I just… did my own thing, by myself. Had my own car, a tank of gas, and some cash in my wallet. No concrete plans when I woke up that morning.

I ended up spending most of my 18th birthday at the zoo, just wandering around at my own pace. Whenever my folks would take me before that point, we’d always end up trying to speedrun the whole place, spending no more than a minute at each exhibit, if we’d stop at all. And without spending a single cent on anything other than admission.

I spent two hours just hanging out in the zoo’s walk-in aviary, feeding seed sticks and nectar cups to parrots. Best birthday ever.

She realized far, far sooner than I did, that we’d made better friends than lovers. By the time I figured it out myself, we’d already split up and gone our separate ways. I haven’t seen her since, aside from one kinda shitty night where she’d cheated on her boyfriend… with my roommate. And that was several years ago.

It’s a six-figure salary in my part of Texas.

I become a burned spy, who uses his skills to solve problems for the citizens of Miami.

Also, forklift attachments exist specifically for grabbing and moving barrels around. One of them is called a parrot beak.

Make not voting a misdemeanor, fine any registered, eligible voters who don’t cast a ballot whenever there’s an election.

That song’s the worst part of rewatching Osmosis Jones, for sure.

I’ve been coming back to a eurobeat mixtape Hyundai put out a few years ago, playing over footage of a Nordschleife endurance race. Just playing the whole video, start-to-finish.

Jessa Stebbins’s music is great on its own, I’ve got a lot of her tracks on my own playlists already, but this arrangement combined with the sounds of revving engines and squealing brakes in between songs, adds another layer to everything.

That’s a fair point for sure, but there’s also just something about the way saying “gay” feels, versus “bi”. Not necessarily an emotional impact so much as, I guess, mouth feel?

I mean, saying “I’m gay” takes less than half the syllables of “I’m bisexual”, I prefer the former whenever I’m pressed for time.

The secret is that you have to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

I still had an in-person job during the pandemic, thankfully not foodservice, but my job supported that industry. I mostly remember envying my housemate who spent most of 2020 living off of the extended unemployment benefits.

My usage is pretty high - currently up to 40 gigabytes for January. I tend to do 60-70 per month, mostly thanks to music streaming without a ton of local storage. I broke 100 gigs in December though; more than once, I found myself wasting my holiday breaks watching Instagram reels.

I also travel for work, hardly any of this usage was over wifi.

Plus, having watched Breaking Bad makes all the references/shoutouts in BCS even better.

Guilt by association. Or rather, actually, proximity.

One day, when I was in middle school, there was a food fight. Nothing climactic like you’d see in the movies, just a few boys sitting at the same table throwing French fries at each other, escalating to M&Ms. Someone’s half-pint of milk got knocked over. Faculty was quick to shut it down and issue punishment.

Rather than considering who started the fight or who escalated it, the teacher decided to simply drop the hammer on everyone seated at the table, equally. Including myself and three other kids, who weren’t in the fight at all.

I used to work a job with a 3-day work week, 12-hour shifts. 36 hours a week, company paid for 40. This was also physical labor, not an office job.

Four-day weekends were nice and all, but commuting during the week was brutal. After work, I’d have just enough time to drive home and go straight to bed, waking up just in time to go back. I honestly debated sleeping in my car sometimes, just so I could get more rest during the work week.

In my trucking career, one of my past jobs had me on a 4 days on/4 days off structure, which sounded nice on paper. But that company had a ton of behind-the-scenes problems that made things more stressful than they were worth. I would often have to work a fifth calendar day to end my rotation at home, and I never made anywhere near the money that company claimed I would.

My gaming desktop is only running Windows out of inertia at this point. Windows 10 LTSC specifically; I’m just waiting on the security updates to stop. Everything else in my house is already running something better.

Ooh yes, Insurgency is one of my favorites. I love the ‘quick reload’ mechanic as well, choosing between saving your leftover bullets and actually reloading faster.

Technically, being a truck driver, I sleep at work every day. There’s a mattress right behind my seat.

Most of my trips these days aren’t long enough to warrant pulling over to catch some shut-eye, but I’ve been that desperate in the past. Never on a highway shoulder though, I’d always try to be safer than that.

The vast majority of my customers will load and unload my truck for me, so usually, once I back into a dock door, it’s nap time.

• Initial D

• Kaguya-Sama: Love is War

• Cowboy Bebop

• Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

• Neon Genesis Evangelion