit link Battle of the Ukraine Megathread #8 💩 The Pillory What are you on about? Trump never said Epstein's crimes were a hoax. Did you even read the article? The hoax is what the hypocritical democrat party is trying to twist it into. They kept all this quiet, tried to sweep it under the rug for four years. Only now are they desperately trying to twist things and say Trump was somehow, magically implicated. Trump was instrumental in taking down Epstein's whole nasty business. The dems never cared about Epstein or his victims. Their huge, fake outrage lately, is totally a hoax. Hypocrite Source, by u/Simon-Says69 Epstein was being used by the CIA & Mossad. All that blackmail info from the island went directly to Israel, who it was gathered for in the first place. They forced a sweetheart deal for Epstein in the first trial. Then along came Trump, and burned Epstein & Maxwell's whole dirty operation to the ground. Wound up being their worst nightmare. Trump was a key witness in the prosecution that put those two behind bars. Source, by u/Simon-Says69 🪦 Obituary Subreddit regulars who have fallen victim to gigajannies. May their souls rest in grass. Please notify us with a comment below if this section needs updating. Epitaph suggestions are more than welcome. SRALangleyChapter | January 2025 | "Casualty in the war against NAFO." CanonBallSuper | August 2025 | "He's with Trotsky now." topbananaman | August 2025 | "Free Palestine & long live Arsenal." Molotovs_Mocktails | August 27, 2025 | "Enjoy your alcohol-free drinks with the Party, OG" VampKissinger | January 2026 | "Some day you will get your revenge against Australia" AdmiralGut | March 4, 2026 | "Letting a hundred flowers bloom in Oklahoma" SaiDerryist96 | March 9, 2026 | "Half Milennila, Half Zoomer, 100% OG" BackoffD | April 5, 2026 | "San Francisco will pay" ChocoCraisinBoi | April 13, 2026 | "Thank you for everything" Pretend-Elevator7623 | April 13, 2026 | "Finally free from his autism" ShitbirdGT | May 7, 2026 | "Our security guard in the heavens" sje46 | June 7, 2026 | "Exploring the leafy swamps of heaven" MadonnasFishTaco | June 8, 2026 | "Eating fish tacos with Ronaldo Fink Mullen" submitted by /u/technofeudal-bellman to r/stupidpol [link] [comments]

submitted by /u/VegetableShirt5213 to r/mancave [link] [comments]

In episode 4, Hillary Lynn Hayward-Thomas Baldwin decided to teach us a thing or two about “code switching.” Mandy Patinkin is more Spanish than \"Hilaria\" Baldwin. Apparently, Hillary thinks code switching means launching into a double time Sofia Vergara impersonation when talking to her monolingual spouse, her monolingual interior designer, her monolingual “therapist,” and the monolingual producers of the TLC show. A master class in stupid is as stupid does On with the recap! “Home From Camp” is the opening caption and it appears Operation Scrape the Bottom of the Barrel has been launched Alec drives the kids home from camp and I’m already annoyed. The bar is low, but that was quick. Hillary is wearing her shiny leggings and somehow they’re even more annoying in real time than in pictures. \"The smell of absurdity in the morning\" - Tom Robbins Hilz carries assorted kids out of the car while Alec says jovially to one of them, “where you goin, butt crack?” while her voice over says “Alec and I are rarely apart.” In my humble opinion, they should part ways while he goes to parenting classes, and she gets psychotherapy from anyone besides the guy that agreed to play their therapist for the show. As Hillary carries Marilú out of the car (the child has shoes on, so I don’t know why this is a thing), ML says “Daddy make me sad” Hilz asks why and the she responds “Um, um, um I don’t like him because he’s being neelo.” Leo sweetly kisses his sister on the cheek and Hillary ignores that as she tries to figure out what “neelo” could be. That she might be searching for the word “malo” (bad) doesn’t occur to Hillary’s multi fluid brain. Alec comes over and Marilú straight gives him a hearty raspberry. Same, little one. Alec explains ML is mad because she had to sit in the back during the drive home. Cut to Hillary off camera interviewing Edu and Marilú and asking, “what’s your favorite thing about Daddy?” Marilú calmly responds “Poo poo. Poo poo worms.” During a couch interview with both Alec & Hillary the producer asks how they deal with kid meltdowns and Alec prompts Hilz “please answer the question” sounding exasperated. Couch Hillary*: “You don’t take it personally, they’re gonna yell. They’re gonna yell sometimes, oh my God, we have seven kids, surprise, they’re gonna yell, get over it.”* Somebody needs to get over something but for once, it's not Alec. Couch Alec: “What I’ve learned from myself and other people is that children melting down is better than the opposite” (camera cuts to cat meowing and Alec glancing over at it) “When a kid keeps everything inside and is in a corner and is grinding his teeth (Hillary looks at him sharply) or her teeth and is just really, really far away. I’d rather have them screaming at me for an hour a couple times a week maybe” (we see a montage of the kids screaming in various setting: cars, horse stables, houses, you name it) “or less, maybe less.” Alec uses Hillary’s accent in talking to Marilú: “ju call me neelo? Ju know wha I say to ju, I say (blows a raspberry) I say neelo!” At the same time Hilz is in full accent “why ju mad at heem?” Any speech therapists in the house? Sweet ML does not have a fighting chance with these two. Hillary Cooks or Let’s Talk At Length About Alec Seeing Hillary’s Ex-Boyfriend Naked Alec says, “I want to prove that I have actually have friends that are adult men who have careers and are intelligent people, it’s not all just scraping gum off my rug all day long” so we are introduced to “Brendan, Artist” and “Dan, Documentary Filmmaker” standing awkwardly in the kitchen as Hilz cooks. One asks stiffly, “What are you cooking, Hilaria?” Update: according to u/Greedy_Juggernaut361, this Brendan is Brendan O'Connell who painted the Hilaria Rice a Roni canvas. I love it here! In the style of popular aspirational lifestyle shows Hilz answers airily: “I don’t even know yet, I’m just gonna make things…we have a whole beautiful garden that I just went to” as she digs through a basket of veggies. The four candles amidst the clutter are especially perplexing to me. More of a little segment I like to call Revisionist History with Hillary where she simpers in a couch interview: “I love having a full house. I always grew up with a very big full house” (she is one of two children born to a busy doctor and a busy lawyer). “I think it’s one of the reasons I had so any kids and what I love even more is when the house is even fuller.” No typos, just unvarnished Hillary Lynn. Couch Hillary: “When you go to therapy it’s about self-awareness, it’s about release. I see him with his friends. I think this is going to be a big part of our healing journey is to grow and walk forward with the people who stood with us the entire time.” The friends were there when Alec and Hillary met and of course they’ve been coached to brings this up, asking Alec “do you remember what we were doing right before you met her?” Hillary pipes up from the kitchen: “are you talking about when we’re meet?” English, guys. It’s so tricky with all that pesky grammar and syntax. Couch Alec: “When I met my wife, oh my God, it was just magical” and we get a black and white title card like silent movies. At this point I paused and poured myself the biggest glass of hard cider and reconsidered my life choices. It's giving 6th grade student PowerPoint presentation. We get flashbacks of Alec telling Carmen the story of when he met Hillary while Carmen gave him a facial and Hillary telling Carmen the story as they played with the sad anniversary gifts that she ultimately gave Alec. The planning that went into this is evident. Alec clearly says, “I was with my friend Brandon.” The man’s name is Brendan but do tell, Peepaw. In Hillary’s story she tells Carmen the girlfriend she was with that night hit her and said, “Alec Baldwin is looking at you!” Carmen asks, “Did you even know who Alec Baldwin was?" Hillary: “I had seen Working Girl a few times because Yiayia really liked Working Girl.” I think the Greek Yiayia in question might have been one of Hilly’s childhood nannies as well as Carmen’s OG nanny cuz ain’t no way Dr. Kathryn has Carmen call her Yiayia. Hillary tells her 10-year-old “I winked at him and that’s like the cringiest thing you could do but I was at least one glass of wine in.” She describes that as she was leaving, he grabbed her hand and said “who are you? I must know you. And I thought well at least now he’s being cringey too because that like a really bad line.” Speaking of cringe - they provided this picture to be used in the show. Meanwhile, back at the kitchen table, Alec is telling his bosom buddy whose name he doesn’t quite get right “and it was magical, look at us now.” Hearing this, Hillary yells out: “Then you said where are you from, and I said I’m from Boston, and you’re like no you’re not and I was like actually I am, and it was like an omen of what was to come!” She opens her eyes wide and throws a paper towel at him and when I tell you the man looked thoroughly befuddled. He must have been thinking “this shitty adlib was not in the script!” The face of a man who was not prepared for the utter nonsense she just spewed. Hillary trots out her story about being used to splitting checks for dinner and Alec notes: “She used to date age-appropriate guys. When I met her, she was very young, so they were very young. And I’d meet them, and I’d be like I get it y’know they’re very handsome and very super fit guys who were about as interesting as watching the grass grow.” As compared to the scintillating mental powerhouse that is Hillary? Couch Hillary joking (?) to Couch Alec: “I wanted to have my kids, and I wanted them to look good… I wanted to have a baby with a good-looking guy. It could have been anybody You were just the first good looking guy that walked up to me, so I was like ok he’ll do.” Couch Alec: (smiling) “I was the first good looking guy?” Their dynamic is so off all the time. Again, they CHOSE these pictures to show. Back to the meal with the Two Important Friends as one of the cats casually walks on the tabletop and an off-camera producer asks: “Hilaria, have you dated an actor before?” Frankly, the blender on the table bothers me as much as the cat. Hillary: “No” (zany music starts playing because she so funny, gaiss) “Well, I wouldn’t date an actor when he was an actor” (the fuck?). “I dated an actor who got to be on Broadway, and we went to go see him naked.” She tries so hard to be clever. Girl, just eat your kale. Hillary & Alec duo/Couch Alec: “I’ve seen the, one of the loves of her life naked!” Hillary is pretzeled up on the couch with her arms wrapped around her legs, showcasing her ring and flipping her hair around and laughing so hard I was a little concerned she’d cannonball right off the couch. Hilz giggle whispers “he was not the love of my life.” I’m sure Eduardo Ramos agrees and thanks his lucky stars. Her original face was lovely here. Couch Alec: “He was one of the loves of her life, he was a very important boyfriend of hers, and we went to go see him on Broadway and he was naked. And he had his whole, as our British friends, he had his bits out. We went to go see Take Me Out, the musical that our dear friend Scott Ellis directed (Good God, Alec really can’t help himself from being a blowhard, can he?) and all these baseball players were in the locker room, and they turn around naked with their dongs hanging out. And he’s there, her boyfriend and I recognize him, I met him before, and when he turns around with his personality hanging out, I’m like OH, OH, OH, ok. He had like a clarinet hangin from his pants. (Hillary and the female producer are screeching with laughter at this point). The guy literally turns around and we were like AH, AH, WOAH!” Hillary: (overcome with laughter) “I think you remember this more than I do!” I will say, Alec commits to the bit. Couch Alec: “And when you meet him backstage, we go out to the lobby, and we meet em all (where?) and her boyfriend comes I’m like, hey how you doin, you fuckin asshole (bleeped out)?” Couch Hillary: “And I was like, I’m going to stay over here” (does a robot voice and robot arms) Couch Alec: “And you can’t pay attention to a word he’s saying. He’s standing right here taking to me. I’m sitting there looking, I’m goin, and he’s lookin at me goin yeah y’know the show and this and that” (does a bit of an impression that Hillary finds hysterical) and I’m like you have, like a baseball bat that you stuff into your pants every day. How does that work for you? Well, let’s move on from that subject.” Producer: (laughing hysterically) “That wasn’t on my list of questions!” Uh huh. Couch Alec: “I thought it had to be told, it had to be told.” Did it, though? Taking 7 Kids to the Dentist They’re back in NYC for a day as Hillary yip yaps about going to into city to do some back-to-school prep and we see her walking with the kids. The really interesting part here is the captain describing the tall, thin young man with her who I always thought was Alec’s PA. He is officially recognized nanny number three, y’all, and his name is Eduardo! Why is Hillary pushing the double stroller while wearing No H? What. Does. The Nanny. Do? As they walk, Hilz is speaking is Spanish briefly which short circuits her English so we hear her say “más tarde” (later) then when Carmen asks if they can get candy she says “gwee cahn’t get shoogar as we’re going to the denteest!” Couch Alec says raising kids in the city is difficult and expensive but then says proudly “I always look at my kids’ birth certificates and it says born in Manhattan. All my kids are born in New York, they are New Yorkers.” Couch Hillary: “Except for Ireland” Couch Alec: (looking flummoxed) “She’s born in LA which is pretty much the same the same” I beg your finest pardon? Whaaaaaat? To prove this point (I guess) they cut back to Hillary and Nanny Eduardo walking to the dentist with all the kids Baby Ilaria: “bitch, fuck, bitch.” This bleeped out and captioned as “Baby: the b-word. Baby: the f-word. Baby: the b-word.” Carmen and Hillary laugh and Hillary bleats: “LIT-tra-lee you gaisssss. Carmen, you didn’t know swears for so long!” Rafa helpfully clarifies: “The first is the f-word that I learned” Carmen: “I knew ass” Mother of the Year: “Estop saying bad words!” Baby Ilaria: “Bitch (bleeped)” Hillary: “It’s amazing about babies they will repeat everything you don’t want them to…” From her stroller, Marilu sucker punches poor Rafa who looks shocked as Hillary stops walking and says unconvincingly “Lulu, no.” They finally arrive at the dentist and while processing my trauma from all of the above, I have so many logistical questions. Hillary is not exactly what I would call a busy person. Why not make three appointments (2 big kids, 2 big kids, 3 youngest) on three different days since she has three nannies to help? Why not make seven different appointments and have some peace? Why are they holding Baby Ila down in the exam chair and heightening her fear? Is the balloon guy there for non-celebrity clients as well? Hillary explains that sometimes when she gets overwhelmed by the chaos of all the yelling, she tunes them out and just looks around and blinks. Confusingly, she also says, “I enjoy this chaos so much that I don’t want to be mad at it while it’s happening.” Pick a lane, loony tune. The dental tech asks Rafa if he’s brushing his teeth twice a day and he says, “I don’t know because I have very yellow teeth, I have yellow stains.” Cut to a solo interview with Parent #3/Carmen who shares, “Rafa went through a phase where he did not brush his teeth. So now what I do is I scrub his teeth once a week and I do the high smile like fluoride treatments with like the charcoal purple thing. He still has yellow teeth, it’s really bad.” Cut to Hillary looking at Rafa’s teeth post check-up: “they look great, they look beautiful.” This little guy breaks my heart. He doesn’t say much when cameras are around, he’s super subdued compared to his siblings, but he sees a lot. The awesome dental assistant who worked with Carmen then chats with her as she works on Leo. She asks Carmen “what did we learn today” and they chat about plaque and gingivitis. Leo asks for a break to share “I learned that Carmen is a young (gets bleeped no subtitles so it must be bad) who likes to make me embarrassed.” Carmen didn't bat an eye. The assistant gasps and says, “no - those are not nice words, Leo!” No Hilz to be found but honestly, what would she add if she was there? Hillary asks the kids to say thank you to the dentists and staff and not one of them does. Alec and Carmen give a couch interview with Carmen curled up on the couch next to him exactly like Hillary in a white tank top with her black bra straps hanging out with full makeup. Alec explains it was hard for Carmen to be an only child for a little over a year then have four brothers in quick succession. Carmen gets airtime trying very hard to be funny and wishing her brothers were cousins who lived in Canada that she saw occasionally (but her sisters could stay). She's snippy and rude to her dad and talks dismissively about her siblings. It’s uncomfortable to watch Alec fail so epically as a parent. Back to Alec who stayed in the Hamptons to clean because OCD. As he hoses something down, he chants “always be cleaning” - totally spontaneous moment, obvs. He tells the producer he was in tears prior to the interview over their dirty rugs. Sure, Jan. Liking order is not necessarily a compulsion, Zander. Caroline Rhea In the peace of no Hilz and no kids, Caroline Rhea stops by the Hamptons house for lunch. They do a bit of improv about how attractive the camera crew are. What was that about dating age-appropriate folks? I’m convinced that this woman has sold her soul to the Baldwins – she spends an inordinate amount of time kissing up to Peepaw and Hilly. She gladly participates in many of their thirsty endeavors: Alec’s 2019 Comedy Central roast: “One time I was doing Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and he was doing Hilaria, the teenage yoga instructor. Your wife Hilaria is in great shape but who wouldn’t be after pushing around a 200-pound baby all day? She’s the boss, baby!” Alec’s stint on “Match Game” (2/23/19) Alec’s “Here’s the Thing” Podcast “Everybody Loves Caroline Rhea” (4/3/23) Hillary and Mich Who’s “Witches Anonymous” Podcast “In the Coven with Caroline Rhea” (12/4/22). Here’s an excerpt from my recap of that insanity: Caroline is all in on this crazy train and actually says these words (brace yourselves), “Look externally for support, but know, like, Hill-airy-uh, you’ve accomplished more in your life than most humans…you have 7 children, you’re an amazing mother, you’re an amazing, supportive, loving wife, you’re out there, you’re always saying the right thing. You’re always supporting women; you’re always fighting back from bullies. Give yourself a break, you’re too hard on yourself.” Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the wee donkey. This. Is. Sheer. Insanity. All that to say, if Caroline is ride or die for these two dullards, it speaks volumes about her. Grandma Hillary Hilz says that while she was in the city with the kids, Ireland, her baby, and her husband (did we know they’re married?) “happened to be in town,” so they meet up at the conveniently empty Emporio restaurant owned by her BFFs David and Markus which gets lots hype. Hillary wears a tiny black slip dress that was tasked with doing too much with too little fabric. Cleavage rocks, but Hillary's aggressive cleavage is creepy. In a voice over while pictures of Ireland growing up are shown, Hillary reads stiffly: “Ireland is Alec’s only child from his first marriage to Kim Basinger. She grew up in LA but moved to Oregon a few years ago and started a family.” How can she be bad at reading two sentences? Hillary, Ireland, André, and Baby Holland sit in the empty restaurant and have the most awkward exchange. The first thing we hear Ireland say is that she can’t believe the Baby Ilaria (pronounced Eee-lar- ee-uh) is the same height as Holland who is 9 months younger. Hilz reminds viewers that she loves Ireland, and they have a lot in common because Hillary is only 11 years older than her stepdaughter: “We were pregnant at the same time” i.e., don’t forget she’s as fertile as a woman in her late 20s. Hillary “code switches” with Holland as she gets a little fussy and tells her in full faux accent: “Ees ok, since I’m your, like, granma, ees gonna be ok.” Nothing about this is ok. We learn that this is the first time that Hillary has met Holland in person because “we live so far” (Portland to NYC is 4 hours, 43 minutes). Hillary describes Holland getting to meet Hillary and Alec’s kids that same morning and we see pictures and videos of the meet up. We hear virtually nothing from André (who is ten years older than Ireland but doesn’t look it), and Ireland is stiff and not particularly personable (she wasn’t pregnant at the time as some have speculated). They don’t look at ease in front of the cameras, which is fair – most of us would feel a little awkward being filmed in an empty restaurant with our inappropriately dressed stepmother/mother-in-law wearing what looks like lingerie. To me this indicates that they were willing to be on the show just to support Alec. As she has many times before, Santa Hilaria de las Muchas Mentiras tells the story of how she told Alec while they were dating that she wouldn’t stay with him if Ireland didn’t accept her because she didn’t want to come between them. The fan in her hand makes me irrationally angry. Hold a butter churn or some shit to show your true roots! Couch Alec tells his tale of woe about the terrible divorce and Hillary is the only one who says the name “Kim” whereas Alec can only bring himself to say, “Ireland’s mother.” Very weird switch back to Alec and Caroline having lunch and talking about Ireland. Caroline asks, “how about your gorgeous little granddaughter?” He grunts “cute” while shoveling in the chicken salad then adds “Ireland is happy, he’s a great guy, the baby is just perfect.” Caroline keeps Alec indebted to her by gamely setting up a disastrous bit: Caroline: “I was gonna ask, did you ever have the conversation before you got married like, I want to have all the children in the world or just thought, I’m gonna have three?” Alec: “My wife, really, she’s tough” Wut. Caroline: (enthusiastically) “She is so on it and capable I admire her with every fiber of my being! I have one child and when I get it all right just once I’m impressed.” Huh. Alec: (doing a good DeNiro impression as Caroline giggles) “It’s good. Sounds good, sounds good.” Twilight Zone time. Caroline: “DeNiro is on a boat in Italy, I know this because I talked to Whoopie.” Did the editor fall asleep while cutting this? None of this makes sense. Caroline: “What’s you next acting move?” Alec: “Me? Ummm. Ummmm.” Producer to Caroline: “Alec has told us that he doesn’t care if he acts any more. Do you believe him?” Caroline: “No! He’s gonna keep acting. You know what, it’s defense. He’s gone through like a - hell. He’s gonna act again, of course he is. He’s a brilliant actor. That’s your purpose. That’s one of your many purposes: act and then father every child on the planet. Those are your two things that you were born to do.” Back to the Emporio Commercial Hillary calls Alec whom Baby Holland is encouraged to call Peepaw, and we learn that Kim is Meemaw, which she hates. They Facetime with Alec who asks where they are so that Hilz can breezily say that they’re at Emporio. The coat fighting for its life will always be funny to me. Couch Alec shares that his relationship with Ireland was so negatively impacted by his divorce from Kim, he is very focused on having a good relationship with his younger kids. Phone Peepaw tells Baby Holland, who is tossing bread around: “You’re exactly like your mother. We would go to Edo Sushi on Ventura Boulevard and Ireland Baldwin would throw like ten pounds of rice on the floor.” Ireland to Hillary: “He has to say my last name like that.” Hillary to Alec: “Why do you always say both names? Like not to be confused with the other Irelands we all know?” I can’t begin to convey the clarity of her Mainstream U.S. English as she said this. Phone Alec: “Ireland, your hair looks great!” She does have great hair, unlike Granny Colonial Wig. This is like a Renaissance painting. So many ways to interpret the layers happening here. Producer to Alec: “What’s your relationship with Ireland today?” Couch Alec (with Hilz there): “Ireland has got a great situation, she’s got a great guy, we love him. Her baby is gorgeous and funny and fit right in with our kids, she’s one of us.” That deflection was working overtime! Phone Alec says, “I love you baby girl” and everybody at the table looks surprised – I wasn’t sure if he was talking to Ireland or Holland. He goes on: “I hate that you’re having my favorite food without me” (so many plugs for this silly restaurant). Hillary revs up her bitch bus and throws Alec neatly under it when she says crisply: “well that was your choice to be there, ok?” Dayum. Cut to Couch Alec saying, “we do the best we can and the real glue there is Hilaria.” It might to time to do a little glue quality control, sir. Hillary reminisces that when she and Alec started dating, he took Ireland to a high school volleyball tournament in Florida, and he sent Hillary pictures saying how proud he was of Ireland. Hillary says, “he worshipped you, still does.” Ireland responds: “He actually got asked to leave my game because he told a ref off so bad…the ref was…borderline abusive to the girls so that was one time I was like, that’s awesome!” Hillary: “When he gets upset about something he usually has a point, he just doesn’t convey it” Ireland: “It’s like a toddler in Target getting dragged out by their mom because they have big feelings.” Totally except he’s a grown ass man with a history of misogynistic, racist, and homophobic rants when he loses his temper. But otherwise, yes, he has big feelings. They toast and we see one final shot of frickin Emporio. Another Drive in the Hamptons Alec and Hillary drive to the beach and Hillary wants to focus on their marriage “to reconnect on a different level that is not fight or flight.” After parking she asks Alec: “would you like to go on a nice beach walk with me?” He responds with a breathy “sure” maybe imitating her crazy voice as she rolls her eyes. Alec talks with a lot of emotion about how happy Hillary was when he met her and how women with cancer would take her yoga class and say how good they felt taking her class. He actually says, “I died when that woman said that, I died.” Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund, anyone? He claims he didn’t kiss her for their first month of dating bc he was doubting whether he wanted to pull her into his world. Alec engages in "OCD beach cleanup" and Hillary just stands and stares instead of helping. It’s just as well because if she were to bend down her enormous fake breasts would cause her to faceplant in the sand. Imagine not finding anything your partner says even remotely interesting. When he picks up an abandoned sock she whines, “this is why you’re gross Alec, because then you want to touch [the trash], you’re supposed to do this with gloves on. I hope that person’s sock doesn’t have warts on his feet” (not a typo). Alec talks about the history of Long Island and Hillary could not possibly care less. She says in a couch interview that she’s heard most of his stories and just stops listening. To his credit, Alec is aware and says, “my wife tunes out, deeper than I thought possible.” Hillary tells Alec that she remembers the first time he took her to this beach, during Easter of 2011 and even then he was telling her about the history of the place and drawing maps in the sand, then she reads his downcast face for once and saves the moment by saying, “You were fascinating and I decided to get married to you.” All lies but E for effort. Little did 2011 Hillary know that 2025 Hillary would have a full factory reset. Couch Alec: “It’s been very, very tough for her. Everything that supported me and helped me was muted and everything that hurt me and cost me was amplified by the media. She’s married to this. And I for a while this past year fully expected her to sit down with me and say I don’t think I can do this anymore. I fully expected her to present me with that idea. It was what a lot of other people have done… I would have understood kind of, because I don’t want her to suffer because of me. But Hilaria wasn’t willing to do that.” Couch Hillary says: “the most romantic thing you can do with somebody is just be and enjoy each other. We go on a walk and he’s gonna talk about the geography of the land and the trash that history of this and that. And he always says to me, you’re gonna miss me when I’m gone because nobody’s gonna be doing this. And I’m like, you’re probably right” (laughs and tosses her hair). Of course we get the girlfriend narrative from Hilz: “Alec said to me, just remember you’re always gonna be my girlfriend even if you are mother and wife, you’re always my girlfriend.” Cut to Alec on the beach: “Do you want to go clamming? If I looked like you, I wouldn’t want to go clamming either. Do you want to go to dinner with me? God, you look so good in that bathing suit, I love that bathing suit.” Couch Hilz again: “Of course I want my husband to think I’m attractive and funny and want to spend time with me, of course I want to be his girlfriend. My husband wants to date me, is this that bad? How do you think we have so many kids?” She smirks and thank the pepino gods this is over because I can’t take another minute. As our friend the lovely dental assistant said, “what have we learned today?” I would say that watching smug, willfully ignorant liars spin for an hour is exhausting. That’s all for now! If you liked this recap and want to buy me a coffee/hard cider, find me at https://buymeacoffee.com/readybat If you use the Buy Me a Coffee feature you don’t have to include your name: “Supporters can choose to be anonymous by leaving the ‘Name’ and ‘E-mail’ fields blank while making a payment. Anonymous support like this will show the supporter’s name as “Someone”.” submitted by /u/Ready-Bat-8824 to r/HilariaBaldwin [link] [comments]

