UPDATE: JoJo has been found! I am on my phone so please imagine I am pointing down into the Reddit portion to tell you that our good doggo JoJo is safe in his family’s arms.
my new Kate Bush sweatshirt came (again, I am TELLING YOU, just go to Etsy or eBay and type "kate bush” and there are SO MANY CHEAP TOPS, which is also true of the BDSM community and would be a great name for a punk band, which is not important):
I love it enough to faff about flipping the image for you! No, Nicole. You’ve made them watch your fav song’s music video before, you do not need to include it again. A sad note: I am obsessed with her counterpart in this video, but had never googled him before now. You can tell, while watching him move, that he’s a dancer first, it’s all there in their final dance, his perfect head control, but this beautiful man, Gow Hunter, passed away in 2011, at the unacceptable age of 51.
If you wouldn’t mind just watching it once more to appreciate Gow?
ANYWAY. Back to business. First of all, you are amazing and you don’t need to give any more to Electric Literature, please don’t, keep your money, but consider forwarding this exciting update to your rich friends:
It’s time for my new favourite thing in the WORLD, which is our INAUGURAL Featured Pet of “Nicole Knows.” It’s a symbolic title, but it DOES entitle the pet in question to extra pats, and the lucky companion of said pet INTENSE bragging rights.
Everyone, meet Kismet! I had to include all three provided images, because, I mean, look at them! Via her lucky lucky owner Amy:
“She is fluffy and fat (and healthy) and is turning 13 this year. She is extremely chill despite her resting bitch face. She sleeps with me every night and likes it best when she’s clutched to my chest like I’m a child sleeping with a teddy bear. I knitted us matching socks. She is the best.”
Who could argue with those credentials? Congratulations to Amy and Kismet! Remember, all submissions must go to nicole dot cliffe at gmail and not in normal replies, also chonkiness is NOT mandatory, skinny pets deserve to be admired too!
Do you…do you REALIZE that I woke up to a million pictures of incredibly adorable animals and got to look at EACH ONE as I filed them in my “Pets of Nicole Knows” gmail folder, where I can now go whenever I am sad????
I think, instead of doing a master post of my fav horror novels, which I would invariably play and noodle with and never finish, I will instead feature individual favs and thus devote a little more time and space to them, THUS, let me now speak of one of my more recent reads, which is more BEAUTIFULLY atmospheric and world-building and texture-y than it is terrifying, which is often nice. I was SCARED, but mostly I felt absolutely and completely in its thrall.
The book in question is Wylding Hall, by Elizabeth Hand, a great talent indeed.
I struggled to describe it, so I’m cheating and stealing the publisher’s own plot description, but obviously as soon as you read it you will know exactly how important reading it is. I am a tremendous fan of folk-rock, so for me, in my head, this was like imagining my beloved Steeleye Span withdrawing to a haunted castle to record a new and life-changing, career-altering album, and succeeding, but at what cost? AT WHAT COST?
Speaking of Steeleye Span, my favorite of their albums (my father had them all) is the usually overlooked Back In Line, because it has a song on it about Isabella MacDuff, who, as we all surely know, left her husband and his protection to crown Robert the Bruce (who was probably not her lover, but that would ruin a great song). And was then imprisoned and kept dangling in an outdoor cage and eventually died for having done so. A moment for Isabella MacDuff, Countess of Buchan, and her bravery!
Maddy Prior is never better in her LIFE than on this track:
Grace wrote this delightful thing on new starts (also on alcoholism) which I enjoyed a whole lot, here’s some of it (I loved this part especially, while also being annoyed by it, bc, well, people in active alcoholism can be the fucking WORST, like all of us can be, and are):
Being an active alcoholic is incredibly difficult, and people who manage it for years deserve more credit than they get. When you tell people you’re not drinking any more, people who don’t know what to say, say “wow, that must be so hard.” And it is, sort of, but it’s nowhere near as hard as organizing one’s life around locating the next drink, or pretending to be interested in one’s life when one is dreaming of getting fucked up. When I hear that someone I know is still going — or I meet someone who managed to keep their run of new starts going longer than I did, which was eighteen years — I sense I am supposed to feel sad for them, but mostly I feel inspired and thrilled. And people who pussy out of it get too much credit. It’s not difficult, it’s just extremely painful, which isn’t the same at all.
Or to put it another way, giving up drinking wasn’t difficult, it was literally impossible. Because the new start is always the same: I’m going to drink less; or the same amount less frequently; or the same amount just as frequently, but in a different place or at a different time of day; perhaps the same amount in the same place at the same time, just as frequently, but with different people, or, for novelty’s sake, a different drink — say, Brandy Alexanders rather than stout. (For some reason I had a Brandy Alexanders phase back in 2003.) (Oh, who am I kidding, I remember the reason exactly: it was because I learned John Lennon was into them during his “lost weekend” and I thought it was a way of making my obviously catastrophic drinking patterns align with those of someone famous and salvageably “difficult.” I thought they would save me, or make me likable again, or something.)
