Wednesday 7th June - Fiver Feed : Five things to do today in Glasgow for around a Fiver or FREE!
Instagram here for extra stuff and things, come join the fun! (Disclaimer - may not actually be any fun)
Shoutout for Glasgow Science Festival 1st - 11th June, 100's of activities, most are free!
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• Walk - Birding Wellbeing Walk - £Free
• Want to develop knowledge of how to identify birds more astutely? Join bird enthusiast and artist Scott Rogers on a walk to interesting green spaces, paying attention to different birds that are occupying the city.
• 17:30 - 19:30 Woodlands Community Garden 117 W Prince's St G4 9BY

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• Dance/Fitness - No Lights No Lycra - £Fiver
• There is no light, no lycra, no teacher, no steps to learn, no technique, just free movement. NLNL is a space where you can completely let go, shake out the stresses of the week, and lose yourself in the music. This week is requests week, get 'em in!
• 18:00 - 19:00 Larkfield Centre 39 Inglefield Street G42 7AY

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• Gig - Hector Boys, Virginia Coast, Entropy - £Fiver + Booking Fee Adv./£7 otd
• A showcase event from the heart of Glasgow's music scene from upcoming bands, with some indie, pop and rock for your aural pleasure. Support your local scene!
• 19:30 - 23.30 Nice n' Sleazy 421 Sauchiehall St G2 3LG

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• Cinema - Medusa Deluxe - £Free (Booking Required)
• The CineSkinny Film Club sponsored by Mubi presents a free preview screening of Medusa Deluxe, a delirious murder mystery set at a hair-dressing competition.
• 19:00 - 21:00 CCA 350 Sauchiehall Street G2 3JD

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• Theatre - Gaslamp Theatre presents: Teddy & Taft - £7/6 + Booking Fee
• TEDDY & TAFT! is a comedy about the US presidential election of 1912, and it’s also a disco dance play where your favourite historical figures break into dance numbers set to disco music. Just like they did back in 1912.
• 19:30 GUU Debates Chamber 32 University Ave G12 8LX

Hi Go Wild Friends! In case anyone wants to know about beautiful Costa Rica I went there using my Go Wild pass so I thought I would do a story about what happened in Costa Rica. There aren’t really a lot of travel tips in here, its just the wild shit I got into in Costa Rica. I did another write up with actual tips about South Beach in Miami on a budget here if you want to read that one.
Okay, Costa Rica, so fuckin amazing! I want to fly to all the international places Frontier goes so I decided to do Costa Rica second (Cancun is an easy trip for me in Kansas City, they go nonstop there every weekend). The hardest part about Costa Rica is just getting there, I took a bit of a circuitous route.
I always take a big vacation each year after tax season, its fun for me to turn my phone off and go somewhere off the grid and not even think about work. Last year I went to Argentina and Uruguay and it was wild but honestly, this year was even better! I first wanted to stay with my brother and see my nieces and nephews in Orlando so I booked a one way flight from St. Louis to Orlando for only $19 with my Go Wild pass. I got to take a train from Kansas City to St. Louis, it was only $37 and I loved it actually, something about trains is so fun for me, probably because I took one to Chicago in college and stayed in a homeless shelter, my first real experience solo traveling, I loved it!
I spent the afternoon in St. Louis riding around downtown on those fun scooters and eating chicken wings and walking around the baseball experience place they had, it was a good afternoon. I had a late flight to Orlando but I fucked up the terminal (don't google which terminal is Frontier, its wrong). I went through security and bag check only to find out I was in the wrong terminal so that stunk but I had plenty of time for two security checks so no big deal. The flight was delayed so I didn’t get into Orlando until almost 2am and there was a long line for the rental car. I regret not doing the one you can pick up without talking to an agent so much, it was only like $5 more, do the self check car rental if possible. Orlando was fun, got to see my nieces and nephews and my brother and his wife put a little guest bedroom in the shed, easy to get into at 2am without waking anyone up.
After two days in Orlando it was time for my big flight to Costa Rica! So excited! This flight was only $51 with my Go Wild pass, an absolute steal. It stopped in Atlanta and then I was in Costa Rica in no time. On the plane a bunch of us were excitedly talking about our Go Wild passes, its kind of fun to do the spiderman meme thing and be like, you have a Go Wild pass? Me Too! The ringleader told me there were wild sloths if I went to a place called Manuel Antonio. I said what the fuck did you just say, wild sloths? Oh yes! I literally had no plans for a whole week so I mentally added sloths to the list of things I wanted to see. I have a travel buddy I met in Mexico to visit in San Jose and I wanted to see the volcano and the beaches of course but that was it.
At the airport you will want to get some cash, they have an ATM right there when you walk out. Don’t do the currency exchange, those people were giving really shitty rates. After you get cash walk around outside the airport to the backside, it’s a short walk and that’s where all the city buses come. There are buses to San Jose every 15 minutes, just jump on one of those its only like $1.50 and it goes 25 minutes to downtown. I have a huge aversion to taxis in Latin America, I’ve been ripped off a lot and airports are especially bad.
Once in San Jose you can walk most places, it’s a fun city to walk around. I stayed at the Costa Rica Backpackers hostel which I do not recommend for one big reason. Its so fuckin hot. I didn’t even think about checking for air conditioning, most places have it now. Also, I like hostels and the common areas and the hammocks and I always set up my chess board and play at night with beers. But I really like to have my own room at a hostel. This private room was I think $35 a night which is pretty good but it did not have air conditioning, just a fan recirculating hot air and it was right off the street so yeah, no recommendation for that one, I only stayed one night. That’s the fun thing about how I travel though, no reservations and no plans, if its not great I just go to a different place. I hung out with my travel buddy that night and we smoked a lot of um… cigarettes and went to this place where locals hang out. It was like some fuckin fast and furious movie but with Ticos, guys were just flying around on motorcycles on wheelies. I bought a huge meal for my friend and me, empanadas, a bunch of other Costa Rican food, it was so fuckin good and the whole meal was only $7, ha!
The next morning I set my chess board out at the hostel and I put $10 out on the money clip like I normally do when I travel. It’s a fun way to get people to play, if you beat me you get $10 if I win, nothing. My chess is kind of like a parlor trick too because I play in less than 5 seconds every move so everyone is thinking through it and Im having beers and going quick, usually at a hostel there gets to be a crowd and Im playing four dutch people on warm night in Mexico, so fuckin fun. On this morning a kid came up to play and I was teaching him chess for awhile nervously, I didn’t see his mom anywhere and secondly who brings a kid to a hostel? I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen one. He starts just taking my pieces off the board and then he takes the $10 and says welp I guess I won. I laughed and I said alright then, good job buddy. Just then his mom hobbled over, a Danish hippy with a broken foot. She thanked me for hanging out with him and told me the doctor said not to walk too much but it was hard with a six year old. I said sit down, sit down and I got her breakfast and helped her out. We talked for a bit and I told a funny Mexico story and helped them get their stuff together and she said oh you have to come to our hippy community in Puerto Viejo, you can stay in our shack by the ocean. I said oh that sounds fun today Im going to see a volcano but maybe later. She said they are the most beautiful beaches in Costa Rica, one is entirely black sand. I said Im listening. She said they were poor in a little shack by the rainforest and they have monkeys and sloths in their backyard. I said um what the fuck did you just say? Wild sloths? She said yeah, tons of them. I booked a ticket right away for the 6am bus the next day. I went with my friend to the active volcano and then he dropped me off at my hotel. I booked the Radisson the second night because I really wanted Air Conditioning. Im soft like that, sorry. And it had a hot tub. I’ve never seen that many people in one hot tub, ha. At night I did a Tinder date, I found out all the cabs are pretty much $6 in San Jose so it was easy to get there and back and I went out with a fun lady who told me in Costa Rica they eat chicken wings with gloves, did you guys know that?
