I would like to apologize in advance, I’m a newer redditor and brand new to this incoming blackout and super anxious about it.
Many subreddits will be going dark in petition of the API pricing policy changes, and some apps have stated they will shut down altogether on June 30th. While I am in agreement with this protest since our voices need to be heard amongst this world of greedy corporations, I do have my concerns. This is my first time doing anything like this. What is the general protocol when something like this happens? Is there anyone who is more experienced with these blackouts able to reach out and guide me on what to prepare when these subreddits that I frequent go down? I am extremely worried and can hardly sleep at night. I’m only getting one, maybe two hours of sleep if I’m lucky. My performance at work is taking a drastic hit and because of the deficiency of sleep, I have constant mood swings. I don’t qualify for insurance for healthcare so I can’t exactly visit my local primary physician for help. All of my income goes to my increased rent and inflated food prices. The start of this month has already been rough for me. I’ve lost my hat, had to replace my worn-down shoes and my apple smart watch broke. This API blackout is just another issue added to my stress. Can any locals show me the ropes and help calm my nerves? Everywhere I go, I use reddit. My livelihood depends on it. I am shaking, getting light headed, and sweating myself as I’m typing this.
I’ve been hearing more and more reports of people leaving reddit altogether. They will be deleting all of their comments and posts before closing their accounts. Should I screenshot my favorite posts and put together a printed photo album when I want to go back to revisit some things?
I am mainly looking for information if anyone has advice on what to prep ahead of this blackout. We will not have any access to news, issues and events happening in our city when reddit goes dark. I imagine that traffic will be even worse than it already is because people will no longer be at home, on reddit. Combining that with speeders, slow people on the left lane, vehicles without their lights on in the rain and tailgaters.
Before you all brigade me for being a moron by asking what to prep and to “google it”, it was the first thing I did and I have some notes on hand. Just looking for the veterans to provide their wisdom and insight. Please stop the hate and be respectful. Reddit IS the front page of the internet.
I already have a few essentials such as a yearlong subscription to my local newspaper, bottled water that is not Zephyrhills or nestle, toilet paper, canned goods, portable AM/FM radio, an OLED Nintendo Switch™ with BOTW/TOTK including a battery recharge pack, candles, lenovo legion gaming pc for Diablo IV, lighters, tarp, sandbags, generator and most importantly, some pubsubs but there is no telling what will really happen until you actually experience it. Should I withdraw some cash on hand? How much? What will my reddit coins be worth? I made a regretful mistake recently of purchasing a very expensive reddit avatar nft as well and can’t refund it. I have some memes already printed out (majesty building mostly) and some printouts to simulate new posts like inadequate driving, traffic, i-4, what internet provider, BEST pizza/burgers/wings, epass or sunpass, hidden gems in Orlando, going to the theme parks will it rain, police/helicopter activity anyone know what is going on?
Discord is not an option for me. I’ve tried using discord and their pro nitro version but it isn’t the same as reddit. There are no orange upvote arrows, or karma and you have to jump through many loopholes to unlock different channels that I don’t have the mental capacity to learn. I joined the local gaming one and some user named rat mother personally banished me afterwards since they had a vendetta against me because I don’t understand reaction face emotes. So now I can’t even find friends to game with and play solo. I have not experienced this much toxicity since the days of ranked league of legends.
This is all just too sudden to go cold turkey from this subreddit with no warning. Will emergency services be open? What are the early signs of withdraw? Will Disney be open? Universal Studios Islands of Adventure? Does anyone realistically know where to specially get discounted tickets?
I do not have reddit gold/platinum at this time but will services restore to those who have those VIP features earlier than those who don’t have it? Or is it amount of reddit karma based? People who want to be ignorant and rude by saying “touch grass” need not comment. I have a medical condition that makes me severely allergic to organic wildlife matter. When you selected your starter Pokémon did you pick Bulbasaur? No, you did not touch grass. You went with Charmander or Squirtle. A lot of you might laugh and not take this seriously but I am a reddit pro power user. 93% of my phone’s battery app usage is for reddit and I upgraded my gaming pc to the 4090 for reddit. We all have our passions and hobbies and there is no need to shame others for theirs.
I’ve survived the hurricanes, the recession, pandemic and inflation. The death of vine, decline of digg, and the change from micro-usb. I don’t think I have the strength, the faith, nor the willpower strong enough to push through this blackout. Orlando is my home, my city. I was born and raised here. Even if we all leave this subreddit Orlando will still be with me, forever and always just like those who moved here from New York. They too, are Local and FLGrown. But it also begs the question on where Orlando Weekly will steal content posts next?
In the aftermath of all of this, will we all be the same person going in to this blackout as we are coming out? I have concerns that I won’t be “me” anymore. Who will take responsibility and be accountable for this emotional yet spiritual awakening traumatic event? The moderators?
[Edit] Thanks for the gold kind stranger! This is the way. The narwhal bacons at midnight (for those of you who are true redditors).

Happy Thursday, Barkada --

The PSE gained 85 points to 6565 ▲1.3%

Thanks to Kristoffer Notario for the positive feedback on the new index look ("Ang linis"), to Ralph Dollente for the context on the MPI valuation, to kalelManila.eth for the speculation on RSA's "follow the money" trail (leading to Aeroport?), to Jing for finding the Nestle logo that looked a lot like my SPNEC meme, and to all of the Barkadans that wished me a swift recovery from "jetlag with a toddler". Haha, as you'd expect, the toddler is doing way better than the parents!
Huge thank-you and shout-out to Francis Josef Salmo, 2nd Officer of the Maestro Sun, for writing in to say that he and his crewmates use some of their limited daily connectivity to download and read Merkado Barkada as a way to get some PSE news! That was a really humbling note to receive. I raise this mug of coffee to you, Francis, and the crew of the Maestro Sun!
Shout-outs to cristinaorlina, ***, Jonathan Burac, Arnold Li, Pao, Justn, mArQo, Stephen Chiong, Dividend Pinoy PGG, Palaboy Trader, CHARToons, Bien EC, KingArk, LanAustria, Lance Nazal, arkitrader, Chip Sillesa, Evolves Capital, Inc., and Jing for the retweets, and to Evolves.co, Jayvee Menil, and Mike Ting for the Facebook shares.

▌In today's MB:

• LMG sold to Maxwealth for P402-M
• MPI still vetting valuation firms
• BHI revealing strategy in sad mini-series
• May '23 inflation down, prices just as high
• Repower reschedules IPO for July 24
• DoubleDragon used AI to design a banig

▌Daily meme Subscribe (it's free) Today's email

▌Main stories covered:

• [NEWS] LMG Corp sold to Maxwealth Infinity for ₱402-M... LMG Corp [LMG 3.35 suspendedl] [link] shocked the market with news that it signed a share purchase agreement with Maxwealth Infinity Holdings (MIH) that will see MIH take a 67% stake in LMG for ₱402 million (₱3.10/share). MIH is a holding company owned and chaired by Alfonso Huang (company website), who is also the President of e-pon, an e-money app. MIH was founded in 2021, MIH has investments in “various financial and information technology companies”, but its website reveals an additional interest in real estate development and entertainment. The disclosure said that MIH made the LMG purchase with the intent to “invest in the hospitality industry and the construction industry”, and that it will “expand the portfolio of [LMG] to include the operating subsidiaries of [MIH].” The disclosure said that LMG and MIH intend to complete the tender offer and close the transaction within 60 days.
  
  • MB: This one was truly surprising to me, both because LMG is a sleepy stock and because I have no idea who Maxwealth Infinity is. The name sounds like any of the thousands of Facebook groups that ply scam financial advice, so I’m glad that the disclosure specifically said that Maxwealth “does not solicit, accept, or take investments/placements from the public”. My quick due diligence on the company didn’t turn up much of substance either. Their website reads like a try-hard resume cover letter, filled with bland fluffer words like “impact”, “contribute”, “strategic”, “enriching”, and “potential”. A media scan turns up a paid promo piece about Mr. Huang, and a story about MIH donating sacks of rice to typhoon victims. The MIH career page shows that they’re hiring eight positions for their Taguig office, all posted three days ago. It’s not really clear what MIH is, what it’s done, or what it plans to do. I can’t help but feel SquidPay vibes, but I hope that it’s more tangible and substantive than that.
• [UPDATE] MPI still searching for a valuation firm... Metro Pacific [MPI 4.42 ▼0.9%; 83% avgVol] [link] Chairman, Manny V. Pangilinan, recently said that the MPI Consortium was still in the middle of a process to find an acceptable firm to perform the valuation to act as the basis of the MPI Consortium’s tender offer price. MVP said that they’ve been “given a list of accredited firms”, and that there are “probably only two” on that list that do not have the kind of conflicts that would come from working with another company in the MVP-led group of companies in the past. MVP said that he’s had “indirect” talks with some of the larger shareholders (SSS and GSIS), revealed that those groups had negative feedback on the initial price, but would not commit to a higher price being the likely outcome of the next valuation.
  
  • MB: Aside from the whole “valuations are weird” angle and the fact that MPI is too sophisticated to have been caught by surprise about the potential accreditation of the first valuation firm it used, I’m mostly disappointed that it feels like MPI might already be losing that brief period of intense swagger. MPI has been a sleepy giant for most of my investing life, so it was pretty shocking for it to suddenly jolt to life and start making aggressive moves into the agricultural sector. There was the Axelum [AXLM 2.48 ▼2.4%; 5% avgVol] stake, then the announcement of the massive agricultural facility, and don’t get me started about that SP New Energy [SPNEC 1.46 unch; 0% avgVol] deal! My point is that MPI was rewriting its narrative in real-time while demonstrating the agility and nerve of a company with a clear vision for a future filled with big bets and growth. Where did that energy go? I want more of that green corporate raider energy, and less of this sleepy corporate bureaucracy drama.
• [NOTES] Quick takes from around the market...
  
  • Boulevard Holdings [BHI 0.08 ▲2.5%; 165% avgVol] [link] appeared to signal that it will be suspended for a while and that it has decided to spend this time releasing a mini-series of disclosures to explain the development strategy for each of the company’s “major assets”, its “significant land parcels”, and its “cash hoard”. The most recent disclosure started with its Fridays Siargao location.
    • MB Quick Take: This is such a weird look that I don’t even know where to start. Dripping info to shareholders gives off massive “long suspension” vibes, but it also manages to give off “we are just making it up as we go along” vibes. If you know the strategy now, why not tell us now? I don’t know if I can beat the BHI dead horse any longer, though. BHI, more like “Belated Hypothesizing Inc”, amirite?
  • Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) [link] revealed that the May 2023 Consumer Price Index reading was 120.9, which was 6.1% higher y/y. The rate of inflation in April was 6.6%, based on a CPI reading of 120.9.
    • MB Quick Take: Keen readers will notice that the actual CPI measurement was the same between April and May, meaning that the actual level of prices didn’t change at all from month to month. The only thing that changed was that April 2022’s CPI reading was lower because it was at the start of the long and intense price inflation period we saw throughout FY22. Remember: inflation might go down, but (generally) prices won’t.
  • Repower Energy Development [REDC 5.00 pre-IPO] [link] provided an updated IPO schedule after it had previously paused the listing process to take on a significant anchor investor from Japan. The new pricing date is June 23, with an offer period from June 28 through July 14, and a listing ten days later on July 24.
    • MB Quick Take: It looks like the bones of the offering are the same (230 million shares for ₱5.00/share, with 87% primary), but investors are going to want to pay close attention to the updated prospectus that we should get once the price has been set. Will REDC share any information about the anchor investor, and is the anchor investor the type that provides any strategic advantages for REDC going forward? Energy stocks are hot, but IPOs have been terrible for investors lately. Will REDC’s pricing take the recent performance into account to entice more retail investors to take a look?
  • DoubleDragon [DD 7.20 unch; 19% avgVol] [link] said that its 548-room Hotel101 in Cebu is 100% sold-out 21 months after it started the pre-sale process, and 12 months before its project completion date. DD also took the time in this disclosure to let us know about how this location will be the first to “adopt” the “AI designed Hotel101 Banig accent design”.
    • MB Quick Take: I don’t know how I feel about DD name-dropping AI as the designer of a banig. Well, that’s not true, I know how I feel about it, but I guess I’m just not sure how DD anticipated that we’d feel about it? Because that’s hilarious. This was meant to show that Hotel101 would “always stay ahead of the curve in technological advances”, but I think its inclusion sends the opposite message.

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Since the reddit API changes were announced, we have seen dozens of question threads created about this topic, and we anticipate there will be dozens more created once the protests begin.
In an effort to both ensure users still get answers to their questions about this topic and prevent these questions from flooding the subreddit, we will be removing any questions about this topic and directing users to post their questions in the comments of this thread.
 
Because NoStupidQuestions is a common resource for information on high-profile topics, we will remain open for the sake of sharing information about these changes and the ensuing protests.
Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments of this post. Please note that all top-level comments in this thread must contain a question, and all subreddit posting guidelines apply to questions posted as top-level comments in this thread. (No loaded questions, no rants disguised in the form of a question, etc.)
 

Information on reddit API changes and subreddit protest:

Latest updates:

• [6/7/2023] ModCoord - Notes from call between u/spez and Partner Community moderators/developers and Council members

Informational reddit posts/comments:

• redditdev - "API Update: Enterprise Level Tier for Large Scale Applications"
  
• ApolloApp - Information on API pricing changes according to the developer of Apollo (third-party reddit app)
  
• ModCoord - "Open Letter regarding API pricing"
  
• Save3rdPartyApps - "Don't Let Reddit Kill 3rd Party Apps!"
  
• [ELI5] bestof - "u/Autumn1eaves gives a great simple explanation of the API controversy."
  

News articles:

• The Verge - "Major Reddit communities will go dark to protest threat to third-party apps"
  
• TechCrunch - "Popular Reddit app Apollo may go out of business over Reddit’s new, unaffordable API pricing"
  

