There's a bar in Greenville, SC (......ugh my mid-20s are showing themselves hard in this thread...) that has alcoholic slushies (City Tavern, one of the bartenders is from MD, so good place to go if you wanna make sure the TVs are showing DC/Baltimore teams).... Two of them use everclear.
Good way to get fucked up fast.
@Ghost You know, now that you mention it:
WITH apps like Venmo out there... that makes someone with a Square even more suspicious. Like, not even with the difficulties of obtaining a Square.
With Venmo, you are able to go 'Hi, this is more secure, you don't have to worry I'm skimming your card, you can just scan my QR code and decide your amount on YOUR phone without the device being in my hands the whole time...'
I can see why someone shoving a card scanner would, for a few reasons, be really uncomfortable.
Yeah. I took it as explanation of why objection, and if that is what he meant, I can understand exactly why he was confused.
ETA: I had to struggle to get to my correct boiling down.
(wahoo is a lady btw)
Oops! Didn't know, sorry!
ETA: Fixed! Sorry! Only char I ever played with her that I knew was a guy, I totally didn't mean to be rude.
I don't think she was upset by it (since she didn't say anything!), I'm just aware and I know usernames can be super confusing sometimes so I thought I'd mention. 
I loved/hated LARP.
Part of why I fell for my ex husband is we fucking rocked it at a WW LARP playing opposite each other. People would just fall back and watch.
But then there were those goddamn creepers. The couple who would creep for 'thirds.' The dude who would ST and trade XP for favors (both monetary and not).
Just...ugh.
@Rinel said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):
@Ghost said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):
In my estimation you can probably trust people at ACTUAL sex/swinger/bdsm clubs more than some of these people.
You almost certainly can. Kink communities tend to take consent very seriously and proactively warn new members about predatory people in the area.
absolutely, 100%.
I was part of a BDSM group in Ohio for a few years.
They did background checks.
They required you to attend the casual dinners out at least twice before you were allowed to join and the organizers had to approve you doing so meaning they could, absolutely, say 'We're sorry, we don't think you're a fit for our group.'
In addition to that, the age range for the group I was in was 18-35. If you aged out, the current membership had to decide yay or nay (vast majority of the time, because we were all so close and became good friends outside of, y'know, BDSM shit, we would say yes please stay around) as to whether people would stay. The age thing was because they wanted younger people joining to not feel like 'oh uhhhhh this is full of weird older people, newp!'
WHICH I ABSOLUTELY APPRECIATE. Because many BDSM groups I've looked into since have mostly been people 50+ and as a woman under 40? I just did not ever have remotely the same level of comfort. There are guys, sure, in that age range who are more respectful but uh, by and far, not so much.
People are gonna be more comfortable and feel safer in their own age range. Just like, at my age now, I'd totally get if someone 18-22 would be like 'Yeah, I'm not cool with this' if I was in a group.
(If anyone is in the Cincinnati/Columbus area and interested... PM me. I will see about looking up their info, see if they're still extant, and let you know. They were probably the best part about when I lived there.)
@Derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@Rinel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
Something like 80% of my past week's meals have been soup. The same soup.
I feel guilty for complaining about this because it's a really lovely soup and this is first world problems to the max... but I really don't want any more soup. ;_;
...what kind of soup? Wanna trade for some pasta?
get your asses over to my house. I have food I need to clear out of my pantry so I can justify changing my diet over.
@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
get your asses over to my house. I have food I need to clear out of my pantry so I can justify changing my diet over.
i has food, beds, and children
you can have my spare boxes of pasta if you can get here.
I found out I'm pre-diabetic (I blame all the stress-eating this year tbh), so I need to get through everything in my kitchen and start a new, better diet. But I'm poor enough from move-prep and all the doctor visits from being so fucking sick the past couple months that I can't just.... buy a lot of new food right now.
