Johnson kennedy funeral home inc obituaries
[HIRING] 25 Jobs in VA Hiring Now!
2023.06.08 18:00 No_Competition4897 [HIRING] 25 Jobs in VA Hiring Now!
2023.06.08 17:47 Slight-Blueberry-895 Stormworks wishlist
- Logic system overhaul/improvements. Current system is tedious and a pain to do, even for relatively small builds. Even just having the ability to filter out logic points that are already connected would greatly improve the system across the board, ideally an advanced filter system would be added, such as creating groups, filtering parts, etc. The need to not only use but also create microcontrollers for instrument panels feels excessive and unnecessary. Simplifying panels, or giving the option of a simplified instrument panel that does not need to use a microcontroller, would go far in decreasing the games barrier to entry.
- Built in GPS maps. The fact that this game does not have a built in GPS map, like those tom tom gps map things you see on older cars is absurd when career mode’s map doesn’t show where you are on the map. And before anyone says that it’s “realistic”, if fishing boats in the Bering Sea can have a GPS map during rough weather, I see no reason why a SAR vehicle wouldn’t have such basic equipment. The current career mode’s starter boat is kinda useless at the starting base for this reason, there aren’t many landmarks out in the ocean, and I shouldn’t have to use the workshop just to make the base boat functional.
- Radio console. A simple premade radio console with knobs and such would also be nice and simplify a decent amount of logic.
- Custom window, wedge, and pyramid dimensions and/or more of these blocks in general, and make them more customizable (ie changing the windows color to green or putting designs on wedges and pyramids)
- Small boats keep water out, don’t need a closed volume to be buoyant
- Sails
- 18th century weaponry
- Life rafts
- Emergency inflatable slides (for planes)
- Gliding
- Oars
- Premade vehicles for every basic need you have in game. There should be basic, cheap, premade cars/trucks, boats, etc that can fulfill most of everything you would need to do in game. Nothing particularly fancy, just simple builds that can easily supplanted by custom creations that can serve as references for your own builds or be stopgap measures until you build replacements.
- Search and Recovery. Unfortunately, not every SAR operation is successful. Missions about recovering remains would be nice and can add a decent bit of variety. For example, maybe a hiker found a body in a hard to reach place in the mountains, and because of that an offroad vehicle or aircraft is needed to get there, diving on a wreck to recover remains, or recovering a car from a lake. Other missions could also be diving for investigation critical components, such as black boxes or voyage data recorders, or even specific components that investigators want to find.
- More in depth rescue/injury mechanics. Stuff like sprained ankles, injuries, pregnancy status, health conditions, etc, requiring different things to heal/stabilize. This would also add a sense of urgency to each SAR mission, as now you can’t solve/delay everything by throwing a first aid kit at it. Maybe the local hospital doesn’t have the facilities to treat a time sensitive, so you have to transport the patient to a bigger hospital. Dealing with things like hyperthermia would also be nice.
- Boat materials (wood/metal/polymer)
- Amenities and furniture in general.
- Logging industry
- Fishing industry
- Debris
- Other SAR teams/companies to have a presence in the world and are able to be called upon if needed.
- Nuclear reactor disaster
- More variety and depth for SAR missions, such as an aircraft ditching in the harbor, an aircraft going missing and having to search for it, recovering lifeboats, a nuclear powered ship sinking and having to deal with the radiation, chemical tankers releasing toxic chemicals into the water, sinking an adrift vessel, stopping an illegal salvage operation etc. A cool idea would be to add in the possibility for major accidents to happen, such as a cruise ship capsizing, a nuclear powered ship sinking, or a military aircraft armed with a nuclear warhead being lost over the ocean. Another cool idea would be to add interviews with accident investigation teams after some accidents, such as when a ship sinks because of poor maintenance about what you saw. Obviously, the interviews should only occur for more major accidents and when the player could actually have relevant information. There could also be complications for missions, such as the ship still moving and unable to be stopped, the whole crew is incapacitated, etc.
- In the same vein as no 22, an overhaul of Search And Destroy as it pertains to the overworld would also be nice. Instead of simply having an AI that fights the player, how about having 2 major factions that fight each other, the local military and an invading military, with the option of creating your own faction to take over the islands. This would differ from the previous system by making it so that you would complete orders issued to you, such as patrolling a specific area, engaging a fleet, mining or demining a waterway, etc. At first, you start out doing gruntwork, but as you move up in rank the more you can do, such as sending grunts to do the gruntwork for you. You could also give the option for the player to make their own faction Another thing that could be added are pirates and pirate gameplay. SAD could also add in new missions and disasters, such as disarming mines from the second world war, serial killers, hijacking attempts, a fire at a munitions dump, etc. You can have a lot of fun in regards to disasters and special missions too, such as cleaning up a munitions dumping ground (like what the Norwegian military did, dumping thousands of tons of munitions into a river) or a sunken supply ship detonating (like that one off the coast of England) and dealing with the after effects of that.
- Hiring AI to do things for you, such as a doctor to administer medical assistance to survivors, a captain to drive a boat, SAR divers to recover people from the sea for you, etc.
- Passenger playstyle. Ferrying passengers around feels like a logical next step in the game, with factors such as reliability, how fast you can get to destinations, feats (ie having the fastest passenger ferry in the world even if it does not operate at that speed regularly or having the biggest ferry, etc), price per ticket, amenities(free or paid movie theatre, comfy seats, concession stands, is the interior a comfortable temperature, is there a barbershop and if so is it any good, etc) and necessities (do you have enough seats, is there a bathroom, do you have enough life preservers, if it’s overnight, do you have any beds etc). Options to run excursions with famous or historic ships, simple cruises/excursions to places around the islands would be nice too.
- Expansion of delivery and miner playstyles. Expansion of these playstyles, such as hiring AI to do parts of the job, either as employees or contracting out another company to, say, transport coal from your mine to the powerplant would go a long way to fleshing out these playstyles. You can even have the option to do smuggling runs of illegal or illicit goods. Smaller deliveries that can be handled with a van, or doing mail runs would be cool as well as oversized delivery missions. Increasing the variety of cargo to transport, such as transporting locomotives and/or cars for export would be cool.
- Terminal loading cranes.
- A R&D mode which would allow for quick and easy analysis of a creation where you get raw numbers on a ship’s current tilt, balance, engine performance, etc with the ability to easily change the weather and conditions of the environment and easily switch to build mode.
- Shipwrights. The idea here would be to overhaul building mechanics as it relates to career mode. Instead of being able to instantly build everything, how you can modify your vessel is limited to what your facilities can do. To get a brand-new ship, you would have to commission it from a shipwright. Before commission, you would have access to R&D mode to fully test out the vessal. Where the fun part really begins is that you can have an entire playstyle built around receiving commissions for ships by the AI (or even other players) for a desired vessel within x specifications at a cost of x amount for x amount of vessels within x timeframe with a bedroom made out of 50% windows at a height of x feet, or even upgrade/modify preexisting vessels as part of a commission or to flip on the market, buying older vessels of varying states and giving them a new lease on life. How many ships you can produce at a given time would depend on your facilities, which can be upgraded. Of course, there would be aircraft and land vehicle equivalents. You can even see the ships you produced doing their job in the world.
- Salvaging. Another playstyle that I feel would be a next step for Stormworks would be salvaging vessels either for scrap, refurbish them for resale, restoration into a museum piece, or simply to clear a waterway. You could even give the option to illegally salvage shipwrecks.
- Survey missions
- Survival suits
- Crabbing
- Flooding disaster
- Hurricane and super storm disasters
- Air conditioning
- Other ships coming to assist vessels in distress.
- Tropical islands
- Blimps, zepplins, and hot air balloons.
- Naming vehicles
- Rogue waves
- Supernatural phenomenon. My idea for this is that you would have two categories of phenomenon, explicable and inexplicable. Explicable phenomena would be phenomena that have scientific explanations for them, things such as ghost lights with scientific explanations behind them, maybe have some missions where you disprove the supernatural. Having everything be explicable, however, can be underwhelming so actual supernatural phenomena, such as fleshgaits (especially with SAR being the core theme of Stormworks), ghost ships, or alien encounters, especially if mechanics, such as SAR, are incorporated in it. Like, imagine a seemingly normal SAR mission turning out to be the rescue of aliens from a crashed spaceship and you have to transport them to a drop off point where the MiB is waiting, or a mission where you first set out to debunk the supernatural to then be assailed by the flying dutchman.
- More doors, buttons, ladders, stairs and hatches (ie: a traditional house door, car doors, glass hatches, etc)
- Panels that can be used as signs or “hatches” for otherwise external equipment (ie in order to access a fire extinguisher you have to open a hatch first, im sure there is a better word for it but I can’t think of it)
- Moonpools
- Pools
- More buildable/modifiable properties, especially for terminals. Could be expanded with the ability to flip properties.
- Races
- Competing manufacturers of equipment and engines that have varying strengths and weaknesses that improve as time goes. This would also make the game more accessible by giving new players the ability to easily access better engines while also rewarding those who learn how modular engines work by allowing them to jump ahead of the AI. Perhaps a system where you can lease or even produce your own engine designs could be implemented to further reward and encourage using modular engines.
- If the game becomes comprehensive enough, the ability to change which era you play in (1700s, 1800s, 1940s, etc) would be a really cool addition by adding in technological challenges of older eras. Additionally, there could be supernatural phenomena that isekai vehicles to and from different time periods, which could add in a whole variety of interesting missions and challenges.
- Built-in couplers for trains
- Wind having an effect on the player (exiting an aircraft and standing on its wing should result in you being yeeted off the aircraft)
- Pressurization
- Ingame tutorials like what From The Depths has
- A better openworld, NPCs, and RP experiences. The world of Stormworks feels very much dead, which is a shame because that is it’s biggest selling point for me over other building games like simple planes. It gives a reason for all the vehicles being built beyond simply being cool, you can actually DO things with it. I would recommend solving this by:
- Create actual population centers. Not huge cities, but small towns dotted across the islands with actual businesses and populations would go a long way to improving the game world, maybe have one or two cities on the island itself so we can do stuff with skyscrapers.
- Global traffic of personal, commercial, and government boats, aircrafts and land vehicles would go a long way to making the world feel less empty. Having npcs use a dedicated radio channel for chatter, and which you can interact with them through would be great. This traffic responds to ingame events, for example increased outgoing road traffic when a disaster is about to hit
- More realistic roads
- Navigation signs, buoys, etc
- NPCs operating gas stations, bridges, and industries in general.
- Relating to one, make NPCs not only interactable beyond being glorified money bags, but also interact with their environment. Such as trying to move away from fires, calling for help when they see a vehicle, moving towards a stopped SAR vehicle and climbing aboard, getting inside a vehicle of their own volition or swimming to shore when they are literally meters away instead of staying in the water and/or burning boat. Having NPCs interact with the player as well would also be great, such as thanking you for saving their lives, buying the player a beer as thanks if they meet in a bar, etc would be nice. Ideally, there would be a number of persistent npcs who have names, personalities and backstories. Such as Joe, an old sea captain who’s vessel is painted pink in memory of his 6 year old daughter who disappeared, and, if he thinks his vessel is about to sink, will desire to go down with the ship and be resistant to his personal rescue.
- Consequences for your actions visible in game. For example, if a casualty becomes a fatality, there is a funeral service held at the graveyard.
- NPCs having varying fluencies in English
- Missions with storylines attached to them, such as an archaeologist searching for Atlantis, or a group of sailors looking to raise the cargo ship they worked on after it sunk.
- Radio music channels
- TV channels, can also have a gameplay effect through amenities
- Newspaper with an obituary, some fluff news stories, generic articles, state of the economy, ships launched, details regarding the SAR missions you did or didn’t do, in game events, etc.
- Unmarked missions, for example lets say Captain Joe’s ship sinks, but Joe survives. Joe is depressed, but if you go out of your way to salvage and repair Joe’s ship and give it back to him he will be happy.
- NPC backstories being more then just a text in a box, perhaps a mission leads to you finding Captain Joe’s daughter, alive or dead leading to either a heart warming reunion or somber closure.
- News interviews
- Points of interest, such as abandoned buildings, natural wonders, historical locations, museums, heritage railroads, businesses etc with lore surrounding them and special missions for that location. For example, lets say there is a hot air balloon tour operation. There would be a few special missions pertaining to hot air balloons in that location. Or for the heritage railroad, their engineer called in sick so they need someone to fill in for the day.
- Flavor for missions, for example maybe a family of four reported in the burning boat and watch you put out the fires
- NPCs react like real people in the sense of physiological reactions, such as grieving, becoming frozen in shock, mental breakdowns etc.
- All disasters have effects (when applicable) in the overworld, such as destroyed homes, ships transported inland, etc. Having missions pertaining to the aftermath, such as removing large debris from roads and tracks to recovering missing persons.
- Visual deterioration of abandoned/sunk/crashed vehicles
- NPCs may try to take advantage of disasters, such as by robbing people on a sinking ship, looting buildings after a disaster, etc
- NPCs may panic and act irrationally when in a disaster, such as taking life jackets away from women and children, releasing lifeboats/liferafts early, etc
- Skills and attributes, such as consoling, leadership, physical fitness, bartering, etc
2023.06.07 17:02 Screaming_Mosquito Does anyone want this thing growing in my backyard? Please say yes.
I've tried selling this thing for weeks now on Facebook Marketplace, eventually at just 1 cent because I just genuinely want it out of my hair. And I cannot find any takers. I want someone to just take it instead of throwing it out because honestly, I'm deeply nervous about what would happen if I did. But if this advertisement proves to be just as fruitless, I will do it despite my nervousness because my mind just can't take this anymore otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have a psychological break with reality and need to be sedated.
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
submitted by Screaming_Mosquito to DrCreepensVault [link] [comments]
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
2023.06.07 17:00 Screaming_Mosquito Does anyone want this thing growing in my backyard? Please say yes.
I've tried selling this thing for weeks now on Facebook Marketplace, eventually at just 1 cent because I just genuinely want it out of my hair. And I cannot find any takers. I want someone to just take it instead of throwing it out because honestly, I'm deeply nervous about what would happen if I did. But if this advertisement proves to be just as fruitless, I will do it despite my nervousness because my mind just can't take this anymore otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have a psychological break with reality and need to be sedated.
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
submitted by Screaming_Mosquito to creepypasta [link] [comments]
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
2023.06.07 16:53 RFC2001 Rebooking Every WWE PPV from WrestleMania 1 - WrestleMania 40 - Part 47 (Long)
Royal Rumble 2008
Date: 27/1/08
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York
Career Threatening Match:
Ric Flair vs MVP
(After Vince McMahon announces that Ric Flair must retire if he loses a match, MVP says he’s beat Ric Flair before and will beat him once again to go down in history! Flair says MVP is nothing but a coward and he’ll take pleasure keeping his career alive against a punk like him. Ric Flair wins after forcing MVP to submit to the Figure Four Leg Lock.)
No Holds Barred Match:
Chris Jericho vs JBL
(After Armageddon, JBL announces he’s coming out of retirement after speaking to Vince McMahon and will be traded to Monday Night Raw! JBL says he cost Jericho the WWE Championship because he assaulted him by throwing Randy Orton into him which deep down he knows was intentional. Jericho says it wasn’t intentional but now he wishes it was because Bradshaw is nothing but a self centred, arrogant jackass who’s going to pay. Jericho challenges JBL to a No Holds Barred Match at the Royal Rumble and the self proclaimed Wrestling God accepts, promising to beat some respect out of Y2J. Jericho wins in a bloody encounter after JBL submits to The Walls of Jericho.)
Extreme Rules Match for the ECW Championship:
CM Punk (c) vs Chavo Guerrero
(Chavo Guerrero returns on the last ECW of 2007 and attacks CM Punk. Guerrero says his reasons are simple, he wants the ECW Championship and CM Punk is an embarrassment to not only ECW but the WWE! Guerrero says just like on SmackDown with Edge, ECW needs class representing the brand. Punk says Chavo doesn’t represent class, he represents what’s wrong with a lot of people in this company. A shameless ass kisser who’ll do what not only Vince McMahon tells him but also his aunt Vickie. Chavo challenges Punk to put the ECW Championship on the line against him at the Royal Rumble and Punk accepts, promising to put Chavo to sleep and continue his reign as ECW Champion. Chavo Guerrero cheats to win the title after poking Punk in the eyes when going for the GTS before winning via a roll up.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Edge (c) vs Rey Mysterio
(Rey Mysterio wins a Beat the Clock Challenge to earn this opportunity at the World Heavyweight Championship. In the build up, Rey says Vickie Guerrero is like family to him and he cares about her but says he’ll also never lie to her. Rey says that Edge doesn’t love her and is manipulating her to not only cowardly win the World Heavyweight Championship at Armageddon but to also cowardly retain it at all costs. The Rated-R Superstar takes offence, says how dare Rey accuse him of not loving Vickie and promises that he’ll pay for sticking in his nose in their relationship when she’s happily moved on in life. Edge retains the World Heavyweight Championship clean after spearing Rey in mid-air.)
WWE Championship:
Randy Orton (c) vs Jeff Hardy
(After becoming #1 Contender for the WWE Championship, Jeff Hardy says it’s only a matter of time before he achieves his childhood dream and becomes only the second man in history to hold the Intercontinental and WWE Championship at the same time. Randy Orton says Jeff Hardy is nothing but a dumb risk taker who’s out of his depth at this level which is why he’s never had the opportunity in his long career until now. The Legend Killer promises that the Age of Orton will continue, no matter how much Hardy and his fans tries to build up a fairytale story. Randy Orton counters a Twist of Fate, hits Hardy with an RKO out of nowhere and pins him to retain the WWE Championship! After the match, the New York gives Jeff Hardy a standing ovation for his efforts.)
Royal Rumble Match:
John Cena (#30) returns and wins by last eliminating Triple H
Royal Rumble Notes:
The final four are John Cena, Triple H, Batista and Mr.Kennedy
Hornswoggle isn’t in this match in the slightest
Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and Mick Foley are surprise entrants
The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels are #1 and #2 respectively.
No Way Out 2008
Date: 17/2/08
Location: Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas, Nevada
Elimination Chamber Match - Winner faces the World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania 24:
Batista vs MVP vs Kane vs Mark Henry vs Finlay vs The Undertaker
Extreme Rules Match for the ECW Championship:
Chavo Guerrero (c) vs CM Punk
(CM Punk invokes his rematch clause for the ECW Championship. Punk says ECW has been his home for almost 2 years now and giving that title honour and prestige that Chavo won’t give it meant everything to him. Chavo says Punk’s claims that he won’t give the title prestige are disgusting, as was him being the ECW Champion and he rightfully saved the brand from a total misfit like him. During the match, Shelton Benjamin interferes and gives Punk a T-Bone Suplex. This allows Chavo to capitalise on the assistance as he then delivers a Frog Splash to CM Punk and pins him to retain the ECW Championship!)
Career Threatening Match:
Ric Flair vs JBL
(Mr McMahon says Ric Flair’s career still being alive is down to pure luck and he’s found a guy who’s going to put him down for good… JBL! JBL says there’s only one man who should have that honour of being the man to retire Ric Flair and that’s him, a Wrestling God! JBL thanks Vince McMahon for asking him to put Flair down once and for all and promises to do so. Flair says JBL won’t stop him from at least getting to WrestleMania with his career still in tact. Ric Flair wins via submission.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Edge (c) vs Rey Mysterio
(Rey Mysterio says he has no excuses for losing at the Royal Rumble but promises to still expose Edge for manipulating Vickie Guerrero and ensure he doesn’t walk into WrestleMania 24 as the World Heavyweight Champion. Edge says Rey can get to the back of the line however Teddy Long says as assistant General Manager, he can give Rey at least an opportunity to become #1 Contender at No Way Out if he can win a gauntlet match against Curt Hawkins, Zack Ryder and Chavo Guerrero! Rey wins the Gauntlet Match and earns himself one more opportunity to face Edge. Before this event, Rey tears his bicep meaning the match doesn’t go on long. Edge once retains the World Heavyweight Championship. After the match with Rey vulnerable, The Big Show returns and attacks Rey Mysterio, laying him out with a chokeslam. The Big Show then reveals his friend Floyd Maywheather is in the front row and brings Floyd over the barricade to join in the assault on Mysterio. Big Show raises Floyd Mayweathers hand to a chorus of boos.)
WWE Championship:
Randy Orton (c) vs John Cena (By Disqualification)
(After winning the Royal Rumble, John Cena says he isn’t waiting until WrestleMania to kick Randy Orton’s ass. Cena says he’d rather reclaim the WWE Championship now, get his hands on Randy Orton sooner and will head into WrestleMania as the WWE Champion! Randy Orton laughs saying Cena is the dumbest person on the planet for wanting to have his title match at No Way Out instead of at The Grandest Stage of Them All. Orton goes on to say Cena is selfish and jumping the queue instead of just waiting until WrestleMania like any smart person would. During the match, Randy Orton slaps the referee on purpose, intentionally gets himself disqualified and walks away with a huge smirk with his WWE Championship. Cena holds his hands on his head over the fact his opportunity seems to be gone.)
