do y’all wanna here about some ridiculous celebrity drama my family is caught up in right now because I am LAUGHING
OKAY SO I’ve mentioned on here before that my uncle owns a business that caters for a bunch of concerts (see: me almost accidentally killing Will Smith, me accidentally getting a private concert from Leslie Odom Jr, my mom eating dinner with Ed Sheeran, my cousin trying to hook up with someone who tours with Panic at the Disco, my mom getting backstage when Woody Harrelson was denied access, etc) but anyway. It’s a really successful business! He knows a ton of random celebrities, and apparently now Netflix is interested in making a docu-drama about when he toured with the Grateful Dead a million years ago???? So that’s fun.
Anyway. Upcoming is Jay-Z’s big concert on the parkway- and for years my uncle always worked it. Because he’s like, a highly recommended company and he’s Right There, so it was just natural for him to work it. But then, last year, he decided my uncle was charging too much money.
Two Things:
My uncle FAMOUSLY undercharges people!! A couple years ago, Kevin Hart did a huge comedy special for HBO and my uncle worked it- when he got the bill, Kevin Hart literally told my uncle he wasn’t charging enough money, paid what he believed to be the correct amount of money, and then tipped an obscene amount of money, leaving my uncle with like 10k more than he was expecting, and that’s the story of the time my uncle Survived The Winter
AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE JAY-Z CAN’T AFFORD IT??? He’s Jay-Z! Isn’t he a billionaire! Isn’t he married to Beyoncé! He can definitely afford to feed concert performers and workers! Like dude!
But ANYWAY, he like. Proposed a lower price??? And my uncle was like “that’s enough to get maybe half a hoagie from Wawa and one can of soda for everyone working” lmao that’s how bad the price cut Jay-Z wanted was. I’ve worked for my uncle before- usually backstage there’s like an Array of main course meals, snacks, desserts, and drinks (water/soda/alcohol). Just a shit-ton of food, most of it prepared by his own company. Plenty in case people wanted second helpings. But with this proposed price drop, the best they could budget was half a sandwich and a can of soda like!!! Come on.
So he refuses to do it, so Jay-Z just…either Creates his own catering team on the spot, or used whoever he uses when he goes on tour, idk, but they agreed to that budget and my uncle moves on with life.
Except EVERYONE who worked that concert ended up complaining about the catering! lmao
So NOW he’s trying to get my uncle back this year (the concert is like…this weekend, mind you) but my uncle isn’t answering any calls because he’s currently hanging out….with Ozzy Osbourne.
They’re old friends because my uncle toured with him Back In The Day, and during most of the tour Ozzy was terrified of my uncle, because, like, the drugs made him think he was trying to steal his family or something, but by the end of the tour he had practically fallen in love with him, and when he learned my uncle was leaving he reportedly demanded “You’re LEAVING me??? Why??? Did Sharon do this?!?!?!” and listen idk they’re still friends and Ozzy’s still in love with him. Ozzy’s got a concert in the city or surrounding area right now, so my uncle’s out working that.
Now, the other thing about my uncle- remember how I said he famously under charges? Well he also famously over pays his workers, and like half of them are assholes who take advantage of that, so despite the fact he runs a hugely successful business and should be rich and with money to spare, he’s actually just…a terrible business man who is always borrowing money off people. Specifically, my mother and grandmother. Like, he’ll get a job, and then be like ‘oh shit! 5000 dollars short!’ and they have to transfer money into his account (my mom works in banking and handles pretty much the whole families money) and wait until he gets paid for the job to get the money back, it’s ridiculous. But because of this, my mom is more involved with this company than she’d like to be.
Now my uncle has this business partner, except he’s not really a partner because he refuses to let my uncle pay him, and he’s this aging hippie who I’ve never seen not high, and he may or may not live in his car, but he’s also Super Fucking Rich, but he’s not a dealer so no one knows for sure where the money is coming from, my mom went to high school with him and says he’s literally always been like this- but anyway, he ALWAYS has my uncle’s phone for some reason. You wanna call your uncle and wish him a happy birthday? Nope, it’s Victor, fuck you. Literally ALWAYS has his phone unless my uncle takes it so he can call his mother or sister for money lmao. But so that means…if the Hippie Friend needs to get in touch with my uncle….he has no way of doing that. So hippie friend, armed with my uncles Only Phone and access to his email, is getting a barrage of messages from Jay-Z’s people trying to hire him by??? fucking tomorrow??? to cater a weekend long event??? and the Aging Hippie is like ‘maybe his sister can get a hold of him!’ so he calls my mom- with my uncle’s phone- to tell her she needs to get in contact with my uncle- who does not have a phone on him right now- because Jay-Z wants to pay him money finally- ‘how will I be able to tell him that Victor’ – ‘well you can just leave a voicemail he checks those a lot’ – ‘you are using his phone Victor’ – ‘well we can hang up so you can call him’ – ‘VICTOR’-
so basically my uncle’s blowing off Jay-Z to flirt with Ozzy Osbourne, and I think that’s rather iconic of him
AZHSJSSK UPDATE:
Jay-Z just went with his own people like last year and the food is SO BAD- reportedly stale sandwiches with expired ingredients and brownies that are so rock hard they’re impossible to eat safely- and we know this because the STAGE HANDS STRAIGHT UP CALLED MY UNCLE!! WHO FINALLY HAS HIS PHONE BACK!! Like the people who handle the stage and lights and sound and are used to his catering literally called him to complain, to beg him to come Fix This, and he’s like ‘this is LITERALLY not my job??’
