Takes of Varying Warmth

It’s been a week, including second vaccine–yaaay!–so here are some random thoughts for, hopefully, your entertainment. Many have appeared on my Twitter feed in some form.

I know people who genuinely like going into offices and talking with co-workers, and I wish them happiness with their own kind, YKIOK and all that. But I assume strangers who celebrate “office culture” and “the inspirational possibilities of water-cooler talk” and “team bonding activities” are somewhere on the continuum between Micromanager and Serial Killer. Yes, that is a single continuum. I have read John Douglas, and “Manipulation. Domination. Control.” describes a lot of motivation from middle management to the C-suite perfectly fine. (My current managers are lovely, but I also looked for a job that would specifically be remote-only and not have employer-tracking software, which has the pleasant side effect of screening out many Crawlspace Carl instantiations.)“He’s got radioactive blood” is not actually an answer to “Is he strong?” in my current understanding of causality. Fifteen years after I last played Mage: the Ascension, I still loathe the Hollow Ones and everyone who came up with them. “What if Holden Caufield but SECRETLY THE MOST ENLIGHTENED BEINGS IN THIS GAME?” I just…no. (Also not really secretly, because that game’s subtext was no more sub than that guy from 50 Shades.) (*Also* also I hate Magic and Science/Tech Are Innately Opposed as a concept.) (The Euthanatos were cool, though, and the Nephandi were impressively creepy Geigery motherfuckers.)New sexual orientations discussed in my social circle: Disaster Bisexual (this one is not original to us), Tragically Attracted to Basic Cis White Dudes (Preppy/Military Manifestation), Demisexual With Too Many Hot Friends.Okay but people presenting not trusting/liking your neighbors as a horrible consequence of political division or dubiousness about unmasking or whatever are always *extremely weird* to me. I’ve spent basically 14 years in New England, my mother’s family goes back three generations there, and we did not get where we are today by trusting people. Boston has its version of the city life thing where your neighbor stands a decent chance of getting kill orders from a Labrador, and northern New England…like, please read even one (1) Stephen King book. “Creepy psychic child” is probably your best-case scenario.On that subject, a friend of mine was like “maybe even if a dog *is* telling you to kill people, don’t believe them,” and to be honest it depends on the person and the dog. If one of those bouncy malamute puppies in YouTube videos suggested I shank someone, I’d at least give it due consideration.If a 9,000-year-old demon *disguised* as a dog told me to do it, no way. It’s a demon! Telling people to kill other people is Extremely Basic Chaotic Evil Shit! Murder is your go-to move, Stan, and I’m not gonna assume you’re right about this! But if an actual black lab, an entity known mostly for being the personification of enthusiastic doof and shameless pestering for table scraps, informed me that actually the following people needed to be taken out…I’d figure that there was something going on. I’m not saying I’d do it, but I’d at least make inquiries. (I 100% believe that the resident dog would tell me to kill someone when she meant I should give them chicken drumsticks and/or chocolate cake, given the context in which we often use the term around her.)