Elimination Chamber - Winner faces the WWE Champion at WrestleMania 24:
Shawn Michaels vs Umaga vs Triple H vs Jeff Hardy vs Mr.Kennedy vs Chris Jericho
SmackDown Elimination Chamber Notes:
Mark Henry enters fourth and is eliminated first by The Undertaker
MVP enters sixth and is eliminated second by Kane
Kane enters third and is eliminated third by Batista
Finlay enters fifth and is eliminated fourth by The Undertaker
Batista enters second and is eliminated fifth by The Undertaker
The Undertaker enters first and wins
Raw Elimination Chamber Notes:
Mr. Kennedy enters third and is eliminated first by Shawn Michaels
Umaga enters fifth and is eliminated second by Jeff Hardy
Chris Jericho enters second and is eliminated third by Shawn Michaels
Shawn Michaels enters first and eliminated fourth by Triple H
Jeff Hardy enters fourth and is eliminated fifth by Triple H
Triple H enters sixth and wins
Notes:
(Instead of fighting Big Show, Floyd Mayweather is a heel and will be in Big Show’s corner at WrestleMania 24.)
(John Cena beats Randy Orton the night after No Way Out in a match Triple H is the referee. This results in Cena being added to the match for the WWE Championship.)
Chris Jericho beats Jeff Hardy for the Intercontinental Championship 8 days after No Way Out. Hardy is then suspended for 60 days for violating the wellness policy.)
Hall of Fame 2008:
Ric Flair, “High Chief” Peter Maivia, Rocky Johnson, Mae Young, The Brisco Brothers, Eddie Graham and Gordon Solie
WrestleMania XXIV
Date: 30/3/08
Location: Florida Citrus Bowl, Orlando, Florida
United States Championship:
MVP (c) vs Matt Hardy
(Matt Hardy returns after No Way Out and attacks MVP for costing him 3 months of his career. Hardy promises to not only get revenge on MVP but also says he’s going to take what matters most to him, the United States Title! MVP says Hardy’s just guaranteed himself one thing and it isn’t his United States Championship, it’s another inevitable beatdown and injury at the hands of him.)
Money in the Bank Ladder Match:
CM Punk vs Shelton Benjamin vs John Morrison vs Chris Jericho vs The Miz vs JBL vs Mr.Kennedy vs Carlito
(Chris Jericho wins the match he created! Controversial but Punk’s time will come, tune in.)
24 Man WrestleMania Battle Royal:
Umaga wins, last eliminating Kofi Kingston
Extreme Rules for the ECW Championship:
Chavo Guerrero (c) vs Kane
(Chavo Guerrero says at WrestleMania 24, he’ll solidify his greatness as ECW Champion further and says he doesn’t care who faces him, he welcomes the challenge. Kane answers the challenge on ECW, beats the hell out of Chavo, Chokeslams him and the message is sent. The Big Red Monster says he’s come over to ECW for two reason’s. To take care of Chavo so that The Undertaker has one less distraction on the road to WrestleMania against Edge and most importantly, the ECW Championship! Instead of a squash match, Chavo puts up a bit of a fight with some heel tactics but in the end, Kane prevails, delivers a Tombstone Piledriver to Chavo Guerrero and pins him to win the ECW Championship!)
Batista w/Rey Mysterio vs The Big Show w/Floyd Mayweather
(Floyd Mayweather instead of feuding with The Big Show because f*ck making Big Show job out to a non wrestler albeit a boxer he’s twice the size of, aligns with Big Show and says he’ll be in his friends corner at WrestleMania if someone even has the guts to face him. Batista answers the challenge. His reasons are that Big Show is nothing but a bully who decided to attack his already injured friend Rey Mysterio at No Way Out and he’s going to make him pay. Big Show says just like he did to Rey at No Way Out, he’s going to give Batista the beating of his life and embarrass him at The Grandest Stage of Them All. Rey Mysterio says just like Floyd for Big Show, he’s going to be in his friend Batista’s corner while he kicks The Big Show’s ass. During the match while the referees down, Mayweather turns on The Big Show, knocks him out with brass knuckles, Big Show falls into the ropes and eats a 619 from Mysterio and then falls into a Spinebuster from Batista who then pins Big Show as the referee regains consciousness to win the match.)
Career Threatening Match:
Shawn Michaels vs Ric Flair
(After No Way Out, Ric Flair says this might be his last WrestleMania with the stipulation Vince McMahon has set and wants to face who he believes is the best person to give him something memorable. Flair challenges his friend Shawn Michaels, says he’s Mr. WrestleMania and without doubt the man to give him what he wants. Shawn Michaels says he loves Flair too much that he declines his offer and doesn’t want to face him at WrestleMania because he doesn’t want to be the man who retires Ric Flair. Flair however convinces Michaels by slapping him in the face and insulting him, calling him a joke. Michaels says not only will Flair get The and Mr. WrestleMania at The Showcase of the Immortals, he’s going to take old yeller behind the shed and put him down for good. At the end of the match, Michaels is upset and knows it’s time, as does Flair who’s telling him to finish him. Michaels utters those famous words “I’m sorry, I love you”, hits Flair with the Sweet Chin Music and pins him to end his legendary career. An emotional Michaels hugs Flair who’s unconscious in one of the most emotional matches in WrestleMania history. Flair bids farewell in tears, receives a standing ovation, hugs his family and bows out in style.)
Women’s Championship:
Beth Phoenix (c) vs Mickie James
WWE Championship:
Randy Orton (c) vs Triple H vs John Cena
(The three biggest stars on Raw are set for a huge showdown at The Showcase of the Immortals. Triple H says he doesn’t care if it’s one on one or a triple threat match which is now the case after John Cena beat Randy Orton on Raw, he’s leaving WrestleMania with the WWE Championship since it’s been far too long and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. John Cena tells The Game that he doesn’t care who he has to go through, after WrestleMania he’ll once again be able to say The Champ is Here! Randy Orton meanwhile says he’s already beat both men in the past, has no doubt over being able to do so again although at the same time on this occasion and promises that The Age of Orton will continue after WrestleMania, no matter how much Cena and Triple H try and promote their fairytale comebacks. After missing WrestleMania the year before and being without one of the top titles for 3 years, Triple H completes his journey back to the top and pins Randy Orton after delivering a Pedigree to win the WWE Championship.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Edge (c) vs The Undertaker
(A match almost a year in the making is finally happening. Edge says this was the plan all along, he didn’t want to face The Undertaker anywhere apart from at The Grandest Stage of Them All. Why? It’s easy, The Streak! Edge says not only will he retain his World Heavyweight Championship but he’ll forever cement his place in history as an all time great when at the end of WrestleMania 24, The Undertaker will be 15-1! The Undertaker is not only wanting to defend his streak but he wants to beat the holy hell out of Edge for screwing him out of the World Heavyweight Championship on more than one occasion. He also says the Rated-R Superstar will be facing a reaper at WrestleMania who’s determined to keep his streak in tact and win back what’s rightfully his, The World Heavyweight Championship! Despite Edge’s best attempts as The Edgeheads interfere along with some other heel tactics, The Deadman overcomes the shenanigans, delivers a second Tombstone to Edge and pins him to win the World Heavyweight Championship in order to go 16-0 at WrestleMania.)
Backlash 2008
Date: 27/4/08
Location: 1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore, Maryland
CM Punk vs Shelton Benjamin
(Shelton Benjamin continues attacking CM Punk on ECW after WrestleMania. As a result, CM Punk wants a match against The Gold Standard at Backlash and wants to get full revenge he hasn’t had the chance to get since Benjamin cost him the ECW Championship at No Mercy. Vince McMahon who appears on ECW for the night grants Punk his wish but says he has full confidence that Shelton Benjamin will come out and top and prove him right about Punk after all. Punk of course proves McMahon wrong again and wins after forcing Benjamin to submit to The Anaconda Vice!)
Women’s Championship:
Mickie James (c) vs Melina vs Beth Phoenix vs Maria
WWE World Tag Team Championship:
Hardcore Holly & Cody Rhodes (c) vs Paul London & Brian Kendrick
United States Championship:
Matt Hardy (c) vs MVP
Chris Jericho is the Special Guest Referee:
Shawn Michaels vs Batista
(Batista shows up on Raw as a guest on Chris Jericho’s Highlight Reel because he wants to get something off his chest. The Animal says Shawn Michaels shouldn’t have listened to Ric Flair yet he chose his ego like he always has and always will. Michaels says he done what Ric wanted out of love and respect and the only reason Batista is angry is because Flair chose to face him and not The Animal at WrestleMania. Because of this confrontation, Vince McMahon announces that Shawn Michaels and Batista will face each other at Backlash. Vince also informs them they’ll have a special guest referee… Chris Jericho! Batista says Michaels will pay at Backlash for retiring Ric Flair and Chris Jericho better stay out of his way. During the match, Michaels fakes a leg injury, suckers Batista into a Sweet Chin Music and pins him to win this match.)
Finlay w/Little Bastard vs The Big Show
(After WrestleMania, Big Show attacks Finlay and bullies his friend Little Bastard which sets up this match. Finlay puts up a bit of a fight but in the end, The Big Show to no surprise wins after knocking Finlay out.)
World Heavyweight & ECW Championship:
The Brothers of Destruction (c) vs Edge & Chavo Guerrero w/The Edgeheads
(After WrestleMania, both Edge and Chavo Guerrero want to invoke their rematch clause for their respective titles. Vickie Guerrero grants them their rematches but announces instead of facing The Undertaker and Kane one on one, they’ll face them in a tag team match at Backlash with both titles on the line. Edge says his wife is an absolute genius and this is why he loves her meanwhile Chavo says he has no doubt in his mind that him and Edge will take care of those two freaks who’ve got gold that doesn’t belong to them. The Undertaker and Kane promise to inflict pain on their opponents for all of their sins in recent months, especially Edge who’s been a thorn on both their sides at times over the years. During this match, The Edgeheads try and get involved but they both receive a beating from Taker and Kane. The Champions then Tombstone Edge and Chavo at the same time and pin them to retain their titles.)
Fatal 4-Way Elimination Match for the WWE Championship:
Triple H (c) vs JBL vs Randy Orton vs John Cena
(After WrestleMania, Triple H says the WWE Championship is the true symbol that The Game is back and better than ever! He welcomes all challenges and says he doesn’t care who he has to go through, he has no hesitation dropping anyone where they stand. Randy Orton interrupts, says he’s rightfully invoking his rematch clause and promises Triple H’s title reign will be short lived. John Cena also interrupts and says he isn’t done with Orton and at this rate Triple H because he’s got the one thing he wants, the WWE Championship! Vince McMahon announces a Triple Threat rematch at Backlash although at the end of that same Raw, Vince announces after JBL attacks Triple H that it’s now going to be a Fatal 4-Way Elimination Match. The reason JBL is added is because Vince wants to further stack the odds against The Game by adding someone who’s been kissing his ass since coming out of retirement. Vince make’s it no secret that he despises his son in law for the way he’s disrespected him over the years. Triple H says that deranged old bastard can stack the odds as much as he wants, it won’t stop him from leaving Backlash with the WWE Championship. Triple H wins to retain his championship, last eliminating Randy Orton.)
And that’s part 47 officially done! I hope you guys enjoyed it and continue to like the project I’ve worked so hard on in the last few months. I’ll be back very soon for part 48 where we’ll see Chris Jericho turn heel, a first time ever match between two of the biggest stars in the last 3 years and The Undertaker take Edge to his favourite place to close out their iconic feud. Stay safe and stay tuned!
submitted by RFC2001 to fantasybooking [link] [comments]
Date: 27/1/08
Location: Madison Square Garden, New York, New York
Career Threatening Match:
Ric Flair vs MVP
(After Vince McMahon announces that Ric Flair must retire if he loses a match, MVP says he’s beat Ric Flair before and will beat him once again to go down in history! Flair says MVP is nothing but a coward and he’ll take pleasure keeping his career alive against a punk like him. Ric Flair wins after forcing MVP to submit to the Figure Four Leg Lock.)
No Holds Barred Match:
Chris Jericho vs JBL
(After Armageddon, JBL announces he’s coming out of retirement after speaking to Vince McMahon and will be traded to Monday Night Raw! JBL says he cost Jericho the WWE Championship because he assaulted him by throwing Randy Orton into him which deep down he knows was intentional. Jericho says it wasn’t intentional but now he wishes it was because Bradshaw is nothing but a self centred, arrogant jackass who’s going to pay. Jericho challenges JBL to a No Holds Barred Match at the Royal Rumble and the self proclaimed Wrestling God accepts, promising to beat some respect out of Y2J. Jericho wins in a bloody encounter after JBL submits to The Walls of Jericho.)
Extreme Rules Match for the ECW Championship:
CM Punk (c) vs Chavo Guerrero
(Chavo Guerrero returns on the last ECW of 2007 and attacks CM Punk. Guerrero says his reasons are simple, he wants the ECW Championship and CM Punk is an embarrassment to not only ECW but the WWE! Guerrero says just like on SmackDown with Edge, ECW needs class representing the brand. Punk says Chavo doesn’t represent class, he represents what’s wrong with a lot of people in this company. A shameless ass kisser who’ll do what not only Vince McMahon tells him but also his aunt Vickie. Chavo challenges Punk to put the ECW Championship on the line against him at the Royal Rumble and Punk accepts, promising to put Chavo to sleep and continue his reign as ECW Champion. Chavo Guerrero cheats to win the title after poking Punk in the eyes when going for the GTS before winning via a roll up.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Edge (c) vs Rey Mysterio
(Rey Mysterio wins a Beat the Clock Challenge to earn this opportunity at the World Heavyweight Championship. In the build up, Rey says Vickie Guerrero is like family to him and he cares about her but says he’ll also never lie to her. Rey says that Edge doesn’t love her and is manipulating her to not only cowardly win the World Heavyweight Championship at Armageddon but to also cowardly retain it at all costs. The Rated-R Superstar takes offence, says how dare Rey accuse him of not loving Vickie and promises that he’ll pay for sticking in his nose in their relationship when she’s happily moved on in life. Edge retains the World Heavyweight Championship clean after spearing Rey in mid-air.)
WWE Championship:
Randy Orton (c) vs Jeff Hardy
(After becoming #1 Contender for the WWE Championship, Jeff Hardy says it’s only a matter of time before he achieves his childhood dream and becomes only the second man in history to hold the Intercontinental and WWE Championship at the same time. Randy Orton says Jeff Hardy is nothing but a dumb risk taker who’s out of his depth at this level which is why he’s never had the opportunity in his long career until now. The Legend Killer promises that the Age of Orton will continue, no matter how much Hardy and his fans tries to build up a fairytale story. Randy Orton counters a Twist of Fate, hits Hardy with an RKO out of nowhere and pins him to retain the WWE Championship! After the match, the New York gives Jeff Hardy a standing ovation for his efforts.)
Royal Rumble Match:
John Cena (#30) returns and wins by last eliminating Triple H
Royal Rumble Notes:
The final four are John Cena, Triple H, Batista and Mr.Kennedy
Hornswoggle isn’t in this match in the slightest
Roddy Piper, Jimmy Snuka and Mick Foley are surprise entrants
The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels are #1 and #2 respectively.
Date: 17/2/08
Location: Thomas & Mack Center, Las Vegas, Nevada
Elimination Chamber Match - Winner faces the World Heavyweight Champion at WrestleMania 24:
Batista vs MVP vs Kane vs Mark Henry vs Finlay vs The Undertaker
Extreme Rules Match for the ECW Championship:
Chavo Guerrero (c) vs CM Punk
(CM Punk invokes his rematch clause for the ECW Championship. Punk says ECW has been his home for almost 2 years now and giving that title honour and prestige that Chavo won’t give it meant everything to him. Chavo says Punk’s claims that he won’t give the title prestige are disgusting, as was him being the ECW Champion and he rightfully saved the brand from a total misfit like him. During the match, Shelton Benjamin interferes and gives Punk a T-Bone Suplex. This allows Chavo to capitalise on the assistance as he then delivers a Frog Splash to CM Punk and pins him to retain the ECW Championship!)
Career Threatening Match:
Ric Flair vs JBL
(Mr McMahon says Ric Flair’s career still being alive is down to pure luck and he’s found a guy who’s going to put him down for good… JBL! JBL says there’s only one man who should have that honour of being the man to retire Ric Flair and that’s him, a Wrestling God! JBL thanks Vince McMahon for asking him to put Flair down once and for all and promises to do so. Flair says JBL won’t stop him from at least getting to WrestleMania with his career still in tact. Ric Flair wins via submission.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Edge (c) vs Rey Mysterio
(Rey Mysterio says he has no excuses for losing at the Royal Rumble but promises to still expose Edge for manipulating Vickie Guerrero and ensure he doesn’t walk into WrestleMania 24 as the World Heavyweight Champion. Edge says Rey can get to the back of the line however Teddy Long says as assistant General Manager, he can give Rey at least an opportunity to become #1 Contender at No Way Out if he can win a gauntlet match against Curt Hawkins, Zack Ryder and Chavo Guerrero! Rey wins the Gauntlet Match and earns himself one more opportunity to face Edge. Before this event, Rey tears his bicep meaning the match doesn’t go on long. Edge once retains the World Heavyweight Championship. After the match with Rey vulnerable, The Big Show returns and attacks Rey Mysterio, laying him out with a chokeslam. The Big Show then reveals his friend Floyd Maywheather is in the front row and brings Floyd over the barricade to join in the assault on Mysterio. Big Show raises Floyd Mayweathers hand to a chorus of boos.)
WWE Championship:
Randy Orton (c) vs John Cena (By Disqualification)
(After winning the Royal Rumble, John Cena says he isn’t waiting until WrestleMania to kick Randy Orton’s ass. Cena says he’d rather reclaim the WWE Championship now, get his hands on Randy Orton sooner and will head into WrestleMania as the WWE Champion! Randy Orton laughs saying Cena is the dumbest person on the planet for wanting to have his title match at No Way Out instead of at The Grandest Stage of Them All. Orton goes on to say Cena is selfish and jumping the queue instead of just waiting until WrestleMania like any smart person would. During the match, Randy Orton slaps the referee on purpose, intentionally gets himself disqualified and walks away with a huge smirk with his WWE Championship. Cena holds his hands on his head over the fact his opportunity seems to be gone.)
Elimination Chamber - Winner faces the WWE Champion at WrestleMania 24:
Shawn Michaels vs Umaga vs Triple H vs Jeff Hardy vs Mr.Kennedy vs Chris Jericho
SmackDown Elimination Chamber Notes:
Mark Henry enters fourth and is eliminated first by The Undertaker
MVP enters sixth and is eliminated second by Kane
Kane enters third and is eliminated third by Batista
Finlay enters fifth and is eliminated fourth by The Undertaker
Batista enters second and is eliminated fifth by The Undertaker
The Undertaker enters first and wins
Raw Elimination Chamber Notes:
Mr. Kennedy enters third and is eliminated first by Shawn Michaels
Umaga enters fifth and is eliminated second by Jeff Hardy
Chris Jericho enters second and is eliminated third by Shawn Michaels
Shawn Michaels enters first and eliminated fourth by Triple H
Jeff Hardy enters fourth and is eliminated fifth by Triple H
Triple H enters sixth and wins
Notes:
(Instead of fighting Big Show, Floyd Mayweather is a heel and will be in Big Show’s corner at WrestleMania 24.)
(John Cena beats Randy Orton the night after No Way Out in a match Triple H is the referee. This results in Cena being added to the match for the WWE Championship.)
Chris Jericho beats Jeff Hardy for the Intercontinental Championship 8 days after No Way Out. Hardy is then suspended for 60 days for violating the wellness policy.)
Ric Flair, “High Chief” Peter Maivia, Rocky Johnson, Mae Young, The Brisco Brothers, Eddie Graham and Gordon Solie
Date: 30/3/08
Location: Florida Citrus Bowl, Orlando, Florida
United States Championship:
MVP (c) vs Matt Hardy
(Matt Hardy returns after No Way Out and attacks MVP for costing him 3 months of his career. Hardy promises to not only get revenge on MVP but also says he’s going to take what matters most to him, the United States Title! MVP says Hardy’s just guaranteed himself one thing and it isn’t his United States Championship, it’s another inevitable beatdown and injury at the hands of him.)
Money in the Bank Ladder Match:
CM Punk vs Shelton Benjamin vs John Morrison vs Chris Jericho vs The Miz vs JBL vs Mr.Kennedy vs Carlito
(Chris Jericho wins the match he created! Controversial but Punk’s time will come, tune in.)
