southsamurai @ southsamurai @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Well, pigs will eat anything, and anyone.

They'll eat their own, in some circumstances, though it's usually only going to be in bad conditions, or opportunistically. It's extreme rare to see it happen among feral swine, though it does sometimes occur. But wild pigs will eat any dead critter they run across, even other pigs. It's more rare that they'll eat another pig they know. It does happen, but even if you live where the damn ferals are endemic, you might only see evidence of it a handful of times over decades.

So, out of all animals that you'd think of for kid's stories, a pig is probably the most appropriate pick for a butcher. Maybe a cat or dog (though I think cats would just eat their business out of business, not wanting to share.) would fit.

That's fucking brilliant, and I would applaud out loud if it would do any good

Hmmm

I think I have a good one, though it didn't bother me much, and anyone in the same line of work has done similar, so it isn't as big a deal to us.

But!

Back around the turn of the century, I had a patient that developed a pressure sore on his hip.

This sore broke down fast, and wasn't responding to treatment well. So it progressed brutally. It then got infected.

By the time all was done and said, the wound was about four inches around, and tunneled from the hip socket down the femur about halfway.

Despite being freshly discharged and on oral antibiotics, the IV antibiotics hadn't eradicated all of the infection, they just got it under control enough to continue treatment at home.

Enter the wound-vac. Basically, it's a pump that sucks wounds and makes them heal faster. Amazing fucking devices, totally changed wound care. But I digress.

Part of the way a wound vac works is packing the wound with fancy sponge material. Otherwise, it'd just suck the wound' sides in and that ain't good.

Every morning, I'd take the container full of blood and pus to empty it and clean it. Then I'd get busy pulling out the old packing materials, also covered in blood and pus, plus chunky bits. Then I'd irrigate with saline, followed by using pads to pull most of that back out. So, about a half hour of dealing with body fluids that smelled exactly as bad as you'd think infected body fluids would smell.

Then came the fun part! Fifteen minutes of packing the wound.

Now, during all of that process, im wrist deep in this man's leg. Guess how far gloves go up the arm. We did eventually get longer ones, but guess who has two thumbs and hands that tear regular sized gloves apart.

Exactly, 👍 this guy 👍

So, my choices amounted to refusing to do the job, which was not happening because that ain't how I roll; using the shorter gloves while the wound shrank, and just taping them up as best I could to keep human juices out of the gloves (or, rather, to a lesser degree), or wear the long gloves and hope they didn't pop while I was in there.

Truth be told, I had better sensitivity with the popped gloves since that amounted to not wearing any at all, so I probably should have just gone that route, but that's whatever. I went with regular gloves and tape.

So, every day, by the end of the process, I'd have to pull off gloves that had sweat, blood, and pus in them. Not as much as I'd have had if I went in bare handed, or had a glove break, but enough.

Then I'd scrub my hands for the third time of the morning and think hard about my life choices while drying them.

It may help the description to realize that I can palm a basketball (if I'm careful), or could before arthritis. And, my usual glove size is xxl. So when that hand is in someone up to the wrist with room to spare, you know it's a party!

I tell this story in person sometimes. I include the sounds of my hand schlucking in the wound. Psshhhsslllccck going in, and thhpppthck coming out. I have seen people almost pass out, have had one person vomit, and many leave the area with haste. It may or may not be the most disgusting thing anyone has ever done, I'm confident it isn't. But as stories go, it hits hard in person, with all the sounds and hand movements.

Now, old wound care stories abound, but most of them weren't disgusting on my end. I'd see disgusting things, and do stuff that was disgusting to see if you were standing there, but I'd be gloved up and clean the entire time. Like, if you've never seen anyone cutting necrotic tissue out of someone's body from a wound that covers essentially their entire ass down to the bone, well, you don't want to see that. It didn't bother me at that point, but it was definitely disgusting by usual standards. But I find it more sad than disgusting what with the reason it was that bad. She was slowly dying, and her body just couldn't recover, so she was rotting away. That's some fucked up shit, and is one of hundreds of reasons I will always advocate for the right to death via assisted euthanasia.

Hell, I've seen nastier wounds than either of those. Infected burns are horrifying to see. But I've also had to clean diarrhea out of wounds, including that specific one on the lady with only half an ass left. Which, on the scale of things is pretty disgusting, but it was also possible to get the job done without getting anything on me. Well, other than trauma lol. That lol isn't making light of it. It's whistling in the dark.

I tell you though, once you've handled a few infected wounds, you either adapt to it and do it clinically distant, or you run screaming and never come back. Luckily, I came into this world with a strong stomach, a pervasive curiosity about medical matters, and a stubbornness about retreating from challenges. So it was always easy to turn off the "yuck switch" and just do what needed doing. Most of the time, wound care was awesome. I loved it, and struggled more to keep my enthusiasm for the work hidden than any kind of reaction to the gross parts.