I got up at 4:30am and packed up for my 6am bus. At the front desk I asked them if they could call me a cab and they said its an additional $30 US. I was like nah, fuck that, $30? What a ripoff, I’ll just walk, its only 2 miles. So I walk pretty far into downtown San Jose and whoooooooosh, a bottle explodes near me! I go what the fuck and look up, theres a drunk Costa Rican man in a soccer jersey like two blocks away screaming at me in Spanish! I had so many questions, the first of course was who is balling out of control at 5am in the morning? The second was, who the fuck is that Latino Roger Clemens? I could barely see the guy from two streets away and he was (presumably) drunk getting that close to me with a full bottle of beer? The last question of course was who is drunk and throwing FULL bottles of beer? I walked away from his direction and then saw that there was a whole bar full of drunk soccer fans like him and I noped the fuck out and ran to the taxi stand and got a taxi. I said you know what, a taxi isn’t such a bad idea!
I regretted not Googling anything because my phone didn’t work at all in Costa Rica. They said I could buy a sim card but I didn’t want to, I kind of liked being off the grid. But I really wanted to find wild sloths. Maybe the person beside me will help I thought as I stood in line for the 6am bus. Damn, I hope its not someone rapid firing Spanish at me though, my Spanish is not great. Most of my Spanish I’ve learned from the music of Bad Bunny. I was relieved to see my seat in 44 was next to a Japanese man in 45. Oh that’s awesome I thought, he will struggle with Spanish too and we can find wild sloths together. Nope, turns out Im a racist asshole, he was a Japanese Argentinian who spoke perfect Spanish and no English, none. His phone worked too and he was putting all these upside down house letters in Japanese and beautiful beaches were popping up, I really needed his help. I tried to befriend him but they speak a different kind of Spanish in Argentina, cajes instead of calles and so fast, so fuckin fast! His had like a little stall in it before it winded up too, like a UUUUUU mi esposa no esta aqui! His wife was either sleeping back in San Jose or dead, I couldn’t really understand. I noticed he had a bear avatar on his phone so I knew he liked animals so half way through the ride I decided to try to tell him they had sloths there. Hay peresozos en Puerto Viejo I said but he didn’t understand what I was saying. I said peresozos again and put up three fingers mimicking a sloth and then I panicked, I was like shit, what do sloths do? Its an animal famous for not doing anything. I pretended to hang up side down and he is (loudly) guessing animals in Spanish and Im like no, peresozos! Maybe I was saying it wrong but I had no Google so I said es posible tu telefono? And I typed in sloths and all these upside down houses came up and the words Oso Peresozo. And he goes UUUUUU OSO PERESOZO! I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a bus traveling through rural Costa Rica and seen a Japanese Argentinian get excited in Spanish about wild sloths but it is… ADORABLE!
Si SI! Oso Peresozo! I yelled. People are turning around now, they are like why the fuck are the American and Japanese guys back there in 44 and 45 playing charades two hours into a 6am bus ride? I said juntos? (Together) and he said si si! He told me where we could get bikes to rent and what to eat, he was the perfect travel partner! He said Yelp dices Jerk Chicken is the best to eat here. I said thanks Juan, you are my favorite travel partner! We had an amazing day in Puerto Viejo, beautiful beaches, monkeys, wild sloths, God damn that was an amazing day. He even showed me where my hostel was and I dropped off my bag. This hostel was called 456 hostel which I also do not recommend because no AC and there are weird animals running on the roof but I didn’t care, I just wanted to throw down my bag and get back to looking for wild sloths. The lady said we can’t just take your bag you need to check in first, I said listen lady you see that God damn excited Japanese man out there? We got wild sloths to find! I had no desire to spend one second in that hostel but Juan goes “Esta bien, cerveza” and then he had a beer by the ocean while I checked in. I joined him for a beer and it turns out that is a beautiful setting for a hostel. Still don’t recommend though, so fuckin hot.
Juan and I had an amazing day in Puerto Viejo, God damn that place is beautiful. We saw wild sloths, monkeys, and had an amazing time on the beach. I was sad to see him go, what a great travel partner! He pointed to where my hostel was but I said I would ride back into town with him. To be honest, I forgot to write down the name of the bike rental and there was like a hundred in Puerto. I turned my bike in with his to his surprise because we had rented for a full day but I told him I wanted a motorcycle. He used his expert Googling skills to get me to the cheapest motorcycle place. It was only $30 a day for a motorcycle which I thought was very reasonable. And I didn’t have enough cash on me and they didn’t take cards so the rental guy just said no worries man, take de bike to the ATM. That was pretty trusting! I came back with the money and got the bike and I can’t tell you guys the drugs part because the mods said no talking about drugs.
That was such a fast motorcycle. I turned my Bluetooth speaker up all the way and floored it and zoomed down the coast in time for the sunset, so God damn beautiful! Something about that warm Costa Rican sun on your shoulders and the sound of Khalid and the smell of salt in the air riding along the beautiful ocean, it will change your life. After the sunset I went to Cat’s house and her beautiful German friend Alina was there. There were three kids too and as soon as I got there they went riffling through my bag looking for candy. I had two caramels but was one short so I gave the little kid my chips. This was her sad face for not getting candy!
Cat was hobbling around on crutches so Alina and I said sit down we will take care of dinner. I went to the store down the street and got so much stuff for that poor family- toilet paper, rice, peppers and Barbies for the kids and a soccer ball for Marcello. Gringo santa claus when I came back, both the ladies cried, Alina said her girls had never had a Barbie doll. Alina and I cranked up the music in that little hippy house by the ocean and made dinner and drank wine and laughed while the kids played with their new toys and Cat relaxed and finished her remote work. We ate the food and drank the wine and smoked…cigarettes and had an amazing night. Alina asked if I wanted to share the Tuk Tuk and I said yes. She said it in kind of a mischievous way so I thought maybe she wanted to make out. And she was very beautiful so I said yes. We got in the Tuk Tuk and rode back towards town passing my hostel, she winked and said your hostel was back there you know and then put her hand on my arm.
I thought Cat was poor but Alina was super poor. She told the tuk tuk driver to turn left by the trash dump and we pulled up to an even tinier house right next to the rainforest. She said wait out here and I’ll put the kids to bed. So I waited on the porch. The kitchen was actually outside, a little refrigerator and a little stove and a sink. I sat in the chairs and she came out and we smoke a um cigarette together and then she said wait here. I was like fuck, wait her for what? Is she going to rob me or something but she didn’t seem scary, she seemed sweet. She came back out with a big giant mattress and threw it on the porch floor. Then she took off her shirt and said in her German accent, “Un now we share our bodies.” I thought that was a pretty sexy thing to say so I took off my shirt too and joined her except I didn’t want to have unprotected sex with a hippy so we just made out.
Sometime after she slipped back inside so I was alone on the mattress on the backporch by the rainforest. I thought that was a pretty good place to spend my first night in Puerto Viejo and I looked up and saw a hundred million stars lighting up the sky and fell asleep. But not too many hours later, God damn I awoke to a caucophony of jungle sounds! So many monkeys, just fuckin howling. And there were these weird rat things running around, they weren’t small at all, if you’ve ever seen the Princess Bride fucking ROS. (Rodents of Unusual Size). I honestly thought the monkeys were coming on the porch, that’s how loud they were.