24 Man WrestleMania Battle Royal:
Umaga wins, last eliminating Kofi Kingston
Extreme Rules for the ECW Championship:
Chavo Guerrero (c) vs Kane
(Chavo Guerrero says at WrestleMania 24, he’ll solidify his greatness as ECW Champion further and says he doesn’t care who faces him, he welcomes the challenge. Kane answers the challenge on ECW, beats the hell out of Chavo, Chokeslams him and the message is sent. The Big Red Monster says he’s come over to ECW for two reason’s. To take care of Chavo so that The Undertaker has one less distraction on the road to WrestleMania against Edge and most importantly, the ECW Championship! Instead of a squash match, Chavo puts up a bit of a fight with some heel tactics but in the end, Kane prevails, delivers a Tombstone Piledriver to Chavo Guerrero and pins him to win the ECW Championship!)
Batista w/Rey Mysterio vs The Big Show w/Floyd Mayweather
(Floyd Mayweather instead of feuding with The Big Show because f*ck making Big Show job out to a non wrestler albeit a boxer he’s twice the size of, aligns with Big Show and says he’ll be in his friends corner at WrestleMania if someone even has the guts to face him. Batista answers the challenge. His reasons are that Big Show is nothing but a bully who decided to attack his already injured friend Rey Mysterio at No Way Out and he’s going to make him pay. Big Show says just like he did to Rey at No Way Out, he’s going to give Batista the beating of his life and embarrass him at The Grandest Stage of Them All. Rey Mysterio says just like Floyd for Big Show, he’s going to be in his friend Batista’s corner while he kicks The Big Show’s ass. During the match while the referees down, Mayweather turns on The Big Show, knocks him out with brass knuckles, Big Show falls into the ropes and eats a 619 from Mysterio and then falls into a Spinebuster from Batista who then pins Big Show as the referee regains consciousness to win the match.)
Career Threatening Match:
Shawn Michaels vs Ric Flair
(After No Way Out, Ric Flair says this might be his last WrestleMania with the stipulation Vince McMahon has set and wants to face who he believes is the best person to give him something memorable. Flair challenges his friend Shawn Michaels, says he’s Mr. WrestleMania and without doubt the man to give him what he wants. Shawn Michaels says he loves Flair too much that he declines his offer and doesn’t want to face him at WrestleMania because he doesn’t want to be the man who retires Ric Flair. Flair however convinces Michaels by slapping him in the face and insulting him, calling him a joke. Michaels says not only will Flair get The and Mr. WrestleMania at The Showcase of the Immortals, he’s going to take old yeller behind the shed and put him down for good. At the end of the match, Michaels is upset and knows it’s time, as does Flair who’s telling him to finish him. Michaels utters those famous words “I’m sorry, I love you”, hits Flair with the Sweet Chin Music and pins him to end his legendary career. An emotional Michaels hugs Flair who’s unconscious in one of the most emotional matches in WrestleMania history. Flair bids farewell in tears, receives a standing ovation, hugs his family and bows out in style.)
Women’s Championship:
Beth Phoenix (c) vs Mickie James
WWE Championship:
Randy Orton (c) vs Triple H vs John Cena
(The three biggest stars on Raw are set for a huge showdown at The Showcase of the Immortals. Triple H says he doesn’t care if it’s one on one or a triple threat match which is now the case after John Cena beat Randy Orton on Raw, he’s leaving WrestleMania with the WWE Championship since it’s been far too long and there’s not a damn thing anyone can do about it. John Cena tells The Game that he doesn’t care who he has to go through, after WrestleMania he’ll once again be able to say The Champ is Here! Randy Orton meanwhile says he’s already beat both men in the past, has no doubt over being able to do so again although at the same time on this occasion and promises that The Age of Orton will continue after WrestleMania, no matter how much Cena and Triple H try and promote their fairytale comebacks. After missing WrestleMania the year before and being without one of the top titles for 3 years, Triple H completes his journey back to the top and pins Randy Orton after delivering a Pedigree to win the WWE Championship.)
World Heavyweight Championship:
Edge (c) vs The Undertaker
(A match almost a year in the making is finally happening. Edge says this was the plan all along, he didn’t want to face The Undertaker anywhere apart from at The Grandest Stage of Them All. Why? It’s easy, The Streak! Edge says not only will he retain his World Heavyweight Championship but he’ll forever cement his place in history as an all time great when at the end of WrestleMania 24, The Undertaker will be 15-1! The Undertaker is not only wanting to defend his streak but he wants to beat the holy hell out of Edge for screwing him out of the World Heavyweight Championship on more than one occasion. He also says the Rated-R Superstar will be facing a reaper at WrestleMania who’s determined to keep his streak in tact and win back what’s rightfully his, The World Heavyweight Championship! Despite Edge’s best attempts as The Edgeheads interfere along with some other heel tactics, The Deadman overcomes the shenanigans, delivers a second Tombstone to Edge and pins him to win the World Heavyweight Championship in order to go 16-0 at WrestleMania.)
Date: 27/4/08
Location: 1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore, Maryland
CM Punk vs Shelton Benjamin
(Shelton Benjamin continues attacking CM Punk on ECW after WrestleMania. As a result, CM Punk wants a match against The Gold Standard at Backlash and wants to get full revenge he hasn’t had the chance to get since Benjamin cost him the ECW Championship at No Mercy. Vince McMahon who appears on ECW for the night grants Punk his wish but says he has full confidence that Shelton Benjamin will come out and top and prove him right about Punk after all. Punk of course proves McMahon wrong again and wins after forcing Benjamin to submit to The Anaconda Vice!)
Women’s Championship:
Mickie James (c) vs Melina vs Beth Phoenix vs Maria
WWE World Tag Team Championship:
Hardcore Holly & Cody Rhodes (c) vs Paul London & Brian Kendrick
United States Championship:
Matt Hardy (c) vs MVP
Chris Jericho is the Special Guest Referee:
Shawn Michaels vs Batista
(Batista shows up on Raw as a guest on Chris Jericho’s Highlight Reel because he wants to get something off his chest. The Animal says Shawn Michaels shouldn’t have listened to Ric Flair yet he chose his ego like he always has and always will. Michaels says he done what Ric wanted out of love and respect and the only reason Batista is angry is because Flair chose to face him and not The Animal at WrestleMania. Because of this confrontation, Vince McMahon announces that Shawn Michaels and Batista will face each other at Backlash. Vince also informs them they’ll have a special guest referee… Chris Jericho! Batista says Michaels will pay at Backlash for retiring Ric Flair and Chris Jericho better stay out of his way. During the match, Michaels fakes a leg injury, suckers Batista into a Sweet Chin Music and pins him to win this match.)
Finlay w/Little Bastard vs The Big Show
(After WrestleMania, Big Show attacks Finlay and bullies his friend Little Bastard which sets up this match. Finlay puts up a bit of a fight but in the end, The Big Show to no surprise wins after knocking Finlay out.)
World Heavyweight & ECW Championship:
The Brothers of Destruction (c) vs Edge & Chavo Guerrero w/The Edgeheads
(After WrestleMania, both Edge and Chavo Guerrero want to invoke their rematch clause for their respective titles. Vickie Guerrero grants them their rematches but announces instead of facing The Undertaker and Kane one on one, they’ll face them in a tag team match at Backlash with both titles on the line. Edge says his wife is an absolute genius and this is why he loves her meanwhile Chavo says he has no doubt in his mind that him and Edge will take care of those two freaks who’ve got gold that doesn’t belong to them. The Undertaker and Kane promise to inflict pain on their opponents for all of their sins in recent months, especially Edge who’s been a thorn on both their sides at times over the years. During this match, The Edgeheads try and get involved but they both receive a beating from Taker and Kane. The Champions then Tombstone Edge and Chavo at the same time and pin them to retain their titles.)
Fatal 4-Way Elimination Match for the WWE Championship:
Triple H (c) vs JBL vs Randy Orton vs John Cena
(After WrestleMania, Triple H says the WWE Championship is the true symbol that The Game is back and better than ever! He welcomes all challenges and says he doesn’t care who he has to go through, he has no hesitation dropping anyone where they stand. Randy Orton interrupts, says he’s rightfully invoking his rematch clause and promises Triple H’s title reign will be short lived. John Cena also interrupts and says he isn’t done with Orton and at this rate Triple H because he’s got the one thing he wants, the WWE Championship! Vince McMahon announces a Triple Threat rematch at Backlash although at the end of that same Raw, Vince announces after JBL attacks Triple H that it’s now going to be a Fatal 4-Way Elimination Match. The reason JBL is added is because Vince wants to further stack the odds against The Game by adding someone who’s been kissing his ass since coming out of retirement. Vince make’s it no secret that he despises his son in law for the way he’s disrespected him over the years. Triple H says that deranged old bastard can stack the odds as much as he wants, it won’t stop him from leaving Backlash with the WWE Championship. Triple H wins to retain his championship, last eliminating Randy Orton.)
2023.06.07 15:50 gf120581 There's been a lot of TV horror anthologies that didn't get a fair chance (even something as legendary as "The Twilight Zone" had to deal with its share of executive meddling, much to Rod Serling's dismay), but I don't know any that got a raw deal as badly as Fox's 2001/2002's "Night Visions."
Of course, it was inevitable it happened with Fox, a network that picked up a sterling reputation as one that let promising TV series wither and die on the vine ("Firefly" fans will know this better than anyone). This excellent horror anthology from genre vets Billy Brown and Dan Angel (responsible for "Goosebumps" TV series and the would be horror pilot "Body Bags" and later to create "The Haunting Hour") was meant to premiere in October of 2000 (appropriate), but instead got bumped for "Freakylinks" (another promising show Fox screwed over) and instead got ran off as a summer time-filler in 2001, with three episodes not even being run (those had to wait until September 2002 for Sci-Fi to run them, two of them reedited into a "movie" called "Shadow Realm"). According to Brown, this was due to a changing of the guard at Fox and a network that didn't think the show was "hip" enough.
Really. "Hipness" is apparently a genre necessity according to the suits at Fox. And apparently this "hipness" obsession was what was responsible for the show's most out of nowhere creative decision, having Henry Rollins be the Rod Serling-equivalent. That actually worked surprisingly well, but that meant ditching the one who was already committed to the role...Gary Oldman. Yes, Gary freaking Oldman could have been the host of this show. Think of how awesome that would have been. And yet he was dumped for Rollins because the latter was more "hip." (Brown mentioned they never wanted a host, just an "Outer Limits"-style voiceover, but Fox demanded a host or no show...and then they let the show die anyway.)
Given all the nonsensical meddling involved (Brown mentioned Fox nixed adapting a Dean Koontz story because it was "too scary", then complained the show wasn't scary enough), it's impressive the show turned out as well as it did, because "Night Visions" is a pretty good anthology with some truly impressive episodes that feature a wide variety of talent in front of and behind the camera (Joe Dante and Tobe Hooper direct multiple episodes). The entire series is available on YouTube to check out (13 episodes with 2 stores to each) and some highlights are:
"A View Through the Window" (E3): Bill Pullman directs and stars as a military scientist investigating the sudden appearance of a portal in the middle of a desert that leads to a lush farm inhabited by a picturesque family (including a beautiful young woman of course). Features a shocking twist that scarred a lot of early 00s kids.
"Now He's Coming Up the Stairs" (E4): Luke Perry (RIP) portrays a therapist with the ability to absorb the illnesses of his patients (in the opening he cures an anorexic and then suffers through her disability herself) who takes on perhaps his most dangerous case yet. I should mention at this point that cruel twist endings were the norm for this series.
"Rest Stop" (E5): College kids out traveling pick up a mysterious hitchhiker (Jerry O'Connell) and learn the local rest area hides some dark secrets. The ending gives a very grim answer to the question of how much are you actually worth.
"After Life" (E5): Randy Quaid (pre-insanity) is a man who suddenly wakes up in the midst of his own funeral, much to the delight of his daughter (his wife is more mixed), but becomes obsessed with the vision of heaven he supposedly saw and eventually wants to return...with his loved ones. The twist ending here is exceptionally cruel even by this show's standards.
"Bitter Harvest" (E8): Jack Palance is a crusty old farmer who loses both his limbs thanks to the careless actions of the boy next door (Brendan Fletcher) and goes to dark lengths for retribution. Animal lovers, you will be deeply upset by one scene near the end.
"My So-Called Life and Death" (E8): A teenage girl (Marla Sokoloff) staying with her deeply dysfunctional family at their summer home suspects the handsome handyman she has a crush on is actually a ghost. If you've read the "Goosebumps" book "The Ghost Next Door" (which was adapted to the TV series), this is like a darker adult version of that, with the main highlight being the deeply fucked-up family (Dad is a neglectful boozer, little brother is a pampered little shit, Mom is completely oblivious to anything that messes up her perfect delusions, etc.).
"Darkness" (E10): My personal favorite episode, with Michael Rappaport as a man who inherits his wealthy uncle's manor and learns the dark secret behind his uncle's gruesome demise (the opening shot awesomely depicts the aftermath). This one will make you uneasy at the sight of any flickering shadow.
"Harmony" (E11): Timothy Olyphant stars (and really, what more recommendation do you need?) as a traveler who finds a small town where music is outlawed due to superstition and he tries to convince them they have nothing to fear. Think of this as a dark version of "Footloose" where the Kevin Bacon character really should have kept his mouth shut.
"Cargo" (E12): Jamie Kennedy is a young cargo officer who ignores the advice of his crusty veteran co-worker (Phillip Baker Hall) and learns some of their cargo is very much alive...and very hungry. One of the episodes directed by Tobe Hooper.
"Patterns" (E13): "Christine's" Keith Gordon directs this tale of a psychiatrist (Miguel Ferrer) who deals with a very unusual patient (Malcom McDowell) who claims his obsessive-compulsive behavior is what's keeping the very fabric of reality together. A clever little story that explains every bizarre compulsive habit you've ever seen someone do. Sometimes those silly little rituals are very important indeed.
There's plenty more to enjoy and if you're a fan of the genre, you should check it out. Another Fox casualty well worth discovering.
submitted by gf120581 to horror [link] [comments]
Really. "Hipness" is apparently a genre necessity according to the suits at Fox. And apparently this "hipness" obsession was what was responsible for the show's most out of nowhere creative decision, having Henry Rollins be the Rod Serling-equivalent. That actually worked surprisingly well, but that meant ditching the one who was already committed to the role...Gary Oldman. Yes, Gary freaking Oldman could have been the host of this show. Think of how awesome that would have been. And yet he was dumped for Rollins because the latter was more "hip." (Brown mentioned they never wanted a host, just an "Outer Limits"-style voiceover, but Fox demanded a host or no show...and then they let the show die anyway.)
Given all the nonsensical meddling involved (Brown mentioned Fox nixed adapting a Dean Koontz story because it was "too scary", then complained the show wasn't scary enough), it's impressive the show turned out as well as it did, because "Night Visions" is a pretty good anthology with some truly impressive episodes that feature a wide variety of talent in front of and behind the camera (Joe Dante and Tobe Hooper direct multiple episodes). The entire series is available on YouTube to check out (13 episodes with 2 stores to each) and some highlights are:
"A View Through the Window" (E3): Bill Pullman directs and stars as a military scientist investigating the sudden appearance of a portal in the middle of a desert that leads to a lush farm inhabited by a picturesque family (including a beautiful young woman of course). Features a shocking twist that scarred a lot of early 00s kids.
"Now He's Coming Up the Stairs" (E4): Luke Perry (RIP) portrays a therapist with the ability to absorb the illnesses of his patients (in the opening he cures an anorexic and then suffers through her disability herself) who takes on perhaps his most dangerous case yet. I should mention at this point that cruel twist endings were the norm for this series.
"Rest Stop" (E5): College kids out traveling pick up a mysterious hitchhiker (Jerry O'Connell) and learn the local rest area hides some dark secrets. The ending gives a very grim answer to the question of how much are you actually worth.
"After Life" (E5): Randy Quaid (pre-insanity) is a man who suddenly wakes up in the midst of his own funeral, much to the delight of his daughter (his wife is more mixed), but becomes obsessed with the vision of heaven he supposedly saw and eventually wants to return...with his loved ones. The twist ending here is exceptionally cruel even by this show's standards.
"Bitter Harvest" (E8): Jack Palance is a crusty old farmer who loses both his limbs thanks to the careless actions of the boy next door (Brendan Fletcher) and goes to dark lengths for retribution. Animal lovers, you will be deeply upset by one scene near the end.
"My So-Called Life and Death" (E8): A teenage girl (Marla Sokoloff) staying with her deeply dysfunctional family at their summer home suspects the handsome handyman she has a crush on is actually a ghost. If you've read the "Goosebumps" book "The Ghost Next Door" (which was adapted to the TV series), this is like a darker adult version of that, with the main highlight being the deeply fucked-up family (Dad is a neglectful boozer, little brother is a pampered little shit, Mom is completely oblivious to anything that messes up her perfect delusions, etc.).
"Darkness" (E10): My personal favorite episode, with Michael Rappaport as a man who inherits his wealthy uncle's manor and learns the dark secret behind his uncle's gruesome demise (the opening shot awesomely depicts the aftermath). This one will make you uneasy at the sight of any flickering shadow.
"Harmony" (E11): Timothy Olyphant stars (and really, what more recommendation do you need?) as a traveler who finds a small town where music is outlawed due to superstition and he tries to convince them they have nothing to fear. Think of this as a dark version of "Footloose" where the Kevin Bacon character really should have kept his mouth shut.
"Cargo" (E12): Jamie Kennedy is a young cargo officer who ignores the advice of his crusty veteran co-worker (Phillip Baker Hall) and learns some of their cargo is very much alive...and very hungry. One of the episodes directed by Tobe Hooper.
"Patterns" (E13): "Christine's" Keith Gordon directs this tale of a psychiatrist (Miguel Ferrer) who deals with a very unusual patient (Malcom McDowell) who claims his obsessive-compulsive behavior is what's keeping the very fabric of reality together. A clever little story that explains every bizarre compulsive habit you've ever seen someone do. Sometimes those silly little rituals are very important indeed.
There's plenty more to enjoy and if you're a fan of the genre, you should check it out. Another Fox casualty well worth discovering.
2023.06.07 05:47 Screaming_Mosquito Does anyone want this thing growing in my backyard? Please say yes.
I've tried selling this thing for weeks now on Facebook Marketplace, eventually at just 1 cent because I just genuinely want it out of my hair. And I cannot find any takers. I want someone to just take it instead of throwing it out because honestly, I'm deeply nervous about what would happen if I did. But if this advertisement proves to be just as fruitless, I will do it despite my nervousness because my mind just can't take this anymore otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have a psychological break with reality and need to be sedated.
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
submitted by Screaming_Mosquito to LetsReadOfficial [link] [comments]
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
2023.06.07 05:31 Screaming_Mosquito Does anyone want this thing growing in my backyard? Please say yes.
I've tried selling this thing for weeks now on Facebook Marketplace, eventually at just 1 cent because I just genuinely want it out of my hair. And I cannot find any takers. I want someone to just take it instead of throwing it out because honestly, I'm deeply nervous about what would happen if I did. But if this advertisement proves to be just as fruitless, I will do it despite my nervousness because my mind just can't take this anymore otherwise I'm afraid I'm going to have a psychological break with reality and need to be sedated.
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
submitted by Screaming_Mosquito to nosleep [link] [comments]
I grew up originally in Northern California near Mt. Shasta, and four years ago I moved to the Big Island of Hawaii after I got a new job working for the university located in Hilo as an adjunct. The search for a place to rent where I could garden in the backyard took a while, but the wait was worth it. Gardening is like comfort food for my soul, and always has been ever since I was a little girl. My mom brought me up doing it, and I took to it immediately when I was just 3 or 4 she always liked to remind me.
I suppose the reason I wanted to leave California was the fact that she wasn't there anymore, that the last piece or vestige of my family was gone and I was all that was left of the life we used to have out there. I remember the day everything was packed up for the movers and ready to go, I walked outside to wait for a friend to pick me up to take me to the airport. As I sat there on my porch, I saw an elderly man walking in front of my front yard. It was an old friend of my mom's from the neighborhood. He had been very kind to me at her funeral as he had just lost his wife himself. We both waved at each other and I got up to chat with him one last time.
As it turned out, he was there to give me a going away present. It was a batch of strange seeds in a small sack. Some were colored burgundy, others indigo, and still others ivory with fascinating patterns on them. In total, there were 19 by my count. He said that before his wife passed away, she had originally intended to give them to my mom. Apparently, during one of their hiking trips around the mountain, the two of them kept stopping to see if someone was following them. Every time they would, some tree would rustle or a bush would make a quick, sharp noise indicating some sort of disturbance. Towards the end of their hike, they stopped one final time only for them to turn around and notice that someone had left this dingy little sack of seeds on a rotted out tree stump they had just passed. In other words, there was no question at that point that they had been followed.