people keep asking for strategies. here’s a list. some I've used myself and some come from books in the market wizards series and al brooks/raschke/hougaard/etc. not financial advice—your trades, your risk. read it, steal it, print money. EDIT: I do not "know" all of these work. this is more or less an easily accessible list. it you as a trader that makes them work or not. 1. ride the trend. don’t fight it. EMA/momentum cross – forget the usual 9/21 BS. use 100 EMA on the 1H. now trade only in that direction on the 1-min or 5-min. high-timeframe bias is king. VWAP bounce (the smart way) – don’t buy the first touch. that’s for suckers. wait for a long wick, high volume, no follow-through. that’s when smart money steps in. first hour trend lock – whatever the stock does in the first 30-60 min, stick with it. don’t get cute. trend is set, don’t countertrade. 2. mean reversion. buy panic, sell euphoria. "broken parabolic" short – stock just printed 5+ straight green 1-min candles? first red engulfing candle = short. gravity is undefeated. "fake halt" trap – stock spikes like it’ll halt. then… no halt. that’s a rug pull. short immediately. RSI exhaustion (the real way) – if RSI hits 90+ (or sub-10) and hasn’t pulled back… first 2-min reversal candle = go. this is the rubber band setup. 3. liquidity traps. where real money is hiding. stop-loss hunting reversal – where does retail hide stops? previous day high/low. market makes a fake move past it, then reverses hard. trade against the dumb money. market maker refill zones – ever see a stock grind slow, then a sudden volume spike with no movement? big player filling orders. trade with it, not against it. dark pool footprints – if big money is buying/selling on dark pools, the real move is coming. track these levels. 4. scalping. quick hits, no hesitation. "1-min rip & dip" – first 1-min candle breaks premarket high? but next candle dips first, then reclaims? that’s a long. big bid scalping – huge hidden bid shows up on Level 2? buy just in front, scalp the bounce. works best in low float trash stocks. options chain spoofing – don’t just watch stock level 2. watch the option chain. big calls bought at the ask? stock about to move. 5. trading the reaction, not the news. "FOMC fade" – first big move after Fed minutes? usually fake. let the dumb money push it, then fade it. earnings overreaction reversal – stock rips or tanks HARD in first 5 min after earnings? 80% chance it fades back. traders overreact first, institutions clean up later. merger arbitrage scalp – buyout announced at $50/share? if it trades above $50, that’s a free short. arbitrage funds won’t let it stay there. 6. psychological warfare. market is a casino, play the house. "bagholder bounce" – stock gaps down -20%+? wait for a flush, then long the first real bounce. bagholders desperate to escape. retail fakeouts – textbook bull flag? yeah, market makers see it too. expect a fake breakdown first, then the real move. "9:45 AM reversal" – retail trades like morons for the first 15 min. 9:45 is when the reversal usually hits. trade accordingly. 7. using option data to predict stocks. gamma squeeze ignition – sudden massive OTM call buying? market makers need to hedge. stock is about to rip. "max pain" friday fade – options expire where they hurt the most traders. stocks gravitate to max pain. free money for mean reversion traders. open interest fakeouts – stock breaks a huge OI strike? first move is usually fake. market makers need to wipe out retail before letting it go. 8. after-hours & premarket plays. premarket VWAP reclaim – dips under VWAP premarket, then reclaims with volume? that’s a long. algo fuel. after-hours liquidity trap – stock pumps in after-hours, but volume disappears? that’s a trap. fade it. closing bell "liquidity grab" – stock sells off into close, then rips last 1-2 min? that’s smart money grabbing shares before tomorrow’s move. final thoughts. if you’re out here drawing fair value gaps and waiting for "the algorithm" to bless your trade in 2025, please, for the love of god, close your brokerage account and go touch some grass. submitted by /u/El1teM1ndset to r/Daytrading [link] [comments]

I had a pumpkin go moldy after 3 days of rain and now my fake grass rug has pumpkin mold residue. Any tips on cleaning it? Or is saving it not even worth the effort. (I know it is kinda ugly, but it fits perfectly on my tiny balcony and I don’t want to toss it if I don’t have to) submitted by /u/Due-Commission-6079 to r/CleaningTips [link] [comments]

Long one, but so was the drama! TLDR at the bottom! My (28F) boyfriend "Derek" (26M) and I live in a beautiful 110 year old home, that has been bisected "landlord special" style into 2 separate suites. We love our cozy home, with all of it's "charm"- aka, squeaky old oak floors, whistling chimney, groaning pipes, and rattling radiators. We understood when we moved in that heritage aged homes come with thin walls, but we figured it wouldn't be too big a problem as we're both quiet nerds. Context of who we are here matters- Our hobbies are puzzles, videogames, cozy movie nights in, books, and DnD. Derek and I are, simply put, kind of boring- but we're best friends and we love our cozy life! If we host anything, it's my weekly weekend Dungeons and Dragons game, or Tuesday night bi-weekly book club. We are NOT loud or wild, just two nerds and our little cat. So, Unit 2 is leased by a guy who sublets the bedroom that is directly below my kitchen. The first sub-tenant in there we nicknamed Karaoke guy, due to his daily performances that would last often until midnight. We found the noise more fun than annoying, and we liked humming along to his 5x daily Mr. Brightside performances. The Karaoke Guy moved away, and we missed him immediately. Karaoke Guy swapped for Bridge Troll. Bridge Troll was an older man, maybe mid 50s, who brought with him a little car that was not assigned a space as we only have 2 spaces- one per unit, so he parked in our spot which we need/ use. I texted the Landlord about it, car was moved, not a big deal, right? …wrong. One day in- He continually parked in our spot, despite being told by LL that he was to use the street. Derek drives a large work van full of company tools, so street parking was also a robbery risk for us. Bridge Troll kicked up such a fuss, that my LL asked us if we would mind parking on the grass on the side of the house from now on, as Bridge Troll says the work van is often "parked directly in front of his door" (not true). We complied for the sake of peace. During this time we'd also been hearing banging from the room downstairs, but we had thought nothing of it- chalked it up to moving in sounds, or maybe workout equipment being used? We were so wrong. The banging was a daily occurrence for the next 8 months, sometimes with a few days between that felt like heaven. Every day, any time after 7:30ish, banging and swearing and threats. More on this soon. One month in- Derek and I were just about to head to bed one night, and I went to the kitchen for water- so maybe 11:45pm. Before I could head back, we heard a series of very loud bangs on our front door- we could see the old wooden door rattling from the force. I immediately yelled for Derek to help, as I was scared. Derek came out, checked the peephole, and opened the door to Bridge Troll, who immediately started screaming at us to "shut the fuck up" and that he was going to call the police for all of the noise. Derek is a giant guy- 6'3 lumberjack type. I am very small. Derek is a gentle giant, I grabbed a knife and yelled from the kitchen that he best calm down or I'd hit dial on 9-1-1. Bridge Troll screamed at us to shut the fuck up a few more times, and Derek just said "Okay." then slowly closed the door on him. He left after a few more minutes of screaming at the door, and Derek put my riled self to bed. I texted the Landlord about this, but got no reply. The next thing we noticed was that the banging was clearly NOT random. We had assumed the best, but after this the banging was very clearly only under my kitchen (his bedroom) and any time we so much as stepped foot in there or the adjacent library or dining room, after 7:30ishpm. Bridge Troll had acquired a nasty habit of pounding on his ceiling while screaming that he was calling 9-1-1 and that we need to "Shut the fuck up, shut up shut up be quiet go to hell!!!!". I again, texted my landlord and began keeping a record of exactly what date and time this was happening. No reply from LL for the first month of this. Two months in- We moved a huge rug into the dining area to reduce noise, started using headphones for music as we cooked, and set up a TV in our bedroom for movie nights as it's the opposite side of the house, but nope NOT good enough for Bridge Troll. 3 months in- This gets worse as I was injured in a fire during this time. I was on bed rest, and I could barely walk, as I had 3rd degree burns to about 35% of my left leg, and 2nd degree spanning up a lot of my left side and hands. This is about the time Bridge Troll started calling the police. 4 months in- When Derek was at work one day, I felt better enough to hobble to the kitchen, get a snack and set up in the living room for a movie. Within minutes the banging and yelling started. I was at my wits end, hopped up on painkillers, in severe pain, having just had my second round of flesh removal that morning- when I heard "This is the Police Department." alongside some banging on the door. I hobbled to the door (which is extremely painful when you're healing burns. Movement felt like a cheese grater was against my whole left side) and explained the situation to the officer. Luckily, he said he thinks maybe my neighbor is crazy, as once he arrived he went to his door first and he refused to answer. I was wished a speedy recovery, and went back to my movie. Bridge Troll banged on the floor several more times that day, when I was literally not able to even be walking around. At this point I called my LL. Voicemail, but I did finally receive a text! LL explained she has been in China for a few months so she didn't get my texts, but that she would tell the tenant to get his sub tenant under control. No changes. 5 months in- Derek was out of town, about a 3 hour drive away, sleeping over at a friends house. My burns were healing extremely well, and I was able to take care of myself again! I was celebrating this with a cozy reading night, and was at the popcorn making stage. Maybe 9pm, on a weekend. I heard the banging, but this far in I just ignored it. This was, until I saw a dark figure in my yard. Our yard is not shared- and from a window in my library room I could see all of it without being in view myself with the lights off. I hunkered myself behind the curtain and peered out- and what do I see? Bridge Troll. I brace myself for a repeat of the door incident, but without my Derek to keep it calm. I normally feel I can protect myself, but at this time I am still heavily bandaged and have no epidermis on a lot of my body. Bridge Troll, however, did not knock. He skulked around, trying to peer into my living room windows. I watched while I dialed 911 and whispered to the dispatcher that I was a toasted marshmallow in danger, but as I did Bridge Troll walked back to his unit. The police arrived, and they took my statement but said that technically he didn't do anything illegal, so they would try to talk to him and make a report but that's all they could do. Bridge Troll didn't answer his door, and Derek did a frantic late night drive home to protect his crispy girlfriend. 6 months in- Landlord finally got involved. She came and did a suite inspection on us both. She did him first, then came to us- she said she is very happy with the state of our home and that we have clearly tried to minimize noise. She said her hands are tied, as it is hard to evict a sub-tenant without evicting the tenant, and she really liked the actual tenant as he's been there without issue for years. She offered Bridge Troll a different unit she rents in town at a discounted rate, but he refused it, and demanded we be kicked out. She told us that he texts her often to complain about the noise and the "partying and fighting" in our suite, to which we all laughed. Apparently even the LL doesn't think Derek and I look like hard partiers. Soon after, while Derek was working late, I was interrupted by the police at my door. The police were responding to reports of a domestic dispute turned violent. I let them in, and they saw that I was alone, unless you count The Sims. They asked if I felt safe, if Derek was coming back, if I would like to go to the station to talk- I was thankful, but explained that Derek is a big teddy bear of a man and we never raise our voices at one another. I asked if the neighbor reported this, and they said they could not disclose but I knew. 7 months in- Bridge Troll calmly knocks on our door. Derek and I answer it, and I do all of the talking. Embarrassingly, I was actually on my way out to a bar for a theme night, so of course I had to answer the door dressed like a total slut with a crop top on that said "LOCALLY HATED". Despite his poor timing, Bridge Troll said he just wanted to talk. We did, and I told him all of the accommodations we made but that it's an old thin walled home. He was having none of this, and even refused my offer of taking my number so he could text for quiet instead of banging and calling the cops. He called the cops on us again the next day, as apparently my book club sounded like a real rager. 8 months in- At this point, Derek and I were discussing moving when the lease ended in a few months time. I was at my wits end. I admit, I lost my cool guys- I'm sorry. One night I had had the worlds longest and crappiest day, and I went to make some comfort tea. When the banging started up for the 3rd time in this one kettle-boiling session, I stomped my feet against the ground while shouting "No YOU shut up! Fuck you, fuck off, fuck this!" and then proceeded to get out a dining chair, sit down, and scoot around on it for a minute until I calmed down. Shockingly, no cops were involved in this and he stopped the banging for a day! The final month- At this point, my landlord had actually served the tenant an eviction warning letter. Everything got quiet. We managed to get through September with peace! One warm sunny October day, I noticed that Bridge Trolls car was gone... and had been for days. The next day a moving truck rolled up, and several young men shuffled items into my neighbors house. As quickly as it had begun, it was over. Bridge Troll was gone. It was then, that the heavy overcast clouds parted and a clear blue sky beyond them shone through- streaked with the brilliant yellows and golds that indicate the dawn of a new day. We had been saved! With the evil Bridge Troll gone, our home seemingly heated itself with the sheer force of the love and relief we felt. Also, we hooked up (quietly) on the kitchen floor immediately to celebrate. Fuck the Bridge Troll, this is OUR swamp. So, on to the next insane sub-tenant. Or, if you see my last post, tenant(S) as seemingly 7 people moved into that room. But that's ongoing. For now, I can safely get myself a cup of tea whenever I like. TLDR: My insane downstairs neighbor spent 8 months harassing and threatening my household, including calling in fake domestic violence and party noise complaints, showing up at our door to yell, and peeping in my windows. He disappeared last month, and I literally jumped with joy. submitted by /u/Velmabutgoth to r/neighborsfromhell [link] [comments]

Hi, this is Goose! He is 7 weeks old and spent his first night home with us last night. He sleeps A LOT which I know is normal - but I’m talking like awake for 30 minutes, sleep for an hour, repeat. I feel like he’s not getting enough play for the amount of sleep he’s getting if that makes sense. We play with toys, go potty, he trots around for a bit, and then he’s out on the AC vent again. LOL We’re in Alabama heat (83°) and he seems to get hot pretty easily when we’re outside to potty. We have set up a little outdoor potty area with a playpen and fake grass rug to keep him off the ground until shots are completed. He starts panting almost immediately. He’s using the bathroom regularly, although I feel like he could be pooping more than he is. When he’s awake, he’s playful for the most part besides some occasional flopping. He was health tested and checked by the vet last Tuesday and he had the seal of approval for his health. On a good note, crate training has been a breeze! He loves his crate and willingly goes in for naps throughout the day. I guess I’m just overthinking? Maybe I just need some reassurance that he’s okay and healthy? I’ve never loved a puppy more than I love this little ball of joy. submitted by /u/Human_Image_2731 to r/goldenretrievers [link] [comments]