I jumped up and leaned the mattress against the house and started walking, past the trash dump and out to the ocean. The first beach I came across was the black beach, it was amazing and I sat there until the sun came up. I had no watch or anything and my phone was dead so I walked for a long ways until I found a Tuk Tuk driver who took me to Cats. I got my motorcycle and went back to the hostel but when I charged my phone I found it was only 6am so I went back to sleep. But the hostel had no AC and there were some fuckin animals on the roof right over my head so I couldn’t sleep much. I went to the beach and found more wild monkeys and then sent Cat a WhatsApp message to see if she needed my help since she had the broken foot and Marcello was home, it was some kind of Costa Rican holiday.
She said sure come over and so I drove my motorcycle back down the coast and went back to the store and got more supplies and cooked them a big lunch. I had asked before if they eat meat because some hippies don’t and she said sure but its expensive here I don’t know if you want to buy it. It was $4 ha, I got some ham and rice and peppers and made a huge lunch and drank some beers and cooked while Cat did her remote work. She took a picture and I asked if she mind taking a short video of me cooking. IT wasn’t for social media or friends or anything, that video was for me so I could remember when I could be happy. A trip to Costa Rica for only $51 with my Go Wild pass and I got to be by the ocean and I met new friends and I was actually helping someone, I realized that day that’s what made me the most happy, that’s why I wanted the video.
After lunch I cleaned up and then Marcello and I played some chess. She asked if I minded watching Marcello while she ran to town with a client and I said sure, no problem. I was wrong, it was a huge fuckin problem! She said she would be back in an hour and then we could go to the hippy get-together on the beach. She was NOT back in an hour and I fuckin panicked. I didn’t know this lady’s last name, I didn’t know Marcello really, I called Cat and she didn’t answer and I tried texting her, nothing. I thought fuck, she must have abandoned me with this kid. And I don’t know how to get ahold of the authorities and it was a holiday, this shit was basically the plot to the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy. I started pounding beers because I was so nervous. I asked Marcello if he knew Alina’s number and this little dude said, and I quote, “Who’s Alina?” What the fuck? I said buddy, the lady that was here last night with the kids? He said he didn’t know them very much. Oh my God I thought, I’ve definitely been saddled with a kid. But then I was thinking, you know what, I could raise this kid, wouldn’t be that bad, live in this $400 a month house by the ocean, sounds good. But I have my own kids back home in Kansas City and that made me panic even more, now Im fuckin slammin beers so worried. Every car that goes down this little side road Im like oh please be Cat. Now this kid is starting to yell at me to come back out in Norwegian, I don’t know Norwegian and he wants me to read him books, which are also in Norwegian, Im full panicky at this time.
Finally Cat came back I said Cat, I wasn’t comfortable with that, I don’t even know your last name or anything. She goes, why, whats wrong? And goes running in to see Marcello, I said oh no, he’s fine, nothing happened its just that I thought you left and weren’t coming back. She said why would I leave my kid I love him more than anything in the world. I said I know, okay, its just that I was panicking. She said calm down, all good, lets go to the hippy fire circle. I was not going to go, I was going to get the fuck out but I really wanted to go to the fire circle, I was hoping they would let me spin the fire. So we went to the fire circle, Marcello and Cat with the client and me following behind on the motorcycle. We relaxed on the blanket and then up came beautiful Alina looking like a million bucks in the sun tucking her brown hair behind her ears. She got on the blanket with us close to me and I retold the story about how I thought Cat abandoned her kid with me and we all laughed and smoked again and had beers and then watched the sun go down. I didn’t know Marcello didn’t know how to swim so I showed him how to swim a bit, a little lesson in front of the beautiful sunset. After the sun went down it was time for the fire circle and the main guy said brother, thank you for helping Cat, you are in our circle now, whats ours is yours. I said oh man thank you so much can I do the fire spinning? And he said that you can not do. Damn.
So I watched the others spin it jealously and then I got us some appetizer snacks from the restaurant. After the fire circle and the singing and everything we decided to have a picnic at the black beach. They went to the store to get the food and I went to go get my motorcycle. When I got back I guess Alina had stolen something from the store because the workers were all around her and the police were coming. It was equally sad and scary. They took everything she bought away and Cat said its okay she had enough so we all walked to the black sand beach and I gave Alina a hard time for being a thief until we all were laughing. We had a great night by the ocean and then they both got Tuk Tuks and I got on my motorcycle and drove back to the hot hostel and fell asleep and I never saw those hippies again. The end.

I and a bunch of other people were tagged in a Facebook post this morning from the janitor at my son’s school selling about 50 different things. Furniture, lawnmowers, recreational vehicles etc. My mom wanted two of the bunk beds for the grandkids and a refrigerator. I messaged him and he gave me a price and I gave them my mom’s phone number to work out the details. He said he wanted a deposit to hold the items until 5 when he got home from work.
My mom doesn’t do PayPal, so she asked me to cover it and she’d pay me back. He gave me an address and asked me to send it friends and family, then send him a screen shot as proof. That sort of rang alarm bells. When I typed his email address into PayPal, his name didn’t pop up as associated with it. I told him my husband was in town and could drop off cash. He gave me an address and google street view put it at an apartment complex that didn’t match the post picture. He then said to send it paypal, and send a screenshot immediately. At that point I said my parents wanted to see it in person and they’d take their chance it was still for sale. He said he wouldn’t allow them to see the furniture without a deposit, so I backed out fully and didn’t send anything. It just rang too many alarm bells. Was I just being paranoid or was his account taken over?

OP here: https://www.reddit.com/stepparents/comments/13pt86i/hcbm_is_dictating_our_lives/
The same day I posted about how the court system wasn't moving fast enough, we got a court date. It's mid-July and I can't wait. We had SS for the second time ALL YEAR this past weekend. He and DH went camping and had a blast. They took the dogs with them and, unfortunately, there was a small accident where one pup (black lab, 60lbs.) pulled SS6 too hard and scraped his sweet face. DH felt AWFUL about it, obviously. But, having HCBM make awful accusations about us made it worse.
He sent HCBM a picture of SS when they were home and he was cleaned up. DH keeps her messages on DND because, if she sends one message, she'll send 10. Every single time. Anyway, she blew up his phone, he was trying to respond, but couldn't because of the facetime requests. SS said that he didn't want to talk to her, it was only 2 hours until time to hand him over anyway, so DH really didn't think much about it, put his phone away, and we watched a movie.
No more than 30 minutes later, the fire department is at our door. Again, she is on trespass notice from our property, so she's standing at the corner of the street, yelling at the police, EMT, and fire people that we're doing awful things to SS. Lucky for us, one of the officers that responded was also one of the ones that put her on trespass notice and remembered her! Anyway, they got her to leave, told her to stay away, assured her that SS was perfectly fine and she would see him in a few hours. They gave DH a police report number for her false 911 call (second one this year).
DH and SS get his things in the car, I head to the grocery store because I don't do drop offs. This is probably 15 minutes after the emergency people leave. DH says that SS has been wonderful and deserves a prize, so they were going to go to Target before drop-off. Anyway, lo and behold, DH and SS get a few blocks from our home and notice that HCBM is following them. Blowing the horn, driving recklessly. DH calls her and tells her to back off. She doesn't. DH calls 911 and they tell him to come to the police station close by. HCBM follows him there, of course, officers are waiting for them. They can't do much, but I do think that it's probably a pretty good thing for our case to have TWO case numbers in one day against her.
There isn't much point to this post, I guess. Probably just venting. Getting this off my chest since I don't have therapy until next week, haha. I just hope so much that the judge sees how ridiculous this is.

Edit: shortened it up a bit and added a TL;DR; Quit job due to shitty raise after 2 years of freezes. New Job bait and switched role and ended up having ageist ladder climbing manager who sucked at their job. Got worked into the ground and had long awaited vacation cancelled the morning of...waited for manager to leave and resigned while throwing them under the bus and getting them demoted so hard they haven't changed roles/titles in 12 years.