For what reason? He couldn't say, though obviously the implication was that whoever it was wanted them to have these seeds. His wife died soon after that, before she could pass them along to my mother. He said he was hesitant to part with them after she died, but felt extremely guilty having waited too long to give them to my mom. Now that I was heading to Hawaii, he thought he ought to just give them to me instead of continuing to keep them. Other than that, he told me to be very careful with them, to specifically pour them out into the ground from the sack instead of touching them myself. And I wondered why. Like it's such an oddly specific thing to bring up about them.
Regardless.
I took them gratefully and thanked him for the gift and said that my mother would have loved them. Now, I'm not so sure she would have.
It was only a week or so after I had finally unpacked everything in my new place that I decided to garden again. And the first thing I planted, of course, were the seeds once meant for my mom. In memory of her. It was only one I put in the ground because honestly I wasn’t exactly sure how big this thing was going to grow to be. I wasn’t even sure what exactly this thing was even going to grow to be either. Turns out, it’s a vegetable… of some kind. I think. It’s almost like a yam? Like with the same texture and everything but with bright orange skin… and fur in strange places? Also, another thing, it’s like a yam but at the time of writing this it has most definitely grown beyond the size of a typical yam. Basically it’ll increase in size every week or so by a half a foot by my measure. Also, every time it grows by that much, another bulbous root pops out and burrows itself beneath.
And oh yeah there are little blue flowers (or what I guess you could call flowers) growing out of little nooks and crannies and just random spots all over. I’m not sure what to say. I have yet to identify it. If one of you reading this can, then good for you, would you like to take it off my hands in that case? Please? Okay well, I guess I better finally explain why I want this damn thing out of here. I’ve already ostracized myself at work trying to get people to take it, as well as trying to explain what makes me hate the thing, so what harm will come from making a bunch of internet strangers think I’m creepy or crazy?
The black and white of it is that every time this thing grows a half a foot, every time another root plants itself in the ground, every time another one of those little blue flower buds appears on it, something changes. About the world we live in. About our history. About how we live day to day. And no one seems to notice any of the changes except for me. Today in fact, I almost got into a fatal car crash after I woke up and took note of a new flower bud growing on the side of it facing my house. If you put a Bible in front of me and made me swear to God that I was going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth I would swear on that, my life, and my late mother’s grave that I grew up knowing that Americans in all 50 states drive on the left side of the road.
I know you’re probably laughing at me. Because that’s what the person I almost ran into did when I told them. They wanted to know if I was British or something, and I said no I was born and raised in Northern California all my life. The closest I’ve ever even been to a foreign country is San Diego. But when I pulled over after that scare and looked it up on my phone, there it was. Americans drive on the right side of the road and pretty much always have. It’s just so… jarring. I have vivid memories of me death gripping the wheel to my mom’s Wrangler for the first time in my life, with her in the passenger seat teaching me the rules of the road for the first time. And I remember very clearly her telling me that no matter where I go in the United States or Canada, if I ever did that is, I would be on the left side of the road the entire time.
And I remember everyone else driving on the left side too. I remember them doing it yesterday. And now, everyone’s acting like it’s actually been this other way the entire time and that I’m somehow just noticing it. But I’m not “just noticing” it. It changed without warning me, to my abject frustration. This is what my life has been like since I planted it. I remember when it first sprouted. When I first started noticing the changes. The very first one I encountered were the changes made to the American flag. Again, swearing to God, on my own life, and on my late mother’s grave, I can attest that the American flag has always had 13, red and white, diagonal stripes. Not horizontal. Diagonal.
Again, I remember vividly sitting Indian style around our 1st grade teacher as she taught us some of the most basic history of the Revolutionary War. Particularly when it came to the Betsy Ross story. I remember being told that, when Betsy Ross first showed George Washington her initial design for the flag that it did indeed have horizontal stripes just like the one I suppose all of you are familiar with. But at the last second, he had her change them to be diagonal because he wanted to convey that the United States did not intend to be an empire in which some states would be perceived to be dominating the others by being “on top”. Making the stripes diagonal, to him, avoided this undesired symbolism.
I remember it all so clearly, even the little kitschy cartoon drawings in our school books of him with Betsy Ross as she showed him the final design. I remember reading about it in middle and high school. Hell, I even remember writing a 13 page essay for US History I in college that dealt with the subject. The paper of course, along with any historical record or proof of this detailed memory (digital or otherwise), is nowhere I can find it. It’s as if God or something turned the whole world into one big Wikipedia article and began editing reality at random with no one reverting the changes.
If you don’t think I’m crazy yet, then maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. When I noticed the plant had grown its eighth root, I learned for the first time in my life that Richard Nixon resigned over the Watergate scandal and not for having been outed as having had a nearly decade long affair with both Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy at the same time as I thought I had been taught. I hadn’t even heard the term Watergate before that. In fact, I learned at the same exact time that apparently for decades since, the affix -gate had been attached to various other scandals and controversies as though it were a naming convention. Until that eighth root planted itself firmly in the ground, I had never once seen or heard of something like that before.
The day I noticed the very first flower to bloom on it, was the same day I found out there’s this little place near Long Island and New Jersey you may have heard of called New York City. You see, to me, that place has always been (and always will be in my mind as I cling onto what I know to be the truth) New Ithaca. Frank Sinatra’s famous song that is played every year on New Year’s Eve, has always been about the great city of New Ithaca, the Big Apple. The changes are just so weird and particular too. The whole general history of that city and state has remains the same though (at least to me), being that it was founded by the Dutch but was taken by the British and renamed before becoming a part of the United States. Only, instead the place was previously named New North Brabant whereas I suppose you have always known that New York used to be New Amsterdam.
There’s even a song about that bit of trivia, I learned. Catchy, and also cringe inducing for someone like me going through what I’m going through.
Actually the overwhelming bulk of changes have had to do with place names. Again growing up, I had it beaten into my brain that in 1492 Columbus sailed the Pacific blue. You heard that right. The vast puddle you probably call the Atlantic Ocean has always been the Pacific to me. And vice versa. Nebraska was a name I had not ever heard of before I measured another half foot in that damn thing’s already enormous length. To me that place was called the State of Fillmore. If before I measured it to be at 3 feet, you had asked me to point out Paris on a map, I would have stared at you blankly until I realized you probably meant to say Degaulleville which was built just northeast of the ruins of the ill-fated City of Lights after it was used as a testing ground for Germany’s most devastating weapon of WWII - the nuclear bomb.
Apparently in this new world the plant has created for me, it is our country that has the dubious honor of being the first military in the world to use nuclear weapons in an actual war.
And the list of changes I have just goes on and on like that. I’m not going to waste time spelling them all out for you. I’m sure that should be enough for you to at least hear me out or dismiss me as having had a break with reality. All I want now is this thing in my backyard, and these seeds to boot, out of here. Like I said in the beginning, I’d throw it away, but now that I suspect there’s some sort of link between it and all these changes being made, I worry what it could do to me if I yanked it out of the ground and chucked it into a dumpster. Degaulleville, Fillmore, etc. were erased by this thing. I could be too, if I made it mad enough.
There’s another part of me, a selfish part, that hopes if someone else takes it they can be the ones to have all these changes happen to instead. They can be the ones to watch desperately as what you once knew to be true, to be there, to be real, is all ground up and thrown away like it was nothing to bend your reality and leave you as the only one aware of it. I want that to happen to someone else instead of me. I want to be the one who’s oblivious to the changes made in the fabric and window dressings of reality. I want to be the one who reads the complaints and desperate cries of someone like me, and calls them crazy. I want want want that.
There’s another, tinier part of me, that naively hopes once I can leave this thing with someone else, it will change reality again but this time for the better. For the better, for me. Maybe once it starts affecting someone else adversely, it can change reality one more time to make my mom come back. To come back in a way that would make me forget she was ever gone. And then maybe I can go home, go back to the life I was used to living. But I know at the same time, there’s absolutely no reason it would do something nice like that for me.
Hell, if anything, it could decide to make things in reality, history, etc. worse for everyone including me. Like let me think… Okay for example, remember back in 1999 when everyone was afraid of the Y2K bug, but then it turned out to not be such a catastrophic ordeal as people were predicting? That damn plant could change things to make it so that Y2K’s catastrophic potential was fulfilled. Or wait, here’s a more recent example - remember like three or so years ago when there was that weird disease in China all the schools and governments got freaked out about for two weeks, warning about having to do lockdowns and stuff like that only for the Chinese government to successfully contain it before it could leave its shores?
I’d imagine the plant could change that history as well. And it’s not like I want any of that to happen, it’s just that I have little to no control over whether or not it will. And I just want to be free from being the only one to know it’s all happening. To notice it everyday. To have your heart and brain scratched at and tortured by it when you do.
So please, someone, anyone out there who can and is willing to take this thing off my hands knowing full well what it is - just DM me. I’ll give it to you at no charge or expense to you. I’ll even dig it out of the ground and drive to where you are (if you’re on the island that is) so you don’t have to get up and go anywhere. If you’re located somewhere else I’ll happily volunteer to pay all the associated shipping costs at my own expense as well in order to get it to you.
You’ll be my knight in shining armor if you do.
UPDATE: I am no longer in need of anyone to take this thing and these seeds off my hands. Thank you to the person that DMed me after I posted this. I got your email confirming that it safely arrived at your address as well. Also, glad to hear it’s grown another root. By glad, I mean that I am glad to know that it has grown yet again but this time I haven’t noticed anything changing. You have no idea what you’ve done to help salvage my sanity. Bless you.
2023.06.07 01:52 motherofcorgss Update: Woke up to a note in my mailbox today
Please see my previous post for the whole story, but tl;dr my estranged dad left me a note in my mailbox that my estranged mom died.
I never contacted my Uncle (NMom’s brother) as the note instructed. A few days later he showed up AT MY HOUSE. I was caught off guard and didn’t answer the door. I figured my silence would’ve sent the message that I wanted no parts of this. When he left, there was another note to tell me to call the funeral home for her arrangements. I called the funeral home directly and was informed that they needed me to sign off on her cremation forms. Medicaid covered her cremation, but her family also wanted a viewing and a service (which is what they needed my permission to do and also pay for).
I wouldn’t have been contacted otherwise. Shitty, but not surprising.
The funeral home was wonderful to me and said that her family “isn’t entitled to anything” and they are not “the decision makers” I am. I said no to the funeral and everything else and they informed her family for me. They called me when her ashes came in and I picked them up. If anyone thinks I’m being petty here, yes I am. The audacity to not just leave me alone. When my younger brother died, my Nmom and her family went to the funeral home and made all the arrangements without consulting my dad and I- but had them send my dad the bill. Spelled my son’s name wrong in the obituary too. None of them including Nmom paid a dime, my dad and I did. So this was my payback.
I’ll be sending her ashes to my estranged Aunt in another state. What I was told from her son (also doesn’t talk to anyone like I do) was that none of my NMom’s brothers even called her to inform her that she had died. Hence cementing my suspicions they only contacted me to do something for them. My aunt will get her ashes and if the rest of her shitty family wants to see them or ask for some they’ll have to call their sister and probably explain themselves. From what I hear she’s really pissed. Whatever, it’s off my plate now and not my problem.
I found out where she lived and contacted her landlord to ask if anyone has been in touch to clean out her apartment. He said that my uncles have been but he needed my permission. My uncles haven’t contacted me any further because I’m assuming they’re pissed off I shit all over their funeral plans and we’re trying to figure out a way around this without informing me. I did give the landlord permission for them to clean out her space. They’re greedy but what they don’t realize is that my mother didn’t have anything of value, she sold anything for drugs years ago. They can do the legwork and pick the scraps and fight amongst each other. I don’t want anything of hers anyway. I am listed on her death certificate and I’ll be closing her bank accounts tomorrow. There’s probably very little if anything in there anyway, but they won’t get to have it. I’ll be using it for the shipping fee for her ashes.
I’m doing okay though.
submitted by motherofcorgss to raisedbynarcissists [link] [comments]
I never contacted my Uncle (NMom’s brother) as the note instructed. A few days later he showed up AT MY HOUSE. I was caught off guard and didn’t answer the door. I figured my silence would’ve sent the message that I wanted no parts of this. When he left, there was another note to tell me to call the funeral home for her arrangements. I called the funeral home directly and was informed that they needed me to sign off on her cremation forms. Medicaid covered her cremation, but her family also wanted a viewing and a service (which is what they needed my permission to do and also pay for).
I wouldn’t have been contacted otherwise. Shitty, but not surprising.
The funeral home was wonderful to me and said that her family “isn’t entitled to anything” and they are not “the decision makers” I am. I said no to the funeral and everything else and they informed her family for me. They called me when her ashes came in and I picked them up. If anyone thinks I’m being petty here, yes I am. The audacity to not just leave me alone. When my younger brother died, my Nmom and her family went to the funeral home and made all the arrangements without consulting my dad and I- but had them send my dad the bill. Spelled my son’s name wrong in the obituary too. None of them including Nmom paid a dime, my dad and I did. So this was my payback.
I’ll be sending her ashes to my estranged Aunt in another state. What I was told from her son (also doesn’t talk to anyone like I do) was that none of my NMom’s brothers even called her to inform her that she had died. Hence cementing my suspicions they only contacted me to do something for them. My aunt will get her ashes and if the rest of her shitty family wants to see them or ask for some they’ll have to call their sister and probably explain themselves. From what I hear she’s really pissed. Whatever, it’s off my plate now and not my problem.
I found out where she lived and contacted her landlord to ask if anyone has been in touch to clean out her apartment. He said that my uncles have been but he needed my permission. My uncles haven’t contacted me any further because I’m assuming they’re pissed off I shit all over their funeral plans and we’re trying to figure out a way around this without informing me. I did give the landlord permission for them to clean out her space. They’re greedy but what they don’t realize is that my mother didn’t have anything of value, she sold anything for drugs years ago. They can do the legwork and pick the scraps and fight amongst each other. I don’t want anything of hers anyway. I am listed on her death certificate and I’ll be closing her bank accounts tomorrow. There’s probably very little if anything in there anyway, but they won’t get to have it. I’ll be using it for the shipping fee for her ashes.
I’m doing okay though.
2023.06.06 21:51 jonesinjosie My MIL announced our pregnancy in an obituary.
I’m 9 weeks FTM, and we hadn’t told anyone yet. The only reason she knew is because I passed on wine and charcuterie at a family dinner two weeks ago and she guessed. We confirmed her suspicions, but told her under no circumstances should she tell anyone else. At the time, I hadn’t even been to the doctor to confirm.
My husbands aunt passed away not unexpectedly on Saturday, they posted the obituary (that MIL wrote) today and in the section talking about family it says “aunt to XYZ, and soon to be great aunt to the child of husband and jonesinjosie”. I was at work, hadn’t seen the obituary, and had no idea until his family’s group chat and the Facebook post started blowing up with people congratulating us and asking if we’re pregnant. Then (because people were tagging us in the comments on Facebook), all of my family and all of our friends saw it and now they know as well.
I’m just so sad. I had a cute way planned to tell my parents, and instead they found out from a social media post. It’s our first and the first grandchild on both sides, so I was really excited and looking forward to telling people in person and seeing their reactions. I’m also just not comfortable with people finding out this early, I’m terrified that something is going to happen, we haven’t even had our dating ultrasound yet. My husband talked to his mom and told her that really wasn’t okay, and her response was sort of “I didn’t realize it would be a big deal, but there’s nothing we can do now”. I don’t even feel like I can be upset with her because she is grieving the loss of her sister, but I also feel like she took something away from me that I can’t get back. How big of a deal do I make about this?
Update: I can’t possibly reply to all of you lovely people, but thank you for validating my rage 😅 all of your kind words make me feel not so alone. This has definitely been a wake up call to who my MIL actually is.
She is NOT normally like this, she is normally so lovely, which is why I was trying to have a little grace with her. I was able to talk to my husband after he came home from work, and he is just as devastated as I am. He lost his dad when he was really young, so he’s very close to mine and was so excited to tell him. We decided to call her together and explain exactly why what she did was so hurtful. She sobbed the entire phone call and tried to claim that she didn’t know we hadn’t told my parents, which neither of us believe and we told her as much and that even if she really thought that, it was still not her place to announce it. She asked us repeatedly if we could forgive her, to which we gave a resounding no and told her not only can we not forgive her, we can no longer trust her. We basically ended the call by telling her we don’t really want to talk to her right now, and to please not contact us until we reach out.
My husband also sent this text to his family’s group chat, which obviously his mom is in: “Hello all. Thank you so much for all of the love and congratulations. We are expecting, but it is still very early in the pregnancy and this is not how or when we wanted everyone to find out. To be very honest, this is how jonesinjosie’s parents found out, and we are both quite upset about that. We so appreciate and love all of you, but kindly ask that we be given a bit of space for now and at the funeral this weekend, as we are still processing the disappointment of not being able to tell everyone in our own way.”
submitted by jonesinjosie to pregnant [link] [comments]
My husbands aunt passed away not unexpectedly on Saturday, they posted the obituary (that MIL wrote) today and in the section talking about family it says “aunt to XYZ, and soon to be great aunt to the child of husband and jonesinjosie”. I was at work, hadn’t seen the obituary, and had no idea until his family’s group chat and the Facebook post started blowing up with people congratulating us and asking if we’re pregnant. Then (because people were tagging us in the comments on Facebook), all of my family and all of our friends saw it and now they know as well.
I’m just so sad. I had a cute way planned to tell my parents, and instead they found out from a social media post. It’s our first and the first grandchild on both sides, so I was really excited and looking forward to telling people in person and seeing their reactions. I’m also just not comfortable with people finding out this early, I’m terrified that something is going to happen, we haven’t even had our dating ultrasound yet. My husband talked to his mom and told her that really wasn’t okay, and her response was sort of “I didn’t realize it would be a big deal, but there’s nothing we can do now”. I don’t even feel like I can be upset with her because she is grieving the loss of her sister, but I also feel like she took something away from me that I can’t get back. How big of a deal do I make about this?
Update: I can’t possibly reply to all of you lovely people, but thank you for validating my rage 😅 all of your kind words make me feel not so alone. This has definitely been a wake up call to who my MIL actually is.
She is NOT normally like this, she is normally so lovely, which is why I was trying to have a little grace with her. I was able to talk to my husband after he came home from work, and he is just as devastated as I am. He lost his dad when he was really young, so he’s very close to mine and was so excited to tell him. We decided to call her together and explain exactly why what she did was so hurtful. She sobbed the entire phone call and tried to claim that she didn’t know we hadn’t told my parents, which neither of us believe and we told her as much and that even if she really thought that, it was still not her place to announce it. She asked us repeatedly if we could forgive her, to which we gave a resounding no and told her not only can we not forgive her, we can no longer trust her. We basically ended the call by telling her we don’t really want to talk to her right now, and to please not contact us until we reach out.
My husband also sent this text to his family’s group chat, which obviously his mom is in: “Hello all. Thank you so much for all of the love and congratulations. We are expecting, but it is still very early in the pregnancy and this is not how or when we wanted everyone to find out. To be very honest, this is how jonesinjosie’s parents found out, and we are both quite upset about that. We so appreciate and love all of you, but kindly ask that we be given a bit of space for now and at the funeral this weekend, as we are still processing the disappointment of not being able to tell everyone in our own way.”
2023.06.06 21:50 Falconerelectronics Mina Miller Edison: A Powerful Force
Mina Miller Edison lived an incredibly inspiring life. She thrived in numerous aspects. Especially since she played many roles throughout her impressive lifespan. Highly educated, confident, ambitious and determined represent the characteristics that describe Mina.
She displayed a deep committed to her family. This includes being the loving wife to inventor, entrepreneur and American icon Thomas Edison. She was also a loving and dedicated mother.
In addition, Mina demonstrated a strong passion for her community with the endless organizations that she contributed a tremendous amount of time and energy.
Mina was born into an entrepreneurial family on July 6, 1865. As the Miller family continued to grow, Mina was the seventh of eleven children born to inventor Lewis Miller and Mary Alexander. Her parents had a love for education. Mina attended and graduated from Akron High School in Ohio. After high school, she went on to study at a home and day school in Boston.
“The original scheme was a Christian educational resort . . . [where] pleasure, science, and all friends of true culture should go side by side with true religion.”
President Theodore Roosevelt once called Chautauqua Institution: “the most American thing in America“.
The mission of Chautauqua Institution (or as locals call it, CHQ):
The next step was getting permission from Mina’s Father Lewis, to which Thomas wrote this:
“I trust you will not accuse me of egotism when I say that my life and history and standing are so well known as to call for no statement concerning myself. My reputation is so far made that I recognize I must be judged by it for good or ill. I need only add in conclusion that the step I have taken in asking your daughter to entrust her happiness into my keeping has been the result of mature deliberation, and with the full appreciation of the responsibility and the duty I have undertaken to fulfill. I do not deny that your answer will seriously affect my happiness, and I trust my suit will meet with your approval.”
