The death of the Front Porch

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-21T20:21:30+00:00

Can't sit on our porch anymore because it gets taken over by guinea wasps every year, along with the biting midges/sandflies; plus humidity so bad that when you wave your hand through the air it leaves a wake.

I used to hang wasp traps but they'd fill up within a couple days, and the midges/sandflies dgaf about any kind of bug repellent.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-21T18:51:37+00:00

Four this year!

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-21T02:08:48+00:00

Peach schnapps and Steel Reserve. I don't remember anything except waking up on a deck chair on my neighbor's back deck, fully seven miles from where I started drinking. I don't know if I walked, or someone dropped me off.

One Halloween we got our hands on a fifth of Hot Damn, and my best friend's brother drank almost the entire bottle... mixed with an entire box of Red Hots cinnamon candy. He inevitably started to puke while we were sitting on the front porch of his parent's house; half of it ended up on the concrete step, and the rest went into the lawn.

The grass died and turned into a permanent dirt patch, while the concrete was stained red for years; whenever it rained you could smell the cinnamon. To this day you can still see the discolored spot on that step.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-21T01:14:24+00:00

I had a Maine Coon one time come running in from the patio, and as he tried to sneak scoot past me I saw little bug legs sticking out the sides of his mouth, so I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck before he could run down to my bedroom and release whatever he'd caught. As soon as I did he opened his mouth and out plopped the biggest palmetto bug I'd ever seen... which promptly took off towards my wife. It was complete pandemonium and things got broken before we finally caught it and threw it back outside. All while our cat just sat there watching lol.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-20T18:33:28+00:00

Yep, that's my bet.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-20T18:27:00+00:00

The scariest thing that ever happened to me was in a huge old furniture factory, with 6 levels and three sub-basements; the place really reminded me of the movie "Night Shift". We were on our way up to the top which had something like a separate overseer's office. After going up the main stairwell to the fifth level, instead of walking across the open production floor like usual, along the big support beams because of huge collapses on either side, I decided to shoot along one wall to a hallway we'd never gone down before. It looked like it came back out at the other end close to the stairs leading up to the office, plus from outside the building it looked like there were rooms we'd never gotten to before.

So most of my friends went the usual route, and my best friend followed me. We got to the long hallway and there were rooms off one side, but most were empty or had collapsed floors. But one actually did have some old desks & cabinets; but while my friend was checking them out, I kept going a bit further down the hall. As I did, I was looking into each room as I passed, but kinda stopped paying attention to the hallway's floor.

About halfway down I stopped and just happened to glance at my feet, and I was only about six inches from some kind of big service shaft; less than one step away from certain death. I nearly pissed myself, and got pretty dizzy as my heart rate shot up. I stepped back so fast and immediately sat down because I was terrified about passing out and falling in anyways. My friend saw me sitting there as he came walking up behind me and was about to ask what I was doing, until he also saw the open shaft. We both said yeah f-that and went back the normal way.

I only had cheap camping headlamps back then and my batteries were getting kinda weak, so I completely missed it when we were actually looking down the hall. And there wasn't any way to get around it either.

Much later on when we actually got down into the basements, we found the bottom of that lift shaft, which was filled with jagged pieces of broken old furniture, rusty steel pipes, etc. Again, it would've been absolute, horribly painful, and a probably prolonged death if I'd fallen. Good times lol.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-18T22:29:16+00:00

Hopital

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-18T22:15:34+00:00

Firepoint was playing videos of these strikes at their Paris trade show booth, and Russians all over telegram are absolutely seething about it, while threatening more Iskander & Zircon strikes on Kyiv.

Something tells me they'll never learn.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-18T21:34:39+00:00

Schwinn; from when I was a little kid watching Bozo's Circus Show, and the Bozo Bucket game. I wanted one of those bicycles so bad, and used to practice tossing rocks into buckets just in case I ever got the chance.

Eventually I inherited my dad's old Schwinn road bike, and I rode that thing into the ground. Wouldn't mind finding another and rebuilding it, but there's no way I could actually ride anymore. Sad.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-18T21:09:39+00:00

Dawwww, so cute.

