Linda Tirado
@KillerMartinis
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author, writer, photographer. backwards in heels and half blind to boot. absolutely no time for your bullshit but all the time in the world if you need a friend
Joined May 2011
And frankly, whenever it is I don’t wake up again. Wrap my tits in red silk and if you’ve got some spare pearls give me the long ones. I’d like to die with my middle fingers extended if I can’t live to be ninety.
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So there’s like eight of us that lost an eye during these protests and we’re starting to find and talk to each other and it is *hilarious*. Three of us are going camping to clear our heads a bit and just process together and god bless the internet that makes that possible.
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an update: I am permanently blind in my left eye, and the docs absolutely refuse to let me go back to work for they say six weeks. I’m definitely not allowed to be near smoke or gas. Usually if I had to stay home I’d spend a lot of time amplifying folk but reading hurts today.
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Okay because people are awful and we can’t even take a day off it comes to my attention that some folks are using my injury to argue that people should stop protesting. Fuck that, stay in the streets double for me, cause I can’t. It was police who shot me, not protesters.
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So my kids asked me if they could get Grimace milkshakes and I said yes but if they did that meme I’d never buy them another milkshake again. And lily just looks at me, horrified, and in a low voice says *how did you know about that*. Wisdom of elders, kid. Wisdom of elders.
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So, uh, I’m pretty sure this whole thing just radicalized my kids. And it makes sense because I also would suddenly be a hardcore anti fascist if police had shot out my mom’s eye when I was seven. But, like. If you think I’m hard, wait’ll you see what my girls do when they grow.
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But it wasn’t my photography eye so it’s not career-ending. I can still see flowers and sunsets, just maybe I won’t be able to tell how far away they are. So I’m gonna keep reporting from Minneapolis until we figure out how to get me and my car home cause I can’t drive anymore.
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I hat we think happened is I took a rubber bullet to the face. It exploded my eyeball, which has now been patched back together but who knows if it’ll need more surgery. My vision is gone no matter what it winds up looking like scar wise.
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But today I’m taking off. I earned a cocktail or three and maybe a new audiobook. Tomorrow I will write.
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Hey folks, took a tracer found to the face (I think, given my backpack) and am headed into surgery to see if we can save my left eye. Am wisely not gonna be on Twitter while I’m on morphine. Stay safe folks
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So I’m at a pub and this tinder date or whatever couple is behind me and of course he’s an American dude and I hear him say “do you know who Jordan Peterson is” and I whipped my head around so fast and he made eye contact and changed the subject. Dude we will bust you *anywhere*.
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It was protesters who got me to the hospital, who gave me medical supplies and acted as my eyes when I couldn’t see past the blood and swelling. I am not your establishment’s argument. And I am happy to tell you so directly.
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Mom voice is real. I just left a concert with a friend and there were some dudes just being clowns nearby the car. I simply got my outside voice on and said “gentlemen, I need some help, could you help me load this walker I to the trunk” and goddamn all three of them ma’am Ed me.
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No, when police shot my gear that was property damage. I am currently shopping for another camera. When they shot out my eye I went blind. Turns out one cannot merely call the eye store. Things are things, people are not things.
@KillerMartinis Property damage IS HURTING PEOPLE - the ones who have spent their lives building a business !.
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About twice a year we learn to just give poor people money.
WOOOW. A Canadian research project gave homeless people $7,500 each — the results were 'beautifully surprising'. Turns out: basic income for the homeless pays for itself. It's free money, because 'the project saved the shelter system $8,100 per person'. '
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It turns out @OGJohnTee and @notbalin are WAY TALLER than me. Also they’re both fucking awesome.
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I just tried to call one of the other people who lost an eye and I got a message back “protesting right now phone battery low call later” . Idk who thought we’d stop but lol fuck y’all we’re going harder.
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Dunno who y’all thought you were fucking around with but I’m the girl that loses an eye and goes back to work the next day. I ain’t got time for nonsense.
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So everyone has been asking about whether I’ll be suing:. Case 0:20-cv-01338 has just been filed in the US district court in Minnesota.
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I wrote a book which was published in 2014 about how much it sucked to be poor in the world’s wealthiest country. It’s been translated into seven languages and is taught as text in a dozen universities. I’ve just had an email about my overuse of the word “fuck.”. Some thoughts:.
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(Anyone else in the club is welcome just we haven’t been able to talk to them yet, but imagine if this turns into like some kind of police-related blindness event in the woods).
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Y’all don’t realize how easy it is for me these days to fuck up conservatives. And this gonna be a fucking thread. Dan Crenshaw wears an eyepatch for aesthetic reasons. Not medical. He “noticed people noticed” that he has a glass eye. So he did the more obvious thing. Google it.
