Basically DVDVR LiveJournal

[Shartnado]

11 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

My wife's estranged dad had the fucking temerity to text her out of nowhere asking for money and I am going to piledrive this motherfucker into the earth's molten core

Do it!!!! Straight to the fucking core!

[Contentious C]

13 minutes ago, Zimbra said:

My wife's estranged dad had the fucking temerity to text her out of nowhere asking for money and I am going to piledrive this motherfucker into the earth's molten core

Zangief or it doesn't count

[Curt McGirt]

On 3/21/2025 at 10:07 PM, Curt McGirt said:

we didn't have hydraulic lifts, just the old fashioned whatchamacallits

Pallet jacks. Just remembered.

[Zimbra]

28 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Pallet jacks. Just remembered.

Reminding me of when I worked at a college bookstore that was right at the top of the biggest hill in Lawrence, so our loading dock inclined away from the building. Truckers would show up with 5-6 3000# pallets of books and curse is the entire time they had to drag those things uphill from the nose of their 53' trailer.

[Curt McGirt]

I would quit the first day of that job. Maybe the first hour. I know how heavy a gaylord of books of different sizes and weights randomly thrown in together at any odd angle is, I cannot imagine a full pallet of solidly packed and condensed books must weigh. Without an electric, hydraulic pallet jack, I would refuse going up ANY fucking hill.

Edited March 25 by Curt McGirt

[Zimbra]

That place was too fucking weird to quit.  The owner of the store was schizophrenic, and while it was mostly controlled by medication he was still fuckin weird.  His office was right off the textbook floor and he'd sleep on the floor with his head under his desk with his door open in the middle of the day because his meds made him sleepy.  The textbook manager, my boss, was a bitter twice-divorced alcoholic with an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and Chelsea football.  The art department manager was an acid casualty who'd been one of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers back when.  The supplies manager was an ex-speedfreak who would, on her frequent smoke breaks, wax rhapsodic about how great dexatrim was.  The office manager was embezzling money to pay for her daughter's travel volleyball team.  We made insane local commercials based off of whatever pop culture trend the owner or his wife had heard of.  This was 2003 and somehow they became aware of the Chapelle Show Lil Jon sketch.  It made it into the commercial in the form of our white IT guy in a Jack Sparrow wig saying Yeah and OK in a really not-OK impression of Lil Jon.

But I could show up as high as I wanted and I stole a lot of books so I ended up working there for two years until I moved to Madison.  RIP Jayhawk Bookstore

[zendragon]

My Mom called me after 20 years

[Shartnado]

53 minutes ago, zendragon said:

My Mom called me after 20 years

How did the call make you feel? Was it a positive thing, I mean,  if you feel like elaborating beyond the fact that the call did happen. 20 years is a long time.

[zendragon]

9 minutes ago, Shartnado said:

How did the call make you feel? Was it a positive thing, I mean,  if you feel like elaborating beyond the fact that the call did happen. 20 years is a long time.

I don't know how she got my number but I let it go to voice mail since it was an out of state number. Said she was worried about the fires but not mention of accountability of her behavior toward me in my teenage years

[Curt McGirt]

17 hours ago, Zimbra said:

That place was too fucking weird to quit.  The owner of the store was schizophrenic, and while it was mostly controlled by medication he was still fuckin weird.  His office was right off the textbook floor and he'd sleep on the floor with his head under his desk with his door open in the middle of the day because his meds made him sleepy.  The textbook manager, my boss, was a bitter twice-divorced alcoholic with an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and Chelsea football.  The art department manager was an acid casualty who'd been one of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers back when.  The supplies manager was an ex-speedfreak who would, on her frequent smoke breaks, wax rhapsodic about how great dexatrim was.  The office manager was embezzling money to pay for her daughter's travel volleyball team.  We made insane local commercials based off of whatever pop culture trend the owner or his wife had heard of.  This was 2003 and somehow they became aware of the Chapelle Show Lil Jon sketch.  It made it into the commercial in the form of our white IT guy in a Jack Sparrow wig saying Yeah and OK in a really not-OK impression of Lil Jon.

But I could show up as high as I wanted and I stole a lot of books so I ended up working there for two years until I moved to Madison.  RIP Jayhawk Bookstore

Dude that is a fucking dream job. I would never leave. I'd make reasons to not move. 