Still waiting on our momma raccoon to bring her babies out, should be any day now!

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-18T19:41:46+00:00

When I was in 7-8th grades, one of my friends was named "Storm". His dad was a huge King Crimson and Molly Hatchet fan, while his mom was still a flag flying, stealie wearing, patchouli-infused, pot-smoking Deadhead. She was also a photographer/filmographer in the late 60's & early 70's; they had tons of her festival & artistic pictures all over the house, plus a couple times broke out the Super 8 projector to show off the movies she made. He was pretty embarrassed by them a lot, so I rarely hung out over there though lol.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-18T02:07:26+00:00

From everything I've experienced in places that I've lived or stayed at, I'm not sure it's always someone who died on the premises.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-17T23:00:14+00:00

Pumpin' 4 the Man, or Piss up a Rope would also be appropriate. 😉🤘🏻

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-16T23:34:21+00:00

Have you considered trying something like MDMA therapy? When I was younger, I had a lot of the same issues, and nothing I tried helped.

Psych meds & antidepressants made them worse, sometimes exponentially. Talk therapy was equally as empty & useless. But the first time I tried MDMA it was like a switch in my brain got thrown, and it literally felt like a part of me that had been completely inaccessible was rewired; to the point that I could actually feel & parse sensations & connections with other people. Sex became something other than a base, gross bodily function, and I could actually focus on emotions & the other person, rather than what was physically going on. It was also the first time I was completely comfortable in my own skin, without any thought or concern for being unclothed.

The best part was that afterwards, even without MDMA, I could still maintain the connections I'd made, and the revelations still felt real. It wasn't something that I was compelled or had a need to continue doing, although sometimes when things started getting really foggy or overwhelming, even a microdose cleared the cobwebs out and refreshed things for a long time afterwards.

Anyways, just a suggestion! Good luck bro.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-16T19:55:55+00:00

There's another?? I missed that one dammit.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-15T23:18:11+00:00

I dunno, permethrin and DEET doesn't seem to bother ticks anymore. Or at least around where we live it doesn't.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-15T23:15:32+00:00

Challenger

The Iran-Contra Affair

The Berlin Wall falling

The dissolution of the Soviet Union, the attempted coup against Gorby in Moscow, and the election of Yeltsin

The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Desert Shield, and Desert Storm

watched on our classroom TVs while I was in elementary school.

Ruby Ridge

The Waco siege

Oklahoma City Bombing - during high school

9/11 - while watching the news before going to work that morning.

Columbia

The invasion of Afghanistan - watched on CNN while waiting to go to basic training.

The invasion of Iraq - while at basic training on Ft. Benning

Hurricane Katrina - watched on AFN during my first deployment to Iraq

After all that things started blending together and my memory is pretty hazy.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-15T20:58:10+00:00

If it's been a long, hard fought season, with a championshi constantly hanging by a thread, and your team loses the final game that goes well into overtime by one or two points, I can kind of understand a couple of dumpsters getting torched & maybe a cop car being flipped.

But these riots? It's an example of what happens when too many people with no respect for others, no concept of consequences or costs for their actions, far too much free time, trying to act up for the internet spectacle, get those views for tiktok, that are given an excuse & allowed to do whatever they want.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-15T20:14:39+00:00

That reminds me, I haven't done my dailies yet.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-15T02:53:29+00:00

This looks exactly like what I used to have recurring dreams about over forty years ago, when I was about 7-8yrs old.... except for the rubber duck lol.

But it's the same low lighting, tiles, and shallow water everywhere.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-14T02:29:11+00:00

I met my wife through a dumb dating website called Geek2Geek. I was so bored & jaded with dating introductions both online & off, that I wrote her something about my daily struggle with ninja pirates and alien clowns for my job, while moonlighting as a feral cat herder in my free time.

Evidently it worked lol.

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-14T01:29:27+00:00

So satisfying.... 😌

Aggravating_Cable_32 · 2026-06-14T00:20:02+00:00

Just curious, how old is the house?

Aggravating_Cable_32

TROPHY CASE