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I was told to crosspost my comment in another subreddit here as folks may appreciate it here. Got a solid response with the folks talking about an a-hole boss demanding an employee work over a pre-booked vacation. I'll add a bit more context here, but this was about 12 years ago when this all went down. Since then, I went back to work for a previous employer where I was unceremoniously let go for reasons (maybe another post), but have since been working for almost 10 years at another company (folks of this subreddit are not a huge fan of them but they have probably treated me the most humanely and respectfully as I've ever seen). That said...on with the story!
In 2010, after the wonderful failings of the job market leading to salary freezes and sub-par raises, I had gotten my 3 year performance evaluation at my employer at the time. After having been promoted twice, but not getting salary increases due to freezes, I received a whopping 5% increase and told "this was an amazing increase for doing so well"...Sufficed to say, I was not very happy and started shopping around. My manager was sad, but his boss told me to "do what you gotta do, no other company out there will pay you what you're saying is market". Being young, motivated, driven, and damn smart, I went out there and in under 2 weeks I had secured an interview, gone through the process and had an offer in hand. I actually got more than I was asking...nearly a 35% increase in base salary. Took the offer, stuck to my guns of not dealing with counter offers, put in my notice, worked right through to my last day and left on good terms (important later).
The new job was great, I was working in a similar role as a L2 Support Technician but for a different class of product than what I used to work on at my previous firm (middleware). Turns out it was a bit of a bait and switch because 3 months after I joined, my new employer transferred me to the sister team of the support group I was on to support the new version of their middleware product. Prior to this version, the middleware was a free service and as such, received a free service's level of support...No SLA's, Best Effort Service with a small but knowledgeable support team. It seemed like a good opportunity so I didn't complain much.
Within 3 months we were getting overrun by tickets, chats, and calls all day every day... By the end of the 7th month we had 3 senior techs leave...now it was me, my manager, 1 other senior tech and 3 fresh-faced L1 support techs who moved into our team as 'promotions' on the US Team. I had also received a fairly sizable raise and promotion despite only being there for 6 months...which I should have taken as a huge red flag...Our Asia team was down to 2 people and having serious staffing issues due to the real need to take breaks and step away like humans...So my manager started scheduling me and the other senior tech for alternating 'double shifts' to help support APAC hours and 'reduce our ticket backlog'. We were assured that 'help was on the way...just a few weeks'. After a few weeks, the other tech complained because he has family and kids, and now it was just me working doubles...Literally would work from 830am to about 530pm, take an hour or 2 off, and then work from 730 to 430am and then repeat the next day.
My manager at the time was over double my age...by the time of the story. I was working doubles for like 2 months straight due to the staffing issues but I thought it was a light at the end of the tunnel since I had a 2 week vacation coming up. My manager had it out for me as the next promotion I could get was for her job...So she had it out for me regularly by denying my vacation requests or planning her time off after I'd put mine in. Her rationale to put me on the evening and night shifts was in her words "you're a young man and it's more productive to work and advance your career than go out partying and drinking while the rest of us have families and children to spend time with". This time though, since I hadn't been on vacation for months, and my hours worked were racking up she begrudgingly agreed because it was about to start raising flags to higher management that I hadn't been on continuous leave for a while.
Excited for this, I had booked flights, hotels and a bunch of other things to relax...I was originally planning on going with my girlfriend, but the work hours and stuff pretty much killed that relationship...
The night before my flight there was a major outage and series of issues, and as a Senior on the team, myself and a few others had to come in at like 3am. Despite being really new, most of the former folks quit, leaving me the most senior asides the boss after a few months. 8am rolls around, I'm packing up to go home after fixing the issues and the boss walks up and says "I've cancelled your leave request due to the issue, we're going to need you in to cover for the next week or 2 and you can look into taking time off next month."
I say that, "no, I'm going on vacation...this is non-negotiable"...which she did not take well...she flips out saying "I have the next 3 days off, and that means you are required to cover. You do not negotiate. What I say, goes. Go home, you can freshen up but you need to be back in the office by 11am so I'm not late for my bookings."
I don't really know what came over me...something just kind of broke in me. So I just said OK. packed my bag up and went home. I got into the shower, washed up, shaved, combed and gelled my hair and pounded a 5 hr energy. I hadn't ironed my suits in months and most of my shirts were either wrinkled from being worn a bunch or had the crisp fold wrinkles from being pulled out of the package from the department store across the street and immediately being put on so that I could have a different short on from the day before. So I pulled out a clean shirt, and ironed my best suit and threw it on. I hadn't slept in over 36 hours but I never felt so goddamned awake and locked in in my life.
I got on the subway and walked into the office and landed at my desk around 10:59am...I intentionally spent a few minutes in the lobby getting some tea to make sure I got to my desk at exactly 11am.
Fun fact about this company...they are very much paranoid about competition, so if you quit...you immediately get into your exit interview and then get sent home with 2 weeks PTO/Severance + payout of any remaining vacation time. Usually no counter offers, just exit interview, pack your stuff, and enjoy your 2 weeks PTO.
My boss had a smug grin on her face, packed up her stuff on seeing me sitting down and left for her 3 day vacation. I waited a few minutes, told my 2 junior co-workers that I was sorry for leaving them hanging and then proceeded to print out my resignation letter, walked over to her boss and requested an immediate skip-level and requested if we could get a conference room to talk. When we got into the room, he was asking me why I was so late and that he had been checking my morning badge ins and was concerned that I was routinely coming in 2 hours late and that our working hours were 830am to 530pm. Upon hearing this I told him he probably doesn't have the full story and that before I went into it, that I needed to tender my resignation. He was shocked to say the least, but wasn't even remotely prepared for when I told him to check the "out of hours" badge ins and badge outs which is when he realized I had been working 18+ hour days for the past 2 or 3 months straight. Every "Day" of PTO only counted for an 8 hour shift...to take a full day off I had to burn 2 'days'. But every double shift earned me 8 hours of comp time which was tracked under a different allocation...His jaw dropped when he saw they owed me almost 80 days of Comp Time.
After calming down, he let me know that he apparently didn't know half of what was going on...and begged me to stay on and that I could immediately take time off as soon as she returns. I just said, "I'm done...i'm burned out, and i'm exhausted...and it shouldn't have gotten to this point." Once he realized there was nothing he could do, he said, "hey...do you mind if we order in lunch and do your exit interview and you can just lay it all on the table? I'm willing to listen, and we can have HR in to make sure your concerns get addressed." After the 3 hour exit interview where I proceeded to throw my boss under the bus about how poorly managed the team was and why there was so much attrition, they tallied my severance and I went home with effectively 3 months worth of pay from all the PTO/OT they owed me.
I left, made my flights for vacation that evening and laid out on a beach for a while and more or less just slept when i got back from vacation. I went and got drinks with my old boss who got me a position back at my old company for almost the same amount I was making at the new company, and tbh I took it. It was a bad idea in retrospect, but I wasn't really the same after that.
That said...I'm in a healthy and recovered space now. I've been at my current job for 9 years with a number of big promotions, I make over double, almost triple what I was making at those jobs and I have a management team that encourages us to take time off and has not denied a vacation or time off or even a mental health day request in those 9 years. I also only work 40 to 50 hours a week. compared to 80, 90 or 100hr weeks I was doing...
But that required me to take the steps to say "no" to my bosses and managers and setting boundaries. Good management will respect those boundaries and work with you if there's a conflict.
Anyways, enough proselytizing...what happened to my manager?