This letter won the approval of Mr. Miller. The date for the wedding was set for February 24, 1886, hardly more than a year after they met. She was only 20 years old. Oak Place, the Miller home in Akron, was to be the site of the wedding. Father Miller and his Mary Valinda spared no expense in seeing that the nuptials were an occasion to be remembered.
Madeleine briefly ran for Congress in 1938, she sadly lost. During World War II she gave much of her time to blood drives for the New Jersey Red Cross. She also administered the Edison Birthplace in Milan, Ohio after her mother’s death. She died on February 14, 1979.
Charles is the best known because of his second career, in public service. In the mid-1930s he served in the cabinet of President Franklin Roosevelt. First as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, then as Acting Secretary. New Jersey voters elected him as their governor in 1940. He also founded a charitable foundation that now bears his name, the Charles Edison Fund. He died on July 31, 1969
Theodore did work for his father’s company after graduation. After starting as an ordinary lab assistant, he worked his way up to technical director of research and engineering for Thomas A. Edison, Inc. He eventually founded his own company, Calibron Industries, Inc. Also, he built his own smaller laboratory in West Orange. Theodore earned over 80 patents in his career. In 1925 he married Anna Maria Osterhout, a graduate of Vassar. He became an ardent environmentalist. Theodore lived in West Orange with his wife Anna until his death on November 24, 1992.
Mina was active in many different organizations and clubs including:
In addition, please click these helpful links for more info:
Finally, to learn about Wire Harness Assemblies, please click below:
submitted by Falconerelectronics to Ground_Wires [link] [comments]
She displayed a deep committed to her family. This includes being the loving wife to inventor, entrepreneur and American icon Thomas Edison. She was also a loving and dedicated mother.
In addition, Mina demonstrated a strong passion for her community with the endless organizations that she contributed a tremendous amount of time and energy.
Mina was born into an entrepreneurial family on July 6, 1865. As the Miller family continued to grow, Mina was the seventh of eleven children born to inventor Lewis Miller and Mary Alexander. Her parents had a love for education. Mina attended and graduated from Akron High School in Ohio. After high school, she went on to study at a home and day school in Boston.
Mina’s Father the Inventor and Founder
Mina Miller Edison was born into a family that was used to being in the spotlight. Lewis Miller was a successful inventor. He also became one of the founders of Chautauqua Institution. The Miller family spent summers in their home along Chautauqua Lake. Her families love for Chautauqua was passed down to Mina. Therefore, when she had a family of her own she brought them to her family home at Chautauqua Institition.Mina’s father and husband both had a passion for inventing. However, what they chose to invent was different from one another. While Thomas concentrated on technology and electronics, Lewis focused on farm equipment. They shared the common goal of making life easier with their inventions.
Chautauqua Institution
Chautauqua Institution sets on the shores of beautiful Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York State. The Institution was originally called the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly. It was founded in 1874 as an educational experiment in out-of-school, vacation learning by industrialist Lewis Miller and Methodist Bishop John Heyl Vincent. Hence, a place where spirituality meets continuing education.“The original scheme was a Christian educational resort . . . [where] pleasure, science, and all friends of true culture should go side by side with true religion.”
Chautauqua Institution
We call Chautauqua County home which is also the birthplace of the National Historic Landmark, Chautauqua Institution. Chautauqua Institution is a 750-acre community on Chautauqua Lake that attracts 100,000 visitors each summer who explore spirituality, philosophy, cultural vitality and the arts.President Theodore Roosevelt once called Chautauqua Institution: “the most American thing in America“.
The mission of Chautauqua Institution (or as locals call it, CHQ):
CHQ is dedicated to the exploration of the best in human values and the enrichment of life through a program that explores the important religious, social and political issues of our times; stimulates provocative, thoughtful involvement of individuals and families in creative response to such issues; and promotes excellence and creativity in the appreciation, performance and teaching of the arts.Each summer season celebrates four program areas: The Arts, Religion, Education and Recreation. A summer at Chautauqua is loaded with lectures, concerts, religious services and as well as amazing displays of literary and performing arts. Chautauqua Institution attracts world-class talent that performs ballet, theater, opera, symphony and dance. Click here to check out this season’s exciting events.
The Multiple Achievements of Mina Miller
Marriage to Thomas Edison
When Mina Miller met Thomas Edison, she was promised to her gentleman suitor, George Vincent, the son of Bishop Vincent. Edison learned that Mina would be staying the summer at Chautauqua, he arranged to spend time there to win her and meet her family. Thomas Edison’s hearing was badly compromised by this time from when he was a child so he taught Mina to send and receive Morse code. That summer, he used it to ask her to marry him. He tapped “Will you Marry Me?” on Mina’s hand, and she said “Yes.”The next step was getting permission from Mina’s Father Lewis, to which Thomas wrote this:
“I trust you will not accuse me of egotism when I say that my life and history and standing are so well known as to call for no statement concerning myself. My reputation is so far made that I recognize I must be judged by it for good or ill. I need only add in conclusion that the step I have taken in asking your daughter to entrust her happiness into my keeping has been the result of mature deliberation, and with the full appreciation of the responsibility and the duty I have undertaken to fulfill. I do not deny that your answer will seriously affect my happiness, and I trust my suit will meet with your approval.”
This letter won the approval of Mr. Miller. The date for the wedding was set for February 24, 1886, hardly more than a year after they met. She was only 20 years old. Oak Place, the Miller home in Akron, was to be the site of the wedding. Father Miller and his Mary Valinda spared no expense in seeing that the nuptials were an occasion to be remembered.
Managing a Home Full of Staff and Children
When Mina and Thomas Edison got married she was much younger then her husband. She became the stepmother to his three children. Still being young herself she was not fully ready for motherhood. However, Mina Miller Edison took charge of the household. Often times Thomas was not around due to his work. This left Mina in charge of hiring the house staff as well as raising the children. Furthermore, she gave herself the title of “home executive”. Mina also held ownership of Glenmont. The home she shared with Thomas. Owning and managing her own home was the first of many successes for Mina.Children of Her Own
Two years after their marriage Mina and Thomas added to their family with their first child, Madeleine. This started the same pattern of children Thomas had with his first wife. Their daughter was soon followed by two sons, Charles and Theodore.Madeleine Edison
Madeleine was born on May 31st, 1888, the first child born to Mina. She was born in Glenmont, the Edison Family home in New Jersey. Madeleine married John Eyre Sloane. She married him in the Drawing Room at Glenmont on June 17, 1914. Madeleine and John had four sons, who happened to be Thomas Edison’s only grandchildren from either marriage.Madeleine briefly ran for Congress in 1938, she sadly lost. During World War II she gave much of her time to blood drives for the New Jersey Red Cross. She also administered the Edison Birthplace in Milan, Ohio after her mother’s death. She died on February 14, 1979.
Charles Edison
Charles Edison was born into the Edison Family at the Glenmont on August 3, 1890. He married Carolyn Hawkins, whom he had met in 1912 then married on March 27, 1918. Finally, he became president of his father’s company, Thomas A. Edison, Incorporated, in 1927. He ran the company until it was sold in 1959.Charles is the best known because of his second career, in public service. In the mid-1930s he served in the cabinet of President Franklin Roosevelt. First as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, then as Acting Secretary. New Jersey voters elected him as their governor in 1940. He also founded a charitable foundation that now bears his name, the Charles Edison Fund. He died on July 31, 1969
Theodore Miller Edison
Theodore Miller Edison was the last to be born at Glenmont on July 10, 1898. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from which he earned his physics degree in 1923. He was the only member of the Edison family to graduate from college.Theodore did work for his father’s company after graduation. After starting as an ordinary lab assistant, he worked his way up to technical director of research and engineering for Thomas A. Edison, Inc. He eventually founded his own company, Calibron Industries, Inc. Also, he built his own smaller laboratory in West Orange. Theodore earned over 80 patents in his career. In 1925 he married Anna Maria Osterhout, a graduate of Vassar. He became an ardent environmentalist. Theodore lived in West Orange with his wife Anna until his death on November 24, 1992.
Mina’s Step-Children
With the marriage between Thomas and Mina, she took on his three children from the first marriage. Marion, twelve years old, Thomas, Jr. ten years old, and William Leslie eight years old. She continued to struggle with her relationship with her stepdaughter. Mina’s stepchildren did not take education as seriously as she did. They believed that Edison’s fame could make their future for them. Finally, due to this belief, Mina’s stepchildren went on to live less acclaimed lives as the other Edison children.Marion Estelle Edison
Marion was the first born of Thomas Edison’s children. She was born on February 18, 1873, and gained the nickname “Dot” as a child after Morse Code. In 1895 she married Karl Oscar Oeser, a German army lieutenant. They lived in Germany through the First World War. Unfortunately, her marriage ended in divorce in 1921. Finally, she then returned to the United States, where she died on April 16, 1965.Thomas Alva Edison Jr
Thomas Alva, Junior, was born on January 10, 1876. He had the nickname “Dash” after Morse Code like his sister. He went on to marry stage actress Marie Louise Toohey in 1899. However, the marriage ended within a year. He next married Beatrice Heyzer. Thomas Jr sold the use of his name to advertise “quack” medicines and dubious inventions. His father disapproved of this and eventually asked him to change his name. Thomas Jr. briefly went by the name of Thomas Willard. His efforts at inventing and starting a mushroom farm failed. Finally, he died on August 25, 1935.
William Leslie Edison
William Leslie was born on October 26, 1878. He went to school at St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire. Then also attended J.M.Hawkins School on Staten Island. He later studied at the Sheffield scientific school at Yale. William soon married Blanche Travers. William Edison served in the military during the Spanish-American War in 1898. He also served again in the First World War. Like his brother he turned to farm life, breeding chickens. Finally, he died on August 10, 1937.
Chautauqua Institute and Mina’s Influence
Mina’s father’s love for Chautauqua was passed down to his daughter. Mina dedicated herself to many organizations locally. She supported many land and wildlife conservation. Often times Mina would donate her own funds to projects for Chautauqua. Mina became a trustee of the institute. Others involved in Chautauqua held Mina in high regards. Also much like her father, Mina continued her involvement with her beloved Institute until her passing in 1947.Mina was active in many different organizations and clubs including:
- The American Red Cross
- The Chautauqua Association
- West Orange Community League (President From 1912-1919)
- National Audubon Society
- Chautauqua Bird and Tree Club
- The John Burroughs Association
- The Daughters of the American Revolution
- The School Garden Association of America
The Thomas Alva Edison Foundation
After Thomas Edison passed away, Mina started The Thomas Alva Edison Foundation in his memory. The foundation combined both Thomas’s and Mina’s passions. Mina’s love for education and Thomas’s love for science. However, later on, the nature of the foundation changed. It was no longer dedicated to advancements in science and education. Finally, it became a foundation aimed at preserving Thomas Edison’s name and accomplishments
Wrapping It Up
Lastly, Thank you for taking the time to read this post.In addition, please click these helpful links for more info:
Finally, to learn about Wire Harness Assemblies, please click below:
- Instant Wire Harness Estimate
- Wire Harness Manufacturing Terms, Tools, and Tips of the Trade
- Wiring Harness Assembly: The Official Resource Guide
2023.06.06 18:52 PritchettRobert506 [HIRING] 20 Jobs in Omaha Hiring Now!
2023.06.06 02:53 Trick-Ad9660 My family won’t tell me how my Uncle died. I’m not allowed to go to his house. I don’t know where his remains are. I’m not allowed to speak to anyone and I’m not allowed to know.
TLDR: I’m in the UK I don’t know how to find any of this out. I don’t remember his birthday or the know the date and cause of death. I only have his name and address. No one will tell me anything and it’s making my grieving process so so much harder I don’t know what to do.
The relationship with my Dad has been frosty. I was being abused by my sisters so I stood my ground with them and refused to attend family functions until they acknowledged their behaviour was abusive. My Dad wasn’t happy with this and felt I should retain my place as the family scapegoat. He stopped talking to me meaning I couldn’t easily retain contact with my Uncle as we live far away. He was sick and a boomer so didn’t use social media. I lost his phone number. Now it’s too late.
The last time I saw him we were supposed to hang out after my Grandads funeral but again - my sisters were being abusive, fighting screaming. I ended up leaving in tears without keeping my promise to him. His face lighting up when I asked him to come with me is the thing I remember.
My Dad answerd the phone to me for the first time in years. We had a conversation like o was a normal human. I said I wanted to grieve and go pay my respects at his home with him as someone hid my uncles death and has stolen his remains. My Dad agreed to see me for the first time in years. Me - a moron I messaged my sisters to ask if they were coming? Suddenly my Dad won’t answer the phone to me. My sisters are telling me I’m “interfering” and I’m not welcome and specifically told me I’m not allowed to know anything that’s happening. I sent my Father a text letting him know I’m still coming to visit him and the grandchildren. I asked when is a good time? After a week of ignoring me his tone suddenly changed back to being aggressive and nasty. He told me I’m not to come see him nor am I allowed see any of my family. I said again - I’m very upset about the death of my uncle, I also had an old friend die too and I’d already booked my (expensive) travel tickets and accommodation to visit. He’s ignoring me again. I feel like it’s only me & Dad that cared about my Uncle at all. They didn’t care at my grandparents funeral and used it as another opportunity for abuse. I’m upset on so many levels right now and have to grieve for him alone.
I’ve been looking for funeral and obituary announcements in his local newspaper and can’t find anything. I know he had friends and a girlfriend but they’re all kinda addicts so - I don’t know how he was treated while he was sick? what cancer killed him? did he know? Did he have a funeral? My uncle and grandparents were the only adults in my life I have happy memories of. They’re the only ones who treated me as a normal kid and not a scapegoat. My sisters were put on a pedestal so don’t appear to really care about them as they weren’t a big part of their life but they meant everything to me and I’m deeply cut up my Uncle died suffering, neglected and alone.
I’m partly writing this just to get it out. I don’t know anyone else that can understand how I feel right now. Also - if anyone knows how can I find out something by myself without any help please let me know. I live about 12 hours away but I’m thinking of going and knocking door to door asking about him to try and find out what happened. I can’t even find a photo of him. I looked on Ancestry.com and couldn’t find anything. All the people who would’ve been able to help me now are dead. I just want some closure.
submitted by Trick-Ad9660 to CPTSD [link] [comments]
The relationship with my Dad has been frosty. I was being abused by my sisters so I stood my ground with them and refused to attend family functions until they acknowledged their behaviour was abusive. My Dad wasn’t happy with this and felt I should retain my place as the family scapegoat. He stopped talking to me meaning I couldn’t easily retain contact with my Uncle as we live far away. He was sick and a boomer so didn’t use social media. I lost his phone number. Now it’s too late.
The last time I saw him we were supposed to hang out after my Grandads funeral but again - my sisters were being abusive, fighting screaming. I ended up leaving in tears without keeping my promise to him. His face lighting up when I asked him to come with me is the thing I remember.
My Dad answerd the phone to me for the first time in years. We had a conversation like o was a normal human. I said I wanted to grieve and go pay my respects at his home with him as someone hid my uncles death and has stolen his remains. My Dad agreed to see me for the first time in years. Me - a moron I messaged my sisters to ask if they were coming? Suddenly my Dad won’t answer the phone to me. My sisters are telling me I’m “interfering” and I’m not welcome and specifically told me I’m not allowed to know anything that’s happening. I sent my Father a text letting him know I’m still coming to visit him and the grandchildren. I asked when is a good time? After a week of ignoring me his tone suddenly changed back to being aggressive and nasty. He told me I’m not to come see him nor am I allowed see any of my family. I said again - I’m very upset about the death of my uncle, I also had an old friend die too and I’d already booked my (expensive) travel tickets and accommodation to visit. He’s ignoring me again. I feel like it’s only me & Dad that cared about my Uncle at all. They didn’t care at my grandparents funeral and used it as another opportunity for abuse. I’m upset on so many levels right now and have to grieve for him alone.
I’ve been looking for funeral and obituary announcements in his local newspaper and can’t find anything. I know he had friends and a girlfriend but they’re all kinda addicts so - I don’t know how he was treated while he was sick? what cancer killed him? did he know? Did he have a funeral? My uncle and grandparents were the only adults in my life I have happy memories of. They’re the only ones who treated me as a normal kid and not a scapegoat. My sisters were put on a pedestal so don’t appear to really care about them as they weren’t a big part of their life but they meant everything to me and I’m deeply cut up my Uncle died suffering, neglected and alone.
I’m partly writing this just to get it out. I don’t know anyone else that can understand how I feel right now. Also - if anyone knows how can I find out something by myself without any help please let me know. I live about 12 hours away but I’m thinking of going and knocking door to door asking about him to try and find out what happened. I can’t even find a photo of him. I looked on Ancestry.com and couldn’t find anything. All the people who would’ve been able to help me now are dead. I just want some closure.
2023.06.04 23:27 truedilemma What happened to these six older and elderly women? A write up of five women who went missing under mysterious circumstances.
This post is about a couple of older and elderly women who vanished without a trace. I wanted to include women who disappeared without much of an explanation. When elderly people go missing, their disappearances can often be chalked up to a dementia-related event. I believe many elderly people who vanished with their cars may be in the bottom of lakes and rivers. Those who lived near wilderness may have gotten lost and died of exposure. Those who were picked up or hitchhiked could've been brought to a hospital where they were unable to communicate their true identity. The women I included went missing under more suspicious circumstances.
Mayme Hart Johnson - Disappeared June 12th, 2000 from Nashville, Tennessee.
Mayme is the first on the list and the reason I decided to do this post. On June 12th, 2000, Mayme Hart Johnson, a local historian, researcher, and teacher went missing from Nashville, Tennessee. Mayme, who was 85, lived in the 100 block of Bosley Springs Road in West Nashville with her son, Sam, in his apartment. At 6:30 am that morning, her son woke to find his mother gone. While he reported that he wasn't initially concerned because Mayme occasionally left the apartment around that time, he became alarmed when she didn't return by lunchtime. Where Mayme would go/what she would do at that time is not known. Richland Creek is close by to the apartments, but from what I've seen, it's narrow and a body would probably soon be found if it was in there, despite it being 28 miles long. Of course, there is always a chance she made it into a larger body of water that concealed her. A maintenance man from the Johnson's building told authorities that he had seen Mayme at 6:30 am the day she went missing. This was around the time Sam woke up. Whether this employee saw her outside the building, inside the building, near or on her apartment floor, or down the street is not mentioned. At the time of her disappearance Mayme was 5'5, 120 pounds, with brown eyes and gray hair, and last seen wearing pink pants and a pink blouse. Whether these were pajamas or not (possibly indicating a dementia-like episode, where she got up out of the house and left without telling her son or getting dressed) is, like many things in this case, unknown. Mayme, as I mentioned, was a historian and if you google her name you will find a few sites that show her body of work. In 1986, she published "A Treasury of Tennessee Churches". A search for Mayme was conducted in the Nashville area and extended to Huntingdon, TN, where her husband's grave was, and where she had been visiting the weekend before she vanished. There was also an aerial search of Eastern Maury County that took place in July 2000 after law enforcement came up with a theory that she could be a target of the I-65 rapist. I'm not sure where police got this idea from. The I-65/Days Inn Killer, now identified as Harry Edward Greenwell, murdered three hotel clerks (ages 21, 24, 34) in the late 1980s. He also sexually assaulted a 21 year old hotel clerk in 1990. While LE does believe he's connected to more violent crimes, I'm not sure how they link Mayme to him--if you know, please add your knowledge in the comments. After the aerial search, nothing was found linking anything to Mayme. In 2008 she was declared deceased.
