A dude comes in my store every day to get gas and beer. On the weekends he pulls up in his giant RV. If I don’t see him for a week (pretty regular thing), when he does come back he’s been on vacation in that RV. His happy, healthy kids come in and get their drinks.

Recently he asked me if I knew anyone who could drive a medical taxi. He has a company which takes people to doctors visits. Insurance pays for it.

“I can’t find anyone to work. No one wants to work anymore. I have 10 vehicles parked right now.”

“What’s the pay? Do you do drug tests?”

MINIMUM FUCKING WAGE. DRUG TESTS.

I just told him, “dude, McDonald’s is paying $14.50 right now, starting wage. Paying people the bare damn minimum, you’ll either get them fresh out of prison or jacked up on meth. Like, holy shit man. Minimum wage? For a job that requires drug testing? You aren’t suffering. I see you taking your RV on vacation constantly. Fucking pay your employees bro. Those parked cars could be bringing in free money but rather than look at the problem, you think people don’t want to work. Pay 50 cents more than McDonalds and I’ll come work tomorrow.”

Nope. Stubborn, greedy bastard would rather have 10 cars parked.

Fuck that whole class of people.

My uncle visited the Philippines. When he came back he went on and on, “They’re poor, some don’t have running water and they got dirt for floors. They work so hard though, and they’re so loyal. I wish I could find people like that here in the states. Not people constantly asking for more. People who are happy with what they have and are loyal. You can’t find anyone loyal to anything but themselves here.”

I nearly vomited hearing that shit.

“Why won’t people just make me rich here without worrying about their piece of the pie. I don’t have enough luxury vehicles. My house isn’t a castle like it should be.” Was all I heard.

It’s disgusting.

I really do hate myself for a lack of sympathy in this situation, but these people need to experience what they’re doing to everyone else.

What’s sad is that people who agree with her won’t see the threat to her life as a valid reason either. They don’t know her so they don’t care for her. They’ll lump her in with the people they torment outside of Planned Parenthood regularly.

Just another woman who spread her legs and is too cowardly to accept the will of god.

I’ll be honest, I’m burned out. I need a break from morons and their stories. I really do.

I loved going to my grandfather’s house as a kid. It wasn’t mine, but it felt like it belonged to all of us. He built it with his own hands. I put my little handprints in the basement. My aunt inherited it when he died. I can go there today and look in the closet where I wrote all of my relative’s phone numbers on the wall for emergencies when I was 5 years old. Every one of his grandkids can go to that house and see their life everywhere. They can feel connected to their family and their memories.

My aunt’s kids have grown up there now, her daughter graduates this year. She’ll be able to have that same experience.

If I ever have grandkids, they’ll have to drive by the shit apartments that I’m stuck in and feel nothing.

Millennials existed in a world where they seen ownership, experienced ownership. Our movies belonged to us. Our games belonged to us. Everything is a service or something we can’t afford.

I love my Steam Deck, but nothing on it belongs to me. That is the world I live in from the top to the bottom.

If I want to remove the ugly 1970s wood paneling and paint my living space to match me as a person, nope. Gotta ask my fucking owner and he’ll say no. He could sell it tomorrow or die, and if they tell me to get lost, I gotta get lost.

I took over payments on my childhood home when I was 21. The roof hadn’t been repaired in my lifetime. When I was a kid I put a tarp over my desk to keep the rain from destroying my computer. When I was 23 I fell through the floor in the bathroom.

If I had known just how hard it would be to obtain a place of my own, I wouldn’t have let that place go. I would have lived in it until it collapsed. If I could go back in time I’d tell younger me to suck whatever dick I had to suck to keep it, right there in that terrible poverty stricken hellhole of an Appalachian neighborhood.

My mom bought that place for 40k. 5 bedrooms. A huge house. We were poor so we couldn’t keep with repairs, but it was ours.

I don’t know. Bums me the fuck out. I’d love to have a home for my children.

And they have so damn much money that giving him the PS5 would have been like you or me flicking a penny to the kid.

People suck sometimes, I swear.

As a child I loaded an air rifle with pixie stix and shot my shirtless friend in the chest with it.

In my mind, it was going to be like some three stooges cloud of flour that would turn his face pink kind of like this. (Best I could find)

What happened instead was his entire chest was pouring blood and filled with burning pixie stix powder. I’m so glad I didn’t shoot him in the face. See, I was aiming for my brother who was the same height as me at the time and my buddy happened to be the one who came through the door.

He was a damn good friend too. The adults weren’t brought in on the matter. We cleaned the wounds with peroxide and waited years to tell anyone haha.

God I miss being a kid. I miss my old friends.

I am currently babysitting a 13 year old boy almost every day. Why? Because CPS says he can’t be alone.