Verity struggled to fight down a frown as she watched her teammate ‘chat up’ a pair of his family’s guardswomen from around the corner. Sure, he was technically just trying to help his team gain access to the family hangar, but it still wasn’t right! It just wasn’t… proper, for a lad to be acting like that. Being all flirty to get what he wanted. Not proper. Not proper at all. “What do you think he’s saying?” Bonnlyn asked from beneath her own position behind a nearby bush, wincing only slightly as the morning frost coating some of its leaves brushed against her exposed neck. “’Hey, I’ve got a big dick. I’ll show it to you if you let me and my teammates take a peek inside the hangar?’” Olzenya said, lowering her voice to imitate their teammate, even as she tucked her hands under her armpits for warmth. The elf pointedly wasn’t watching the hangar where William’s conversation was taking place, instead her back was to the wall Verity was hiding behind, a severely rugged up Marline not far from her. “As much as part of me thinks that might actually work,” the dark elf muttered, her teeth chittering as she spoke to her fellow elf. “I’m pretty certain even William wouldn’t be that brazen. Even if he’s currently on the outs with his family, I’m certain the guards will recognize that he is still part of it. He’s probably just reminding them of that.” “You don’t sound certain,” Olzenya pointed out. The dark elf clearly thought about arguing that she was, before honesty compelled her to simply remain quiet as she continued to shiver. “He’s not that bad!” Verity grunted, puffs of steam issuing from her mouth as she spoke. “He really is,” Bonnlyn said, prompting the orc to send the dwarf a look of betrayal. “What? I love the guy like… something complicated, but you can’t deny that he’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic after what happened last year. Hell, have you seen the way his aunts were watching him? They’re as mystified by our team leader as we are. And they raised him!” “He’s our team leader!” Verity squawked. “He helped us beat a team of third years last semester! Third years! And he figured out how to kill krakens! And… a bunch of other stuff.” Even six months on she could scarcely believe it. Not least of all because he’d accomplished the latter items without any of the other members of the team even knowing about it. Beyond Marline… That thought stung a little. Even if she understood the reasoning for it. “And the fact that he had us fight a team of third years in our first year, while simultaneously fighting Al’Hundra for access to her nest, doesn’t do much to refute the shortstack’s point,” Olzeyna drawled. “Being a freaky genius savant doesn’t mean he’s not crazier than a sack of foxes.” “As much as it pains me, given the service he’s done for my house,” Marline murmured quietly. “Even I’m forced to admit that his methods are… unorthodox.” Traitors! The lot of them! “Well, if he’s so bad, why did you all agree to spend Winter-Fast at his family’s estate?” The high elf shrugged. “Beats going home.” Marline nodded. “Given his recent troubles with his family, I thought it wise to… keep him company during his visit. My family were saddened, but understood.” Bonnlyn just made a dismissive gesture. “Same as you. I see my family plenty enough while we’re in the academy. Compared to that, an invitation to stay the week at a noble’s estate sounded much more interesting.” “I’m glad to know my family’s estate arouses such excitement in my team,” A new voice deadpanned. Surprised, all four girls turned to see the team leader and only male member of Team Seven had arrived. Bonnlyn was the first to recover, brushing through the awkwardness with the same bull-headed manner she approached most things. “What did they say!?” William smiled, apparently unbothered by the fact that his team had apparently just been discussing how firm his grasp on sanity actually was. “We can go in. So long as I ‘swear not to touch anything’. Oh, and they’re sending a runner for my aunt. I’ve no idea why they felt the need to tell me that, but they did.” “Awesome!” Bonnlyn cried as she all-but dashed towards the shard hangar. The rest of the team followed along behind, albeit at a slightly more sedate pace. “How’d you convince them?” Verity asked in what she hoped was a casual manner. “Well, my recent troubles with my family aside, I am still a part of the family. I just reminded them of that fact.” The boy shrugged. “‘Troubles’, he says.” Olzenya scoffed. “Will, I’ve got troubles with my family. You were about two seconds from being locked up when we showed up last night.” Marline elbowed her friend in the side for being so callous, but William seemed unbothered. “Perhaps.” To say the meal that had followed that arrival had been tense was something of an understatement. Which wasn’t all that surprising given that William had absolutely wrecked his mother’s plans by rather violently breaking off his engagement with his then fiancée. Needless to say, the Blackstone-Ashfield alliance was now rather dead in the water, and with it, the Ashfield Countess’ plans to claim the Summerfield Duchy once the current heirless duchess passed on. Plans that had been years in the making. Admittedly, that whole scheme had required multiple explanations for Verity to understand, but with said context the orc could well understand why her team leader’s mother seemed torn between hugging and throttling her son when the team had shown up at her door. “I’m serious,” Olzenya continued, heedless of Marline’s continued elbowing. “I’m pretty sure it was only the fact that you arrived on a Royal Navy Sloop with a contingent of Royal Marines that kept you from being placed on ‘indefinite house arrest’ for the rest of your life.” Again, rather than be offended, William just laughed. “Yes, and that’s why I acceded to our Royal Overlord’s requests that I have an escort for our trip.” Marline rolled her eyes. “‘Acceded’ he says, as if it was a choice.” The boy just shrugged, as if he wasn’t talking about their nation’s ruler – a figure so far above Verity that it made her head spin just thinking about it. “Well, given that she didn’t actually want me to come at all, I’d say the choice was indeed mine, after a fashion.” “Honestly, I’m still not entirely sure why you wanted to come out here.” Olzenya said. “Part of me thought you wanted to patch up relations with your family, given… the whole shitshow last semester, but given how you and your mother are avoiding each other, that’s clearly not on the agenda.” William moved to respond, before being interrupted by a distant shout. “Will!” The quartet turned as one, to see a young girl darting towards them from the direction of the main house – followed by a trio of harried looking maids. The sight made the boy grin. “I promised my sister I’d visit.” It was actually a strange thing for Verity to see. Normally their team leader’s smiles were a tad… fake. Not outrageously so, but it was something Verity had begun to pick up on. Here and now though? It looked all too genuine. …The orc girl glanced away as an uncomfortable flutter ran through her stomach. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice. “It seems I won’t be able to join you for our little impromptu Shard inspection,” William said. “Apparently my younger sibling has decided to move our planned afternoon meeting forward.” With that said, the boy gave them each a final wave before changing course towards the half-elf girl. When they met, the young man swept the half-elf up into a great hug and swung around like so much luggage, eliciting great shrieks of glee. It was a familiar move, one Verity had performed and been subject to with her own siblings – though it was amusing to see just how scandalized the Ashfield heiress’ maids looked as their charge was swung about. Nearby, Olzenya sighed affectionately, before gesturing back to the hangar. “Well, we might have lost our intrepid leader, but I say our expedition continues.” “Aye.” Marline smirked. Slipping past the two guards positioned by the hangar’s entrance, the girls had to squint a bit in the low gloom of the building’s interior. Well, Marline did, given the naturally shaded nature of her silver eyes. Olzenya probably didn’t, given the huge black pupils of her own. Still, despite the relative gloom of the building, the low lightning did nothing to take away from the majesty of the two craft that occupied the space. “A Drake,” Marline breathed as she identified the fighter craft. Though she needn’t have bothered. There wasn’t a girl in Lindholm that couldn’t identify a Drake by sight. A bit old by the standards of Shards now, the craft still made up the mainstay of the Royal Navy’s fighter capacity. The small wing tips that jutted out from the edges of the rear-mounted wings made her think of a shark’s fin. An image that was only reinforced by the gleaming silver of its aluminium skin. Though that comparison was only slightly marred by the bulbous brass aether ballasts that ran along the machine’s side. Only slightly though, given that just like a shark, the Drake had teeth. Four aether-powered-repeating-cannons sat at the very front of the craft, each one more than capable of shredding any foe they came across. She smiled. Back when she’d been working on her… old mistress’ estate, she’d more than once craned her head to the skies in hopes of catching a glimpse of similar skimmed craft as they darted past on some patrol or another – blue-green aether trailing from the wings of the great machines. Each time the sight had been enough to make her heart skip a beat. …And someday soon she’d be able to fly one of them. “And a Wyvern,” Bonnlyn chirped excitedly from where she was perched on the wing of the craft in question. Indeed, to the left of the Drake sat a Wyvern, the two seater fighter-bomber design slightly older than the Drake – and significantly less storied. If the Drake looked like a sleek silver shark, then the Wyvern was a fat tuna. “Get down from there you goblin!” Olzenya snapped, the moment of awe apparently broken by the sight of their teammate clambering all over the craft they’d ‘promised not to touch’. The dwarf rolled her eyes, but did as the high elf requested. Clumsily. Though she continued talking even as she slid off the wing. “I was just trying to figure out the beast’s history. The Drake’s almost factory new, but this girly apparently suffered a bad crash at some point. You can see the weld lines along one of the wings.” “That, would be my nephew’s work,” a voice called from behind them. “The breaking. Not the fixing.” The girl’s of team seven turned as one, each snapping off a salute at the Marine Knight that had just entered the hangar. The short woman laughed at the sight as she strode over to the Drake. “At ease, girls. I’m not exactly in uniform right now.” Indeed she wasn’t, clad in a leather jacket and thick brown pants, the crest that identified her as Marine-Knight – and a pilot besides – was still clearly visible on her chest. Still, the members of team seven relaxed as best they could as William’s aunt turned away from the Drake to take them all in. “So, you’re my law-son’s teammates. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to greet you all lastnight. Your arrival took a lot of us off guard and I was out scouting for a bandit camp at the time.” “Bandits, ma’am?” Olzenya asked. The woman just shrugged. “Nothing worth mentioning. Just the usual winter shenanigans.” As one the, girl’s nodded in understanding. Seasonal banditry was an unfortunate reality of life. Something that happened each year, but tended to be especially bad after a poor harvest. As the name suggested, it was generally an act performed by farmers looking to ‘supplement’ their income through the harsher winter months by preying on nearby trading. As a result, most households tended to intensify their patrols during the colder seasons. “Anyway, I’m Karla Ashfield, but you can all call me Knight Ashfield.” Despite her otherwise genial demeanour, there was no missing the slight… heat at the end of that sentence. “Don’t bother introducing yourselves. I watched that last bout of yours myself and I’m more than familiar with each of you.” “Pleasure to meet you, ma’am” Bonnlyn said, her voice so polite that Verity actually had to double check it was actually the dwarf that spoke. “Your law-son speaks highly of you.” At those words, a complicated expression flashed across the woman’s face, though there was no missing the hint of pride that followed it. “Well of course, I’m his favourite aunt after all. I’m not surprised he’s been bragging about me.” Verity didn’t know if she’d take things that far, but she wisely chose not to voice that opinion. “Just so,” the dwarf agreed easily. “With that said, I can’t help but notice that these craft are both lacking their cores.” They were? Had that been why Bonnlyn had been perched on the wing of the Wyvern when they’d walked in? Normally the shard-core was positioned directly beneath the pilot and could be accessed by a hatch just under their feet. “Is House Ashfield planning on upgrading its Shard complement in the near future?” Bonnlyn continued, her mercantile mind no doubt seeing the opportunity for profit that two empty shard hulls would create in a market that was about to be flooded with mithril-cores as a result of William’s latest invention. Hell, their team would be interested. Once they got back to the academy, they’d be second years, and that meant Shard training. And while the academy allowed them access to their fleet of Unicorn training craft, for intra-academy competitions teams were allowed to make use of ‘private craft’. “Not at all.” The pilot laughed. “I’m afraid that’s a result of William’s handiwork.” As she spoke, the woman reached into her jacket pocket, and the girls all gasped as she pulled loose a glowing shard of metal. A mithril-shard. The thing that powered a shard-craft. Indeed, that was the reason for the name, given that mithril-shards were literally shards of a greater mithril-core. And owing to their smaller relative size, they lacked the power to fill an entire airship’s ballasts like a true core could, but some enterprising engineers had discovered that said lesser output could allow for alternative means of flight in smaller craft. Verity glanced over at the single propeller attached to the back of the Drake. Mithril’s ability to continuously produce aether was instead used, not to generate lift through the vapor’s lighter than air properties, but instead to generate pressure that in turn spun the Drake’s propellers. Oh, certainly it could fill the smaller craft’s ballasts as well, but as a rule of thumb, most of the power would go to spinning the propeller during normal flight. That propeller, in turn, would generate speed by pushing the air. That speed allowed air to flow over the wings, which generated lift. Which in turn created flight. Thus, where an Airship floated through the air – a shard cut through it like a knife. “William, ma’am?” Marline asked quietly, drawing Verity back from her thoughts. The pilot woman cocked her head. “Oh, he didn’t tell you? His last act in this household, and the one that got him sent out to the academy, was to steal one of our Shards for a… rescue of sorts. Of two peasants whose boat got caught out in a storm. A noble enough move if it hadn’t been so foolish.” The girls all glanced between each other at those words, more than a little scandalized… albeit not terribly surprised. …Though Verity found the man somehow climbing even higher in her esteem at the thought that he’d risked his house’s ire to help a pair of normal people. People like her. Or at least, like she used to be. To be honest, some part of her still struggled with the idea that she wasn’t a normal person anymore. She was a noble now. A very minor unlanded one to be sure, but a noble all the same. “That, uh,” Olzenya started to say, her opinion of William’s actions no doubt running contrary to Verity’s own. “Was… noble?” “Stupid,” Karla all-but agreed. “Still, as they say, you learn more from mistakes than successes. And it did lead us to developing this.” As she spoke, she gestured to the chain attached to the core she was holding. “We keep this thing and her sister in a lockbox when the shard’s aren’t actively in use. Keeps them a lot safer than they’d be otherwise.” That was… actually a fairly clever idea. She’d more than once heard her more rebellious fellow slaves ruminating on the idea of stealing a shard from the mistress’s hangar and just… flying away. It was a fool’s dream to be sure, more of an idle hope than anything, given the guards on the hangars and the fact that they as slaves didn’t know how to actually fly a shard. But… even that pie in the sky dream would be stymied by the fact that the prize and the means to escape with it had been separated by the Ashfield household. “A brilliant idea.” Marline said, admiration on full display as she stared at the vaguely key-shaped shard the woman was holding. “One that I could see delaying a sortie in a surprise, but that’s a minor drawback compared to the added security it provides.” Yes, Verity could see why such a system would appeal to the dark elf given her family history. Sure, William’s actions had resulted in them getting a replacement for it, but a lifetime of ingrained thinking wouldn’t shift overnight. Indeed, now that they actually had a core once more, the orc imagined the Greygrass family would be all the more fanatical in guarding it – and any shards that were borne of the main core. “Feel free to spread it around,” Karla shrugged absentmindedly. “It’s a simple enough thing to do, even if we did have to reconfigure the engine a bit for easy slotting and removal. Did most of it myself to be honest.” That was a little surprising. Verity thought the Ashfields would guard their ‘innovation’ a bit more strongly. “I’d be interested in seeing that,” Marline nodded eagerly. The woman paused, before something… dangerous “Well, how about an in-person show?” She moved over to a tarp covered object in the back corner. “You girls are about to enter your second year right? Start on Sshard stuff?” The quarter nodded, poorly hidden excitement pervading their frames at the implications of the woman’s words – even Olzenya’s. “Well, how about I take you up and you could try handle the stick for a bit?” The woman asked grandly as she pulled on the tarp. To reveal a worn-looking but still perfectly serviceable Unicorn. Verity literally couldn’t say ‘yes’ fast enough. This was the best day ever! “We’re going to die!” To say that Verity was panicking as she desperately yanked at the controls of her craft was something of an understatement. The constant spinning of the world beyond her cockpit glass didn’t help matters, as she could already feel a nauseous sensation building in her gut. A gut that seemed determined to force its way up into her chest – along with a dozen butterflies. All while her shard hurtled toward the ground. “At this rate, yes.” ‘Auntie’ Karla actually had the audacity to sound bored as the orc fought desperately to save them both. “You should probably do something about this flatspin.” “What do you think I’m trying to do!” She all but snapped at the infuriating woman as she fought with the controls. But no matter how much she tugged at the flight stick, the damn plane refused to break out of its spin. Have to get the nose down, she thought franticly as she tried to recall her academy’s theoretical lessons on the subject. Get air moving over the control surfaces. Unfortunately, the shard refused to co-operate. “I figure we’ve got maybe forty seconds before we pancake,” Karla drawled. “Thirty nine. Thirty eight-” Verity moved to yell back, before being forced to swallow both that and a bout of bile as she struggled to fight another bout of nausea from the spinning. Shit, were they really going to have to bail? Was she going to be responsible for wrecking the Ashfield’s Shard? On her first flight? She knew her family didn’t have the kind of coin to pay for it if she did. Sure, Unicorn Training Craft were designed to be cheap and quick to replace - which was why they were only made of wood, not aluminium - but the two-seater design was still- “Just passed two thousand meters. And I’m taking over,” the human woman behind her said. Almost instantly Verity felt the controls under her hands go slack as Karla engaged the ‘instructor’s controls’ from her own seat behind the orc. “First, let’s stop the spinning.” The shard shifted, as beneath them valves opened and closed to redirect aether from the shard’s mithril core. “Redirecting pressure from props to the right exhaust.” Blue-green gas burst from the exhaust thrusters positioned to the rear of the right wing, arresting the shard’s spin in moments. Not it’s descent though. The plane’s nose was still level with the horizon. And the ground beneath them was only getting closer. Would they still have to jump!? “Redirecting pressure from right exhaust to rear ballasts one and two.” Another series of clunks rang out as Karla pushed and pulled at some of the levers in front of her, the well-oiled mechanical interfaces acceding to the woman’s demands with only a small amount of pressure. Slowly, the front of the shard started to dip – revealing just how close the ground really was as it rushed up to meet them. “Ma’am!?” Verity shouted in fear. “We’re not going to make it! We should-” “It’s fine,” the brunette responded. “Pressure returning to propellors.” Another two clunks that Verity barely heard over the blood pounding in her ears rang out. “I really think we should bail!” They were supposed to have bailed the second they stalled below five hundred meters! That was what the manual’s said! “It’s fine,” she heard the woman say. “Probably.” “Probably!?” She shrieked as they continued hurtling towards the ground. “Almost definitely,” the human grunted as the orc heard her finally pull back on the flight stick. The cadet was forced down into her seat as the plane started to pull up, the shard’s wooden frame creaking as the g-forces of the maneuver made the edges of her vision blur slightly. Yet even as the shard pulled up, the ground below them continued to grow larger as they were still on a descent angle. The wide-open fields beyond the walls of the capital loomed closer and closer. Even if they bailed now, the rear propellor wouldn’t have enough time to detach! It’d likely shred at least one of them as it cartwheeled loose! …Still, she found herself reaching for the release valve on her seat, the aether she’d channelled into the gas-tank beneath her chair primed to blow off the cockpit and send her screaming up into the air with just an errant- And then they were up - the bottom of their craft all-but skimming the grass off the field beneath them before it shot back up into the air. “See?” Karla breathed as the pair continued to climb once more. “We were fine.” The orc – now that she wasn’t the one in control of the craft, nor being squished into her feet by g-forces, turned in her restraints to glare at her teammate. “C-couldn’t you have taken over sooner, ma’am?” The human actually had the audacity to shrug in her seat, her tinted goggles obscuring her gaze from the roc, but doing nothing to hide the human woman’s shit-eating grin. “I mean, you were the one who put us into a flat-spin. I was hoping if I gave you a little longer you’d remember that you had more options available to you than just… yanking on the flight stick.” Verity frowned at the words, even as she turned forward in her chair. …Some part of her had a growing suspicion. Was the woman… hazing her? “Honestly, if this is the calibre of my darling nephew’s teammates, well, I’m a little worried,” the pilot continued. And all-but confirmed Verity’s thoughts as she did. Suddenly the Ashfield’s shark-like smirk when she’d revealed the Unicorn made sense. She’d wanted to scare the shit out of all the girl’s hanging around her ‘favourite law-son’. And the worse thing was, Verity couldn’t even complain! You know, even if she could get around the staggering difference in rank between them. Because she’d done the exact same thing to the girls who’d come sniffing around her younger brother back when they’d worked on the farms! Ugh, she thought frustratedly even as another bout of nausea ran through her. Her first flight in a shard had been soured by an overprotective aunt trying to scare the shit out of her. …Suddenly Bonnlyn’s wobbly legs and frown made sense when she’d clambered out of the Shard after her flight. “Well, we’re back at altitude,” the devilish woman said. “Take the controls again whenever you’re ready.” Ugh. Was it wrong to know that she was glad that she wouldn’t be the only member of Team Seven to suffer this? Then another thought occurred. And lucky William is just… chatting with his sister while I have to fight to keep down breakfast, she thought with unusual venom. The lucky lad. William struggled not to let a stray bead of sweat run down his forehead as he suffered one of the worst fates imaginable. His little sister was mad at him. Really mad. Previous / First / Next Another three chapters are also available on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bluefishcake We also have a (surprisingly) active Discord where and I and a few other authors like to hang out: https://discord.gg/RctHFucHaq submitted by /u/BlueFishcake to r/HFY [link] [comments]

I feel like maybe it makes them feel at home or something 🥹 They are always laying on it and it was only $10 for a 5x3! Highly recommend for your fur buddies 🥰 submitted by /u/NadiSwan to r/cats [link] [comments]

Got a question, I just put together my greenhouse last week and I was wondering if I can put a fake grass rug on top of the grass in the greenhouse. I sprayed the grass with roundup so it is dead. So I was wondering if I can put the rug down and then put a raised garden bed on top of the rug. submitted by /u/Aalamp83 to r/Greenhouses [link] [comments]

A picture I saw on Instagram in 2021 of a music studio that had fake grass, either a rug or turf, very bright green, with vibrant primary colored furniture around it. I think it had the program Ableton up on the screen of the computer? Been searching for it for years! submitted by /u/dietcoketunes to r/tipofmytongue [link] [comments]

When I was 11, I was at the very bottom of my class until the teacher, Ms. Henry, made me sit next to the new kid. Thomas and his family moved into town halfway through term, so he just sort of appeared one day. During his second week, Ms. Henry tried to draw him out of his shell by asking about his favourite TV program. “What’s a TV program?” he replied. That got a laugh. Clearly, he was playing dumb to put one over on her. Everybody thought he’d emerge as the next class clown, but instead he rarely spoke and aced every subject. A few girls tried befriending him—they dug that ‘Children of the Corn’ look, I guess—but agreed he was a weirdo after chatting with him in the lunch hall. As desk buddies, he and I locked horns. A lot. Because I was left-handed, our elbows bumped together whenever we wrote, and he got super pissed anytime I asked to borrow a pencil, so I of course did this as often as possible. Anytime I asked Ms. Henry to split us up she’d just sneer and say, “Ryan, there’s gonna be times in life when you’re forced to spend time with people you don’t like. Get used to it.” One day, as I struggled with a difficult maths exam, Thomas offered to help. I’m guessing he finished early and got bored. It was my first ‘A’. Without either of us ever agreeing to it, he started helping me with homework and tough assignments, and soon my grades improved so much my mom bought me a bunch of Pokémon cards as reward. I offered Thomas some of the one I already owned, but he didn’t even know what a ‘Pokémans’ was. Then one day, out of the blue, he asked if I’d sleepover at his place. “Father really wants to meet you,” he said. Why did his parents even know who I was? We sat together, sure, but he knew so little about pop culture getting through a conversation was like chewing calt. Still, I wanted to thank him for his help, and my mom didn’t raise any objections, so that Friday I packed some clothes and cycled over to his place. I drove down several short roads flanked by woods, past a train station, toward the outskirts of town. Thomas’s two-story house sat at the top of a long driveway so steep that I needed to jump off my bike and push most of the way, and all the windows were either boarded up or had the curtains pulled shut. Things got spooky the second I arrived. Thomas and his parents waited patiently to greet me, each grinning like they were on a poster for tooth whitening. Everybody had matching blonde hair and dressed in plain shades of brown, grey, and white. A large man introduced them as ‘The Donovan’s’. My pre-teen brain categorized him and his wife as ‘old’, but in retrospect there must’ve been a twenty-year age difference there. Mr. Donovan walked my bike into the garage while me and Thomas followed his mom inside. Something was wrong with the house—it looked too sterile. No clutter, zero toys scattered about. Plus, the antique furniture was older than my grandparents. In every room, sheets had been draped over objects mounted along the panelled walls, and Mrs. Donovan made a point of telling me that, “Touching the sheets is strictly forbidden.” She led us into a sitting room decorated with crucifixes, crucifixes, and more crucifixes. Of varying sizes. We kneeled down on a colourful rug, facing each other. The only sound was the ticking of a grandfather clock. At last Mr. Donovan joined our group and led a prayer for the standard stuff: good health, blessed weather. Even though I’d gone to protestant church with my grandparents, I couldn’t figure out what religion we were meant to be practicing. He obviously thought of himself as a spiritual leader, and devoted a lot of time to the ‘blind sinners’ who would suffer ‘swift retribution’ on judgement day. It wasn’t until he called for a minute of ‘holy silence’ that I heard a low, shaken voice. I concentrated hard, tuning out the clock. There were muffled cries. From somewhere within the room. I peeked my left eye open. Nobody was watching, although the way the family didn’t stop grinning made me shiver. I glanced around the room. We were alone. When I turned back towards the circle, Thomas’s Mom was staring straight at me, her smile practically splitting the seams of her face. Quickly I shut my eyes, already anxious to go home. The silence seemed to last forever. Finally, the spiritual leader clapped his hands and said we should go out back and ‘toss a ball around’. On my way out of the room, I listened for more cries, but the sound had died off. I figured my imagination got the better of me. As Thomas and I tossed a leather ball back and forth in the long grass, his dad watched from a crude decking area, beaming. Like at school, Thomas threw with his right hand whereas I favoured my left. We kept trying to pass each other bad shots, competing to make the other miss a catch. It was all in good fun, though. Thomas acted even weirder than at school. Away from his parents he at least seemed interested in subjects like TV, but now he strictly spoke about Bible stories and recited his favourite verses. I sidestepped his questions my spirituality as much as I could. My arm was aching by the time Mrs. Donovan called us for dinner. In the kitchen, we gathered around the table, and then she brought in a metal pan, presenting 5 boneless chicken breasts lathered in lumpy gravy and canned peaches. Before we ate, everybody linked arms for another prayer, and part of me wished the ritual would never end, because then we’d need to choke down the food… A heavy silence fell over the room, then those cries started up again. Closer than before. It sounded like a child, and their voice had a panicky quality. If it wasn’t for the threat of another glare from Thomas’s mom, I would’ve peeked. As the prayer dragged on, the crying became more hysterical, until finally something rattled against the wall behind me. Mr. Donovan’s voice raised, thunderous now, and drowned out the sound. I’m not sure which scared me more, but either way my arms broke out in goosebumps. The sermon ended five minutes later, and we sat there in silence until the head of the table said, “Amen.” I checked the corners for sobbing children, finding only more sheets. What then? A CD player? My imagination? The uncooked chicken made me gag. I didn’t want to cause trouble so I picked around the mouldy peaches and spread out the plate so it looked like I’d eaten more than I actually had. There was chocolate cake for dessert, but Thomas’s Mom went around slicing a piece onto each of our plates, which were still covered with chicken and gravy. By that point my stomach was growling, so I scoffed down a top layer of cake which hadn’t touched anything else. I wanted to leave. Faking a belly ache, I asked if they would call my mom and have her come pick me up. Thomas’s dad raised an eyebrow. “No need, we have a special remedy.” He told the rest of the family to pray for my health and led me out of the room. The front door was on my left, and I briefly considered making a run for it, but the second I did Mr. Donovan’s hand clamped around my shoulder, tight. His smile never wavered, but something about his eyes made me break out in goosebumps. Like an implied threat. So, I let him guide me into a vintage bathroom. There was a covered cabinet above the sink and the tub was already full. A thick layer of scud—plus a few dead flies—floated along the surface. Mr. Donovan poured something into the murky water (salt maybe?) and ordered me to strip off my t-shirt so I could dip my midsection in. I told him I’d made a miraculous recovery. “Ah, the power of prayer,” he said, grinning so wide I could count the back teeth. After that he announced it was time for bed, despite the fact it wasn’t even dark yet. Upstairs, at the very far end of the hall, a huge object spanning the width of both walls was covered by another sheet. We got ushered me into Thomas’s room, which was even more dull and lifeless than the rest of the house: a queen-sized bed, one small cupboard, and a single wooden chair tucked in the corner. We needed to share the bed, but only after another round of prayer. Then, it was lights out before 9 o’clock. Alone with my friend, I rolled over and asked what religion his family practiced anyway. He gave the vaguest answers possible, and when I pushed him, became hyper-defensive. So, I said, “Hey, do you ever wanna punch Ms. Henry right in her stupid ugly face?” That made him laugh. Away from his parents, he became more like his school self. Not normal, but closer than before. We argued over who the hottest girl in class was, followed by the most annoying. Without meaning to I brought up one who always teased him, and it was like all the energy leaked out of my new friend. “I know everybody thinks I’m odd,” he sighed. “They just need to get to know you like I did. They’ll come around.” “You think so?” “Absolutely.” He smiled. Then, after a little while, he said, “Hey, wanna see something creepy? I’ll show you if you think you’re brave enough not to wet the bed.” I rolled my eyes. He wanted to rattle me, like when we played ball. “Sure.” “We’ve gotta wait until mother and father retire for the night.” I kept asking what he had planned but he wouldn’t answer. He got a kick out of keeping me in the dark, I think. He waited until the house fell quiet, and then swung his legs out of bed. “This way.” In the chilly, dark hall, enough moonlight shone through the windows beside the staircase to see by. As we tiptoed past several closed doors, that crying returned, growing louder as we approached the object beneath the black sheet. Not my imagination then… Facing me, Thomas whispered, “Don’t worry if he looks at you, just make sure you look away fast. You’ll be fine so long as you look away fast.” Before I could ask what that meant he crouched down, grabbed the corner of the sheet, and pulled it back, revealing an antique armoire. Suddenly the crying became less muffled. A mirrored panel ran along the bottom section, surrounded by fine, gargoyle-like carvings. Still holding the blanket, Thomas pushed his left ear against the carpet and stared at the glass. “He’s there. Come look quick.” I just wanted to get this over with. I lay down. For a second I stared at the reflected hall, confused about why we were even there. But then an out-of-place shape caught my eye. I told myself it was my reflection, but then realized I had no reflection. A boy was standing in the corner with his back to us. His shoulders went up and down like he couldn’t stop sobbing. “Do you see him?” Thomas asked. I swallowed a gulp, my blood running cold. “Neato, huh?” My brain scrambled for an explanation. It was a trick. Or a nasty prank. I looked behind me. Nothing. Only a bare patch of wall. “He’s not there,” Thomas said. “Only in the mirror.” When I looked back, the boy was much closer and crouched on his side, nose to nose with me. His features were all stretched out, long and narrow like a funhouse mirror, and he had a shock of blonde hair to go with them. His thin lips twisted into a grotesque smile as the boy reached out to me, the tips of his fingers pushing through the glass, into reality. I couldn’t move a muscle until his faces only inches away from mine, his breath blasting me in the face like a gust of cold air. I scrambled away. If my throat hadn’t hitched itself shut, I would’ve screamed. Quickly Thomas dropped the sheet and dragged me up by the shoulder, then shoved me down the hall. Behind us the armoire thrashed from side-to-side, its hinges squeaking, the boy crying again. Now his voice had an almost hysterical quality. Back in the safety of his room, Thomas pressed his ear against the door until the armoire quietened down. “We are blessed father didn’t hear,” he said. “Now we sleep. Father said we aren’t to rise before he wakes us to begin the morning ritual.” He must not have been the least bit scared by what we saw, because he ushered me into bed and dozed off straight away. But my body wouldn’t quit trembling. What was that thing in the mirror? Were there more of them? Is that why they hung sheets everywhere? But why keep any mirrors at all? One thing was for sure: I couldn’t spend the night in that house. But Thomas’s dad would never let me go. I needed to get the hell out of there without being seen. After Thomas’s breathing eased into a rhythm, I swung my legs onto the floor and tiptoed out of the room, toward the stairs, but as I approached the top, footsteps came clomping along. I ducked behind the nearest door. Through the narrow gap, I watched Mr. Donovan march past with a rectangular object tucked beneath his arm. There was a tinkling sound from beneath the sheet. He carried it over to Thomas’s room, grunting the whole way, and disappeared through the door. My stomach lurched into my throat. I didn’t want to find out what he had planned. I flew down the stairs, carefully, quietly. I kept my hand against the wall for guidance. The front door was locked. My bike still was in the garage, I hoped, but how did I get there from the landing? Above my head, there were angry shouts of, “He’s gone!” No time for plans. I sprinted around the ground floor, flying from room to room. Cries rang out in every one, and now the objects beneath the sheets danced on the walls, bouncing around. The crying child sounded terrified now, like they were in pain. Past the kitchen, there was a cramped utility room with another door. The temperature plummeted as I bolted through it, into the garage. The light switch was on the inside wall. I flicked it, then a naked bulb blinked on. Junk was scattered everywhere: car parts, step ladders, boxes of old newspapers. And more sheets thrown over different mirrors, each flapping and twisting. There were more cries, except not just the boy, and for a second I was afraid to move But then a door slammed shut behind me, and I ran for it. My bike was propped up against the wall beside the exit, it’s handlebar stubbornly tangled with a Christmas tree. After a few tugs, it came loose, and it was like setting off a Rube Goldberg machine. A mop and bucket fell into a stepladder, which clattered to the floor and sent a bag of marbles sprawling across the floor, and so on. I grabbed the bike’s handlebars. The exit was one of those old ‘fold-up doors’ you needed to twist the handle to open. My hands were shaking so badly I needed to set the bike aside and focus solely on this task. The door rotated up. Behind me Thomas’s dad burst into the room, and for the first time he’d stopped smiling. He rushed after me but struggled to get through the minefield of junk. My bike’s rear wheel became tangled with a sheet, and when I started running it came away like a magician ripping away a tablecloth. I heard the mirror fall the floor and shatter. Laughter rang out, and I when I glanced back over my shoulder bone-thin arms were reaching out of the glass, towards Mr. Donovan. As the garage light rapidly flicked on and off, Mr. Donovan screamed. I will never, as long as I live, forget the terror in that scream. Pure adrenaline got me out of there. Without slowing down, I sprinted to the top of the driveway and leapt onto the bike and flew down the hill. Behind me, screams rang out from deeper in the house. I didn’t stop to look back… Mom wasn’t pleased about me cycling home so late, but I made up an excuse about Thomas’s family getting sick and needing to leave in a hurry, so she let it slide. I knew she’d never believe my story. I tried faking an illness to get out of school because I was so anxious about seeing Thomas again, but she was having none of it. I spent all of Saturday and Sunday wondering about what I’d seen. On Monday, my desk buddy sat without breathing a single word. We never spoke again and we didn’t bump elbows once. To my great relief, Ms. Henry announced Thomas’s family had moved again the very next day. I never saw him after that, although for a while I had nightmares about his dad dragging me back inside their house, and they tend to flare up anytime I see a mirror-fronted armoire. submitted by /u/lightingnations to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