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Your periodic reminder that the quote is actually “the customer is always right in matters of taste” which is the most hilariously bitchy way to say that actually most customers are wrong but let ‘em buy gross shit if they want to pay for it.
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Honestly, truly honestly. One of the most humbling things about traveling overseas and learning what literally everyone that isn’t American takes as a standard basic human rights practice. It’s the term “duty of care”. Everyone but us knows this.
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Police don’t have the highest suicide rates by profession. Nor is policing amongst the most physically dangerous. Policing is, however, the profession with the highest rates of inflicted domestic violence. When cops are anxious, data tells us they hurt others, not themselves.
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It is remarkable how quickly we've moved to normalize Trump. Resist that impulse. This isn't normal. None of this is normal.
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It is 3am and a dude has just messaged me to let me know I’ll probably still be fuckable even with the scars. One cannot simply make the men stop.
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Photographer love is real. I’ve been walking around Berlin for a couple hours and I see a dude running with a 70-200 and I flag him down. Guy thinks I’m a tourist or asking for money, tries to skirt. I say “where do I go for not-shitty architecture photo spots”. Guy stops short.
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If you fucking think that the problem with my book, which largely focused on the abject abuse of workers, was the fact that my language was salty may I invite you to go kindly fuck yourself sideways with a rusty grapefruit spoon and my I also just say.
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Folks I really appreciate the well wishes but a white lady losing an eye is not the injury we need to be focused on here. Keep in mind that folks are protesting the extrajudicial killing of black and brown people. Center that fact in your coverage.
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Your reminder that if you take an Uber or a Lyft today, you’re crossing a picket line. Friends don’t let friends break strikes.
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Anyway now seems a good time to review:. I would not have been shot had police not felt free to shoot journalists. I would not have been in Minneapolis had police not killed george Floyd. Police would not kill people so much if they thought they would be held to account for it.
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Today in “oh. Oh, no.”. I let my kids order each other Christmas presents. Like handed them my phone and let them order and then got on a zoom call . Today we got a gumball machine, five pounds of sandbox sand and a thing I can only describe as a 1.5ft-large egg.
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No worries, I’ve been back at work for five hours now. My job is to witness and they only got my left eye. My right one is good to go.
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Well, it happened. My full-on MAGA father, 84 years old, asked if I’d seen about Trump’s getting shot in the head. I told him that not a single person I know that’s taken or been around someone who’s taken a headshot had ever seen one bleed so daintily before.
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I STILL HAVE MY AUDIO RECORDER!!!!! I thought I’d lost it last night but nope, shot me put it in my bag safely. Which means I have audio of myself getting shot, this career is super weird.
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Hi it’s me. Thanks for all the lovely wishes. Here’s what to do with that energy: hit up your next local council meeting and give them hell for me. Tell them I said I sent you. <3.
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My eldest was terrified that we wouldn’t be able to leave the house or that the officer who tagged me was gonna come finish the job and I had to explain to her that I’m white so the only time a cop will shoot me is if I’m working, so now she’s extra mad because that’s racist.
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These girls are gonna come out the gate swinging is all I can say. And I can’t blame them.
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Folks, I lost an eye during a pandemic because I believe so strongly in protest and the importance of accurate media coverage of it. It is vanishingly unlikely that any talking points will dissuade me from this view. Please stop trying; I am aware of moderate philosophy already.
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Headed out for my second surgery, wish me luck folks!.
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I’m at least 1000% more addicted to twitter right now because at some point that dude is gonna unplug all the servers in an epic rage fit and I don’t want to miss the apocalypse.
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So you tell me if a rapist is likely to rape a chick again if he knows she won't tell the cops because she'd lose her health insurance.
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someone has dmed me to say that I should be careful about vocally supporting trans folks. 1. Clearly you’re new here, and .2. Fuck off into the sun, come back, fuck off into the sun again, repeat eternally, and.3. Here we support marginalized folk because we are not bigots.
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My younger tends to ponder before she talks so all she’s had to say generally is that she’s glad I didn’t get hit in the middle of the forehead because then I’d be dead and she’d be sad. But I heard her talking to her sister saying fuck the police so she’s thinking about things.
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I mean, guy had heard my accent, we’re in city center, it’s mostly tourists. And what I will NOT be having tonight is you fucking with some Irish chick with that bullshit like you know philosophy.
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No funeral. No burial. Anything that could reasonably be harvested will be and my skeleton is useful as a case study in spinal anatomy. What you want to do is blast you some early 80s punk and raise a glass. Ain’t need travel. -L.