-
Helen Joyce Rawley - disappeared June 4th, 2003 from College Park, Maryland
Helen Joyce Rawley lived in a bungalow on the 4600 block of Knox Road in College Park, Maryland with her son. 75 year old Helen went by her middle name "Joyce" so that is how I'll refer to her. Seventy-five year old Joyce and her son, Tom, had lived together since the death of Joyce's husband of 48 years, Nelson, in 2001. Between 6:45 and 7:00 am on June 4th, 2003, Joyce was last seen by her tenant, a man who had rented a room at the Rawley home for the last eight years. Joyce was seen by him on her porch that morning as he returned home from work. Beginning the day after her husband died in February 2001, Joyce suffered two strokes four days apart. Because of the strokes, she was unable to talk and considered disabled because of her inability to communicate. In 2002, Joyce underwent chemotherapy and radiation for rectal cancer. She was on medication that made her tired and weak. She didn't go out anywhere by herself except to get the mail. Her mind remained "sound", according to her son. The day she went missing, her son returned home from his foreman job at 3:30 pm, and found the house empty with the lights off. Joyce's purse and wallet remained left behind in her bedroom, everything was in place, and there were no signs of a robbery. Police tracked Joyce's scent out the front door which she never used, and to the corner of the block. However, she went missing on a "rain-soaked" and "dreary" day and it's possible the bad weather could've washed away any more of her scent outside. Since the death of her husband who died unexpectedly in his sleep, and her two other sons who died together in a 1982 boating accident, Joyce's immediate family consisted of her remaining child Tom, who was unmarried and childless at the time of his mother's disappearance. If she had other family out of the area is unknown. She does have a beach house in Annapolis, Maryland, but had not visited there after she went missing. She was 75 when she disappeared, standing between 5'4-5'5 and 110 pounds. Due to her cancer, she wore a colostomy bag and was on several medications that she can't go long without. Fliers with Joyce's information went out, woods were searched, local bus drivers were notified and questioned if they had seen her, and hospitals had been checked. A helicopter flew over the city at night with a heat-detecting device. No sight of her was ever found. She had brown eyes and white hair and was last seen in a sweatshirt and slacks. She enjoys gardening, crossword puzzles, and reading. Police don't suspect foul play and Tom isn't considered a suspect (neither is the tenant who was the last to see her), but they aren't sure what could've happened.
-
Maebell Dawson - disappeared January 3rd, 1998 from Jefferson Township, Ohio
68 year old Maebell Dawson had lived in a one bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor of the Martin Luther Manor Living Center on Liscum Drive for about a year when she went missing. Maebell was divorced, had two daughters, and had retired from a hospital housekeeping job two years prior. Maebell was close to her family, and when calls to reach her went unanswered for two days, by January 5th, her residence was checked. Nothing in the second-story apartment was missing or out of place. Her winter coat was draped over a chair, her wallet, credit cards, cash, and a check for rent dated 1/8/98 were all found in her purse on the table. Her bank account was never accessed again. There were no signs of forced entry, a struggle or robbery inside the apartment. LE does not believe Maebell was attacked from her apartment or lured from the premises, but they do believe foul play was involved. According to CharleyProject, suicide "has not been ruled out but has been deemed unlikely". In 1998, Maebell was between 5'4 - 5'6 and 180 pounds. She had brown eyes and gray hair, wore glasses, and was last seen in a tan jogging suit. She was last seen entering her apartment at 9:30 pm on January 3rd. Five and a half years after her disappearance, Maebell was declared legally dead.
-
Norma Mae Maynard - disappeared February 3rd, 1979 from Boone, Iowa.
Norma Mae Maynard went missing in early February of 1979, just two weeks after the unexpected death of her husband, Carl, on January 19th. Norma and Carl had been married for three decades and Norma was deeply grieving the loss. Norma lived with her 30 year old son, and he was the last to see his mother. He stated that shortly before noon on February 2nd, he found a note from his 61 year old mother that stated she was on her way to Los Angeles, not to look for her, and that she'd get in touch again someday. The validity of this note (if seen by LE, if handwritten analysis was performed, etc) is not known. Norma's purse and a few items of clothing were missing, but her checkbook and jewelry were left behind. There was no sign of a break-in at the house. Her husband's pension which she lived off of and her bank account with savings was not touched. Norma was a shy woman who spent most of her time at home and had a regular routine. She didn't drive and her brothers stated that she had never been more than a few miles from her hometown. Her husband's funeral bill was paid for by a check dated four days after she vanished and signed by "Mrs. Carl Maynard". According to Charley Project, "The signature appeared to match Maynard's handwriting, and her son said she had signed a blank check and left it with him to fill in and pay the bill". The validity of this is not known either. A sighting of a woman matching Norma's description was seen by a local Greyhound bus station employee. The woman was boarding a bus bound for Los Angeles. Police are not sure of the accuracy of this sighting and consider it "shaky". Norma didn't drive but she didn't normally travel by bus, and why she allegedly went to Los Angeles is unknown: she had no friends or family there. Norma's son was not considered a suspect in her case, though some members of her family believe he was involved in her disappearance. He has maintained his innocence and has since moved out of state. Norma was 5'3 tall and weight 175 pounds, with blue eyes and gray hair. If she was alive today, she'd be 105. I believe someone close to her knows what happened and made up the story about her leaving for California. My second theory would be suicide, and she made up the California story so her family wouldn't worry.
-
Yu Chin Goodson - disappeared March 25th, 2005 from Russellville, Franklin County, Alabama.
Yu Chin Goodson is one of the youngest on my list, and at 57, I wouldn't classify her as elderly, but she is an older woman with a lot of mental and physical issues, who went missing under mysterious circumstances like these other women. Yu Chin is an Asian woman suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, diabetes, and a heart problem which required daily medication. In 2005, she was living in group home for patients with mental disabilities in Russellville, Alabama. On March 25th, 2005, a witness claimed to see Yu Chin enter a small, older grey or silver car with a loud muffler. The car was headed toward the Decatur, Alabama area, which is where her son lives. Staff at the group home were informed that Yu Chin was gone, and within 15 minutes of her disappearance, the police were notified and a search for Yu Chin began. No trace of her was ever found. Her son, who lives in the Decatur area, was never contacted by his mother. There has been no mention of foul play, and authorities believe she could currently be homeless and living in shelters. At the time of this write up, she has been missing for almost twenty years and would be around 75 if still alive.
-
Barbara B. Blount - disappeared May 2nd, 2008 from Holden, Louisiana
Barbara B. Blount was a 58 year old widow who lived on the same road as her children, kept in regular contact with her family and friends, and was active in her local church. It came as a surprise one morning when her nephew came over to visit her residence in rural Livingston Parish, Louisiana, and Barbara was nowhere to be found. A neighbor had just spoken to her over the phone, and Barbara had said she was cleaning out her kitchen cabinets. By the time her nephew had arrived for a visit, the front door was wide open, Barbara's phone was lying on the floor with the battery pulled out, her car was gone, and Barbara was missing. Besides for the unusual circumstances in the home, police didn't find any proof of forced entry. A few hours later in the late afternoon, the silver four door 2006 Toyota Camry Barbara owned was found a quarter of a mile from her home. It was found 25-30 yards off the main road and out of sight, hidden by trees. No trace of Barbara was discovered, baffling friends and family who described Barbara as a cautious individual who carried a gun when she went outside to milk the cows and didn't open the door to strangers. Waterways and woods were searched in attempt to find Barbara, but nothing was ever found.
edit: ooof messed up the title.
submitted by truedilemma to UnresolvedMysteries [link] [comments]
Mayme Hart Johnson - Disappeared June 12th, 2000 from Nashville, Tennessee.
Mayme is the first on the list and the reason I decided to do this post. On June 12th, 2000, Mayme Hart Johnson, a local historian, researcher, and teacher went missing from Nashville, Tennessee. Mayme, who was 85, lived in the 100 block of Bosley Springs Road in West Nashville with her son, Sam, in his apartment. At 6:30 am that morning, her son woke to find his mother gone. While he reported that he wasn't initially concerned because Mayme occasionally left the apartment around that time, he became alarmed when she didn't return by lunchtime. Where Mayme would go/what she would do at that time is not known. Richland Creek is close by to the apartments, but from what I've seen, it's narrow and a body would probably soon be found if it was in there, despite it being 28 miles long. Of course, there is always a chance she made it into a larger body of water that concealed her. A maintenance man from the Johnson's building told authorities that he had seen Mayme at 6:30 am the day she went missing. This was around the time Sam woke up. Whether this employee saw her outside the building, inside the building, near or on her apartment floor, or down the street is not mentioned. At the time of her disappearance Mayme was 5'5, 120 pounds, with brown eyes and gray hair, and last seen wearing pink pants and a pink blouse. Whether these were pajamas or not (possibly indicating a dementia-like episode, where she got up out of the house and left without telling her son or getting dressed) is, like many things in this case, unknown. Mayme, as I mentioned, was a historian and if you google her name you will find a few sites that show her body of work. In 1986, she published "A Treasury of Tennessee Churches". A search for Mayme was conducted in the Nashville area and extended to Huntingdon, TN, where her husband's grave was, and where she had been visiting the weekend before she vanished. There was also an aerial search of Eastern Maury County that took place in July 2000 after law enforcement came up with a theory that she could be a target of the I-65 rapist. I'm not sure where police got this idea from. The I-65/Days Inn Killer, now identified as Harry Edward Greenwell, murdered three hotel clerks (ages 21, 24, 34) in the late 1980s. He also sexually assaulted a 21 year old hotel clerk in 1990. While LE does believe he's connected to more violent crimes, I'm not sure how they link Mayme to him--if you know, please add your knowledge in the comments. After the aerial search, nothing was found linking anything to Mayme. In 2008 she was declared deceased.
-
Helen Joyce Rawley - disappeared June 4th, 2003 from College Park, Maryland
Helen Joyce Rawley lived in a bungalow on the 4600 block of Knox Road in College Park, Maryland with her son. 75 year old Helen went by her middle name "Joyce" so that is how I'll refer to her. Seventy-five year old Joyce and her son, Tom, had lived together since the death of Joyce's husband of 48 years, Nelson, in 2001. Between 6:45 and 7:00 am on June 4th, 2003, Joyce was last seen by her tenant, a man who had rented a room at the Rawley home for the last eight years. Joyce was seen by him on her porch that morning as he returned home from work. Beginning the day after her husband died in February 2001, Joyce suffered two strokes four days apart. Because of the strokes, she was unable to talk and considered disabled because of her inability to communicate. In 2002, Joyce underwent chemotherapy and radiation for rectal cancer. She was on medication that made her tired and weak. She didn't go out anywhere by herself except to get the mail. Her mind remained "sound", according to her son. The day she went missing, her son returned home from his foreman job at 3:30 pm, and found the house empty with the lights off. Joyce's purse and wallet remained left behind in her bedroom, everything was in place, and there were no signs of a robbery. Police tracked Joyce's scent out the front door which she never used, and to the corner of the block. However, she went missing on a "rain-soaked" and "dreary" day and it's possible the bad weather could've washed away any more of her scent outside. Since the death of her husband who died unexpectedly in his sleep, and her two other sons who died together in a 1982 boating accident, Joyce's immediate family consisted of her remaining child Tom, who was unmarried and childless at the time of his mother's disappearance. If she had other family out of the area is unknown. She does have a beach house in Annapolis, Maryland, but had not visited there after she went missing. She was 75 when she disappeared, standing between 5'4-5'5 and 110 pounds. Due to her cancer, she wore a colostomy bag and was on several medications that she can't go long without. Fliers with Joyce's information went out, woods were searched, local bus drivers were notified and questioned if they had seen her, and hospitals had been checked. A helicopter flew over the city at night with a heat-detecting device. No sight of her was ever found. She had brown eyes and white hair and was last seen in a sweatshirt and slacks. She enjoys gardening, crossword puzzles, and reading. Police don't suspect foul play and Tom isn't considered a suspect (neither is the tenant who was the last to see her), but they aren't sure what could've happened.
-
Maebell Dawson - disappeared January 3rd, 1998 from Jefferson Township, Ohio
68 year old Maebell Dawson had lived in a one bedroom apartment on the 2nd floor of the Martin Luther Manor Living Center on Liscum Drive for about a year when she went missing. Maebell was divorced, had two daughters, and had retired from a hospital housekeeping job two years prior. Maebell was close to her family, and when calls to reach her went unanswered for two days, by January 5th, her residence was checked. Nothing in the second-story apartment was missing or out of place. Her winter coat was draped over a chair, her wallet, credit cards, cash, and a check for rent dated 1/8/98 were all found in her purse on the table. Her bank account was never accessed again. There were no signs of forced entry, a struggle or robbery inside the apartment. LE does not believe Maebell was attacked from her apartment or lured from the premises, but they do believe foul play was involved. According to CharleyProject, suicide "has not been ruled out but has been deemed unlikely". In 1998, Maebell was between 5'4 - 5'6 and 180 pounds. She had brown eyes and gray hair, wore glasses, and was last seen in a tan jogging suit. She was last seen entering her apartment at 9:30 pm on January 3rd. Five and a half years after her disappearance, Maebell was declared legally dead.
-
Norma Mae Maynard - disappeared February 3rd, 1979 from Boone, Iowa.
Norma Mae Maynard went missing in early February of 1979, just two weeks after the unexpected death of her husband, Carl, on January 19th. Norma and Carl had been married for three decades and Norma was deeply grieving the loss. Norma lived with her 30 year old son, and he was the last to see his mother. He stated that shortly before noon on February 2nd, he found a note from his 61 year old mother that stated she was on her way to Los Angeles, not to look for her, and that she'd get in touch again someday. The validity of this note (if seen by LE, if handwritten analysis was performed, etc) is not known. Norma's purse and a few items of clothing were missing, but her checkbook and jewelry were left behind. There was no sign of a break-in at the house. Her husband's pension which she lived off of and her bank account with savings was not touched. Norma was a shy woman who spent most of her time at home and had a regular routine. She didn't drive and her brothers stated that she had never been more than a few miles from her hometown. Her husband's funeral bill was paid for by a check dated four days after she vanished and signed by "Mrs. Carl Maynard". According to Charley Project, "The signature appeared to match Maynard's handwriting, and her son said she had signed a blank check and left it with him to fill in and pay the bill". The validity of this is not known either. A sighting of a woman matching Norma's description was seen by a local Greyhound bus station employee. The woman was boarding a bus bound for Los Angeles. Police are not sure of the accuracy of this sighting and consider it "shaky". Norma didn't drive but she didn't normally travel by bus, and why she allegedly went to Los Angeles is unknown: she had no friends or family there. Norma's son was not considered a suspect in her case, though some members of her family believe he was involved in her disappearance. He has maintained his innocence and has since moved out of state. Norma was 5'3 tall and weight 175 pounds, with blue eyes and gray hair. If she was alive today, she'd be 105. I believe someone close to her knows what happened and made up the story about her leaving for California. My second theory would be suicide, and she made up the California story so her family wouldn't worry.
-
Yu Chin Goodson - disappeared March 25th, 2005 from Russellville, Franklin County, Alabama.
Yu Chin Goodson is one of the youngest on my list, and at 57, I wouldn't classify her as elderly, but she is an older woman with a lot of mental and physical issues, who went missing under mysterious circumstances like these other women. Yu Chin is an Asian woman suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, diabetes, and a heart problem which required daily medication. In 2005, she was living in group home for patients with mental disabilities in Russellville, Alabama. On March 25th, 2005, a witness claimed to see Yu Chin enter a small, older grey or silver car with a loud muffler. The car was headed toward the Decatur, Alabama area, which is where her son lives. Staff at the group home were informed that Yu Chin was gone, and within 15 minutes of her disappearance, the police were notified and a search for Yu Chin began. No trace of her was ever found. Her son, who lives in the Decatur area, was never contacted by his mother. There has been no mention of foul play, and authorities believe she could currently be homeless and living in shelters. At the time of this write up, she has been missing for almost twenty years and would be around 75 if still alive.
-
Barbara B. Blount - disappeared May 2nd, 2008 from Holden, Louisiana
Barbara B. Blount was a 58 year old widow who lived on the same road as her children, kept in regular contact with her family and friends, and was active in her local church. It came as a surprise one morning when her nephew came over to visit her residence in rural Livingston Parish, Louisiana, and Barbara was nowhere to be found. A neighbor had just spoken to her over the phone, and Barbara had said she was cleaning out her kitchen cabinets. By the time her nephew had arrived for a visit, the front door was wide open, Barbara's phone was lying on the floor with the battery pulled out, her car was gone, and Barbara was missing. Besides for the unusual circumstances in the home, police didn't find any proof of forced entry. A few hours later in the late afternoon, the silver four door 2006 Toyota Camry Barbara owned was found a quarter of a mile from her home. It was found 25-30 yards off the main road and out of sight, hidden by trees. No trace of Barbara was discovered, baffling friends and family who described Barbara as a cautious individual who carried a gun when she went outside to milk the cows and didn't open the door to strangers. Waterways and woods were searched in attempt to find Barbara, but nothing was ever found.
edit: ooof messed up the title.
2023.06.04 14:01 hotbowlsofjustice Mad Magazine April 1985
 | submitted by hotbowlsofjustice to The1980s [link] [comments] |
2023.06.03 08:06 ChanRob69 Is this normal? I've never taken a bereavement, but they need proof before it's even approved?
 | submitted by ChanRob69 to AmazonFC [link] [comments] |
2023.06.02 21:29 Nruiz43 I lost my best friend and it's all her fault
First off, I've (31m) never posted anything on Reddit before, I've only ever been a phantom browser (or listener for the few of us who listen to Slash), so if there are formatting errors, or if I've mucked this entire post, forgive me; but that's not what I'm here for so get bent, I'm dying to unload all of this. There's a lot to unpack here, so please bear with, and without further ado:
I'm currently dealing with the loss of my best friend James (27m) who successfully completed suicide a few weeks ago. I'm so unbelievably angry at his loss as he was one of the brightest most intelligent people I've ever known. A person who was too smart for his own good regularly led him down a dark path that I've talked him out of several times in the past. Before we get into the heart of the matter, I'd like to provide some insight to when it all started.
I've known James from our time in the Service together, when we were both assigned to perform military honors for veterans. We met back in 2016, and I'll admit, at first I was standoffish as I am with most new people I meet. After a few weeks we bonded over our disdain for the training regimen and requirements for new Honor Guard(HG) trainees. I wouldn't say we became fast friends, but we deepened our relationship over time with big dreams and even bigger goals. Talking about cars, preferably JDM, guns, technology, games, anime; actually, just everything. This man knew a lot about everything, and we found in eachother kindred spirits. Although he was much better at knowing what the best (in his opinion) of the best was, and what I should focus my efforts or should buy, and I trusted his knowledge. He really was the best.
We maintained a pretty good relationship over the next few years when I left the service in 2018 and moved back home to Ohio and he was left back in Illinois to finish out his service commitment. And during that time, we talked regularly, if not every day, then every other day. With some spotty communication between, we're guys, talking all the time isn't always necessary, and it got to the point of regular check-ins and talks about life and the bullshit going on. Mine being the transition from the military to civilian life, and his, just regular bullshit within the service, and whatever car he was dealing with at the time.
It wasn't until 2019 when things started to unravel, and he decided he wanted to be in a relationship with a woman Brenda (27f) that he'd met at the airport. I'm not sure when he had, but it might've been a few years to a few months prior to the autumn of 2019. The only significance of Brenda was that James had managed to hook up with her AT THE AIRPORT. I dogged on him for being such a smooth talker and having the ability to do that. To my knowledge, it was a one and done thing, but he maintained contact with her, which led to them developing a relationship, and being "official" the autumn of 2019.
After three months, a total of 90 fucking days, this man was smitten. To the point of which he was so torn up about her getting cold feet and breaking up with him. Something I've never seen before from this man who basically had a revolving door with women in the past. I had to talk him off of the figurative ledge because of how much he felt he gave her. Nonetheless, they ended back together, and he moved her into his house to live with him and a long-time roommate Neil (25m). James introduced Neil and I and we've been pretty good friends, but nothing as significant as James and I. Either way we were all pretty close, and both Neil and I advised against staying with Brenda, as she was, as far as we could tell, unbalanced. That was putting it lightly.
This cycle of being together and not being together, and getting angry over petty things, begins to impact the relationship between James and I. To the point where I can't just talk about the bullshit between him and Brenda. So I stopped talking to him for a few months in 2020 and tell him off about how I can't listen to him bitch about his girl anymore.
Either way, we begin talking later on in 2020 and things are friendly as usual, with the exception that we don't really talk too much about Brenda anymore. Which is a nice change of pace. Anyway, from the time I was in the service, my experience translates to driving trucks. So what did I do when I got out? I drove trucks, which sucks, but pays well. So I've always nagged James for what I should do as far as getting out of trucking, and in to computers and IT. I've tried my hand at it in the past when I tried to get my BS in Comp. Sci. in 2019, which I failed miserably.
So back to trucking I went always looking for a way out, as I've got a wife and two sons, it makes it hard to raise a family and be present. So he maintains his relationship with Brenda and keeps it on the backburner for conversations, rarely bringing it up, all the way up into 2022 when he's been out of the service for two years, and has made a name for himself in the IT community. He came out to Ohio in Nov 2022 to buy some big ticket items for his own racing setup. He convinced me (without too much arm pulling) to drive out to St. Louis with him to visit our old digs. During this 6 hour drive we catch up on all the old bullshit and what's going on in his love life. The constant fighting, bickering, and me doing my best to cheer him up and let him know, that outside of what he's failing at in his relationship, he's got a pocket full of spades and is exceptionally successful at every other aspect of his life. I mean, what other person do you know who goes from making less than $40k a year to making over $600k in two years? Nonetheless, we also spent that entire time talking about what he currently does, and he set me on a pathway of learning, specifically books, that he said I should read. After I got back to my daily life, and read them; We talked about them, and he made sure I understood the concepts held within them, and oddly he said he'd get back to me.
