Well that would make sense if he did the fire part BEFORE insertion, but that thing went in his trunk aflame.

Add wedding rings to that list. Folks, please just buy yourself sex toys and don’t make us have to call the fire department to get your wedding ring off your now ruined dick.

I worked in an ER. I have my reasons.

Ah, you understand. She gave my BIL a sandwich baggie of used golf tees that were all chipped and dirty, that she picked up off the public golf course near her house. She gave me HER OWN very used bathrobe that was so threadbare you could poke holes in it with your finger. She gave her ONLY grandchild an old vitamin bottle filled with dish soap and a bubble wand she found in the park or something. We would have all forfeited presents happily if she just spent a bit of money on her grandchild, but no. She also volunteered at a Catholic secondhand store, so would just take home anything that suited her fancy, and give us these cardboard boxes, unwrapped, full of used crap nobody wanted, and grandchild would get a stained old dress or a sleeping bag that smelled like smoke.

Some people would perceive this as a poor person who means well and is trying, but she got a ton of alimony every month, had more money than any of us, and was reassured routinely that it was ok to just celebrate at dinner and just buy a present for the kid. But the whole point was to make you feel like she was insulting you by giving you garbage.

These people cannot change and don’t want to, and it’s not worth trying.

I honestly question what one does when you are dating someone when you are 15 and 17 respectively, which is no big deal, but then it becomes 17 and 19? Like you aren’t really doing anything wrong, you’ve just had a relationship. But what’s the legal take on that?

I know someone and this happened to her son, and he ended up on a sex offender database because he was 18, she was 17, and she sent him a nude or something and then cried foul to her parents. I just wonder about these grey areas. Believe it or not there is a subreddit for registered sex offenders so they can try and figure out how to navigate the details of life, and clearly some of their crimes are more along those lines than preying upon an actual child. I don’t think you did anything wrong, I think you just got misled.

My ER clerk friend told me that one night a guy walked in and tried to hand her what looked like the ball of a trailer hitch, and for some reason it had burn marks on it and it stunk. She told him to get it out of there and asked him what he did with it and why he was there. He had set it on fire and shoved it up his ass. Why he set it on fire first is a mystery, but he just wanted to be seen for his burns to his hands. At least nobody had to fish it out.

Holy shit!

My therapist is a nice young mom, and I coincidentally know her dad a little bit and they’re nice people as far as I have seen. Maybe she has a closet full of medieval torture devices for all I know though.

I actually did have a therapist offer to refund me once. I found her incredibly rude and she said things to me I found that were like negging and patronizing almost? I came away from each session feeling like she didn’t like me at all, and that we hadn’t done anything at all, like I was speaking into a void to someone who offered me exactly one piece of advice the whole time. I drove myself crazy trying to figure out if I just wasn’t getting something or was I just the asshole or what, and in the final session when I finally burst into tears because I felt so belittled and like she disliked me, I told her I could not continue with her because of this, that she had said almost NOTHING to me save for one sentence that I considered anything like therapy, and that I could not continue throwing a lot of money at this when I felt completely unsupported and unsafe, and I left. (Whether I was wrong or not we weren’t getting anywhere or jiving so there was no point). She left me a very patronizing voice mail where she snarkily apologized and offered to refund or refer me elsewhere. I did not return her call. Maybe it was a me problem, to this day I don’t know, but I had two therapists after that (one retired) and we got along just fine and made plenty of progress. I really don’t know. I am not going to not pay someone for their work regardless of what I think of the job they did as that’s not ethical, but that was several hundred dollars wasted.

I did have the faintest sense that the senior therapist in that practice didn’t think a lot of her either, as she walked into one of my sessions as we just had sat down to begin and said kind of coldly “May I talk to you?” to my therapist and they took off and talked for a bit, and she didn’t seem awfully happy when she returned (and she deducted that time from my session which amazed me). She isn’t there anymore according to their website. I really don’t know. I still feel awful when I think of her.