Patients tend to not enjoy you saying things like "okay, that is so cool, I can see your femur". Or, "oh wow, I can feel bone in here". So I learned to keep my mouth shut while working. Being gleeful during wound care will get you a visit with your supervisor. Telling said supervisor "but it's so cool! Nobody else gets to see this kind of thing" is surprisingly not going to be met with shared enthusiasm most of the time.

Damn. Way younger than anyone should check out, if they don't want to

In general, I didn't much. I did occasionally wish the money was not taken because I needed it, but I'm fine with the point of taxes. We all chip in for stuff we all use. No big deal.

I definitely have objected to what the taxes were used for, and definitely cared about tax disparities, but I never minded paying my share.

I have objections to how property taxes are assessed, though I'm okay with the fact of them for the same reason I'm okay with income taxes. In a monetary world, there has to be some degree of shuffling the money around to keep roads usable, in essence.

Even now, when property taxes are a much bigger proportion of my income, the numbers make sense to me based on the tax valuation of the property. I disagree with that valuation, but not so much I would complain about it. I could, in a perfect world, sell for the price they think it's worth, so I'm not storming city hall.

But, I have heard people complain about their tax amounts rather than the fact of them. Particularly here in the US when someone moves to a new tax bracket, it can be a very upsetting thing to realize that your raise isn't going to all go into your pocket.

Or, as I love to say: you feel what you feel, it's what you do with it that matters

Alas, no. You could hypothetically replace the board though, which would allow you to continue using the rest of the hardware. But you have to source the part, and switch it out, which isn't always possible

Not cured, but garlic does cause a great deal of pain, and can reduce their healing.

Oh, Jesus, never, ever grab or touch me from behind. I will lose my shit, and have hurt people before.

Tbh, since I have a strong brief belief you shouldn't ever touch someone you don't know without a damn good reason, and never from behind, I don't even try to get rid of it entirely. I just work at not hurting the idiots that do it. And it ain't easy. I'm lucky that where I live has a pretty generous self defense interpretation; if you lay hands on a stranger at all, as long as they don't go excessive, it's your fault. Otherwise, I would have a record.

Like, I've worked hard in therapy too get to the point where if I'm at home or in "safe" places with people I trust, I don't do anything more than tense up. And I haven't really injured anyone in over a decade. Only minor stuff, and I stop as soon as I know they're not going to do anything else stupid. But I swear to fucking gods, I want to just start barking and growling and go ape.

There's nothing else that will set my PTSD off like that. Shit, it's only been a month since I got a proper death threat, and I was chill as fuck about that. But don't fucking touch me if I can't see you coming. If I can see you coming, I'll have a chance to tell you to back the fuck off, and it'll be okay as long as you listen.

But if I'm just bebopping through the world, I've worked very fucking hard to not have my head on constant swivel, to be able to just fucking shop for groceries without sweating and watching for every fucking movement. So, when some jackass startles me without even saying anything before the touch, fuck them. Fuck them right in the fucking ear with a stolen dildo. If I happen to swing around and they get knocked the fuck out, that's what they get.

Like, legit, even a simple "hey" right before the touch, and I won't attack. I need that extra second of warning to put a leash on the rage and panic. I can do it, I can hear the warning, and just step away from the person instead of going right at them. I can put the leash on and not lose my shit.

Some days, all I'll do is jump away, which isn't any better for me, because my back can't take sudden movements like it used to; I'll need a day or two of recovery and/or muscle relaxers. But those are the good days, and I can't always guarantee that I'll be able to choose to jump away instead of going after the threat.

And, wtf are people thinking? I'm damn near six feet tall, with shoulders that have trouble getting through narrow doors. Why the fuck are you going to just grab that guy's arm? Like, fuck people, think a little. You shouldn't even be doing that with a friendly grandmother looking person, but when it's fucking sasquatch? How stupid do you have to be? And that fucking arm you're grabbing is as big as some people's thighs ffs, so why? Why the fuck would you risk grabbing it?

Luckily, kids never grab that high. They tug a shirt or something. And older folks still remember good manners and don't just grab strangers. So I've never really fucked anyone up that I would regret. Did, however, break the arm of a guy that was a friend because he didn't believe me when I told him I was touchy. That was before therapy though. I've knocked a couple of people out, knocked them down, left bruises, and one dude was concussed enough to need an ambulance.

So, you might think, "oh, south is talking about something really rare". No! People are fucking stupid! A lot of people on the scale of things. Maybe a dozen or so is plenty, but it's been more than that. I'm trying to count up in my head, and it's close to twenty where someone got some degree of hurt. More where I was able to control things.