To make a long story short; I live in a bedroom studio with 3 cats who learned to open door handles that love the outdoors In my bedroom studio, I replaced the loft area where my bed was and want to make it into a cat hangout space, as I know cats love being in high places. I originally was thinking of laying down an artificial grass rug as their “flooring” so they can still have that feeling of being an “outdoor” cat while being indoors. My big concern is that since the grass rug is artificial, I don’t care if they scratch it up or play on it; it’s if they eat it. I know grass is really good for them when it comes to their digestive system; it benefits brushing their teeth, less hairballs and no issues with their bowel system! The only complaint is that they eat too much grass outdoors that when they come indoors, the grass shows in their throw up (again, no hairballs). Because of how much grass they eat and I’m planning to have fake grass in my bedroom studio, I’m concerned they will eat it and not only mess with their digestive system but possibly kill them. I googled how to avoid eating it but it recommend products that avoid scratching too. I want it to be “their spot” and still have the feel of being “outdoor” cats so products that recommend not scratching it is not ideal. If anyone has any recommendations or knows any at home remedies to not eat it but can play on it, it would be greatly appreciated! Thank you! submitted by /u/Designer_Virus3664 to r/CatAdvice [link] [comments]

https://www.aspc.co.uk/search/property/422351/2-Union-Street/Ellon/ submitted by /u/Western-Mall5505 to r/SpottedonRightmove [link] [comments]

I’d been driving for what felt like hours, down the same long road, through the same long stretch of forest, when I finally arrived at my destination, a gargantuan mansion that sat atop a small hill. Surrounding it, like a moat encircling a castle, was a massive parking lot filled with luxury vehicles. But one vehicle in particular stood out from all the rest. A 1977 vintage cargo van, that, despite being restored back to its original condition, had been emblazoned with the words “Best Friends Catering Company.” “Fucking Chad.” I said out loud, as I parked my similarly depressing vehicle beside his. Despite the misleading company name, Chad was not my friend. If I’m being honest, I’d be surprised if he had any friends. He was my boss, and a unique form of asshole. I’d been working for him for almost four years now, ever since my failed audition for that network procedural, when I was forced to find some sort of income to pay my rent. As much as he got on my nerves, in a way, I kind of felt sorry for him. This business was basically all he had, and I suppose, given his personality, that this catering team was the closest thing he had to friends. It’ll be fine. I told myself. It’s just one gig, and then you’re on vacation. No Chad for a couple of weeks. — The inside of the mansion was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Almost all of the building’s original walls must have been knocked down, resulting in what looked like some sort of weird open space bachelor pad the size of a football field, with tons of rich people stuff everywhere. Bear skin rugs, leather ottomans, an olympic size pool, and what appeared to be authentic medieval tapestries lining the walls. Must be nice. I thought to myself, enviously. Chad had hinted that the host of the party was James Alistair, a middle-aged billionaire, and famous for being one. He had formed and sold more successful companies than I’d had acting gigs, the most recent of which was supposedly planning to build a literal elevator to space. Even if they could do that, what would be the point? I wondered, as I headed into the kitchen, where the rest of the caterers were finishing up food prep. But before I could completely wallow in self-pity, a familiar voice greeted me at the door. “Dan! I didn’t know you were working tonight!” “Hey, hey. Likewise!” I replied with a smile, as I turned around to greet Sandy, my co-worker and partner in crime, who, like all us lowly caterers, was donning a bow tie. Truth be told, I’d had a crush on her since my first day on the job, when we started sharing stories about funny mishaps we’d both had at music festivals. She was a budding screenwriter, and we always talked about our dream of working together. We’d always had a special connection, but I had somehow gone four years without building up the courage to ask her out. Maybe one day. I mused, optimistically. “Why didn’t you take the van in with us?” She asked. “I think you know the answer to that.” I said, simultaneously winking at her, and gesturing to Chad, who was unpacking water bottles behind me. He was 40-something, with a mustache as obnoxious as his vehicle. “Answer to what?” my boss interjected, as he always did. “Speak of the devil!” I mumbled, faking a smile. “You’re an hour late, Stevenson.” “Oh, am I? I didn’t even realize”. Chad stopped what he was doing and walked over to us, attempting to put his hand on my shoulder. I subtly maneuvered away so he couldn’t reach me, as Sandy put her hand over her face, in an effort to hide her laughter. “You know, Dan…” Chad began, “If you had taken the van in with us, you would have been on time. I’ve told you before that it makes a better impression on the host when we all roll out of the van together! It’s more professional, and this is a business. And when one of us doesn’t play their part, well, then we all look bad! You made us all look like dicks.” “You know what, Chad-” I began, before stopping myself. “I’m actually missing out on serving a bunch of old rich people overpriced drinks at the cash bar. I better get over there.” I smiled at Sandy, and she smiled back, as I silently walked away. “And just remember… No fuckups tonight, Dan! Remember, they’re paying triple tonight. We need to keep them happy!” — A few minutes later, I was standing behind the bar by myself, bored out of my mind, when an old lady in a fancy dress and a long necklace of pearls waddled over. “Cosmopolitan!” She commanded. You don’t say? I thought to myself. “Coming right up!” “But don’t shake it too much.” “I wouldn’t dare,” I replied, while attempting a flirtatious smile. After making the drink and handing it back to her, she simply snatched it out of my grip and darted off. “You’re welcome. You know, there is a tip jar. And you are rich as sin!” I mumbled quietly to myself, as a silver-haired man in a suit stepped up to the bar. “Hi, could I get a gin martini, please?” I appreciated the pleasantry, so I spared him any sarcasm. “Yes, sir!” “Sir?” He laughed, “Just call me Jim.” As I looked up, it took me a moment to recognize who he was. It was the billionaire himself, James Alistair. “Of course. Right away… Mr. Jim.” I stuttered, while wondering why I had added “Mr.” to his nickname. “Just Jim is fine! And what’s your name?” “Dan.” “Dan, huh… Dan’s a good name.” He said. “Hey Dan, you see that guy over there?” He pointed to the center of the room, where a large man with a walrus-like mustache and round, wire frame glasses was laughing loudly with other guests. “Yeah?” I smiled. “He loves ivory. Like real ivory, from elephant tusks. Collects it. What a fuckface.” It took everything I had to avoid roaring with laughter. “And that lady…” Jim added, as he pointed to a brunette woman in a gold dress. “...Won’t drink tap water. Literally has sparkling water running through the pipes in her estate. Despicable.” “What about… that guy?” I asked, trying not to laugh, and playing along, as I pointed to a tall, thin man with a long white beard and a bald head, who was flailing his arms while conversing with his fellow aristocrats. Jim gave me a quizzical look and a cheeky smile. “You tell me. What do you think that guy’s deal is? “Honestly… maybe the worst of them all. Likes pineapples on his pizza.” He immediately burst out laughing. “Hey Dan, can I ask you a question?” “Uh, yeah sure.” “Seriously… that ivory guy. You think he deserves to live in the lap of luxury?” “Oh, definitely not!” I replied. “You know… I agree with you! What a piece of shit.” Jim said, before excusing himself, “Anyways, I’ll be back. Was really good to meet you, Dan!” “You too, sir!” I said, as he looked back at me with feigned frustration, “I mean Jim!” My correction put a huge smile on his face. He gave me a thumbs up, as he walked away. I was just about to reflect on meeting possibly the coolest man on earth, when Chad dropped by and started chiding me for some napkins being out of alignment. I just had to grin and bear it. — A short while later, my billionaire buddy returned, looking for a refill. “You know, Dan, if I'm being honest, I kinda hate all of these people.” He began with a smirk, “Seriously, I despise each and every one of them.” He surveyed the room, analyzing what must have been a hundred or so regal-looking individuals, each of them joking and laughing quite obnoxiously. It was so deadpan and earnest that I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “If you wanted any of them dead…” he continued, “Any single one… seriously, which one of these assholes would you kill?” I didn’t want to overstep any worker-host boundaries, so I attempted to bow out of the conversation. “Oh no, I’m sure they’re all good people at heart.” He smiled. “Sure… but let’s assume for a moment that they're not, and had it coming. Seriously, which one? Come on.” He demanded with a smile. “You know you’ve got someone in mind! Look, I’ll start. I’d definitely kill that hedge fund douche over there!” At that very moment, I saw Chad step out of the kitchen, barking orders at the staff. “I mean, uh… I guess my boss is an asshole.” I answered, as I pointed at Chad, shaking my head. “That guy?” He paused to study him. “Yeah… yeah he looks like an asshole. Ok, noted. See, not so hard right? ” He asked, with a serious expression on his face, before stepping away, “Anyways, Dan, I gotta go mingle and what not. Catch up with you in a bit, buddy.” And like that, he was gone. What a character. I thought to myself, as my mind returned to Sandy, who was bartending at another table on the other side of the room. — An hour or so later, as the party carried on, one of my co-workers passed by, with a confused look on his face. “Hey, have you seen, Chad?” “Who cares.” I replied, “Guy’s a dick.” “It’s just a bit out of character for him, isn’t it? To not be out here, you know, micromanaging us?” “Enjoy it while it lasts.” Sandy quipped, as I made my way back to my bar. Not long after that, my good buddy, Jim, the billionaire host of the night’s festivities, returned to the bar. “Dan! Good news! Your boss. Not a problem anymore. Oh, and I’ll have another martini.” I laughed out loud. He got me again. This guy. I thought, as I began to make the martini “Sure thing, Jim.” He simply stood there quietly, scanning the room, just as he had done during our last conversation. “So who’s next? I’m thinking Mrs. Wingate over there.” Jim said, as he pointed back to the very same old lady with the pearl necklace who had failed to tip me earlier. “Why her?” I asked, genuinely curious. “Honestly, she’s a little bit racist. Like, she doesn’t call anyone names or anything directly, but she kind of implies it. You think she deserves to go?” “Hell yeah.” I said with a smile, once again playing along with our running gag. “On it.” He replied, giving me a thumbs up. I handed Jim his martini and, just as he was about to walk away, he turned back around, as though he’d forgotten to tell me something. “Machete. I know you’re thinking gun, but then innocent people get caught in the crossfire, so you know… safety first!.” He added, before turning back around and walking off. This actually happened two more times over the course of the night. Eventually, I ran out of ice, and headed to the kitchen, in hopes that Sandy might be there. But instead, I found two of my co-workers arguing, in a panic. “Where the heck is Chad?” One of them yelled at the other, “He never told us if the backyard is appetizers or light bites.” “I don’t know. Haven’t seen him. Does it matter?” The other snapped back. “Hey Dan, have you seen Chad?” They both asked, in unison. “Why does everyone give so many fucks about Chad? Just pick one. I don’t know, we already served appetizers inside, so let’s just go with light bites.” I delegated, before remembering why I was there in the first place. “Oh, ice. Where’s the ice?” “In the basement.” One of them sighed, pointing to a stairwell adjacent to the room. “Thanks.” I replied to the headless chickens, as I began to descend the staircase. — Something I’ve always found curious is that no matter the home, basements always tend to be the same. Even this extravagant mansion was no different. Dimly lit and smelling of whatever that basement smell is. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I squinted in an effort to find the usual heap of ice bags we kept on hand for a variety of reasons. “There they are.” I said to myself, as I spotted them. But as I headed to the back of the cellar, I discovered that they were being used for a very different reason. There, protruding from under the heap of ice bags, was an old lady’s arm. Dangling from it, a long necklace of pearls. And below it, on the concrete, a dried puddle of blood. Oh fuck!!! It’s Mrs. Wingate. And she wasn’t the only one. Nearly everyone Jim had joked about lay under the ice, and there, at the bottom… was Chad. At that moment, a wave of panic rushed over me, as it all hit me. I began to pace back and forth, a million thoughts racing through my mind. This guy is actually killing his guests! I need to get out of here! Wait, no, what about Sandy? I need to get Sandy! No, don’t be a hero. Call the police! Yes, that’s it, call the police! I pulled out my cell phone and called the cops as fast as I could type those 3 numbers, while at the same time, looking up at the stairwell, to make sure no one was coming. “Uh, yes… um, my name is Dan Stevenson. I’m not sure exactly how to explain this, but I’m at some billionaire’s party, and it appears that he is killing his guests.” “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” A woman replied. “He’s actually a famous guy, um…” his name escaped me for a moment, until I found the words, “...Jim, I mean James Alistair!” CLICK. Just like that, she hung up. Huh? I looked at my cell phone service, but I had 5 bars. I called back immediately. “Hi, this Dan Stevenson, I think our call dropped. I was just telling you about-” “Dan, stop calling. We’re not coming.” The same woman said, in a deadpan manner. And then… CLICK. What the fuck? — Without any other option, I found myself back upstairs, searching for Sandy. But by the time I got to the reception area, everyone had moved outside to the massive lawn behind the house. Stepping out into the backyard, I scanned the crowd for my crush, while at the same time doing my best to stay calm and look normal. Eventually, I spotted her serving light bites on a tray, as she glided through the party. I ran up beside her, and leaned in. “Sandy-” “Hey, what’s up?” She replied, distracted by a guest. I continued to walk alongside her, faking smiles and nods as we passed by the wealthy elite. “There’s something I need to tell you-” But just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder, followed by Jim’s voice. “Dan! Come over here. Hey Carl! Carl! You gotta meet, Dan.” He called out, as he guided me away from Sandy, and over to another area of the lawn. “Hey.” Said Carl, without making eye contact. He was a clean-shaven man, who looked about as nondescript as a rich guy could. “This man makes the best gin martinis I’ve ever had.” Jim continued, as he pointed at me. “You gotta try one.” “Coming from him, I know that’s a compliment.” Carl replied. “The man’s had a lot of gin martinis.” The two men each belted out a laugh, as Carl stepped away. Watching him walk off, Jim moved closer to me and leaned in. “Embezzled millions.” He said, taking two of his fingers and making a slicing motion across his neck, with the same big, but now eerie, smile on his face. He winked and walked away. As soon as Jim was out of sight, I immediately returned to my search for Sandy, but she had disappeared. I ran over to one of my co-workers and attempted to explain what had happened, but stopped myself halfway through, as I could tell the tale was much too far-fetched to believe. I picked up a bottle of gin and immediately began chugging it, straight from the bottle. Thank God Chad wasn’t here to see this shit. I thought to myself. Oh wait… shit. My thoughts quickly returned to Jim, and the bodies. I have to get out of here! I have to find Sandy! Finally, I spotted her not far away, and ran over to warn her again. “Sandy, I’ve gotta tell you something-” But before I could continue, Jim let out a loud whistle at the center of the lawn, calling for his guests to join him. I walked over to get a closer look, as he raised his glass for a toast, to the crowd’s applause. “Thank you, thank you. No, please, please.” He began, as the applause faded. “I just wanted to say, that I’m so glad that you’re all here today…” I looked around at a sea of smiling faces. “...Because you’re horrible humans.” The crowd erupted in laughter. He waited for it to fade again, before continuing. “No, seriously, you all deserve to die. And guess what… you’re gonna!” The group laughed even louder this time. Idiots. Just then, Jim searched the crowd and pointed at, of all people, me. “Except for you. Not you, Dan. You’re good people!” The garden fell silent. Everyone turned around to look at me and, upon seeing that I was a mere caterer, simultaneously looked confused, and laughed. “Dan’s a caterer by the way. Oh, on that note. Dan, that girl, you like her, right? I mean, not to put you on the spot, but you’ve been eyeing her all night! I mean, come on.” He was pointing at Sandy, who, standing beside me, gave me a weird, nervous look. Meanwhile, the group of caterers, long aware of my crush, rolled their eyes. “Actually,” Jim added, as he walked over to me, gesturing towards my co-workers. “What about them, are they cool?” I nodded, unable to think of what to say, before eventually spitting out a reply, “Uh, yes. Yup, they’re cool, Jim.” I thought about running, but found my feet frozen in place. The billionaire moved his gaze over to a group of masked ushers, who had encircled the entire crowd of one-percenters. “Ok, the caterers are cool!” He yelled, waving his hand in the air to them, as whispers of confusion began emanating from the guests, now seeing the masked men. “Leave the caterers alone. They’re cool. But what was I saying? Oh, right. The rest of you are assholes though. You’re all gonna die. Bottoms up…” Jim continued, as he downed his glass of champagne in one gulp, “...And also… goodbye.” There was a deafening silence. And then… utter chaos. Suddenly, the short fences that surrounded the distant perimeters of the yard began to rise up, as all of the masked ushers drew machetes and began to mow down the panicked guests. The shock was quickly replaced with screams and shrieks, as the lawn’s once green grass soon resembled a red abstract expressionist painting, littered with bodies. Meanwhile, Jim simply stood there in the center of the garden. “And don’t even think about going back into the house! The doors and windows are all locked!” Sandy and I turned to each other at the exact same time, a look of fear in both of our eyes. “Run!” I yelled, as we made a mad dash for the house, ignoring the billionaire’s warning. — As we entered the mansion and ran for the front door, we passed by many others who were being hacked to pieces, as they tried to do the same thing. But for some reason, no one stood in our way. We finally made it to the door, but just as Jim had warned, it was locked. Before we could even think about what to do next, a familiar voice called out. “Dan! Why’d you run, man? I told you… you and your friends are good.” I looked up and saw Jim standing there before us, smiling, and tried to fake a smile of my own, “Hey… Jim, we were just-” “And now I’m finding out you tried to call the cops?” He interrupted me. My heart sank, as he stopped in front of us, holding a machete of his own. Sandy and I both backed up against the door, cowering in fear. “It's cool, I guess. I mean… I’m hurt, but deep down, calling the cops… that just means you were trying to do right by your community, and that… see, that… is why I like you, Dan!” He walked over and patted me on the back. “Think of it this way… You know how people always say, ‘Millionaires get away with murder'? Well, then it stands to reason, that billionaires get away with mass murder!” He let out a self-satisfied chuckle, before holding out his hand. “Dan, I told you… you, your girl, and all your catering buddies… you guys are all cool.” Not knowing what to do, I simply closed my eyes and held out my hand, expecting him to machete my arm off. But all I felt… was his hand shaking mine. I opened my eyes to find Jim smiling at Sandy and myself. “Come, let me walk you guys out.” He then looked over at one of the masked men, and nodded. CLICK. The door opened, and Jim gestured for us to walk outside, putting his arms over both of our shoulders. — As the billionaire escorted us through the parking lot, we passed by dozens of masked men rushing mops and body bags into the house. “That’s your van over there, right?” Jim asked, ignoring the chaos all around us. “Oh wait, I know whose it is. Or should I say, whose it was? Jeez, no wonder you hated that guy.” I looked at him and forced one last smile, unable to utter any words. Sandy and I then turned around, and started slowly walking to my car. “Anyways. It’s been an absolute pleasure, Dan!” He called out, as he stood there and watched us walk down the long driveway to my car. “And seriously… don’t be a stranger!” We got in my car and immediately locked the doors. After sitting there in silence for a moment, Sandy put her hand on mine, both of us still shaking. I started the engine, and drove the fuck off, Jim’s silhouette still visible in the rearview mirror, waving goodbye in the distance. submitted by /u/sleuths82 to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

