To Be Clear: Tiggy is my former biology teacher’s cat, not mine.
Tiggy was found on the street by her six-year-old son and they thought he was a teenager, except his teeth weren’t in great shape, and he never got any bigger. He’s lived with them for 15 years, and Mrs. A thinks he’s probably 17 now.
Tiggy is SUPPOSED to be an indoor cat, but he is Cunning and Apparently Feels No Pain, so he’s managed to get out may, many times by jimmying window locks open, working doorknobs knocking a hole in the roof from the attic, and straight-up running through single-pane glass once. So Mrs. A, attempting to mitigate his environmental impact, has him permanently wearing a neon yellow, reflective strip vest/harness, with bells, a flashing light and a beeper that goes off every 12 minutes, in case he gnaws the bells off. It also has a GPS tracker made from a modified Ankle bracelet, that tells her when he gets out.
IN SPITE OF THIS, he’s still murdery little shit.
The Loud Harness seems to have slowed down his genocide of the local small vertebrates, but had a curious backwards effect: The large carnivores come over and try to throw down with him.
If you’re wondering how 6lb kittykat takes down a 45 lb coyote: Stone-cold bastard kills them the same way a lion takes down a fucking zebra-He latches onto their windpipes and either asphyxiates them by clamping down or actually rips their throats out. The ruff does nothing.
We know this, and his estimated body count, because he likes to bring back particularly difficult kills to the porch to show off.
In 2012, Mrs. A’s son brought home a malamute/GSD puppy and Mrs. A was terrified that Tiggy was going to kill him too. Instead, Tiggy took Tobasco under his proverbial wing and went from “Mighty Hunter” to “Overprotective Parent”, staying in the yard and guarding Tobasco from any potential harm with the same murderous zeal as he’s always had.
…He also taught Tobasco how to stalk, chase, and corner the local wildlife and last year Mrs. A came home to find a six-point mule deer buck in her kitchen, attempting to hide on top of the stove.
Tag: personal stories
An SR-71 Blackbird once flew from LA to Washington DC in 64 minutes. Average speed of the flight: 2145mph.
“There were a lot of things we couldn’t do in an SR-71, but we were the fastest guys on the block and loved reminding our fellow aviators of this fact. People often asked us if, because of this fact, it was fun to fly the jet. Fun would not be the first word I would use to describe flying this plane. Intense, maybe. Even cerebral. But there was one day in our Sled experience when we would have to say that it was pure fun to be the fastest guys out there, at least for a moment.
It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet.
I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.
Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace.
We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: “November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground.”
Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the “ Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.
Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.” Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check”. Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”
And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done – in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.
Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”
I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.”
For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A. came back with, “Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.”
It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work.
We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.”
-Brian Schul, Sled Driver: Flying The World’s Fastest Jet
Always reblog passive-aggressive Blackbird speed check
Had a dream where I was sitting in a dark office and reality felt really altered and strange and there was just a fishtank illuminating the room and then this fuckin fish looked at me and grinned with human teeth and in this super deep voice said “you’ve been here awhile, better wake up before you forget how to” and I fuckin woke up in a cold sweat
Dude I think you went to hell
When i was like 13 was allowed to use the internet unrestricted for the first time and i spent a lot of time on Runescape. One of the people i talked to on there was this person who had much higher levels than me in every skill and had, to my perception, a seemingly overflowing amount of game resources. One day i was taking about wishing i could get gold ore to level my smithing and not having access to any and they like “here, you can have this gold that i have” and just gave me this big stack and i was like “i don’t even have anything to offer back”. They told me they didn’t need anything and just wanted to be nice. I said that they didn’t have to and what they told me honestly has stuck with me since, they said “life’s too short to spend it being mean to people” and like it’s such a simple thing to say but combined with their actions and the weight they bore to me at the time was hugely influential on my outlook on life and the way i treat others. I don’t know who that person is but they changed my life that day and I’m so thankful to them.
high level MMO-ers are either the nicest people on earth or the spawn of Satan there is no in between
Runescape was a big part of my formative years for better or worse. Age twelve left me impressionable at best and the free lobster this guy gave me one day just stuck with me. We fished together for days on end and we talked about our parents and stuff. If you’re out there NinjaKirby69 I miss you buddy.
I forgot to type it up yesterday but one of my best experiences didn’t even involve me. It was when my younger sister, Runescape user cooldudetha, crashed the steel market single-handedly out of sheer boredom.
