Just Post

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25243733

Dear Aldis....

Why are you like this? I show up to buy ramen noodles, and I can't find them. So I think "Did they move them? There's not an empty space on the shelf where they used to be. Either they moved them, or they no longer carry them."

So I ask a person, who's stocking shelves with a look on her face that tells me she's now 3 hours behind schedule and worried about being tied to the rack after her shift and whipped mercilessly. That mixture of anxiety and fear make me even hesitant to break her concentration. So I ask another employee who's seemingly having a staring competition with a milk carton. I can't tell if she's winning or losing. Either way I'm fairly sure she's high as balls. I ask her if they've moved the ramen noodles. The response I'm met with is "Oooooh, yeah, maybe."

........ok? Can you maybe point me in the right direction?

"Well, they're probably getting ready for valentines day. They sometimes change the packaging to be holiday themed".

At this point, I'm thinking she misheard me? Because when the fuck have you EVER seen valentines day themed ramen noodles??? I'm not talking about fancy shit. I'm talking those little tiny packs of noodles you get for like 50 cents each. The cheap shit!

So I ask "No, I'm asking about RAMEN noodles."

and she replies back like I'm stupid "Yeah, we're probably waiting on the valentines day packaging."

Now, I'm fairly sure since I asked twice, and made sure to enunciate clearly the second time, I'm fairly sure she didn't mishear me, but there's still SOME miscommunication going on. I just have no idea what.....so I don't know how to move this conversation along. My brain is really struggling to even comprehend what a valentines day ramen noodle would be. Like, is it just pink packaging with hearts? Are the pre-cooked noodles shaped like a heart instead of a square? Is it a special flavor? I'm totally lost by what we're discussing at this point.

Just then another guy walks by dragging a big cart behind him to stock shelves. And she says over to him "Hey, are we still waiting for the valentines day ramen?" and he says yes. He just agrees with her.

I'm fairly sure they're messing with me at this point. I don't know what is happening or even what to envision with valentines day ramen noodles.

WHAT THE HELL IS IT???

I just googled it, and I'm finding stuffed animals from 5 below in the shape of ramen noodles.....which, just in itself.....what?

I'm finding etsy products where they take ramen noodle imagery, and valentines day imagery, and make a pink wrapper for the noodles......again....what?

But I'm not finding official products from any ramen noodles producer that seem to be real. So. What the hell just happened???

Then I go over to where the hot chocolate packs are. I buy 1 pack every 2 weeks in the winter. The space where they'd normally be is totally empty. So I sigh, and walk away. That week our current temperatures were negative 5. I can fully understand why hot chocolate sold out that week.

Next week I go in. Temperatures are now 25 degrees. Still not warm, but not nipple hardeningly cold as it was. Still though, it's been almost 2 weeks at this point since I had hot chocolate. Still none.

Last week I go. Still a bare shelf. At this point I want to ask an employee if they've stopped carrying it, or if there's some manufacture issue. But that didn't exactly go great last time, and my sanity isn't exactly my strong suit right now. I'm not sure I could handle being told some random bullshit like Marty McFly came back from the distant future year of 2015, and took them all. This was almost a month ago, so I don't think the new tariffs, even if they would be affected, would be in place yet.

And I can't even call Aldi's before I leave my house to go get hot chocolate. I'd love to just call and ask "Hey, is it on the shelf right now? It's not? Well that saves me 45 minutes coming out there for something you don't have! Thanks!"