@savadler Please give us a heads up about eventual funeral arrangements. I’ll fucking drive to Tennessee to attend and pay my respects.
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For those amongst you who aren’t going to bed in the bathtub: may you never understand why I’m so incredibly pissed right now. I’m real happy you get your pretty lights and all though.
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And that’s complex for her cause she doesn’t want me to get hurt anymore but she’s grappling with the notion that everyone doesn’t get that and she’s trying to find words for her upset so her solution is that she now wants to go protest with Black kids as like a bodyguard.
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Some of you seem to have the misconception that I said anything. I did not. I just looked at the man. Like “oh hi did you think you could just…fly a couple thousand miles and say whatever you wanted to women” and he got the message.
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I think the funniest thing about the “shock, horror, you mean people who went to good universities might also be prone to cults” thing is. Have you ever been in a room with someone who went to Harvard for example. They’re *primed* for cults. They exhibit those behaviors.
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So a tiny slice of disabled humanity. I wandered past a barber shop that had a sign out front which said “do you need a haircut” and I did so I went in because why not. Dude cut my hair WITH MY EYEPATCH ON so he could see how the elastic would work with the cut. I nearly cried
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Every bit of data that we have about productivity tells us that making these people miserable is one of the most effective ways to keep them from getting things done.
Making Trump officials miserable isn't going to accomplish anything. Vote them out if you want change.
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I’ve just realized that if I get an eye patch I’ll never need a sleep mask again cause I can just move that patch over.
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I am also mindful that these verdicts are paid by the taxpayer rather than the police budget and so a substantial amount of any recovery, after I’ve paid the bills I’ve incurred for this and the like, will be donated to local community initiatives. Let’s go.
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Stop killing people and then nobody has to protest to explain to you that killing people is wrong, you amoral incompetent.
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Up side, I do not have the plague, they tested me for covid and that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Fucked world where I’m like “well they might have exploded my eyeball but at least it got me basic medical care!”.
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The two older ones even complimented the one who helped, and came over to check whether it was a two person job. Lovely young men, also some type of hooligan which is what young people do before they grow up. Point is most people are decent unless they’re not. But most are.
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Do you know what I’ve just learned from the police office outside my polling place. It’s that I can say “sorry not a fan of cops” and point at my eyepatch and THEY GET IT IMMEDIATELY.
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I was 31 when I wrote that book and I was young enough I might consider your bullshit moralizing dressed up as criticism. You missed your window. Fuck off.
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And I’ll be fucked if you’re gonna tell me some respectability bullshit, like I’m somehow harming my own motherfucking prospects. You’ll notice I’ve won every award short of a Pulitzer and I’m not even 40. I don’t lack a vocabulary, I lack patience for people like you.
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For your own health I hope to Christ’s actual mother that you never present yourself in public in a place where you expect people to serve you because I never allowed people to fuck with food in kitchens I ran but I can’t guarantee the state of any others, and further.
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Hi, I'm your friendly neighborhood expert. It is 100% true that the condition of poverty actually makes your brain work differently! But let's dive into that rather than leave it at that top-line takeaway.
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Folks I just left my bed and my room and walked to a gas station and got my own coffee for the first time since I got shot and small victories but it’s pretty fucking good.
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So. As I said this morning in Congress, today is the one month anniversary of the last day I woke up with two working eyes. I have not gone a single day since then without doing interviews/panels/being a research subject/being a witness. Y’all. Getting shot is fucking TIRING.
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In what world, whether this temporal one or the later one, did you think that your balls were big enough to come up to me and tell me to control my motherfucking mouth. The working class, by which I mean people you consider below you, don’t owe you shit. You should pay better.
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Guys I just realized that now I have like an unbeatable excuse to refuse to parallel park.
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@anaismitchell Unequivocally that nobody expected an immediate answer to anything. You could duck a call or wait to return a letter until you knew what you really meant to say. One had time to edit. Even by the time text was ubiquitous it cost money; nobody expected you to waste thirty cents.
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Dear everyone: please give me like at least two weeks to get used to this before you start telling me how to refer to myself, my injury, how I was injured or what life will be like for me now. I assure you I can decide these things for myself in due time, I’m a writer, I do words.
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I’ve just poured whiskey onto the counter and learned something about depth perception. The glass, it is further away than it looks.
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There is this weird thing happening where folk are trolling me and like, y’all must be new here cause if a shot to the eyeball ain’t stop me I really doubt your misspelled attempt at an own is gonna be the thing that ruins my day. Like, why bother?.
