I caused ~$100k damage to my middle school.

I am going to fuzz some of the details for obvious reasons, but when I was in 8th grade, I was dealing with a chaotic home life and had just moved for the 3rd time in 8 years across the country. I hated the school and didn’t really have friends so developed some destructive habits.

Our physical education teacher was a lazy, creepy, moron who would force us to run laps for an hour which let him sit in his office. He’d berate kids and give them mean racist nicknames and if you refused he would give you an F for your midpoint report which meant you couldn’t participate in any other sport or extracurricular activity the school sponsored. The class was half the grade at a time so it was over a hundred kids including the disabled kids and sometimes would just leave us unsupervised for an hour. At one point he crudely encouraged on two kids with downs syndrome make out, which they did while he watched and laughed and made fun of them. Just an evil spiteful man.

So before and after class we had 15 minutes to get ready so I would go around the locker room and find anything that would fit in a toilet and flush it. Towels, clothes, backpacks, food, pencils, paper - all of it in the toilet. They had insane flush power so would violently suck it all down and I thought it was just funny. I did it off and on for a month.

One day we heard gym was cancelled and then the school was cancelled the next day because of a facilities issue. Apparently the gym flooded pretty badly. We had to start having gym outside. Then after a couple weeks we had a school wide assembly and the superintendent was there and explained that a group of people had been flushing stuff down the toilet and they had to do a massive, emergency plumbing project that cost them $100k+. They were super mad and told us they already knew almost everyone who did it but if you come forward you won’t get expelled. Yeah, sure.

Anyway, I had no friends and no one knew I was doing it so I just didn’t say anything and got away with it. Also, a few years later the gym teacher was fired allegedly for some sexual misconduct issue.

I know!

The puzzles were the best part for me, and are undeniably good. I did do a deep dive into the settings too when I started to get frustrated and those options were key.

I tried very hard, but I did not enjoy The Outer Wilds.

For those who don’t know, it is a first person exploration game over ~12 planets within a small solar system. There is a core game loop that lasts about 20 minutes wherein you can fly your ship anywhere and explore until the cycle ends.

The thing I really disliked was that you only got ~10-15 minutes of exploration before you had to restart the cycle back at home and go back to where you started. There was also a plethora of environmental hazards that were instant death, all while you had oxygen and fuel to manage. Dying would also reset the cycle so it wasn’t uncommon to spend 5+ minutes getting somewhere only to die and restart a few times. It just made me frustrated.

I did complete it with the help of mods that let me teleport to the key locations. People really liked the story but it really didn’t hit for me. I feel like I was born with the cilantro gene for this game because I really didn’t like it.

Exactly!

I posted to the DnD 5e subreddit about a contradiction in the rules between how elementals and demons are summoned, suggesting that someone can summon a demon who can summon their own demon and so on, forever. Rules as Written allowed it and Rules as Intended also seemed to allow it given summoning elementals explicitly restricted doing summoning lesser elementals all the way down.

Anyway I got about to about 50 downvotes because I said I would allow a player to summon a demon who could summon a demon (who could potentially summon another demon) because, well, DnD. Fuck me I guess.

Sports - Viagra Boys

I heard this on the radio at work near when it released and I laughed so hard that I had to walk into the back. Completely forgot about it then found it organically youtube a few years ago and had the same reaction. Is it the best? Well, no. But it is a unique experience.

I get the sentiment, but it’s not that simple. The kid picking up someone else’s script isn’t a crime. Me denying or filling the script is a professional discretion. Also the company I was working at would not have supported me.

It was legitimate. They arrested the kid later that day and it was in the news. I did have that thought though.

Correct. He was clearly just mad that I frustrated his plans. I didn’t even consider reporting it because it wouldn’t have resulted in anything. We had a bad reputation with the DEA since we were a high volume pharmacy so we had more staff and high turnover. All that led to more than the average amount of employees stealing/selling drugs. We had some pretty sneaky ways of catching it and always reported but all that meant is more work for them and not much credibility.

I guess it technical made money but Kung Pow! Enter the Fist.