Just like the title says. But this is kind of a special case (okay sure I imagine everyone says that but just bear with me) so I thought I’d ask around first to see if anyone has any ideas. I’m a bit at a loss on how to go about finding someone that can specialize in a case like my dog. Let me give you some background here. I got this dog six years ago from the shelter. No idea what his past is like. He’s not very friendly, but he’s certainly not aggressive. Just has people he likes (me) and then everyone else is a Suspicious Person. I’m sure you know the type. Overall a pretty good dog and his few behavioral issues haven’t been that big of a problem. He’s terrible on a leash, but he doesn’t need to be leash walked, because I live out in the country and he’s got plenty of land to run around on and do what he wants. He does bark at people, and normally this wouldn’t be an issue with how spread out everything is here, but the way my house is situated it’s within eyeshot of my neighbor. We’ve both got acres of land, but our houses were built to one side of that land, right at the spot where the property line is. I moved to the country for privacy - like most people, I imagine - and figured this wouldn’t be an issue because there was a line of big pine trees that separated our yards and we couldn’t even see each other. Then we had a nasty windstorm that damaged a couple of them and I dunno, I guess he lost his damn mind and cut all of them down. And then put up this hideous chain link fence. I’m not ascribing any sort of malice to it - he’s always been friendly to me. I think he just doesn’t like to put much effort into maintaining his property. His yard is always covered in dandelions, his gardens would be overgrown except last summer I watched him do the chemical equivalent of burning and salting the earth so now he’s just got scorched weeds and barren earth surrounding his house. The porch has dry rot, but it hasn’t spread to the support beams yet, so he’s ignoring it. And just… lots of other little things that just makes me feel he lives here because it’s convenient and not because he wants to. But maybe I’m reading too much into it. I just wanted to explain why my dog didn’t become a problem until recently. It started around when the fence went up. First it was the barking. If he saw my neighbor return home or go out into his yard, he’d want out. Then he’d stand by the fence and bark his head off. It got to the point where I’d refuse to let him out if my neighbor was outside, but I think my dog started tracking when he was or wasn’t home. Yes, that sounds crazy, I know, but I swear that was what happened. If my neighbor was home, he’d stand by the fence and bark. If he wasn’t home, he could care less. It got to the point where my neighbor noticed and asked me about it and I had to apologize. I started taking him outside on a leash when I knew my neighbor was home (which sucks because he’s terrible on a leash) but at least he knew he was being watched and stopped barking. He started rage-pooping instead. I’m not sure what else to call it. He’d sidle up to the fence as close as he could get, shove his butthole against the chain link, and drop a turd on my neighbor’s side. And the worst part is he’d turn his head around to stare intently at the neighbor’s window while he did this. The first time I didn’t realize what he was doing and after that I didn’t let him do it while he was on the leash, but when he was out unsupervised he would take the opportunity and then I had to go clean up my neighbor’s yard before he got home. I think my neighbor figured out that my dog hated him and instead of being like ‘oh hahah animals can be funny like that’ and letting me manage it (because I was! I was keeping him from barking! I was cleaning up his side of the yard!), he instead started… feuding with my dog. He glared at him whenever we were in the yard. Was always friendly to me, but somehow managed to work in a snide comment about my dog into every conversation. He’d make it sound like good-natured ribbing, but I knew he meant to be insulting when he called my dog a mutt or an… ‘ornery little shit.’ And he’d look at my dog when he said this with a smug smirk on his face, as if he was watching for my dog’s reaction, or was just gloating at how the dog didn’t know he was being insulted. But I think my dog did know. One time he did that and my dog started coughing and I swear it sounded like he was saying under his breath ‘fuck you too.’ Yes, the dog was saying that. Yes, I know how that sounds. Bear with me, okay? So harassment of the neighbors. That’s the first issue I want to work on with any potential trainer. No more barking. No more rage-pooping. And no more swearing at people. The next issue I want to work on is improper chewing. I’ve gotten him every texture of chew toy I could find but I just can’t get him to chew on them. I’ve got soft toys, antlers, plastic bones, rubber chews - I legit went down the toy aisle at the pet store and basically got one of every type. Yet he insists on… finding things around my house. It’s upsetting enough when your dog destroys things, right, but honestly I’m more worried he’s going to hurt himself. You see, the things he’s chewing on are dangerous. He’s taken my box knife three times now. I had to throw it away after the first time because he cracked the plastic case. I got a metal one and he shouldn’t be able to break it, but a) I don’t want him chewing on metal and b) it’s still a knife he is putting in his mouth. He’s also made off with a kitchen knife, but he didn’t get far with that one as I was in the kitchen and had just been using it when he snatched it off the counter and tried to make a run for it. I got upset enough that he hasn’t tried to counter surf since. He’s still being an opportunist though. For example, he knocked a candle off the kitchen table the other day. It was in a glass holder and it broke and I think he stole one of the pieces. I didn’t see him do it, but when I picked the pieces up there was a big shard conspicuously missing. I can’t imagine what happened to it, other than he stole it and has it hidden away somewhere. Really hidden. I tore the house apart trying to find it. I can’t stop worrying that he’s going to hurt himself. Oh yeah, that’s another thing I want to work on with him. He gets over-excited when he thinks he’s going to get to ride in the car. Jumps off sofas. Slides around on the rugs. Crashes into furniture and knocks things off. That’s how the candle got broken. But I’m okay with this behavior if you need to focus on the more pressing concerns. Which brings me to the most concerning of his recent behaviors. I’m not sure what to call this. Scavenging? Trespassing? Murder? The fence that my neighbor put up doesn’t encircle his yard. We’re out in the country and have a lot of land, after all. It’s just there to deter my dog. You can get around it just by going far enough, but my dog has never shown any interest in being out of eyeshot in my house, so the fence works in keeping him out of my neighbor’s yard. Okay? That’s important to keep in mind. Now, I’m normally a heavy sleeper but last month I was put on medication that changed that. I don’t think my dog has realized it yet. Because starting a few months ago, he’s been sneaking out at night. Like. Unlocking, opening the door, and leaving. Then coming and letting himself back in. The first time it happened I almost called the police, thinking I was being broken into, but then I realized I didn’t hear my dog barking and thought maybe I’d just improperly locked the door. So I got up, checked it, and saw my dog running through the yard. I wrote it off as a fluke. The door wasn’t properly shut and he used that to go outside on his own. So I waited for him to scratch at the door and be let back in… but instead I heard the door open and close. I heard the deadbolt slide shut. And then I heard his nails on the hardwood and the jingle of his collar tags. I pretended to be asleep when he came back into the bedroom. He flopped down on his dog bed and went straight to sleep, but I lay there awake for a long time. He did it again the next night. And the night after that. Somehow, my dog was opening the door and going outside when he thought I was asleep. He also started digging holes in my yard around that time. I wasn’t sure what he was burying and now I’m too afraid to dig them up and look. Not after what happened. I’m not sure I want to know for certain. About half a week after he started letting himself out at night he got sick. Vomiting and diarrhea. Any dog owner can laugh about dog poop because you kind of have to get over it, but every dog owner also knows that a sick dog is another story altogether. That’s a special level of horrific. So I got him an appointment with the vet as fast as I could. The vet said there was nothing to be concerned about, just that he probably ate something rotten in the yard. He gave my dog some dewormer, just in case, and said to call back if the vomiting doesn’t stop. When we got home, my neighbor’s house was swarming with police. Apparently his brother hadn’t been able to contact him for a few days and finally called in a wellness check. They found my neighbor somewhere on his property. He’d been dead for almost a week. After a while, an officer came over and talked to me for a little bit and I didn’t get the feeling they were searching for any kind of foul play. It was hard to tell for certain what happened because the body had been disturbed by wild animals, he said (and from reading between the lines I think there were parts of the body missing), but it seemed likely to be natural causes. Probably was out doing yard work and had a heart attack. It happened. I wanted to say that my neighbor never did yard work, but at that moment my dog started horking in the kitchen and I had to run him outside to vomit in the grass and when I got back the officer asked if everything was okay with him. Yeah, I said, the vet checked him out. And then the officer reluctantly told me I might want to visit the vet again and really make sure everything was fine. They found some disturbing things in my neighbor’s house. He apparently had it out for my dog. He had… taken photos of my dog while he was rage-pooping at the fence, cropped out everything but the head, and then blew that up to the size of a target and took a stack of them down to the gun range. Like, who does that? Fucking nutjob. I’m sorry he’s dead, but also… I’m kind of glad I don’t have to deal with him anymore, now that I know that. Sorry. That probably makes me a little bit of a bad person. Anyway. No, my dog was not poisoned. I think he just ate… rotten meat. Like. Meat that’d been left outside for a week. I guess it could all be a coincidence. The burying things in the backyard. My neighbor dying. My dog happening to smell a tasty body nearby and helping himself until he made himself sick. But… there’s one more thing. And this leads me to the last thing I need help with from a professional trainer. I need someone who can address the whispering. He’s been doing it for months now. It started right after my neighbor died. I woke in the night, disturbed by a quiet, insistent noise coming from beside my bed. I rolled over and it stopped, but I pretended to still be asleep and it resumed after a little while. I risked opening an eye to see what was happening. My dog was sitting in front of my bedroom mirror and whispering, over and over, “Who’s a good boy? I’m a good boy.” He sounded so proud of himself. I’m a little frightened of him now. When I wake up in the morning and find him watching me, waiting for my eyes to open, it’s no longer cute and endearing. It feels… sinister. Like… what happened to my neighbor? Did he really just have a heart attack in his backyard? And how is my dog talking to himself? I hate being afraid of my dog. I flinch when he enters the room. I think he’s realized that I’m scared of him now, because he’s been acting kind of… depressed, almost. He’s not excited for treats anymore. He’s not spending much time outside, just goes out there to pee and then comes right back inside. He spends most of the day on the sofa, watching me. Sometimes he walks over to me, half-heartedly licks the back of my ankle, and then sighs really deeply and returns to the sofa. I’ve been trying to convince myself that the whispering isn’t a problem. It’s… not normal… but he’s still my dog, right? I think that my mood is affecting him. He doesn’t sound like he’s congratulating himself in the mirror anymore. The last few nights he’s sounded more like he’s trying to reassure himself. I tried telling him he’s a good boy like nothing was wrong, but I suspect he realizes I’m faking it. Anyway, if you have any recommendations for trainers that would be comfortable taking on this kind of problem, please let me know. This is now an urgent problem. Because someone bought my neighbor’s house. I was hoping it would all be fine and aside from the whispering, there’d be nothing to worry about with my dog. The moving van arrived this morning. He’s been at the window all day, watching them. He’s not growling or barking. Honestly I could handle that. A dog barking or growling isn’t that weird. But that’s not what he’s doing and it’s scaring me. He’s calmly staring at them and licking his lips. And while I was hiding around the corner, listening, I heard him quietly say to himself: “Oh he looks delicious.” submitted by /u/fainting--goat to r/nosleep [link] [comments]

I’m asking cause I don’t know if my idea is genius or terrible. My baby is almost potty trained, only has accidents in the middle of the night due to his age, and we were advice to remove the at home potty area in the next few weeks so he will stop associating it with a toilet. We are doing a lot of enrichment for him specially in this heat, and I’m jealous of people with gardens who can scatter food for them to find, so I thought to turn my appartment’s doggy area into a fake garden. The idea is to buy a fake grass rug and have his stuff there, I think it will help with enrichment + it will make it less noisy for my downstairs neighbours when he gets the zoomies and jumps and runs. I’m not really concerned about him eating the fake grass cause he is very trustworthy with that (he will put stuff in his mouth but he spits it out, never swallows. My only concern is: will he confuse it with a park and just pee all over it? Do any of you have something like this for your pups? submitted by /u/silencebeach to r/puppy101 [link] [comments]

Save them to your Phone and always have witty jokes at the palm of your hand. 3.14 percent of sailors are pi-rates. 5/4 of people admit they’re bad at fractions. A bartender broke up with her boyfriend, but he kept asking her for another shot. A brain walks into a bar and takes a seat. “I’d like some wings and a pint of beer, please,” it says. “Sorry, but I can’t serve you,” the bartender replies. “You’re out of your head.” A cheeseburger walks into a bar. The bartender says, 'Sorry, we don't serve food here.' A college education now costs $100,000, but it produces three very proud people: the student, his mama, and his pauper. A couple of cups of yogurt walk into a country club. “We don’t serve your kind here,” the bartender says. “Why not?” one yogurt asks. “We’re cultured.” A friend of mine didn’t pay his exorcist. He got repossessed. A friend of mine is known for sweeping girls off their feet. He’s an extremely aggressive janitor. A guy walks into a bar, and there’s a horse serving drinks. The horse asks, “What are you staring at? Haven’t you ever seen a horse tending bar before?” The guy says, “It’s not that. I just never thought the parrot would sell the place.” A guy walks into a bar...and he was disqualified from the limbo contest. A pirate walks into a bar with a paper towel on his head. The bartender says, “What’s with the paper towel?” The pirate says, “Arrr! I’ve got a Bounty on me head!” A turtle is crossing the road when he’s mugged by two snails. When the police ask him what happened, the shaken turtle replies, “I don’t know. It all happened so fast.” Armed robbers—some say they’re a drain on society, but you’ve got to give it to them. Barbers…you have to take your hat off to them. Can February March? No, but April May! Cooking out this weekend? Don’t forget the pickle. It’s kind of a big dill. Dad, can you put my shoes on? No, I don't think they'll fit me. Dad, can you put the cat out? I didn't know it was on fire. Dad, did you get a haircut? No, I got them all cut! Dad: Did you hear about the kidnapping at school? Son: No. What happened? Dad: The teacher woke him up. Daughter: I have a lot of friends named Nathan. There’s Nathan Miller, Nathan Radcliff, Nathan Lewis… Me: When they are together, do you call them the United Nathans? Dear Math, grow up and solve your own problems. Did I tell you the time I fell in love during a backflip? I was heels over head! Did you hear about the aquatic sea mammals that escaped from the zoo? It was otter chaos. Did you hear about the circus fire? It was in tents. Did you hear about the guy who froze to death at the drive-in? He went to see Closed for the Winter. Did you hear about the guy who invented the knock-knock joke? He won the 'no-bell' prize. Did you hear about the guy who stole 50 cartons of hand sanitizer? They couldn’t prosecute—his hands were clean. Did you hear about the kidnapping at school? It’s fine, he woke up. Did you hear about the nurse who was chewed out by the doctor because she was absent without gauze? Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? Great food, no atmosphere. Did you hear about the surgeon who enjoyed performing quick surgeries on insects? He did one on the fly. Did you hear the one about the kid who started a business tying shoelaces on the playground? It was a knot-for-profit. Did you hear the rumor about butter? Well, I’m not going to spread it! Did you hear they arrested the devil? Yeah, they got him on possession. Did you know corduroy pillows are in style? They're making headlines. Do I enjoy making courthouse puns? Guilty. Do mascara and lipstick ever argue? Sure, but then they makeup. Do you wanna box for your leftovers? No, but I'll wrestle you for them. Dogs can’t operate MRI machines. But catscan. Don't trust atoms. They make up everything! Have you ever tried to catch a fog? I tried yesterday but I mist. Have you heard about the chocolate record player? It sounds pretty sweet. How can you tell if a tree is a dogwood tree? By its bark. How did the dad prank his daughter using fake dog poop on April Fools Day? He told her to look out for her new sham-poo in the shower. How do celebrities stay cool? They have many fans. How do lawyers say goodbye? We'll be suing ya! How do you follow Will Smith in the snow? You follow the fresh prints. How do you get a country girl’s attention? A tractor. How do you get a good price on a sled? You have toboggan. How do you get a squirrel to like you? Act like a nut. How do you make 7 even? Take away the s. How do you make a Kleenex dance? Put a little boogie in it! How do you make a tissue dance? You put a little boogie in it. How do you make holy water? You boil the hell out of it. How do you row a canoe filled with puppies? Bring out the doggy paddle. How do you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile? You will see one later and one in a while. How do you weigh a millennial? In Instagrams. How does a penguin build his house? Igloos it together. How does a taco say grace? Lettuce pray. How does the man in the moon get his hair cut? Eclipse it. How long should socks be? Twelve inches, so you can fit in one foot. How many DIY buffs does it take to change a light bulb? One, but it takes two weeks and four trips to the hardware store. How many mystery writers does it take to change a light bulb? Two: One to screw it in most of the way and another to give it a surprise twist at the end. How many narcissists does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. The narcissist holds the light bulb while the rest of the world revolves around him. How many paranoids does it take to change a light bulb? Who wants to know? How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Ten tickles. How much does it cost Santa to park his sleigh? Nothing, it's on the house. How was the handsome runner described? “Dashing.” I asked my dog what's two minus two. He said nothing. I began to read a horror novel in braille. Something bad is about to happen—I can feel it. I can guess what people do for a living just by looking at their hands. I mean, I’m usually wrong, but I can guess. I could tell a joke about pizza, but it's a little cheesy. I decided to sell my vacuum cleaner—it was just gathering dust! I didn’t get a haircut, I got them all cut. I don’t trust stairs. They are always up to something. I don't play soccer because I enjoy the sport. I'm just doing it for kicks! I don't trust those trees. They seem kind of shady. I got carded at a liquor store, and my Blockbuster card accidentally fell out. The cashier said never mind. I got hit in the head with a can of Coke today. Don’t worry, I’m not hurt. It was a soft drink. I had a date last night. It was perfect. Tomorrow, I’ll try a grape. I had a neck brace fitted years ago and I've never looked back since. I have a joke about chemistry, but I don't think it will get a reaction. I know a bunch of good jokes about umbrellas, but they usually go over people’s heads. I know a lot of jokes about retired people, but none of them work. I know a surgeon who puts organs back in upside down. I told him that’s not funny, but he said it was an inside joke. I like telling Dad jokes. Sometimes he laughs! I lost my job at the bank on my first day. A woman asked me to check her balance, so I pushed her over. I made a pencil with two erasers. It was pointless. I once got fired from a canned juice company. Apparently I couldn't concentrate. I once had a dream I was floating in an ocean of orange soda. It was more of a fanta sea. I only know 25 letters of the alphabet. I don't know y. I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon. I'll let you know... I read that by law you must turn on your headlights when it’s raining in Sweden, but how am I supposed to know when it’s raining in Sweden? I recently went to the “World’s Tiniest Wind Turbine” exhibit. Honestly, not a big fan. I searched for a lighter on Amazon, but all I could find were 6,000 matches. I signed up for a marathon, but how will I know if it’s the real deal or just a run through? I sold our vacuum cleaner; it was just gathering dust. I spent a lot of time, money, and effort childproofing my house, but the kids still get in. I tell dad jokes, but I don’t have any kids. I’m a faux pa. I thought the dryer was shrinking my clothes. Turns out it was the refrigerator all along. I told my doctor I heard buzzing, but he said it’s just a bug going around. I told my girlfriend she drew on her eyebrows too high. She seemed surprised. I used to be a personal trainer. Then I gave my too weak notice. I used to be addicted to soap, but I'm clean now. I used to hate facial hair, but then it grew on me. I used to play piano by ear. Now I use my hands. I want to go on record that I support farming. As a matter of fact, you could call me protractor. I want to make a brief joke, but it’s a little cheesy. I was addicted to the hokey pokey…but I turned myself around. I was breastfed until 3. But enough about my day, how was yours? I was going to tell a time-traveling joke, but you guys didn’t like it. I was just reminiscing about the beautiful herb garden I had when I was growing up. Good thymes. I was out on a walk when I saw a sign that said, “Man wanted for robbery.” So I went in and applied for the job. I wondered why the ball was getting bigger. Then it hit me. I wouldn't buy anything with velcro. It's a total rip-off. I’m an expert at picking leaves and heating them in water. It’s my special tea. I’m reading a novel where the main character has strained the muscles around his spine. That’s his back story. I’m so good at sleeping, I can do it with my eyes closed. I’ve been bored recently, so I decided to take up fencing. The neighbors keep demanding that I put it back. I’ve been breeding racing deer. Just trying to make a quick buck. I’ve been thinking about taking up meditation. I figure it’s better than sitting around doing nothing. If a child refuses to nap, are they guilty of resisting a rest? If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims. If athletes get athlete’s foot, what do astronauts get? Missile toe. If the early bird gets the worm, I’ll sleep in until there’s pancakes. If you see a crime at an Apple Store, does that make you an iWitness? If you see a robbery at an Apple store, does that make you an iWitness? I'm afraid for the calendar. Its days are numbered. I'm on a seafood diet. I see food and I eat it. I'm reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down! I'm so good at sleeping, I can do it with my eyes closed! In a freak accident today, a photographer was killed when a huge lump of cheddar landed on him. To be fair, the people who were being photographed did try to warn him. Inflation is really getting out of hand, but that’s just my five cents. Is this pool safe for diving? It deep ends. It hurts me to say this, but I have a sore throat. It takes guts to be an organ donor. It’s a shame that the Beatles didn’t make the submarine in that song green. That would’ve been sublime. It's inappropriate to make a 'dad joke' if you're not a dad. It's a faux pa. I've got a great joke about construction, but I'm still working on it. Justice is a dish best served cold. If it were served warm, it would be justwater. Mountains aren't just funny. They're hill areas. My boss told me to have a good day, so I went home. My dad told me a joke about boxing. I guess I missed the punch line. My dentist offered me dentures for only a dollar. It sounded like a good deal at the time, but now I have buck teeth. My doctor told me I’ve really grown as a person. Well, her exact words were that I “gained excess weight.” My dog accidentally swallowed a bunch of Scrabble tiles. I think this could spell disaster. My friend wants to become an archaeologist, but I’m trying to put him off. I’m convinced his life will be in ruins. My girlfriend says it’s either her or my career as a news reporter. I have some breaking news for her. My IQ test results came back. They were negative. My kid wants to invent a pencil with an eraser on each end, but I just don’t see the point. My son asked me to put his shoes on, but I don’t think they’ll fit me. My son has his BA and his MA, but his P­A still supports him. My son’s fourth birthday was today. When he came to see me, I didn’t recognize him at first. I had never seen him be four. My wife asked me to go get 6 cans of Sprite from the grocery store. I realized when I got home that I had picked 7 up. My wife asked me to stop singing “Wonderwall” to her. I said maybe… My wife asked me to sync her phone, so I threw it into the ocean. My wife is really mad at the fact that I have no sense of direction. So I packed up my stuff and right! My wife is really mad that I have no sense of direction. I packed up my stuff and right. Not sure if you have noticed, but I love bad puns. That’s just how eye roll. People are usually shocked that I have a Police record. But I love their greatest hits! Police arrested a bottle of water because it was wanted in three different states: solid, liquid, and gas. RIP boiled water—you will be mist. Scientists have discovered what is believed to be the world’s largest bedsheet. More on this story as it unfolds. Shouldn’t the “roof” of your mouth actually be called the ceiling? Shout out to my fingers. I can count on all of them. Someone told me that I should write a book. I said, “That’s a novel concept.” Sore throats are a pain in the neck. Spring is here! I got so excited I wet my plants. Stop looking for the perfect match…use a lighter. Sundays are always a little sad, but the day before is a sadder day. Teacher: “There are two words I don’t allow in my class. One is gross, and the other is cool.” Johnny: “So, what are the words?” That car looks nice but the muffler seems exhausted. The bank keeps calling me to give me compliments. They say I have an “outstanding balance.” The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense. The wedding was so beautiful, even the cake was in tiers. There’s only one thing I can’t deal with, and that’s a deck of cards glued together. This graveyard looks overcrowded. People must be dying to get in. Today, my son asked, “Can I have a bookmark?” I burst into tears—11 years old and he still doesn’t know my name is Brian. Two goldfish are in a tank. One says to the other, “Do you know how to drive this thing?” Two guys walked into a bar. The third guy ducked. Wanna hear a joke about paper? Never mind—it's tearable. Want to hear a joke about construction? I’m still working on it. Want to know why nurses like red crayons? Sometimes they have to draw blood. We all know about Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But have you heard of Cole’s Law? It’s thinly sliced cabbage. What animals are the best to call if you get locked out of your house? Monkeys. What country's capital is growing the fastest? Ireland. Every day it's Dublin. What did Baby Corn say to Mama Corn? Where's Pop Corn? What did one cannibal say to the other while they were eating a clown? Does this taste funny to you? What did one DNA say to the other DNA? “Do these genes make me look fat?” What did one Dorito farmer say to the other? “Cool Ranch!” What did one furniture maker say to another during a tense discussion? “Let’s table this.” What did one hat say to the other? Stay here! I'm going on ahead. What did one plate say to another plate? Tonight, dinner’s on me. What did one wall say to the other? I'll meet you at the corner. What did Tennessee? The same thing as Arkansas. What did the accountant say while auditing a document? This is taxing. What did the air conditioner say when it met a celebrity? “I’m a big fan.” What did the baker say when she won an award? “It was a piece of cake.” What did the coffee report to the police? A mugging. What did the dad say when his golden retriever was caught eating a hot dog? “It’s a dog eat dog world out there.” What did the dishwasher say to the oven after a productive day? “You’ve been on fire!” What did the drummer call his twin daughters? Anna One, Anna Two! What did the dryer say to the boring duvet cover that just got out of the washer? “Don’t be such a wet blanket.” What did the evil chicken lay? Deviled eggs. What did the fish say when he hit the wall? Dam. What did the flowers do when the bride walked down the aisle? They rose. What did the French chef give his wife for Valentine’s Day? A hug and a quiche. What did the geometry teacher say when the class had trouble solving a problem? “Let’s try a different angle.” What did the husband say to his wife right after getting LASIK surgery? “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet? Supplies! What did the juicer say to the orange during self-quarantine? Can’t wait to squeeze you! What did the ocean say to the beach? Nothing, it just waved. What did the police officer say to his belly-button? You’re under a vest. What did the sapphire’s best friend tell her? “You’re a real gem.” What did the skeleton order with its beer? A mop. What did the two pieces of bread say on their wedding day? It was loaf at first sight. What did the zero say to the eight? That belt looks good on you. What do a tick and the Eiffel Tower have in common? They're both Paris sites. What do Bostonians call a fake noodle? An impasta. What do clouds wear? Thunderwear. What do frogs use to track their exercise? Fit (rib)bits. What do lions use to look at their manes? Mirroars. What do sprinters eat before a race? Nothing—they fast. What do you call 26 letters that went for a swim? Alphawetical. What do you call 50 pigs and 50 deer? 100 sows and bucks. What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear. What do you call a belt made of watches? A waist of time. What do you call a dog that can do magic? A Labracabrador. What do you call a factory that makes okay products? A satisfactory. What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta. What do you call a fibbing cat? A lion. What do you call a fish wearing a bowtie? Sofishticated. What do you call a fish with no eye? A fsh. What do you call a hippie’s wife? Mississippi. What do you call a hot dog on wheels? Fast food! What do you call a lazy kangaroo? Pouch potato. What do you call a naughty lamb dressed up like a skeleton for Halloween? Baaad to the bone. What do you call a pony with a sore throat? A little hoarse. What do you call a poor Santa Claus? St. Nickel-less. What do you call a pudgy psychic? A four-chin teller. What do you call a snitching scientist? A lab rat. What do you call a toothless bear? A gummy bear! What do you call an angry musician flipping someone off? A song bird. What do you call an elephant that doesn't matter? An irrelephant. What do you call an unpredictable camera? A loose Canon. What do you call cheese that isn't yours? Nacho cheese. What do you call it when a group of apes starts a company? Monkey business. What do you call it when a lawyer takes a test early in the morning? A breakfast bar. What do you call it when a snowman throws a tantrum? A meltdown. What do you call someone who always states the obvious? Someone who always states the obvious. What do you call someone with no body and no nose? Nobody knows. What do you call two monkeys that share an Amazon account? Prime mates. What do you call two octopuses that look the same? Itenticle. What do you get from a pampered cow? Spoiled milk. What do you get when you cross a polar bear with a seal? A polar bear. What do you need to make a small fortune on Wall Street? A large fortune. What does “idk” stand for? Everyone I ask says, “I don’t know.” What does “Rockin’ Robin” do when she’s bored? Tweet. What does a bee use to brush its hair? A honeycomb! What does a house wear? Address. What does a karate master get rewarded with while driving? A seat belt. What does a lemon say when it answers the phone? Yellow! What does a mobster buried in cement soon become? A hardened criminal. What does a nosey pepper do? It gets jalapeño business. What does a sprinter eat before a race? Nothing, they fast! What does a writer have in common with a football player? Anxiety over a rough draft. What does garlic do when it gets hot? It takes its cloves off. What happens when a strawberry gets run over crossing the street? Traffic jam. What happens when it rains cats and dogs? You have to be careful not to step in a poodle. What has more letters than the alphabet? The post office! What has one head, one foot, and four legs? A bed. What invention allows us to see through walls? Windows. What is Marco’s favorite clothing store? Polo. What is the Easter bunny’s favorite type of music? Hip-hop. What is the most popular fish in the ocean? A starfish. What kind of bird is always getting hurt? The owl. What kind of car does a sheep like to drive? A lamborghini. What kind of car does an egg drive? A yolkswagen. What kind of cleaning product feels a lot of motivation in life? All-purpose. What kind of drink can be bitter and sweet? Reali-tea. What kind of music do chiropractors like? Hip pop. What kind of noise does a witch’s vehicle make? Brrrroooom, brrroooom. What kind of shape may have been knighted? Cir-cles. What kind of shoes do ninjas wear? Sneakers! What kind of shoes does a lazy person wear? Loafers. What kind of spells do leprechauns use? Lucky Charms. What makes a basketball court trendy and accessorized? The hoops. What part of the museum makes everyone sneeze? The sta-tues. What piece on the playground is always exhausted? The tire swing. What sound does a witch’s car make? Broom broom! What time did the man go to the dentist? Tooth hurt-y. What vegetable is kind to everyone? The sweet potato. What was said about the messy, angry man who was eating a can of Pringles? “He’s got a chip on his shoulder.” What was Sherlock Holmes’ favorite protein source? Mystery meat. What would the Terminator be called in his retirement? The Exterminator. What’s a bad wizard’s favorite computer program? Spell check. What’s a crafty dancer’s favorite hobby? Cutting a rug. What’s a vampire’s favorite ship? A blood vessel. What’s a writer’s favorite train station? Penn Station. What’s an astronaut’s favorite part of a computer? The space bar. What’s brown and sticky? A stick. What’s either a really gross animal issue OR an impressive, magical school? Hogwarts. What’s Forrest Gump’s password? 1forrest1 What’s it called when kittens get stuck in a tree? A cat-astrophe. What’s orange and sounds like a parrot? A carrot. What’s red and smells like blue paint? Red paint. What’s the best way to watch a fly-fishing tournament? Live stream. What’s the difference between a man wearing pajamas on a bicycle and a guy wearing a tuxedo on a unicycle? Attire. What’s the least-spoken language in the world? Sign language. What’s the most detail-oriented ocean? The Pacific. What’s the most patriotic sport? Flag football. What’s the name of a very polite, European body of water? Merci. What's a robot's favorite snack? Computer chips. What's the best smelling insect? A deodor-ant. What's the best thing about Switzerland? I don't know, but the flag is a big plus. What's the best way to watch a fly fishing tournament? Live stream. When does a joke become a “dad joke”? When it becomes apparent. When I was a kid, my dad got fired from his job as a road worker for theft. I refused to believe he could do such a thing, but when I got home, the signs were all there. When two vegans get in an argument, is it still called a beef? When you have a bladder infection, urine trouble. Whenever I try to eat healthy, a chocolate bar looks at me and Snickers. Where do boats go when they're sick? To the boat doc. Where do fruits go on vacation? Pear-is! Where do math teachers go on vacation? Times Square. Where do wasps like to get lunch? A bee-stro. Where do you learn to make a banana split? Sundae school. Where do young trees go to learn? Elementree school. Where was the dripping coming from in the fridge? The leeks. Which bathroom appliance would be the worst life preserver? The sink. Which bear is the most condescending? A pan-duh! Which state has the most streets? Rhode Island. Which U.S. state is known for its especially small soft drinks? Minnesota. Why are elevator jokes so classic and good? They work on many levels. Why are piggy banks so wise? They're filled with common cents. Why are spiders so smart? They can find everything on the web. Why can't a nose be 12 inches long? Because then it would be a foot. Why can't you hear a psychiatrist using the bathroom? Because the 'P' is silent. Why couldn’t the bicycle stand up by itself? It was two-tired. Why couldn’t the couple get married at the library? It was all booked up. Why couldn’t the couple respond right away when looking at wedding venues? They were engaged. Why couldn’t the family leave the room after playing with Legos? They were blocked. Why couldn't the bicycle stand up by itself? It was two tired. Why did Beethoven get rid of his chickens? All they said was, “Bach, Bach, Bach…” Why did Billy get fired from the banana factory? He kept throwing away the bent ones. Why did the bedding hide their relationship? They just wanted something pillow-key! Why did the cashier rip money in half? They were asked to break a bill. Why did the coach go to the bank? To get his quarterback. Why did the envelope take so long to get ready? It had to get addressed. Why did the man fall down the well? Because he couldn’t see that well. Why did the man name his dogs Rolex and Timex? Because they were watchdogs. Why did the math book look so sad? Because of all of its problems! Why did the raisin go out with the prune? Because he couldn’t find a date. Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field. Why did two tall people get along so well? The could really see eye to eye. Why didn’t Han Solo enjoy his steak dinner? It was Chewie. Why didn't the skeleton climb the mountain? It didn't have the guts. Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work. Why do dads feel the need to tell such bad jokes? They just want to help you become a groan up. Why do dogs float in water? Because they are good buoys. Why do melons have weddings? Because they cantaloupe. Why do nurses like red crayons? Sometimes they have to draw blood. Why do pumpkins sit on porches? They have no hands to knock on the door. Why do seagulls fly over the ocean? Because if they flew over the bay, we'd call them bagels. Why do some couples go to the gym? Because they want their relationship to work out. Why do you never see elephants hiding in trees? Because they’re so good at it. Why don’t phones ever go hungry? They have plenty of apps to choose from. Why don’t pirates take a bath before they walk the plank? They just wash up on shore. Why don't eggs tell jokes? They'd crack each other up. Why is cold water so insecure? Because it’s never called hot. Why is grass so dangerous? Because it’s full of blades. Why is Peter Pan always flying? Because he Neverlands. Why is sand so optimistic? It has a can-dune attitude. Why shouldn’t you write with a broken pencil? Because it’s pointless. Why was the color green notoriously single? It was always so jaded. Why was the cow such a heartthrob on the farm? He was a s-moo-th talker. Why was the dad sitting on a pack of playing cards? His kid asked him to sit on the deck. Why was the ghost so tired? He worked the graveyard shift. Why was the gossip disliked at the coffee shop? She always spilled the tea. Why was the hockey player gifted a new cap? He was known for his hat tricks. Why was the pig covered in ink? Because it lived in a pen. Why was the rookie police officer assigned to hunt the cannibal? The more seasoned officers had already been eaten. Why were spectators confused by the koala’s self-portrait? It was bear. Why were the utensils stuck together? They were spooning. Why would doors do well on social media? Everyone looks for their handles. You can’t plant flowers if you haven’t botany. You know, people say they pick their nose, but I feel like I was just born with mine. You think swimming with sharks is expensive? Swimming with sharks cost me an arm and a leg. You’re American when you go into a bathroom and when you come out, but what are you while you’re in the bathroom? European. submitted by /u/Bugasum to r/dadjokes [link] [comments]