He’s mature. He’s smart. He’s quiet. He is COMPLETELY capable of taking care of himself. His dad works 6 hour shifts at most.

The issue is, his dad went to jail for drugs. He’s been sober, he’s been working, he’s been fighting like hell to provide a decent life for his kids.

He’s not allowed to have his girlfriend around them, so he’s paying for two apartments and they can only spend time together coming up when the boy is in school.

I mean, sure, the dad hasn’t been a saint. But man oh man, they’re doing everything the can to make sure he fails.

He was taking suboxone, got the shot instead, realized he wasn’t experiencing withdrawal and dropped that. Well, now he has to prove that he will have detectable amounts in his system for up to a year, and then they’re going to MAKE him go back on suboxone to keep his son.

It’s madness the hoops some people have to jump through, meanwhile a childhood friend was starved and beaten regularly and they wouldn’t remove him from the home until his parents burned down a neighbor’s house and went to prison for arson.

When we were kids and we’d discuss what we wanted to be when we grew up, his answer was, “my mom’s murderer.”

When she did pass, he cried his eyes out for never reaching out to her and was one of the pallbearers.

I don’t get why things have to be such a mess.

Oh boy oh boy. Story time.

So around 2015 I got a call at work from an ex-girlfriend. I was 100% certain that the first time I had sex with her had occurred in 2008.

She informed me that it was actually in 2007 when we got drunk and ended up crashing at a friends place.

The whole point of her call was to tell me that she had a daughter, and that daughter was mine. I watched that baby for her when she was about 6 months old. It never even crossed my mind.

She had me totally convinced. I called my old friend who informed me that we did in fact have sex night and that he heard us and was annoyed by it. The timing was perfect. Uh oh.

Anyway, I always liked her. I didn’t think I had any reason to distrust her. So, like the fool I am, I just went with it.

She said that she didn’t tell me because of my heavy drinking, drug use, and promiscuity. She didn’t think I was cut out to be a dad, but then she seen through social media how good I was with my kids and decided she was wrong, all these years later. Things started seeming off pretty quick. She told me that a friend of hers passed away in a car accident, and she always told the daughter that he was her father.

Deeper than that, though, she told his family he was the father.

She told me that the little girl was that family’s link to him and that she didn’t want to break their hearts. But she wanted me to know, and she wanted me to have a relationship with my daughter. I thought it was fucked up that she had done that, but I certainly didn’t want to crush some mother’s heart who lost her young son in an accident and miraculously found that he had left a child for her to love.

She said that I could come around and that we would let the kid know when she was older.

We first agreed to meet at a park, I went and sat there for two hours and she never showed up. Then she apologized and said something came up, she wanted to meet at the petting zoo that was in town. I went to the petting zoo, sat there for a while, and she never showed up. She told me that she would be in touch with me, that she was sorry things kept coming up.

At that point, I had still refused to get a cell phone because I am so antisocial. I didn’t want to have to talk to people or answer people when I was outside of my home or my job. I didn’t get a cell phone until 2019, I always used an iPod touch with a VOIP app. So whenever I was left hanging, I just had to wait.

I ended up talking with the kid on the phone a few times, she was a very sweet kid, but very troubled. That trouble I knew, had to come from somewhere.

The last time we scheduled to meet, I got a call the day before. It was her sister.

“angryseal, I have always liked you. When I found out my sister was talking to you again, I couldn’t just sit by and let you get scammed. You are not the first long lost father, you’re probably about the 5th. To give you a clue how awful my sister is, she met a lonely older man who has spent his entire life taking care of his sick mother. He never had time to date, and after his mom passed he went out and had the misfortune of meeting my sister. She was at his house one night and noticed a bank statement with a large number. She hatched a plan and called him up a few weeks later. She told him she had cancer and that she couldn’t afford the surgery and was going to die if she didn’t get it. It was early enough that all she needed was a surgery, and that surgery was 40k. This man gave her 40,000 dollars, she called him one more time to say the surgery was successful and then she ghosted him. She blew all of that money vacationing with another man in Florida. They probably spent half of it on cocaine. You tell my sister that you want a DNA test and you will never hear from her again.”

What!? Ok.

So the next time we spoke, I told her that it wasn’t anything personal, I just didn’t want heartbreak on down the line and I told her I’d like to get a DNA test. “How dare you? What, you don’t trust me? I have never been anything but good to you! You know what?! I’ve done just fine raising her without you up to now and I’ll keep doing fine, you asshole!”

I have never heard from her again.

I still think about that pretty often haha. What a world we live in.

I don’t understand how these kids get caught. They gotta be really slow or something.

I was caught 0 times as a teenager. My mom never found my porn.

My brother was caught a few times. My cousin was caught in the damn car on a family vacation with OTHER PEOPLE IN THE CAR just yanking his noodle under a blanket.