I saw it in theater and remember everyone laughing through the whole thing. Absolutely absurd re-dubbing of a couple of old kung fu movies by the guy that later wrote and directed Ace Ventura and wrote the Jimmy Neutron movie. The reviews were utterly horrible (deservedly) but undeniably funny. I still quote it all the time.

For the unaware that where the “That’s a lot of nuts!” comes from.

Years ago I was working as a pharmacist in a very busy pharmacy in a city center. This was during the opioid epidemic in America and being a high volume store, had a lot of regulatory oversight on our controlled substance dispensing.

One Friday evening a young kid came in with a prescription that he said was for his grandmother. It was for a lot of oxycodone from a city two hours away. He had two girls with him when he dropped off the prescription and had never filled with us before, and wanted to pay cash. We had a policy that we didn’t fill prescriptions for maintenance controlled substances for new patients >100mi from our address. We only got so much of each controlled substance so we adopted the policy so we’d have enough for our regular patients. I told him we couldn’t fill it. He started to get angry and mouth off but left.

Cut to Monday which was my next shift and there is a folder with the DEA logo on the front of it in front of my terminal. I ask what it is to someone who worked the weekend and they said an agent dropped it off. I open it and the only thing inside is a business card slotted into those slits you sometimes see on the face of one of the pockets. I call the number and after some introductions the agent asks me if I was the one who denied the prescription on Friday. I confirm and the guys says that it was part of a multi-jurisdiction sting operation to catch a mid-level dealer who was buying scripts from people. He told me I wasted a bunch of their time and next time to just fill it. I told him it’s emphatically my job to not do that and that I didn’t appreciate him using my store since we had a bunch of other issues that local police weren’t dealing without him adding to it but he just hung up. Whatever.

My heart dropped when I saw that folder though and I’m sure that is what he wanted when he did it.

For example, someone who owns a small one man trades business. They don’t get healthcare through their employment so they need to buy it retail.

I have had a David S. Pumpkins suit since just after it aired and I wear it every year.

I have been catcalled twice by other men wearing it. They were very aggressive.

I am also in a stock photo of a business meeting where I am wearing the suit and there are about 30 people wearing normal clothing because I went to a conference on 10/30 where they encouraged costumes, showed up an hour late and had to sit in the front row. The picture is taken of me sitting there hungover and looking tired and everyone else smiling.

It’s the most flammable suit I own.

No regrets.

As good as the 1995 movie was, and it was good, the Techno Syndrome Mortal Kombat song was a certified banger.

Honorable mention to Blood Rave from the Blade Soundtrack

One that I read that I found interesting is in the busking community is “fat hats!”. Since they sometimes use a hat to collect donations, it’s an expression that you hope they collect a lot of money.

When I was 7 my parents took me to Sea World (it was a long time ago and I was too young to recognize the cruelty of their enclosures). My dad told them it was my birthday and they picked me to be the kid that participates in one of the shows. The whales were rebelling though (obvious why now), and they ended up canceling the show. The trainer held me back though and let me go in the back with him to their home pool.

There was a fat yellow line about 15 feet from the perimeter of the pool and I asked why. The trainer told me to take a step over the line. I did and within 2 seconds an adult male orca crested his eye above the water to look at me, just stationary in the water. It was the most potent flight or fight response in my life and I just froze. Those things weigh 5 tons and can move at 35mph and you can see their intelligence in their eyes.

That quickly ended my fascination with whales as a kid.

As I was writing it out I realized it was the latest book. 😆

Probably exists but I had the idea for a roguelike Mario Kart-like game.

The player goes through a tournament of races, getting currency both on the track and via placement and buying weapons/consumables/upgrades at a shop at the end of races. Tournaments begin showing all the details of the tracks, other racers, and environmental concerns but as you progress to get less information and the other racers get more aggressive. Some consumables/modifications can change the environment (e.g., you can get a permanent rain cloud above you to make the track wet around and behind you which would be helpful if you bought the high traction tires).

Placing in the top three wins the run, so the player needs to manage maintaining their tournament standing with taking a longer route and getting enough currency on the track (or stealing it from others through modifications/consumables).

I read somewhere once that their agent would book them at any festival that would accept them. That lead to them getting booed a lot where they didn’t match the rest of the lineup. People began to anticipate them and became a heel type character to avid concert goers.