I wrote this last night, after reading a bit of Night Shift and watching The Boogeyman. Would appreciate any feedback, even if you think it sucks. It's been several years since I've sat down to write, so I may be a bit rusty.
UNTITLED
He hadn’t meant to kill her. They’d been fighting. She was yelling and screaming, hitting him with balled up fists. Perhaps she’d thrown something at his head, something ceramic which had shattered against the cabin wall behind Arthur as he ducked it. Still, killing her never crossed his mind. He just wanted her away from him. And so he’d pushed, and it was at that same moment that a swell of water rolled the boat which gave her fall the necessary force as her head connected with the corner of the counter.
There was a soft crunch and she went limp. Arthur stood in shock for a few seconds, expecting her shake her head and glare at him with renewed fury, but Patrice’s neck lolled loosely, and blood seeped from her ears and the deep indentation at the top of her skull. Her eyes stared at something just past him, unfocused, unblinking.
He fell to his knees in front of her, panicked. “Patrice, baby. Are you ok?” He touched her shoulder and gave it a shake. “Can you hear me? Wake up!” He shook his head. Don’t be stupid. You can see her neck, the blood. You know she’s… His mind began to race. He hadn’t meant to kill her, but it wouldn’t matter. They were alone on the Sea Turtle, anchored off the coast of Catalina Island. They’d both been drinking and had had a fairly public fight at a restaurant on the island. It wasn’t his fault the waitress had been attractive – and just his type, too.
A dark haired and olive-skinned Spanish woman in her mid-20’s. They’d been flirting while Patrice was in the bathroom and she must have caught it on her way back. She’d sat back in the booth, her eyes full of hurt and murder as she gulped down her vodka and asked the waitress (a different one) for a double this time. After a couple of those, she’d started yelling, letting the restaurant know about his past indiscretions. This was supposed to be a nice night out and she was making a scene because of a light touch on the arm. He hurriedly paid the check and then grabbed her by the elbow, “Let’s go.”
“Fuck you,” she said, through tears. “Babe-“
“Don’t you fucking call me that!” She threw her fourth vodka double of the night in his face. A fat ice cube bounced off the bulb of his nose as the liquor soaked his shirt. Anger welled up and his neck turned purple. He’d thought about killing her then, but that’s normal in these kinds of situations, isn’t it?
He wiped his face with his bare hand and shook away drops of vodka. He hoped to Christ he wouldn’t get pulled over on the way back to the marina. He remained quiet, staring at her while he took in deep breaths and grabbed a cloth napkin from the table to dab at his face and shirt. Arthur knew she wanted him to blow up, to slap her and start calling her ugly names.
He could feel the eyes of the restaurant on them and saw the manager coming up to ask them to leave. Arthur put his hand up and nodded. “I’m sorry about this. She seems to have misunderstood something, and well…”
“I didn’t misunderstand anything.”
“Ma’am, are you ok?” The manager asked her. He was keeping his distance from Arthur while he addressed her. “Do you need me to call someone?”
“No, we’re fine,” Arthur told him.
“I was asking her, sir”. The manager had some steel to him. He looked Arthur in his eyes with a gaze that said Try me. He stood no chance against Arthur, but it seemed women made to cry by their philandering husbands was this fop’s Superman Juice. Still, Arthur had no intention of making this worse. He put both hands up in acquiescence and backed up a step. “Ma’am?”
Patrice looked at him amid runny eyes and sniffles, looked at the gaping onlookers of the restaurant, and then at Arthur with his hands in his pockets, now quiet and calm.
“No,” she said. “You got your show for tonight.” With a final sniff, she pulled herself out of the booth, straightened her silk dress as she stood and walked out without looking at anyone.
“Listen, I-uh- I’m sorry about the fracas.” Arthur pulled out his wallet and held out a hundred dollars to the manager, who shook his head and put his hands up.
“I don’t need your money, and I don’t want it.”
Arthur shrugged and laid the bill on the table. “Then make sure Jessica gets this, as an apology.” He turned and saw the young waitress who’s laid a soft caress on his forearm and motioned to her. “Really, it was a misunderstanding.” Jessica hugged herself and shrunk back behind the bar.
“Please leave, sir.” Arthur looked back at the foppish manager who probably thought his Tai Bo sessions translated to fighting prowess.
“Again. I’m sorry.” He turned and followed Patrice out the door and found her shivering next to the car, waiting for him to unlock it. There was no more fighting on the way back to the marina, just silence. She knew better than to put on the radio, and he didn’t touch it, so they drove in silence; tears drying on Patrice’s face, vodka drying Arthur’s.
Who knows why she had started on again once they were anchored, but she had. She had and that had been the death of her. Now Arthur sat over her body, with her neck lolling with the rocking of the waves and the blood pooling under her head on the hardwood flooring. His mind was whirling and he saw his life falling apart. He saw murder charges, possibly life in prison. His daughter, Maddy, hating him the rest of her life. Everything he’d worked hard to build at the firm would go up in smoke. His whole life finished over a waitress. No, he couldn’t let that happen.
He rushed to a nearby closet and grabbed towels and stuffed them into her head wound. He used another to start soaking up the blood on the floor. He clambered up on deck and pulled a tarp from the wheelhouse storage closet to wrap her in. Once that was done, he went back topside and checked around for nearby boats. There were a few about a hundred yards away or so. Maybe he could start up the engines and not be noticed. He needed to get to isolated waters. He turned the engines and kept an eye on the boats for signs of life as he motored past, going further west, past Catalina.
After a couple of hours, he stopped. It was now midnight. He ducked below deck and grabbed the tarpaulin wrapped body and began dragging it up on deck. He checked around to make sure no boats had come up while he was below and was satisfied to see the waters empty, with Catalina Island a long, ghostly shape in the distance. Arthur muscled Patrice’s body over the railing and let her slide out of her tarp wrapping, head-first. She splashed into the water and quickly sunk, the seawater perhaps getting into her fractured skull. Arthur stared at the water for several minutes and then eventually willed himself to move.
Down in the cabin, he again stared at the pool of congealed blood and soaked towels. Going back into his closet, he pulled out bleach and gloves and got to work at scrubbing the floor. After another hour of this, he was satisfied. He tossed the towels overboard and began motoring back to his previous anchor spot. It was about 3am when he dropped anchor again at Catalina Island. Still no sign of interest from the other boats. Maybe he was lucky.
He went back down to the cabin and pulled out a bottle of whiskey from the dry bar. Uncorking it, he took several long pulls before recorking it and putting it away. He staggered to bed and was dead to the world for the next several hours.
There had been questions after he reported Patrice missing the next morning. Some suspicion, certainly. He couldn’t blame them for that. He was honest with the police about everything up until they got to the boat. Patrice went back to drinking and decided to sulk on deck while Arthur went to bed. She must have slipped.
“I’m sorry, Officer, I never heard her, I tend to sleep pretty heavy.”
Maddy was, of course, beside herself with the news. What 15 year old girl would be? Her mother was missing. Arthur had to take some bereavement time off from work and spent most of it with his daughter, consoling her. Sometimes, he would walk along Huntington Beach Pier and stare at the waters of Catalina Island wondering if Patrice had simply sunk to the bottom of the ocean or had been eaten by a shark. Were there sharks here? There had to be. There always is a shark, and they’re always hungry.
After a couple of months, Maddy’s nightly tears had stopped, and Arthur no longer needed to comfort her as often. She’d found her coping mechanism amongst her friends. Arthur was still putting away about a half a bottle of whiskey a night. Most nights he would drift off to late night TV, staring bleary-eyed at some unfunny half-wit, hucking it up for a dutiful crowd. Some nights he would stare out his window in the direction of Catalina and would replay the image of Patrice sinking. Those nights, he took a sleeping pill with whiskey.
On one such night, he stared out at the water and heard the crunch of her skull, saw the roll of her neck as it snapped. Her empty stare at something just past him in the cabin. Arthur went to the medicine cabinet in his bathroom and popped one of his sleeping pills and chased it with a long pull of whiskey. No TV, tonight, he decided. He would lay in bed and drift off in the darkness.
He climbed in bed and waited for the pill to do its work. To take him to a dreamless sleep where his guilt couldn’t touch him. He felt his eyelids drooping and his breath began to slow. He began to smell seawater and heard a dripping on the carpet of his bedroom. He wasn’t even asleep, yet, and he’d already started dreaming. He wasn’t supposed to be dreaming. He was supposed to be
(dead)
dreamless. He heard a wet shuffling of feet drawing closer to his bed. Through his drooping eyes he could barely make out a shape standing over his bed.
“Maddy?” It was a drunken slur, barely above a whisper. “Why are you getting water on the carpet?” The figure didn’t answer. It just stood there, dripping water on the carpet. Long hair hanging in wet tendrils over its face. “Maddy?”
The figure shuffled closer and gave a soggy moan, “How could you treat me this way?” Arthur felt the bed shift as the figure began to crawl on to the bed, soaking the duvet. She nestled up to Arthur’s left side and tucked her head into his chin. There was a dent on the top of her skull that his chin fit into like puzzle piece. Her arms encircled Arthur’s chest and she brought her knee up to rest on his thigh, just how she used to in better times. “I’ve only ever loved you.”
Arthur was finding it hard to breathe now. His eyes were too heavy to open and his arm was on fire. He felt Patrice squeezing the breath out of him, her own breath gurgling in her throat. As he left consciousness for the final time, he heard that soggy moan again, “I miss you. Come back to me.”

I don't understand the Upma hate. Upma this, Upma that. You can just gobble it up when you are late. Ofc upma is bland in itself but with some sugar or coconut chutney it's top tier breakfast material. It's similar to oats. Oats with water is bland but oats with milk and sweetener is so yum. Stop with the memes already.
Please enjoy this small rap about Upma by ChatGPT along with your mom's homemade upma:
(Verse 1) Yo, listen up, I got a dish to mention, A breakfast classic, it's my true intention. It's all about the flavor and the Indian spice, I'm talking 'bout a dish that's real nice.
(Chorus) Upma, upma, it's time to shine, A dish so tasty, it'll blow your mind. With semolina and veggies, it's a perfect blend, Get ready to feast, my hungry friend.
(Verse 2) Heat up the pan, let the oil sizzle, Add mustard seeds, watch 'em pop like a missile. Onions and chilies, sautéed to perfection, Filling up the kitchen with a fragrant direction.
(Chorus) Upma, upma, it's time to shine, A dish so tasty, it'll blow your mind. With semolina and veggies, it's a perfect blend, Get ready to feast, my hungry friend.
(Verse 3) Now comes the star, the semolina grain, Roasted golden, it's ready to sustain. Pour in the water, let it all absorb, Stirring it up, there's no time to get bored.
(Chorus) Upma, upma, it's time to shine, A dish so tasty, it'll blow your mind. With semolina and veggies, it's a perfect blend, Get ready to feast, my hungry friend.
(Verse 4) Carrots, peas, and some cashews too, Adding color and crunch, it's a beautiful hue. Sprinkle some turmeric, salt, and spice, Mix it all up, now it's time to entice.
(Chorus) Upma, upma, it's time to shine, A dish so tasty, it'll blow your mind. With semolina and veggies, it's a perfect blend, Get ready to feast, my hungry friend.
(Verse 5) Garnish with cilantro, a touch of lime, A symphony of flavors that'll make you climb. A spoonful of upma, a bite so divine, In every mouthful, happiness you'll find.
(Chorus) Upma, upma, it's time to shine, A dish so tasty, it'll blow your mind. With semolina and veggies, it's a perfect blend, Get ready to feast, my hungry friend.
(Outro) So next time you're hungry, looking for a treat, Remember upma, it can't be beat. A rap about a dish that deserves some love, Upma, the breakfast star, rise above!

Please see pinned comment for most recent participating subreddit statistics

Please see Thread 2 for 50k and below due to text limit.

Many subreddits are still actively discussing how to participate in the protest in a way that best fits their community. Please do not harrass or act disrespectfully towards any subreddits, or their moderators, who have not yet been added to the list below.

Subreddits Participating On June 12th.

30+ million:

aww
gaming
Music
Pics
todayilearned

20+ million:

art
DIY
EarthPorn
explainlikeimfive
gadgets
LifeProTips
mildlyinteresting
sports
videos

10+ million:

creepy
Damnthatsinteresting
Futurology
history
interestingasfuck
InternetIsBeautiful
lifehacks
NatureIsFuckingLit
nosleep
philosophy
tifu
unexpected

5+ million:

AnimalsBeingBros
AnimalsBeingDerps
AnimalsBeingJerks
anime
AskMen
askwomen
bestof
BlackPeopleTwitter
buildapc
Confession
ContagiousLaughter
cryptocurrency
FoodPorn
HistoryMemes
HumansBeingBros
malefashionadvice
me_irl
minecraft
nba
nextfuckinglevel
photography
ps4
Tattoos

1+ million:

2meirl4meirl
3amjokes
3dprinting
AbruptChaos
AbsoluteUnits
adorableporn
agedlikemilk
Amateur
amateurcumsluts
AMD
Android
AnimalTextGifs
antiwork
Apple
applyingtocollege
architecture
askhistorians
AssholeDesign
astrophotography
atheism
audiophile
Australia
Battlestations
BiggerThanYouThought
blackmagicfuckery
blessedimages
blursedimages
boardgames
bodyweightfitness
BoneAppleTea
booksuggestions
boxoffice
brasil
BreedingMaterial
BustyPetite
BuyItForLife
Canada
cars
CasualUK
cats
catswithjobs
childfree
childrenfallingover
cinemagraphs
CleverComebacks
climbing
college
CollegeAmateurs
collegebasketball
comedycemetery
comedyheaven
confusing_perspective
Cooking
CozyPlaces
crafts
CrazyfuckingVideos
creampies
cscareerquestions
cumsluts
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500k+:

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250k+:

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50k+:

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Hello, I am hopping sineone could help me out with getting my gen 5 ou team, no I don't have a pc or anything to ise a save editor, I just have a copy of pokemon black and a dream, so I was hopping someone out there could hack in my gen 5 ou teams, I'll post o e team below and I'll make a comment with the other team, if anyone can, please comment on this, thank you
(This is my rain team)
Thomas (Politoed) (M) @ Leftovers Ability: Drizzle Shiny: Yes EVs: 252 HP / 4 SpA / 252 SpD Calm Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Scald - Ice Beam - Haze - Protect
Samsung (Rotom-Wash) @ Leftovers Ability: Levitate Shiny: Yes EVs: 128 HP / 252 SpA / 128 Spe Timid Nature - Thunderbolt - Hydro Pump - Will-O-Wisp - Hidden Power [Fire]
MAX NUT (Ferrothorn) (M) @ Leftovers Ability: Iron Barbs Shiny: Yes EVs: 252 HP / 4 Def / 252 SpD Relaxed Nature - Spikes - Stealth Rock - Power Whip - Gyro Ball
NEON FROG LETS GO (Toxicroak) (M) @ Leftovers Ability: Dry Skin Shiny: Yes EVs: 4 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe Adamant Nature - Drain Punch - Sucker Punch - Substitute - Bulk Up
Rocslig (Gliscor) (M) @ Toxic Orb Ability: Poison Heal Shiny: Yes EVs: 6 HP / 252 Atk / 252 Spe Jolly Nature - Earthquake - Ice Fang - Swords Dance - Protect
Grug (Excadrill) @ Leftovers Ability: Mold Breaker Shiny: Yes EVs: 252 Atk / 4 SpD / 252 Spe Jolly Nature - Rapid Spin - Earthquake - Poison Jab - Shadow Claw
(This is my meme team)
Mr.Beast (Garchomp) @ Lum Berry Ability: Rough Skin EVs: 252 Atk / 4 Def / 252 Spe Jolly Nature - Outrage - Earthquake - Crunch - Swords Dance
MAX NUT (Ferrothorn) @ Leftovers Ability: Iron Barbs Shiny: Yes EVs: 252 HP / 48 Def / 208 SpD Careful Nature - Spikes - Knock Off - Power Whip - Leech Seed
Pee whale (Hippowdon) @ Smooth Rock Ability: Sand Stream EVs: 252 HP / 12 Def / 244 SpD Careful Nature - Slack Off - Earthquake - Stealth Rock - Whirlwind
Jimmy (Amoonguss) @ Black Sludge Ability: Regenerator Shiny: Yes EVs: 252 HP / 88 Def / 52 SpA / 116 SpD Calm Nature IVs: 0 Atk - Toxic - Giga Drain - Clear Smog - Stun Spore
Requis (Conkeldurr) @ Life Orb Ability: Sheer Force Shiny: Yes EVs: 120 HP / 252 Atk / 116 SpD / 20 Spe Adamant Nature - Drain Punch - Knock Off - Ice Punch - Thunder Punch
Your dead (Aron) @ Shell Bell Ability: Sturdy Level: 1 Shiny: Yes EVs: 252 Atk Brave Nature IVs: 0 Atk / 0 Spe - Endeavor - Sandstorm - Metal Burst - Toxic
Seriously, for anyone who can help, thank you

I saw an instagram post from a meme account, but I didn’t know if it had any basis in truth? Lately we’ve been given TONS of hours where we’re actually trying to find people to take all the hours in the pharmacy so I’m just wondering if it’ll be crunch time again as we’re trying to hire some more part timers haha

Love can make a person feel crazy. The elation you feel when they pull you close, the way your heart rapidly pounds as their hands trace the curves of your body. Whispering sweet nothings to each other during the darkest hours of the night. Nothing is as exquisite as love. The emotions that well up within us can be intense for sure, but that’s to be expected when you’re found your person.
For all your flaws and quirks they still choose to be with YOU - ah, it is truly amazing. Quite spectacular actually to be able to find the love of your life, to find the soulmate you’ve always dreamed of. Like they were made for you. It makes you long for days of just laying in bed, your head nestled into the crooks of their body as you feel them breathe steadily beneath you. Closer and closer. You never want to leave this place, it’s warm and divine.
But thats not enough sometimes.
More.
Kisses traced along limbs, chests, and faces. A love letter of intimacy and lusty promises traced into their very flesh. Leather cuffs holding back hands - adding some excitement and thrill. Soon, kisses turn to licks and sweet bites. How salty sweet the taste of their skin is, sweat glistening beautifully on the body you worship with fervor. They giggle, how cute is it when they’re ticklish! Keeping the bites light and the kisses playful, you make your way down their glorious body. Starting at their beautiful face, you pepper their body with kisses and occasional love bites - all the way down to their chest. Their arms grow taut as they playfully resist against the cuffs.
More.
You bite hard into their flesh, the squishy soft folds of their side, and they scream.
Need to be closer. Deeper.
Soft hands that once stroked you with love now struggled desperately against the restraints with panic and fear. You pull and rip deeper into their sides and your engulfed in their rich scent and blood. How warm and lovely, closer than we’ve ever been before. Plunging both hands into the gaping wound, they scream. You shush them lovingly and then shove your hands and then arms deeper. Euphoric feelings of being complete and wholly together as one wash over you as you crawl deeper inside, bones crunching, blood draining quickly.
Strange.
He always laughed before when you said you wanted to share the same skin. Honesty is so important in a relationship.

