Banana On The Surface Of The Sun

I’ve been listening to the people in the apartment below me have arguments for two years now and I still can’t figure out what language they’re speaking. The best I can narrow it down is like if Portuguese and Hebrew had a baby. Is that a common pidgin combination

I just listened to a clip of this and jesus christ you fucking got it. there are like 3500 people in the whole united states who speak this and two of them are in a very fraught marriage four feet below me

i love having the hubris to go 'sure i'll try that, how hard can it be' about every creative skill under the sun. jack of all trades master of shit fuck but who says you have to be a master??? maybe i want to sew a mediocre plushie and code a janky mod and write a bland song. im having fun. im in my lane. im learning and im thriving.

One underappreciated thing about visiting somewhere completely different where you've got local hosts to hang out with is when you've gotten used to seeing wild shit that would absolutely not fly at home, and going "wow, this would be illegal where I'm from", but you're chill because when in rome you do as romans do.

And then at some point you're all in the middle of doing stuff and you make that remark again, and your host just goes "yeah it's illegal here too, we're just straight-up breaking the law rn."

And you just go aye, fair enough.

I SHOT THE HEAD OFF THE CPR MANNEQUIN WHAT THE HELL

IM GONNA PISS MYSELF JFC

ok so the last time i got cpr certified was when i was a tiny lil thing in high school to be a lifeguard for the kiddie swim lessons we taught. so its been a minute, yeah?

i am required to be cpr certified in my position at my job, smth that has not been brought up at ALL in the last 3 years ive been here, so i went to retake the course and all that. I went with a coworker, we partnered up and named our dummy Charles because we're cool like that. ended up having to use the table instead of the floor because of my bad knee and recently healed ankle, so we're above everyone else. We get charles ready, and i end up going first as the first responder, so i'm going over the process in my brain. 30 compressions at 100-120BPM, two respirations, AED, etc. etc. I was also remembering how hard it was to do proper compressions in my tiny little body at 14, so I knew it took more force than i thought to get the compressions deep enough, so i prepared to have to use my body weight and fucking send it. But! it turns out, since im not 4'11" anymore it was in fact Not Very Difficult to get past 2 inches, so it was fine and the instructor actually told me to ease up. I did awesome, compressions were deep and at proper rate, gold star for me.

however, my brain did not connect the dots that if the compressions would take less force, so would the respirations. Me at 14 had to use my full lung capacity to get the chest to rise at all, so I, with my full adult lung capacity and 10+ years of competitive swim, vocal training with breath support, and occasional dabble into brass instruments as I make my way around an orchestra, decide that I need to still full blast for the thing to work. i have to save charles, after all, so fucking send it ig. two very fast, very HARD breaths.

charles's chest plate lifts off and resettles incorrectly, i am none the wiser because i am (wrongly) focusing on the fucking little LEDs on the dummy being green instead of actually registering the movement of the chest like youre supposed to. My coworker, however, has noticed that charles might be A Little Fucked Right Now, and tries to get my attention, but i am FOCUSED because you gotta do the full two minutes and all that. so i switch back to the compression.

the chest plate, no longer in proper position to hold the head in place, clicks weirdly, and next thing i know the charles's head fucking LAUNCHES off into the fucking wall, nearly missing another person's head. his chest flipped up off his body and his head is gone and trailing that little plastic bag that the air you breathe into, completely deflated.

i fucking OVERINFLATED the bag to the point where when i did a compression it fucking POPPED and sent the head flying. the class had to stop for a full fucking 15 minutes to get itself together while i melted into my chair in embarassment i wanted to DIE

the instructor was fucking dying she was all like, 'ok you remember when i was giving the list of instances when you can stop cpr? you can stop now because he's dead' AND EVERYONE WAS LAUGHING AT ME AND MY COWORKER WAS FUCKING HEAVING AND WHEEZING HARD ENOUGH TO FALL OUT OF HIS CHAIR AND IM SO FUCKING MORTIFIED