Well, within 2 weeks of me leaving, she was demoted. I didn't get too many details but she was pretty much trying to maximize her bonus by getting stuff done with as few staff-hours as possible. She found a loophole that she could allocate comp time which was not being tracked and was using that to bundle staff hours into...almost like a overtime ponzi scheme? I don't know how she didn't get fired but I can tell you this...it's been 12 years and she still has the same title...the equivalent of a 2 or 3 year employee getting their first promotion. So Get Wrecked i suppose?

They hit every red flag.
I got to the location on time, but the building had a different business name on the front and no street number. I called the phone number I was given and asked if this was the building because it was labelled "Other Business Center" and not "This Business." The receptionist laughed at me and said I was "probably at the right place, but if not, there's another location in the city." Okay? So I go inside and only after you walk through the 30ish yard foyer do you see a sign for "This Business."
I walk in and 3 receptionists are talking amongst each other. We all look at each other, I smile, and they go back chatting for another minute until one woman leaves (I'm assuming for break because she brought her things). Then they acknowledge me and tell me to go sit in the waiting room.
Twenty minutes later one of the receptionists frantically walks to a clerk near me and asks where someone is because the woman who was supposed to be interviewing me is busy. Then she runs to the back of the office and comes back 5 minutes later. She said (to the clerk, not me, but loud enough so I could hear) that she's going to my interviewers office because nobody can find or contact anyone else.
At this point its been half an hour. I've seen too many red flags and I'm ready to go home. I go tell the last remaining receptionist that I was supposed to have an interview, but nobody's come to get me and I can't wait around any longer. I give her my name and say that the interviewer has my information if she wants to reschedule, but I'm sorry and I can't keep waiting.
The receptionist who has been on the goose chase comes running down the hall and says that my interview was at noon (so, right now). I say that I was at 11:30 (I have it written down from my phone call last week) and she must have gotten the time wrong, but I can't wait and to contact me if she likes.
I applied for 3 or 4 positions with this company back in April because they were "urgently hiring," but they waited 2 months to call me. On top of that, the woman who I spoke with (and who was supposed to interview me) said that after reading my resume she thought I would be better suited to a different job I didnt apply for. She didn't know the salary, benefits, duties, job name, or job description off the top of her head. I asked her to send me the details so I could familiarize myself with the duties and prepare for the interview. She said that she would "try to find someone at the other office with the job decription" and email me the details. She never did. She also never emailed me to confirm the interview like I had asked. Then she gets the time wrong and tries to blame me.
And I thought my current job was bad. No wonder this place can't hire anyone. I can't even say this was the most unprofessional interview I've ever had (or, I guess, didn't have) because when I was in my 20s I went to a group interview for a sales job and another time I wanted an hour for my interview. I'm sick of it at this point.
How can businesses be so unprofessional and sloppy, but I'm expected to show up early and beg to work there. I already have an okay job at a bad company. I've applied to over 100 jobs since December and I've had a total of 4 interviews.
I'm glad I had a better interview this morning for a firm I'm really interested in 🤞
It's rough out there.

So the other day I was biking to work and was going under an overpass. This particular overpass is where cars get off the freeway, and there are encampments lining the street. There was a really sweet bully or pittie (not sure tbh) who wasn’t on a leash and was jumping after pigeons- like jumping INTO the street to chase the pigeons. I was on bike, so I stopped and as far as I could tell no one was home or had any type of eyes on the dog. The dog came up to me, but I wasn’t totally sure if he was friendly and was already running late.
I got about a block away and then I was like, fuck I have to call. I felt conflicted about calling, but at the end of the day that dog was GOING to get hit by a car and I couldn’t live with myself if on my return home I saw him in the street.
So I call animal control and they said they’d send someone. I’m new to Oakland and have lived in rougher even more impoverished cities. I crossed my fingers and hoped they would actually come.
I biked back the same route after work looking for the dog (it was a short shift, gig work) but I didn’t see him.
Then about 2.5 hours after my original call, an Oakland number pops up on my phone. It was animal control calling me back- it turns out the dog was trying to get on the freeway when they arrived but they got him. She said, “he is safe with us, we got him”.
I was absolutely blown away, and thanked her profusely. In other places I’ve lived, I’ve dealt with animal control and NEVER had an experience like this.
So just wanted to share a good story about Oakland. I’m glad the dog is safe, and it really alleviated my conflicted feelings about calling.

I am The Bard, who taught men their first magics, which to this day endure when all others have. It is written into the blood and bones of all you have built, and so I shall never die.
I did not teach you how to dream. I only taught how to tell a dream to another who you would never know.
The phone rang. Karna didn’t bother to pick it up. The message machine clicked for a moment, tape starting to turn backwards as new words were written onto it. It clicked again, stopping dead. Karna didn’t look up from his meal of leftover takeout. He finished his noodles, checked again to see if there was any shrimp left, and sighed as he threw the box at the bin. It bounced off the others already filling it up.
He sighed, rubbing his head and eyes. Healing magic could cure a hangover. It couldn’t do anything about dehydration. He needed to get up and get a drink. He went over to his cabinet and looked around for a glass. When he didn’t find a clean one, he grabbed a coffee mug instead. It was the last one. He was also out of coffee. Irritating. No matter how much of it he drank, he was still tired. It just meant he couldn’t sleep.
Sex helped, a bit, but when it didn’t, things were worse. Lying alone in his own bed, at least he could toss and turn and work his sheets into tangles trying to find some position that would let him finally fall asleep. He could slip out of bed for a nightcap, a strong one, to try and help. With another, there was nothing to do but lie there, still and silent, trying not to wake the man or woman next to him.
Trying not to think.
Impossible to sleep, then suddenly too much sleep. Blink and it was three-thirty in the afternoon. He stood at the sink, filling up the mug and draining it repeatedly. The call was probably from work. Worse, it might be his mother.
”Karna, what the fuck are you doing with your life you useless bastard. You’re not immortal, it’s all slipping away, one day, one minute at a time, and here you are doing nothing with it.” He said to himself. “Because you’re too tired to anything and still can’t sleep.” Of course, he knew why. His mind, treacherous as a serpent, betrayed him then, in the dark, in the solitude. Every wound he had suffered, every scar erased by healing magic, those were nothing. He was a paladin, the training had gotten him used to the sight of his own blood a long time ago.
”Practice for healing magic. Isn’t that what the old sister called it?” He wondered aloud. “Tch. She was kind of a bitch. Still is. I wonder if she’s calling me to yell at me too? Of course, I suppose I deserve it. I-“Then he stopped himself, and slammed the mug down, forcefully. It hit one of the plates in the sink, and it cracked. Karna swore and picked up the mess, picking the shards of metal out of his sink and throwing them in the boxes in the bin.
He sat back down in the one seat he used at his four-person table. It was covered in books, loose change, an unopened letter from some survey, a candle, a mug, miscellaneous bits of stationary, a comically large six sided die with red and black patterns, and off directly to his left a stick of deodorant and bottle of cologne. Those last two were the only things he’d used on this table in a while.
He sat back in his chair and sighed. “Yeah, you know exactly what you’re doing with your life. Nothing of any use to anyone. Well. Useless is better than detrimental, so hey, at least there’s that improvement.”
He hit the button to play back the latest message from his telephone, and picked it up, placing the receiver to his ear. At least he could listen to his messages. That would be something for the day.