“Alright, let’s get one thing straight: I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t believe in the Easter bunny, and I sure as hell don’t believe in any wooden people.”
At the murky forest’s outer edge, Tom McCann cleared his throat. He waited until me and Dad stopped and faced him head on, then added, “But I’ve got a crew sitting with their thumbs stuck firmly up their arses because there’s fairytale monsters running around out here, so I’m stuck playing your stupid game. Congratulations.”
My father said, “Mr. McCann, I know you think I'm crazy, or a conman, or probably both. But I'm telling you this one final time, it’s not too late to take a bath on whatever money you might lose and find another project.”
Our employer was a muscular man with an even tan, dressed in a tracksuit and white trainers. He wore a large Rolex, which caught the moonlight every time he scratched his thick, utility pole neck. “Are you about done?”
“I am.”
“Good. You wanna get paid tonight?”
“It would sure be nice.”
“Then shut the hell up and do what I hired you to do.”
“Fair enough,” my father replied. He grabbed two flashlights from his pack and tossed one in my direction.
I caught it, a lump already rising in my throat. A maze of warped, crooked trees lay before us, their skeletal boughs thrust together like sweeping arms. I’d never even seen a wooden person before—I didn’t yet know whether I’d have the courage to face one down. My greatest fear, back then, was disappointing my old man.
Dad guided us along where spaces occurred naturally until, a dozen or so paces into the forest, the foliage thinned out.
Over his shoulder, he said, “So tell me Mr. McCann, isn’t Redburn a national heritage site? I’m surprised you got permission to bulldoze the place.”
“Is that how you’re gonna fix this problem? Show these tree people I’ve got the right paperwork?”
“I was just curious. You’re not the first visitor who tried buying up land for cheap.”
Our employer rolled his eyes. “Well, Patrick, the simple fact is this new development is gonna be the magnet that attracts opportunity. The suits are scared of eco-warriors who cry on Facebook, sure, but they also know everything I touch turns to gold.”
“Didn’t the wildlife trust try to stop you?”
“’Course they did. Luckily, I don’t believe in no’s.”
“Huh, that’s funny. I could have sworn the judge said ‘no’ to your appeal about the recovery order. You had to hand over, what was it, 19 apartments?”
“Those fraud charges were about as legitimate as your little wooden friends,” Tom hissed, his voice bitter.
Upset this outsider was belittling our beliefs, I clenched my jaw, tight. Dad, however, just chuckled. The sceptic couldn't rile him up—not my father, unshakeable as an oak tree, tall and rangy with a shock of greying hair and a long, straight nose, same as mine. He said, “If you don’t believe this crap, why come begging me for help?”
“Two things. One, I came asking for help. And two, I’m no mug. I’ve seen this scam before. You locals make up fairy tales and scream cultural heritage—” air quotes accompanied those words—"to extort the evil entrepreneur from the big city. Well, fair warning, if I don’t see some supernatural shit tonight, you aren’t getting a single cent from me. Sound reasonable?”
“Sure does. Fair warning though, I’d strongly advise not letting any wooden person touch you.”
“Oh gee, I’ll try.” Mr. McCann looked down his nose at me. “Ronan, was it? What age are you Ronan?”
“I’m twelve,” I said.
“Twelve, huh? And is that old enough to come ghost hunting?”
“Ronan can take care of himself,” Dad answered. My face flushed with pleasure at the compliment. “Besides, theres’s things he needs to learn.”
The trail twisted three times, carrying us through marshy grass, alongside a narrow stream, deeper and deeper into the gloom. From out amongst the endless darkness, I could hear the crunch of dead leaves, the snap of rotten wood.
Above the canopy, where we could see it, the moon drifted in and out from behind thick, billowing clouds. And my electrified nerves jumped at every cry of a tiny animal, barely audible beneath the trees whispering in the breeze.
“Well?” Mr. McCann said, after a minute of silence.
“Well what?” Dad asked.
“Isn’t this the part where you tell me about the tree pixies?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff?”
“I don’t. But I’m not having the crew rock up tomorrow and say you didn’t do the right magic tap dance to cleanse the evil spirits.”
“What do you know about them already?”
“I know they’re keeping me from stream rolling this shithole.”
Dad ducked beneath a bough. “Is that all?”
“They kill children who wander through the forest late at night, blah blah blah. It’s your boilerplate urban—”
Before the baron could finish a mouse scurried out from beneath a downed log. He yelped, hopping from one foot to the other, a little foxtrot, and got to work trying to stomp the little critter, who moved way too fast.
Without looking back, Dad said, “Don’t worry, I’ve seen braver men than you jump out of their skin out here.”
Despite the pent-up anxiety, I chuckled. My father was enjoying this. A lot.
Mr. McCann muttered something too low to hear.
“Well, the kid things partly true,” Dad said on the far side of a nestle of ferns. “What they actually do is—” his voice trailed off there. “You know what, it’s too spooky. We don’t want Tom running off without any evidence, do we Ronan?”
“Stop milking it and tell the bloody story.”
Dad’s beam of light swept across the ground in low arcs. “Ronan, you wanna take this one?”
Around us, trees closed in from every angle. As we bullied our way along, our cheeks and arms were gouged by the lacings of sharp branches. It felt like the forest kept reaching out, placing hands on us. Almost against my will, I found myself admiring their resemblance to hideously elongated figures.
Side-by-side with the developer, I cleared my throat. “The wooden people are like us. Or, well…some are. Others not so much. Do you know what a doppelganger is?”
“Nooo,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“A doppelganger is—”
“He’s joking Ronan,” Dad said, as he pushed through more scratching bracken. Beyond it, there lay an ocean of leaves, choked in darkness.
I said, “Oh. So, there’s this colony of wooden people who live out here in wooden towns. In the old days, they stayed away from us, and we stayed away from them. People didn’t worry about them. Like hurricanes. If you lived somewhere that gets a lot of hurricanes, you’d probably think about them, but in Ireland we’ve never had a hurricane because it’s not a warm tropical climate, so we don’t worry about them. It was the same with wooden people. It was hard to stumble across them.
“But then we started building cities and railways and stuff. That meant their homes kept getting destroyed. So, they started moving around. But then we started building more stuff so—”
Through a narrow gap, I glimpsed movement and hesitated. A chilly draught sent dead leaves scattering across my boots.
Mr. McCann said, “Let me guess, soon they had so little space they got angry and attacked?”
“Well, no. First they tried to explain their problem.”
“Oh, so our wooden friends speak English? They’re like those talking trees in Game of Thrones are they?” He went and stood beside a nearby birch, pressed his mouth up against a large hollow in its bulbous trunk, and said, “Hey Treebeard, you awake? Mind if I bulldoze this place?” The entrepreneur faced us, grinning, those porcelain teeth prominent against the gloom. “Well waddaya know, he said it’s completely fine.”
In the middle of a patch of dirt and mud and weeds, Dad said, “Quiet, Both of you.”
Branches scraped together roughly as the forest shivered in its various joints.
“What is it, a fox?” Mr. McCann asked.
Dad silenced him with a gesture. From somewhere unseen, whispers rang out. Or maybe it was just the wind. My trembling hand struggled to keep hold of the flashlight. Again and again, I wiped the palm sweat on my jacket and prayed Dad wouldn’t notice.
Dad faced us. “Ronan, you stay here with Mr. McCann. I’m gonna—"
“Oh no,” the cynic fired back. “If I stay put, you’ll go out there, smoke a cigarette, and come out panting like you’ve just performed an exorcism.”
Unable to mask his agitation, Dad exhaled through his nostrils. “You came asking for my help, now I’m giving it to you. Nobody’s trying to rip you off, I promise. You don’t live as part of nature, so you don’t see it, but Ireland is bleeding magic. The world is. And now it’s starting to fight back. If there’s wooden people out here tonight, you’re gonna leave this forest a changed man, believe me. But right now, I need you to listen.”
It was strange to see dad angry; he was usually so even-keeled. To me, he said, “Ronan, I’m going to go ahead and lure them out. Stay here and keep a candle lit in case they come this way.”
From my pack, I grabbed an Olympic-style torch and ignited it with a lighter tucked in the side compartment. The idea of not having Dad around for protection made my neck hairs stir. If the wooden people attacked, it would come down to me to protect us.
My father said, “Remember Mr. McCann, whatever happens, don’t let them touch you.”
This warning was met with an eyeroll.
Flashlight in hand, Dad disappeared behind a cluster of ash trees while I stood there, knees wobbling.
“That’s the trouble with you smalltown folk,” Tom said, once the gloom swallowed Dad whole. “All these superstitions. This development could be a great opportunity, more tax revenue, more jobs. But instead you run around scared of things going bump in the night."
“They’re not superstitions,” I snapped, more forcefully than intended. “And besides, even if they were, animals live here too. Are we just gonna wreck their homes so you can make some money?”
“Kid, you see this?” He tapped his Rolex. “This baby cost 50k. The Aston Martin I arrived in was triple that. Your Dad drives a 3-door hatchback that’s older than you are, I heard that shit-heap sputtering up the road five minutes before you appeared. Here’s some free advice: if you wanna make something of yourself, pull your head out of the clouds.”
At the corner of my eye, a black blob filled the gaps between trees, briefly. After I cleared my throat I said, “Money isn’t everything.”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, kid, but it is. Why else would your old man be out here? If he was really set on protecting the forest, why take my money to do this phoney cleansing?”
I didn’t have an answer for that, so I turned away instead.
Another gust of cold air made me shiver. A moment later, there came a trample of dead leaves.
I choked out a feeble, “Dad?”
No response.
“Is this the part where you stage an attack?” Mr. McCann asked, acting bored. But did his voice wobble a little?
Branches stirred as the forest took great, shuddery inhales. It sounded like whispers. The rhythm of my heart quickened.
“It’s a nice trick, I’ll give you that.” Tom did a terrible job at sounding disinterested.
More whispers, behind us now. I said a silent prayer Dad arrived back and then whipped my torch and the flashlight around.
Illuminated by the beam, there stood a huge, tumorous oak tree. From behind it, there came a skitter of rapid steps.
I held out the torch like a shield. “Who’s there?”
My companion hung over me like a shadow, so close his short, quick breaths blasted the back of my neck. What happened to all his bravado?
Barely detectable even with the light, the tree inhaled, exhaled. I stood absolutely still, weapon raised and shaking.
“See?” Mr. McCann stuttered. “It’s nothing. Just the win—”
Before he could finish, a pair of eyes opened, cloudy and pale as though stricken by cataracts. Pressed against the tree a face peered back at us, like a mask made from living bark, and smiled.
Together, Mr. McCann and I screamed. My hands fumbled the torch, which slipped into a patch of mud and extinguished with a wet splatter.
The forest erupted into chatter and whispers. Behind us, up ahead, along both sides. I whipped the flashlight in one direction and the next. Anytime the beam landed on a tree there was yet another face, each grinning like a clowder of Cheshire cats.
In unison, figures stepped away from the trunks. From head to toe they were the texture rough bark, except for those pale eyes. Malignant growths engulfed the skulls, twigs and branches sprouted from shoulders and necks, and some were even dappled with furry moss. Limping with crude joints bent at odd angles, they shuffled toward us.
A screaming Mr. McCann tore off through a narrow gap in the undergrowth. I rushed after him, unable to even think straight.
Waist-deep foliage encroached on both sides of the trail, right up to our ankles. I followed the burly man through a maze of sticks and spears as he barrelled ahead, faster than my legs could carry me.
Out of nowhere, he ground to a halt. As I caught up, the terrified man backstepped from more wooden people, too many to count. He spun on his heels, knocking me aside as he did, only to discover more closing in from behind, cutting off any hope of escape.
Tom choked out a weak, “Please, leave me alone. I’ll give you anything. Money. Jewellery.” He unclipped is Rolex and offered it as a gift. “I’ll never come back here. Please…just…”
Together, they moved forward, limbs outstretched. They were so close now. So very close.
As Mr. McCann’s foot caught on an exposed root, he collapsed backwards into the soil. All our tormenters came to a halt except for one, which continued on until it was close enough to reach out and touch a limb against Tom’s forehead.
On his hands and knees, he spun away, scrambling toward me across the tangled floor. Already his face had sprouted warts. No, not warts—saplings. Buds. The flesh of his cheeks and forehead bubbled, rapidly swelling in sections, while dark patches grew darker still across his neck, his forearms, his eyes, and even his lips. Paralyzed by fear, I could only watch.
Tears opened up along the sleeves of his tracksuit and ran up the shoulders, across the chest, and down the waist. In a matter of seconds Mr. McCann’s limbs became bloated and elongated. His clothes fell to the floor in tattered ruins.
Naked and deformed, he staggered to his feet and shuffled toward me, his screams now fading, his limbs stiff and awkward. Roots sprouted from his feet and grabbed the soil, biting deep, destroying any hope of forward progress. Through unmovable lips, he sputtered, “Help me…please.” Inside his mouth I saw a thick, green carpet.
Within seconds the man became indistinguishable from a small oak tree, one bough forever reaching forward, the branch lacing inches from my throat.
What broke me out of my trance was the sound of puking. Past the tree that had formerly been Mr. McCann, the wooden person that touched him puked up splinters and moss. It’s bark flaked and shed, exposing beige skin underneath. At the end of one limb, a fist opened and closed, revealing a human hand which then tore wood from a skull in huge chunks. Beneath these sections lay human features—nose, ears, lips. The human flexed and cried and gulped for air, a hatchling emerging from its shell.
I was so entranced by this hideous sight I didn’t notice the other wooden people had closed in. After six petrified backsteps, a low branch thicker than an amputated forearm stabbed the small of my lower back. I spun around, heart clawing against my chest, only to discover I’d reversed into the nearest wooden person.
I dropped onto the ground, head buried in my lap. “Please,” I whimpered. “I don’t want to be one of you. Please.”
Even then my thoughts were of Dad, and what he might have thought seeing his son cower in fear like that.
A hush fell over the forest. I took several short, shuddery inhales. That meant my lungs weren’t solid. Yet.
Slowly, I looked up. Wooden figures loomed over me, motionless. The closest one reeled away its limb.
“Let me through.” My father’s voice issued from within the crowd.
“Dad?” I cried.
Figures stepped apart, clearing a path he stepped through. “Ronan.”
I got up and rushed forward and threw myself into his arms, my cheeks wet with tears. “I dropped the torch, I’m sorry, I’m so—”
“Shush, it’s okay.” He put a warm hand on my shoulder, and my nerves eased.
“But Mr. McCann, he—”
“He’s completely fine.” Dad stepped aside. Past his shoulder, a new Mr. McCann pulled on spare clothes Dad brought in his pack.
A dry gulp seized my throat. “We need to run, we need to—”
“It’s okay, we’re not in any danger.” He pulled me in close. “You see son, there’s something you need to know about us. About how I know so much about this place. You and I, Ronan, we were among the first. Years ago, before you were old enough to even remember, our people realized we needed a way to protect ourselves, so I volunteered to go speak with the humans. But they wouldn’t listen. So now we’re pushing back. Against those who want to destroy our home.”
“We’re…we’re wooden people?”
Dad squeezed my hand.
“But what’ll happen to Mr. McCann?”
He gestured toward the tree that was once the real estate mogul. Any hiker who stumbled across it maybe would have made a casual remark about the vaguely human form, the warped portion of bough shaped vaguely like screaming face, forever etched in terror. You could practically hear the silent scream.
Tom McCann—the new Tom McCann—grabbed the discarded Rolex from the dirt and brushed it clean. He gave me a little smile and then clasped the watch around his wrist.
I squeezed dad’s hand even harder. “But couldn’t we have helped him? We could have explained—”
He shook his head. “If we transformed one hundred Tom McCanns, a hundred more would just pop up. We need to replace them, son. All of them, the humans. It’s like I said, the world is bleeding magic. And these flesh bags, they never learn. So, we’re taking over. Not just here, but everywhere. England, Germany, Spain, America.”
He kneeled down, brought himself eye level with me. “Are you ready, son? Will you help us protect this world?”
I brushed away my tears, a new hardness in my stomach. “I will, Dad. I will.”

Hey folks,
I have a 2yr old little one who is fully sleep trained and generally an amazing sleeper (this will be relevant shortly). Last week we noticed on the monitor that she was anchoring her elbows on the top of the crib and basically doing a crunch while bracing with her legs to try and get out. Since she was now officially trying to jailbreak, yesterday we converted the side of her crib to the lower wall with an exit.
As soon as she saw the newly modified bed she was THRILLED! She couldn’t stop smiling and kept running up to it to show us, and was overall in a phenomenal mood. Fast forward to last night: Bedtime routine went beautifully, she was sleepy and happy, but the SECOND she gets put into the crib she starts absolutely loosing her shit. Like I’ve never heard her cry like this. Ever. This continued for 15min, and I went in to check on her and reassure her that we’re there and whatnot, and while she was still in her bed she desperately threw her arms out to me and, when I got close, literally climbed my torso and nestled into my shoulder before she would calm down even a little. I know from when we were doing sleep training that I’m not supposed to stay long, but hearing her scream like that and feeling her desperation as she held me I couldn’t just put her back down. So, I held her and comforted her for a little while then put her back in her bed and she immediately resumed screaming (though luckily fell asleep in another 15 or so). We just put her down for her nap and she’s doing the same thing and it’s fucking KILLING me not going to her to comfort her.
I know there’s no “right” answer of how to do things, but I just feel like such a shit dad when I know how upset my kid is and am electing not to go to her, you know? I know this is likely best in terms of long-term strategy, but intellectual understanding and VISCERAL reaction are often at odds. I just don’t know what to do.