Why do people think it's okay to touch strangers? Fuck! I'm stressed as fuck just remembering it.

Like, I'm a pretty friendly guy in public. I don't like people, but I do my best to not let them know that unless they give a good reason to show it. Someone needs help, I'll help. They want to talk, I'll talk. But you don't touch strangers. You can offer touch, like a handshake or even a hug (and thank you so much to that sweet lady that hugged the hell out of me after one of the times I'm talking about. Saw me lay a guy out and still came up to where I was crying and wanted to help me get myself together.), that's just being a decent human.

Holy shit lol. PTSD is no fucking joke folks. I'm laid in bed, with people I love around me, and I'm still shaking a little and trying not to cry just remembering this stuff. People like to joke about being triggered and such, but it can sneak up on you when you aren't expecting it, when you think it can't. And then the whole cascade starts up.

What's really fucked up is that the whole being grabbed/touched from behind thing wasn't even from major events. Like, I was a bouncer for a while, and got hurt doing it, which didn't help the PTSD. But this shit goes back to Jr high where I wasn't dealing with people trying to kill me, just fuck with me and hurt me. Not even bad hurt, "just" punches and such. I can deal with someone coming at me when a knife and stay controlled. Hell, part of me likes the possibility of a fight where I don't have to be nice and hold back. But some rando grabbing my arm lets loose those old memories that got ground into my brain over years, and I don't think that's ever going away entirely.

That's what she said ;)

No, they were just sweet on each other.

Totally fucking adorable tbh. The parents supposedly started out thinking it was one of those puppy love crush situations, and went with it. By the time they all realized the kids were serious, they had also shown they were willing to obey rules around it, so the parents just shrugged and let it be. Again, that's supposedly; I didn't know either of them outside of school beyond the occasional birthday party with the girl back before that.

In my home brew ttrpg setting, it's viral. A magical virus, but a virus.

I knew a girl in elementary school that would always say she was engaged, and that her fiance went to a different school. Needless to say, nobody believed either claim.

Until high school, when it turned out to be true.

There was no telling if it was originally just kids playing pretend and turned serious, or if they were serious all along, but they stayed together all through school, and got married not long after graduation. Still together, last I heard.

I want to say she first mentioned it in the sixth grade, but it could have been fifth. I know it was sixth when she would show off her ring, which was a silver band with a tiny little stone in it. Again, nobody really believed her, and there's no way to know if that really was an engagement ring, or what.

So I believe it realistic to say she was engaged at 12, or was at least claiming to be.

There's a ton of examples, so yeah.

My home brew ttrpg setting is exactly that

Long and hairy, hard to carry. Grumpy but tolerable in small doses. Absurd at any dose.

My Johnson noise has been known to disrupt things a good bit

It's like any other initial screening tool. It gets you started, but it can't be the main determinant for healthcare. BMI isn't meant to be an all-in-one measuring stick the way something like a blood test can be (most of them are first steps as well, but there's exceptions).

If a doctor has a patient with a 30 BMI, but they can see that you're at an otherwise healthy body fat level, they won't try and treat you based on the BMI unless they're on the shitty end of doctoring. There are bad doctors, but most of them get weeded out in the grinder that is med school and internship.

You'd definitely want to have other measurements to go along with BMI when you're unusually tall, short, or muscular.

It's cheating, but there was a track in need for speed carbon that was catchy as hell. Love me or hate me, by Lady Sovereign

Not technically video game music, but it's one of the few tracks in any video game that I went out of my way to find outside of a game.

They are.

They're certainly not the kind of purely creative art most people think of as ART, and it's definitely a crossover kind of art. But if memes aren't art, then pretty much nothing Warhol did was either. Yeah, that's not only an argument people have made, it's also an interesting debate about the essence of art. But Warhol did memes. To an extent, Basquiat did too.

All visual art is a form of shared consciousness, and that's what memes are at the core.

I would even argue that making a good meme, one that actually becomes widely shared because it transmits an idea, is a very difficult form of art. There's skill involved, and thought. It's only partially about the format/template (in cases where that's the expression of the meme rather than it being less formalized). There's an element of writing to it, some design craft, and you have to find the right audience.

Memes are an art form with a low barrier to entry, but that doesn't invalidate the form any more than cheap digital cameras invalidate photography as an art form.

They're pretty heavy, but more important is how you'd have to carry them by yourself. Uncomfortable and awkward for the human and tortoise.

I've hefted similar sized snapping turtles before. They're definitely not too heavy, though it isn't exactly picking up an empty box either. But if you try to carry them by yourself, you've got their shell or their belly against you or you're kind of waddling along while you hold them by the sides.

One of those in the picture isn't as dangerous as a snapping turtle, but they can still bite hard. So a two man carry is safer for the people as well as the critter.