I DECAPITATED CHARLES IN A CLASS ON HOW TO SAVE SOMEONES LIFE SOMEONE FUCKING KILL ME

One must never underestimate an opponent who does not fear death. An enemy who values your death more than their own life is unpredictable - you cannot assume that there is anything they wouldn't dare to do. Risk a blow to distract you, run right into your sword in order to get their own into you, tackle you off a cliff to throw you both into your deaths. An enemy that does not seek to survive is ruthless, they will think in ways so alien to you, that you cannot anticipate what they might do. The best defense you can have is to never make enemies like this.

The same fear and respect should also apply to clowns. They do not fear shame or mockery, they have no honour to lose by becoming laughingstock. A clown will not hesitate to look ridiculous, if tackling you makes you both look stupid. A clown does not fear losing their dignity for as long as they can take yours down with them.

Do not make enemies with clowns.

One of those tropes that never fail to be funny: when the protagonist is literally telling the truth, and nobody believes them, but everyone is perfectly chill with what they assume was what actually happened, so the protagonist is trying to defend themselves for no reason.

Imagine being like "no but for real, I didn't push him. He literally just slipped and fell on his own", and everyone who hated that guy is like "oh yes, of course darling, of course nobody here would accuse you of having done the unthinkable. We all know that with the way that he was, it was only a matter of time until he would someday just slip on his own, with only one person there to witness the accident. I just wish it could have been me."

Book smart, street smart, and the secret third thing: wilds smart

Can't necessarily read books, people, or situations, but leave that mf in the wilderness for three hours and they've found four pretty good camp-building sites, a source of potable water, and a badger's nest.

look. im not going to name names, but i just think it needs to be said: some of us need to be more considerate of other people. some of us need to stop making horrible wet gurgling noises while we enthusiastically chew on our own foot in the middle of the night

I just want to say, if you've ever worked a low-level office job and thought 'wow this is piss-easy', that's not a sign that the work you were doing is objectively easier than other types of work, it's a sign that you were good at it.

by which I don't mean 'stop de-valuing office work' bcos that's not a real problem, no-one is doing that, I just feel like a lot of young people aren't aware that e.g. being able to type fast and accurately, open up a computer program you've never used before and figure it out unaided, are marketable skills, not things that 'everyone' knows how to do.

I've worked in 'easy' office jobs for 6 years now and believe me, some people are bad at them & do not find them easy.

yes this!! thank u!

In a job-hunting group I was in once, one woman talked about how, when the power had gone out, she and some other staff members carried all the vital paperwork and some chairs and tables down several flights of stairs to the sidewalk out front (where there was daylight to work by) and processed a bunch of clients’ needs, at least temporarily, and rescheduled appointments and stuff so that when the power came back up everything was still fairly organized and no clients were just turned away. And we all said “That’s the kind of thing you need to include in your resume.” And she said, “But anyone can do that; that’s not anything special.” And we’re all staring at her, going, “No, they can’t. Yes, it is.”

That thing you know you did/do really well? It’s probably special.

No job is an unskilled job.

Being good at an office job takes skills. Real skills. It's just that, especially if you're of a certain age, you learned some of these skills at school already.

Figuring out software, maintaining complex directories, customer service, balancing multiple tasks, interpreting policies, and so on are all skills.

And some people are Very Bad at these skills. There's a trainee right now at my office who might not make it through her training period because she doesn't have these skills.

I find my job super easy. Every person I've ever tried to explain large parts of it to just glazes over when I explain certain processes that I can do in my sleep (and that's not a me being bad at explaining stuff -- one of the many things I'm responsible for is literally explaining THEIR processes to them, and I'm told I'm very good at that bit).

I've spent a lot of my career getting dragged in to meetings to fix problems that I thought had easy solutions... but, like, no one else saw the solution.

And I also know what my boss has to do, and I do not want his job.