Instead, I just gotta roll the dice, possibly waste my day off, and don't talk to anyone. That's what obtaining hot chocolate has come to. I'm legitimately considering going to Walgreens......but then I remember that they always have the same cashier, who always wants to talk your ear off. And I'm sorry, but I don't give a shit about your kids. I don't care what award he won in 3rd grade. I don't care about his peanut allergies. I've never met your kids. I have no interest in doing so. I'm just here to buy whatever handful of items you happen to carry that are hard to find elsewhere. Which apparently no longer includes DVD-R's. I wanted to buy a small bundle of maybe 10. I understood I'd be overpaying, but fuck it. I just wanted to get home, use 1, and throw 9 in a drawer to never be used again. But no. Walgreens doesn't even carry them anymore. They'll carry a USB stick of 8gb for $30, but no DVD-R's. In fact the cashier didn't even know what I was talking about. She used the excuse "DVD what? Like the players?" "No, these are like the discs, except they're blank. You can write data to them." "No, we sell some DVD movies that nobody ever buys...." and points to a bin of movies that nobody should ever buy. Why are these here? Why do these even exist at all? Who is ever going to buy a Tim Allen movie called "Restless for the holidays"? See you've never heard of that movie, and don't know if I just made it up, but it serves the example of the level of movies they're carrying in the Walgreens $5 dvd bin. All that to say that no, these dvd's are not DVD-Rs. And she says to me "Oh.....I don't know what they are. I'm too young for that."

Was NOT angry before she said that. I was disappointed. THAT comment brought me to "NOW LISTEN HERE YA LITTLE SHIT!!!" levels of anger internally. Holy shit. I have a good poker face, so she never even knew I was mad, but oh my god.

All of this entire post just to say, that I'm cold in my apartment, and instead of using my new electric kettle I got in December, I'm sitting at my desk in a sweater! A SWEATER!!! LIKE A PLEB!!! ARE YOU HAPPY ALDI'S??? YOU DID THIS!!!!

I just have to be adequately insured first.

contemporary text

Call it a midlife crisis. Call it a justifiable reaction to what reality around me has become. Call it a complete breakdown of my mental well being. Just don't call it a comeback. There's no coming back from this.

I figure I'll just let go. Go into the light. I'm still alive, but mentally I'll be already gone.

Weeeeeeee!!! Let's fall down on the ice again, and explode into a million pieces, and eat some rock candy! That's not candy! It's my toe! That's what Joe Walsh used to say. Smoooooooke on the water......a pencil in your eye........

stares blankly at a wall

That leprechaun smells like toast.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/30958323

So I'm walking home, and there's this little tiny bit of ice. Psssshhhhh big deal. I got this. I walk over worse ice than this every day! This is childs play! Bitch please!!! This ice ain't nothin!!!! Why you makin' my life worried about ice? Ain't nothin but a thaaaaang! Just some frozen water on the sidewalk! No big deal!

What I'm trying to express is that I was not concerned about a thin layer of ice on the sidewalk.

Well I step over it. I thought I stepped over it. I stepped on it. So I start slipping. No big deal, I'll just position my other foot on the unpacked layer of snow, to get some traction. All of this took place in all of 0.5 seconds.

Well I do that, and turns out I stepped on MORE ice. So I'm like "oh shit, there's a genuine chance I might fall here.......oh, actually, I think I'm falling. I think I might legitimately be falling. OH SHIT I AM FALLING! I should prepare an impact stratagy. Ok. So basically I want to tuck my chin forward, spread my arms and shoulders, and curl my knees. That's going to spread the point imact over a greater space while preventing my head from impact. Also, with curled knees, my legs shouldn't break upon impact as long as I roll WITH the impact. I mean, worst case scenario, you get a bruise.

Yeah, I had all of 0.5 seconds to formulate that plan. So even though my instinct kicked in, and I did what I could, I didn't have time to actually engage my plan. I just sort of slipped, and suddenly my knee hurts. Took the fall mostly on my knee. One second I'm up, and walking, the next I'm on the ground, wondering how I'm going to get up.

Now, it's 3 hours later and my thumb really hurts. I didn't even know my thumb was part of the landing. But it hurts now, and it's purple. And it's the biggest "injury" I got from the fall. Mild bruise on my knee, but my thumb is purple.

I made an owwie, and now I'm bored on the internet at 4AM. No I didn't hit my head. I'm not loopy. I'm just a weird person. I'm eating potatoes.