”Hey, Karna. It’s Bas.” Karna’s head slumped forwards. He hadn’t expected him to be calling to call him an idiot. “I’ve tried coming by your place a couple of times to visit, seem to have missed you both times.” Or he was asleep, or drunk, or otherwise being a bad cousin. “So, I figured I’d give you a call and leave you a message. Just checking in to see how you’re doing. I know… things have been rough, for all of us, and I know you were taking things hard.” I know you’re weak. “I hope you’re doing well, and hope you understand, if you’re not, then, well, you’ve got my number, and you know where I live. Even though my apartment’s not exactly stellar.” I know you could reach out. But you won’t. You’ve been given everything, inherited power, your house, your money, and you still do nothing with it. I have nothing our society considers important, but I am still a better man than you. “Hope to talk to you soon. Adonai watch over you.”
That last bit was a bit odd. Adonai. The old invisible god, or God, as those that believed in such a thing insisted. Karna wasn’t entirely certain that this wasn’t just a clever way of disguising atheism, given that philosophy’s associations. Why in the world would Basil mention it now? As far as he knew… well he really actually didn’t know anything about Basil’s beliefs. He presumed, given his training, he was a follower of the western philosophies, which were philosophies more so than religions. They were fairly popular these days, a sort of secular spirituality, a substitute for the holes growing in Ordani religious life.
When you’ve fought and killed a god in living memory, it becomes harder to worship them. Beyond that, the old rites simply that, old rites. A series of rituals nobody really believed in anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a cleric. He paused. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a cleric he hadn’t been fighting to the death with. The gods really didn’t seem to have much of a place in a modern society. It was probably arrogant, but part of the point of the gods was meant to be that they were something so much bigger than oneself, that there was nothing that could compare. They were monumental figures, but when the monuments can be torn down by mere men, was it a monument worth believing in?
It was that way then. Some people turned to the western philosophies, realizing that their religious needs, the desire for mystery, for reverence, for prayer, meditation, moral laws and sacred communities were met there, without gods. Some, Basil included, turned their gaze towards an invisible, supposedly omnipotent, God. Well, the gods were supposed to be omnipotent, but if nobody could even prove your God existed, well, then there wasn’t any fear that anyone could kill Him. And then, there was the other kind. The kind which were kind of a bad joke.
He remembered his days in the warm sun, under the abbot’s orchard in Hearthfire Abbey, amid the warm red walls, the golden light of the day filtering through the green leaves, the bright red apples highlighted against a blue sky. Quite literally simpler times. He remembered the grave beneath the tree. Senket Zarathustra. Of course, that wasn’t really where she was. She was a few miles up the road, in a chapel nobody paid any mind to, next to six other graves, two empty. How much a contrast that was, compared with what was in the abbey. Her image, glaring down from tapestry, immortalized in statuary, and everywhere revered. Saint, they called her, but what was the difference between a saint and a god, when you treated one like the other.
They had made gods for themselves, gods born of and midwives to, their own people. A god that was distant enough to be worshipped, but near enough to be known. Something understood, something relatable, and something that had bested other gods before. Gods borne of the people of godslayers, for what else could they be? Of course, every pantheon needed its devil, its fallen angel. And now here he stood, a useless bastard, but also the same kind of thing as their gods and their devil. What a bad joke.
But at the same time, a joke they had believed in. A joke he felt the obligation to make a truth. A joke he had failed to make true. Up on a pedestal, and down in the dirt. That was what paladin of Order Undivided meant now. A hero, until people had no more need of them. Good, he wasn’t even a hero in the first place.
He shook his head. It was going to be a few hours before any clubs opened. He was going back to bed until then. It didn’t do him any good to sit awake stewing.
Basil was getting worried. He’d tried paying visits and making calls, but there was no contact. He quietly sat through office hours, grading the first assignments of the year. He was starting to regret assigning an essay, particularly to his 101 class. Fortunately, it was early in the year, so he was able to work through his office hours without being further disturbed. He finished his last paper, capped the red pen, and stood up. It wasn’t that far out of his way to visit Karna again, and this time he wouldn’t be ignored.
He made his way through the city, until he came to the Red Street. It had another name, but people remembered not what was given, but what was done. Fifty years ago, the blood of black and red lions flowed, as Elsior faced down her old mentor during the height of the black rebellion. The street’s architecture was eclectic, a mix of the old buildings which had survived the battle, and newer designs built up out of the ruins left from a clash of titans.
There were alleys off the street where you could still see the gashes left in the ground by arcane blades. It was a street where history lay heavy in the mortar and the air. It was also a decently affordable neighborhood, as the old houses, while historical, were also old, small, and lacked modern amenities. He was still never going to afford any of them on a teacher’s salary, even with his stipend as a paladin. Of course, Karna would have had a bitch of a time paying for his house as well, but he had simply inherited it.
Basil shook his head, as if to throw the jealous thought out of his mind. “You’re a grey-eyed monster already. Let’s not add green to the mix.” He growled at himself, as he kept walking up to Karna’s door and knocked. No response. He sighed, looking through the door. Only two of his eyes saw the normal spectrum of light. The others varied from arcane, ultraviolet, infrared, and a curious ability to see electrical signals. The end result was an overlapping view of information, an in-depth view of the world that saw the surface and the depths of everything. It had been a bit of a rude surprise for his parents to find out their son saw their brains at the same time he saw their faces. The practical upshot of this at the moment was that he saw Karna was clearly not at home, and had left a trail of lingering celestial energy behind him.
Well, Karna or another aasimar, but they were fairly rare. Even with the increasing numbers of extraplanar citizens in the union, there weren’t many descended from angels. Basil wryly considered that it might be the former keeping out the later. Baatorites weren’t strictly speaking enemies with most angels, but the distaste between the two species was deep, ancient, and mutual. As such, there was only one trail to follow.
Basil sighed when he found the end of the trail. It was a club, and of a particular sort. He didn’t need his enhanced vision to tell that. Technically speaking, strip clubs and even prostitution were legal. Practically speaking, everyone in any of them used pseudonyms. He sighed and headed for the entrance. The bouncer at the door, a towering ogre, raised a hand. “If you’re carrying, head around to the side entrance. They’ll check your swords there. No weapons in the club.”
”Not planning on starting a fight. Just looking to meet someone.”
”Yeah, well check em anyway. We’ve had boyfriends throwing hands with one another because they were looking at the guy on stage a little too hard, we don’t want em doing it with swords. That’s the kind of domestic dispute that doesn’t just get the cops involved, it’s also a bitch to get out of the floors.”
”Well, I’ll keep that in mind.” Basil replied, and headed around the side. He stepped in, greeted by another bouncer, a dragonborn. He always found it amusing how it was always one of the larger races as a bouncer. Given their job, it made a certain degree of sense, but it occurred to him he’d never seen a gnome as a bouncer. Then again, he didn’t go to many clubs. He checked his sword in, and left a pseudonym.
The dragonborn looked down at the paper, and narrowed his eyes slightly. “What’s the T.D. stand for, Mr. Law?” He asked curiously.
Basil shrugged. “Hells if I know, it’s an alias, same as everyone else is using here. I mean, look at the guy above me on that list, when was the last time you ever met somebody actually named Flamingo?”
”The guy kinda looked like a flamingo. Aasimar type, maybe his wings are pink.” The bouncer replied.
”If he’s the person I’m thinking of, no. Let’s hope they don’t start changing.” Basil replied.
”Ah, ex-boyfriend?”
”Cousin, and why’d you assume ex?”
”The only people I’ve seen who’ve been drinking that much and going home with that many different blokes are the ones going through breakups, and you’re the only person I’ve seen go looking for him, so I know he’s not a whore.”
”Nah, just a dumbass. Thanks for the info. Here’s hoping you have a quiet night.”
”Yeah, try to keep it that way for me.”
”I’ll do my best. Believe it or not, I hate fighting.” Basil replied, and headed past the dragonborn into the club proper.