Ah, a Choosing Beggars tale that actually lifts the spirits:
Some back story. I dated this guy for three years and was a "nice" guy, choosy beggar and entited person all wrapped in one. I have tons of stories but this made me laugh.
I was the only one who worked and he sat at home eating maccas and playing games, drinking and being lazy af. He destroyed my bank account daily and threatened to kill himself or my family if i told him i wanted to leave him. Anyway, one day i received this phone call after work:
BF: hey i need you to ask your parents for something
Me, sceptical: what like?
Bf: i just want them to give me a loan
(My parents are very wealthy but despise my bf because of how much he takes from me)
Me: no, sorry, i really doubt theyll give you a loan. I already owe them so much for keeping my car on the road. I cant really-
Bf: i only need 15,000
Me, silent for a heart beat and said oh so carefully: theyre not going to give you 15,000. What would you even need that for???
Bf: im gonna buy a car!
Me: 15,000? You can buy a decent one for 5...im still not asking mum and dad to give you 15,000 dollars. I myself would never ask -
Bf: but i want a decent car. New one if i can. And besides i can pay them back when my house sells
(His MUMs house isnt even on the market and he thinks its gonna sell next week, and hes gonna pay mum and dad real quickly)
Me: houses take a long time to sell, itll take years-
Bf: not it wont
Me: yes, it will, ive done this four times living with my family. And even so, mum and dad arent going to give you 15,000 dollars.
Bf explodes~
Bf: thats because they fucking hate me!
Me internally: oh here we go
Bf: theyre horrible fucking people i should burn their house down and make them having nothin (Death threats are common)
Me: they dont have to give you anything...
BF: thats because they fuckin hate me, they always have. Selfish fucking miners!
Me: yeah, i know, i know. Look i gotta go.
I hang up and I call mum and she explodes into laughter, dad does too. We had another good laugh when bf asks me to pay for sky diving lessons so he can start up a skydiving school but at this point of time im just happy hes blocked on all social media. After this happened he didnt talk about it much but showed me stupidly expensive cars, i paid no mind, i was too busy thinking of ways of escaping his abuse
this just sucks, sometimes things are just shitty, I feel terrible for this couple:
I immigrated to Canada from Ireland three years ago. A year in I met my boyfriend and we've been together since. I never gave a guarantee I'd stay and we've had many conversations about the fact I may want to go home eventually. Throughout the two years I would occasionally have moments of complete homesickness for Ireland. I really tried to be happy in Canada to stay with my boyfriend, but I could never get used to the city life and struggled to make friends.
I recently lost my job and l came home for a two week trip. Oh other trips I always looked forward to returning to Canada, but this time I couldn't fight the feeling it felt right being home, like my time was done in Canada.
I told my boyfriend how I felt and were both absolutely heartbroken. He wants me to come back and give it another try. I've been there three years now and I feel like I just can't get my head or heart into living there long term. I basically have to choose between being with my boyfriend in a city I don't like with no friends or family or leaving my boyfriend for where I want to be with the family and friends I love.
He doesn't want to move to Ireland due to family and career commitments, so the sacrifices to stay together are basically on me.
Has anyone been through a similar situation? I feel like either way I lose.
A few years back (before I even bought my house) my next-door neighbor had a landscaping company put sod down in her yard. Whatever variety of grass it is, it's doing a damn good job of outcompeting the mixture of random grasses, clovers, and faux strawberries that make up the majority of my yard, and has spread maybe 3 feet inward across the property line. A few days ago, she casually mentions that my yard is looking better thanks to her and that maybe I should "kick in a little for the effort". I thought she was joking, but she doubled down saying that it wasn't fair that I should benefit from the money she spent, and that if I'd give her the cost of one of her sod pallets ($450) we could call it square. She said if I didn't then I was basically stealing from her.
My two questions:
does she have a leg to stand on, legally?
if yes, what the actual fuck?
Thank you for your time.
When your fiance knows your goggie needs a sleeping mask:
If you live near HARTWELL, GEORGIA, EYES OUT FOR JOJO:
Please, no matter how brilliant you think your dogs are, or how you know your dog knows better, even how well trained they are, do NOT keep your car window down for your dog.
Today my two-year-old German Shepard JoJo jumped out of the window while we were traveling cross-state. We’ve always left the window down for him without issue. We were eight hours into this drive, with the window down for plenty in the meantime. And then he just decided to leap out at 60mph.
It’s now been eight hours of constant searching into the A.M., and no sight or sign of him, after searching through the grasses and in woods and ditches. We weren’t able to find blood on any of the guardrails or grass, so we’re hopeful he just rolled into the grass and ran off scared. But he’s wearing his leash and the area is surrounded by different roadways.
Instead of hiking through the smokey mountains, now we’re staying in a motel two states south of our original destination, trying to get a little sleep so we can search more at sunrise.