This is just the surface stuff, what makes James an outright amazing person, is that he's always looking out for those close to him. He had so much pull at his current company, that he was able to make a special position just for me, as a "loyalty program" to get people to train who otherwise didn't have experience in his career field. The books he had me read were primers to see if I had the aptitude to take on this kind of training. The company signed me on at my current monthly rate (as of Dec. 2022) to come on and train exclusively and meet my commitments by the end of January. From then on, it was daily talks of knowledge this, or what experience you have in that. And daily life in general. I came to find out just how little I knew about how knowledgeable and smart James was, and a new appreciation for our friendship,
Where I was once his mentor in the service, he was now my mentor in the tech world. And he was brilliant. Things that would take a whole team months to do, he was capable of doing within a week. I saw him work magic, and was excited to see how I could graft his knowledge and experience into my own. In March, we had a work requirement to meetup at the work site (because IT is remote, duh) and meet with the team that our company supported. There was a whole fiasco and we got up to some of our old shenanigans, but everything was great with the exception of one thing: her. I hadn't asked the entire trip, and he had mentioned that this was the best he'd felt in years. I just didn't want to ask what the problem was, until the day we left to go back to our respective states. I'd come to find out, that the day before he'd left to come out for our trip, his now wife, had locked him out of the main portion of the house (luckily he has over 5000sq/ft house, so he made do with the "other half" as he called it) and I just listened as he lamented about all the garbage that happened prior to his departure. How he gave up everything; his interests, his desires, just to be around her more. How after everything he's sacrificed, he just wanted it to work. That he'd do anything for her, and all she did was spit in his face and shit all over his effort. This last argument he'd had with her before he'd left was all because of him wanting to go get tacos with some of his local friends. A simple disagreement that turned into a 3-day argument.
So things like this progress and he's talking to all the people he needs advice from. His pastor, his therapist, and they're all telling him to run from this woman. These things I've been telling him for years are all starting to come together, and I feel like I can finally take a breath. From hearing stories of how he's slept under his desk to avoid confrontation with her, how he works endlessly because she won't bother him while he works. I was so excited that divorce was now finally an option for him. Until finally she was moving out, and everything came crashing down.
Friday, May 12, 2023. It was work as usual, and he'd spent a little longer at work, and was talking about going out to play pool with a friend. So I ended up talking to him later that evening asking him how things were going, mostly just because I was bored and wanted someone to talk to. When he replied that he was "big sad" and I asked him what was going on. He told me that he was tricked into going out with his friend by Brenda. That the friend was convinced to ask James out by her, so that she could come by their house and move her things out. Which she had never done before, but was prone to leaving at the drop of a hat and going to her sister's house 1.5 hrs away. I expressed that I was sorry for what he had to go through, as I had also gone through a divorce years prior. That regardless if it was for the best, that it is still a painful process. The last thing he said to me: "Can't be mad about a loss that costs me the wins when I'm the one who made the bet" I replied, "Maybe not, but I can understand the loss still hurts."
That was the last thing I said to him at 0016. I'm so fucking mad, at him, at her, at everything. The entire situation, that I would be out there to help him, I joked about moving my family out there with him in that big ass house. That we'd buy property, hundreds and thousands of acres just to bullshit with, and do "hoodrat things with my friends." I texted him and called him Saturday to check on him, but figured he had a hangover, so I didn't want to bother but let him know that I would call a wellness check on him if I didn't hear back. So I called him a few more times on Sunday, which eventually lead to me calling the wellness check at 1421 on Mother's Day. Two hours later, at 1621 exactly, I get a phone call from a detective asking me questions about James. I thought he was in a snag with the police and was doing 180 on the freeway or something, or pulled some Eminem nonsnense. Did I fail to mention that Brenda claimed to be pregnant, and would use getting an abortion as a way to control James? No? Well it was one of the first things I told the detective after they asked me about him being depressed. I didn't understand why the questions were being asked, but they eventually came to tell me that upon their arrival, he was dead. The world snapped to a startling clarity, and I broke out into a cold sweat. I didn't think it could be possible, and my brain reeled at the rushing reality of it all. The sickening reality of it, that she didn't even care because she had already given up, had pulled her claws out of him. It was done, no new memories, no grand dreams, no future plans to conquer the world. But as we know, this is only just the beginning, the aftermath is where it all hurts more.
So his body had to be transported to his hometown on the other side of the country near the coast, from the OTHER side of the country. 3000 miles just to be put in the ground, all for his parents' sake. Which was nice, and a kind gesture, that Brenda allowed and a relatively beautiful ceremony. We show up the day James shows up, a 10 hour drive with no AC and the windows down. My wife and I both knew and loved James, so we were going to be there no matter what. I meet his dad for the first time, a topic James and I regularly talked about. How his father is the best person he knows, and would do anything for. I can see that now, and James' wife had sent a picture to my wife of one of their conversations, about how I reminded James of his dad. That shit broke my heart, and was hard to see, but I appreciated it. Although I think she reveled in twisting the knife. Anyway, come to find out from his dad, that Brenda allowed him to write the obituary, and as James' dad was finalizing it with his wife and James' sisters, Brenda took it and made changes and deleted the things she didn't like.
James' dad took us all around his hometown, showing us where he went to school, where they lived, and what he liked to do. He also took us out for lunch to a local place James liked. I've never felt so at home while not at home. We even got haircuts at James' dad's favorite barber. I met James' mother and sisters, and found that they share a lot of gestures and nuances that were just uncanny. It was good, although, terrifyingly sad. I'm so fucking glad Neil was there, dude was a rock.
The day of the funeral and memorial We got to say our final goodbyes, and there was a line of James' next of kin. Starting with his mother, and ending with his youngest sister. His wife sat separately and was laughing and joking before people started showing up. She adopted a somber and sorrowful set, when we locked eyes, I saw the poison, vitriol, and hate she had for me, and anyone else who cared about James. Her eyes looked like that of Bellatrix Lestrange. She didn't cry, once. It hurt to see someone James cared about so much, not care one lick at his loss. She didn't plan anything for this funeral, didn't appoint pallbearers, nothing. Fortunately, me, Neil, another roommate James had--Jesse, and some other close relatives of James, we raised him one last time. Everything was executed by his parents and was done wonderfully. At his burial site, he was given military honors, which he and I would joke as being terribly done, but for the masses, was acceptable. For military ceremonies like this, the next of kin gets the flag. And unfortunately, they were still married at the time of death. Which she received and treated like nothing so much as a burden. James' parents knew how vile she was and STILL invited her to attend a remembrance party in Honor of James. To which she ran off and never attended. This, this is still the easiest part of the entire process.
James parents are trying to file an injunction, but Brenda hasn't even filed the proper paperwork to begin the probate process. So there isn't even anything to file an injunction against! They want to be able to handle his estate, but can't. There's nothing to do, no memories to take. We fear that everything will be repossessed, foreclosed, and she will laugh her way to the bank to cash in on James' demise. I wish he'd had a will, or started the divorce process. I wish even more, that he was still here. For anyone out there who thinks you won't be missed, you will. For those who think no one will notice them gone, you will be noticed. I would rather talk to you for hours, than be at your grave. Please, reach out, ask for help, or just to talk. I'm sorry things get tough, but you have love and support here if you need it. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, or talk you out of it. I love you man. Til Valhalla.
submitted by Nruiz43 to TrueOffMyChest [link] [comments]
I'm currently dealing with the loss of my best friend James (27m) who successfully completed suicide a few weeks ago. I'm so unbelievably angry at his loss as he was one of the brightest most intelligent people I've ever known. A person who was too smart for his own good regularly led him down a dark path that I've talked him out of several times in the past. Before we get into the heart of the matter, I'd like to provide some insight to when it all started.
I've known James from our time in the Service together, when we were both assigned to perform military honors for veterans. We met back in 2016, and I'll admit, at first I was standoffish as I am with most new people I meet. After a few weeks we bonded over our disdain for the training regimen and requirements for new Honor Guard(HG) trainees. I wouldn't say we became fast friends, but we deepened our relationship over time with big dreams and even bigger goals. Talking about cars, preferably JDM, guns, technology, games, anime; actually, just everything. This man knew a lot about everything, and we found in eachother kindred spirits. Although he was much better at knowing what the best (in his opinion) of the best was, and what I should focus my efforts or should buy, and I trusted his knowledge. He really was the best.
We maintained a pretty good relationship over the next few years when I left the service in 2018 and moved back home to Ohio and he was left back in Illinois to finish out his service commitment. And during that time, we talked regularly, if not every day, then every other day. With some spotty communication between, we're guys, talking all the time isn't always necessary, and it got to the point of regular check-ins and talks about life and the bullshit going on. Mine being the transition from the military to civilian life, and his, just regular bullshit within the service, and whatever car he was dealing with at the time.
It wasn't until 2019 when things started to unravel, and he decided he wanted to be in a relationship with a woman Brenda (27f) that he'd met at the airport. I'm not sure when he had, but it might've been a few years to a few months prior to the autumn of 2019. The only significance of Brenda was that James had managed to hook up with her AT THE AIRPORT. I dogged on him for being such a smooth talker and having the ability to do that. To my knowledge, it was a one and done thing, but he maintained contact with her, which led to them developing a relationship, and being "official" the autumn of 2019.
After three months, a total of 90 fucking days, this man was smitten. To the point of which he was so torn up about her getting cold feet and breaking up with him. Something I've never seen before from this man who basically had a revolving door with women in the past. I had to talk him off of the figurative ledge because of how much he felt he gave her. Nonetheless, they ended back together, and he moved her into his house to live with him and a long-time roommate Neil (25m). James introduced Neil and I and we've been pretty good friends, but nothing as significant as James and I. Either way we were all pretty close, and both Neil and I advised against staying with Brenda, as she was, as far as we could tell, unbalanced. That was putting it lightly.
This cycle of being together and not being together, and getting angry over petty things, begins to impact the relationship between James and I. To the point where I can't just talk about the bullshit between him and Brenda. So I stopped talking to him for a few months in 2020 and tell him off about how I can't listen to him bitch about his girl anymore.
Either way, we begin talking later on in 2020 and things are friendly as usual, with the exception that we don't really talk too much about Brenda anymore. Which is a nice change of pace. Anyway, from the time I was in the service, my experience translates to driving trucks. So what did I do when I got out? I drove trucks, which sucks, but pays well. So I've always nagged James for what I should do as far as getting out of trucking, and in to computers and IT. I've tried my hand at it in the past when I tried to get my BS in Comp. Sci. in 2019, which I failed miserably.
So back to trucking I went always looking for a way out, as I've got a wife and two sons, it makes it hard to raise a family and be present. So he maintains his relationship with Brenda and keeps it on the backburner for conversations, rarely bringing it up, all the way up into 2022 when he's been out of the service for two years, and has made a name for himself in the IT community. He came out to Ohio in Nov 2022 to buy some big ticket items for his own racing setup. He convinced me (without too much arm pulling) to drive out to St. Louis with him to visit our old digs. During this 6 hour drive we catch up on all the old bullshit and what's going on in his love life. The constant fighting, bickering, and me doing my best to cheer him up and let him know, that outside of what he's failing at in his relationship, he's got a pocket full of spades and is exceptionally successful at every other aspect of his life. I mean, what other person do you know who goes from making less than $40k a year to making over $600k in two years? Nonetheless, we also spent that entire time talking about what he currently does, and he set me on a pathway of learning, specifically books, that he said I should read. After I got back to my daily life, and read them; We talked about them, and he made sure I understood the concepts held within them, and oddly he said he'd get back to me.
This is just the surface stuff, what makes James an outright amazing person, is that he's always looking out for those close to him. He had so much pull at his current company, that he was able to make a special position just for me, as a "loyalty program" to get people to train who otherwise didn't have experience in his career field. The books he had me read were primers to see if I had the aptitude to take on this kind of training. The company signed me on at my current monthly rate (as of Dec. 2022) to come on and train exclusively and meet my commitments by the end of January. From then on, it was daily talks of knowledge this, or what experience you have in that. And daily life in general. I came to find out just how little I knew about how knowledgeable and smart James was, and a new appreciation for our friendship,
Where I was once his mentor in the service, he was now my mentor in the tech world. And he was brilliant. Things that would take a whole team months to do, he was capable of doing within a week. I saw him work magic, and was excited to see how I could graft his knowledge and experience into my own. In March, we had a work requirement to meetup at the work site (because IT is remote, duh) and meet with the team that our company supported. There was a whole fiasco and we got up to some of our old shenanigans, but everything was great with the exception of one thing: her. I hadn't asked the entire trip, and he had mentioned that this was the best he'd felt in years. I just didn't want to ask what the problem was, until the day we left to go back to our respective states. I'd come to find out, that the day before he'd left to come out for our trip, his now wife, had locked him out of the main portion of the house (luckily he has over 5000sq/ft house, so he made do with the "other half" as he called it) and I just listened as he lamented about all the garbage that happened prior to his departure. How he gave up everything; his interests, his desires, just to be around her more. How after everything he's sacrificed, he just wanted it to work. That he'd do anything for her, and all she did was spit in his face and shit all over his effort. This last argument he'd had with her before he'd left was all because of him wanting to go get tacos with some of his local friends. A simple disagreement that turned into a 3-day argument.
So things like this progress and he's talking to all the people he needs advice from. His pastor, his therapist, and they're all telling him to run from this woman. These things I've been telling him for years are all starting to come together, and I feel like I can finally take a breath. From hearing stories of how he's slept under his desk to avoid confrontation with her, how he works endlessly because she won't bother him while he works. I was so excited that divorce was now finally an option for him. Until finally she was moving out, and everything came crashing down.
Friday, May 12, 2023. It was work as usual, and he'd spent a little longer at work, and was talking about going out to play pool with a friend. So I ended up talking to him later that evening asking him how things were going, mostly just because I was bored and wanted someone to talk to. When he replied that he was "big sad" and I asked him what was going on. He told me that he was tricked into going out with his friend by Brenda. That the friend was convinced to ask James out by her, so that she could come by their house and move her things out. Which she had never done before, but was prone to leaving at the drop of a hat and going to her sister's house 1.5 hrs away. I expressed that I was sorry for what he had to go through, as I had also gone through a divorce years prior. That regardless if it was for the best, that it is still a painful process. The last thing he said to me: "Can't be mad about a loss that costs me the wins when I'm the one who made the bet" I replied, "Maybe not, but I can understand the loss still hurts."
That was the last thing I said to him at 0016. I'm so fucking mad, at him, at her, at everything. The entire situation, that I would be out there to help him, I joked about moving my family out there with him in that big ass house. That we'd buy property, hundreds and thousands of acres just to bullshit with, and do "hoodrat things with my friends." I texted him and called him Saturday to check on him, but figured he had a hangover, so I didn't want to bother but let him know that I would call a wellness check on him if I didn't hear back. So I called him a few more times on Sunday, which eventually lead to me calling the wellness check at 1421 on Mother's Day. Two hours later, at 1621 exactly, I get a phone call from a detective asking me questions about James. I thought he was in a snag with the police and was doing 180 on the freeway or something, or pulled some Eminem nonsnense. Did I fail to mention that Brenda claimed to be pregnant, and would use getting an abortion as a way to control James? No? Well it was one of the first things I told the detective after they asked me about him being depressed. I didn't understand why the questions were being asked, but they eventually came to tell me that upon their arrival, he was dead. The world snapped to a startling clarity, and I broke out into a cold sweat. I didn't think it could be possible, and my brain reeled at the rushing reality of it all. The sickening reality of it, that she didn't even care because she had already given up, had pulled her claws out of him. It was done, no new memories, no grand dreams, no future plans to conquer the world. But as we know, this is only just the beginning, the aftermath is where it all hurts more.
So his body had to be transported to his hometown on the other side of the country near the coast, from the OTHER side of the country. 3000 miles just to be put in the ground, all for his parents' sake. Which was nice, and a kind gesture, that Brenda allowed and a relatively beautiful ceremony. We show up the day James shows up, a 10 hour drive with no AC and the windows down. My wife and I both knew and loved James, so we were going to be there no matter what. I meet his dad for the first time, a topic James and I regularly talked about. How his father is the best person he knows, and would do anything for. I can see that now, and James' wife had sent a picture to my wife of one of their conversations, about how I reminded James of his dad. That shit broke my heart, and was hard to see, but I appreciated it. Although I think she reveled in twisting the knife. Anyway, come to find out from his dad, that Brenda allowed him to write the obituary, and as James' dad was finalizing it with his wife and James' sisters, Brenda took it and made changes and deleted the things she didn't like.
James' dad took us all around his hometown, showing us where he went to school, where they lived, and what he liked to do. He also took us out for lunch to a local place James liked. I've never felt so at home while not at home. We even got haircuts at James' dad's favorite barber. I met James' mother and sisters, and found that they share a lot of gestures and nuances that were just uncanny. It was good, although, terrifyingly sad. I'm so fucking glad Neil was there, dude was a rock.
The day of the funeral and memorial We got to say our final goodbyes, and there was a line of James' next of kin. Starting with his mother, and ending with his youngest sister. His wife sat separately and was laughing and joking before people started showing up. She adopted a somber and sorrowful set, when we locked eyes, I saw the poison, vitriol, and hate she had for me, and anyone else who cared about James. Her eyes looked like that of Bellatrix Lestrange. She didn't cry, once. It hurt to see someone James cared about so much, not care one lick at his loss. She didn't plan anything for this funeral, didn't appoint pallbearers, nothing. Fortunately, me, Neil, another roommate James had--Jesse, and some other close relatives of James, we raised him one last time. Everything was executed by his parents and was done wonderfully. At his burial site, he was given military honors, which he and I would joke as being terribly done, but for the masses, was acceptable. For military ceremonies like this, the next of kin gets the flag. And unfortunately, they were still married at the time of death. Which she received and treated like nothing so much as a burden. James' parents knew how vile she was and STILL invited her to attend a remembrance party in Honor of James. To which she ran off and never attended. This, this is still the easiest part of the entire process.
James parents are trying to file an injunction, but Brenda hasn't even filed the proper paperwork to begin the probate process. So there isn't even anything to file an injunction against! They want to be able to handle his estate, but can't. There's nothing to do, no memories to take. We fear that everything will be repossessed, foreclosed, and she will laugh her way to the bank to cash in on James' demise. I wish he'd had a will, or started the divorce process. I wish even more, that he was still here. For anyone out there who thinks you won't be missed, you will. For those who think no one will notice them gone, you will be noticed. I would rather talk to you for hours, than be at your grave. Please, reach out, ask for help, or just to talk. I'm sorry things get tough, but you have love and support here if you need it. I'm sorry I couldn't be more help, or talk you out of it. I love you man. Til Valhalla.
2023.06.02 14:14 the-third-person Souhait
I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
submitted by the-third-person to micahwrites [link] [comments]
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
2023.06.02 14:13 the-third-person I discovered one of my paintings in an art gallery
I’m an artist. Not one you’ve heard of, though that may be changing soon. Being an artist is about creation, not about commercial success. I wouldn’t mind getting the occasional acceptance mixed in with the constant stream of rejection, of course, but it’s a process.
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
X
submitted by the-third-person to nosleep [link] [comments]
A long process. They say that most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead. I’d always hoped that I’d make it slightly before that.
I graduated last year with an MFA from a relatively prestigious institution, along with a dozen other folks who convinced themselves that an insurmountable pile of debt was the best way to jump right into the starving artist lifestyle. We were, as mentioned, a small class, so we all went to each other’s showings and were generally supportive, but I was only really friends with two of the others, Jerrod and Albina.
The three of us ended up rooming together for the last year of the program, and we kept that going post-graduation. Having other folks in the house who look through the mail with the same mix of hope and trepidation is surprisingly helpful. Alone, it’s easy to simply look at everyone else’s filtered life and assume that you’re the only one failing. When you come down in the morning to find your roommate crying in her cornflakes because her last eleven submissions haven’t even gotten the courtesy of a rejection letter, it’s a little easier to see that this is just how life goes sometimes.
One of our favorite Friday night activities was going to local galleries to see who they had on display. There were a few reasons for this. One, it gave us a good idea of what they liked to show, helping us hone our own submissions. Two, it was very cathartic to be catty about what had been picked. Three, a lot of the galleries had free hors d’oeuvres and wine.
I guess four, we liked art, but honestly it was hard to remember that sometimes. Sometimes looking at other people’s finished canvases just made me angry. What made them able to decide that they were done? What made other people agree that they were worth hanging on the wall? What justified the astronomical price tags next to them?
I’m not saying that this was anything but jealousy. I’m just saying that art and I are in a complicated relationship.
About a month ago, we went to a newly-opened gallery, Souhait. It was the usual setup: tall glass windows in front showcasing the art placed strategically on bright white walls within. It had the standard mix of oddly angled separators allowing the patrons to wander slowly through the room and discover the paintings one at a time. Basically it looked like every other gallery, but as it was a new opening it had better wine than most.
