so apparently my friend owns a haunted photograph and he’s literally just told me this after two fucking years when he KNOWS how much i love haunted artefacts i can’t believe the audacity
i was like “how haunted are we talking here, is it just a vaguely cursed image or does it actually have Demonic Properties”
and he said “well i’ve never seen the actual image because my dad keeps it in a sealed envelope inside a safe, but whenever he takes it out you can hear voices screaming for help and you feel sick and sometimes you see dark figures moving around in your peripherals”
okay so, firstly, how is it that we’ve been friends for 2 years and this information has never come up, and secondly why the fuck do you still have it
according to his dad the image is of a man riding a model train set and it was given to him by a mysterious stranger in a pub who refused to tell anyone his real name
this is. this is literally a horror movie. this is a direct-to-video minimal-budget terribly-acted horror movie made by a bunch of film students in the nineties. i absolutely love it
me: “bring it round here and we can do the ouija board on it"
him: “nah, i try to stay away from that kind of stuff. if i don’t understand it then i don’t fuck with it.”
bold words from a man who stores haunted artefacts in the basement of his goddamn house
I scrolled back up to confirm this wasn’t onetimeidreamed
Reminded again of one story from our drama teacher in high school, which I thought was pretty funny then and appreciate in some different ways now.
She grew up in Baltimore, and got a rather startling introduction to some cultural differences not that long after moving to a small town in Southwest Virginia to take a teaching job.
One day, she looked out and saw some guy just casually walking down the street, carrying a shotgun. And…nobody else seemed to notice or care? There was certainly no screaming or sirens. It was very weird.
At least she did take a cue from the total lack of alarm from some neighbors who were out in their yard, and didn’t call the cops herself. But, you couldn’t have paid her to go out there for a while, just in case.
Definitely not in Baltimore anymore!
Yeah, my automatic assumption in that case would be that he was probably taking it to show a friend, or something like that. Barely worth noticing unless the person is acting squirrelly. Just not something I would have been that surprised to see.
But yeah, very different experiences and expectations in Hillbillyland compared to most urban areas and some other parts of the country.
Not too surprisingly, I’ve ended up disconcerted in the other direction on multiple occasions since moving to Greater London.
Including when my uncle and his family came for a visit when I’d been here a couple of years.
While they were doing touristy stuff, they went to the London Eye. And everyone involved got a bit of a surprise when they went through security to get in, and my baby cousin (probably 15 at that point) pulled out a totally standard pocket knife to leave there if they insisted.
I think that may have even been the same model (with under a 4" blade). Like I said, a very standard type of pocket knife back home. I was mostly surprised he was the only one of the family carrying one that day, because they’re handy tools and that’s just kinda what you do, but yeah. (And honestly I still usually do, aware that someone might eventually turn it into an issue. ETA: Though that’s less likely to happen, not being a young man.)
The security guy just couldn’t believe that (a) a kid had this Big Scary Knife at all, and (b) his crazy American family didn’t seem at all concerned about it. In the end, they didn’t totally confiscate the knife, but he did get some stern warnings to leave it wherever they were staying from now on. Which I think he actually did, because jfc.
They were amused afterwards, to say the least. I wasn’t along that day, but I can imagine.
That is the most Goldblumiest thing to say. I believe it.
About 15 years ago, I was at the Helen Hayes Awards in DC. At some point during the night, I was standing at the food tables looking down at it all, getting a snack because awards shows are long, and I start talking to the person beside me. It was nothing brilliant, just a little snark about the food and whatever. We had a lovely conversation over the hors d’oeuvres and we made each other laugh. As we were both walking away from the table, I looked up to wish him a good evening and it was Jeff Goldblum. I have no idea what the look on my face was, but he just smiled at me and walked away.