I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
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I was pouring drink number three when my phone rang… I'm 20 years old, a little drunk and in about an hour, I will have almost shot my colleague in the chest in front of three police officers and two frozen dead bodies. Weird. I can't say that I'm mentally ready for what I'm about to see this evening, who’s ever really ready to walk into a garage with a Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullets and two frozen gang bangers inside. My name is Grant and These are My Funeral Home Stories.
Chapter Two: three drinks, Two dead & One Candy Bar
It's about six o'clock on the 3rd Tuesday in February and factoring in the windchill, it's negative 14 degrees outside. I've been off of work for about an hour and I'm not on call tonight…So naturally, I'm just finishing up my second drink and considering whether to order pizza or Chinese tonight. I use my finger to stop by drink from bubbling over and the phone rings. It’s Andy, one of the directors from the funeral home that’s on call when Ned and I are off AND apparently the person he's on call with this evening is unreachable…If it's your job to be on call, you don't want this to happen. It's almost the equivalent of a no call no show at any other job. If you're on call, the only thing you have to do is wait for the phone to ring and when it does ring, you answer it. It’s really not that hard.
Andy is calling me to ask if I would fill in and go on a police call with him. There was a shooting and apparently there are two frozen dead bodies in a car… inside the police station. OK. Why are they at the police station? Great question. Apparently it was too cold outside to investigate and process the crime scene so they moved the crime scene into a heated garage inside a police station. This all sounds incredibly interesting to me but there's only one problem… I'm drunk. Well, on my way to drunk and I'm not old enough to drink. I'm not going anywhere near a police station. I explained to Andy that I'm in no condition to drive to the funeral home and he'd have to find someone else. He interrupted me and said, “ but you're not old enough to drink. Stay put. I'm picking you up. See you in 10.” He hung up the phone before I had time to argue.
Welp. Looks like I'm going to the police station against all better judgment. I finish my third drink as I put on my black 3 button double breasted black suit by Chaps that I picked up at Kohls. (Side note: all my other suits were at the dry cleaners. I hate this suit. It makes me look like a walking rectangle.) It's our funeral home’s policy that we dress cleanly and professionally while in public. This means you ruin a lot of good dress clothes but at least you look sharp… and you can write off your dry cleaning as a job related expense.
I run a razor over my face sans shaving cream because I’m in a hurry and our funeral home also has a strict no facial hair policy. No mustaches, no goatees and definitely no beards. I'm not sure why this is a rule, It just is. I take an extra long look at myself in the mirror to make sure I have myself in order. The last thing I want to do tonight is walk into a police station looking like a sloppy, drunk unshaven underage mess. Could I get fired for getting an underage drinking ticket while on a death call? I sure hope not. I hear a horn honking in the driveway. I peak out the front window, Andy’s out front in our 2004 black Pontiac minivan. It’s a pretty slick…Instead of back seats, our van has a polished oak floor with rollers spaced evenly down the length of the van. These rollers aid in sliding caskets in and out without scratching the van or caskets.
I’m almost ready. I decided to wear a heavy wool four button top coat, scarf and rubberized dress boots by Ecco, all black of course. (Side note: Always spend extra money on ‘nicer’ boots. You don't want your socks wet on death calls.) Although I hate the suit I have on, I am wearing my favorite necktie. It's white, black and navy blue diagonally striped made from handwoven silk by Ralph Lauren. Very sharp. Remember this tie… my favorite tie, it’ll come up again later. On my way out the door I stuffed a handful of garlic flavored chips in my mouth and pulled a Nestle Butterfinger candy bar out of the pantry. The garlic will help cover up the three Jack and Cokes I just had and put a little food in my stomach. The Butterfinger…well, that's my reward. I'll eat it on the way home. I fucking love Butterfingers and why not reward myself for what I'm about to do? I'm not even on call tonight. I deserve it.
From my house to the police station, it’s about 10 minutes… a straight shot with no traffic. Andy starts nervously giggling almost immediately when my door closes and buckle my seatbelt. Funeral Directors are generally interesting people but our pal, Andy, he's a real card. I'm going to tell you a few things about Andy and hopefully won't sound too judgmental in the process. Andy had a gastric bypass surgery three years ago and as has lost about 150 pounds andI don't think he's gone clothes shopping since his weight loss. All of his suits look like they're about five sizes too big. His skin is loose around his jawline giving him a permanent droopy dog expression. It's weird seeing someone whose clothes and skin don't fit their body. He's a nervous guy and he's always afraid of getting in trouble…but somehow he's blindly confident. That's it for the positives.
Andy talks the most deliberate and malicious shit about everyone in the office. It's pathological at this point, I'm not sure he's even aware of it. You really have to watch what you say around this guy… I mean, if you don't want it repeated or used against you, don't say it around Andy. Andy's jumped from funeral home to funeral home around the country settling in towns just long enough to fuck things up and make a quick exit. He’s was a total creep and we found out a few years later that he was stealing from one of our funeral homes. He had his moments but for the most part, I didn't want anything to do with this guy…Especially after drinking almost half of my $36 bottle of Gentleman Jack. Actually, I'm probably just drunk enough to enjoy his company.
We turn on to Roosevelt, the police station is on our right. Andy has managed to keep the van under control even with the several inches of black ice and snow covering the roads. Andy tells me that we're to call a number when we're outside the police station parking garage and an officer will open the giant chain gate to let us in. The car with the dead bodies is in a separate heated garage inside the building to thaw out for processing.
It just dawned on me, I'm kind of hammered and last time I checked I'm still not old enough to drink… I feel my anxiety levels rising…I’m not super eager to walk into a police station in my current condition. My plan is to keep my head down and stay as far out of the officers’ breath smelling distance as possible. I'm so happy I decided to eat those chips before I left. I can still taste the garlic. Garlic breath is better than booze breath. I'm fairly certain they won't lock me up for having bad breath.
Andy calls the number, the gate opens and we drive down a pretty drastic slope and enter the garage filled with a fleet of police cars. There must be 40 decked out Chevy Impalas polished up and ready for dispatch. We pull forward and an officer signals us to stop next to a plain gray door in the center of a the cinder block wall on our right. Andy loaded two stretchers in the van this evening. One standard, one oversized, we get out of the van and unload both without incident. The officer walks to the back of the van and tells us to follow him.
We walk through the gray door and quickly move through three different beige hallways, no windows, just ugly plain cinderblock. I realized that I've completely lost my bearings. When we come to the end of the hallway with another gray door. I feel a combination of claustrophobia and vertigo hit me all at once or maybe that was drink number three kickin’ in. The officer opens the door and Andy and I wheel our stretchers into a 20 by 20 garage lit by the brightest fluorescent lights I've ever experienced. The temperature of the light in this room is unnerving among other things.
'Welcome to the crime lab garage' I think to myself. Immediately upon entering the room, I'm almost knocked to the floor by a smell that burns my nasal cavities. It wasn't the smell of rotting flesh or piss and shit, I’ve smelled all those things before. This was new. It’s so unique but the more Im exposed to it the more I realize I’ve smelled this before at the funeral home but I can’t place it….Then it hits me almost as intensely as the smell itself. Ammonia, that's it! It smells like someone took two or three large bottles of ammonia and just poured them all over the room. I look at Andy as we park the stretchers. We make eye contact and I pointed my nose while simultaneously making a confused face. “What the fuck is that?” I whisper.
Andy pulls two pair of blue heavy duty surgical gloves out of the front pocket of his stretcher, hands me a pair and then proceeds to blow my mind. He quietly tells me that the strong ammonia odor is coming from the blood. Apparently when someone dies suddenly all the blood cells in the body make one last screaming effort to stay alive and dump a ton of waste into the bloodstream. The waste is what gives the blood a strong scent of ammonia. You know when someone says they can smell blood in a movie or TV show? I think If this is what they're talking about.
Now that I have my gloves on and have adjusted to the smell, I take off my overcoat and suit jacket and tuck my tie between two buttons on my white dress shirt. This is simply precautionary. There is nothing worse than dipping your tie into something gross. It's almost always UNcleanable.
In this moment, I'm able to take in my surroundings. Perhaps it's the alcohol but something feels off. Under rows and rows of fluorescent lights there’s a maroon Chevy Cavalier riddled with bullet holes with all four of its doors and trunk wide open. Upon initial inspection, my eyes are drawn to two dead men in the backseat and rusted hood with a smattering of bullet holes. It seems that most of the shots were through the windshield, windows and door panels.The windshield is barely able to hold itself up.
Andy and I walk around the car to figure out our plan of attack. He flips open a black vinyl body bag, unzips it and places it on the ground next to the car and he tells me his plan. “If they’re frozen in a seated position, we won't be able to move em that easily… So we'll wiggle them out, lay them on the body bags and zip up the disaster pouch around them.” This sounds good to me. We move in.
We decided to start with the body in the driver's side backseat. The door’s already open and the hinges appear to be hyper extended. The crime scene techs probably bent the hinges while they were scrubbing the scene. Now up close, I’m finally able to take in the two dead men sitting in the backseat in front of me. These guys must have been a couple years older than me, both wearing Timberlands, black jeans and black jackets… like big puffy down jackets. One man has a New Era baseball cap on backwards while the other has a black stocking cap atop his head. I didn't see any logos but the brain matter, bullet holes and blood may have made it hard to notice. The ammonia smell inside the car is completely overwhelming. Blood is literally covering everything in the backseat. Chunks of thawing brain and meat are all over the headrest. I pick up a piece near the seat belt and squeeze it with my middle finger and thumb. It's still a little frozen so it crunches a bit before turning into mush between my fingers. I wiped my hand on a clean part of the interior.
Bullet holes are weird…For something that can end your life so quickly, they don't leave much of a mark on their way in…BUT the way out is a totally different story. I have no idea how many times these men were shot but they’re covered and destroyed by bullet holes. Chin, hands, thighs under the eyeballs and everywhere else. There wasn’t a part of either of these men’s bodies that didn’t have at least one bullet hole… I didn't see their feet though…if I’m being completely transparent.
This is gore. This is a complete horror show. Someone wanted these men dead… like seriously dead. Was it the driver or could it have been the front seat passenger? There must have been someone sitting in the front seat, right? Why else would two grown men sit in the backseat together if there was an open front seat? By the number of holes, I come to the conclusion that at least two people had to have shot up this car….Far too many holes for one shooter and it was definitely people they thought they were close to…
With half my body in the car, the smell of ammonia is blending with the smell of shit…which is undoubtedly oozing from one or all of the many holes in these men's stomachs. Thankfully, the taste of the garlic chips and whiskey I had earlier keeping me from gagging. Both men looked like they were sleeping like someone's dad or brother in the backseat on a road trip but riddled with holes and covered and smelly blood and falling human chunks.
There's only enough room for one of us in the car’s backseat door opening so Andy gets in the driver's seat backwards and reaches back around the front seat to help shimmy the body out. I press the button and unbuckle the seatbelt, it whips back into its home position startling Andy and I. Everything in this car is covered with blood or some sort of human matter. My gloves are literally covered in blood from just unbuckling the seatbelt and now the taste of the ammonia smell is dripping its way into my mouth through my throat. The officers are having some sort of quiet discussion standing by the door we came in earlier. It's not uncommon for police officers to be completely apathetic about crime scenes when the funeral home arrives. The investigation is basically over tonight these officers couldn't care less about their scene. They just wanted to get these bodies moved out of the garage so they could get home to their families. I get that… but their lack of supervision is troubling, especially with what happens next.
I am now completely hunched over the body in the back passenger seat while Andy is supervising from the front turned around in the driver's seat with his gloved hands on the headrest. I tell Andy that I think I'm strong enough to grab this man’s right forearm and slide his body out on my own. When I grabbed the man's forearm, I immediately feel something isn't right. I've grabbed lots of dead people's forearms before. None felt like this though. It was so hard and rigid….don’t get me wrong I understand this man is frozen BUT whatever I'm grabbing on to isn't human. It's something else. It's hard and feels like metal one of those cheap metal canes you'd buy at a drugstore. The three drinks circulating through my bloodstream make me curious but pensive. I tell Andy that I'm not touching a man's arm and that there's something else in this man’s jacket.
I interrupted the police officers conversation. “Hey, something isn't right here.” An officer and I switch places as he pulls out a tactical knife and starts cutting away the sleeve to the blood soaked down jacket. “It’s a FUCKING GUN.” I look over his shoulder and see the open sleeve of a jacket revealing a sawed off shotgun. The inside of the coat was some sort of bright orange material so the short barrel of the shotgun stand out…and so did the trigger but not because of its color. It stood out because of frozen dead man’s finger hooked over and frozen around it. Did I mention the gun was cocked. This means that the slightest movement would have caused a sudden discharge… The gun would have fired directly into the driver's seat, the seat where Andy was supervising from AND apparently Andy and I noticed this at the same time.
The next sound we hear was an officer saying, “Gun! Loaded gun!”
Andy and I step back while the officers deal with the gun… he's freaked out…I can tell by the blotchy greenish yellow color he skin has turned in the last 30 seconds. Andy says, “I don't like guns. I don't like guns.”
“It's cool, man. Nobody got shot.” I say not being too sympathetic. I'm definitely drunk now and the idea of a frozen dead man shooting my partner in the chest is kind of hilarious, even if it would have been my fault. I giggle internally. Andy quickly moves towards the door and says, “I need to get some fresh air” and scurries out like an asshole letting the door slam behind him. Almost at the same moment the door closed. The three officers approached me from behind, “We got it out….It was loaded. Your buddy's lucky you didn’t shoot him in the chest.” I just snicker and tell the officers my partner needed some air and that I'll make the removals myself. How hard could it be? I'll just grab and pull.
Frozen bodies move in one piece while regular room temperature bodies are just floppy deadweight. These fellas are frozen solid…they felt like moving a heavy chair or peculiar shaped table out of your friend's car. Square peg in round holes, it was actually considerably easier than I anticipated.
The sound of the two bodies hitting a cold cement after pulling them out was very satisfying…a simple loud hollow frozen thud. I'm surrounded by awfulness and all I can think about is how proud I am that I just handled this crime scene on my own. I can't wait to eat that Butterfinger waiting for me in the car. It's a fitting reward but also something to get rid of this ammonia and garlic taste overpowering my senses at the moment.
Andy still hasn't come back and we're about to zip up the last body bag. An officer had put on a pair of gloves to help me maneuver the second man's rigid bent knees into the body bag. This man's body was like a complicated Tetris piece. Once in, we each grab a zipper on either side of the black vinyl bag and zip our respective ends until they meet in the middle. I nod my head at the officer and say, “That's how it's done!”
The officer looks at me sternly and says, “Did you just come from a party?” I look at him confused and respond, ”What?”
The officer tells me that he just got a waft of alcohol. “It reeks like booze over here.” I closed my mouth quickly and my heart begins to beat out of my chest. I must smell like a distillery… so much for those garlic chips. Laughing, I say, “On a Tuesday? Come on, man!” The officer stands up and says, “Let's run a tox screen on these guys to find out how fucked up they were before getting blasted.”
Looks like a dodged a bullet. How did he smell my whiskey breath over the ammonia smell? Does my breath just smell like straight rubbing alcohol? I feel bad that these dead guys got blamed for MY alcohol breath but, at least, I won't be walking out of here with an underage drinking ticket.
Calming down and feeling relieved. I looked down on my shirt and see that my necktie, my very favorite Ralph Lauren necktie, had fallen out of my shirt at some point and had been dipped into some smelly smelly blood. Fuck! Of course I ruined my favorite necktie on a night I'm not even supposed to be working. I undo the knot and throw the tie into a biohazard bag. The rest of the removal was kind of a blur because I was laser focused thinking about that Butterfinger I left in the car. The alcohol plus all the blood smell I kind of made my stomach sour. My mouth starts to water thinking about that candy bar.
One of the officers helps me wheel the stretchers out to the van in the main area of the police station parking garage. I can see exhaust coming out of our van. It's on? Did we leave the van running? I open the back of the van to find Andy laying down in the center of the wooden roller board taking up the entire back of the van. The sound startles him and he quickly jumps up to a seated position and says, “I'm sorry man, guns really freak me out. I almost got shot…. I thought I was gonna pass out.”
I notice a yellow rapper sitting next to his right leg. He noticed that I noticed. “Oh yeah, I owe you a candy bar.” He says in a nonchalant manner.
All at once, my dislike for Andy hit me like a tidal wave. I ruined my favorite tie and this asshole ate my candy bar? Andy, sensing my disappointment and anger, didn't say another word and I imagine what it would have been like if that shot gun would have gone off.
My name is Grant and these are My Funeral Home Stories.
​
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LPL Summer Power Rankings
Just one person’s opinion. WE diehard so I’ve seen more or less all of their games, but I’ll catch other games here and there. Did a lot of Oracle’s Elixir and Leaguepedia digging as well and followed/consulted @DJJohnnymeister on twitter (must follow IMHO if you care at all about the up and comers of the LDL) for thoughts on lower-level prospects. Will probably make me look stupid when it’s all said and done, but that’s part of the fun right?
Top Contenders
1) JDG
Top – 369
Jungle – Kanavi
Mid – Knight/lzq
ADC – Ruler
Support – Missing
Was the best team on paper last split and lived up to the hype. Coming off of a dominant MSI championship run, they are the slam dunk pick to top not just the LPL power rankings, but the World power rankings.
369 is perhaps the best he’s ever been, easily 1st team All Pro. Kanavi has re-established himself as the best jungler in the world at MSI. Knight’s mechanical talent finally shone through on the international stage. Lzq is an 18-year-old who somehow skipped the LDL altogether and isn’t really relevant to the narrative, but he's on the official roster so I have to mention him. Ruler inserted his name in the GOAT conversation and proved his mettle out of the Samsung/GenG sphere, doing his thing of blending solid damage output with consistent safety. When Missing is the worst player on the team by default and yet still the Spring 2nd All Pro Team support you’re in golden shape.
They get a sentence each because I shouldn’t need to tell you about this team. They’re really just complete without any exploitable holes. Adding Knight and Ruler to China’s best squad in 2022 feels similar to the off-season where the Golden State Warriors added Kevin Durant, with the added bonus that Boogie Cousins is still in his prime. I suppose that makes Yagao into Pro LOL’s Harrison Barnes (I actually like this comparison, down to Yagao receiving blame for the blowing it when it mattered most) and GenG into Pro LOL’s Sacramento Kings (pretty bad, but if we equate the playoffs to making world finals?… ehh still really bad). We’ll see who (if anyone) can rise up to challenge them, but at this point they have to be considered the odds-on favorite.
2) LNG
Top – Zika
Jungle – Tarzan
Mid – Scout
ADC – GALA
Support – Hang
This team had one hole in the roster going into the summer and filled it. LP didn’t have a bad rookie split and showed mettle but he was clearly the odd man out on a team built to compete today. After looking at IG’s ADC Ahn, they chose to spare no expense and traded LP and a boat load of cash for RNG’s GALA who more than fills that hole. GALA will be paired in the bottom lane with Hang, who was a key partner for LP’s surprisingly competent debut, earning an All-LPL 3rd team shoutout in the process.
Scout meanwhile had a downright incredible split that fell by the wayside due to LNG’s immediate playoff exit at the hands of OMG, but it appears that even away from the EDG machine, he’s still one of the LPL’s premier stars at a very competitive position. I mean he put up a mind numbing 17 MVPs individually. To put it in perspective, ThunderTalk Gaming, who were the 8 seed in the LPL Spring Standings, had 18 wins in total. With teams like EDG and JDG sharing the MVP load among their members, Scout downright ran away with it.
Zika didn’t have a super flashy split, but was low key very strong. The team devoted a lot to making sure LP wasn’t exploited and you would think Zika, who was heavily strong-side suited as a rookie on IG last year, would flounder because of it. However, he quietly flourished in the role, even though he only picked up a single MVP performance all season. Putting up strong CS numbers and showing some good weakside ability on top of his typical array of more damage centric tops. Honestly, he might be the most underrated player in the league since he’s overshadowed by his much more resource heavy teammates, but that weakside ability might be even more key with GALA joining the team and needing the resources as well.
Tarzan meanwhile continued as a standout in the regular season, best jungler KDA, strong kill participation basically the rest of the regular season MVP performances, but was perhaps the primary factor in their playoff disappointment. Similar to JDG’s situation with Missing though, when Tarzan (specifically in the playoffs) is the team’s biggest concern, you know you have a roster ready to compete.
3) EDG
Top – Ale
Jungle – Jiejie/Monki
Mid – Fofo/Fisher
ADC – Leave
Support – Meiko
Despite losing their key Korean carries, EDG barely missed a beat last split, finishing 3rd in the Spring Split. It’s a pretty good result all things considered, but it does feel like they have holes in their game. Still, I think that between their core veterans still at the peak of their game and the overall consistency, they are in very good shape for the Worlds slots, even if they feel a step behind the likes of JDG right now.
Even without Scout and Viper, they still have a great veteran core that starts with Meiko, who with Ming’s absence/retirement(?) stands alone as only active LPL’s all-time top 10 support. As part of the EDG core for over 9 years now, and the team’s primary shot caller for a huge part of that span, his presence alone means that EDG will have one of the best macro games in the league. Combo that with Jiejie, who has served in the EDG system for a huge period of time and grown into a top level jungler in his midst of his prime and you immediately have a team that has championship aspirations even before the other 3 members are considered, as both players were 1st Team All Pro for the Spring Split.
The 3 other members were where a lot of the concern lied going into the season, but they exceeded expectations as EDG was the number 2 seed going into playoffs. While the least talked about of the three, it was a great bounce back split for FoFo who was one of the most disappointing players on 2022’s most disappointing team BLG, eventually losing his starting job to mid-season acquisition Icon. On EDG though, he looked revitalized and fairly close to his form on RA 2021, though admittedly he was flanked by better players with EDG. It was a commendable, low drama, stable split for a player who needed it bad.
Similar to FoFo, Ale was coming off of a rough 2021 as well where a talented by troubled LNG team didn’t completely flop by the results, but completely missed the high expectations set. This included a benching for PandaC halfway through the split that really hurt the team in key series down the stretch amid talk about attitude issues. He’s always been a talented pair of hands though and EDG did well to keep him focused and on his game, as he stepped up big time, particularly when given non-tank champions while piloting tanks well enough, earning 2nd team All Pro honors. Obviously, Ale isn’t always the most stable player, but so long as EDG has him on the straight and narrow, he’s going to be a net positive for the team.
Finally, we come to the rookie of the split Leave, who came in with some serious LDL hype and lived up to it for the most part, working well as EDG’s damage carry and showing a flashy mechanics style. Being flanked with the likes of Meiko helps of course, but EDG handed the reigns to Leave and he seemed up to the task. Unfortunately, going up against the likes of Ruler and Elk in the playoffs did prove to be that freshman wall for Leave, but as MSI showed they’ve been folding everyone, so it’s not too shameful. Still as the least experienced player in this top 4 group, it’s going to be a lot of pressure on the youngster. It’s crazy that this super mechanically skilled star of his rookie class could be the weakness of the team, but that’s just the level of the competition among the top teams of this league.
I do want to give brief mention to EDG’s substitute players, who are both very talented youngsters. Monki is a 19-year-old LDL promote jungler who was strong at the lower level and warranted a promotion. Fisher meanwhile had been a standout Korean trainee from Shadow Corp (the same team they picked up About, the new Korean bot lane trainee Ale was talking about) and directly went onto the EDG main roster at 18 years old. Neither will likely see play given this team’s veteran tilt and the championship ambitions, but they’re worth keeping an eye out for down the road whether they’re future EDG starters or purchases for other LPL teams.
4) BLG
Top – Bin
Jungle – XUN
Mid – Yagao
ADC – Elk/Baiye
Support – ON