So now they’re demanding to just. Order food like from a pizza place or something and they want Jay-Z to reimburse them for that- but Jay-Z doesn’t want to reimburse them if they order edible food….except stage hands are literally in a Union and legally, if they turn the stage dark, no rehearsals or show setup is allowed to happen- So straight up if Jay-Z doesn’t just buy these dudes pizza they’re threatning to darken the stage so nothing can happen- the show starts Tomorrow
So now because my uncle is off getting lit with Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, Jay-Z’s workers are threatening to strike on the EVE of his big music festival…I’m screaming
This was a wild ride but the key information I get out of this is that Kevin Hart is a good egg and should be protected at all costs
j.k.r. needs like one close friend to sit her down and go: “okay, but, go over this with me again. you decided the evil snake your dark wizard kept as a pet and vessel of his fragmented horrific soul – the one that has to be murdered in order to defeat the evil wizard – is in fact….an asian woman who was cursed to eventually become a beast and monster in her own body. am i getting this right? the asian woman turns into a snake because her bloodline is cursed and then she becomes the pet of a white supremacist with magic. you invented a body curse specifically for turning women into monsters and your first thought was not like, subversion of fairy tale misogyny but….to add a layer of racism? just trying to understand here.”
Headcanon: I can muster a cogent argument for why it would make more sense or make for a better story if this were the case
Heartcanon: I don’t have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the warm fuzzies
Gutcanon: it’s not that I actively want this to be the case – it just unaccountably feels like it should be
Junkcanon: I like to imagine it’s true because it gives me the other kind of warm fuzzies
Spleencanon: I insist that this is the case specifically to spite the author, because, like, fuck you, sir or madam
on one hand i’m glad pet adoption agencies only want to give animals to people over the age of 21 to make sure stupid kids don’t adopt a dog when they’re not ready for it but on the other hand i have a salaried job and my own insurance and shit but i can’t???? adopt a dog?????? life is CRUEL
why are straight white guys so obsessed with world war 2
like i’ll talk about my interest in history and i’ll have guys be like “yeah i’m a history buff too i love world war 1 and 2″ like cool i was talking about ancient history. like the conversation was literally about ancient egypt.
my fave thing is replying “oh, cool. i just can’t get into it. i like everyday life and religion and art. personally, i find war boring.” and let me tell you it’s a journey to watch them try and understand that killing thousands of people indiscriminately doesn’t hold my attention.
yup it’s always the “oh you’re just not into history” and the response of “yes i am im just into ancient history” and you’re ready to throw 38 greek myths at them just to shut them up about the kinds of bombers the britsh were using in the second world war
except like. they really dont give a single fuck about wwi/ii. they care about the weapons and machinery. do they care about the events and the people? do they care about why wars were actually important? in my experience, very, very rarely.
I think that gets to heart of it: they’re not history buffs in any real sense. What they are is war fanboys. They collect and curate technical information about wars just like any other fanboy collects and curates technical information about the subject of their fandom. It’s basically not real to them; knowing what exact metal the buttons of SS uniforms were made of is of no greater significance to them than knowing the exact height of the captain’s chair on the starship Enterprise – it’s just another shiny technical fact for their collection.
It’s incredibly annoying because WW1 and WW2 are actually really interesting in terms of how politics changed and the like but all people want to talk about is the fighting.
This comic from The Nib is a great analysis of how the cultural obsession with World War II and “the greatest generation” has completely skewed our view of its history and totally fucked us up.
^ definitely definitely read this, especially if you were too young to remember the immediate post-9/11 times.
i know that gun crime is a very serious issue and i am absolutely pro-gun control but at the same time “(x) but with a Gun” memes will literally never not be fucking hilarious
post on this site: the lord of the rings but legolas has a shotgun
I want to see a fanfic where Harry hatches a basilisk.
I want to see a fanfic where he looks up “magical snakes” as soon as he gets to Hogwarts because that thing at the zoo always bugged him, and so the Trio works out that it’s a basilisk immediately after the first petrification in Second Year. But they don’t know how it’s getting around or where it is or anything, so Harry is just like WELP SET A BASILISK TO FIND A BASILISK while Hermione and Ron are like HARRY NO.