So I'm still eating relatively poorly (I'm eating healthy lunches at least since I go through lunch-foods faster) until it's all gone. 
Honestly, can confirm things like @Ghost 's story happen.
There were a couple 'LARP' houses in Greenville, too.
At one point when I was looking to move, I got offered a place in one and they were like 'It's $500/mo plus an extra $40 if you want the wifi password and you have to chip in X a week on groceries.' (not 'buy your own' but 'One of us goes out and buys food for everyone and you have to pay X amount') and I was like '........lol this is Greenville, I can pay $500/mo total for rent and utilities and split a nice two bedroom with someone, nope.'
But people did it. One guy's mom was so desperate to get him out of her house that she paid his rent.... except he told her his rent was $900/mo so he didn't have to get a job (skeezy ass mofo BRAGGED ABOUT THIS ... I was sorely tempted to find out her phone # so I could tell the poor woman).
I went to a post-LARP party at one of these once and spent the whole night asking my SO if we could leave because the place was just so... ugh. It was gross. I was the only woman there and despite being clearly in-a-relationship I felt insanely uncomfortable.
LARP houses happen.
They are not good.
But people become obsessed with LARP on a really awkward level. It's part of why when we'll be here going 'gosh no one is as bad as MUers we're the worst sort of people that ever existed there's no other sort of hobby that is-'
I introduce LARPers.
Some are fine, totally.
But there are people in LARP who are just..... horrifying.
@mietze When the 3rd of the people I listed above (Alex) was living with us (my ex-husband and I) it was basically a gamer geek household. We had a ton of nights where we'd make dinner then just hang out and play video games on our respective computers- often multiplayer games (lord there were weekends we'd spend 12 hours on a Terraria server, just ordering pizza).
But it was great. Like, we also kept the house in order, shared chores, turned our backyard into a vegetable garden.
It's about being responsible, finding other responsible people, and making sure you all get along.
Unfortunately, when the person 'at the helm' is not these things (aka responsible or willing to get along in a healthy way)... the rot runs through the whole. And that's how these communities go bad. 
I would, absolutely, go into a roommate situation with people I get along with in that way again (minor temptation rn to email Alex and be like HEY WANNA MOVE TO TX RIGHT NOW?!). As I look at moving next month, I wish I COULD. I wanna save money, I wanna cook for other people, I wanna have people to hang out on weekends to play board games. But the timing is really shitty rn.
@Rinel said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):
I did that in college with a reasonably large and very fake tree who quickly became known as Daphne (I lived in a house full of classics and archaeology undergrads). Daphne would move from people's doors to various stair landings to, in one particularly memorable incident, the inside of a shower.
Whereupon she promptly fell on top of the person who went in bleary-eyed in the morning for his daily ablutions.
He was not amused.
The worst was when Fred was in my shower, yes.
I screamed.
Fred went off the balcony that night.
Never leave faux-people, mannequins, cardboard cut-outs, etc. in your roommate's shower.
@Tinuviel said in Random links:
he went deep in mind and body, among crowded organ cavities, past the contours of her lungs and liver, and, shimmying past her heart, he felt her perfection.”
tbh
it's better than 'pounding your cervix into your womb'
@Rinel said in Should Rinel become smol birb?:
It's a fuckin' ROWLET and he is a POKÉMON and how DARE YOU IMPUGN THE GREAT RUMPUS CAT
it's not a birb
@Cobaltasaurus said in Help A Kitty :
@Caryatid said in Help A Kitty
Sent a little extra because vet visits can run over total pretty easily. I hope she feels better soon!
Thank you!
And to everyone else: thank you!
Any extra will go toward any medication she may need. I'm hoping that she just has a urinary infection or something really easy to clear up.
I don't hope she's sick but she's been acting weird, so I just hope it's something small.
I couldn't send anything rn because I just paid rent and it wiped me out, but... if you need anything extra (cause kitty meds can be expensive) come Wednesday, let me know.
