Midnight Wolf

Stopped reading a single line before I did exactly that…

I grew up in the 90s and 00s, and I’ve always seen them, but my friend group never visited one, talked about it, not even a passing mention on school campus talking about what we did over the weekend. There were a decent number of stores that were regulars to visit, but Claire’s definitely wasn’t one of them.

Maybe we were more thrifty than others - we’d window shop a ton, but only buy something if it was planned. But the Walmart and Target down the road, that saw a lot more spur-of-the-moment purchases.

anyway

Imagine this: you are inside a local mall, and you are planning at getting some grub at the food court, your tablet repaired at Apple, some browsing at American Eagle, and maybe laugh at the teenagers shopping over at Spencer’s. You glance over as you walk in, and see this: Claire’s? Sure, you’re window shopping, but… the name isn’t descriptive, they have no logo, the front displays don’t really show you what they sell. Why should I step into this store? I could look up what they sell while I’m waiting for my food order, but I’m not that invested in this black-hole - and oh look an Orange Julius!

I’m not super popular (‘like oh my gawdddd let’s go to the mall and tease the boys to get free movie tickets and dinner’) but literally nobody I know from any generation knows wtf this store is. It might as well be a real-life creation of a store from GTA.

Apparently they sell “accessories, jewelry, and toys primarily aimed towards tween and teen girls, and young women”. I’m male but gay af and hung out regularly (read: almost daily) with the chick crowd as a teen, and still nobody, even in my extended friends-of-friends, had gone into one. That’s not great for business.

😏

Although if you want someone to talk your ear off about the church of cocks… Never in the morning though, early birds are the work of the devil. Or something like that. Beds are comfy.

We have by-weekly lunch meet-ups at Liz’s Diner over on main too.

Why is this man speaking in 3rd person?

Sometimes you need a little McDonald’s to remind yourself of how good you have it.

RED

You: restroom?

Waiter: directs you to a room with a plush couch and relaxing ambiance

(the word restroom has always bugged me, like nobody goes there just to rest. It’s an awful term. No, no. clears throat Direct me to thy shitter, my lord. The need is urgent, there is absolutely no time for ‘rest’ at the present moment.)

Switzerland’s reputation as a neutral safe-haven during World War 11

I knew my education was mediocre at best, but damn I missed 9 world wars?!

The invisible mold: “I’m in”

Well stop eating your puppers award, problem solved

“you can’t run that! why don’t you find something nice on the store?”

grabbing the axe

Yes

I’ll give you an offer… that you cannot refuse.

gives a drive filled to the brim with yiff

Hierarchy is priority! you understand :P

I mean, I’m working on it :P - I have 19 or 20 years now of content, some no longer available (artist closed up shop and ended that chapter of their life, etc) but it definitely grew with time. I have gotten way pickier about quality and resolution as the years go on, but so have my kinks, so I’m still chugging along like a freight train, piling on new things often.

Half a TB I’d say is overly optimistic, but maybe a quarter in another 20 years? With higher resolutions and more and more artists/characters (I currently follow over 600+ on FA), I don’t think that’s unreasonable.

In a few years if things progress how they are, I might be selling flash drives with content broken up by categories out of the back of my car at conventions, like bootleg booze and movies once were. People need their fix! They need it bad! :P

My first dummy intranet site for grade school used it, but it was a new technology at the time. I remember having a site on geocities a couple years earlier that was all wysiwyg and only used text. Back then, email was cool.

Internet nostalgia.

I never understood why seemingly everyone uses WP. ‘I need a personal, but professional, web presence’ ‘use this blogging platform’, ‘I need an e-commerce site’ ‘use this blogging platform’ like what.

Maybe I’m old and WP now does everything and the kitchen sink, but I was there when it started and made no sense.