I do believe I was discussing how my extremely well off FIL loaned my BIL money to go back to school, when he had never given him a dime for anything education or otherwise ever in his life, simply so he didn’t have to take on student loans a second time, and when he was not yet employed a month after finishing school took him to court to get all of the money back. Um, this is your kid, you are worth millions easy, you didn’t do shit for him, and it was like 3-4K which is a drop in the bucket for you, which you really should have just given him, and if you were going to be like this in the end you should have just been up front and said no so he didn’t have to go through this. I think I also discussed how he promised to pay for dinner the night after my wedding when my parents had stumped up for my wedding dinner (we got married in NYC), and then when the check came started adding up what everyone owed. Again, if you didn’t want to, don’t, but don’t fucking leave everyone dangling, we didn’t ask you to. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my ex so upset, not because we had to pay, but because he did that.

There are other things too, like his mother’s habit of weaponized eccentricity where she would give you literal garbage for Christmas presenta because she liked to pretend she was very poor even though she has more money than any of her kids, but she liked to see your face drop when you opened the gift which was trash to anyone else, and just a whole whack of other things. Narcissists are wild.

This just sounds like you were misled and it was awkward. I don’t think you intended to chase young women.

When I was in high school in the 80s it was not uncommon for high school girls in higher grades to have adult men as boyfriends. One of my teachers in fact did it, and got put on leave for a while LOL.

We have MAID in Canada. It’s so nice to let someone with a terrible illness go with dignity.

Exactly.

I went back to church 5 years ago after walking away when I was 18. It truly has been the best experience for me, has made a VAST difference in my life, and I wouldn’t call myself visibly religious either; I am a believer, but I’d never discuss it outside of my church friends. I’m picky about what religious people I’d associate with because I sure don’t subscribe to the nonsense about queer people and abortion that many of them do. I would NEVER try to convert someone or anything like that. If someone expresses interest in coming with me, cool, but really you would never hear from me about it otherwise.

I can’t find those here anymore, but they were AMAZING. They’re insanely expensive on Amazon.

Lemmy, Bluesky, Catodon, which is an adorable Mastodon clone which is way better than the Mastodon app. Pixelfed is nice too.

An aside, I haven’t used my Twitter account in 11 years, and I would read it now and then, but when Space Karen bought it I logged out and deleted it (didn’t deactivate so nobody took my name), and randomly a few weeks ago got notified my account has been banned for “inauthentic behaviour”. It was super weird, but who cares. Dumpster fire.

Not if they have to simply because of affordability, of course not. But I don’t see why anyone who isn’t American would be going anywhere near the US right now, and certainly trying to avoid American products. Canadian grocery stores are labelling what products are affected by tariffs and what products are Canadian and most people are really making an effort to not buy anything American.

I really do miss visiting the US though. I would go to Buffalo a lot for day trips and that really is a wonderful city, and you can’t beat clothes shopping there. Not sure what it’s like with the tariffs, but I shopped last fall for clothes and got AMAZING bargains.

Let’s talk about politics a whole hell of a lot less. Yes, things are awful and insane, but there is good stuff to discuss.

Ignoring the people in your replies who don’t like church, I meet the loveliest guys at church. Find the right church which is progressive and inclusive and a younger crowd and you will meet some amazing people. It’s not like what the other commenters think at all. Even just the amazing supportive friends I’ve met are enough, I’ve never had better friends in my life.

I am reading Moon Zappa’s autobiography, I just finished 1000 Acres by Jane Smiley, which I REALLY recommend, and I’m also reading the collected Wendell Berry, Margaret Atwood’s latest short story collection Babes In The Woods, and the book about the Toronto Gay Village murders. All very good, I am decidedly not into true crime but it happened close to me and one of my friends was part of the Village and they told the cops several times that people were going missing. I feel awful for all the victims, but especially for the very closeted religious ones whose wives and children got to find out their fathers were queer because they found parts of them in a planter, and the whole world got to find out too. It’s not nice to posthumously out someone even under the circumstances when it will have such a profound effect on their families.

Maybe he travelled to a country that does it. I don’t know.