“There’s no way to stop it?” the man asked, idly tapping the wall he was leaning against as he held the phone to his ear. “None at all? Hmm.” He hummed to himself, listening a bit longer before setting the phone down and staring out the office’s window for a few minutes.

He slumped forward, slamming a fist onto his desk a few times before going still once more. “Yeah. No. That’s not happening.” He picked the phone back up off his desk and dialed a quick number. “Hey, Ted. Just got a call. It’s a bad one. Mhm, yeah. Really bad.”

He grabbed a pen and started scribbling on the corner of his calendar while talking. “Just send out a test alert, we’re not using the EAS for this. No point in warning anyone when they can’t do a damn thing about it.” He stopped doodling for a moment while listening, then continued. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Dereliction of duty, yadda yadda. Not like it’ll come back to haunt us.”

He looked back out the window for a moment, then took a deep breath and sighed. “Actually, who’s that guy in IT who’s been complain-yeah, him. Grab him and tell him it’s his lucky day. He gets to prove his complaints are accurate. If he can bring the whole alert system down the way he says, everyone in the office gets the rest of the day off.”

He listened to the other end of the line, then barked out a short laugh. “Of course I don’t have permission for any of this. But I’m not making anyone’s last day any worse than it already is, and I sure as hell won’t let anyone else in this office do it either.”

-

A man looked up from his computer, walked across a different office to tap someone on the shoulder. “Hey, Derek. I just got an email, forwarded it to you. We’ve got a priority story to run on the site.” He grimaced while Derek scanned the lede. “Fuck that, right?”

Derek turned and looked up at his coworker. “This is a joke, right? No way we’re supposed to publish it.”

“Hah. Fuck, I wish. This is straight from the top.” He turned and started to walk away, then did an abrupt about-face. “Fuck it. No. We’re not publishing this. In fact…yeah. Nobody has enough time to do anything. Kill the front page, replace it with the most lighthearted news blurbs you can find.”

Derek went pale. “No way. You’re serious?”

“Yup.” The man tapped his foot as he started to turn again, then snapped his fingers and turned back. “Actually, even better. Run some specials on cute animal pictures you find, too. It’ll raise some eyebrows, but the only people who would object can’t be helped anyway.”

-

“Hell no!” a man shouted, “Obligations this, contracts that!” He gave a middle finger to the camera in the video call. “Call the lawyers if you want, they don’t work fast enough for this to matter!” He growled, then slammed the laptop shut.

“Fuck. This. No way in hell am I overriding the station for that shit.” He got up and slammed open the door of his office. “Hey, Camille!” he shouted. “Lock the front doors and kill the standard programming, would you?”

He took a deep breath, and slumped against the doorframe. “I’m serious. Shit, no wonder my news feed was the way it was this morning. It’s bad.” He got up, and stomped down the hall to a broadcasting room, where he knocked on the open door. “Change of plans, guys. Pull up a list of the most popular songs, and play through that today. No ads, no overrides, no commentary. Just the best music in history.”

He turned and started walking out, and shouted down the hall as he left. “And order some pizza or some shit. The good stuff this time. I’m paying.”

-

“Huh. You’re serious?” The woman asked, and blanched as she got a response. “Honest to god?” She sank into her seat as she set down her phone. “That…this. The-no. No. We can’t.”

She fiddled with her phone for a moment, before smiling sadly and looking across the room. “Hey, John. You have a friend at the pet rescue a few blocks away, right?”

John nodded, a quizzical smile playing across his face as he looked her way. “Yeah, what of it?”

She sighed. “Apparently, we’re supposed to tell everyone they’re gonna die today. That’s not a good headline, don’t you think?”

John frowned, drumming his fingers across the desk as he thought. “That doesn’t sound like a headline at all.” He looked at her again. “Is that what that call was about?”

“Yeah, it was.” She got up and began pacing, before stopping and turning to John. “Yeah, grab the whole crew from the rescue, and all their favorite critters. We’re holding an adoption drive instead.”

“You…you’re serious?”

She laughed. “Yeah, I am. What are they gonna do, fire us over it?”

John smiled as he got up and started dialing a number. “I suppose that’s fair. Not like we’ll be here to regret it.”