I was so cautious as a kid. I guess because I was caught and thoroughly shamed when I was about 4 years old. Maybe that’s why I never got caught when I was old enough for it to matter. That shame gave me a lifelong lesson.

I had a motion detecting toy dinosaur at the bottom of the stairs. When someone approached the stairs it would go, “raaaaaawr, raaaaaawr” and I’d be sitting at the foot of the bed reading a book by the time someone got upstairs.

If they suspected anything, didn’t matter. I was reading.

When I got high speed internet (as it was called in those days) I threw out the tapes and magazines. I had a separate hard drive I’d plug into my computer juuuuuust in case, and since I was always messing with and tearing into my computer, my mom never found anything. That drive had Linux, my mom was scared of Linux.

Now that I think about it, holy shit they fucked me up haha.

When they caught me as a little guy my mom said, “oh shamy, shamy.” And my dad said, “you keep messing with that thing and it’ll fall off and you’ll turn into a girl.” They spent the whole day giving me that, “oh you shameful creature” look.

Haha, man. Wow.

Yeah, maybe my people just messed me up.

I’ve had this happen.

I was dreaming there were all of these people in my living room. It was some kind apocalyptic scene that brought them there.

I was standing in my living room, suddenly found myself in my bed in a sleep paralysis like state. I was confused, colors were swirling on the ceiling.

I heard the voices in the living room and I made my way in there. I had that physical feeling that comes with sleep paralysis.

The people were all around the room staring. I screamed “Leaaaave!!!” A woman who looked a lot like my mom said to me, “There’s nothing left out there. There’s nowhere to go.”

It was like I was instantly punched back to reality with this extreme feeling of fear and anxiety.

It took me about 20 minutes to get ahold of myself and awhile longer to even come close to believing I wasn’t completely insane.

I used to deal with sleep paralysis pretty often when under a lot of stress and I could tell it came from a similar place. It was a wild and terrifying experience.

At one time I had sleep paralysis so often that I learned to ride the wave kind of like a psychedelic drug. Not perfectly, but I had some success.

A friend of mine had a small daughter who died choking on a grape. I mean, it’s not exactly relevant here, it just made me think of him. I hope he’s doing alright these days.

I actually met a man from Kazakhstan in my store the other day. He gestured to me that he’d like to sleep in the parking lot and pointed, “in truck. In truck. No English.” Imagine my surprise when I said, “what language?” and this very Asian looking fellow said, “Russian. But not me Russian. Me Kazakhstan”.

I got to use the translate app on my phone for the first time and when I said, “Ah, I’ve heard of Kazakhstan. I seen Borat.” He said, “No no no, uh, he is from London. He is not really from Kazakhstan. We hate him. We’re so tired of him. That is not what we are really like.” I said, “Oh I know that Kazakhstan is a former Soviet country and you guys are nothing like that. Borat is a man from England. He’s a comedian. I know it’s a joke.” “Oh it makes me so happy you know about the real Kazakhstan.” He said.

Then I ordered him a pizza to be delivered to his truck.

It was a fun experience meeting him. He was a great guy.

We talked for hours using the Google translate app.

There were a couple of gaffs. I realized after he left when I said “nice to meet you.” It heard, “it was nice to me too.” But otherwise it worked pretty well. It amazes me that we can do that nowadays.

My ex. Jesus Christ man.

She moved in and adopted my whole personality. Naturally, her own personality was fighting to surface and a person can’t bury who they are forever.

After more than a decade, she just lost it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced, and you’re spot on about it fucking up trust in other people. It doesn’t have to, but it does take work.

In the middle of the chaos that was the collapse of my entire life, I remember one line from a letter she wrote me. “I feel more like myself than I have in a very long time. I know that’s probably hard for you to read.”

She had BPD too, so for three years, one moment I was god, the next she was sitting up in the bed at the end of an overall great day and saying, “I’m sorry. I just don’t love you anymore.”

She wanted nothing to do with me until I found someone else. She lost her damn mind, tried to kill herself, ended up hospitalized for mental health. That got her family involved and we had to fight them for our kid in court. It’s crazy how easy it is for a family member to kidnap your child. They told the magistrate that I held my family hostage with a knife, got a restraining order, and I just had to wait until court knowing that our daughter was scared to death and living through a nightmare on top of a nightmare.

Somehow, the woman I’m with survived all of that chaos with me. I figured she’d get tired of me driving out in the middle of the night over and over again to make sure my ex didn’t actually hurt herself.

Once she got to be herself though, she was alright. She met someone more like her. She went from laying in bed all the time hating herself and her life to taking care of things that she couldn’t before. She never got a drivers license and she was finally able to do that. She never cleaned and when I worked a lot our place was trashed, but her last place was immaculate. Poor girl died of breast cancer 4 years after we split. I wish she had left me years before honestly, so she’d have had a chance to really live.