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I’d have hoped you would have good goddamned well learned by now not to worry about my filthy fucking language - I bet you have both your eyes so I question what you’ve done for the general good of your neighbors, which I’m sure you’ve read about in the New Testament and also.
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But how intellectually hollow must your life be when you read a book that’s been out for a decade and you have to tell the author that you disagree with their linguistic choices. This is what you do with your time, really?. Get a fucking hobby, you utter waste of sentience.
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Never had a face tattoo but am seriously considering getting “try again” over this scar on my left eyebrow.
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Turns out, he’s heard of me and just in an instant he’s giving me points to save in my phone to go to. All photographers are not the same but all of us are in a very tiny club. And I love that about all of us.
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In short, I’d say get fucked but we all know that’s incredibly unlikely. So I’ll simply say I hope all your bananas go bad early and no avocados ever ripen properly, and further that you never have access to anyone ever again. Because you can’t be trusted with basic humanity.
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People keep earnestly putting me into blue lives matter groups and asking me aren’t I glad the police were there to protect me when I got shot, and this is making me cackle perversely.
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Put another way: they couldn’t have shot out my eye if they weren’t shooting at all. And the people they’re shooting at are folk protesting decades of violent white supremacy. We know this cause not a month ago a bunch of MAGA folks also protested and nobody got shot.
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Out of surgery folks, wound up with a general anesthesia unexpectedly so bear with me if I tweet some weird shit in the middle of the night.
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Welp, I’ll need at least one more major surgery but the doctors are pleased so far so that’s good. I guess we’re gonna find out how much it costs to go blind in America.
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I think in today’s episode of Rape Month, But All Year Long men will be shocked (shocked I say) to find how many women in their forties and fifties had something happen to them and never told anyone but would scream that shit to the heavens if the dude tried to go national.
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That man has no medical need for a fucking eyepatch, although I take away nothing from how he lost his eye. That’s an aesthetic choice, which he might feel is needful. I’m just saying that he’s on record saying that protesters shouldn’t bitch about the same injury he had.
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I publicly said I was mad I couldn’t get an abortion and now I’m undergoing a far more painful and drawn-out miscarriage and men in my mentions said I was personally inflicting the holocaust. If you wondered where the discourse is.
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Come and tell me about fucking tax cuts again. Tell me about job creation and the invisible hand of the fucking market and Individualism.
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So I’m currently having a miscarriage, which isn’t terribly physically comfortable . I would like to talk to the manager of the men who had anything to say about abortions, please. Who is in charge.
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So me and this nurse have gotten into a gallows humor contest to see which is worse, a nurse or a journo. I think since I’m the one with the exploded eye I win by default.
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I am out of hospital! Still covered in tear gas and blood, kinda pissed that I can’t go get like a steak or a super artery-clogging cheeseburger cause everything is shut down. But there’s a couple beers in the fridge and there’s worse things than a lack of cheese fries.
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He’s just out with two bodies on him doing his job but all I had to do was prove I didn’t want money or directions to whatever tourists do here and oh man dude becomes an absolute font of wisdom. “Ok so even with your machine you can turn left and that’s real Berlin”.
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Really fucking weird that people would take time to tell me I’ve gained weight. Like yes since I got shot in the head I haven’t exercised much?.
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Announcement: I have made a rather major life choice. Today in a shop a first grader broke away from his parents to come up to me and ask conspiratorially if I was, in fact, an undercover pirate. I’m tattooing a skull and crossbones on my arm so I can roll back my sleeve for kids.
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I will individually knock your ass flat and then I will fight like hell to make a doctor treat you just so I can hit you again.
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“Duty of care” means that for whatever reason you were responsible to be sure that someone else was as okay as it is possible to make them. American jurisprudence could never.
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Rather have rubber in my eye from a projectile than in my mouth from a boot, but there’s no accounting for taste.
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It turns out I am smallishly famous amongst opticians, just went to get glasses and the eye doc knew me already. Also gave me a helluva discount which is how I now own my first-ever designer frames for as much as I’ve ever paid for shitty plastic ones.
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This is starting to make rounds so to be clear: I’m media, was working as a photojournalist when I got shot. John and Balin were protesting. It’s still the first amendment either way tbh but it’s this damn journalism thing, I like having records straight.
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Blew my motherfucking mind when I left home and just regular people talked casually about what they owed each other. Like, there’s a basic expectation that folks would look out for each other and damn the torpedoes.
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So I live with a jarhead, have had two kids with this marine. He is 100% losing his shit over here, turns out the commander in chief can’t insult the corps and have that go well.
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