Given BLG’s penchant for big expenses for early playoff exits, it would be easy to write off their latest roster as yet another flailing attempt to microwave a team into stardom, turning over basically the entire 2022 roster they reportedly spent top dollar for. And yet, it felt different this time around. While the players they picked up weren’t exactly household names, they were talented mechanical players on the rise. They looked genuinely strong in the pre-season tournaments, which admittedly doesn’t count a whole ton, but was interesting to note. And when it was all said and done, it resulted in the best split BLG has ever put up. And while they couldn’t outgun the JDG machine in any of the many shots, it was a great season. While I have them below LNG for their sheer top to bottom power and EDG out of respect for their veteran track record, I’m still very impressed by this BLG squad.
Bin, as somehow the longest tenured BLG member of 2 splits, was the face of the team’s turnaround, and a far cry better from the rocky 2022 he endured swapping between 2 dysfunctional teams. 2023 was where he re-established himself as the premier mechanical top in the league. Always known for his excellent hands since his debut on Suning in 2020, he was able to back up those skills this split, while furthering his profile in the west with his fun trashtalk and gigachad persona. Furthermore, when the chips were down at MSI, he even showed a willingness to pick up tanks, which has always been the clear hole in his game.
As for the free agent additions, the one who most established himself was Elk. If I can put on my hipster hat on, I was an Elk fan before it was cool, given he’s always shown an ability to put up eyepopping damage numbers since his debut which continued this season as he topped the tables far and away leading the league with the number 1 DPM and damage share. However, it was the finer points of the game where Elk struggled on back in the day. Off positioning, hit or miss laning, occasional overextensions trying to maximize damage were all issues for Elk on WE. On this BLG squad though, that has largely ironed itself out, with only occasional blowup performances every so often. An unknown on the World stage going into MSI, everyone now knows the name of this fearsome player. They also added a name that nobody knows, that being Baiye an LDL ADC to the main roster as well. Having just debuted on BLG.J last split and playing all of 7 games in the LDL, it’s tough to take this promotion seriously at all, let alone as a threat to Elk’s seat.
A major part of supporting Elk’s rise was the acquisition of the best young support in the LPL, ON. One of the big pain points of LPL teams is that LDL promotions are just so difficult, and none so more than support, where the talent pool is shallow and the transition is just an absolute killer. So many of the highest profile LDL supports have floundered on promotion, and ON was no exception on Suning back in 2021. That being said, he’s improved an incredible amount since that first rocky season, and the mechanical ability he has as a support and his young age (only 20 years old despite debuting in 2021) makes him perhaps the most valuable long-term asset on the BLG roster. As EDG has shown with Meiko and his cavalcade of ADC pairings, great ADCs can be acquired in the LPL but great supports when kept are backbones to long term success.
XUN was an acquisition much like Elk and ON, a young mechanical standout who BLG scooped up with projection in mind. He arrived into IG in 2021 as a highly touted rookie, and was mentioned alongside the likes of Bo and Xiaohuangren, the 2 super prospects junglers as the next generation. He joined right at the tail end of the Rookie-TheShy era of the team and while he had early struggles then, by the time the next season rolled around, he was IG’s standout player. Even after arriving at BLG, he’s still a very volatile player, and hasn’t solidified his play the way Elk and ON have, but at his best, he’s capable of getting bot rolling, which is exactly what BLG is want to do.
Finally, the Harrison Barnes of the LPL, Yagao, who was the typical blame target for BLG in their losses. It’s true, he’s older and certainly doesn’t match up great against the top of the table mids that he’ll need to beat, but the bottom line is that for the most part he’s fine enough. Just like Barnes, he’s certainly not the team centerpiece, and he occasionally has baffling performances, but he’s usually stable enough to not get in the way. Honestly, he’s probably the weakest individual player among these top 4 teams and the predominant reason (along with coinflippy XUN) that I have the MSI runners up 4th on this list, but to be clear I’m not huge Yagao hater, it’s just that these top teams are so stacked that every potential available weakness makes a difference. I mean, you don’t see Harrison Barnes on the All-NBA teams or anything.
Playoff Expectations
5) OMG
Top – Shanji
Jungle – Aki
Mid – Creme
ADC – Able
Support – PPGod/Jerry
OMG returns with the roster that brought them to their highest playoff finish since Spring 2017 (!!!), finishing a highly impressive 4th in the split. On paper, I still think their roster is lacking in marquee raw talent, but it’s clear at this point that they’re more coordinated than some of their flashier opposition and that they’ve cultivated 2 young stars that have now shown some serious killer instinct.
Without any doubt, this is a team that is defined by the play of their solo lane talents. Starting from the top Shanji had a standout split primarily as one of the most effective K’Sante/Sion tank players the large majority of the time, but occasionally busts out Kennen and his signature Rumble, and been incredibly impactful when he gets them. Furthermore, this synergizes perfectly with OMG’s other star laner Creme, who is afforded the ability to fit AD assassins like Yone. Assassins have continued to be Creme’s calling card and while his control mage play is lackluster, OMG has tailored their gameplans around his champion pool and have reaped the benefits of the young mid laner.
On top of these two really clicking simultaneously, a big hat tip must be given to their teammates as well. PPGod in particular proved to be the right ingredient to bring OMG playoff glory as he continues his ability to accent teams into playoff threats even if he hasn’t been quite been able to reach the Finals at any of his stops. I’ll give him some additional props once we reach the NIP write up. Given PPGod’s late arrival to the team last spring, LDL promotion Jerry sat on the bench for the season, and looks to do so again. Able meanwhile has a pretty non-descript year, taking a back seat to his solo lane teammates but showing some stability that he’s usually lacked. Certainly not a masterful split, but credit where it’s due, he reigned it in and was steady for OMG’s best squad in ages.
Finally, Aki deserves a big hand for his role in OMG’s success as well. A solid vet who isn’t considered a mechanical master by any means, he was steady at the wheel throughout the season, and was even able to out jungle Tarzan of all people in their shock upset win over LNG. Despite taking the most MVPs for OMG in the regular season, it was rarely for single handed domination and I’d point that more as a credit for his facilitation of the team’s coordination in general where they were able to get over the competition where it counted.
I don’t think this team has the ceiling of the others in this tier, but they have a known formula that works. While the others in this group have more talent on an individual level, it’s clear that they have serious questions to sort out that OMG really doesn’t, so I’m considering OMG the safe team in this particular group, but without the upside to challenge the tier above.
6) WBG
Top – TheShy
Jungle – Karsa/Weiwei
Mid – Xiaohu
ADC – Light
Support – Crisp
This team and the one after it were the teams with close to the highest expectations in the League and yet fell flat in spite of talented rosters. Both have largely decided to run it back, with new coaching staffs in an attempt to fix the tactical side where they came short. WBG went big game hunting for their next coach after sacking Easyhoon and was attempting to court Kkoma before he opted to focus on Korea’s efforts at the World Games. They settled for an Kkoma adjacent coach in Daeny, formerly part of the Damwon and T1 programs. A controversial coach in his own right, he’s drew criticism for his pick/bans and his questionable roster decisions, but he still has that Worlds title under his belt, so WBG is out here shooting for the moon. Born to wintrade or whatever.
TheShy is as always, a pretty good representation of the team. Perpetually on top of the damage charts due to his confidence in his mechanics and his propensity to fight constantly, it leads to the coinflippy hit or miss results you so often see from TheShy and his teams in general. He’s certainly not at his peak form where he dominated on the Worlds stage, but he’s not at his worst either near the end of his IG tenure when that whole team looked out of gas, TheShy is an LPL icon, even if that icon is occasionally the death notification on the side of the UI.
Purchasing Xiaohu out of his RNG contract was one of the big stories for this team going into the off season and a large reason for optimism for their future results. In actually he was rather middling by all accounts. Not a total disaster of course, it felt like he was fine for the most part, but not the immediate plug and play mechanical players that Scout, Knight or Rookie serve as. Maybe a second season to mesh is what they need to comeback.
Light for my money was the most dependable member of the team in the regular season, being just a generally stable force in the otherwise chaotic team structure. I wouldn’t call him the best at any individual thing: Ruler is a much safer ADC and Elk is a better pure damage pump, but light is good enough at both of those things to be a consistent plus for WBG, which can’t be said for the rest of the team. Supported by the veteran Crisp, you have to expect them to anchor the team in general, though Crisp was particularly bad in the playoff series against BLG, where his hooks on both Thresh and Naut were off point. It’s just one series of course, but the play needs to be better than that in crunch time next time.
Finally, the jungle situation for Weibo. Karsa continues to be the perpetual punching bag when the team struggles. It’s been a major decline since his Flash Wolves and early RNG days and frankly it might be time to just bucket him as not able to get it done at the highest level at this point. He can still work enough in the regular season to make the playoffs, but the form is just not where it needs to be at this point. In a fascinating move, scooped up Weiwei, who went from BLG’s star jungler to league washout over the course of a single year. The biggest victim of BLG’s 2022 catastrophe, the last look of Weiwei we got was not a flattering one as the team fell flat on it’s face amid roster instability and play not matching up to the expected standard. Still, we’ve seen a number of comebacks for players leaving the BLG ecosystem, such as PPGod and FoFo returning to form after splitting wit the team. Of course it’s not always a winning formula as Doggo and Biubiu (shudder) can attest to, but there’s enough of a strong track record from Weiwei during 2020 V5 and 2021 BLG to say that trying to get that level out of him is worth the attempt.
7) TES
Top – Wayward/Qingtian
Jungle – Tian
Mid – Rookie
ADC – Jackeylove
Support – Mark
Reuniting 2/5ths of the legendary IG core was supposed to lead TES to their Worlds destiny. Yet going into the Summer split they are another team running it back with the exact same roster, though unlike teams like JDG, BLG or OMG, the Spring split was an unmitigated failure for TES. There was not glory, but a collapse down the stretch of the season and shameful defeat at the hands of OMG, a team that is probably running a budget less than Jackeylove’s individual paycheck (note: The previous statement was hyperbole. I do not actually know how much OMG pays their players.) With some of the flashiest names in the LPL, finishing without at least challenging JDG would have been a disappointment, let alone the 7th/8th that they actually managed.
The big obvious question for this team is what exactly they do with the top lane because the decision making around it was seemed heavily stilted. They chose to run Qingtian basically the entire regular season, and then yanked the rug on him with a single series to go? Sure, he was largely a hit or miss top laner who was missing against the better teams (and LGD’s because rookie Xiaoxu was feeling it) but pulling the plug on him and swapping to Wayward literally at the last second heavily sabotaged both of them. Congratulations, Wayward crushed Biubiu in round 1 of playoffs, like basically everyone else who played top lane in the LPL. Up against Shanji (a player TES bypassed as a rookie to pick up Qingtian), Wayward was not up to it, and it was a big part of what ended their season. Even though both top laners are limited, I find it hard to place the blame on them directly given this awkward setup and how they approach top lane in the Summer with both players still on the roster remains to be seen.
The bot lane continues to be the same story as always. Jackeylove is still super high ceiling but there are still sometimes these baffling efforts where he’s playing off of his game, which has been a repeating trend for a while now. Mark did well to stabilize him at the beginning of their shared tenure but it’s been rough going as of late for this bot lane in general.
Moving to the big free agent swap they made, adding the legendary Rookie to the team, and it wasn’t all bad. It’s not like he was an abject disaster, he had his share of good games, such as dominating against Shanks in the first round of the playoffs, it’s just that there were too many series where he didn’t lift the team when things weren’t clicking elsewhere… like the 2nd round against OMG. It felt like too often he wasn’t meshing with Tian who was also off his normally solid domestic game. People joke that it was his Worlds performance showing up and frankly, I’d have to agree.
I don’t know with this team. The on-paper talent is on there as usual but there’s something missing… Normally with teams, the question is: how can this team coordinate together and be more than the sum of their parts, which OMG showcased best? I don’t get that vibe from TES, where the question I’m asking is: do they feel like playing up to their talent, or are they going to let go of the rope and lose in shocking fashion? Just weird vibes. I’d say maybe the coaching swap could help, but bringing in the guy who was overseeing BLG during their moneybag disappointment era doesn’t fill me with confidence. I still think they still should be fine for the playoffs off of their sheer talent running over enough teams when they do hold it together, but I just don’t see them as a viable challenger for the LPL crown unless something flips in them, particularly given how good the top 4 seem.
Playoff Bubble
8) TT
Top- HOYA
Jungle – Beichuan/xiaohuangren
Mid – Ucal
ADC – Huanfeng/1xn
Support – yuyanjia/Yaoyao
A pleasant surprise last split, making their first LPL playoffs since they were known as Sinodragon, TT has shed their bottom feeder status and actually have some breakout potential. They’ve formed a decent core to build off of and collected some of the most exciting young talents in the league. How they split their starts between the young guns and the vets they played last split is quietly one of the most interesting storylines in the league as those talented swing pieces could push them up into contendership or down out of the playoffs depending on how they handle the LPL stage.
We’ll start with the boring part of the team in their now solidified Korean solo lane pairing, HOYA and Ucal. After spinning solo laners basically their entire existence, the duo has been locked in for basically 4 splits now. Neither blow anyone’s socks off (though I maintain Ucal in particular is pretty underrated), but you know you’re gonna get a playoff worthy performance but not much more. Together they provide the solid foundation for the rest of the roster, where it really gets interesting.
Starting with jungle, Beichuan had effective but flawed split. He output damage well and did much to incite action, but he also died a whole ton, with the highest death share of any jungler in the league last split. This volatility has been his modus operandi this TT squad as he manages to lead TT in MVPs and I’m sure would have also led the team had an “Most Un-valuable Player” award been given to the biggest inter on the losing team, so he’s pretty core to the TT identity as they’re constructed. However, the clearly more intriguing option has to be Xiaohuangren, who is likely the youngest player in the league right now, and the most hyped LDL jungler since Bo. Debuting in LDL at just 16, XHR was immediately one of the best mechanical junglers in the lower level, and even when the age limit was placed, he took to dominating the Korean ladder with multiple accounts in his excess time. Promoted in the middle of the Spring split days after he turned 18, he hasn’t seen a stage since that age limit was placed, but eyes will be watching to see if TT put the hyper-talent on the rift.
Their other young hyper-talent TT acquired is at the ADC position where they are bringing JDG’s LDL bot laner 1xn. Highly touted by LDL experts, 1xn doesn’t have a mechanical flaw to speak of, putting out insane damage and CS numbers on the regular. The one thing to note was that the JDM team surrounding him didn’t have the skills to back him up, so he never really got the accolades his performance deserved. How he splits time with Huanfeng, who was pretty ineffective last season, and just clearly is no longer the do-everything ADC we saw at 2020 Worlds with Suning is the other big question. It’s weird to see him morph into a rather conservative low-risk low-reward player, and honestly, if they gave out a “Least Valuable Player” award to the winning team, he’d probably be the among League’s leaders in that sketchy credential.
Finally, the support situation is less exciting but lowkey just as important as the other 2 positions as they’ve opted to add Yuyanjia to the roster to which I’m fairly confused. A lackluster veteran (25 years old?) who has never really helped a roster even at his “peak”, I’m not sure what he brings to the table for TT. It’s even more confusing since incumbent support Yaoyao has been the rare promoted LDL support who has actually looked good in his initial LPL stint, which is some sort of minor miracle given the typical LDL support struggles. Trying to fit XinLiu in last split probably cost them some series, so I’m not sure why they seem so interested in these mediocre at best support players when they have a solid one in hand.
9) WE
Top – Cube/Demon
Jungle – Heng
Mid – Shanks
ADC – Hope
Support – Iwandy
I see WE as the LPL’s gatekeeper team. Last split they were great against the lower ranked teams (exception AL), and awful against the higher ranked teams (exception BLG) and managed to sneak playoffs thanks to the likes of IG being just a bit more volatile. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about them as the season goes on, so I’ll keep things brief here.
They managed to do this with an essential deadweight in the top lane. Cube doesn’t completely alter the equation for WE, as he’s coming off of his worst split to date where he was largely stuck on tank duty, but he does turns the top lane for WE from being a ceiling capper into a floor raiser for the team. Worst case is that he continues his middling tank form and he serves as a rich man’s Biubiu who can actually lane competently. The best-case scenario is that the change of scenery (where he was on RA for 4 years) works to revitalize him towards more of the damage top lane champs he played in his earlier years. Either way, the best part of this addition is really the subtraction of Biubiu, which adds much needed flexibility to a team that desperately needs it. Meanwhile, Demon also augments the team’s flexibility by adding his skills of doing promotional videos when Chinese New Year rolls around. So yeah, you can say this is a much-improved top lane situation.
Otherwise, the team remains the same as their gatekeeper-selves. Iwandy quietly had a very solid season as WE’s most consistent player and a foundation as a support. Hope had a mid-season swoon that showed his deficiencies particular as a laner and on less focused champions, but was able to showcase his carrying skills as the season concluded. Both are what they are: usually net positives for a team, but not really able to take you to a top 6 seed independently. That is going to have to come from their teammates, speaking of which…
Heng was up and down as a rookie jungler, but for the most part demonstrated a willingness to be proactive and facilitate his lanes via early ganks, even if it didn’t always work out as planned. And of course, Shanks who had his best regular season to date, relying on consistently strong lane performances. While capitalizing on those leads remains a hit or miss affair and a particular bad playoff series against TES are marks against him, I still have those high expectations for him and continue to see this as a prove it year. Outside of Cube unlocking something additional, which shouldn’t be counted on, this jungle-mid pair are the key for WE to climb higher than the lower playoff spots. Both are usually strong early, but they’ll need to clean up their mid/late game play for the team to be a contender against higher caliber teams.
10) IG
Top – YSKM/neny
Jungle – Tianzhen
Mid – Cryin/Dove
ADC – Xiaoyueji/Ahn
Support – Wink
Putting IG too low was a big miss for me in Spring and despite narrowly missing out on playoffs and making some pretty major roster changes, they do make sense as a team as a whole to the point where I can see them in playoff contention.
YSKM was the breakout player for them, as his mechanical prowess was legit right out of the gate though I do think he’s a tad overrated as his DPM isn’t as high as you would expect for a player that almost exclusively plays damage top laners. You have to assume he starts over neny who is just perpetually going to be on this roster as a break in case of emergency/illness weakside player.
Their other returning player is Wink, who has proven to be a successfully above average support and revitalized his career in the process after floundering at ADC for IG. Wink is reunited with his former mid laner Cryin, as both were teammates on a Estar team that vastly exceeded expectations on their debut year. While being the low econ mid laner in a Xiaohu-GALA centric RNG didn’t flatter his talents, Cryin had a pretty good year all things as UP’s best player last season, and he’ll get another shot this year. The expectation is he starts over Dove who is still on the roster? He wasn’t awful but was certainly less exciting than his jungle counterpart and I assumed he would be leaving along with GIDEON and the Korean coaching staff.
This is Xiaoyueji’s second shot at the big leagues given he was tried and passed by Ahn last season, but he’s coming off of an LDL Season MVP where he was clearly above the lower level. We’ll need to see if he can step up with the tougher competition ala Photic, or if he’s just a quadruple-A player (too good for LDL, not good enough for LPL) like Asura. It might not even matter though as it’s worth noting that Ahn remains on the roster, even after the promotion of XYJ and a tryout from LNG (who clearly have contending in mind). He’s coming off of a quietly strong split and likely has the inside track in the battle for the starting role as in a repeat of LPL Spring 2022, these 2 will duke it out for the spot again.
Despite not being the LDL MVP, Tianzhen might be the more exciting prospect actually and notably doesn’t have any veteran to compete with. At only 18 years old, he’s going to be one of the LPL’s youngest players and has an eclectic champ pool that is highlighted by his signature Rengar. It will be interesting to see if these LDL standouts can continue the momentum in the LPL. The promotion isn’t easy, but both of them are in position to excel.
11) RNG
Top – Breathe
Jungle – Wei
Mid – Tangyuan
ADC – LP
Support – LvMao/Lele
It’s crazy to think this time last year, RNG were celebrating their 2nd consecutive MSI championship. Obviously, this team has more or less completely shattered from the Golden Road-seeking team that once ruled Spring and faltered at Worlds on a regular basis. I mean it’s been years of speculation that RNG was actually in a NA-esque perpetual financial meltdown that was held together by unfair streaming contracts and bobby pins, but with the departure of GALA and in particular, Ming, who has more or less been on RNG since the start of the era, finally puts RNG on the backfoot. Still, even with the exodus of more or less everyone on those famous teams, there’s a window at the playoffs.
Wei is the final piece of the MSI 2022 team, which is wild to think about because as I mentioned, it's been just 1 year. Now the longest tenured player on the roster, it’s a weird situation as there’s no longer an obvious lane to play into. While he wasn’t always bad, he had many questionable moments and his weakest split to date, and now without GALA in the bot lane there’s no clear place to focus for this team. He’s demonstrated he can be effective without the likes of Xiaohu, GALA and Ming back when he was on EStar in his debut season in 2020, but it’s been a long time since then, so I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.
Similarly, Breathe is also coming off of a split where he failed to meet expectations. It feels like ever since he left WE, he just hasn’t really found his footing as the good flex top laner, first on that weird 2022 BLG failed “superteam” and then on RNG where he never fit in to the Xiaohu-GALA puzzle. This last split he was basically relegated to weakside tanks and was subsequently pretty inconsequential as either a positive or negative factor. The few forays he took towards more carry champions were bad last split and it’s not a great sign for a player once considered so promising. I guess it’s the WE fan in me talking that he still has that upside to be among the best in the league. Maybe I’m lending him too much leeway given he was maybe WE’s best strongside top ever (which for the record is more about WE perpetually playing bot-centric). With out any of those other major carries on RNG, I’m interested to see if Breathe is placed back in that role.
The rest of the team is a smattering of cobbled pieces who aren’t without upside, but don’t exactly scream playoffs. GALA was exchanged for a large bag of cash and LP, who was the only consistent starter of the new cohort. he was heavily cared for as the rookie bot laner on LNG’s otherwise star-studded group, he was able to deliver in that capacity. Notably, he narrowly had the 2nd highest DPM in the split, though admittedly there was a large gap between 1st place damage monster Elk and a much smaller one to the following ADCs of JackeyLove, Assum and Leave. However, he certainly wasn’t perfect as he managed the lowest CS per minute among ADCs in the league, and he didn’t wow the way rookie of the split Leave did. Still, it was a relatively promising start, though the downgrade from Hang to one of RNG’s supports looms large as needless to say, the “cash considerations” RNG received with LP are most likely not being used for his lane partner.
With Angel departing after a pretty rough split, where the highlight was creating a meme after defeating his former team Weibo Gaming, RNG were rumored for a number of domestic mid laners but ultimately just stuck with the player they seemed intent on before they picked up Angel at the last second. Tangyuan is an LDL promote who has been flatout bad in the few stage performances he got in with the main roster, struggling both in the pre-season Demacia Cup and then to open the proper LPL season while Angel got up to speed. He’s at least known to have good Korean solo queue ranks, but you have to imagine there’s going to be a lot of handwringing over his inevitable growing pains as he starts for one of the country’s most popular domestic teams. There’s not zero upside here, for example Xiaoxu came from the same LDL team and vastly overperformed expectations, but I’d lean towards a year of hard knocks for the youngster.
Ming’s departure is the biggest loss for RNG as they now go from one of the rare franchise defining supports to… not that. LvMao spent the split unsigned for the most part before latching onto BLG as ON’s backup to end the season. Reportedly he served a coaching-esque role for the team as they went on their impressive MSI run but LvMao’s play has left a lot to be desired. Now with over 3 years removed from his standout performances in Spring 2020 and no Bard patch coming in sight, it’s tough to see what LvMao brings to the table as a player outside of an experienced hand. The other option they brought in was Lele, the young rookie support FPX promptly benched for Qiuqiu, which is never a great sign, and you know my stance on LDL supports: they bad. Funnily enough Lele was originally a pretty hyped RNG prospect the team once spent 300K yuan signing out of the yearly rookie camp. Needless to say, he’s been an okay LDL support but hasn’t lived up to that price tag at all, though now it seems they could at least get some games out of their failed investment.