[Nice Guy Eddie]

21 hours ago, Zimbra said:

That place was too fucking weird to quit.  The owner of the store was schizophrenic, and while it was mostly controlled by medication he was still fuckin weird.  His office was right off the textbook floor and he'd sleep on the floor with his head under his desk with his door open in the middle of the day because his meds made him sleepy.  The textbook manager, my boss, was a bitter twice-divorced alcoholic with an encyclopedic knowledge of classic rock and Chelsea football.  The art department manager was an acid casualty who'd been one of the Kaw Valley Hemp Pickers back when.  The supplies manager was an ex-speedfreak who would, on her frequent smoke breaks, wax rhapsodic about how great dexatrim was.  The office manager was embezzling money to pay for her daughter's travel volleyball team.  We made insane local commercials based off of whatever pop culture trend the owner or his wife had heard of.  This was 2003 and somehow they became aware of the Chapelle Show Lil Jon sketch.  It made it into the commercial in the form of our white IT guy in a Jack Sparrow wig saying Yeah and OK in a really not-OK impression of Lil Jon.

But I could show up as high as I wanted and I stole a lot of books so I ended up working there for two years until I moved to Madison.  RIP Jayhawk Bookstore

This sounds like it would make a great tv show. 

[Technico Support]

22 hours ago, zendragon said:

I don't know how she got my number but I let it go to voice mail since it was an out of state number. Said she was worried about the fires but not mention of accountability of her behavior toward me in my teenage years

It sounds like she has no idea how to start a conversation, so she just awkwardly brought that up instead.  No defense of her and all that being said, it's absolutely your right to decide whether you want to talk to her or not.  I haven't spoken to my father in over 25 years and last I heard from him was a letter where he, too, took no responsibility for anything.   I don't need that kind of relationship, personally.

Edited March 26 by Technico Support

[Contentious C]

55 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

It sounds like she has no idea how to start a conversation, so she just awkwardly brought that up instead.  No defense of her and all that being said, it's absolutely your right to decide whether you want to talk to her or not.  I haven't spoken to my father in over 25 years and last I heard from him was a letter where he, too, took no responsibility for anything.   I don't need that kind of relationship, personally.

Had a similar exchange with my father recently when I should have left well enough alone.  I basically just wanted to gauge whether he'd done any growing up whatsoever before I hit the eject button for the last time, and it went along the lines of him claiming, "I don't know why we're like oil and water" blah blah blah.  Oh, I don't know, maybe because I have multiple auto-immune conditions that *all* stem from your side of the family and your idea of a good remark to make about why I'm sick is, "it's the COVID jab!"  Maybe it's your odious politics, your disgusting racism and misogyny, your Jekyll-and-Hyde bullshit that has the outside world fooled into thinking you're a harmless class clown?  The total lack of empathy because you think life is the Misery Olympics and you expect other people to feel sorry for your crappy childhood?  Any of that?  No?  OK, bye, enjoy the block.

[Zimbra]

19 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Dude that is a fucking dream job. I would never leave. I'd make reasons to not move. 

Oh, it had the most rancid vibes imaginable.  All the managers hated each other and everyone hated the owners.  And then (spoilering this part because it's real sad)

Spoiler

about four months before I was set to move I was with my boss when he got the news that his daughter died in a car accident on her 21st birthday and things kinda spiraled after that and it was definitely time to go.

 

[Curt McGirt]

Well... shit. Nevermind. The only reason I say it'd be a "dream job" for me anyway is because it would

Spoiler

enable me to work drunk all the time without fear of consequence

so it's not like that would be good for me at all.

[Nice Guy Eddie]

March 31st will mark three years since my father passed away. I still have never cried over his passing and at this point, I doubt I will. 

To the surprise of no one, I was coked up the last time we spoke. I'm not worried about a relapse or anything. I'm in a good place mentally and spiritually since I started going to NA meetings again. 

[Zimbra]

17 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Well... shit. Nevermind. The only reason I say it'd be a "dream job" for me anyway is because it would

  Reveal hidden contents

enable me to work drunk all the time without fear of consequence

so it's not like that would be good for me at all.

Yeah, that job was definitely not helping me be my best self.

I did remember one more funny story: the owners freaked out when they found out the office manager was stealing and had the IT guy pull the browser history for every computer in the store, I guess to see if we were visiting embezzling.com or whatever.  So I had to explain to the very angry owner what deathvalleydriver.com was and why I was visiting it when I was supposed to be working.

[twiztor]

14 hours ago, Zimbra said:

I had to explain to the very angry owner what deathvalleydriver.com was and why I was visiting it when I was supposed to be working.

similar story: 

MANY years ago, before smartphones were omnipresent, i visited my Dad & Stepmom for a weekend. As i had downtime, i checked my various message boards, including this one, and also one whose name included the phrase "Sick Fucks". It was just weirdos, but nothing harmful or dangerous or even disgusting. Just your typical message board of the time. harmless conversations about music, mainly.