Hello beautiful apes! Are ya'll tired of FUD running rampant? Sick of the shill campaigns brigading the sub to knock unsuspecting apes off their individually researched course? Have you ever looked at a comment or a post or a tweet and thought to yourself: "I can't quite put my finger on why... but that person's a shill... definitely...maybe.. I think... hmm... better comment for wrinkles just in case..."? ​ Whoa that's a lot of words for a meme lol ​ This last year has taken a toll on the mind. Not only do you have to deal with unscrupulous immoral and illegal savagery during market hours, you have to wonder if everyone you meet is a shill. Fortunately these shills are not immortal beings from a galaxy far far away, but mere humans who employ a system they've adopted. A system which I'm going to do my best to attempt to explain and demystify for the betterment of our humble community. I like Harry Potter, this is basically Defense Against the Dark Arts, and the term "Dark Apes" just jumped out at me. I hope that term doesn't offend anyone. I hesitated using it. I'm not saying that any apes are shills. I'm saying shills learned to become apes. And it's helpful to look at it from this perspective so you can grasp the rest of the concepts they employ. They've evolved. They learned the ways of the ape and essentially built a nefarious copy cat model. They can now speak the ape language and a lot of FUD is getting through undetected because apes are on the lookout for only the most obvious shills. Ape sees something that resembles what a fellow ape would post, ape say "seems legit" and allows it through the barrier of "New" to the road of "Rising" all the way to the mountain peak of "Hot". Shills are now able to be apes in disguise using dark arts. Hence, Dark Apes. And since there's so many of them, it would be impossible to keep a list of "who's a shill" in mind. I'd imagine there to be multiple groups of them formed in teams, competing against each other for rewards and bonuses on the amount of FUD they spread. However the shill social structure may actually be formed, if you're a shill tasked with a job of spreading FUD and targeting individual apes who appear vulnerable to a shift in opinion, you're going to need a system in place so that you don't waste time spreading FUD to one of your shill brethren by accident lol They do it by recognizing language patterns and the narrative they're paid to spin. If you're saying something against the agenda, you're a target. Especially if you just "like the stock". Most apes simply like the stock and can't read. So that's a major factor as to why SHF are failing in their attempts to brigade the overall sentiment. You can't trick someone who can't read. You can't get someone to sell something that they really like. You can't rationalize an investment strategy to someone who has no investment strategy lmao But for the wrinkled apes, the ones who can read and actually do their own due diligence, on a hunt to find legitimate information in a crowded sea of FUD, it can be very mentally exhausting sorting through all the bullshit. Being weary of everything you read, and spending mental resources on something that shouldn't even be a thought. "Is this truth or fiction?" Because they all use the same tactics, once you fully understand what they're doing and how they're doing it, you'll start to see the pattern everywhere. And so their campaigns will be less effective. And you will be able to discern who's a real ape and who's a shill the same way they do. What I'm about to expose is high level advanced mind control shit which has very convoluted and technical jargon. Just stumbling on the rabbit hole itself is hard enough, let alone understanding the mechanics contained within. This is by design. When creating this shit, it was overly complexified so that the average individual considers it to be mundane. A safeguard in place so the masses won't wake up to it, and so that those who traverse this heavily obfuscated path can continue to use it freely, with the rest of the world being none the wiser. In other words... The secret to manipulating people is kept behind a pay wall of mental fortitude. The system is called "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" or NLP for short. (Side note, a recently developed form of Machine Learning was called Natural Language Processing to further obfuscate this information in search results for NLP) Contained within this system of NLP are methods and techniques. Some of the methods are: Internal 'maps' of the world Modeling Representational systems Meta-programs Anchoring Future pacing Swish Reframing Well-formed outcome VK/D Metaphor State management Covert hypnosis You pay for the information with years of persistent studying of these words and techniques that seem alien at first. And as you level up and allow your brain to build a codex of bullshit phrases that describe actually very simple concepts, with practice, you begin to understand. Well fuck that. I'm here to Ape-ify the shillspeak and expose their strategies to the world in a clear, easy to follow manner. I will do my best to make this so simple that even a 5 year old with a learning disability (my younger self) could understand it. Although that doesn't mean digesting the information will be easy. It's a near impossible task to distill a decade of research into one post. I've worked on this post for 6 months. And that's why it's taken this long to produce it. Carefully and meticulously crafting a paradigm shifting experience, and presenting it in such a way that is entertaining and thought provoking in hopes that it might enlighten and wrinkle all apes who take the time to experience it. I had to figure out the best way to do it so that all it takes is one or two read throughs to skip 10 years of study. The information contained within this post is the reason I've been able to call out all the shill bullshit from day one and why I have a 100% accurate track record on my predictions of their moves. Because I see right through them. And after reading this, so will you. The original version of this post was 3 posts long but automod deleted them for what ever reason so I had to redo it and tried to condense it into one post with no filler. Be warned: This is going to fuck with your brain. It will be annoying at times. It will be confusing at times. You'll likely have to go back and re-read multiple paragraphs to get the point. There are twists and turns that would make M. Knight Shyamalan foam at the mouth. And by the end of it, if you stick with it, and I've done my job right, you will be armed with a real Defense Against the Dark Apes. ----------------------------------------------------------- Congratulations dear Ape! You've stumbled upon the greatest threat to the Dark Ape shill agenda: This meme is shill tactics in disguise. Don't see it yet? Fear not dear ape! I shall explain later. ​ This meme is shill tactics in disguise. Don't see it yet? Fear not dear ape! I shall explain later. Ohhh you thought that was just fun intro with memes to set the mood? Nah, we getting right into this shit with the first lesson: Shill tactic numero uno: MEMES and relatability. Shills use memes and relatability to sway opinions and plant ideas. -------------------------------------- 4th Wall Break: You probably read the word "opinions" and subconsciously thought it said "options" for a second. Welcome to the world of using language patterns to disguise intentions. Saying one thing that sounds similar to another thing so that you'll think of that other thing. -------------------------------------- Everything I've said in this post, up until this first lesson, was shill tactics in disguise. Firstly, I asked you some questions at the beginning of the post to spark an emotional response. Then I hammered that emotional response with a meme that could be used to anchor it. Then I took you on a trip down memory lane. I built up tension. Formed an alliance by describing a common enemy. Reframed that enemy with a buzz word. Made you feel empowered by pulling back the Wizard's curtain to show they're only humans using a system. Established authority because "I know that system". And released the tension in a symphony of words that reads at first skim like a brand new God tier DD. All promising a conclusion. A reward for reading further. I demonstrated relatability with something you're emotionally triggered by, lowered your defenses and fed you new information that was likely foreign to you, yet very familiar intuitively. Your first reaction is to scroll down. You see so many words. You are pleased. Many will upvote and comment for visibility or post a reminder so they can read it later while taking a shit lmao many will later read this on the toilet laughing like a crazy person. And many will award without even reading this part predicting it. If you ever found yourself wondering "Why the fuck does this post have so many awards and people didn't even read it yet" Well this is why. Because hype. Because long post. Because memes. Because emotional trigger at the beginning. Because the tiny portion of information you received from the initial scroll down seemed legit. This is how Dark Apes can use your hype against you. And have been for a while. Writing long ass posts with verifiable information and funny memes to anchor authority and relatability to their username and then slip in a few minor FUD things that will go consciously unnoticed, yet subconsciously internalized. The reason you upvote and comment for visibility is so that once it gains traction, the wrinkled apes can dissect it and call it out as bullshit, or praise it as mana from heaven. Except the Dark Apes know their posts are bullshit. They don't care if it gets attacked, they just want it on the front page and inside your cranium. At that point their bots can do the fighting for them. And many of the so called wrinkles you're flagging down for help, are sleeper agents in disguise. So next time you see someone post, consider reading the whole thing before upvoting. -------------------------------------- (Side note: Anchoring means attaching. Like a ship throwing down an anchor to stay still. Anchoring is a metaphor for attaching feelings, words or ideas to a single object. The brain naturally anchors things every day. The smell of a hot cup of coffee reminds you of happiness. That's an anchor. Companies use this to brand their.. (SUPER META SIDE NOTE: And guess what, I'm tricking you again. What I'm doing right now with this side note is called a pattern interrupt. And THIS super meta side note is a nested pattern interrupt. Layering so many metas, your brain struggles to process them all at once. I interrupted your thought process before you could complete the original thought and painted a picture in your mind of a ship anchoring at a dock and the smell of a hot cup of coffee. Priming your subconscious for programming. Your brain doesn't have time to wonder if what I've said prior to this side note is true. For example, I have absolutely no idea whether or not Natural Language Processing was named NLP to obfuscate search results. I made it up. But because I did it in a side note with all the other shit, you likely shrugged it off and thought "Ohh shit! Seems like something they would do!" taking it as fact lol Even if you are in the Machine Learning field and thought that was stupid, it opened up the question "Wait.. really? No way..". And the only goal to FUD is to make you question. To make you say "Hmm...maybe...". If you find yourself initially reacting negatively to something but then saying "Hmm.. maybe.." That means a Dark Ape has done their job. And as you're distracted thinking about a boat or what ever bullshit visual pictures I'm painting, you take what I said as fact and continue reading without realizing you've been hypnotized. Further interrupting your train of thought by layering or "nesting" multiple side notes and stories together. Effectively "Open Looping" you. I give you a bit of information, and divert your attention to another thing and another thing and on and on and your brain NEEDS closure on all these things so it reads more to find out the conclusion. That's why you see so many videos marketing a product or service telling a story and then saying "I'll get to the answer to that question in a minute. BUT first......." That's an open loop.) ..products in your mind when you think of a product or service. Band-Aid for example. People just call all bandages "Band-aids" even if they're not created by that company. This sort of branding is used everywhere. And many people probably went up to read the bold text at the top to remember what this bold text at the bottom was saying because I fed you so much information it was hard to keep up. And by the time you reach the next paragraph, you'll probably have to do the same thing to keep up with the main story. And for those who haven't struggled to keep up, this bit explaining it diverts your attention further by filling up your mental ram with more things you need to conceptualize at one time. Congrats fucker, you got open looped.) -------------------------------------- (4th wall break: Take this moment to shake off the stress. If you read through that whole thing up to now, you likely gained a few wrinkles and are disoriented. It's okay to be like "holy shit", stare at the wall for a moment, maybe re-read up a bit to catch your bearings and continue reading the main story. We have a long journey ahead. -------------------------------------- Main story continued: Meticulously breaking down the beginning of this post. I used the Fry sus meme. A well known meme that conveys "sus" by considering two choices. "Not sure if this or that." And I modified the structure of the meme from simple text to a long drawn out message and kept the text right under Fry's eye level. Which is sort of suffocating him in world-wind of thought, yet still keeping that "sus" squinty eye motif. It disrupts your senses because you're not used to so many words on that meme and so it puts your brain into focus mode. Narrowing your focus to be able to read every word. As you continue reading, you find that it accurately describes a year's worth of research + a year's worth of FUD into one meme. The text underneath it says "Whoa that's a lot of words for a meme" and it's probably what you were thinking so you laugh or roll your eyes not realizing that I trapped you into a thought box. It interrupts the pattern you were building saying "What the fuck, why so many words" and destresses you by saying "hey I know, don't worry lol". And that creates relatability. The wall of text gets spammed into your brain, which has been trained to filter out FUD and bullshit. It's essentially a DOS attack on the brain. Usually you're more careful when you read things so as to not fall for an opinion trap. But all these things being thrown at you, the visual, the amount of information, the trip down memory lane, the annoyance of how many words were used, and then the final emotional rug pull that said "I knew what you were thinking" makes it so hard for your brain to filter anything out. So you end up internalizing every word and without realizing it, forming an opinion the next time you encounter a similar scenario. Which influences your thoughts and actions and lowers your guard. If I didn't explain it so in depth, you might have walked away from this post with your guard lowered just a tiny bit. Thinking "Oh maybe that guy who posted that thing on Twitter isn't actually a shill, he's just an idiot. Let me educate him because he's just a misinformed ape" So you'll sit there hashing it out with him going back and forth typing.... ------------------------ (Side note: Again I forced your brain to do something I wanted it to do. I conjured up a scenario for your brain to play out like a movie. A memory maybe or a vision of the future you, scrolling on Twitter and reacting to a shill post. Be very fucking conscious of your state of mind when you notice yourself reading something and simultaneously getting visions and pictures drawn up. It's a trap.) (Other side note: The previous side note caused you to have a meta experience. Your brain may have shown you a vision of yourself getting visions while reading lmao AND if it didn't, this side note forces you to remember a time that you did. It's called a Hypnotic Suggestion. If I say "Don't think of a green triangle", your brain has to first think of a green triangle to not think of a green triangle. It wasn't thinking of it before I said it. But now it is. Look you're thinking of a Dorito. Now the chart. Now you're eating a Dorito while looking at the chart. You can't help but envision it as you read it. lmao ​ The brain is a computer. Every word you read is a fucking command. Your senses are input terminals. This is well known and studied and documented. It's everywhere. It's in political speeches. It's in song lyrics. It's in movies and TV shows. Advertising agencies use it to.... SEEE THERE I GO AGAIN DISTRACTING YOU. BE ON GUARD!!) ------------------------ 4th wall break: Did you notice a strange build up and then subtle release of tension after that rollercoaster of side notes? Did you notice how the meme lowered the tension a bit? It's within that tension and release that grabs ahold of your subconscious and implants suggestions and ideas. Recognize when you're feeling tension while reading and wonder what's happening during the release. Okay back to the main story. ------------------------ And then instead of ignoring the shill like you normally would, you would enter into banter mode and exchange words and hear him out and take his FUD for genuine curiosity. It is this banter which opens the door for them to plant more ideas into your mind without you realizing it. (Whoa, meta meta meta) Congrats punk, you got played. And have been getting played this whole time by the pool of memes you've been mindlessly scrolling while taking a shit lmao BE ON GUARD!!! Because of this principle: Advertising without advertising is still advertising. Mentioning something without mentioning it is still mentioning it. Posting a DRS screenshot with some stonk other than GME is most likely an example of this tactic. Saying "I'm an XYZ ape, but I wish you GME apes luck!!!" is still advertising XYZ stonk. There are countless examples of it but I'm sure your mind is already filling in the blanks as the wrinkles are now starting to form in crevice's you didn't know existed xD If you've been paying attention, you can begin to see things in a new light and bullshit will now easily and effortlessly jump out at you when you see it. Realizing that the real battle is for your SUBCONSCIOUS not your conscious. You have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. Think of your conscious mind as the filtered version of your subconscious. That bitch sees EVERYTHING. But it can't focus on everything at once. So it filters things out that it feels is important. Everything else that it isn't able to filter out gets internalized and sorted later. If I can distract your conscious mind, I can plant shit into your subconscious which subtly alters your behavior. It's like sleight of hand but with your brain's storage system. ------------------------ Now I promised to explain why this meme was FUD in disguise ​ https://preview.redd.it/1rvwubw50bd81.png?width=1277&format=png&auto=webp&s=f8554949a356d8733dd0c330616ae2ee5f5b2eaf On the surface this appears to be a harmless joke/meme. But this meme was created using a dark art tactic. The fake bat ears I photoshopped onto Tai Lopez is called branding. It's a tool to help you remember my username and establish trust. It's a meta-metaphor because Tai Lopez used shill tactics in that video to casually just say "Here in my garage" while showing he doesn't care about a Lamborghini. He used literally the same tactic I'm describing with the meme....IN the meme..... To sell a course. For my tactic though, you look at the Computershared Lambo and get all hyped while anchoring a subtle subtext of "Thabat" next to something that triggers an emotional response in your brain. But in reality, I could use a bunch of bots to spam photoshopped bat ears or some other cute cartoon animal onto memes, along with quotes of things I've said to brand myself as an authority. A master shill already did this. And if I did my job properly, that cute fluffy animal should pop up in your mind without me even saying who. And it's just now dawning on you and you're like "Ohh shit wow that makes sense". That's another tactic they employ. It's powerful. Explaining something in such a way that evokes a picture in your mind but not actually saying it. Or if they do say something, they'll hint towards an idea then back off of it. And if you've been following along so far, you'd probably realize that just by mentioning something casually and reasonably backing off of it, I'm planting the idea in your mind. And that gives me leeway if someone calls me out on it. Someone calling me out: "Hey you were saying this or that" Me: "No, I backed off of it. I didn't say this or that. I just brought it up casually and it's not my actual opinion. I just want you to think of this or that". Sort of like if someone mentions price is going to spike during a certain week and then talk about buying call options. BUT saying not to buy call options for that certain week that it's going to spike. Saying instead to buy longer call options for February. They "backed off" of the idea they wanted you to consider. And then they or their shill bros can come and say "NOOO THATS NOT WHAT I / HE SAID. If you bought for that week like we hypnotized you to do, then you're an idiot!!!"... Yeah bullshit lmao The way they all presented it got you to form your own conclusion to buy cheaper calls for that week. And then fucking rug pull like I predicted. Is *insert person I planted in your mind a minute ago\* a Dark Ape? Who knows. I think so. Just based on what I've experienced. And I'm openly saying it. That's my opinion which I'm entitled to have. Not backing off of it. Whether he is or isn't doesn't matter. He actually might not be and I could just be paranoid. ------------------------ 4th Wall Break: See I said I'm not backing off of it but then backed off of it lmao it's a way to inject a strong opinion into your brain while also seeming reasonable so you don't question my intentions. It's bullshit. Saying one thing and doing another. And the shills do it constantly. ------------------------ Do you see how easy it is to get you to wonder? To plant ideas under the radar and make you think "questioning" it was your idea? I could have just wrote that whole part without pointing out that it's already been done by someone and let your brain work it's way there by following the logic and applying it to another example. You'd eventually think "Oh wait what about that other guy.. Did he do that branding technique?" Or I could even just use fake accounts to comment and stir shit up like Bart Simpson at the Bank lmao WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE'S NO MONEY IN THE BANK!?? Dark Apes pose as Apes and say shit just to rile you up. ------------------------ Lesson 2: Hype Baiting Any time you see someone hyping something up, it's baiting. Hyping dates, hyping ideas, hyping anything. Alluding to drama. Drama = Controversy = Hype = Gets people talking Cyberpunk 77 is the most infamous example. I was hyped for 2 years. I wanted that game more than anything in the world. They promised so much, I felt it was gonna be better than reality itself lmaooo ​ Random Cyberpunk meme just to fill the post out because most people only half read and will scroll down, see memes and post \"Commenting for visibility\" lmao.. shill tactic. Using meme hype against you. Random Cyberpunk meme just to fill the post out because most people only half read and will scroll down, see memes and post "Commenting for visibility" lmao.. shill tactic. Using meme hype against you. And then an hour into it I'm like uhhhhh what the fuck is this. I finished the game just because I had so much hype, I had to finish it. But I still got a refund because it was terrible. The story was good BUT look how I'm distracting you again with another common relatable experience. You only hype something up if you feel pulling it out and laying it on the table isn't good enough as it is.) Any time I posted something that went viral, I didn't hype anything. I just whipped it out and said "Here. Take it." And it was good enough on it's own that it gained traction because people shared it. Beyoncé didn't advertise one of her albums and it still blew up because it was just fucking good on it's own. Ask yourself "What is their real motive?". Because anyone HYPING something has a rug pull in mind somewhere. Somehow. Why? BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE TO HYPE SOMETHING IF IT'S AMAZING. It'll speak for itself. I hyped this post on Twitter as an example so I could say it now. Hyping and pre-marketing things before release is a shill tactic. To create a buzz. To imply there's a time limit to something so you remember it. It's an anchoring technique EVEN FUCKING GAMESTOP.. That guy who calls himself SMRT hype baited us to buy merch with a tweet about the NFT without mentioning the NFT but knowing we all were hyped about it. He hype baited us. I trust Gamestop as a company just a tiny bit less because of that. And before you get all riled up... SHORTS HAVE NOT COVERED. 2+2 = 4. THEY MUST COVER. It's math. But that math has nothing to do with Gamestop using ape's hype to sell merch. Ryan Cohen's plan is to turn the company around using OUR FUCKING HYPE as the catalyst for the transformation. WITHOUT APE HYPE THERE IS NO TRANSFORMATION. Shorts are fucking us on the stock and Gamestop is fucking us on the merch. EVERYONE IS TRYING TO FUCK THE APES ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. ANDDDDD look how you're getting all riled up even though I said not to... All while I'm injecting FUD about Gamestop. That was a pace and a lead which is covered in the next lesson. Pacing and leading is giving you a few things you can agree with to soften something you might otherwise disagree with. You were either thinking 1 of 2 things while reading that: BLASPHEMY!!!! FUCK YOU!! I LOVE GAMESTOP. HYPE HYPE HYPE!!! I'm gonna comment on the post and call you out on that bullshit. YEAH FUCK EVERYONE. APES ARE ON OUR OWN!! EVEN GAMESTOP IS AGAINST US!!!! Either way it would get you to comment about it because you're riled up. I hype baited you with that whole paragraph. Hype bait doesn't have to just be dates. I baited you to post an angry comment using your hype. That's whole thing was bullshit lmao I mean yeah some of it is true and reasonable to conclude because business is business and you'd expect a company to try to make sales and strike while the iron is hot. It's a GOOD thing. But it's the NARRATIVE I was painting just now that is FUD to make you sus of Gamestop overall. Shills DO THIS EVERY DAY. And we all fall for it in some shape or form. Why? More comments = higher visibility. That's all a shill wants. Engagement. Understand it when you see it. Control your fucking emotions. Think before you comment. If I were a part of a shill team of dark apes, I would have planned for every angry response and then wait for people to fall into the trap to stir more shit up so you'll keep arguing which increases comment count. The only comments I want to see in THIS post are fucking zen comments. Shills will do this shit to you constantly and gaslight you just to create traction on the post or a tweet. And good hearted apes will defend them and their bullshit excuses because they play on emotions. They make seemingly reasonable gaslit responses just to provoke you, and spread FUD so people will come to their aid. Yes. YOU might be enraged about something. Yes YOU might see it for the bullshit that it is. BUT continuing to engage someone who is dead set on gaslighting you will only allow them more room to gaslight OTHER people. You know you're right. But furthering the conversation gives other people a chance to consider the dark ape's point of view. Which means you're spreading FUD unintentionally by allowing them to debate you. Just say your piece and bounce. No back and forth. IF you understand what I'm trying to tell you, just be Zen. Don't argue with anyone. Because the shills are gonna be ALL OVER this post. I guarantee it. Be on guard people. ------------------------ Lesson 3: Pacing and Leading. I'll just show a screenshot of a comment I made on a post a couple weeks ago for this one. It serves as the perfect example of this shit. https://preview.redd.it/8ifv55xn0bd81.png?width=1093&format=png&auto=webp&s=0383a197fe0cb5cadcf324200a3ba20d5e8530cb https://preview.redd.it/nfrnbx1p0bd81.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=cacc4fb312aab3e880af7c539906bc38e4d87c1c ​ ------------------------ Lesson 4: Levels of The Dark Apes. In my experience I have come across many levels of Dark Apes. This lesson is everything I've learned about them. Type A: The Obvious shill. This is your typical meltdowner. They're active in meltdown, they post shit purposefully to fuck with you. They're OBVIOUS in their attacks. Purposefully obvious. So that you get a baseline of what they want you to think a shill actually is. If this is the game of Chess, these are your sort of "Pawn" shills. Expendable, easily countered. Obviously a shill. Provoking you by saying shit like "Shorts covered bro haha bag holder conspiracy theorist!". These exist to fuck with easily provoked apes. If you have $500 in DRS and that's basically your life savings and you've never done stocks before.. You, like all of us who first started this game, are prone to emotional attacks. I remember when I first started investing. I was just so naïve. I would paper hand so easily. These Type A, Obvious shills serve two purposes: To provoke the beginners into paper handing, and to show the wrinklier apes a baseline shill so you'll be blindsided by higher tiered shills. There aren't as many as there used to be of these types. Because we're in the endgame. And in the endgame, there's rarely any pawns. But there are still a few stragglers on the edge of the board. These are the ones who will gaslight you to no end. They exist to troll. Nothing more. ------------------------ Type B: The (not so obvious) Journeyman Dark Ape. This is the type of shill who will post memes and brigade Bart Simpson in the bank style. They relate to you. They agree with you on things that you agree with on a "core value" system. They exist to feel like "one of the apes". Someone you'd want to have a beer with. If you've ever seen The Truman Show.. They're this fucker right here: ​ But everything they say is a lie. ​ They will go along with you and befriend you. They might invite you into group chats. And LOL the day away. They'll say stupid shit. They MIGHT EVEN STICK A BANANA UP THEIR BUTT to prove how "Ape" they are. This is the brigadier. This is the one who seeps in unnoticed. This one will say 10 truths to slip in 1 lie. They might even actually be apes on the low. Holding for the inevitable MOASS. Double agents. But make no mistake. This is the most dangerous Dark Ape of them all. All other types exist to camouflage THIS type. They rarely make posts. If they do, it's to show DRS or to meme you into a false sense of security. No, this dark ape's agenda is comments. You check their comment history you'll see them agreeing with apes. You'll see them talking good about RC. You'll see them saying DRS is the way!! But... then you'll see them REASONABLY INJECTING BULLSHIT during a heated discussion. Hoping that their comment history will speak for them. Hoping you'll see 10 good wholesome ape comments and ignore the seemingly reasonable FUD questions they bring forth. These shills are VERY careful not to set off any alarms. If you fight them, they will eventually back down. They will not troll you. They will be "reasonable". They will say something and then back off of it. And go back into the shadows to shill another day. They will nit pick on small things autistically. Ignoring the bigger picture of what you're saying to get you to argue about tiny things. Semantics. That's to distract you from the actual point of what ever you're trying to say. I've noticed one thing about these shills. Their one weakness is calling them out when they use NLP tactics. I have literally called out dozens of these shills. Analyzing their comments, detailing what they're actually doing and then they delete their accounts. I laugh my ass off when it happens. They understand the Streisand effect. Calling attention to the bullshit just makes it a larger target. So they retreat instantly. When it happens on Twitter, they won't delete their account but will just stop responding lmao ------------------------ Type C: The DD Influencer Dark Ape. This is Criand or Gherk or possibly me for example. Someone who writes posts that shifts mass perspective. Anyone with a top 100 post of all time on SuperStonk can potentially be in this category. The DD Influencer Dark Ape is dangerous because they provide value and demonstrate a high caliber level of proficiency in the dark arts by the fact that they write so poetically to entrance you. Maybe this type of Dark Ape doesn't start out as a shill. Maybe they genuinely have good intentions in the beginning. BUT they gain so much attention that they become a target for hedgies to bribe or threaten. People look up to us. People tag us in comments for wrinkles. People want more of our brains. Well, that can be leveraged by hedge funds. If I were a shill, I could easily get people to paper hand. Maybe not the hardest diamond hand rock solid HODLers.. But I could get a large majority who are weak in their resolve. And so could Gherk, so could Criand. So could whoever. If they do it skillfully. Over a long period of time. Subtly spread FUD and mindfuck people to come to their own conclusion that this might take longer than they expected and rent is due now lol It's possible. 4th Wall Break: That last paragraph was designed to enrage you to comment "NO ONE CAN GET ME TO SELL! I JUST LIKE THE STOCK!!! DIAMOND HANDSSSSSS" lol.. Don't get hype baited. Recognize this shit when you see it. It's subtle but your brain is now beginning to see it. Watch the fuck out for these people. Even me. No hero worship. THIS INCLUDES DFV. YES even our beloved messiah. Imagine hedgies got to him by threatening his family somehow.. And he makes a post during a fake squeeze that he sold. DFV could make even me question my sanity lmao NO HERO WORSHIP. None. Think of respect as rent. Respect is due every time you post something. Not based on what you posted prior. But what the fuck are you CURRENTLY saying. No matter WHO it is. Remember this phrase: "Go by the narrative, not the narrator." I don't give a fuck WHO says something. How respected they are. Where they come from or what they've said in the past. Go by the narrative, not the narrator. If I, the narrator, suddenly start shifting the narrative to sell, or to say the shorts already covered, or that I won't DRS my shares, or that Ryan Cohen is evil lmao.. That means I was a shill all along. You look at WHAT THEY'RE ACTUALLY SAYING AND DOING. Not who's saying it. Look at the EFFECT of one's actions, not the words they say. Did they say something that leveled you up and exposed the truth, or did they say something that shrouded something in mystery, moved goal posts, switch up their words, said something then backed off of it, created a divide to distract and confuse you which ended up causing a chain of events that helps the hedgies? Overall, did they help the community or hurt it? Not by their words but by the effects of their words and actions. I'm hoping the EFFECT of THIS post will be people being more aware of their state of mind while reading and instantly and effortlessly spot bullshit when they see it. If what someone is saying doesn't line up with the narrative of truth, then the only other option is a lie. It doesn't matter how preposterous it seems. Doesn't matter if the scheme would have to be gigantic and so many other people would have to be "in on it" for it to be true. The most logical answer is the true answer. Magic doesn't exist. Example: If every scientist randomly came out to say that puppies are evil overlords from another planet, here to sell space drugs and make you feel cute emotions to distract you.. And debates are had to discuss how and why. And Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, Joe Rogan, whoever.. EVERYONE was saying it.. "Jamie, pull that up for me" "Well yeah, it seems like the data suggests this has to be true." "That's wild stuff man. Fucking puppies man... shit... What do we do about it?" "Adopt cats I guess...". But you see through the bullshit.. And you know there's some other reason they're saying that. And you look into it yourself and find evidence that points to them being paid by a cat breeding corporation.. The most logical answer is that they're all in on it and trying to stop people from buying puppy shares and instead focus on cat adoptions. submitted by