I think Africa has some countries that lack good stereotypes/jokes/tropes in Polandball. I've been trying to gather some for each country.
Could you help me out suggest other ones or confirm/reject the ones I've got?

Country	Stereotypes	Status
Algeria	French, desert, Oil reserves (and is in OPEC), Berbers, historic barbary pirates, name means "the islands" but it's mostly desert	weak
Angola	Oil reserves, most expensive place to live in Africa, German influence and investment (instead of Chinese), corrupt, human rights violator	weak
Benin	Voodoo, benis(?), malaria(?), not related to historical Benin (stole the name from Nigeria), historically big slave traders, Benin amazons	ok
Botswana	Robot, doing well in African terms (high GDP), Diamonds, AIDS, Elephants, poaching, click language	Good
Burkina Faso	Terrorism, formerly Marxist, Chinese influence, Burkina "fatso"	weak
Burundi	genocide, rural, poor, unhappy, malaria (?), drumming (?)	weak
Côte d'Ivoire	Cacao, looks like Irish flag, elephants, poaching, French, Trafficking	ok
Cabo Verde	Hurricanes, stable, free press, tourist destination	ok
Cameroon	Tribalism, soccer, breast ironing, Anglophone/Francophone conflict	ok
Central African Republic	automobile, civil war with child soldiers, shortlived empire that bankrupted nation	weak
Chad	Gigachad, Lake Chad drought, French, terrorism, poor, Israeli relations, Great Toyota War, same flag as Romania	weak
Comoros	Arab, muslim, claims Mayotte, volcanos, big marraiges, bad income inequality	ok
Democratic Republic of the Congo	Colonial history with Belgium (hands etc.), Unstable with civil wars and coups, resource rich with gold and minerals, Doctor (DR Congo), rainforests, gorillas, Ebola, natural disasters, Mobutu, dislikes Rwanda	Good
Djibouti	Muslim, important harbor location, booty pun, military bases	weak
Egypt	Pyramids, pharaoh, ancient history, Suez canal, camels, the Nile	Good
Equatorial Guinea	Rich, oil, Spanish, not on equator, dictatorship, weird capital on an island, had genocidal dictator that liked Hitler and Kim Il-Sung, capital is being moved to mainland	Good
Eritrea	No freedom of press, psychopathic, violence, persecution, slavery, emmigration, cycling, italian	Good
Eswatini	absolute monarchy, eswaTINY, shields (from flag), recent renaming	weak
Ethiopia	Famine, good food, not colonized, coffee, christian, growing economy, ancient history and kingdom, Italian invasion	Good
Gabon	rainforests, oil, french colony, not that poor, forestry, elephants and poaching, gorillas, drug trade pit stop, tribes, soccer	weak
Gambia	River, long and thin like the shape of the country, Latvian colonization	weak
Ghana	Cacao production to Swiss Nestle, Gold, not part of Ghanan empire, economic growth, kente cloth, Adinkra symbols, Weird movie posters for western movies	weak
Guinea	Guinea pigs (?), very typical African, Bauxite export?, first French colony to gain independence	weak
Guinea-Bissau	Cashew nuts, unstable government, muslim, portugese	weak
Kenya	Athletic, rich wildlife, safaris, poaching, anti homosexuality, has somali refugees, spears and shields from flag	ok
Lesotho	tumor of South Africa, diamonds, mountains/highlands with snow and skiing and freshwater sources, AIDS, high murder rate, low life expectancy	weak
Liberia	Funny state/county flags, not colonized, US influence/mini USA, Ebola, 2 big civil wars	Good
Libya	conflict (civil war), bad hub for refugees, oil (reserves and is in OPEC)	weak
Madagascar	Lemurs, vanilla, cacao, plague & Plague Inc (shut down everything meme), Austronesian, baobab trees, warlords(?), Dreamworks movie & penguins therefrom	ok
Malawi	Lake Malawi, Chinese investment, kid (has a young population), tobacco producer	ok
Mali	Richest in history (Mansa Musa), Timbuktu ancient city, coups, sand, G5 Sahel money from EU, French, sounds like mail	ok
Mauritania	slavery, G5 Sahel EU money, smiling like a psychopath, muslim, time traveler, desert	weak
Mauritius	Paradise, beaches, extinct Dodo bird, turtles, Claims Chagos Archipelago from UK	Good
Morocco	being the devil (pentagram flag), occupying West Sahara, souk markets, cannabis (exporting and consuming), camels, phosphorous	Good
Mozambique	AK47 (from flag), islamist insurgency and IS terrorism, floods and natural disasters, Portugese	weak
Namibia	German influence (and genocide), sand dunes, skeleton coast, once part of South Africa	weak
Niger	sound close to the N-word, G5 Sahel EU money, Uranium, overpopulation, very low HDI, terrorism, deser	weak
Nigeria	Nollywood movies, Afrobeat music, Nigerian prince scam, good with computers and internet, oil, intelligent, popular African country, Boko Haram terrorism	Good
Republic of the Congo	Belgiuan opression, Chinese investment and neo-colonialism, Ebola, snake problem, Pygmy culture	weak
Rwanda	genocide, tensions with Burundi, mountain gorillas, delivery drones, dislikes DR Congo	weak
Sao Tome and Principe	Chocolate and cocoa, sinking because of climate change, Chinese and Macau investment, shark fishing, Sao Tome being much better off than Principe	ok
Senegal	dislikes Gambia because of no access to river, wrestling, wind farms, Casamance separatist movement	weak
Seychelles	tourism, paradise island, gay (because of rainbow flag), highest HDI in Africa, tax haven, coral reefs, turtles	ok
Sierra Leone	Blood diamonds, iron ore, malaria, ebola	weak
Somalia	Piracy, terrorism, famine, Somaliland separatism, Middle Juba having lowest GDI worldwide	Good
South Africa	racial tensions and apartheid, crime, rape, anti immigration, vuvuzelas, braai bbq, British, high homicide rates and income inequality, penguins	ok
South Sudan	Youngest nation, civil war, oil, the Nile	weak
Sudan	Pyramids, the Nile, conflict, coups, dislikes South Sudan, border disputes with Egypt and Ethiopia	weak
Tanzania	Peaceful, animals, safari, rhino poaching, mount Kilimanjaro, Swahili, hakuna matata/hamna shida, Lake Malawi border dispute with Malawi, Chinese investment, athletic (running)	ok
Togo	German then French colony, one of the saddest countries, voodoo (vodun)	weak
Tunisia	Muslim, terrorism (ISIS), vacation spot, Carthage, democracy, Mediterranean culture, oliv oil (?)	weak
Uganda	Gorillas, homophobic (eat da poopoo, y r u gay?), Ugandan Knuckles, Who killed captain Alex? memes, Lake Victoria, Bananas	Good
Zambia	space program, animals (it's one big zoo), sad a bout a dead fish, Zombie-a, loving escalators, China and IMF monetary support, Victoria Falls, copper(?)	ok
Zimbabwe	inflation, balancing rocks, great Zimbabwe ruins, tried to remove white people (farmers)	ok