PLEASE, if you live anywhere near Hartwell, Georgia, message me if you find a lost light brown GSD mix with white underbelly, or would be willing to come help look.
And for everyone else, PLEASE don’t make this mistake. This fun vacation trekking out into the mountains, at one with nature, has instead turned into hell night.
We don’t have a kid, we just have JoJo. I love him with my everything.
UPDATE: Hi everyone! This post is getting a lot of traction and I'm really happy to see that. Hopefully it'll help get the right Georgian eyes on this, and maybe even prevent a tragedy for someone else. Still no sign of JoJo but we haven't stopped looking. For those asking, JoJo IS chipped, but there's been no calls yet. I dont think the chip has gps, only identification if located. I did actually put a pet tracking device on JoJo for the trip, but it turns out it only has bluetooth range. It's been useless so far. But that means he's probably at least moving around, right?
I've been taking up a lot of the advice here - from posting to the Georgia subreddit to calling up shelters and animal control. I even posted on the local facebook groups and one of those posts has gotten almost 60 shares. Flyers is the next step, but I have to wait for my partner to come back to the hotel to go make the prints, and I think he's afraid to leave the area. Will update again when I can.
UPDATE 2: We received a text and a message in the local fb group that he was spotted alive at 7 am walking along the side of the road searching for us. Finding that out just improves things so much, knowing we don't have to keep checking the ditches near where he fell out. The s/o also did a great job and handed out information to a bunch of people and left out some of Jojos food away from the road near where he was seen and put some familiar smelling scents there there. JoJo wasnt there just now but we'll check again later. Flyers are coming up next.
this is basically erotica for me, and the reason I continue to subscribe to r/putaneggonit (I’m only linking the pic bc it’s meat and not all of you are into that, but if you ARE a meat person you’re gonna appreciate it)
Does the earth not have enough to deal with???
YOU CHEAP MONSTERS:
FOUR YEARS. He’s gotta go:
To preface, we’ve been together for 4 years now and do not live together
He recently started a new job where he starts work at 9am, but is usually there early. My job is supposed to be a 9-5 job but it’s very flexible. Sometimes I start late if I had a late night before.
Today I was going in to work at 11, he texted me around 7:30am to say good morning and I texted when I woke up around 8:45am. He replied saying “ oh you wanna wake up now? It’s too late b*tch go back to sleep.”
I didn’t know what to reply. I said okay and then told him I didn’t like when he called me names. He hasn’t responded and it has been hours now.
Honestly, I love your FB call-out post? Not enough people give it back. It would have been better to have your husband explain the home invasion and that you do not find this funny, offline, but sometimes, well, you just gotta. And I come from a community where you lock doors only at night, pretty much:
My in-laws live in a sleepy artsy fartsy town where nothing ever happens. They know all their neighbors, half of the family lives near by. They're the kind of people who are comfortable with anyone coming in or dropping by unannounced just to say hi, show someone something on their phone, etc. It's very Full House.
So that being said, they don't lock their door. We've piled into the car to go to the store or other places before and I've said "Do you have the key?" to be (gently, not meanly) laughed at and had it explained that they don't need to lock the door.
I'm not comfortable with that, but I didn't say anything. I just moved my travel bag into my car. When we went to get ready for bed, I passed by the door and saw it hadn't been locked. I asked if I should lock up for the night and the family chuckled again. I felt extremely uncomfortable, so for peace of mind, I locked up.
In the AM, FIL got up and went to get his paper. He found the door was locked and said "(My Name), did you lock the door?"
I said yeah, very casually. He looked at me like I was crazy. I said I'm just not comfortable with leaving doors unlocked. Both of them laughed, and for the rest of the weekend, the jokes continued. Things like "Who hurt you?" and "What was so bad in your childhood that you can't deal with an unlocked door?" and "What do you think was going to happen, someone was going to break in? This isn't (Big City we live in)."
We ended up leaving early because my husband was tired of telling them to knock it off. A few days later, my MIL posted what was supposed to be a funny thing on FB and tagged me, saying "(My Name) and Husband visited, but DIL isn't cut out for that (town) life! She couldn't handle a few unlocked doors and thinks the whole world is out to get her!" cue the family making fun of me, my upbringing, etc.
I'd finally had enough and posted back: “Home invasions happen. My best friend's dad was murdered in their home by an intruder when I was 12 years old. Forgive me for caring about my safety and infringing on whatever makes you feel superior here."
She deleted the post and told me I was out of line, it wasn't my place to lock doors in someone's house that wasn't mine, if I didn't feel safe with them, maybe I shouldn't visit anymore. I said sure, Husband and I won't visit anymore. She backpedaled and made it clear she meant just me, but I asked why he would drive all the way out there (it's about 5 hours) without me just to be with people who were mean and judgmental about his wife and a locked fucking door? This turned into another big "you're taking my baby away from me!" situation.
Anyway in relaying the whole story to others, I've had a surprising reaction. Am I the asshole for locking a door at night?
Love to all!!!!!!!!! n