I need to know this story
So if you’re not aware, Runescape has the Grand Exchange, which is basically a global trade market controlled by supply and demand. It’s an incredible system, and deserves a lot of commendation.
Well one day back in…I think Summer between 2010-2012? my younger sister and I had nothing to do but play Runescape in our free time. I did what all aspiring heroes do, I was happy to go out and commit mass goblin murder. My sister was more creative. At first she went to train Smithing in Al Kharid, which is this desert area with easy access to iron, coal, a player bank, and a smelter. So basically she made craploads of steel for hours on end for like a week. But then she realized she had nothing to do with the steel. She could go find a smith with an anvil and train Smithing further, but that was boring since she’d already been grinding forever. So she went to the Grand Exchange and sold it all.
Thousands of units of steel ingots.
And it sold like immediately, since there was always a large amount of people training Smithing at the level they could use steel.
Obviously she became fabulously wealthy and didn’t know what to do with her newfound wealth. But since she spent a lot of time at the Exchange, she knew basically how the market worked. I’m not 100% sure on what the thought process was for her, but she essentially realized a basic economic principle: If she could control the supply and demand for steel she could accelerate her profit margins.
So like any reasonable 12-14 year old, she bought out about twice as much steel as she sold. Flooding the market had almost halved the price, and she now was both the supply and demand. Of course, as a result of some mystery person buying tons of steel, the price went up again. So she went and sold it at the higher price. She spent about another week or two playing Carnegie before it got old and she retired to Lumbridge with fat stacks of gold and the finest armor money could buy (but she couldn’t wear due to low Defense level).
I found out from a friend later who was part of one of the big trade guilds that the big market guilds were all pissed that somehow the steel market had crashed, skyrocketed, then crashed in quick succession for no goddamn reason and all of them had lost thousands of coins in the process.
Idk about the rest of the world, but I’m def ready for your Salmon Transportation Story. O_o Please share??
It involves an Animal Involved in Research (the Salmon in Question and its Remarkable Journey) and many people find that sort of thing upsetting and may try to kill you for it. I am happy to tell you in private.
Basically, some salmon-related Science was going to happen. I was asked if I wanted to observe this Science, which promised to be interesting, and obviously said yes. The Science did not go as planned. A series of logical decisions were made, each one building sensibly on the last, but the final situation suddenly seemed very illogical.
And then one finds oneself explaining this to an Authority, who is sarcastic and judgmental. The Salmon is sarcastic and judgmental also.
To be fair, important knowledge for the benefit of salmonkind has been discovered as a consequence.
Also some unimportant knowledge.
Years later, we laugh about it.
Ok I feel like I should add that the Transported Salmon did not suffer in the story. Well, it had to suffer the company of fools.
However! I have thought of an aspect of Salmon Story that is appropriate to share in public because
A) it’s so utterly Pure that even an animal rights terrorist couldn’t argue, and
B) none of it was my problem,
so no Anxiety attaches.Okay so you need a little background Science to appreciate this story. You need to know that salmon hatch in freshwater rivers and travel down to the sea, to live their adult lives in the ocean. Then they return to the same river where they hatched, to lay their own eggs and die of exhaustion. (This is oversimplified but you get the idea.) you’ve probably seen them on nature documentaries, flinging themselves up waterfalls, leaping from rock to rock, then finally reaching the top and getting eaten by a bear.
because Salmon are an important (tasty) commercial species, as well as being key parts of food webs, and also beautiful wild animals, we want them to continue doing this.
Damming rivers to generate electric power creates a rather big barrier to salmon laying their eggs. If you have seen a dam on a big river then you may have seen a fish ladder running up it. This looks like a rather brutal concrete staircase with water coming down it. The idea is that the fish can cross the dam by flinging themselves up the fish ladder, the way they climb waterfalls. Fish ladders are also useful where human activity has added other obstacles – diverted rivers, added water wheels or dead ends, steepened waterfalls, added flood barriers, drained estuaries, etc. They take different forms, including elevators that FLING the fish up to the next level, but the staircase design is the easiest to build. Ok now you’re all caught up
This part of the salmon story takes place in an indoor fishery, where one might go to obtain a young salmon. The fishery had many giant tubs, some of which had currents, so the fish swam around them in circles, really believing they were going somewhere. Anyway, we were concluding other business, and so I chatted to a local researcher, who seemed to like the attention.