I want to see a fanfic where Harry sticks a chicken egg under a toad and makes all these plans about how he’ll talk to his huge deadly snake and get it eye-blinkers and shit so it doesn’t kill people and make sure it’s not too aggressive, and somehow it never occurs to his twelve-year old brain that the chicken egg has a total volume of about four tablespoons and he is not going to get the giant King of Serpents he is expecting.
I want to see a fanfic where it finally breaks out of the shell and Harry finds himself with a bb!basilisk too smol to even have the murder-eyes yet, who can only petrify someone for about half an hour before the effect wears off. She eats spiders and gets tired very easily and demands that he wear a hood she can curl up in and sleep.
(She is also the same vivid green as his eyes and already hideously venomous, but doesn’t like using her fangs because she says they get cold and give her brain freeze when she unsheathes them.)
I just… I really want Harry with a haughty, demanding, arrogant danger noodle who has an overinflated sense of her own importance, views Hedwig as a TERRIFYING MENACE because she isn’t big enough to eat owls yet and keeps up a steady stream of insults hissed in Harry’s ear whenever she’s near someone who has a Dark Mark (which she can sense at close range). And who is basically useless as a familiar because she refuses to slither across anything other than sun-warmed stones or Harry, hasn’t got a very powerful gaze yet and doesn’t like biting people.
(Except snake-arm-people. She finds snake-arm-people confusing and annoying, and would probably make an exception on the no-biting thing where they’re concerned.)
I mean there are obviously a lot of factors influencing snake growth rate but if we assume basilisks just get stupidhuge because they grow their whole lives and are immortal, this snake is probably going to be at least 8 feet long by Deathly Hallows, which is a significant and intimidating chunk of scaly muscle that is intelligent enough to do what it is told. Like, you know, hey, bite this necklace.
So I mean by like his fourth year it’s going to be pretty hard to hide this snake that is nearly as long as he is tall and it’s not going to do much for his reputation that the Boy Who Lived has a pet fucking basilisk but holy damn does it make book seven a whole hell of a lot shorter.
I feel like I should write this
can you just imagine him ron and hermione coming up with increasingly ridiculous excuses trying to hide their pet baby basilisk in the dorms (hagrid would be so proud). how long do you think it’d take before harry’s pet basilisk is just a really badly hidden secret between all of gryffindor? and the ensuring antics of the entire house as they try to keep mcgonagall from finding out? (she knows something is up, but even just thinking of what could be big enough the entire house is trying to keep it from her makes her want to break out the firewhiskey)
ron gets the idea to try and practices parseltongue with baby basilisk since he hears harry talking in his sleep with it all the time anyway (and ngl, baby basilisk is kind of adorable and eats all the spiders in the dorm so he doesn’t have to deal with them, he’s pretty smitten once she hatches), and as soon as hermione overhears him trying it, she’s dragging him and harry to the library because, well, parseltongue is a language, why can’t they learn it? so it’s the two of them alternating between hissing at harry and hissing at the basilisk and harry is trying so hard not to laugh because 90% of what they’re saying is utter nonsense and the basilisk doesn’t even bother, because she likes these two humans but wow are they dumb, that’s not how words work.
What about once the basilisk gets a bit big the eyes start being an issue and after Ron accidentally gets petrified one evening and it sticks until he misses History of Magic the next morning (he isn’t complaining and Binns sure as hell didn’t notice but if it’s Transfiguration next time there will be a Problem) they have to find a way of dealing with the eyes because one of these days there will be enough power for the permanent kind.
So after a lot of false starts with, like, goggles and shit, Hermione appears with a stack of advanced transfiguration books and the beginnings of a plan to give it eyelids or at least nictitating membranes that the petrification can’t pass through, but even with her being super smart it’s a few years beyond her abilities.
And then Harry sets eyes on the invisibility cloak and says “if you can’t see the eyes, they can’t petrify you.” Well a snake in a cloak doesn’t work too well, but Hermione has heard of the Disillusionment Charm, and that would also solve nearly all of their problems keeping a snake hidden in the dormitory.
So Sibilance Gloriana Theophania Sunstone (she didn’t quite completely name herself, she and Harry had a little conversation about what she likes and what human names mean and also she’s like a six-year-old in snake years so she is named after hissing, two queens, and her favorite thing to sleep on) is now the Invisible Snake of Gryffindor.
Out of necessity, her existence ends up being shared with a few people, either because they’ve tripped over her (Neville, Oliver, Parvati), they’ve accidentally been petrified by her (Neville, Fred), or their twin has found out about her and shared (George).