ANYWAY, my stepmom discovered that forum in the brower history and FREAKED OUT. You see, unbeknownst to me, her son had gone through skitsofrantic episodes, was using and hiding drugs, and would randomly become violent/threaten violence against himself and especially others. For those reasons, they kept a close eye on the internet history. They couldn't access the site (yay for not saving login info) but were VERY concerned that he was into torturing animals and posting videos about it online or something. That was a tough explanation and i still don't think they fully believed me.

[Curt McGirt]

That reminds me of going to Florida to have a weekend with my aunt and uncle one time. They actually had Blockbuster down there and I had them rent Trancers IV. My aunt was very particular about me not getting "one of those slasher films" and I was like, okay that's fine, here's this dumb Full Moon movie that just came out because I liked all of those still. They pop it in the player and leave to go drink or shop or something. First trailer up is for a softcore film with FULL ON TITS. Second trailer after is for a softcore film with FULL ON TITS.  I knew that Charlie Band had that Moonlight sublabel, but had no idea that would just be chucked on the front of this bad Tim Thomerson movie where he's sent into medieval times to sling arrows and swordfight haha

[driver]

We got our Clark forklift back on Wednesday and it went back on Thursday(because of a leaky seal on the hydraulic cylinder) and we got blessed with a modern Toyota lift(while our legitimate antique Clark gets "fixed"). This was one of those weeks. It started on Monday when the lift chain on one of our two good shred trucks broke(and the spare shred truck wouldn't stay running). Today(Friday) I rode with another driver to pickup the fixed shred truck after getting soaked in the rain at a customer in Benton Harbor, MI. I was at least smart enough to bring a rain coat.
Driving the fixed shred truck back to South Bend I had to stop because the "Shred Cabinet" had come loose and was sticking out of the side of the truck. Oops. I stopped and on the fly remembered how to fire up the shredder so I could get the cabinet secured back into the truck. Once secured I resumed the drive back to the home warehouse and once I arrived I was told I needed to head back to the company's warehouse in Benton Harbor(which is literally down the street from where I picked up the shred truck).
So I jumped into the oldest truck we have(legally able to vote and drink) and headed back whence to where I had come. Once there I got to learn how they scan and store boxes of files. The easy part was learning how to scan boxes. The hard part was stacking them three high, scanning them and then pushing them back to the rear of the rack. I did that with some bit of success. The one positive is that I got the best arm workout I've had in the past thirty-five years.
After lunch the supervisor who has been splitting her time between Benton Harbor and South Bend showed up in BH and told me I'd be solo on Monday and Tuesday. Both days are routes are complete unknowns to me(other than telling me I'm going to a prison on Monday). That should be interesting. I don't have any tattoos, but I have a resting Rich face that tends to irk people. Lucky me. Heh.

[twiztor]

this will be a weird post because i don't share much on here, but i'm dealing with a life changing situation and i just need to get it out. I'm spoilering it in hopes it doesn't show up in web searches.

Spoiler

long story short: my 19 year old "niece" is staying with us. She's had it rough but we're doing our best to make her life better

 

Edited May 9 by twiztor

[Contentious C]

That situation really sucks. Amazing the other kid was ever even remotely normal, if that's a taste of what life under that roof resembled. Can't blame all of that on Rust Cohle's "resent each other for being alive" sentiment. At some point, bad circumstances cause bad minds to show out.

But great you're doing what you're doing.

[Tabe]

4 hours ago, twiztor said:

this will be a weird post because i don't share much on here, but i'm dealing with a life changing situation and i just need to get it out. I'm spoilering it in hopes it doesn't show up in web searches.

  Hide contents

My wife and I have been together 17 years. We are childfree, by choice. She is an extremely empathetic person and does a lot of volunteer work. I am less so, but still help out somewhat regularly. 

One of our friends went through a rough situation a few years back and they lost one of their children. It was terrible, and took a tremendous strain from both of them, as well as everyone around. That child was a beacon of light, always positive and happy and in good spirits. This understandably left everyone in a bad place, but the worst of it was that they had another child who suffered from not having her parents/family there for her. She bounced around between friends/family, while her social skills, schoolwork, and mental health deteriorated. My wife tried to stay involved as much as possible- attending parent-teacher lessons, working with her on homework, trying to set up schedules. Ultimately, everything failed due to the chaotic home life. 
Time went by, and things normalized somewhat. The family is very poor, and we knew that the child wasn't getting the support that she needed, but didn't really know how to help. We tried a few times and were always rebuffed. It was heartbreaking, but nothing ever seemed like it got THAT bad. We never saw any signs of physical/sexual abuse, so just tried to "be there" as much as possible. 