I have categorized them in three statuses weak/ok/Good depending on how interesting I think the tropes are and how many PB jokes I can remember with each country.
Many countries have duplicate tropes like "desert", "oil", "Chinese investment"... which aren't very interesting.
edit: added some missing countries and will try to update main table from the comments.

I have been having a difficult time typing all of this out. Not only am I not a professional writer, but I have been debating whether or not sharing this so openly is such a good idea.
I have had the ability to sense the demonic ever since I was a child, and that's the only reason that I could come up with as to why what had happened to me a week ago hadn't dragged me by the balls, descending me into complete utter madness.
No matter how many times I tried to keep it controlled, it didn't get any easier. I was twelve when I discovered what I could do. With no one to help me, I had to learn how to keep it hidden. I know that it must sound absolutely bat-shit insane, but it's the truth whether anyone believes me or not.
It was an hour after I had showered and dressed when I caught a glimpse of headlights from Roland's jeep as he pulled into the driveway. Roland and I have been roommates for over a year now, after my grandmother passed, but we've been best friends since I was ten, a few months after my parent's tragic deaths. At around 6'2 and handsome with dark brown hair, light brown skin, hazel eyes, and an outgoing personality, he was usually the center of attention. At one time I'd even grown feelings for him.
Roland wasn't a homophobic asshole, but to avoid any awkwardness between us I just decided to keep my feelings to myself. Not to mention that Roland seemed to have shown zero discernible interest beyond our friendship. Roland smiled and waved as I made my way over.
"Hey, Gavin sorry I'm late," Roland said as he reached over to move his duffel bag to the back seat. "Traffic was a fucking nightmare."
I shook my head and shrugged. "Don't worry about it, man. Uh, hey, are you sure you're still up for tonight? I mean, if you want-"
Roland shook his head. "Hold up. Are you honestly suggesting that we postpone your 21st? Nope unacceptable."
"What's the big deal anyway?" I asked. "You know I've had my first drink when I was sixteen."
"Yeah, and now you'll be able to drink legally like every other adult. Plus, I've been stuck inside a cabin in the woods for an entire week, so damn right we're going to celebrate." For years, Roland had been going on vacation with his family once a month - the perks of working with his father. His whole family were close-knit and they usually did a lot of things together. Sometimes I envied him for it.
"Oh, and did you forget? Aerian will be there, too." Roland added. He wiggled his eyebrows and I smiled warmly at the thought of seeing her in person for the first time. Her and I have been chatting online for months, and we fell for each other immediately. Rather than being the manic pixie dream girl, Aerian embodied that cliché with a toughness. She had a unique personality and had a few things in common with me. She had shoulder length black hair dipped in pink tips embellished by pale skin and beautiful icy blue eyes. She had told me how her friends would compare her looks to Alexandra Daddario, and quite honestly I could see it.
We arrived at the Bowling alley around seven to meet up with the others. Aerian waved at us as we got out of the jeep. The petite curly blond who stood next to her was her best friend Shelby, and the tall beefy dark skinned man was Shelby's fiance, Jasper. I kind of knew them from high school, but we barely talked; we were more like ships passing in the night.
As far as places went in a small town, the Bowling alley was well cared for, but the balls for rent came with small notches taken out and the lanes featured a few divotes here and there. In my opinion, it wasn't ideal if you're seeking competitive sport, but the fry oil that wafted from the snack bar was enticing enough to compensate.
I walked up to the register where Aerian stood with her purse open, apologizing to the plump balding man behind the counter. "Oh, crap. I must've left my wallet at home or something,"
"Here, let me," I offered as I pulled out my own wallet and placed enough cash down for the both of us. Aerian looked up at me as the man handed us two pairs of shoes.
"You didn't have to do that, Gavin." She said. She grabbed her shoes and tucked her purse underneath her arm. "Especially not on your birthday."
"It's fine. Don't worry about it." I shook my head and grabbed my scruffed up bowling shoes and thanked the man for being patient with us. The guy just gave me a beleaguered sigh in return. I didn't blame him; if I had to deal with all the children's parties that happen here quite often I'd probably be a little bitter, too.
After I laced up my shoes I made my way over to the racks that displayed the different variety of balls. I ran my hand over a few available options before I eventually settled on a black one with a purple printed skull on it. Aerian walked up beside me and my chest swelled.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey," She glanced down at the ball I had in my hands. "Oh, nice choice. That's usually my go-to when I used to come here with my dad."
"Do you want this one? I can pick a different one." I said.
"It's fine. I just think it's kind of cool that we have similar tastes in balls." She chuckled as she grabbed a crimson ball with golden swirls on it. She held it up, and I watched as her slender fingers slid into the holes. I was about to crack a joke about it when I suddenly felt light headed. I glanced around, but nothing really stood out to me until I looked over at the snack bar. A tall, wiry man with shaggy blond hair stood at the register with his back toward me.
His head snapped in my direction, and my breath hitched; I watched as his true face rippled beneath his human facade. His skin was milky white, and his obsidian eyes narrowed at me. I quickly averted my eyes and placed the ball on the rack.
"Hey, Gavin are you alright?" Aerian asked, giving me a look of concern.
"Yeah, um, I'm fine. I'm just gonna go to the restroom, and I'll be right back."
As I washed my hands in the sink I kept replaying that man's face in my head. My heart raced and I felt hot. I needed to calm down, maybe he didn't see me, maybe it's all in my head, maybe...when I looked up at my reflection something made me stop and take a second look in the mirror. What the hell? I thought to myself as I kept examining my face. My throat squeezed with fear as I stared at the left side of my face. Black spidery thread-like lines creeped from my scalp and across my cheek. They interlaced with one another. My eyes were oily black. What the fuck? That was a new one. I nearly panicked as I quickly backed away from the mirror, and I yelped when I heard a knock on the other side of the door.
"Hey, Gavin are you in there?"
It was Roland.
"Uh," I glanced back at the mirror, and expected to see dark lines and black eyes, but there was nothing; it was just my normal human face that stared back at me. I debated whether or not to open the door. There was possibly a demon ordering pizza, and there was a good chance he saw me and my face-
Another knock. "Gavin are you in there? You didn't get stuck in the toilet did you?"
I took a few moments before I calmed myself down and unlocked the door. Roland was right outside giving me a worried look. "Woah, man. Are you alright? You're looking a bit pale,"
I took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. C'mon, let's start the game already." I said walking back over to the racks. I just need to keep my head down, and if I see that...man again I'll just have to ignore him.
We all sat in the uncomfortable plastic chairs as Jasper stepped up first. We all watched as his ball rolled all the way to the left and right into the gutter. "I thought you said you were an "excellent bowler" babe." Shelby giggled.
"Excuse me, I'm just a bit rusty is all." He faked hurt and kissed her on the forehead.
"D'aw, you two are so cute!" Aerian gushed. Then she turned to me. "Ok, Gavin you're up."
I got up from the chair and strode up to the wooden platform. I held the ball up and peered over at the newly erect pins. I took a deep breath and drew my arm back and swung it forward with a slight twist. The ball spun dizzily as it flew down the lane with a characteristic curve. "Come on...come on..." I whispered in a mantra. Luckily, the ball connected with a thunderous crack as all the pins clattered to the floor.
"Hell yeah, nice job!" Roland and Aerian cheered. After our game the five of us headed to the parking lot.
"So, what are you two doing now?" Jasper asked.
I zipped up my jacket. "I don't know. Probably headed back to our place, I guess."
Aerian, who was walking close beside Shelby twirled on her heals to face me. "You two should come back with us."
I glanced over at Roland who nodded. "I'm up for it if Gavin is since he's the birthday man."
I turned back to face Aerian. "Sure, why not?"
"Awesome. It'll be fun, and hey, the nights still young." She winked and followed Shelby to Jasper's car, but not before texting me the address in case we got lost.
After about twenty minutes on the road, Roland spoke up. "I almost forgot! Will you reach back there and grab the black bag behind my seat?"
"Yeah, sure." I grabbed the bag and set it in my lap.
"Go ahead and open it."
I loosened the red ribbon from the bag and pulled out a rectangular box. Nestled in the black crinkled paper was an obsidian blade. I brushed my fingertips over the silver wolf-shaped handle in awe. The overall length of the blade was six inches at most. It was inside a leather sheath pouch with a belt clip. "Holy crap, this is-"
"It sure is. I know you've been wanting to get one for a while now. Plus, I also know how much you love wolves so I had the handle custom made. Happy birthday, Gav."
"Thank you so much." I said as I placed the blade back into the box. I was about to place the lid back on when suddenly the jeep began to shudder violently and the back of it slid sideways. I jerked back in my seat, and the box fell to the floor between my feet. Roland cursed and gripped the wheel as he reduced his speed and eased over to the shoulder of the road.
"What the hell was that?" I asked. I looked out the window, but I couldn't see anything but trees.
"Goddammit," Roland sighed and unbuckled his seat belt. "I think one of the tires must've blew. Are you alright, Gav?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Good. Just, stay here. I'm gonna check the damage."
"Be careful." I called to him as he hopped out of the jeep. "There could be monsters out there."
Roland turned around and gave me a smirk. "Don't worry, Gav. I can take care of myself."
I rolled my eyes. "I swear that's what they say in horror movies right before they die."
Several minutes later he opened the driver's side with a frown. "It's just as I thought," He grumbled as he reached over to turn on the hazards. "Tire's blown to hell."
"Well, damn. I guess somebody doesn't want us to party tonight." I said, sitting back in my seat. "Don't you have a spare?"
Roland nodded. "Of course I do, but it might take a while. Call Aerian and tell her what happened."
"Wait," I opened the compartment and handed him a flashlight. "You probably should take this since it's dark out." Roland looked at it for a moment and then took it, disappearing behind the jeep again. I grabbed my phone from my pocket and dialed her number. It went straight to her voice-mail. I tried again, but again went to her voice-mail. I looked down at the screen. No service bars. "You've got to be kidding me!" I groaned in frustration.
Roland came back and opened the door. "Good news is I have a spare, bad news is that I don't have-" When he saw my expression he asked what was wrong.
"I can't get any signal, but that doesn't make any sense! I just had service a minute ago."
Roland checked his phone as well. "Crap, same. Well, let's not panic. If I remember correctly, we're less than a mile from the closest gas station. We should head there and call for a tow. Maybe you can try calling her back."
"Seems like a good plan," I said. I unbuckled my seat belt, but before I got out of the jeep I opened the box and grabbed the blade. I attached the sheath to my belt loop and zipped up my jacket again hiding it from view. Roland opened his passenger door and grabbed his duffel bag.
We were halfway down the road when I smelled something acrid hit my nostrils. I took a tentative step forward and froze as my foot stepped on a large shard of broken glass. I turned to Roland who stood rigid in place, his eyes wide. I followed his gaze to the left, and what I saw made my blood run cold.
It was Jasper's car, or what was left of it. The front of the car was in a ditch. It smelled awful, and it wasn't the engine or cracked radiator. I smelled blood. Lots of it. The whole left side was damaged and open as if something ripped through it. The car was empty. I fought through the cold panic that washed over me. I stood with my hands on my thighs, and I started to dry heave. Roland looked around as if he was searching for something.
"Ok, Gav, we need to leave right now."
I stood up and gave him a confused expression. "Wait, what? No, we have to find them! They could be hurt or-"
"Gavin-"
A high-pitched wail tore through the trees. It was feminine. Oh god...Aerian. Without a second thought, I bolted across the road towards the forest.
"Gavin!" I heard Roland screaming for me to stop and come back, but I kept going. I wasn't thinking straight at the time. All I could think about was Aerian and every worse case scenario. My boots sloshed into the muddy ground, and I cursed when I slipped on a pile of leaves as I staggered up a small incline. This caught me off guard since there hadn't been a drop of rain all day.
I quickly pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight. I gasped as I spotted specks of blood intermixed with the dirt. I grimaced as a strong metallic scent hit me. I glanced down and noticed that there was a strange tint to the mud which seemed to lead further into the trees in front of me.
In between two trees, I saw her. It wasn't Aerian, though. It was Shelby. I gulped and I tentatively made my way over to her. At the sound, she turned her head toward me. Her frantic eyes red and blotchy with tears. She managed a weak moan, and the sound that came out made my chest tighten. Her whimpers were a bleak summation of what she went through before I found her. Her jacket was shredded and covered in blood and her skin was covered in deep lacerations. My thoughts automatically went back to that possessed man. What if he followed us and attacked them? What if he's still here somewhere?
The rest of my thoughts were interrupted when I heard my name fall from her bloodied lips. Without hesitation, I knelt down and tried my best to console her as I carefully pulled her into my lap. Deep down, though I knew that it was a pointless effort. I knew that by her bruised and broken body it was too late to try and call for help regardless if I had service or not on my phone. Her blood soaked into my pants, but I didn't care. I had the urge to find Aerian, but I didn't want to leave Shelby here to die alone and afraid.
"GODDAMMIT!" I cried. I looked back down at Shelby who moved her head slightly upward to meet my eyes. Her torn lips opened and she tried to speak, but her voice was barely audible over the sound of my own heartbeat. I stroked her head. "Shh...don't speak,"
Shelby ignored me and tried again. I frowned as I bent my head down just enough so that I could hear her. "It's not..." she gurgled. "It's not..." Her whole body shook as she dragged in air. Her lips quivered, and then finally her shuddering chest eased, and then she was gone. The cold stillness of the woods pressed down on my heart. Tears fell as I placed her head gently on the forest floor and slowly got to my feet. I had to keep going.
I broke through the trees and came upon what looked like an abandoned construction site; from the dirt covered sign the large building was meant to be a low income housing complex with the same layout as a hotel. The area around it was barely lit up by the few streetlights. Part of the chain link fence that surrounded the building was warped and bent as if something very large ripped its way through it. I shivered. I spotted Aerian's purse by the fence and ran over to pick it up. She must be here somewhere. I made my way down the dirt road toward it.
I rounded the corner of the building quickly, frantically searching for a way inside. I almost didn't notice that someone had crossed my path until it was too late, and I barely registered the blood soaked clothes before we collided. Fortunately I managed to keep my balance and I grabbed the other by the arm. I gasped in relief when I realized who it was.
"Holy shit! Aer-'
"NO!" Aerian screamed as she struggled to wrench herself away from me. "Let go of me you sick-"
"Aerian stop! It's me, Gavin!"
At the sound of my voice she calmed down and glanced up at me. Aerian threw her arms around me and buried her tear stained face in my chest. "Oh my god, Gavin!" She sobbed. "How did you find me? Is Shelby and Jasper alive? Wh-"
"Hold on, Aerian," I cut her off. "What happened? Are you alright?"
She nodded. "Yes. The blood...it isn't mine. We crashed and something attacked Jasper. Shelby and I ran into the forest, but then I lost her and came here. There's an entrance there and I hid," she said as she pointed to a large rectangular window. "We need to go. Whatever attacked us is probably still around."
I nodded and hoped that by the time we got back to the main road, Roland was able to call for help. I placed my phone in my pocket. I didn't want to risk the light attracting whatever was lurking in the trees. I reached to take her hand in mine, but before I did I saw something pass over her face just like the man's had. Her skin was grey, her eyes inky black, and her mouth split open revealing razor sharp teeth. I suddenly screamed and pushed myself away from her, dropping her purse.
"What's wrong?" She asked, startled. She stared at me with human eyes and a human frown.
"Your f-face," I stammered.
"My face? What's wrong with my face?" She asked as she took a step forward.
"Don't come any closer! I know what I saw, Aerian." I screamed. No. Not her, too. Wait a minute, if I was able to sense the man right then and there, why wasn't I able to do the same with her? The reaction I expected from her mirrored in confusion or anger, but none of that happened. Instead, she smiled a toothy smile.
"So, it is true," she chuckled. "I've been able to blend in amongst your species for a very long time now. No one has ever been able to see through my glamor. That is, until I met you. I'm curious, how are you doing it?"
An icy cold feeling washed over me and my heart lurched. My stomach twisted with a sensation I couldn't put into words. I couldn't even muster up a response, but Aerian didn't seem to be waiting for one. "Or can it be that you don't even know? Huh." She cocked her head. "It almost makes me wonder what other charming little talents you might be hiding."
She started to circle around me. She sized me up as her dark eyes fixed on mine. "I've been watching you for a while, and I gotta say, I was very surprised you were able to sense one of us so quickly."
My heart thudded in my chest. Aerian knew this whole time. She knew who that man was, too. Was this some plan to get to me? I try to keep my ability hidden so that I wouldn't draw any attention from their kind. I must've messed up somewhere. "W-why wasn't I able to sense the thing inside of you?"
Aerian sighed and stopped moving. "Thing? Well, first of all that was rude. I may be a demon, but I do have feelings you know, and to answer your question I honestly don't know. Although, unlike the one you saw at the Bowling alley, I don't need a vessel in order to walk topside. What a mess this whole thing has become. I knew I shouldn't have used a demon fresh out of hell. They have more of a difficult time controlling themselves. Collateral was...unavoidable."
My eyes widened as the jarring realization slammed into me. "It was you," I took a few steps back. "Y-you're the one behind all of this!"
Aerian clapped her hands in mock applause. "Wow, congratulations. You've figured it out."
I clenched my fists and stood there, horrified by her blatant disregard for her friends. I wondered for a moment if the real Aerian was in there somewhere experiencing the horrors this thing did. "Tell me something, is she still in there?"
"Didn't you listen to anything I just said? The girl you've been talking to has been me all along, genius. The real Aerian is dead. Now, you can either come with me willingly or-"
"I'm not going anywhere with you. Roland's called the cops and they'll be here soon," I really hoped she would fall for the bluff.
"Oh? I highly doubt that. While you were running through the woods like an idiot, you left your friend alone and vulnerable. Poor thing is probably road kill by now."
At that moment rage poured through me, hot and fast as it twisted inside me and set me alight with the strength and burn of it. I could feel something primal and dangerous stir within my chest. Before she could react, my fist connected with her cheek. "YOU BITCH!" I screamed. "I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" I wanted to rip her eyes out of her skull. I barely registered the pain in my hands as I landed another blow to her face hard enough that she staggered backwards.
She snapped her head in my direction and her face contorted into a snarl as she wiped the blood from her mouth. "I was going to offer you a choice, dumbass!" Her voice deepened and it sounded like something was bubbling from her throat. She glanced down at herself. "This form is too much of a hindrance. I must take you in alive, but if I happen to rip off a limb or two to keep you from struggling then so be it."
A freight train of horrified amazement slammed into me as her whole body expanded and stretched. She tore roughly at her clothes, and threw the material from her body just as her breasts flattened, replaced with a broad and muscular chest. The demon was vaguely humanoid with a tail that slightly resembled that of a xenomorph's. It stood around eight feet tall on reptilian clawed feet. Black veins pulsed beneath grey skin, bat-like ears twitched as it dragged in a deep breath through slitted nostrils and its mouth split open, adorned with a row of sharp jagged teeth. Its black eyes were trained on me.
I felt a sudden wave of dread as I stared up at the large monstrous being in front of me. The demon lunged forward and pulled me in close. I gagged when I caught the coppery odor of recently spilled blood. A large hand grabbed my chin and I flinched as one of its claws sliced into my cheek. I cursed as I threw myself backwards and tugged hard, but it was as useless as a fish struggling on a line. My whole arm ached and I knew that if I kept it up I'd dislocate it.
The demon made a low, guttural growl, but before it could do anything, it paused and lifted its head toward the forest. While it was distracted, I managed to get underneath my jacket and loosen the dagger free from my waistband. I plunged the blade into its neck. Blood spilled from the wound and the demon let out a roar so loud that it made my insides shudder.
It threw me to the ground and recoiled. The demon stumbled backward as it grabbed at the blade. Everything hurt, but I managed to get on my feet, and even though it was tempting, I didn't stick around long enough to admire my handiwork. I also felt a wave of sadness knowing that I wouldn't be able to get my blade back. Ignoring the pain I turned and bolted toward the building. I made my way over to the window and quickly hauled myself inside. Without any hope of rescue, I had no other choice but to find someplace to hide.
I scanned the area and noticed that some of the floors were dilapidated and a few were blocked off by debris. The ceiling sagged in some places and it seemed that the creeper vines were all that held them up. I turned a corner and noticed stairs leading up to the second floor. I quickly made my way over.
Unfortunately, I wasn't quick enough; I barely made it up the last step when a large, clawed hand grabbed my right leg. How the hell did it get in without me hearing it? Oh, and I didn't kill it; the wound on its neck was in the process of healing. I panicked and slammed my free leg into its face. The demon let go of my leg and tumbled down the stairs. It would have been comical if not for the fact that I was in serious danger. I bolted down the hallway and turned right. I ran into one of the rooms and shut the door behind me.
By the light of the moon I noticed that I stood inside a large room with walls covered in graffiti. Dusty furniture was propped here and there and wooden pallets lay broken across the room from a decayed, mold infested mattress.
There was a window overlooking the woods and I ran over to it. I tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. I sobbed and collapsed to my knees. My thoughts were hazy at that point, worn thin by exhaustion. I knew that all of this was futile, and I was dealing with something far more powerful than I was. My resignation broke as soon as I heard movement from outside the door. I forced myself to my feet, driven only by an instinct to survive.
The demon tore through the door. I screamed as it lunged for me again and we both fell onto the mattress. It snarled as it pulled me under it with its tail. The demon lowered its head, and I managed at the last moment to wrap both of my hands on its throat in order to try and keep its demonic mess of a mouth at bay. I could feel its hot breath brush against my face and the tendons and sinewy muscles in its neck buldged.
The demon suddenly paused with its jaws open inches away from my shoulder. It hovered there for a moment, unnaturally still for a predator that had already caught its prey. An oddly unfocused look passed over its face and it growled. "What the hell are you? It can't be...you're a-"
Before the demon could finish its sentence, a loud angry roar reverberated around us. I blinked as the demon was thrown off of me. My vision refocused and my eyes landed on the two large figures in the middle of the room. The second one was a creature almost the same height as the demon. The beast was bipedal and also vaguely humanoid.
It's fur was dark and coarse along its arms and legs, but soft and lighter on its-his-chest and abdomen. His legs jut out of human hips, but his feet were large paws, his ankles had the forward hock joints of a wolf. His body was wide and muscular but he still retained an almost slender shape. His face was lupine.
A werewolf.
I looked between these two powerful beings, and that was the moment I truly found out that humans never really held the top of the food chain, and if that wasn't a giant kick to the evolutionary chain's balls then I didn't know what was.
The two of them collided. The werewolf managed to pull the other into a headlock. The werewolf's golden eyes pierced into me for one heart-stopping moment before he flipped the demon over his head. I could've sworn that the whole place vibrated from the impact. The demon rebounded onto its feet with a snarl and both of them sprang away from each other. I groaned as I moved into the shadows, relieved that they were too preoccupied with trying to kill each other to pay any mind to me.
The werewolf snapped his jaws and launched himself at the demon. The demon dodged the attack and threw the werewolf down onto the pallets with a sickening crunch. I bumped my arm against something and winced. The demon turned its head back to me and advanced. I panicked and scurried backwards.
The werewolf rolled off the broken wood and grabbed the demon by the tail. The werewolf managed to dig his fangs into the demon's shoulder. With a shrill cry of pain, the demon twisted and took another swipe of its claws down the werewolf's chest. The werewolf howled and backhanded the demon across the face, and the force sent it reeling into the wall.
The werewolf moved toward me in a protective stance, his eyes trained on the demon lying in the hole in the wall. The demon slowly got to its feet, and with a rage filled beastly roar it launched itself out the window.
I stood up carefully and turned my gaze to the werewolf still in the room with me. "T-thanks," I stammered. "Uh, we're cool, yeah?" His golden eyes seemed to look over me. Then, he growled.
Nope.
'Think, Gavin, think!' I thought, looking wildly around the dark room for an escape. I glanced over at the window and ran over to it. I hoisted myself up onto the thin rectangular ledge of the window, and even though I wasn't religious, I prayed to whatever Deity that I didn't simply topple over to my death.
I cried out as a clawed hand latched onto my left leg. In my haste to kick out of his grasp, my hands lost their grip of the roof below me. I felt several claws slice into the skin of my leg as I fell backwards, over the roof and down to the gravel below. I could have sworn the beast whimpered, but the pain was too much and darkness pulled me under.