“Hah!” She grinned as she started jotting down some notes. “Yeah, that’s right. Today’s our last day on Earth. Let’s make it a decent one, yeah?”

dovewithscales:

lilli-sturmreiter:

cumpriest:

hidrellez:

you gotta include this photo

ağlıycam

This is it. The internet has come full circle. You can all go home now. We’re done.

kyraneko:

homunculus-argument:

Weird stories I remember reading online:

A dude starts a story about airsoft with “my great-grandma was a contortionist in a circus. This will be relevant later.” And then he starts explaining about this challenge that was played out at his local airsoft field, essentially two-team capture the flag, where both teams could move their flags around their own respective fortresses and hideouts, but with specific rules to make it harder to keep the flag location hidden from the enemy.

And this guy happened to spot the enemy team moving their flag (I think you needed to have 3 players of the team to move your own flag or something), and saw them taking the flag to one large-ish shack with only one entrance. This guy circles the shack several times but can’t find any other entrance, only a narrow opening in one wall that’s clearly intended to just let in sunlight, and allow people to shoot out of the building or try to shoot in. The enemy team has left this room unguarded, it’s upstairs and the flag is held downstairs.

They don’t consider it an entrance that should be guarded because no ordinary man could reasonably enter through it. But our hero here is not an ordinary man. He’s hyperflexible, and not the first in his family to use their genetic loose joints in their advantage. So this guy reaches in, and carefully puts his gun on the floor. He takes off his coat and belt, and put them inside, too. He even removes his shoes. And then he dislocates his fucking shoulder, in order to squeeze through a hole that people shouldn’t fit through.

Once inside, he manages to get his shoulder back on the right way, takes a moment to recover, gets himself geared back up, and sneaks downstairs to fire three unsuspecting enemy teammates in the back, capturing the flag and winning the game. From their point of view, this guy had just manifested out of thin fucking air.

Having been the key to winning this challenge, in a feat that seemed downright impossible, the guy was asked to explain how. So he told them of the squid-like squeezing feat. While everyone was impressed, he was the reason why the field got a new rule: no limb dislocation allowed. Also there’s now a bar in the middle of the previous slipping slot, barring any new attempts.

And that’s how a circus contortionist’s great-grandson got “All team members’ ligaments must be kept at their intended locations during the whole game” added to the rule list of an airsoft field.

To quote another excellent competitive shenanigans story:

“Sometimes it’s not about whether you win or lose. Sometimes it’s about how many pages you add to the rulebook.”

evilkitten3:

catnipcryptidd:

dollsahoy:

elpalodelchurrero:

metocoymerregusto:

Wait for it

Que weno

is anyone going to tell the people in the notes who are calling the driver an idiot that they did not, in fact, wait for it?

(or that the driver that other people so clearly see is, in fact, not)

ok fuck that got me

luckyladylily:

funnytwittertweets:

The 2 birds per stone factoid is actually a statistical error. Astroid Georg, who fell from the sky and killed 38 billion birds, is an outlier and should never have been counted.

thebibliosphere:

thebibliosphere:

I just read the most unhinged ask accusing me of some TikTok, new age, other dimension bullshit regarding my “belief” that I’m married to Mothman and how I’m “promoting mental illness as spiritualism.”

Like, bestie, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that’s my spouse’s username @mothman-etd.

I’ve been ugly laughing for the last 5 minutes. Tears are streaming down my face. Help, I need an inhaler.

spiritofcamelot:

femmecrip:

eponinejosette:

starkstrider:

tyleroakley:

niamharthur:

bardofspades:

mituna-senpai:

what if every Tumblr user suddenly looses their mouse?

J = Next Post
K = Previous Post
L = Like
N = View Notes
Space = Show Photo
Shift + R = Reblog
Shift + E = Add to Queue
Z + Tab = Switch Blogs

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING.

I just reblogged this with the command, shit

Do you know how much this helps people who have trouble with the mouse? (Me, other disabled people) thank you

Yup, I use these when my hands get particularly weak (like now)

Alt + R is the new command to reblog
Alt + Q is the new command to queue

acrylicdragon asked:

Why do you use tumbrl as your main social media? Is not a bit outdated and filled with weird ppl?

neil-gaiman:

Very much so! It’s definitely outdated and filled with weird people. But I’m afraid it has some downsides as well.

mayfriend:

consistencyisalliask:

“This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong. I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table. I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind. Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase. It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it. Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies. You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know… But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, what am I going to do? In the end I thought, nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie. Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice …” I mean, it doesn’t really work. We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies. The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.”

— Douglas Adams (via revolverwife)