Hanguang-jun, stop ignoring your poor husband!

Abandoned Tori Gate found in Japanese Tunnel

this is a confession to the star wars fandom because I have to get this off my chest. last summer just for fun I taught myself to read aurebesh and. you fanartists have Got to Continue putting the most Hilarious stuff into the background of your art because it is literally my favorite thing

here’s a couple of excellent things I’ve read since I started keeping a list just last month:

- “I hate drawing lightsabers”

- “Idk what to put here”

- “stupid fucking sign”

- “eat paste, it’s good”

- an entire news article on a phone screen which I actually found really impressive

- a few funny misspellings but the best one so far was ahsoka somehow becoming “asock”

- wanted poster of obi wan that read “wanted for fashion crimes”. the caption translated it as “wanted for high treason”. like blatantly lying to my face. love it.

- door on a ship was labeled “cake storage”

- “shopping list: frogs, hair gel, lightsaber polish”

and my personal favorite:

- “if you’re reading this you’re a fucking nerd”

thank you scherz et al. for bringing us the frogs Mini ature, Mini mum and of course, the Mini scule

Glad to see we made one scientist very happy

People gathered around lava, Iceland.

Honestly I feel like this sums up humans quite well

That’s a massive flow of molten rock burning at Fuck Off and Die Degrees Fahrenheit but rather than, you know, running away or anything like that, humans just grab their friends and gather around to watch the pretty glowing Water Rocks of Pain

Welcome to Mimic Ikea! Don't worry about it.

is Mimic Ikea one large mimic housing many smaller mimics?

Don't worry about it

This porno didn’t fuck around

there’s… a lot to take in here…

I was so flummoxed by this I had to learn more, so I took to Google, where I found this blog post by Dan Cardone, who was a grip on this film. Some highlights:

“FORTUNATELY ONE OF THE MODELS WAS ALSO A FULLY QUALIFIED NURSE” my god I am LOSING my MIND

You’re an ancient Greek man coming home from 4 months of war to find your wife 3 months pregnant. Now you’ve embarked on a solemn quest: to punch Zeus in the face.

Soon after you begin your quest, you encounter another man in a similar situation. You decide to join forces, as two mortal men stand a better chance at punching Zeus than one. Two villages over, you encounter a woman who had relations with Zeus and was left with a highly aggressive half-boar half-man offspring. She too feels your anger and offers to join your quest. By the time you reach Mount Olympus, you’ve amassed a large and formidable army of cuckolded/ravished mortals, demigods with daddy issues, mythical creatures with scores to settle, and a seamstress who you’re pretty sure is Hera in disguise. Zeus never stood a chance.

What I find best about this scenario is that the original wife probably expected to be murdered for her infidelity at worst or have her relationship with her husband ruined as he grew to resent her baby, at best.

Instead this man looked at his beloved and said, “who did it?”

And she replied “Zeus,” accepting he probably wouldn’t believe her.

And then he sighed, strapped his sandals back on and said, “I’ll be back before the baby is born.”

“Where are you-?”

“The lord of the sky came into my house, molested my wife in my bed and ate my food. I am going to settle the score.”

“Darling, he’ll kill you.”

“He may try, if he would like.”

You’re so right, that IS the best part.

I’m personally caught up on the seamstress.

“The pathway up Olympus is guarded by dozens of traps and perils strong enough to thwart even the Titans. How are we going to get past all of…” the shepherd boy with golden eagle feathers gestured uselessly at the slopes above them, particularly the herd of eight-legged goats snorting fire.

“There’s a way around,” Yiorgos said, though he was not specifically asked. But he had been the first to begin the march on Olympus, and so felt obligated to take the lead whenever possible, “In the stories there’‘s always a way around whatever obstacles the Gods place in our way.”

He hadn’t meant the words to come out as a question, but they had that lilt to them none-the-less. And even though he hadn’t meant it to be a question, much less a question directed at anyone specific, it was directed at one all the same. Just as the eagle-feathered shepherd boy’s had.

“Way I heard it,” a woman’s voice said. Rough with the Mycenaean Greek equivalent of a backwoods accent, and with the depth of a farmer’s wife who straps cattle to her back to carry to market, “there’s a back path. Hidden behind an invisible door that only one key in the world can open.”  Everyone’s eyes had turned to the broad older woman in heavy shawl sitting amidst supplies in the foremost cart. “Least, that’s what my grand-mammy always told me.” she added after a moment of dozens of eyes on her.

“Oh, we were so foolish!” That was Lydia, a lithe waif of a woman, many months pregnant, sitting opposite the seamstress in the wagon. “Of course there’d be a.. a quest. They’d keep such a key in the depths of Tartarus or in the golden chariot of Apollo, or, or-”

“Or”, the older woman cut her off in a voice both firm, but much gentler than she used on anyone else, “he’s like all husbands and has been promising to move the key someplace better for the past three thousand years but hasn’t gotten around to it.”  She gestured vaguely to the hillside, “Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was under, say, that bush right over there.”