I haven't read these yet, but I will soon. This is in response to the United States using drones to enact ethnic cleansing. This was a breakneck search, but if anyone has a good in-depth article for countering drone warfare, please let me know.

NATO.int | Countering Drones: Looking for the Silver Bullet

NDUPress.ndu.edu | Breaking the Shield: Countering Drone Defenses

Claws.in | Drone and Counter-Drone Warfare at a Tactical Level

A good idea would be for drone hobbyists to outfit theirs with weapons. It's incredibly important, too, to target factories, and develop chemicals, EMPs, and other technologies that can disrupt drone functioning (drones are quite fragile). Hopefully China, or otherwise industralized states, developing drones en masse can send some to resistance groups.

This past Friday my best friend Kai took his life at Lahilahi. I'm not trying to dump this on any one but its been the hardest thing I've had to go through since my own suicide attempt almost 20 years ago. I made this video to share with our community and to cherish his memory, but I also consider you, lemmy, a part of my community. So I'm sharing this with you because you are all part of my ohana. But if you have someone in your life that you are worried about please cherish them. Its so easy to get wrapped up in our own struggles and miss those who are falling behind around us.

I'm posting it here because there is no place I could find more appropriate.

Saw this meme floating around and have no idea if the comparison is accurate or just a joke.

broke my ankle. feel stupid.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24177573

I said when Trump won the election that we were leaving to the UK. I am a dual national with the UK and the US, but I never actually bothered doing anything about it before. But my daughter is queer and she is just not safe in the U.S. in our view*, so we are taking the opportunity to get out. I think some people here didn't believe it, but we have our plane tickets and we will be there on January 21st.

We are leaving on the 20th because we are thinking that if Trump starts rounding up immigrants right a way, a lot of people who are in the U.S. legally will freak the fuck out anyway and who knows when we'll be able to get tickets. So we're just leaving. I'll have time to see what happens when the fascist rapist felon get sworn in and then we'll be out of here.

I was originally going to wait until I got a job to go because it will be easier to get a family visa once I get a job and, of course, I'll be eating through what money we can scrounge together from things like selling my car, but I have already had two interviews cancelled because I'm not in the country and I'm sure having a U.S. phone number doesn't help (I realize I could have spoofed that with a UK number, but it literally didn't occur to me until today). Even with the interviews I have scheduled next week, the chance of me getting hired before Trump gets into office are pretty low.

We will be staying with an old high school friend of mine for a few days until I find a place to rent by the week as I look for work. We have absolutely no plans about where to live. I will go wherever the work takes us as long as we're there.

My wife is going to stay behind and take care of affairs like selling the house. My daughter is in online school, so she can stay in that until we get the family visa and can enrol her in a UK school. Because she's my daughter, once she has a family visa, she can immediately apply for permanent residency status. My wife will also be able to much more easily get a job on a family visa.

The nicest part is that we can bring the dogs over without having to put them in quarantine. That won't happen until I get a job either, but I am glad we will be reunited soon.

So we will be off in a week. Will I still post a lot on Lemmy once we get there? That remains to be seen.

Goodbye, America. I don't know if I'll ever come back, but I hope I can at least return to visit.

*I know some of you are going to say she won't be safe in the UK either. They are banning conversion therapy there and schools have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bullying queer kids. Plus, the education system there is not going to turn to dogshit to the point the U.S. already has and it's only going to get worse. It's all around better for her there.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23995408

Today, January 6th, is the 12th day of Christmas. You know, the one from the song. It is called Epiphany and in many countries it is celebrated as Three Kings Day.

If your family celebrates it, I hope you got a nice present!

FUCK YOU!!!

That shit is OVER! Take down your decorations. You're past the socially accepted limit.

Unless your name is Mick Foley. He's allowed to be as crazy as he wants. When YOU fall 18 feet to your death, twice in 30 minutes, and still get up breathing......yeah, nobody gonna mess with the hardcore legend.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/23873991

I like this video because of how little assumptions it seems to make about my values. That's why I think it's something for everyone.