“Would you like to see my new fish ladder design,” said the local scientist.
“Yes,” I said immediately.
It was a very nice prototype. Only a few steps of a full staircase but very attractive. He sold it to me – it was cheaper, more natural, less damaging, less intrusive. It was a very promising design of fish ladder. It was, the local scientist said, Fish Friendly. (That’s why this story is so Unproblematic, despite having Lab Animals in it – obviously you need to test a new fish ladder with actual fish.)
“Want to see a fish climb it?”
“Hell yes,” I said.
The scientist produced a fat young demonstration salmon from a nearby tank. We discussed the limitations of the demonstration. This was a baby salmon, not a tough old breeder; the conditions weren’t wild; the salmon had little motivation to climb the ladder. But, the scientist promised, the salmon was an expert and experienced demonstrator and had been carefully trained with snacks, which is why it was so fat.
He placed the fat young fish in the pool and stood back proudly and CHAOS!!! BROKE!!! THE FUCK OUT!
The man reeled back BLEEDING FROM THE FACE, there was a BANG, and the fish had VANISHED, it was just GONE,
Lights were reeling everywhere, everyone was stunned,
After determining that the guy was only stunned and bleeding because his glasses had been PUNCHED INTO HIS NOSE the question was WHERE IS THE FISH???? The question of “what the fuck had just happened” was a tertiary concern. THE FISH HAD VANISHED
Biologists love animals, so it was a case of everyone, including a stumbling stunned bleeding man, casting about wildly for the missing fish. Nightmare visions danced in our heads of this beautiful brave fish, this fat and beloved expert baby, suffocating in a dark dirty corner of the floor, or having perished in whatever the fuck just happened… we worked out that the fish had jumped up a step, then turned and used the fish ladder to push off in the other direction, and punched the guy in the face, so we followed that proposed trajectory.
Ok so we couldn’t find the fish, and then we all sort of looked up at the lights, and we all simultaneously wondered why the lighting had gone all chaotic. Everyone pieced it together at the same time. THE FISH WAS IN THE LIGHTS
we found it in a random direction, very far away, in an empty pool all by itself. It was swimming determinedly against the current, as happy as anything. It had somehow gotten into the fishproof overhead lighting, which had a kind of long cage over the bulbs, and had flipped itself along the ceiling until it dropped down into a pool.
We just looked at that fucker. It was happy. “Good puzzle guys,” it was saying. “It took me a while to crack it but the solution was worth it. I think I’ve definitely earned my snack.”
I’m not proud of this next part, but I turned to the guy and said “I think I’ve discovered a limitation in your study,”
this was so wrong of me, with my own filthy mouth I said this; to this good man, this sweet man, this gentle fish biologist with his face streaked with gore,
“You should use a species that can’t fly”
@wiwaxia at least your fossils don’t do this
i honest to god was walking through the parking lot of my college’s chick fil a and i witnessed with my own damn eyes two beautiful women, one in a plain dress and the other in a navy uniform, hold hands and then kiss each other goodbye and it was so cute and as i turned to head back to my dorm i saw these two boys staring at them across the parking lot and i was like “oh no” but then the taller one grabbed the shorter one and kissed him really hard and they looked so embarrassed and i realized that sometimes you just gotta have a little courage yknow
Gay culture is kissing your partner on a chick fil a parking lot, making the CEO of Chick FIL A cry.
My cousin is a professional hippo keeper and has advanced far enough in the field of professional hippo keeping that she’s head of..idk, hippos? all giant herbivores? at Disney and has been consulting with the Cincinnati zoo about Fiona.
And being her facebook friend has really introduced me to the subculture of hippo keepers, who apparently all know each other and also can recognize most zoo hippos on sight.
And man, if you thought cat ladies were bad about the “my precious panther children just bit the shit out of my arm and then vomited on my rug” shit then I need to tell you that it is NOTHING compared to how hippo people talk about hippos with each other. For example, my cousin will post a cute video of Fiona and her mother and all her hippo friends will comment things like, “Aww, look at Bibi. She’s beautiful. Remember that time she bit down while I was brushing her teeth and she broke every bone in my hand?” and all the other people are like, “Aw, precious Nile princess! I remember riding with you in the ambulance!”