A month ago, we found out that it is WAY worse than we knew. The girl, now 19, was bouncing between being banished/locked in her room to being kicked out of the house and essentially homeless for days/weeks at a time. She wasn't allowed a house key. The parents "didn't have money to buy food for her" so she was forced to go without. She wasn't allowed to use the stove/oven so couldn't prepare her own food. She was verbally abused constantly and the mother used heavy manipulation on her at all times (again, we recognized some of this was going on, but didn't realize the extent). This hasn't been said explicitly, but i believe that there was physical abuse. She spent some time in rehab for drugs (marijuana), and upon her release, her parents would force her to smoke "for her anxiety", only to berate her for making their house smell like weed. She was forced to cut contact from her Grandma (main caretaker during her sibling's illness), aunts, cousins, and friends. The parents called the police on her any time she would stand up for herself and would constantly threaten to lock her up in juvie and/or mental institutions (and followed through more than once). 

My heart was broken. My wife's was shattered.

We now have a 19 year old living with us. This has caused a huge rift between us and our former friends, the parents. No loss as far as i'm concerned. The mother waffles between calling her daughter and screaming at her, to refusing to talk to her for days on end. Zero actual conversation has taken place. It was a week long fight to even be allowed to pick up some of her clothes and other necessities. 
 

This entire situation is sickening, and fills me with righteous anger. She's such a good kid and didn't deserve any of this. 

 

WTF.  I have no real comment other than that.  WTF.

Good on you guys for stepping up.  Have done it three times with nieces and nephews.  Very difficult each time - two worked out well, one not so much.  Good luck to you!

[The Natural]

6 hours ago, twiztor said:

this will be a weird post because i don't share much on here, but i'm dealing with a life changing situation and i just need to get it out. I'm spoilering it in hopes it doesn't show up in web searches.

  Reveal hidden contents

My wife and I have been together 17 years. We are childfree, by choice. She is an extremely empathetic person and does a lot of volunteer work. I am less so, but still help out somewhat regularly. 

One of our friends went through a rough situation a few years back and they lost one of their children. It was terrible, and took a tremendous strain from both of them, as well as everyone around. That child was a beacon of light, always positive and happy and in good spirits. This understandably left everyone in a bad place, but the worst of it was that they had another child who suffered from not having her parents/family there for her. She bounced around between friends/family, while her social skills, schoolwork, and mental health deteriorated. My wife tried to stay involved as much as possible- attending parent-teacher lessons, working with her on homework, trying to set up schedules. Ultimately, everything failed due to the chaotic home life. 
Time went by, and things normalized somewhat. The family is very poor, and we knew that the child wasn't getting the support that she needed, but didn't really know how to help. We tried a few times and were always rebuffed. It was heartbreaking, but nothing ever seemed like it got THAT bad. We never saw any signs of physical/sexual abuse, so just tried to "be there" as much as possible. 

A month ago, we found out that it is WAY worse than we knew. The girl, now 19, was bouncing between being banished/locked in her room to being kicked out of the house and essentially homeless for days/weeks at a time. She wasn't allowed a house key. The parents "didn't have money to buy food for her" so she was forced to go without. She wasn't allowed to use the stove/oven so couldn't prepare her own food. She was verbally abused constantly and the mother used heavy manipulation on her at all times (again, we recognized some of this was going on, but didn't realize the extent). This hasn't been said explicitly, but i believe that there was physical abuse. She spent some time in rehab for drugs (marijuana), and upon her release, her parents would force her to smoke "for her anxiety", only to berate her for making their house smell like weed. She was forced to cut contact from her Grandma (main caretaker during her sibling's illness), aunts, cousins, and friends. The parents called the police on her any time she would stand up for herself and would constantly threaten to lock her up in juvie and/or mental institutions (and followed through more than once). 

My heart was broken. My wife's was shattered.

We now have a 19 year old living with us. This has caused a huge rift between us and our former friends, the parents. No loss as far as i'm concerned. The mother waffles between calling her daughter and screaming at her, to refusing to talk to her for days on end. Zero actual conversation has taken place. It was a week long fight to even be allowed to pick up some of her clothes and other necessities. 
 

This entire situation is sickening, and fills me with righteous anger. She's such a good kid and didn't deserve any of this. 

 

Good on you and your wife doing the right thing. Thinking of you, your wife and the 19 year old. Best wishes, mate.

[Curt McGirt]

Better late than never. Remember that, in case you ever think you'll need to. 

You're doing the work of saints.