“i can leave the door open while i’m cleaning my bathroom,” i reasoned to myself. “surely my beloved cat, Meatball, isn’t dumb enough to try and jump into an open toilet full of Clorox”
i caught this tiny-little fool MID-FUCKING-AIR. i watched him start leaping and time literally slowed down. and then he had the audacity, the NERVE, to beep indignantly at me for ruining his plans
Once the children were asleep, Sajjad headed out on an urgent shopping mission. “We are Muslims and we’d never had a Christmas tree in our home. But these children were Christian and we wanted them to feel connected to their culture.”
The couple worked until the early hours putting the tree up and wrapping presents. The first thing the children saw the next morning was the tree.
“I had never seen that kind of extra happiness and excitement on a child’s face.“ The children were meant to stay for two weeks – seven years later two of the three siblings are still living with them.
this is a beautiful article and i just want to include a few other highlights from the above family as well as another profiled:
…she focuses on the positives – in particular how fostering has given her and Sajjad an insight into a world that had been so unfamiliar. “We have learned so much about English culture and religion,” Sajjad says. Riffat would read Bible stories to the children at night and took the girls to church on Sundays. “When I read about Christianity, I don’t think there is much difference,” she says. “It all comes from God.”
The girls, 15 and 12, have also introduced Riffat and Sajjad to the world of after-school ballet, theatre classes and going to pop concerts. “I wouldn’t see many Asian parents at those places,” she says. “But I now tell my extended family you should involve your children in these activities because it is good for their confidence.” Having the girls in her life has also made Riffat reflect on her own childhood. “I had never spent even an hour outside my home without my siblings or parents until my wedding day,” she says.
Just as Riffat and Sajjad have learned about Christianity, the girls have come to look forward to Eid and the traditions of henna. “I’ve taught them how to make potato curry, pakoras and samosas,” Riffat says. “But their spice levels are not quite the same as ours yet.” The girls can also sing Bollywood songs and speak Urdu.
“I now look forward to going home. I have two girls and my wife waiting,” says Sajjad. “It’s been such a blessing for me,” adds Riffat. “It fulfilled the maternal gap.”
[…]
Shareen’s longest foster placement arrived three years ago: a boy from Syria. “He was 14 and had hidden inside a lorry all the way from Syria,” she says. The boy was deeply traumatised. They had to communicate via Google Translate; Shareen later learned Arabic and he picked up English within six months. She read up on Syria and the political situation there to get an insight into the conditions he had left.
“It took ages to gain his trust,” she says. “I got a picture dictionary that showed English and Arabic words and I remember one time when I pronounced an Arabic word wrong and he burst out laughing and told me I was saying it wrong – that was the breakthrough.”
The boy would run home from school and whenever they went shopping in town, he kept asking Shareen when they were going back home. She found out why: “He told me that one day he left his house in Syria and when he had come back, there was no house.” Now he’s 18, speaks English fluently and is applying for apprenticeships. He could move out of Shareen’s home, but has decided to stay. “He is a very different person to the boy who first came here,” she says, “and my relationship with him is that of a mother to her son.”
One of the contractors at work drove past my shack on a forklift yesterday, stopped, backed up to my window and said, “hey, do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?”
My knee jerk response when asked this, even if it’s by a companionable dude old enough to be my dad, is to go, “uh, nah-” and then ramble uncomfortably until someone stops me-
-which is what I started to do, only to be cut off by Contractor saying, in an embarrassed rush, “some of the guys were asking me because you and I talk sometimes, but I didn’t want them to hit on you at work, so I told them that you Worship the Devil and would Hex them if they tried. I’m sorry.”
Which leaves me wheezing helplessly, trying to get my shit together, because this is honestly one of the nicest, most hysterical things I’ve ever heard someone say to me.
Oblivious to this, Contractor then follows up with, “and they were like ‘forreal??’ so I was like, ‘yeah, she’s probably a sadist, too, you can tell by her jewelry. She’ll stab you or something.’”
And tbh I can’t even come up with anything witty to say in response, so all I manage to choke out is, “pleASE LET THEM CONTINUE TO THINK THAT, I’M BEGGING YOU.”
And Contractor just smiles and is like, “Okay! I just wanted to let you know!” before driving off with his forklift.