Welcome to LivingMas!

For those who don't know, this pinned thread explains the current experience, shares relevant Taco Bell news, includes any new details or changes for our community. Limited time offers are a part of each Taco Bell "Experience". Taco Bell releases around 10 "Experiences" per year, each one with new items, limited offers and special releases nationwide. These experiences average 4-6 weeks each. All prices are corporate pricing recommendation and will vary by location.
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Experience 5: May 25 - June 28, 2023

NEW ITEMS

• Steak Chili Verde Nacho Fries and Burrito ($4.49 & $3.99): Fries topped with, or in a burrito with, spicy chili verde sauce, steak, nacho cheese, fiesta strips, sour cream, and shredded cheese
• Watermelon Berry Freeze replacing Wild Cherry Freeze
• Watermelon Berry Lemonade Freeze (Interesting note: "Lemonade Mint Syrup" is the name of the syrup added to the Watermelon Berry Freeze for this option)
• Enchirito Digital LTO ($3.79): "Give our fans another chance to experience the craveable fan favorite they brought back in 2022 with their votes throughout the entire experience". Available via web, app, kiosk, and POS key.

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These Items will continue in E5:

• Nacho Fries ALC: This is the 14th Experience for Nacho Fries since original launch, which was January 2018. There have been 50 total experiences in that time frame which means they've taken up 28% of our experiences in the past 5 years.
• Deluxe Cravings Box ft. Nacho Fries: This ($8.49) box will include a Chicken Chalupa, 5-Layer Burrito, Doritos Locos Taco, Nacho Fries, and a Medium Drink.
• $6 Bell Breakfast Box ft. Breakfast Crunchwrap (includes: breakfast Crunchwrap, hashbrown, 2 pack Cinnabon delights and medium drink) and Cinnabon Delights Coffee (Prices may vary)
• Breakfast California Crunchwrap ALC + Combo
• Deluxe Build Your Own Cravings Box LTO ($8.99): App users will now be able to tap into more choice, abundance and premium options when they customize their own Deluxe Cravings box.

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These Items are Taken Away/Discontinued in E5:

• Yellowbird Steak Nacho Fries
• Blue Raspberry Breeze and Wild Cherry Breeze Freezes

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3rd Party/Delivery Promotions:

• 5/25 – 5/31: Steak Chile Verde Fries will only be available for 3P delivery for DashPass users on DoorDash for the first week they are released (not available to Grubhub, Postmates, Uber Eats or non-Dashpass users on DoorDash). They will still be available for delivery orders placed directly on the Taco Bell app.
• 5/25 – 5/31: Free Starry Beverage of any size w/ Purchase of a Steak Chile Verde Nacho Fries w/$20+. Must add Steak Chile Verde Nacho Fries and Starry beverage to cart.
• 5/26 – 5/28: Cheesy Gordita Crunch Buy One Get One of equal or lesser value w/ $20+ orders for Memorial Day Weekend on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates and GrubHub. Must add two Cheesy Gordita Crunches to cart. Limit 1 per user.
• 6/1 – 6/14: Free California Crunchwrap w/ $15+ orders on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates and GrubHub. Must add California Crunchwrap to cart. Limited to new breakfast eaters only.
• 6/2 – 6/2: Free Cinnabon Delights® w/ $20+ orders for National Donut Day on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates and GrubHub. Must add Cinnabon Delights (2 pack) to cart.
• 6/4 – 6/4: Cheesy G Taco Buy One Get One of equal or lesser value w/ $20+ orders for National Cheese Day on DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates and GrubHub.
• 6/8 – 6/8: Free Burrito w/$20+ and Chance to win a Final Fantasy XVI Gift Pack with Promo Code GAMEFEST on DoorDash as part of the Summer of Game Fest Branded Partnership sponsored by DoorDash.
• 6/9 – 6/11: $2 off $20+ orders on DoorDash.
• 6/15 – 6/21: $3 off $15+ orders on DoorDash. Limited to new eaters only.
• 6/16 – 6/18: Free California Crunchwrap w/ $15+ orders for Breakfast for Father’s Day Weekend on DoorDash, UberEats, Postmates and Grubhub. Must add California Crunchwrap to cart.

In-App Promotions:
Starting on Tuesday, June 6, fans who are Taco Bell Rewards members can start their Tuesday mornings in June with a FREE Breakfast Crunchwrap offer and bite into fluffy eggs, warm hashbrowns, crispy bacon or juicy sausage all wrapped in a warm tortilla! The Free Breakfast Crunchwrap offer will be available for Rewards members in the Taco Bell app before 11 a.m. local time every Tuesday throughout the month of June: June 6, June 13, June 20, and June 27.

• 5/26 – 5/28: Cheesy Gordita Crunch Buy One Get One of equal or lesser value w/ $20+ orders for Memorial Day Weekend. Must add two Cheesy Gordita Crunches to cart and enter promocode 2XCHEESYG2305. Limit 1 per user.
• 6/6 – 6/27: Free Breakfast Crunchwrap (Bacon or Sausage) every Tuesday in June. Must add Breakfast Crunchwrap (Bacon or Sausage) to cart.****
• 6/1 – 6/7: Purchase a Deluxe Build Your Own Cravings Box, Get 10% off on a future order this month. Limit 1 per user, with a max discount of $10.
• 6/9 – 6/12: $0 Delivery on all orders. Delivery only, limit 1 per user. Offer inclusive of CA Prop 22 Fee.
• 6/16 – 6/18: $3 off $20+ orders. Delivery only, limit 1 per day.
• 6/23 – 6/25: Free Crunchwrap Supreme w/ $20+ orders. Must add Crunchwrap Supreme to cart. Limit 1 per user.

See this thread for what Taco Bell is testing during this experience!

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LivingMas

• Our community Discord has surpassed 3,800 members and still growing. We would love to see you there!
• LivingMas website is our community home base. All leaks can be found there first. Bookmark it. Share it.
• Get early experience updates and more on Twitter & Instagram following us @AlwaysLivingMas

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I do not receive comment notifications for this post, so if I am missing anything please mention me in the comments or send a PM and it will be edited/added on this megathread. Thank you!
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Flairs

• EMPLOYEES - Message the mods for a Verified Employee flair as well as an invitation to the employee only subreddit KenTacoHut. If you are on the Discord channel, you can be recognized there as well.
• Everyone else - Please view our list of user flairs and pick your favorite! Custom flairs are NOT available. Limited Time Flairs are released on special occasions.

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Places to be

• RandomActsofTacoBell - To offer and receive Taco Bell meals
• FormerTacoBells - Buildings that clearly used to be Taco Bell
• LivingMenos - A Satirical Taco Bell Subreddit (for your memes)
• YumBrands: PizzaHut, kfc, habitburger
• Taco Bell Discord Invite (be there, or think inside the bun)

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This subreddit and all pages associated with it are operating without affiliation to Taco Bell or YUM! Brands. Information is sourced from fans, publicly and discreetly by employees, and by research through various sources. Statements made by moderators or members in no way reflect the Taco Bell or YUM! Brands companies. Please send all comments and concerns of this subreddit to the mod team in a private message. If your comment or concern is about Taco Bell, the company, use their contact page on their website.