Preparing the Field Monty Don is an eccentric British man with a large forehead and an even larger smile, is one of the most well known pillars of the gardening community. He is widely beloved, a god among gardeners, and yet still comes across as affably lovely. But he has no problem stirring the soil now and then. To many, he is the badboy with a green thumb, rugged and manly, with an answer to every agrarian question and a wink for every agrarian woman. Not really, he would never do something so rude. For almost two decades, he has hosted the BBC show Gardener’s World, the largest and longest running gardening show on tv. GW has been around since 1968, but our boy Monty has been the face of the programme since 2003. From 2011 onward, he hosted it from his own garden, Longmeadow, which would go on to become a veritable mecca of gardening prowess. Overall, the British gardening community is exactly as sweet and nice as you would expect. But there are rare disputes, and I thought we could go through them together. Taking Sides In 2012, Monty Don became embroiled in a row between himself, his fans, the BBC, and a number of companies, over how best to dispose of pests when gardening. His advice was to hand pick the offending plants and destroy them, and not to use pesticides, which enraged pesticide companies, who went running to the BBC. Rather than supporting Monty, the BBC apologised on his behalf, stating: “Monty often mentions non-organic alternatives and we will endeavour to ensure this is more consistent in future.” Don responded with irritation and swore never to promote non organic products. “It is a classic case of the BBC not wanting to offend anyone and trying to be fair and reasonable – but at the same time getting it wrong. It is nonsense, because there is nothing here that they need to defend” Fans were quick to take sides, but this would not be the last time Monty made headlines. It was just a taste of what was to come. The Meadow Discourse The Lawn Controversy would come to encompass Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh - the man who had hosted Gardener’s World before 2003. In an interview with Radio Times (to which the entire nation listened in rapt attention), Monty revealed that while he enjoys walking on freshly trimmed grass, keeping it neat and striped was unnecessary. Indeed, he encouraged fellow gardeners to stop mowing their laws altogether. He said that neat lawns were a manly obsession, linked more to controlling nature than embracing it. “Cutting grass burns lots of fossil fuels, makes a filthy noise, and is about the most injurious thing you can do to wildlife. Letting grass grow, which is, after all, a pretty passive thing to do, is probably the single most effective thing you can do in any garden of any size to encourage particularly insect life, but also small mammals, invertebrates, and reptiles” From the allotments of Islington to the broads of Scotland, gardeners reeled in shock. Immediately, the fathers of British floriculture weighed in. Some, like Springwatch presenter Chris Packman, supported Don. He had long encouraged wild lawns, and considered mowing a ‘very bizarre habit’. But Titchmarsh would not let this go unchallenged. In an interview on Good Morning Britain (the UK’s biggest morning show), he passionately shut down the pernicious Don: “Gardens do two things. Most importantly, they’re brilliant for our wild fly. Secondly, they’re also good for our well being. I find that a striped lawn does me the power of good. It’s excellent for my mental health.” But he also conceded that it isn’t about choosing one or the other. You can make the most of both. “I have a flower meadow, but I also have a striped lawn. So I share it with the wildlife and I enjoy it myself as well, and that’s my take on it.” Viewers were quick to point out that not all gardeners have the space for such a move. But Ben Shepherd, host of his own show ‘Love Your Gardener’, agreed with Titchmarsh, though he avoided drawing the ire of Monty Don. One less timid gardening aficionado would be David Hedges Gower, of the Lawn Care Association. He not only refuted Don, he actively threw him under the bus, accusing him of being too uneducated to speak on the topic, and that a well cut lawn was healthier than Don thought. ‘We will never be friends’, he declared on the Horticulture Week podcast, to the gasps of many. “There’s somebody who is very passionate about lawns and somebody who doesn’t like them very much at all, I don’t think we’d have anything to talk about in the pub.” Gower summed up the beef thusly: “I certainly don’t think I’ll be on his Christmas card list anytime soon”. Indeed, gardeners around Britain would come out in opposition to Don. “The birds seem to like it when the grass is cut, they can’t wait to come down and eat the bugs and worms they can get at more easily” One gardener replied. ”Anything else we’re not supposed to do?” Commented another, from Birmingham. The Invisible Birds In July 2021, Monty Don once again fell into controversy after Gardener’s World was flooded with complaints. Eagle eared fans accused the show of using fake birds to create an atmosphere. ”I get letters asking why we lay fake birdsong over filming in the garden because - I assume - viewers cannot believe it could ever be that present or loud. Yet there are lots of birds that are a hidden, constant presence that I largely take for granted” In his book My ‘Garden World: The Natural Year’, he once again addressed the allegations, attributing his avian popularity to his habit of bird feeders around his garden during the winter months. But viewers were not convinced. On the forum allotments4all.co.uk, the user Kippers Garden penned: I’m just sitting here watching Gardener’s World and something is really bugging me… the bird song doesn’t seem natural. The same bird seems to sing loudly at the beginning and the end of each scene. I find it very annoying […] Has anyone else noticed this? The response was also highly critical. “As far as I can see the whole programme is fake”, replied user Powerspade. Another user had this to say: ”There’s hardly any veg on it nowadays, I don’t watch it either” Indeed, multiple users were quick to disparage the show, with one declaring “Stopped watching it yonks ago.” The Seeds of Discord The Peat Scandal would rock the gardening community in 2021. Peat bogs make up a full 12% of the UK’s land area, and constitute the country’s largest CO2 store, while providing habitats for birds, insects and plants. But peat is a major ingredient in British compost, a favourite of tillers everywhere, and so British peatlands are regularly dug up for commercial use. As of writing, only 20% of UK peatlands remain in a natural state. British farmers are using it up 200 times faster than it is forming. Environmentalists and gardeners have been locked in a vicious struggle for years now over the stuff. But there would be a victor: in early 2021, the Environmental Secretary announced plans to ban the sale of peat-based compost by 2024. There was a bit of a problem here. Peat-compost worked really well. Consumer watchdog ‘Which’ looked into the issue way back in 2014, experimenting with hundreds of gardening products, and told consumers not to even bother buying non-peat composts. It refused to recommend any peat-free composts, and gave low ratings to half-peat soils. Its best buys were, for years, composts with 100% peat. It went without saying that every serious gardener used peat, and to avoid it meant shooting yourself in the foot. Major authorities like Kew Botanic Gardens and the Royal Horticultural Society advised against using peat, even despite making thorough use of it themselves. Ben Raskin of the Soil Association went as far as to dispute the Which trials. “We have tested different composts and found that most pest-free composts performed very well. The challenge for commercial vegetable growing is that even a small problem with your compost could make a big hole in your livelihood, so before all growers in the UK go peat free, they need a little more proof that it is risk free.” Many green thumbs around the country looked derisively upon this claim. Whether they supported or opposed peat, it was undeniable that it gave all seedlings a boost. The editor of ‘Which Gardening’, Ceri Thomas, defending the trials. She spoke to Amateur Gardening, claiming “We go to great lengths to ensure that the composts we choose for testing will be the best ones consumers could buy.” Data obtained through freedom of information requests found that agencies overseen by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (shortened to DEFRA) have continued using thousands of cubic metres of peat-compost since the ban, with no plans on stopping. This made everyone angry. Conservation groups accused the government of breaking its commitments to tackle climate change. Gardeners reacted with frustration that they couldn’t get their hands on peat, but the government could. Naturally, Donny boy had something to say about the ban. “This is entirely to be celebrated”, he wrote, claiming that garden centres stocking peat products were ‘actively choosing to do harm’ The backlash was immediate. Many were quick to point out how bad this would be for gardeners. “Nothing works as well as pest based composts for growing and propagating young plants. The substitutes are all useless. Only a jewellery designing TV predenter could say otherwise.” Said Michael from the Wirral Gardening had long had its class disparities, as seen with Titchmarsh, and there were criticisms here too. “It’s all well and good but I’ll bet that as soon as peat compost is banned, the price of non peat will rocket. What about the people on benefits trying to establish a garden from scratch? It’s ok for tv stars to push for change, they can afford whatever alternative.” One responded. Others pointed out that the rural peat industry was a huge employer, and that many would be out of a job. Many others flat our refused to stop using peat, and insisted they would collect it themselves if they had to. Still more pointed out that the environmental factors were less one sided than they appeared: The moss which creates peat is an invasive species. It creates an acidic environment where no other plants can survive. It’s no good for anything except wound cleaners, outdoor toilet paper, and face cleaner. Yes, it does absorb C02 but trees do that better, snd they don’t ruin the landscape. Some responses were fiery. He claims the problem is carbon, but Monty the hypocrite who flies around the world unnecessarily is part of the problem. Others claimed they would simply stockpile it. Better start stockpiling now. I hate the peat free alternatives, and we don’t all have space for large compost heaps to produce a good growing medium. There was another contingent who saw this as a political dispute. To them, the real issue was constant construction in order to accommodate for Britain’s high immigration rate, and that extracting peat was really just a politically correct scapegoat. The gardening fandom was in a lather. The Flower Show The Chelsea Flower show is the largest of its kind in the UK. To Americans, there are strong comparisons to a county fair, but with a floral theme. There are farm related events, barnyard animals, food stalls, and competitions over the largest swede, longest carrot or most shapely melons. Since 2014, best boy Monty Don has covered the flower show on national TV. He was interviewing gold medalist Sarah Price and came out with a line that got him into some rather hot gardening water: “You were saying you do most of your work in the evenings, you have two young children. It is extraordinary that you're doing this on such a big stage while looking after young children, in the evenings. Do you feel that you're constantly running on just a very fine margin?” Many viewers immediately asked why Don had never given that question to fathers, and accused him of every day sexism. Price spoke to the media earlier that month, pointing out how she never could have done it if not for her husband. “There's a general trend toward men sharing childcare, and if it wasn't for my husband, who is a writer, agreeing to look after my children for most of May, I wouldn't be able to do Chelsea.” She acknowledged that a gender gap in gardening existed, especially when it came to gaining corporate sponsors, but denied being offended by Don. Many non-gardeners leapt at the opportunity to express their anger at the ‘PC woke brigade’, on sites like the Daily Mail and Sun, but no one really listened to them. Finishing the Harvest This is by no means an exhaustive account of British gardening tiffs. None of them are massive by any means, but that's what drew me to them. Monty Don remains as lovely as ever. The show is still airing, though it briefly went on hiatus during Covid. The peat ban is still scheduled to take effect in 2024, though the forestry service has no plans to stop using it themselves. And Horticultural fanatics around Britain eagerly await the next piece of juicy gossip. submitted by /u/Rumbleskim to r/HobbyDrama [link] [comments]