I was taking a casual tour of the perimeter when Jerrod appeared at my elbow.
“Hey, congratulations!” he said. “You weren’t going to tell us? I can’t believe you managed to keep this a secret.”
“Sorry, what?”
“Oh, yeah, ‘what’ indeed.” He steered me around several corners to where Albina was admiring a painting. “‘There’s a new gallery opening, we should all go, no reason.’ Congrats!”
I stared at the painting in disbelief. It was one of mine.
I was certain that I hadn’t submitted to this gallery. I hadn’t even heard of it until Albina had mentioned that it was opening. I would have remembered receiving a letter of acceptance, and I definitely would have remembered delivering a painting. None of these things had happened.
And yet there my art was on the wall. It had my signature, and my name displayed next to it on a card. I knew the piece. I’d done it two or three years ago. It was good, very representative of my style at the time, but I’d moved on and had stopped trying to get it displayed a while ago. The last I had seen it, it was six or seven canvases deep in a stack of pieces that I had nowhere else to put.
It was fairly obvious that that was not the case now. The proof was on the wall in front of me.
Albina and Jerrod were both praising me, so I just smiled and made vaguely humble comments. I must have submitted it. It wasn’t like someone had broken into our apartment and stolen a single piece of my art. It was both confusing and concerning that I couldn’t recall offering it to this gallery, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
I was still trying to puzzle this out when another familiar piece caught my eye. I nudged Jerrod. “Oh, so I’m the one keeping secrets?”
He raised an eyebrow at me, and I pointed across the floor. His eyes widened as he saw the same thing I had: one of his paintings neatly framed and prominently displayed.
“I didn’t even know you’d finished that one,” I said. “I swear I saw you working on it like two days ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, sounding a bit lost. “I was.”
“How’d you get the gallery to take it before it was even done?”
“Oh my God, look!” said Albina.
In the back corner of the gallery, occupying an entire corner, was a small collection of Albina’s work. It was expertly curated. I’d watched her develop her style for years, and the eight paintings chosen here perfectly encapsulated the entire range. Clusters of people kept gathering in front of them, and I saw more than one slip off to speak to the gallery owner about purchasing a piece.
“Albi, these are amazing,” I told her after we finally managed to get close enough to see them all properly. “This—some of these are absolute perfection. I don’t think I’ve even seen all of them.”
“Seriously, when did you do all of this?” asked Jerrod. “Some of these are definitely new. Unless you have a secret studio you’ve been hiding from us?”
He narrowed his eyes at her in mock suspicion. She laughed, shoving him lightly, but behind her smile I saw the same confusion that I’d heard in Jerrod’s voice, the same that I’d felt myself. None of us knew that our work was going to be on display here. Something was very odd.
We didn’t talk about it then. Oddity or not, our art and our names were on display, and there were free drinks to toast with. We refilled our glasses, congratulated each other effusively, wandered the gallery for a bit and then did it all again. By the time we were walking home, all concerns had vanished from all of our minds. We were successful! We could figure out how and why later.
The next morning, Albina was dead.
I woke up late with a hangover. Jerrod woke up later, looking even rougher than I did. There was nothing resembling breakfast anywhere in the apartment, so we sat and sipped our coffee silently. Albina’s door was open, and I think we both hoped that she’d gone out to get bagels or something and that we would shortly be provided for.
She wasn’t answering texts, and Jerrod and I were just starting to get concerned when there was a knock at the door. We opened it to find a policeman asking if we knew Albina Shevchenko, and if we had contact information for her family, and if we could come identify the body.
It had been a hit and run. She’d been dead by the time witnesses had gotten to her. No one had seen the car’s license plate. The police didn’t even pretend that there was a chance of justice.
They gave us her effects, including what remained of a bag of bagels. Somehow that was the worst part for me. She’d gone out to get something to celebrate with us. It made us complicit.
At the funeral, the priest spoke about her giving spirit and her wonderful personality, but most of all he spoke about her massive artistic talent. He went on at length about what she could have created if she had not had her span cut short. The entire gathering nodded along with him.
Jerrod and I exchanged looks. It wasn’t that he was wrong. She was amazing, and eventually the world would have known about her. It’s just that that hadn’t happened yet. The three of us were, as far as we could tell, the only ones really aware of how much potential we had. If everyone knew this about her, why had she been scraping by in a dingy apartment with us, trying to get enough money together to buy more art supplies?
“We should go back to Souhait,” Jerrod said after the funeral. “The gallery owner probably doesn’t know. We’ll need to get her pieces back before he trashes them when she doesn’t respond.”
Our trip was unnecessary. The gallery owner had Albina’s obituary blown up to large size and prominently displayed next to a tremendous collection of her work. It covered entire walls of the gallery, each piece with an explanatory card discussing when and why she had painted it. Where the prices had been on the cards, every single one was marked “SOLD.”
I was looking around for the owner to ask where he was sending the money when Jerrod grabbed my arm.
“Look,” he said, half-whispering.
Arranged in a neat circle on one wall were a dozen of his paintings.
“I don’t know that I want to be on display here,” he said. He sounded frightened.
“Then take them back. They’re your pieces.”
“Are they?” He pointed. “I never finished that one. That’s how I wanted it to look, but I couldn’t get it right. I swear I never completed it. And there! I never painted that. I thought of it, I knew it in my head, but I have never put brush to canvas for it. Not even to start it.
“How could they have any of this? How could anyone?” His voice was rapidly rising toward hysteria.
“Hey, let’s get you out of here,” I said, putting an arm around his shoulders. “We’ll come back tomorrow and get them taken down if you want. We’re all running on fumes right now.”
Privately, I thought again about the piece that Souhait had of mine. I’d never gotten around to looking for it at the apartment. Things had been a blur since Albi’s death. I wondered how this gallery had so much of our stuff. I wondered what else had been taken.
Back at home, Jerrod rummaged through his artwork, hunting for something.
“See?” he said finally, holding up a canvas. “I told you. It isn’t done.”
He was holding up something that could have been an early attempt at one of the pieces we’d seen in the gallery. It was the same general idea, but the colors weren’t right and the composition didn’t gel. Also, as he’d said, it was clearly incomplete. Parts of the canvas still showed through in some areas. It wasn’t what was hanging on the walls.
“I told you,” he repeated. “How can they have art I never finished?”
I tried to get him to calm down. I sat him down on the couch and poured him a drink. We’d go back in the morning, I said. We’d find the owner. We’d sort all of this out. It was a problem for tomorrow, not for this evening. Not right after a funeral.
I thought I’d gotten him to agree with me. I poured us both another drink. Somewhere in the middle of that one, I fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up, Jerrod was gone.
Just one of those things, the police said. Wrong place at the wrong time. He’d been mugged. His credit cards and phone were gone. He’d bled out in the street. He was almost halfway to Souhait.
I went there to get his art taken down, like he’d wanted. They’d already expanded the collection. His photo smiled down at me from the main wall, next to an obituary lauding his talent, his bold innovation, his novelty. The rest of the gallery was plastered with his work. I recognized some of the paintings he’d been rifling through at the apartment the previous day. Most had already been sold.
And on the back wall, in a small but well-lit section by themselves, hung six of my paintings. The one that I’d seen the first night was there, along with two others I was particularly proud of. If I’d been asked to pick three pieces to best represent who I was and who I had been as an artist, those might have been them.
The other three bore my signature, but I did not paint them. Not yet. Like Jerrod, I knew the subject matter in them. I had thought of them, conceived them, and even made some attempts to put them to canvas, but they had never come out like I’d imagined. I’d set them aside to try again later, when I had better supplies, when I was better.
Yet here they hung, complete and perfect, exactly as I had pictured them. It was a triumph of my craft.
It was beautiful to see what I could become, given enough time.
It’s just too bad that I don’t have it.
Most artists don’t become famous until after they’re dead.
2023.06.02 00:23 RMOONU Inversión Indexada, Cesta Dow Jones, se compra las 6 empresas con mayor peso en el índice: UNH, GS, HD, MCD, MSFT y AMGN. Obtienes el 39,77% de la ponderación total.
 | submitted by RMOONU to BolsaUSA [link] [comments] |
2023.06.02 00:17 RMOONU Simplemente invertiría en el SP500, compraría los 30 más rentables y en declive y los mantendría a largo plazo.
 | submitted by RMOONU to BolsaUSA [link] [comments] |
2023.06.01 20:54 Emmie89509 Housing, Education, Furniture, Legal Information
Housing Information
City of boston Rental Relief Program is offering $15000 grant “The Rental Relief Fund provides up to $15,000 in rental and utility assistance for income eligible households for up to 12 months. Eligible households can receive assistance for both back rent and rent going forward. Households receiving assistance for future rent will need to recertify income every 3 months to verify continued need” past due March 13 2020
Homeowners Assistance Fund is offering up to $50,000 “Mass HAF will provide up to $50,000 in financial assistance to eligible homeowners who have missed at least 3 home mortgage payments to help them avoid foreclosure. If a homeowner's application is approved, funds will be provided to a homeowner’s mortgage servicing company (the company that collects their mortgage payments) in order to apply it to the housing loan)”
MASShousing continues to offer up to 50,000 for first time homebuyers in Attleboro, Barnstable, Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, Chicopee, Everett, Fall River, Fitchburg, Framingham, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lawrence, Leominster, Lowell, Lynn, Malden, Methuen, New Bedford, Peabody, Pittsfield, Quincy, Randolph, Revere, Salem, Springfield, Taunton, Westfield and Worcester. For more information and check eligibility :
RAFT Program is offering up to $10,000 “RAFT can cover utilities, moving costs, and overdue rent”
HOMEBASE through DHCD is offering $20,000 for move in cost, household items for those at risk of homelessness
Family Aid also assist families at risk of homelessness (617) 542-7286
Furniture Information
Masshealth MATCH program is offering up to $5,500 for eligible households. For more information
Rosie’s place 617-442- 9322
My Brothers Keeper (508) 238-4416
Inquire with DTA as well as your health center for referral for furniture may need uhaul to pick up
Family aid also offers 3000 for furniture
Education/ Job training programs:
YEAR UP Average starting annual salary for students is 52k a year. You will learn a new skill, intern at one of their 250 contracted companies and they will assist in helping you land a job (617) 542-1533
City Year Job training for those interested in tech job (617) 927-2500
YMCA training inc “The 16-week Medical Administrative Assista training program prepares participants for general registration and front desk administrative office support, including basic medical terminology, overview of billing and claims processing, HIPAA and OSHA guidelines, and health insurance overview. At the conclusion of training, participants will take a certification exam to receive their industry recognized Medical Administrative Assistant credential.” Inquire online :
MASSHIRE continues to offer their ESOL , GED/HISET, ADULT DIPLOMA, PRE GED, Literacy Programs
Automatic technician training program Carpentry apprentice program and other programs Inquire at :
JVS Boston offers the following programs: Animal Care Technician Training Automotive Technician Training Bank Career Training Biotechnology Manufacturing Associate Training Program Bridges to College & Careers - Biotechnology Training Carpentry Apprentice Training Certified Nursing Assistant Training Customer Service Training Early Childhood Educator Training Healthcare Cleaning Training Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC&R) Training Hotel Training Patient Care Technician Training Substance Addiction Assistant Training Inquire at :
Legal Services Organizations:
GREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES 197 Friend Street, Boston (617) 603-1807 (Housing Law) (617) 603-1700 (Eastern Regional Intake) Services: Eviction defense; defense of tenants after foreclosure; subsidy preservation; tenant rights; plus other non-housing services Website: l
VOLUNTEER LAWYER'S PROJECT (617) 603-1700 (Eastern Region Intake) Services: Legal services - for renters facing eviction. Filing court documents against landlord. Post-foreclosure eviction. Website:
HOMESTART 105 Chauncy Street, Suite 502, Boston (617) 542-0338 (857) 415-1454 (Eviction Prevention Hotline) Services: Housing court assistance and legal support. Payment for back rent. Moving expenses for relocation. Email: Website: l
LAWYERS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS (617) 482-1145 Services: RAFT or Boston Rental Relief Fund application help; help with eviction discrimination or harassment; no individual eviction cases. Website:
Community Organizations:
CITY LIFE/VIDA URBANA 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain (617) 934-5006 (English COVID Hotline) (617) 397-3773 (Español Línea Directa) (617) 524-3541 Services: Eviction prevention; rent relief; tenant rights; community organization services. Website:
JUSTICE 4 HOUSING Services: Help justice-involved individuals who are denied housing opportunities due to a criminal record secure stable housing. As well as justice-involved and domestic violence housing agency evictions. Facebook: @justice4housing Email: [email protected] Website:
NUESTRA COMMUNIDAD 56 Warren Street, Suite 200, Roxbury (617) 427-3599 Services: Housing resource services; housing counseling; homelessness prevention; special expertise for ages 60+. Website:
PROJECT HOPE 550 Dudley Street, Roxbury (617) 442-1880 (ext. 242 for Housing) Services: Provide housing support services including rehousing and case management to low-income women with children. Also education, employment, and emergency services. Website:
CITY MISSION 185 Columbia Road, Dorchester (617) 742-6830 Services: Limited, one-time grants for back rent; various other non-housing services. Website:
ASSOCIATION OF HAITIAN WOMEN IN BOSTON (AFAB-KAFANM) 330 Fuller Street Dorchester (617) 287-0096 Services: Assist newly arrived Haitian immigrants in applying for public housing benefits and facilitates workshops on housing issues such as tenant rights, home buying, etc. Website:
KENNEDY CENTER 15 Tufts Street, Charlestown (617) 241-8866 ext. 1352 Services: Housing or food emergency services. Application assistance and case management. Email: [email protected]. Website:
CASA MYRNA (617) 521-0126 Services: Provide culturally competent and trauma-informed emergency shelter and critical supportive services for adults, youth and families who are homeless due to domestic violence. Email: Website: m
NEIGHBORHOOD OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING (NOAH) 143 Border Street, Boston (617) 418-8260 Services: Financial Assistance - Emergency Housing Assistance Program. Bilingual (English/Spanish) rental housing counseling and. Website:
ACTION FOR BOSTON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 178 Tremont Street, Boston (Numerous locations) (617) 348-6329 Services: Rent assistance; housing counseling. Email: Website:
No person is all bad , hard times do not discminate nor are they schedule, we all deserve to live comfortably and be happy. I hope this helps. Heal, Be confident & stay consistent. Wishing you all the best
ITS NOT LETTING ME INCLUDE LINK I APOLOGIZE
submitted by Emmie89509 to boston [link] [comments]
City of boston Rental Relief Program is offering $15000 grant “The Rental Relief Fund provides up to $15,000 in rental and utility assistance for income eligible households for up to 12 months. Eligible households can receive assistance for both back rent and rent going forward. Households receiving assistance for future rent will need to recertify income every 3 months to verify continued need” past due March 13 2020
Homeowners Assistance Fund is offering up to $50,000 “Mass HAF will provide up to $50,000 in financial assistance to eligible homeowners who have missed at least 3 home mortgage payments to help them avoid foreclosure. If a homeowner's application is approved, funds will be provided to a homeowner’s mortgage servicing company (the company that collects their mortgage payments) in order to apply it to the housing loan)”
MASShousing continues to offer up to 50,000 for first time homebuyers in Attleboro, Barnstable, Boston, Brockton, Chelsea, Chicopee, Everett, Fall River, Fitchburg, Framingham, Haverhill, Holyoke, Lawrence, Leominster, Lowell, Lynn, Malden, Methuen, New Bedford, Peabody, Pittsfield, Quincy, Randolph, Revere, Salem, Springfield, Taunton, Westfield and Worcester. For more information and check eligibility :
RAFT Program is offering up to $10,000 “RAFT can cover utilities, moving costs, and overdue rent”
HOMEBASE through DHCD is offering $20,000 for move in cost, household items for those at risk of homelessness
Family Aid also assist families at risk of homelessness (617) 542-7286
Furniture Information
Masshealth MATCH program is offering up to $5,500 for eligible households. For more information
Rosie’s place 617-442- 9322
My Brothers Keeper (508) 238-4416
Inquire with DTA as well as your health center for referral for furniture may need uhaul to pick up
Family aid also offers 3000 for furniture
Education/ Job training programs:
YEAR UP Average starting annual salary for students is 52k a year. You will learn a new skill, intern at one of their 250 contracted companies and they will assist in helping you land a job (617) 542-1533
City Year Job training for those interested in tech job (617) 927-2500
YMCA training inc “The 16-week Medical Administrative Assista training program prepares participants for general registration and front desk administrative office support, including basic medical terminology, overview of billing and claims processing, HIPAA and OSHA guidelines, and health insurance overview. At the conclusion of training, participants will take a certification exam to receive their industry recognized Medical Administrative Assistant credential.” Inquire online :
MASSHIRE continues to offer their ESOL , GED/HISET, ADULT DIPLOMA, PRE GED, Literacy Programs
Automatic technician training program Carpentry apprentice program and other programs Inquire at :
JVS Boston offers the following programs: Animal Care Technician Training Automotive Technician Training Bank Career Training Biotechnology Manufacturing Associate Training Program Bridges to College & Careers - Biotechnology Training Carpentry Apprentice Training Certified Nursing Assistant Training Customer Service Training Early Childhood Educator Training Healthcare Cleaning Training Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning and Refrigeration (HVAC&R) Training Hotel Training Patient Care Technician Training Substance Addiction Assistant Training Inquire at :
Legal Services Organizations:
GREATER BOSTON LEGAL SERVICES 197 Friend Street, Boston (617) 603-1807 (Housing Law) (617) 603-1700 (Eastern Regional Intake) Services: Eviction defense; defense of tenants after foreclosure; subsidy preservation; tenant rights; plus other non-housing services Website: l
VOLUNTEER LAWYER'S PROJECT (617) 603-1700 (Eastern Region Intake) Services: Legal services - for renters facing eviction. Filing court documents against landlord. Post-foreclosure eviction. Website:
HOMESTART 105 Chauncy Street, Suite 502, Boston (617) 542-0338 (857) 415-1454 (Eviction Prevention Hotline) Services: Housing court assistance and legal support. Payment for back rent. Moving expenses for relocation. Email: Website: l
LAWYERS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS (617) 482-1145 Services: RAFT or Boston Rental Relief Fund application help; help with eviction discrimination or harassment; no individual eviction cases. Website:
Community Organizations:
CITY LIFE/VIDA URBANA 284 Amory Street, Jamaica Plain (617) 934-5006 (English COVID Hotline) (617) 397-3773 (Español Línea Directa) (617) 524-3541 Services: Eviction prevention; rent relief; tenant rights; community organization services. Website:
JUSTICE 4 HOUSING Services: Help justice-involved individuals who are denied housing opportunities due to a criminal record secure stable housing. As well as justice-involved and domestic violence housing agency evictions. Facebook: @justice4housing Email: [email protected] Website:
NUESTRA COMMUNIDAD 56 Warren Street, Suite 200, Roxbury (617) 427-3599 Services: Housing resource services; housing counseling; homelessness prevention; special expertise for ages 60+. Website:
PROJECT HOPE 550 Dudley Street, Roxbury (617) 442-1880 (ext. 242 for Housing) Services: Provide housing support services including rehousing and case management to low-income women with children. Also education, employment, and emergency services. Website:
CITY MISSION 185 Columbia Road, Dorchester (617) 742-6830 Services: Limited, one-time grants for back rent; various other non-housing services. Website:
ASSOCIATION OF HAITIAN WOMEN IN BOSTON (AFAB-KAFANM) 330 Fuller Street Dorchester (617) 287-0096 Services: Assist newly arrived Haitian immigrants in applying for public housing benefits and facilitates workshops on housing issues such as tenant rights, home buying, etc. Website:
KENNEDY CENTER 15 Tufts Street, Charlestown (617) 241-8866 ext. 1352 Services: Housing or food emergency services. Application assistance and case management. Email: [email protected]. Website:
CASA MYRNA (617) 521-0126 Services: Provide culturally competent and trauma-informed emergency shelter and critical supportive services for adults, youth and families who are homeless due to domestic violence. Email: Website: m
NEIGHBORHOOD OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING (NOAH) 143 Border Street, Boston (617) 418-8260 Services: Financial Assistance - Emergency Housing Assistance Program. Bilingual (English/Spanish) rental housing counseling and. Website:
ACTION FOR BOSTON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT 178 Tremont Street, Boston (Numerous locations) (617) 348-6329 Services: Rent assistance; housing counseling. Email: Website:
No person is all bad , hard times do not discminate nor are they schedule, we all deserve to live comfortably and be happy. I hope this helps. Heal, Be confident & stay consistent. Wishing you all the best
ITS NOT LETTING ME INCLUDE LINK I APOLOGIZE