To give the club some credit, they had a pretty decent band going. A small number, playing as much with style as they did skill. That was to say, a decent if unspectacular amount. The rolling tones of the lead singer washed over an atmosphere of casual conversation and lewd humor. Basil cocked an ear at the sound. He would have sworn he’d heard the woman on the radio at least once. He watched her closely for a moment, along with the rest of the band, but didn’t recognize them. Then again, he didn’t go to many concerts.
As the double bass thrummed, the piano crooned, and the saxophone danced center stage, he made his way through smoke and other scents towards the bar. A teifling danced a lurid show in the center of the building, sweat glistening on blue skin from the lights. One of Basil’s eyes kept a lock on the man, tracing the electrical signals running under his skin to enact their sensual motions. It wasn’t exactly something he was looking to copy, but it was an interesting interplay to watch. Dancing wasn’t something often done alone, done for the show. It was interesting to compare the flow of signals of this to more traditional forms.
He kept most of his eyes forwards through. He had a job to do, and he preferred white to blue anyways. A brief thought entertained his mind of what Zeal might look like in such an outfit. He snapped it off immediately, jaw snapping shut in anger at himself. That was wrong, and a bad place to go. He couldn’t allow himself to think of her, think of anyone, that way, but especially her.
He focused himself. He had a job to do, and he was going to die alone. The only thing anyone would ever love of him would be an illusion. Any intimacy would have to be built on lies. Throw those thoughts out of his mind. They would only bring distraction, and disappointment.
He centered himself, and took a seat next to Karna, as the aasimar knocked back what was looking like probably the sixth shot tonight. How the hell was he even paying for all this? He rapped the bar twice with his knuckles. “First time here, got mezcal?” He asked.
”Mezcal coming up, though I can’t say it’s gonna be quite as good as home’s.” The barkeep replied.
”I am home, just grew up away from it.” Basil replied. For all his illusions, he always forgot to cover his chultan accent. Then again, recognizing his voice was part of the point for the man next to him.
”Basil?” Karna asked, turning slightly. “You’re straight, well, nearest to it, the fuck are you doing here?”
”Checking on you, and about to drink a theoretically decent mezcal.” Basil replied. “I’m worried about you.”
”Well fuck off, you don’t need to be.” Karna replied. “Another.” He requested. Another shot of strong absinthe filled his cup.
”Might want to slow down there hoss.” The barkeep warned. “The kind you’ve been having is a hundred thirty proof.”
”That so? Huh. Would have thought it was about a hundred twenty. Guess I’m getting better at drinking. Stands to reason, it’s all I’m good at or good for.” Karna replied, clearly about as drunk as someone on their seventh shot of one hundred thirty proof absinthe should be.
”Politely, bullshit.” Basil replied. “Though you are going to manage to be the first paladin to ever give yourself liver cirrhosis at the rate you’re going.”
”Paladin. What a bad joke.” Karna spat. “Paladins are heroes, we, we’re not fucking heroes. You got closer, and you’re, well, you. Me. I’m just a fool. So what if I ruin my liver. I’ve ruined everything else.”
Karna went for his glass, but Basil put his hand over it, stopping him. He looked his cousin in the eye, gentle, pitying, but firm. “Karna, we should go. Let’s find somewhere, a park or something, and talk.”
”We should, as in you should get your hand off my drink, and then pull that pole out of your ass. Dancer might need a spare.” Karna spat back. “I don’t need to talk, I need a damn drink.”
Basil didn’t move. “Cut the crap and calm down. You’re drunk already, and clearly not in a good place. If you’re going to be this way, at least we can do it at a safe distance from anyone else.”
”Oh fuck right off.” Karna replied. “What, am I embarrassing you? More so that I already have? I know I’m a fucking disgrace okay. I saw it with my own two eyes and can’t stop seeing it. The least you could let me do is drink myself to death in peace so I stop being a bother for all of you.”
The bartender was steadily shifting away, looking towards the bouncer who sighed and began to approach. He briefly made eye contact with Basil, who tried to give him an apologetic smile and flicked his eyes back towards Karna. The bouncer nodded. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen this.
Karna continued. “But no, you can’t do that. Can’t just let me be a failure in peace. You’re not content just being the better man than me, being better in every way but looks than me. You have to prove it, have to rub it in. I already you’re better, okay, don’t need to slam my nose in it with this stupid pity schtick.”
”When did I say anything about that? I’m the weakest member of our party!” Basil protested. “And what the hells does that have to do with any of that. You’re my cousin, my family, and beyond that my friend. You clearly need help, so of course I’m going to try and help you.”
”I don’t need help.” Karna snarled back, green eyes glinting red with a dangerous, gleaming light. “LEAST OF ALL FROM YOU!” He roared. The red light flared. Basil flinched, covering his eyes as the roar slammed into his mind and ears at the same time. He focused, piercing through the growing crimson fog.
The music kept playing, a hidden tape rolling, but the band pretending to sing had stopped. The club had gone silent, save for that. The patron’s idle gossip and chatter was muted. The bar was silent, patrons slumped over on their chairs, the bartender and bouncer were on the ground, foaming at the mouth. Karna and Basil were the only two people conscious in that building.
Karna stared in stunned silence, quiet horror at the scene. Some part of him processed exactly what he had just done, rationality quietly ticking away behind a fog of alcohol and badly managed emotional issues. It only intensified the later, a combination of terror and guilt forming into a blossoming rage. Then he saw Basil’s face, saw realization peeling back and something shifting in how he looked at him, saw a cold fury, a hatred, spreading across his face.
Basil looked himself, horrified at what had just occurred, and mind flashing to the street in front of Zeal’s home. This was the exact same scene. The same power as Alexander, but now being used instinctually. He had no idea what had actually happened to these people, if Karna had meant it or not. One thing he did know for certain. He had to stop this. If Karna was out of control there was no telling how many people could be hurt so he had to end this now.
Karna opened his mouth, but it was too late. Basil whirled, placing a palm on the bar to leverage himself from a sitting position into a whirling kick. His heel hit Karna squarely in the face, with every ounce of strength he could muster. A sucker punch, meant to be a knockout blow so he could take the aasimar down, end this spell, and get him out of here before anything else went wrong.
Karna snapped back out of his chair, it tumbled to the ground, and the back of his head hit the floor hard. His headache roared, but he rolled over coming back up to his feet, coming to a ready stance. He might have been depressed and drunk, but he was still a paladin, better trained than most and tougher than pretty much everybody. It was going to take more than that to knock him out.
Basil kicked him squarely in the nuts.
Karna doubled over in pain, and Basil kicked him in the face again. Basil had trained under paladins and monks alike. His skill with his own limbs was on par with his swordsmanship. His training under the paladins in the tradition of Jort made him an expert at sneak attacks, sucker punches, and practical, dirty fighting. In other words, he was effectively an expert at kicking people in the nuts. He went for a chop to the throat, trying to finish the fight right then and there.
Karna caught his hand, and broke it by squeezing his fingers. He looked up, bloody eyed and berserk. “Ah. Fuck.” Basil swore. Then Karna threw him. Basil went flying, arm broken, and hit the wall shelves, covered in a hundred forms of expensive booze. The impact shattered his collar bone, and he kept going until he hit the solid wall on the other side of the bar. He landed hard on his face, shirt torn to ribbons and bleeding freely.
His hand and shoulder reset themselves, and shirt tore entirely as he burst his extra limbs out of it, and slammed them down to pick himself up. He drew in a breath, and Karna threw a chair at him. Basil dodged upwards, onto the ceiling as the chair smashed a hole in the wall behind him. He rushed his cousin, gathering shards of broken glass with his spare limbs and a bottle into either hand. He flung the glass before him, forcing Karna to cover his face. Then he hit him on top of the head with both bottles, dropped them, and hit him on both sides of the throat with a chop.
