The lore books in The Elder Scrolls series, hands-down.

There is an entire universe of conflicting knowledge, personal bias, and unreliable narrators that leave Tamriel’s history feeling very real, and very open to interpretation. The fun of it is piecing together the truth somewhere in the middle. But I’ll die on the hill that the Arcturian Heresy is absolute horseshit written by a madman, and comparable to the scribbles of a paranoid schizophrenic on an anti-vax forum. Anyone who references that volume in regards to Tiber Septim and the forming of the empire is an impressionable dweeb.

I rage nearly every day when a bag either rips beside the seal, or has such garbage perforations that you have to use scissors on it regardless of their presence.

After some digging I’ve learned I’m misremembering it being Homey, and it was instead the 1991 film Shakes the Clown.

Realized this having been Homey is a false memory, and found out it was Shakes the Clown.

I’ve come to learn from other responses that this was likely not a Homey movie, but I’ve always believed since childhood that it was. Someone said it might be called Vulgar (2000), but that seems too late in my life to correlate to the movie we saw. I’m currently digging to figure out what it was. I swear the men sitting around talking about pussy were clowns.

Edit: Looks like it was Shakes the Clown.

Homey the Clown Shakes the Clown. Dad took that shit out after three lines. Maybe. The movie started with a group of clowns/men discussing their pussy preferences.

It truly is night and day. I still see a bit of clashing in the bowels of political posts. Usually a MAGA being downvoted to -48, or various subspecies of liberals having it out, but next to that it’s certainly a lot more tame and respectful.

Frig off, Berb!

Reddit was bad for my mental health. Especially from 2016 onward. If it wasn’t toxic or aggressive people, it was an endless onslaught of all the shitty things happening in the world politically. I don’t even live in the States anymore, and I was still angry every single day. I still see some of it on Lemmy and it’s good to be informed, but Reddit’s algorithm was tailored specifically for my anger. The platform is all ego.

I’m either much nicer here, or people are far less confrontational. I’ve said it a hundred times, but every time I receive a notification on Lemmy I brace myself for another senseless asshole. But it’s almost always positive on here.

My wife and I spent $350 altogether for the paperwork and an officiant. We eloped beneath a tree in a park with her family present, and afterward I returned my dress shirt to Walmart for a refund. I will never regret how low-class that was.

We’ve been married now for ten years.

Dollar store seasonal garland. By the time it’s up in your home, it looks about 2/3 as real and costs 1/10 the price.

As I also saw mentioned, medicine. Buy it purely on price by volume and disregard the brand entirely. The only medicine I buy name-brand is Flonaise, because most generic brands of fluticasone spray have the most low-functioning applicators I’ve ever seen.

They come in two power settings: high, and low. And both of them will rip your dick off.

Valheim. My homestead is beautiful and densely forested. I’m well equipped and have provisions for days. I’m good.

Those oldest memories of Minecraft are the most peculiar of them all. I still remember starting with either the last Alpha release, or the earliest Beta release. I had come across a comic (using screenshots from the game) of Steve looking out into the night and seeing a single pair of red eyes in a distant hill. He looks out again and a monster is looking back in (or something like that). Always wanted to find that comic again. Anyway, that was my extent of knowledge going into the game. I knew there was mining, night time, and monsters.

I remember digging a hole into a hillside to survive my first night. There was a single torch placed outside of the hole, and throughout the night I watched various animals gather around the entrance to look in at me. I remember feeling awful, thinking they wanted shelter from the monsters outside, but realized while looking back much later that they were just spawning in my torchlight.

I also recall finding sort of a canyon or mountain pass with lava flowing into it. There was a small doorway or opening on one cliff face, and several flaming poles between it and the other side. It looked like an altar of some sort. This was back when lava/fire burned leaves and left the stumps to burn eternally, but in my inexperience I thought these were pyres placed deliberately by some entity, and began to worry there was truth to the Herobrine myth. Maybe other players were in my world.

Early Minecraft was a trip.

Is that the actual actress? If so, how the fuck did she wind up here?

I want to be positive and I’m trying to remain optimistic, but somehow I just know it in my bones that they’re going to further Fallout 4 the franchise and strip away even more skills and attributes. Hell, maybe they’ll get rid of dialogue entirely.

My dad suffered a heart attack and died suddenly about a year ago. I’ve never been religious or very spiritual, but after his death I became a lot more open to peoples’ various ideas on the afterlife. There was such an unfair finality to losing him. I always feel as though he’s right there on speed dial, even at this moment, but when I go to reach out to him I’m reminded that he isn’t ever going to pick up even though he still feels close. It’s like he’s always on the tip of my tongue.

Of all the things I’ve read and heard in my exploration of the topic since, NDEs are hands-down the most comforting and convincing of them all. Even if it’s all some kind of grand and miraculous illusion that we endure across all cultures, with or without any physical brain activity, the thought of him finding peace and comfort in that moment of death and choosing not to return to his body is very beautiful to me. My dad lived a life or immense chronic pain. His leg was obliterated as a young man and reassembled with rods. He had degenerative disks in his spine, rheumatoid arthritis, etc. So many memories are of him whincing and breathing through pain. Of course he wouldn’t return to that battered and broken body.

So while it still feels shitty, and still feels unfair, I take solace in the thought of him shedding that shit, seeing his dad (suicide) and mom (cancer) with him again, and choosing to return to the ether, knowing full well that my mom, my brother, and myself will heal, and be okay, and reunite with him eventually too on the other side.

And when I die, even if it’s all a last-minute illusion, I hope it gives me the peace I need to let go too.