It was. Of course. And everyone in the caravan agreed that it had been a very lucky and wise guess from the nameless woman and for the upteenth time since she first sat herself down in the front wagon and announced she was coming along with no further explanation, each and every last member very purposefully gave no further thought to the matter.

Do ya'll ever think about how every character in MDZS is living in a radically different genre of story?

Cause yeah, sure Wei Wuxian is living in a danmei fantasy novel with strong romantic comedy elements, but if you slide over a bit Lan Wangji is living a serious and heady drama about regret, loss, yearning, the passage of time, and ultimately atonement.

Scooch on over to Xichen and your in a straight up Greek tragedy, right down to the parable about hubris and trust. Jin Guangyao is living meanwhile in a political dark fantasy al'la Game of Thrones, Nie Huaisang is in a Gothic moody Monte Cristo-esque reflection on revenge and deception, and while Lan Sizhuhi and Jin Ling are living in two VERY different YA fantasy books ('magic boarding school/secret orphan of destiny' and 'Steven Universe style coming of age/discovering all your family are some flavor of evil and magic' respectively).

Everyone connected to Yi City is living inside a dark psychological thriller/horror flick, except for Xue Yang who is in a Found Family/Enemies to Lover fic right up until he isn't.

Jiang Cheng's entire life has been one long soap opera, and it is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon.

an au where lwj is a florist and wwx is the guy coming in twice a week to buy flowers. every time lwj delivers to the same workplace, to the same guy (who is kinda rude tbh and lwj has no idea why wwx likes him) but each time wwx gets different flowers. this goes on for like weeks, with wwx working his way through lwj’s entire flower selection and lwj is kinda sad when wwx buys the last flower he hasn’t tried yet bc he’s probably not going to come back but he does! he comes back in the next week with a lil handwritten list of flowers and just keeps picking from them instead of from random. 

it takes a while for lwj to cotton on but eventually he notices that the guy wwx sends the flowers to always starts sneezing or sniffling the second he accepts them. added onto the fact that there’s always a group of his colleagues who always coo over the ~romance~ of him getting flowers, meaning that he has to display them on his desk and can’t just throw them out, and lwj is downright suspicious. 

the next time wwx comes in lwj is like are you sending spite flowers?? and wwx is like yes. absolutely. 100%. he’s a massive dick and im getting revenge. lwj is like no im not harassing some random guy just so you can be petty and wwx is like nah nah jzx is my sister’s ex and he broke up with her for x dumb reason (probably soup related or he called her plain idk), you understand why i gotta do it right? and lwj does bc he was also very petty when jgy and lxc broke up.

so wwx keeps coming in and they keep sending spite flowers to jzx but then wwx comes in one day and is like they got back together ): ): ): and lwj is like oh,,,, does this mean you won’t need to buy more flowers? and wwx is like yeah i can’t do that anymore bc i’ll disappoint my sister but if jzx has to be her bf, i need someone to help show just how good a boyfriend should be and shame him for how much he sucks. lwj will you be my super amazing and completely out-of-my-league boyfriend? lwj is like are you asking me out of spite and wwx is like /: i’ve been flirting with you for months now, im not asking you out bc im being petty (side note: there was definitely a more convenient florist he could have gone to but he took one look at lwj and was like this is worth using up my entire lunchbreak). anyway they sort that shit out and are henceforth disgustingly in love and if it so happens to inspire jzx to be the best boyfriend he can be, well that’s irrelevant. 

anyway the first time the four of them get together lwj walks in with a bouquet of flowers and jzx just pales bc he recognises the flowers and during dinner lwj is like yeah im a florist and i met wwx when he bought flowers and jzx is doing everything he can not to like actually say anything bc he’s finally figured out who’s been sending him flowers the whole time. wwx just smiles pleasantly at him from across the table and asks if he’d like some more soup.

#asdfghjkl #omfg #Oh I live for this kind of content XD #This is so delightfully petty without being actually harmful #(altho rip WWX’s wallet XD) #amazing! #Good ideas! #Maybe JC is bankrolling it #Since he can’t participate directly? #Adds another layer of mystery to WWX when LWJ or an assistant or someone #LSZ?? LJY?? #Is like why tf are you spending so much money on flowers #And WWX is like Oh it’s not my money don’t mind #And the dinner the dinner omg XD #WHAT IF #LWJ mastercrafts a /huge bouquet #Of /every/ flower JZX is allergic to #Yanli loves it #bwahahaha #And WWX didn’t even have to ask him :D [via hiimherefortheuntamed]

hey! i saw your tags and i think that if jc were bankrolling it it probably would’ve gone something like this:

Jiang Cheng impatiently taps his fingers against the table, and pretends not to notice the way everyone steers well clear of his little corner of the café. He pulls his phone out and opens his chat with Wei Wuxian again. Just like the last time Jiang Cheng checked, the latest message from Wei Wuxian simply says ‘see you soon’. Jiang Cheng isn’t quite sure what Wei Wuxian’s definition of ‘soon’ is, but his own one doesn’t count twenty minutes late as ‘soon’.