Like?? Thank god for Contractor tbh. He’s an angel among men, and I hope the rest of his life is filled with prosperity and happiness and like, that he finds $20 on the ground every week for the rest of his life.
Update: Every time Contractor sees me, he does a little Devil Horns gesture at me and its adorable.
Update the Second: I saw Contractor while doing my tour and he told me that the guy that asked if I was single was around, and that if I saw him, I should just make complicated hand gestures at him while I walk by to scare him off.
I’m gonna pitch a show as “like Game of Thrones but even more gritty and realistic” and then it’s nothing but a baron handling land estimates and organizing road repairs and stuff. There’ll be an entire episode about how a peasant gets brought to court for letting milk cattle graze on communal pastureland even though it’s supposed to be reserved for draft animals.
my ten-episode plan from the writer’s room of this blessed show: –ep. 1: meet the accounting staff of this magical kingdom in a far-off land –ep. 2: land estimates, plenary powers of wizards employed by the office of the royal treasury, and how tax code intersects with succession laws of absolute primogeniture when the lineage in question may have extra-planar ancestry –ep. 3: a full-hour hearing with flashbacks on how mrs. Jones’ cow grazing actually violates three local statutes, is in line with a conflicting royal decree (potentially issued under ensorcelled compulsion), and is entitled to binding arbitration via fey courts. mrs. jones is not entitled to said arbitration, the cow is. –ep. 4: how land rights and taxation applies to druid circles and sentient treefolk, especially when said land is technically owed fealty to both a human and inhuman entity. we never see any treefolk. –ep. 5: the differing rights and responsibilities of yeomen who freehold land near a lord’s manse vs. yeomen who freehold land held by the lord’s vassals vs. burghers in cities surrounded by forty-foot high gilded walls inscribed with runes so terrible they will burn a man’s flesh just from touching. extensive tax comparisons are made based on type of property held and crop status (cereal crop taxed x, but fiber crops taxed y). –ep. 6 – 9: ep. 3 but for a host of other problems: conflicting tax status for nobles who hold different positions (especially if they technically owe themselves fealty), bridges (just like…in general), a revolt started by a miller, and tax-deductible status for magical family heirlooms and whether or not being part of a dragon’s hoard can be considered “held in escrow.” –ep. 10: the queen kills the king. this is never explained but on a rewatch, isn’t surprising. it does rattle the staff as they look to cook the books and make sure they get paid as revolution sweeps the land. a brief aside is delved into concerning mercenaries. this takes less than five minutes; the rest of the episode concerns a detailed archive of back-taxes owed by the rebel dukes.
There are certain stories told around the campfire that transcend
from whispered words to pure legend. There are also tales retold in the
veterinary sphere, obscuring confidential client details of course,
which seem unbelievable at first but certainly happened somewhere, some
time.
This is one of them.
Once upon a time, a young family had a black and white cat named Sox. They had absolutely been planing to desex and microchip Sox, but life unfortunately got busy and Sox went missing before they could get this done.
After a week of searching, they very luckily found Sox at the pound. Sox was desexed and microchipped before being released, and they gladly took their cat home.
I’ll tell you what’s ferocious. Freddie’s comeback to Sid calling him “Freddie Platinum” when they were recording down the hall from each other at London’s Wessex Studios (Queen for News of the World, Pistols for Bollocks).
Sid Vicious made the mistake one day of bursting into Queen’s control room and antagonizing their frontman. “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses, then?” he sneered. “Oh, yes, Simon Ferocious,” Mercury replied. “We’re trying our best, dear.”
Then, according to Queen biographer Daniel Nester, Freddie rose from his chair and began to playfully flick the safety pins displayed on the front of Sid’s leather jacket. “Tell me,” he asked, “did you arrange these pins just so?” When Sid stepped forward in an attempt to intimidate Freddie, the singer simply pushed him backwards and inquired, “What are you going to do about it?” Sid immediately backed down. [x]
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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