Karna struggled to breathe, nearly blacking out from the impact, and but threw a wild, blind punch. Basil evaded most of hit, but even a glancing hit was enough to send him flying. He caught his momentum on a support pillar, swinging around it with his tendrils. His ankle hit the side of a table and shattered. He wheezed in pain, falling to a knee on top of the table to mend it.
Karna roared and charged like a bull, giving Basil scant time. He palmed a lighter from one of the unconscious men lying next to him, and jumped clear. Karna smashed the table into splinters beneath his fists, tearing skin and breaking bone, but healing them just as quickly as he damaged them. Basil flicked the lighter open, and threw it. The expensive alcohol covering Karna caught light, stunning and blinding him as Basil set him ablaze!
He hit the flaming angel with everything he had before the fire burned away. Fists, feet, elbows, knees, tendrils. A devastating combination of every move he knew to put a man on the ground flew out of him. He hadn’t really trained to get into a bar fight, but damn if it wasn’t coming in handy. He finished with a powerful drop kick in the aasimar’s solar plexus, sending him staggering back against the bar, breath torn from his lungs.
Basil breathed heavily, as his cousin slumped, then swore as Karna got his feet under him, and pulled his head up still more than ready to go. He swore louder as Karna gripped the sides of the bar, and tore the granite countertop off of it, swinging it at Basil like an improvised weapon.
Basil leapt, running along the side of the countertop as it smashed through everything it came across. Fortunately, it was swung high, missing the unconscious clubgoers, and shattered when it hit a load bearing column, though that cracked ominously. Basil landed on his cousin, spines biting into him and wrapping around bones to anchor the assassin. He’d seen a similar technique used by velociraptors when they hunted, using their massive claws to hook onto larger dinosaurs. Once attached, the smaller reptiles would begin to eat their prey alive. He wasn’t planning on biting Karna though, instead he raised up his boot and began to stomp his cousin’s face, over and over and over again, desperately trying to bring the berserk paladin down before he brought down the building!
Karna flared his wings and soared upwards, slamming both himself and Basil into the ceiling. Basil fell off, and Karna grabbed him by the face. He slammed them both down into the floor, smashing Basil’s head into the ground once, twice, three times, then threw him with enough force to scatter blood across the entire club and snap the assassin’s neck. He watched as Basil hit the pole the dancer had been, ahem, performing with, and his illusion vanished.
Horror overtook him as he saw Basil’s true form break in two, snaped apart by the force of the impact, and fall like so much meat onto the stage. He rushed forwards, hands shaking as he realized what he’d just done. He reached for Basil’s head, bloodied and broken. But his hands went through him. His emotional pain was then matched by physical pain, as he felt a steel stripper pole strike him directly between the legs.
Basil didn’t let up, as he dropped the illusion and his invisibility, and beat his cousin into the ground with the broken pole. He went for joints, broke ribs, hit below the belt with every opportunity and he did not stop. He didn’t know what it was going to take to put Karna down but he did know that if Karna got back up, he was actually going to die. It was nothing but the good fortune of his unusual anatomy that had kept him breathing with a broken neck, and his healing magic to allow him to ever get up again. He wasn’t going to get another chance, and so he beat down his cousin until the pole was bent beyond all recognition and the stage was slick with golden blood.
When he finally stopped, Karna was finally, mercifully, down. Basil knelt by his side, mending him enough to make sure he could be moved safely, though not enough to bring him back into consciousness. The patrons were beginning to stir to consciousness. With a grunt, he picked up his friend, hoisting him over his shoulder, and covered both of them with a spell of invisibility.
Slowly, shakily, he retrieved his and Karna’s weapons, erased both their names from the registry, and slipped away as people began to regain consciousness and the police arrived. Then, he began the slow, tired business of carrying Karna back to his house. He grumbled as he went. “You are far too skinny to be this heavy, and put up way too much of a fight for me to need the extra weight of lugging your ass out of here. You stupid overpowered twink.”
Karna woke up with a splitting headache, and a slightly less splitting everything-else-ache. Paladin healing factors worked wonders, but if you took a beating that was going to make you ache for a week, you were going to ache for a week. He remembered what happened, and started to wish he didn’t. “Oh fuck. I nearly killed Bas. And… yeah, the rest of the club. I’m not going to be allowed back there.”
He rolled off his couch and got a drink, of water this time. He looked at his liquor cabinet, walked over, opened it, and grabbed a bottle. He emptied it into the sink. Then he emptied the rest. He looked down at the drain, drew in a deep breath, and focused himself. “I need to apologize. I need to talk. I need help. And I need to get my life back on track.” He resolved. “I can’t let that happen again.”
He clenched his fists, and opened them again, hands still shaking. There was a knock at the door. His first thought was that it might be Basil checking on him. The next though was that it was the police. His third thought was that it was Basil, and the police. Well, either way. Apologies would be made, he might just also need to call a really, really good lawyer, and probably a bank to take out a loan to pay all that property damage.
He opened it, and saw another aasimar looking back at him.
”Hello Karna.” Alexander replied. “I heard you had something of a rough night, powers going out of control, a rather ugly bar fight, that sort of thing?”
”Yes. How long am I going to be in jail for?” Karna asked.
”Not at all, I’ve covered the damages and fortunately, nobody has any memory of last evening. Dominion Flare has that useful side effect.”
”Dominion Flare? What I did has a name?”
”Of course. It is your inheritance after all.” Alexander mused. “Though, you might be the first one to awaken it while drunk, though you’re not the first to cause some degree of damage with it. These things happen, it simply requires training.” He looked Karna squarely in the eye. “And beyond that, I strongly suspect you may be looking for some help getting yourself back on track.”

Couple weeks ago, there were 3 of them in the street, guy had an iPad with sign up details on an app, I agreed with it as was feeling charitable, he asked for details, email, phone number, etc, but then asked for sort code and account number to set up direct debit, I refused and he said he had a legit badge etc, I still said no. Not heard anything since, anyone else heard of this? Was is legit or a scam? Near Warrington, north west England.

Throwaway in case anyone from my place of work was on the bus and is here.
Here's a trip report from an altercation with a maniac bus driver this evening (approx. 1810). Would be keen to know if anyone who was on the bus is on here and if anyone said anything to him. Also thought it might be in line with the general PT hatred that finds a home on the sub:
I was cycling over Grafton Bridge toward Symonds Street. A bus came dangerously close behind me (I think #70) and started sounding the horn in repeated short bursts. I waved him back and he continued driving close and sounding the horn in the same manner until the end of the bridge where we ran up behind another bus stopped at the traffic lights, which were red.
Here I turned to the bus and took my phone from my pocket so I could note the time and the bus number and saw the driver getting off to talk to me, leaving a bus full of passengers wondering what was going on.
He told me that cyclists aren't permitted to use Grafton Bridge. I told him that he was wrong and that professional drivers should really be aware of the rules of the road they were using (per https://at.govt.nz/driving-parking/how-to-use-bus-transit-lanes/). He reiterated his point and I reiterated mine, several times. I lost patience and told him to get back on his bus and do his job each time he tried to talk to me from this moment. He asked me why we couldn't have a civil conversation - ignoring the fact we were stood in the middle of the road making passengers and other road users wait, and ignoring the fact that he had just made me fear for my life. The interaction ended when I lost my temper and swore at him - "get back on your fucking bus and do your fucking job"; at which time he walked toward the bus and called me a "fucking bastard" then got back on the bus. I continued to cycle toward home.
The whole exchange lasted something like 3 minutes, through which other vehicles were held up behind the bus, beginning to sound their horns, and the traffic lights continued to change. Passengers of the bus watched, open-mouthed, throughout.