Fred and George are very keen to have an invisible house snake, and are brilliant at finding new spells to help out: she gains the ability to crawl up the walls like they’re more floor, to levitate and slither in midair, and to fill her venom sacs with substances other than venom; it is extremely rare that she wants to actually kill anything besides dinner, and it is so much more enjoyable to be able to bite people and use her fangs as a delivery system for itching powder or the line of nondrinkable potions Fred and George are in the process of inventing.
By the time the dueling club rolls around, she’s about three feet long and plump on rats and spiders and mice. She bites Lockhart when Snape sends him flying, and Snape ends up taking over the dueling club entirely while Lockhart hurries to the hospital wing with a set of massive boils on his ankle.
When Draco summons the snake with Serpensortia, Harry squeaks with delight and grabs the snake, hissing at it in greeting, and so the whole school learns Harry Potter is a parselmouth by means of an adorable scene with a very friendly, cuddly snake, which doesn’t strike anyone as particularly Dark Lordly at all.
The new snake, of course, can detect the presence of Sibilance, and Sibilance is delighted to have a serpent companion, so they’re happily engaged in conversation as Harry, Ron, and Hermione return to the dormitories. This scene of adorable domestic bliss is interrupted when they get up to Harry’s dorm room with one more snake than usual, and Ron’s pet rat Scabbers suddenly turns into a man and runs shrieking down the stairs.
(Harry has explained Scabbers to Sibilance back when Sibilance was smaller than Scabbers, and she has never attempted to eat him. The new snake, however, has not received this conversation and it’s a very different thing hanging around with a snake who you watched come out of the egg than meeting one that’s several times your size from the get-go. Absent introductions, the new snake assumes it’s dinnertime and Peter Pettigrew, faced with something very like what the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets would look like from Harry’s perspective, decides discovery is a slight improvement on dying and drops his animagus form.)
It is Peter Pettigrew’s poor luck to run into the Entrance Hall just in time to meet Severus Snape, who can put two and two together as well as most people and who is, easily, one of the fastest duelists Hogwarts has seen in recent decades.
Pettigrew’s capture and interrogation result in the release and exoneration of Sirius Black, who has one conversation with Harry, one conversation with Albus, and one conversation with Vernon and Petunia Dursley; the deal they all come to is that after precisely two weeks at Number Four, Privet Drive, during which time Vernon and Petunia will be scrupulously polite, Harry will go and live with his godfather.
Professor McGonagall and Professor Dumbledore agree that a snake is an acceptable pet, and the new snake takes the name Hex, quite a bit of delight in the spells Sibilance has had adapted for her, and the unofficial position of Gryffindor house mascot.
There is widespread interest in learning Parseltongue, and with Harry translating, a number of students take time to learn at least some basic words. Chief among these is Ginny Weasley, who is desperate for someone else safe to confide in about the blank spaces in her memory.
It is Sibilance, not Hex, that finds out about the diary, sneaking down from Hermione’s dorm looking for spiders (really, where have they all gone to?) in time to overhear Ginny crying as she writes in a book that really, really reeks of dark magic.
She bites the book, of course, and then there’s an awful mess and Ginny furious and distressed that the diary, and with it, her friend Tom, are no more. It takes some doing for Sibilance to explain her existence, the nature of the book, and what was likely happening to Ginny; eventually Harry has to be tracked down to translate.
With Tom Riddle gone, they all speculate on the Chamber of Secrets and it’s Ginny with the suggestion that Moaning Myrtle might be the one who died last time the monster was released. Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sibilance, Hex, Ginny, Fred, George, and Neville all head to the bathroom, and from there to the Chamber, where they stand with their eyes closed while Sibilance calls out the massive basilisk.
It’s a long, interesting conversation, and it ends with several spells cast, promises made, and a fascinating comedy of errors as they sneak an invisible basilisk out of the Chamber, through the school, out the main doors, and into the Forbidden Forest where its newfound flying, climbing, and poison-switching abilities will enable it to joyously predate upon the acromantula colony for decades to come.
They all get detentions over the matter when they are caught sneaking back in, less for the Forbidden Forest trip and more for McGonagall’s near heart attack at hearing the whole thing, but there are no more petrifications, the affected students are eventually awoken, and Gryffindor wins the Quidditch Cup, much to Oliver’s joy.
Hex and Sibilance enjoy warming themselves curled up on the fireplace hearth until Sibilance gets too big, and eventually Snape discovers her existence by tripping over her, but that’s another story.
AS I WATCHED HIM GROOOOOOW TIME HE WOULD NEVERRRR KNOOOOOOW TIIIIiiIIIiiiiiiIIIIME FOR MY REGRET RESIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDES TIIIIIME
IF I ONLY KNEEEEEEEW THE WHAT AND HOW AND WHO THAT TIIIIIIIME TRULY DIVIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiides
what i do is not up to you 