Life is a mess. Some people do make it hard to trust other people, but we have to carry on and do our best. We’ve gotta work so that problem isn’t everyone else’s problem.

I have done my best to keep from carrying all that baggage into the relationship I’m in. I do my best to encourage her to just be herself. We get one short life, and I don’t want to have a hand in ruining it for anyone. Go see your friends, go be with your family. Don’t sit here alone because I do. Keep building your life outside of me. Maintain something of the world you lived in before you moved to ours.

Sorry for the book. I guess I needed to spit it out of my head again. I could write on this topic for several years straight and I still wouldn’t run out of shit to say about it. :p

Same as it ever was.

I had a friend as a kid who made straight A’s the first semester in school every year, then straight F’s to the last semester where he’d pick it up just enough to pass. I remember a teacher laughing at him because his cousin blacked his eye while he was fighting his mother, “Oh, you mean a girl did that?”

Once he got to high school he couldn’t pass the 9th grade because the strategy of passing the first and last semester didn’t work anymore. He dropped out and got his GED. He took the test one time, scored 90% higher than average.

He slept in class every day because he spent his nights prepared to fight his dad when his dad attacked his mom.

I remember in middle school when the regular teacher was out long term for surgery, he handed a test to the substitute and she cried and apologized for not paying closer attention to him. She worked with him after that and he passed her class.

The last time I seen him, he was strung out on heroin and doing nothing. We went to school together from the 3rd grade until he dropped out and I only ever seen two teachers really try to help him. Police came to the school one time to photograph his bruise covered body and nothing ever came of it.

He used to write stories and give them to me on the bus. I asked him if he kept writing. He told me he hadn’t since his early 20s.

I can’t stand to think about how many kids out there have so much potential, only they’re stranded on an island with nowhere to put it.

Well, just you wait. You be dead by CHRISTmas 2021. That wat you get to.

Either you be dead or you be turned too zombie to be controlled by Fow-chi Chinese army.

This hole thing poplation control. Wat wuflu dont kill, vaxine will. Or zombie like I said.

Mark my world. Ded by CHRISTmas 2021. Mark my world

Soros. Hoosane Obama. Fow-chi. Biden. CNN. That ur god.

She dodge the bullet.

:p

A dude I grew up with was FURIOUSLY homophobic. We watched the movie Big Daddy, everyone loved it but him. “Nah, I’m leaving. I can’t stand that queer shit. The movie would have been just fine without it.”

In his 20s he lost his damn mind. He wouldn’t watch television, terrified that he’d have to see something gay. He shut down completely, stopped hanging out with people.

Well, he met a girl in an online game, they got married. A gay dude moved into their neighborhood, wife came home and caught him blowing the dude.

Now he’s out of the closet.

He said it was exhausting always feeling like he was going to be outed. You could seriously make him leave a party by just mentioning something about gay people. He’d get super pissed, make a scene, then leave.

I remember him fighting a friend for making a joke (maybe he wasn’t joking) about them having a sexual encounter. I mean, it was brutal. Held him down at my front door choking him screaming, “you tell the goddamn truth! I ain’t never touched you removed!”

I laughed at him when he came in my store with his boyfriend. I said, “Dude, you fucking haaaaated gay people.”

He replied, “nah man, I fucking hated myself.”

That is sad. Just fucking sad.

As someone who worked in a gas station for 24 years..

sigh

I’d do it. I’d suck it up. I’d make some damn good friends along the way and then I’d never maintain those friendships and feel guilty for the rest of rest of my life. “Just call him, dipshit. He’s going through a divorce! Just go fishing! Pleaaassse! Ok, here goes. Tomorrow.”

Always tomorrow.

Just wanted to comment on these two.

“I have to wonder if the demonization of corporate America and the wealthy over the last four years planted a mind virus in the assassin’s mind.”

Fuck you! You have the mind virus. A virus which leads you to believe that the rest of us should suffer because you’re better. Eat shit anonymous CEO.

“If you walk by the place where it happened, it’s business as usual, which gives me some perspective. This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.”

Then light some candles and put out some flowers you fucking cowardly parasite. Hold a vigil, gather your CEO buddies and sing Kumbaya. Be sure and post the date online so all of the healthcare CEOs know when to be there.

I’m a part of that group. I see 24 people wish I’d kick rocks haha, I get it.

Look, I’m sure most of the refugees agree with me. If we don’t fit in we’ll leave.

So far I’m digging Lemmy. I wish it was more active, but if it’s gonna grow it will.

It broke my heart to leave Reddit after 15-16 years, but it’s not that same place any more any way.

So, hello fellow Apollo refugees.