Don't devalue things you think of as easy at work, because chances are they ain't.

when I first got my current admin job I explained to my boss that I need things written down, I need hardcopies of stuff because I have an awful memory and I find it easier to keep track of things by noting it all down, otherwise I just get confused and overwhelmed

and he told me 'I'm the opposite, I keep everything in my head, I've always had a good memory so I'm not good at writing stuff down which is a problem when I have to communicate things to other people, that's why I need you, you rely on doing things that way so you're better at it than I am, I can't do what you do'

sometimes your greatest weakness can be your greatest strength, you just need to find an environment where it can flourish, nobody would have guessed I could be a stellar administration officer keeping a whole small company organised based on how fucking abysmal I was at waiting tables

Two-tailed spider, Hersilia sp., Hersiliidae

Photographed in Singapore by Nicky Bay // Website // Facebook

Shared with permission; do not remove credit or re-post!

My favourite thing in the world is seeing folks act like real human beings around big celebrity personalities

there’s a certain type of image I enjoy finding in old flickr albums from the 00s which is like a completely unknown picture that feels like a meme from an alternate universe

Me when there's cherries

It’s asexuality day!

Today in niche genres of joke that I can never get enough of and will probably still be secretly thinking about four years later

Wouldn’t it be cephalophlangi? Since fingers are phalanges, and pharynx is the throat

Ooooh yeah, that’s better as an accurate description - but no, it still needs the

How do we feel about cephalodactyl? And we can use phalanges for “phalangipod.” Cephalodactyl phalangipod. How do we feel about that

The Greek prefix for "hand" is "chiro", so perhaps it is a chirocephalic pentapod, or maybe a pentapodactyl cephalochiroid?

I like “pentapodactyl” tremendously!!! but hate “chiro” in this context, and I don’t know why. Obviously I have no authority to be the arbiter of this but I do feel strongly!!

There’s a gorgeous rhythm to:

Cephalopharyngeal pentapodactyl monstrosity of the alarm

@elodieunderglass I'm curious how you pronounce "Cephalopharyngeal" - my instinct is to pronounce the opening as a dactyl, like in "cephalopod", i.e. "SEF-uh-lo", but the scansion of that line feels better to me if it's an amphibrach, i.e. "suh-FAL-lo"

The Cephalobrachial Pentapodactylus! Palmate monstrosity of the alarm! The sesquipedalian's best pernoctalian psuedo-mammalian hand without arm!

This maniform, bursiform, digital deep-dweller drifts through the darkest demersal domains, A five-footed fingerling phantasm floating full fathoms afloor from the foam-freckled main!

It hunts with its quick hyponychial cnidocytes fully envenomed and ready to kill! If nocuous toxicants don't cause cessation its rostriform mandibles certainly will!

By ripping and rending, it ruptures its rations with razorlike radulae housed in its jaw; Its great glabrous grub-grippers gather the gobbets to go in its ventropharyngeal maw!

The Cephalobrachial Pentapodactylus seldom comes skyward while it's still alive, But sometimes some singular specimen surfaces, stalking the shore like a deadly high-five,

So if you should witness, in perambulation, gressorial fingertips roaming the sands, I beg you, consider this simple hortation: observe from a distance, and do not shake hands!

#on the naming of things#the cephalobrachial pentapodactylus#palmate monstrosity of the alarm#(its polysyllabical classification engenders affection and adds to its charm)#sufficiently poetic verse

^ tags!

@cephalopodvictorious I am so sorry, but I simply must inflict this on you.

@sufficientlylargen are you familiar with Larval Forms and Other Zoological Verses by Walter Garstang? Because this reminds me of it.

@jewishpangolin I was not familiar with Walter Garstang's work, but I have just checked it out on the Internet Archive and this is delightful! Thank you for bringing this to my attention!

I would say it is very stylistically similar to what I wrote above, but Garstang clearly had a much greater knowledge of zoology than I do.

Chinese wushu technique, shuang-jie-gun. (CR 楚儿霸王)