My inaugural trip to a haunted attraction as a boy was to a farm-themed hay maze, with all the scarecrows and old barns and cheap animatronic crows with red eyes you might expect. At the end of it a theater kid dressed as a hillbilly farmer would chase you to the exit with a cap-shotgun. ”Git outta here, ya dang kids!” he’d say, in an Appalachian drawl that was hysterically overdone. ”I’m comin’ for ya! Y’all better run!” The place was cheap and low budget and entirely ridiculous, and I fell in love with it all the same. So a year later we visited another place - Miss Wretched’s House of Horrors, it was called, I think, down on Gardersdale - and that was an equally cheesy haunted mansion with pop-out skeletons and suits of armor that dropped their rubber axes near your feet, which would trigger an often off-time CLANG! sound from poorly hidden speakers. I loved that experience too, so at my insistence we got fake IDs the year after that and with those gained admittance to the ‘big-kid’ haunt that was all the rage at the time. It was called ‘DarkHouse’ - I remember the blood-red vampiric font above the door quite clearly - and it was my first run in with ‘professional’ actors, and dirty words, and pitch black halls and chainsaws. Upon completion fifteen year old me felt like he’d become a man. But as the years wore on attractions like these lost their edge. And I tried to up the ante a bit. Truly I did - I went on out of town on road trips to all the spookiest places in the state and beyond as soon as I was old enough. Among the locales checked off in this period were various ‘real’ haunted houses in which nothing happened, several of those ‘win-a-prize-if-you-last-the-night’ spooks in which I won simply by falling asleep, and two of those infamous ‘adult’ haunted houses in Vegas, where you have to sign a waiver and be okay with extensive (but not really extensive) physical contact. Those were effective, to be sure, but after my second visit to one of those places even those lost their merit in my eyes. I was starving for a legitimate scare by age twenty seven. And that’s when, on a deep web forum for like-minded adrenaline junkies, I first heard about an attraction known as ‘Labyrinth.’ It was mentioned almost passively by another user, and when I pressed them for further information the response was frustratingly vague. ’Can’t tell too much,’ they’d said. ’They contact u if u want in.’ Whatever. In my experience there was rarely ever a payoff frightening enough to justify that type of gimmicky cloak-and-dagger nonsense. I closed the forum and forgot about it entirely by the end of the week. And then came the black envelope. Inside that was a black letter, appropriately enough, and typed tastefully on its inner sleeve it said the word Labyrinth, and beneath this it provided an address, and a date and time. Given its name I’d expected Labyrinth to be a maze of sorts, or one of those escape rooms with a horror bent. But instead I found myself staring up at a palatial, chateauesque estate of impossible size, with spires and towers and wings and various other gratuitous additions to structure. It was truly magnificent; I’d visited North Carolina’s Biltmore once and that estate wasn’t any more impressive than the one before me. On the door to the place was a second Black Letter that read simply, ‘Labyrinth. Find the heart to escape.’ And despite my initial jaded skepticism, I now found myself quite intrigued; in the context of the location I now found these vague letters more tasteful and reserved than gimmicky. So it was with a strange optimism that I entered the place, and shut the door behind me; it locked on its own with a faint click. There was no mechanism on its interior to unfasten it from what I could see. The interior of the place was every inch as magnificently constructed and furnished as the outside would suggest. It was regal, and immaculately clean. And it was empty. “Hello?” I said. An echo responded, I waited a bit before I spoke again. “I’m Andrew Owens. Got a letter in the mail yesterday; said to come here today at three, so… here I am!” Nothing. I checked my phone for the time and it agreed with my punctuality. I guess this is the game? I thought back to the letter. Find the heart to escape, it’d said. It was short. It was vague. It was open to interpretation. And I mused on its possible meanings and reasoned that I had to somehow prove my courage - my heart - to be allowed out. The isolation was a fresh twist, and so was that creeping thought that if something goes wrong, there’s nobody here to help. It made me a bit afraid. And I loved it. I decided to explore. In no particular order of my visiting them, the mansion had on its first floor and in the immediate vicinity of its parlor a coat room; a sitting room that featured both two separate fireplaces and multiple redundant couch-and-table furniture sets; a grand study with a gorgeous, multi-thousand dollar mahogany desk by the window and more books in its floor-to-ceiling shelves than all but the largest public libraries and every single private collection I’d ever heard of; a billiard room; a grand banquet hall with filled wine goblets at every seat of its table; a kitchen behind that with a fresh bowl of fruit on the counter; and a gallery in which various regal painted portraits of young and beautiful people were hung, who I assumed to be either the owners of the estate or relatives of those owners (although I didn’t stop to see if there were informative plaques). A centerpiece portrait of a woman in a blue dress was particularly striking. Striking. But not frightening. Now that I wasn’t particularly appreciative of; I’d come here for a thrill, had I not? But the magnificence of this place aside, I wasn’t sure what made it a fearful experience and not just an elaborate puzzle. But I got my answer shortly enough. I moved from the billiard room to the coatroom, and from the coatroom to a long hallway that was, like the others, fit with cushioned benches on the sides of it and Persian rugs and a grand player piano that provided a pleasant enough tune (and the only sound beside my own footsteps). Then I opened the door at the end of that hallway, and found myself, bizarrely enough, back in the billiard room. I stopped cold. Now I hadn’t taken so much as a single turn since I’d arrived at the building, much less in the quick minute since the last time I’d been in that room. But here I was all the same. The first thought I had was okay, so that’s the twist, then: they built identical rooms to create an illusion of going in circles. But that theory was frustrated by that fact that everything matched. Everything - from to the pattern of the balls on the tables, to the order of the cues in the rack, to the way the chalk was placed on the window sill, and the stain it’d left there. I then reasoned its an architectural trick, I think; the halls are curved ever so slightly to give the impression of being straight, when in reality they’re turning you every which way and circling you back around to other rooms. Hence the name ‘Labyrinth.’ I was impressed; truly, genuinely impressed. Not scared, really, but I’d been tricked and surprised, and even a seasoned critic like myself had to admit that the twist was indeed effective. Maybe this place isn’t such a dud after all. So I moved through the room and opened the door at the far end that led back into the hallway. And I walked straight into the old study I’d been in fifteen minutes and six rooms earlier. My heartbeat skipped a step, and for the first time I was unable to muster up any explanation at all to explain this phenomenon. No amount of subtle hallway-twisting could account for this. I decided at least to test the extent of the trick: while still standing in the billiard room I shut the door and opened it again to find not the study but a new hallway instead. When I shut it a third time I opened it to find a bedroom, and after the fourth such attempt I was staring into the kitchen. More revelations followed: that place, while otherwise identical to its former self, was beginning to decay. I slid my finger across the surface of a kitchen counter and rubbed it against my thumb. Dust sprinkled onto my trousers. Dust, and not a negligible amount of it, in a room I’d noted earlier for its immaculate cleanliness. I felt that old damned dread mounting up, and this time I was powerless to swallow it. And the door there led me not into the banquet hall but into the sitting room again. And like the kitchen before it, it was dirtier than it was before; not filthy, but it was certainly lived in. A crooked picture frame. A pillow on the floor. Cup-rings on the table. The blanket that’d been neatly folded on the couch the first time I’d been here was now crumpled up against the arm of the seat. It was then, though, that I got an idea - leave the door open behind me to keep open an avenue of escape (the rooms can’t change if the doors are open, right?). So I left it hanging half-way and moved to the door at the other end of the living room. But I stopped when I reached it. What awaited me wasn’t the billiard room or the kitchen or the gallery or the bedroom but the sitting room again - the very same room in which I stood - even filthier now. And standing in the door at the far end was myself again, leaning halfway through the threshold in what was a perfect mirror of exactly my stance and exactly my demeanor. I turned around behind me, then, and sure enough I could see myself there too, looking back into another version of what was no doubt the same room from the door I’d just come through. “H-hello?” I and a chorus of Mes said at the same time. I slammed the door in a panic when that happened, and threw into action my second plan: a forced break-out through the window at the end of the room. I picked up the chair and let out a shouted “I am fucking DONE with this place!” Then I hurled the chair at full strength into the glass; it bounced off without so much as scratching it and tumbled onto its side. I turned around to lift it up again for a second toss, but I stopped before I did. Sitting propped up on its two ends, on the surface of the table and clean amidst all the dust, was a third black letter. No cheating, it read. Find the heart to escape. I blinked. I felt sick. I felt my heartbeat in my throat, and I backed up, and then after a brief pause, I began to run. Through door after door I went to find the parlor, but It was a fruitless effort; the billiard room led to the banquet hall to the coatroom to the portrait gallery to the bedroom, and each chamber entered featured more disorder and more ruin and more decay than the ones before. The wood had rotted; the light bulbs were dead; there were cobwebs and spiders in the corners. But not once did the parlor present itself, and after the third pass through the study I collapsed by the leg of the desk to catch my breath. But it was then, in a bizarre stroke of luck, that I looked to the other end of the room and saw that one of the grand bookshelves had snapped under the weight of age and collapsed, spilling its books to the ground and crushing a corpse. It was old, I realized when I inspected the body up close; it looked like the thing had laid there for decades by the time I found it - long enough for the smell to wash away and for the clothes to rot off. But in its hand was what appeared to be a dust-covered book of sorts, or a tome or a collection of notes. I picked it up and flipped it open and I began to read, and after some searching I found the following relevant passage: Found the pattern to the rooms. Took me god damn forever but I found it. Just gotta make sure to run to the door when I’m done. Beneath that there was a scribbled diagram of sorts, where a task in a certain room would lead to another. Light fireplace in living room -> kitchen. Eat from the fruit bowl -> pool room. Pocket the eight ball -> coat room. Find the key in the pocket of the right coat -> banquet hall. Drink from the chalice -> portrait gallery. Make it through -> study. Spin the globe to the match th- And the notes ceased at that precise moment. I can only imagine it was then that the shelf fell - perhaps purposefully by some mechanism or perhaps because of sheer age and the absence of maintenance - and crushed the author. How long they’d laid here I couldn’t tell, and at the moment, shamefully, I didn’t quite care. I was simply worried about avoiding the same fate for myself. So I crept around the study and to the desk, and while I did the floor creaked and it moaned and it protested with each and every step. But I made it, luckily, and when I did I placed my hand on the globe and spun it once without purpose. Match the globe to the what? I searched for a bit before I saw an old, eighteenth century cartographer’s map - yellowed and weathered and worn like the globe, and ripped a bit on the far edges of it - at the far end of the room and above another shelf. I looked back down at the globe, and nudged it left until both it and the map depicted the New World in the middle. I… guess that’s good enough? And just then something hit my head - whack - and tumbled to the floor. I looked at the ground to find a book there, and then I looked up just in time for another book to fly from the other listing shelf and hit me in the forehead. Whack. Then came another book, and another, and another. It quickly became impractical to dodge them all; I simply put my hands over my head and made for the exit, and as I did the trickle of falling books became a stream, and that stream became a waterfall, and that waterfall became an avalanche that consumed the room utterly; from every shelf of every standing case in the room books flew off the shelves and they began to pool on the ground before filling it up and flooding it. And the torrent rose like the ocean tide, and I climbed over the piling mountain of the stuff and was battered hideously as I did. My vision swam; my ribs cracked; I had the wind knocked out of me no fewer than three times, and by the time I reached the far end of the room nearest the exit a tidal wave of books and encyclopedias and tomes and leatherbound and hardback collections had reached its crest and began to crash down in my direction with a tremendous and simply earth-shattering CRASH. I dodged left and to the door, and seconds before I was consumed I threw it open and tumbled unceremoniously into the next room, and kicked it shut with a slamming click. And when I did, oddly, not a sound could be heard from the other side - no falling books or settling shelves or breaking things. It was as if all that’d been there in the first place was nothing at all. I gave myself a once over and a quick pat down to make sure - nothing broken or bruised, mercifully enough - and I allowed myself to rest and breathe. “Holy shit,” I said. “Holy - okay. Okay. I’m okay. I’m here. I made it.” After a moment more of rest and regrouping I looked around the sitting room I’d already been in multiple times, and I remembered the instructions from the notes. Light the fireplace in the living room. Okay. Easy enough, right? Just need matches, and wood, or something. I looked around the room and found old newspapers and kindling already in the floor of the fireplace. Above the mantle were matches; I took the last one from the box and swept it across the edge and it produced for me a small flame. I tossed it into the pit. But before I could even begin to make for the kitchen that flame caught and roared with stunning speed. Then a moment later there was another swoosh - I whirled around and found the other fireplace in the room had been ignited too, and before I could process this development its flames spread just as quickly and just as menacingly as the ones from the first, and they leapt out of the gate and caught on the ratty old carpet and began to climb. The chimneys in this dilapidated place had been so choked with soot too that the smoke spread right out into the living room and began to fill it up. I hit the ground when I noticed this, and I began to crawl. But the fire was far, far faster than I was; within a minute it had consumed the couch closest to the door. Then it reached the table, and that old untreated wood went up all at once and cracked and crumbled and fell to ash. And soon I soon felt those flames licking at my legs and bearing down on my back, and I gave up any effort to crawl and stood up began to run. I leapt over the second couch and the table there, just as the ceiling cracked and tumbled in behind me, but when I reached the other furniture set the flames from the second fire place that’d already eaten it all up caught on my trousers and climbed up the rest of me too. I was engulfed in fire in seconds flat. And all my screaming and all my thrashing produced nothing for me then. Soon my hair was singed off, and my clothes burned away, and my skin itself began to bubble and boil and char and melt. It was excruciating to an indescribable degree, but I knew there’d be water in the kitchen, so with the last of my strength I stumbled to the door and opened and entered it and shut it behind me... ...and I stopped. And I patted myself down for the second time. I could breathe, I realized. I could breathe, and I had hair, and hell - I was utterly and completely untouched by fire. Even my clothes were only as unkempt as they normally were. I leaned up against the door and closed my eyes and regrouped again. I opened my eyes. I was in the kitchen, as expected, and sure enough it was as filthy and dilapidated as the rooms before it, if not considerably moreso. The lights had long since snuffed out, and the wood was old and it was molded and rotted through, and the various hanging pots and all the appliances throughout were lopsided and broken. And then I saw my objective on the counter. Eat from the fruit bowl -> pool room. And no longer was that bowl filled with fresh produce, either. Instead its contents were little more than molded, thoroughly rotted mush. A cloud of flies buzzed above and around it. I said aloud, “Hell no. Nope. No fucking way.” But I knew even as I spoke I had no other way to escape. I approached the bowl, and squeezed my eyes shut tight and reached into it, past the swarming, feasting insects, and I grabbed what felt like it had once been an apple. Then I breathed in and out several times, and told myself Its temporary, like the fire. And I held my nose, and I ate the thing and chewed it faster than I could taste, and swallowed it whole. To say the fruit was simply expired would be a profound understatement. It was filthy; and so putrid and so thoroughly rancid that at least half of it stuck to my teeth and required me to lick it off or pull it out with my bare hands. I heaved. I wretched. I nearly threw up but stopped myself before I did, unsure if doing so would void my “accomplishment” and require me to start the game over, or eat more from the bowl, or feast on my own vomit. So I swallowed the stuff and ran to the door and slammed it shut behind me. Fortunately Labyrinth was merciful enough to purge that taste too. But the memory remained, and once I was confident the contents of that stuff were out of my stomach I released what wasn’t yet, and vomited onto the floor in a series of splats. Not like it did much for the decor of the place one way or the other. The billiard room was, like the others before it, of course, profoundly decayed. The ceiling here had caved in almost entirely, and the pool table on which I had to pocket the eight ball, if memory served, was old and feltless. And while it had a stick on it, though, there were no billiard balls at all. Under my breath I mumbled, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” as the parameters of the upcoming search began to dawn on me. But then I heard something in the far corner of the room, that sounded like something wet; a slurping, maybe, or a sucking or a licking. I turned to look, and there were the balls at least - at the feet of an enormous, likely rabid, mange-ridden Mastiff that’d been feasting on them in the absence of proper food. Fortunately the thing was fastened to the desk in the back, but how much yield the chain had I was unsure. It saw me a second later, and when it did it stood up and stared, and for a long moment we did little else but eye each other up and down and sideways. I harbored few illusions about its intentions, with all its bared teeth and its aggressive stance and those ropes of spit hanging from its jowls. Before making a move I ran through a series of plans that would ideally get me in possession of the eight ball without having to wrestle it out of the damn thing’s paws. Among the rejected ideas were one in which I used a pool cue to at the very least beat the dog unconscious from a distance before making for the ball, and one in which I tried somehow to distract it. Eventually, though, I decided to use a cue not to mess with the Mastiff at all but to try to roll the ball away from it. Any direction I could get them to move would be a victory, I reasoned, so after tossing the dog a piece of wood to bite on I knelt down and began to poke at the pile of slobber-covered billiard pieces. They scattered, but I was so focused at tapping the eight on its head and nudging it towards me that I didn’t pay enough attention to the dog at all. It had ignored the wood, it turned out, and it lunged for my cue and grabbed it in its jaws and tossed it - and me with it - into the wall. WHUMP. I tumbled back onto the floor, and before I could regroup that damned snarling, barking hound was bearing down on me with full speed and monstrous, demonic aggression. Its chain kept it from my neck, at the very least, but after a panicked struggle it managed to clamp down onto my ankle and drag me - with me howling and grasping for ground and digging into the wooden floorboards with my nails to no avail - back to its corner. Two things happened that worked in my favor then. First, our wrestling sent the billiard pieces across the floor; the eight ball with them, and second - I managed to flip around and crack the beast in the jaw with my good foot before it got me back far enough to deliver a mortal strike. I broke free after that, and limped over to the eight ball and placed it on the table and fetched a fresh cue from the wall. I lined up the shot - come on, baby. Come on, come on, come on - and knocked it in. “YES!” But a half-second later the dog broke free of its chain and bounded over in my direction. I had an olympic second to react; I flipped the table over to startle the Mastiff and made a mad dash for the exit while it made a mad dash for me. But it reached me first, unfortunately, and it snarled and snapped and I held it by the throat an inch from mine. Its breath stunk like the end of the world; like rendered flesh and bone and disease and rot. I gagged and pushed and scrambled back towards the door, and it pounced again and knocked me back down and began biting my bad leg for a second time. I screamed, and I flailed and my hand found a pool cue that’d snapped under the toppled table. I grabbed it and jammed it into the dog’s mouth and scrambled free while it yelped and pawed at its wound. I didn’t wait around to see how or if it released the wood; I simply limped into the coat room, and slammed the door shut. The pain subsided. Three rooms left. Three rooms left. Three rooms left. I opened my eyes after a bit and gave myself another pat-down for good measure. I was intact. The corpse in the study indicated that these hazards weren’t mere illusions, but things did at least appear to reset themselves whenever a door was closed, assuming the player was on the far side of it. I looked around the coat room. A single naked bulb flickered in the center of the ceiling and provided just enough light to illuminate the coats, but not the floor. I didn’t pay much mind to that, though, once I remembered the instructions for proceeding. Find the key in the pocket of the right coat. Naturally there were dozens and dozens and dozens of coats hanging in that place - leather and tweed and business attire and windbreakers and dusters and countless other varieties. I started with the closest one; nothing in that pocket but lint. The same thing awaited me in the pockets of the next four coats too. But it wasn’t until the fifth that I understood it wasn’t lint at all. “Ow! The hell-?” I yanked my hand out of a pocket and found there a red welp, ringed and with a puncture wound in the center of it. I blinked. Then I turned back to the coat, and took it off its hanger and held it upside down until the contents of its pockets were emptied. I heard no clang indicative of a key hitting the floor. But even in the poor lighting I could see the spider hit the ground and scurry off into the shadows. I looked at my hand. It’d begun to swell and fester, and little more than ten seconds had passed since I’d been bitten. From that point forward I opted to empty out the coats rather than reach into the pockets. And without fail, each and every one of them held at least one and as many as four spiders per pocket. By the twentieth coat there was a constant skittering around me as the horde swept across the floor, to and fro and this way and that and over my boots and up my legs. Still no sign of the key. And by then I was losing my nerve. “Ow! Motherf-” I grabbed at my forearm and winced and found there another bite; the culprit had fled before I could return the favor. On my hand the initial wound had swelled to the point that the whole limb felt heavy, and on my legs and ankles were a multitude more such incisions. Whatever species of arachnid this was they carried extremely potent venom in their fangs, and quick-acting stuff to boot. I became sluggish after a dozen or so bites. And then I began to lose control of my muscles - I tripped over my feet, and my breathing slowed, and by the time I found the key in the right-side pocket of the forty first coat I’d checked - I counted them as I went - I could hardly see straight at all. I caught the thing, but I collapsed no sooner than I did. And then came the horde. From the shadows behind me, and in front of me, and on both sides and above me the spiders swarmed. Adrenaline alone gave me the strength to get back up to my feet, but even that was a challenge beyond anything I’d encountered thus far. My body was covered in welts and stinging bites from head to toe. There was spiders on my hands. There were spiders in my shoes. There were spiders in my clothes too - all throughout - and on my neck and on and in my face. Each and every one of the things was biting and feasting as I lumbered clumsily to the door. Each step felt like a mile. And by the time I thumped my right hand onto the knob and managed, after excruciating effort, to insert the key (miraculously I never once dropped it; doing so would undoubtedly be a death sentence) the things were in my ears, and in my nose, and in my mouth. I tried to grit my teeth but so inflamed were all the facial muscles required for that task that I was unable to stop the things from pouring into the opening and down my throat. I couldn’t even gag. All I could do was throw every last inch of strength left in my bones to the task of turning the knob, and pulling open the door with wrists so beaten and so red and so swollen that doing so felt like shattering bones. And when it was open I then had to take steps with feet so enlarged that my shoes themselves felt ready to burst. The light from the next room - what little of it there was - spilled into the coat room and illuminated the bones of at least a dozen other souls who’d never made it. I slammed the door shut behind me and collapsed, and I gasped for air. As had always been the case the wounds reset themselves and I was in good health ; not a single spider crawled on my skin or through my ears or underneath my clothes. But like with the rancid fruit the memory remained. I screamed “WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS PLACE?! HUH?!” There was no answer to that, of course, so in my rage I walked up to the banquet hall table, and grabbed the closest chair, and tossed the thing with all my strength across the surface. Plates and cups flew to the ground and broke there in a thousand pieces among all the other debris. The chair I’d thrown simply tumbled across the length of the table, and stopped at last, near the other end of it. A goblet stood fast at the far side, untouched and unweathered. Drink from the chalice -> portrait gallery. I didn’t move for some time. I simply stared at the thing, and felt it was doing the same to me, not unlike the dog, and I was unable to keep my mind from running wild through the possibilities of what it might contain. Rancid milk I thought. Or a cup of insects, maybe, or fresh blood. And at that point I was so thoroughly exhausted and disheartened that the mere thought of drinking such vile content brought me to tears. But I put one foot in front of the other anyway, and marched over to it, and although it was likely ill advised, I peered inside. It looked like wine, I saw. So I smelled it, and it smelled like wine. Then I picked up the goblet and swished the drink around a bit, and saw it had the same consistency as wine, too. I wiped my eyes and set my resolve and made sure to locate the exit - behind me and to the left - and held my nose and drank the stuff. It tasted sweet. Not like any form of alcohol, as I’d expected, but sweet and thick and cool and refreshing. I downed the drink in its entirety. Then I wiped my mouth, and no sooner did I turn towards the exit and form the thought that was way too easy; what’s the catch? then I noticed that there were now, curiously enough, two exits. Not two exits in any concrete way, but with my vision swimming the way it was I realized there were two of everything, really. Two doors. Two pairs of feet. Four hands, two tables, two goblets. I thought Huh; that’s weird, and then I collapsed onto the ground and was all at once and once again utterly unable to coordinate my movement, and to think, and to make sense of sight, and to breathe. It was punishingly, achingly hard to breathe, in fact - each breath I drew brought fire with it, and before long the poison had swollen shut my throat until no air could pass through it at all. I tried to gasp for air but couldn’t; I tried to reach into my mouth and pry open the airway but got nowhere in that endeavor either. I wretched, and convulsed, and seized and clawed at my throat and made all the motions of gasping desperately without receiving any air at all. The last coherent thought I had was that as usual, salvation could be reached at the exit and nowhere else. So with my body in revolt I commanded it up, and then I stumbled and wobbled and tilted and fell in the direction of that door, and picked myself up and fell again, but a bit closer this time and with a knee full of splinters. Soon it hurt to take in even what little light there was in that damned room, and every movement I made was agonized and cumbersome and burdened. But I’d come too far to give in now; just as I began to black out I reached the door and threw it open and fell through. Only when I slammed it shut could I breathe again. “Haven’t broken me yet, you fucks,” I said. I coughed violently. “Not yet.” The portrait gallery awaited me now. Make it through. By now I’d purged myself of illusions that any room in this demented place would be easy to solve. And the more vague the instructions, the more difficult they’d be to follow. So I looked around for potential hazards and saw none. There were no spiders, there were no dogs, there were no fires, and there were no poisons or falling books either; there wasn’t even proper darkness in that place. It was as old and as broken as any room before it, but a hole in the ceiling allowed the moonlight to pour in and bathe it. And in that light all there was before me was a hallway lined with aged portraits. So I began to walk forward, slowly and deliberately and with every hair on my neck and arms standing straight on up. At first there truly was nothing to fear. But then I turned my attention to the paintings themselves, and I realized that they appeared to be aging. When I stopped so too did that process, but if I moved so much as an inch towards the end of the room (which itself was shrouded in darkness so thoroughly at the bottom I couldn’t see any door at all) then the figures would age. It wasn’t profound or rapid, really, just little things here and there. A new wrinkle would appear. Or their clothes would lose just a bit of their luster. The only one I could see for the entirety of my walk, though, was that mighty centerpiece ahead, of the woman in blue. She aged a year a step as I walked; when I entered the room she was young, and youthful and vibrant, with the sun at her back and a sparkling dress that matched the sky. But halfway through the room even that sky had grown gray. Her hair was nearly white, her smile had fallen to a more tired countenance, and her dress was old and wrinkled and worn and faded. She looked terribly, terribly sad, and all at once I got the impression that I was killing her myself - that every step I took brought her closer to death. I paused for a breather after that, and for a time we stared at each other as I rested. I almost wished I could tell her how sorry I was. I took another aching step forward. Almost there, I told myself. Almost out. My hip stung. My breathing was heavy (yet again although for entirely different reasons), and I’d begun to sweat. I rubbed my hand across my forehead and my smooth scalp and did my best to pace mys- Why is my scalp smooth? I patted the top of my head with both hands. Nothing up there but skin. Then I looked at my hands - they had aged profoundly in just the few minutes since I’d entered this place; wrinkled and veiny and liver spotted and simply old. And all at once I was overwhelmed with dread and fear and anger and confusion. I looked back but knew there was nothing for me there. I could only go forward, but each step brought more pain and more anguish. My joints ached. My eyes became tired. I looked back up to the portrait at the three quarters mark and saw the woman there was now in her eighties or nineties, at the door of death and without even the resolve to frown. I pressed forward and looked down and saw my clothes too had begun to weather and age. I now wore rags, and barely that. It was an exponential falling apart: in the beginning of the room each stepped aged me a month. Then a month became two months, and that became three. By the middle of the place I aged a year for each step, and now - now every footfall brought with it a decade or more. Soon I could no longer stand at all but merely crawl; my elbows shook and they wobbled, and at last - still a mere two or three running strides from where I imagined the door to be (it was still too dark to make out what waited in those shadows) but an eternity away in my condition - I collapsed. There was nothing left. I looked up one final time at the painting. All the flesh was gone; only bones and dirt remained. And then I too was little more than bones. I’d never known true darkness until I passed in Labyrinth. There was nothing at all to see on the other side. Truly nothing; I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and there wasn’t so much as a dull spark at all to give me a sense of direction or context. I was simply floating in empty, unconstructed space, and although time had no meaning here I felt vaguely that I had been there for a very, very long amount of it. Weeks perhaps, or months or years or decades. I was unsure. By the time the door presented itself to me I’d long forgotten about Labyrinth or even who or what I was. I simply opened it like it was the most natural thing in the world, and inside I found a pillar of light that pulsed and beat to a steady rhythm. Like a heart. And then it came back to me. Find the heart to escape. And with that flooded in all the memories of that place. The changing rooms. The rapid decay. The books and the fire and the rancid food and the dog and aging to the door of death all at once. All of it. I willed myself forward and into the light, and… ...And I tumbled out onto the grass. Then I looked up and saw stars there, and I looked around and found myself in front of the mansion at twilight. I felt a quick pang of relief and hope and instinctively repressed it until my pat-down was complete. Then I let it sing. I was alive. I was alive, and I was breathing and I was young again and unharmed, and for the first time in hours, or days, or however in God’s name long it’d been I felt free. I began to laugh and cry at the same time, and while I did I ran away from that horrid place, and through and past the gate, and out to the field where my car was still parked. I made it home an hour or so later and fell into a deep and restful sleep. Suffice to say the wretched experience in Labyrinth completely and utterly cured me of my need to be thrilled by fear. And to you’ll I’ll merely say this: if you ever get a black envelope in the mailbox, toss the damn thing. Or better yet, burn it. submitted by /u/TheJesseClark to r/nosleep [link] [comments]