Inside of my house (and heart) are two cats.
One of them prefers for you to pet him without paying too much attention to him. He will run away if you focus on him with anything resembling intent.
The other will give you a firm skippity-bap with her giant paws if you don't pay attention to her as you pet her.
It's OK to confuse the first for the second. Woe betide anyone who dares to absentmindedly treat her as though she were him.
As a kid, you know what I thought "mythology" meant? Religion not directly based on the Bible.
And I was a Muslim?!?!?!
tfw when I see a post in a group on Zuck's Overgrown Hot-or-Not™ that's comment-locked, and it takes me exactly one (1) second of glancing at the headline to understand wtf happened
I can't believe I've never shared this story with the Internet before. It's how something some random person I don't know and have never met will live in me forever.
It was sometime in the late 90's or early aughts. I was in my early adolescence, so between 11 and 14. I used to regularly read the PennySaver cover to cover. Why? For me, it was one of the few scattered little windows into what everyday life was like for non-famous people outside of my niche world. I also was a fast and voracious reader, but never had enough to read, especially not periodicals.
If you don't know what the Pennysaver is, it was analog Craigslist: That cheaply-printed newsprint booklet that no one subscribed to arrived in everyone's mailbox once a week. Certain ad types cost money to run, plus it ran ads. It was a more family-friendly weekly than, say, your LA Weeklies or, further up the West Coast, The Strangers. Also minus the journalism, I suppose, but there were gay people in it!
Anyway, one week, I'd read something in the PennySaver that started the slow process of catalyzing a change in my life for the better. It wasn't a wanted ad for something I had that turned out to be worth a lot of money. It wasn't a job listing that started my career. It wasn't even for a garage sale that had an item that ended up being important to me.
It was a w4m personal ad. As continues to be the case, those were much rarer than m4[literally anything]. The first sentence was "Thin may be in, but fat's where it's at!"
It was the first time I'd ever seen someone call themself fat in a way that wasn't at all negative, apologetic, or angry. This lady was saying hey, I'm fat! And I think it's a selling point even if the overall culture says it isn't!
I don't recall anything else about the ad other than that it was a woman seeking a man, and that the rest of it was unremarkable. It took a lot of other things to get me to a point of real, lasting comfort with my fatness, of course. But that little quip is stuck in my head for the rest of my life.
Thank you, random lady. I hope you're still alive, kicking, and happy. I hope you found as much love and/or miles of d1ck as you wanted, whether through the ad or by other means.
I made this in MS Word while at a job I hated (:
Could there be anything worse than realizing that you're the ex Chappell Roan is talking about in "Good Luck, Babe!"?
Yes. Yes, there is.
It would be worse to mistake yourself for the ex Chappell Roan is talking about in Good Luck, Babe!
the one that promised me all the riches of Creosote oh my, Mx. Spammer *flutters fan coquettishly*
the one whose sender was named Mr. Sahih Al-Bukhari
the one claiming that Beyoncé is secretly Italian and lying about her age
AND THEN OUT OF ALL OF THOSE THEY ALL USE THE SAME ONE (1) OUTHOUSE ANYWAY
this was what a friend-of-a-friend sent some guy after a single date with him.
While it's true that drugs aren't never the answer, they definitely aren't always the answer.
I'm pretty sure I peaked ~10 years ago. I made this meme while slacking off at work. Took me like 4 minutes in MS Paint (XP version).