Was it different in other parts of the world or something? When I was growing up, if you could hear a dial tone, incoming calls would receive a busy signal.

It’s the armpit of America. You can tell you crossed the state line because of the smell. The rest of the state gets… better, but that’s a low bar.

(I grew up in New York and honestly I’d even take Jersey over where I live now.)

Yeah, I’ve got that too. But confidence leads to complacency. I’ve thankfully never had it happen when it mattered, but on a couple of occasions I’ve found myself not being hypervigilant when I normally would be. It’s back on once I notice, but it only takes one slip up.

Most of these cases also involve a change in routine. You go about your normal day, feeling the way you normally do, because your mind has forgotten that something is different. Trusting your instinct to overcome that just isn’t a foolproof plan. I mean there is no foolproof plan, but there’s also no harm in taking a little extra precaution in your routine like putting your shoe or your wallet in the back seat.

… is that Dean Cain?

The biggest thing that most of those people have in common is that they think it couldn’t happen to them.

I don’t think it’s because the bet is different so much as it’s because the bet is against the person rolling. I’m betting that that person is going to “lose”. It’s just bad vibes.

But yeah, obviously my bet didn’t affect the outcome. That just makes it funnier that it worked out that way.

The time I won at craps.

I don’t gamble. I’ll bet on things or play games of chance for money on occasion, but putting my money on a losing proposition isn’t my idea of a good time. When I go to a casino I go to the poker tables and that’s it.

The whole culture about it just seems so self-defeating and depressing. The superstition, chasing the high of that one-in-a-million lucky event. It’s not for me.

My older brother is mostly the same way, with one notable exception: craps. He’d been talking it up to me for years, telling me how it’s the most fun he’s ever had in a casino, and I should just try it with him and see what it’s like.

It seems too complicated, I told him. He said that you can just bet the Pass Line, which basically means you’re betting that whoever is rolling the dice doesn’t roll a seven. It’s a social activity, he explained, because the whole table is betting the Pass Line and rooting for each other.

The way he described it, a group of a strangers drinking, cheering for each other on their wins, commiserating with each other on their losses, I could almost start to see the appeal.

I downloaded an app and started asking him questions, which he answered patiently. Eagerly even.

Then I saw it.

“What’s the ‘Don’t Pass Line’?”

“It’s a bet against the person rolling the dice. Nobody really bets the Don’t Pass Line. It’s a dick move.”

A plan formed in my mind. “Ok, I’ll play.”

That night, I’m sitting at the craps table. To my right, my brother. To his right, our little sister. They sit me on the far left so I can get a feel for it before it’s my turn to roll.

The rest of the table is a smattering of dead-eyed gamblers. They looked preemptively disappointed, but ready to be amazed. Like they were ready to get caught up in a run of good luck, but they weren’t going to bring it themselves. Not the party I was promised, but there was some promise there.

First up, my sister. She rolls to set the point. We all put our chips on the Pass Line. Some of the gamblers make more specific bets.

She rolls again, and we win! She rolls again and again, and we keep winning. I see the spirits lifting around the table. There’s talking, laughing, cheering, free liquor, free money, and suddenly I get it.

Eventually my sister rolls a seven and her turn ends, but that’s ok because she already won the table a shitload of money. I’m up like $150 myself.

The table knows us a little by now. I’m new, we’re all siblings, and surely my brother will continue the hot streak.

But a plan is a plan.

My brother takes the dice and rolls the point. Everyone places their chips. I place my chips.

The dealer asks me, “Did you mean to put your chips on the Don’t Pass Line?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I meant to do.”

Silence. Then my sister: “You’re an asshole.”

My brother rolls again: seven. The Don’t Pass Line wins me a couple bucks.

I take the dice and proceed to go on a mini hot streak myself. I win like another fifty bucks, but the table never recovers. The mood is dead. I killed it.

That was probably twelve years ago. To this day, if it comes up, my sister will only call me an asshole again. My brother won’t talk about it at all.

You can’t just knock someone out with a punch. That’s how it works in movies, not in real life.

I think we should use Pokémon metaphors to describe all human interactions.

My last drain snake broke off in the drain.

Get a decent drain snake. Maybe not the cheapest one on Amazon.

I got you.

I used to throw it away, but recently I started saving it, and it’s amazing.

Step 1: Cook bacon.

Step 2: Strain the grease. I use a tea strainer. You don’t have to do this, but it helps it last longer, because the bacon bits spoil before the grease does.

Step 3: Pour it into a small tub. I use an old spreadable butter tub that has masking tape on the top and sides with “BACON GREASE” written on it, so I don’t accidentally use it instead of butter.

Step 4: Store it in the refrigerator.

Step 5: Use that shit. You can use it in most places you’d use butter or oil.

• Caramelizing onions? Slap a dollop of bacon grease into the pan first.

• Pancakes? Pancakes with a soupçon of bacon.

• Eggs? Obviously.

• Grilled cheese? Holy shit, use bacon grease. It’s so fucking good.

It behaves a lot like butter. When it’s cold it stiffens up, but if you leave it out for a few minutes it softens and becomes spreadable.

Whenever I cook more bacon I top up my bacon grease tub. My cooking has gotten a little bit better this year, and it’s all because of bacon grease.

Exactly. I’m using what I know of gravity. The mattress should be resting on top of something. If we’re looking down, it is. If we’re looking up, it’s floating in mid-air, apparently wedged against both walls even though it doesn’t look firmly wedged on the right side.

I’m not the one being pedantic. Whatever that object is, it’s not clear that it’s a banister.

There’s no banister in the picture. It looks like maybe there’s a support for a banister, but that doesn’t magically make the tops of the steps into the sides of the steps.

I got told to “ignore previous instructions” because I said I liked looking at a painting. I think that’s just going to be an insult now.

But eugenics applied to animals is just selective breeding. Or in this specific case you might call it natural selection (gasp).

There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but it does suggest the existence of evolution, which doesn’t align ideologically with the Republican party.

“no, there really isn’t a celebrity I’d go gay for.”

Not even for the story?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, and Brooke Rollins, secretary of Agriculture, have floated the notion that instead of culling birds infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, farmers should let it spread through flocks. The idea is that by doing this, farmers can “identify the birds, and preserve the birds, that are immune to it,” Kennedy told Fox News on March 11.

Ok, so where is this idea coming from ideologically? Are they trying to prove a point about their hands-off approach to COVID-19? Or is it just that they were always planning to do nothing, and they’re trying to rationalize it?

Bottom.

1. The risers on the stairs are not visible.

2. The wear on the carpet goes right to the edge. That’s consistent with people stepping on it, not kicking it on the way up.

3. If it’s at the top, the mattress doesn’t appear to have any of its weight resting on a step. It could be so wedged in that it’s being held in place, and that it was wedged that way by someone awkwardly pushing at the ends of it in a way that wouldn’t seem to give them enough leverage to do that. But the obvious explanation is more likely, that it’s at the bottom of the stairs.

There’s nothing wrong with carpeted stairs.