Or she’ll post a picture of baby Fiona gnawing gently on her caregiver’s leg and someone will respond with a picture of a massive bruise she got when a teenage hippo did that and everyone will be like, “hahaha, these nightmare murder beasts sure are wonderful.”
in which dmz is not kind
(The MTA deities are Elder Gods: elemental, ruthless, demanding, and vain. MTA is a syncretic religion; it is an occasionally ill-fitting combination of three smaller pantheons: the IRT, BMT, and IND. As a result, the MTA gods are jealous gods and fights between them are frequent and frequently legendary. New Yorkers are never sure if a subway problem is the result of the gods being unhappy with their supplicants or simply squabbling among themselves, although it’s generally assumed that the century-long delay in consecrating the first of the subterranean shrines along Second Avenue after removing the sky-based temples is the reason that the locals and expresses never have their doors open at the station at the same time so you can switch.)
The scene: a crowded evening rush-hour train, two women sitting next to each other on the bench, nowhere to stand. The lady next to me, twice my size, asks me to move the straps on my backpack because they are touching her. I comply, then go back to my doze. A stop later, she’s at it again, complaining that they are still touching her. The only strap in her general vicinity is the one still on my arm and I don’t feel the contact, but I pull my elbow in a little for show – there’s nowhere for my arms to go, either. It’s not enough. She complains a third time, elevating her voice along with her indignation. I suggest that she should lower her personal space expectations during rush hour, which is not what she wants to hear, but she’s not interested in escalating it to physical confrontation and goes back to watching something on her phone. I go back to my doze again, but first silently wishing her a lifetime of sitting next to small, loud, hyperactive children on every ride.
The MTA gods are capricious and capable of great kindness and great cruelty, sometimes both at once. They love blood sacrifice and whimsy in equal measure. And so on a day when they rattled their immortal chains with some fury, I had my plea answered favorably.
At the next stop, even more people get on and I first hear and then see a little boy, maybe six years old, board with his harried mother. He’s bouncing all around in his three inches of allotted space and I smile and thank the MTA gods for their boon. I then offer the mother my seat – she accepts very gratefully. A moment later, I see why: the boy is one of two. There is a little brother, maybe three.
“Good luck,” I tell the lady next to me as I get up, all virtue and NYC solicitousness, as the two overstimulated kiddies climb up into the space that had once been occupied by a snack-sized adult dozer. The look on her face as she realizes what I’ve done warms the dark cockles of my soul.
At the dinner table, my sister asked all of us what color we thought her boyfriend’s shirt looked like. After we all said gray, she turned to him and said “now tell them what color you think it is” and he just quietly replied “dark white”
A group of rough looking boys walked past me today and all I heard of their conversation was “he’s got that anxiety disorder bro so I went with him so he’d be more comfortable” and it made me realise the world isn’t all that bad
The pet store I worked at had a pen with rabbits near the front door. On every side of the pen were huge signs saying “You can pet me, but don’t pick me up!”
One day two absolutely huge guys came in and one immediately reaches into the pen to grab a rabbit. Before i could say anything his friend grabbed his arm and asked him “did you see the sign?”
He said “yeah! it says that you can pick them up but don’t pet them!”
Then he went quiet for a moment and softly said “I didn’t read it right did I?”
And his friend just puts his arm on his shoulder and said “its ok, i know you’ve got that thing where words get mixed up. Let just pet these cute lil shits”
And I still haven’t gotten over that interaction.I was walking my dog through Boston bc he likes the likes car rides. He’s a little thing tbh we call him short and long.
So this huge scary man with a full beard approaches me like “hey can my buddy and I pet your dog? He gets nervous around dogs but your’s is so small I think it’s a good place to start.”
Ofc I was like “yes he’s very friendly!” So this guy brings his equally big friend over and they sit on the floor while this man looks terrified of my tiny dog so big man number one asks “can I pick him up?” And i say yes so he picks him up and puts him on man number two’s lap and man number two is abt to freak out and his friend straight up just goes “hey man, it’s okay just relax I’d never let anything hurt you. He’s a good boy.” I’ll never forget it ever bc I know that man looked at me (5’3 , glasses, probably wearing a sweater vest) and my dog (kinda goofy looking little thing) and was like ‘ah yes the two least intimidating living things I’ve seen in Boston all day he’ll feel relaxed around them’ and went out of his way to help his friend. It makes me so happyA good post, pure.
Another adorable story has been added.
Steel Phoenix Studios 