Just as Jiang Cheng’s about to give up and go back to work, the front door slams open and Wei Wuxian runs in. He scans the room quickly, and then, having spotted Jiang Cheng, makes his way over to his table. Wei Wuxian drops into his chair, legs sprawling out. 

“Hey,” Wei Wuxian greets with a bright smile.

Jiang Cheng takes several deep breaths. When he’s convinced that he’s not going to kill his brother he says, “I’ve already ordered.”

Wei Wuxian nods along and then peers down at the table, taking in the half-eaten slice of cake and the empty coffee mug. Worried that Wei Wuxian is going to ask to try some of his cake, Jiang Cheng pointedly takes a bite and doesn’t offer any. Wei Wuxian doesn’t move.

When it becomes clear that Wei Wuxian has no intentions of budging, Jiang Cheng asks, “Are you not going to order?” 

“Nope!”

“Why not?” he demands, pulling the cake closer to himself.

Wei Wuxian hums and then tells him, with an undeserved amount of confidence, “I just felt like watching you eat today.”

Jiang Cheng is torn between cringing at the thought of his brother intently watching him eat his cake, and throttling Wei Wuxian because he actually thought that Jiang Cheng would fall for that.

“Bullshit,” Jiang Cheng enunciates, “what’s the real reason?”

Wei Wuxian immediately slumps against the table, and whines, “I went over my monthly budget.”

Jiang Cheng laughs at him.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Wei Wuxian complains.

“What else should I do?” Jiang Cheng retorts.

A sly look crosses Wei Wuxian’s face, one that Jiang Cheng doesn’t trust at all, and he says, “Give me money.”

“Nope. No. No way.”

“Come oooon, it’s for a good cause.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I am but a starving artist, and you are a rich man who can fund my vision,” Wei Wuxian tells him, a pleading look crossing his face. 

If he were his sister, Jiang Cheng would’ve immediately opened his wallet and given Wei Wuxian everything he had inside. Fortunately, Jiang Cheng thinks Wei Wuxian’s pouting face is stupid and not at all cute or endearing. He’s feeling magnanimous today though, and decides to play along with Wei Wuxian’s game anyway. 

“And what is your vision?” he asks. 

“Revenge on Jin Zixuan,” is Wei Wuxian’s immediate answer.

Jiang Cheng stares at him, but Wei Wuxian looks completely serious. When it becomes clear that Wei Wuxian is being genuine in his intentions, Jiang Cheng nods, and pulls out his wallet. 

“How much do you need?”

I think I grew too much on the internet to understand how some people have blog names.

Like, I'm from IRC and trans communities, if your username is bball24, that's your name. I assume your mom addresses you by that name and it reads the same on your driver's license and maybe even birth certificate l.

I never think "oh, best-tardis-in-the-galaxy is a blog run by some gal named Sarah!". No, if I think of the name at all, it's like obscure trivia. My good friend Ms. Best-tardis-in-the-galaxy has the government name 'sarah'. Perhaps she hasn't been able to change it yet, too much paperwork or something?

I just sometimes see people post things like "what's your blog name mean?" and I'm like "it's me. What else would it be? You mean kirk's-big-saggy-tits isn't your name?"

Basically it's something like Facebook's real name policy but from the other angle. I think everyone is named what their username is, not vice versa.

(and yes, my name is foone. My mom calls me that and it's what's on my license. Isn't that true for everyone?)

Humans have finally managed to land on Mars, only to find a locked safe buried in the Martian soil. The key is apparently on Earth, but no one knows where.

The galactic council watched on to see how humanity would handle the task, much as they had with several species before. What the test was supposed to show was whether or not a species of violent nature could ever be brought to work together. They finally picked something up, another ship already headed to Mars? Was it possible humans were that clever to have found the key, maybe it was more specialists and equipment to analyze the locked crate to ensure it was safe to open. A few minutes after landing, they got another broadcast from the red planet.

“This is the LockPickingLawyer and today I’ve got something quite special, this locked alien chest. First of all I have to thank everyone who recommended me for the job, I’m honored that you all thought of me. Now let’s get to work”

The council representatives were confused as they started analyzing the translation, before even getting through the name he spoke something haunting

“Normally I don’t say things like this but this lock is quite unique, however with no security pins it will still be quite quick.”

“There we go, a click on 3… “

All the species of the galactic council sat dumbfounded, they spent many galactic cycles refining and perfecting their study and in all their time not a singular race had tried this method. Click after click, even in such an intricate lock the human had only spent around five minutes tampering with it.

“There we go, now while I can’t open this as part of my video I can say that I at least have a clue what the key should look like in case it ever gets locked again. I admire the design choices and the fact that at least it was harder to get open than anything Master Lock has made”

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

at the rose city comic con panel this month a fan asked them (sean and elijah) if sam and frodo were in love and they said

Sean: .....yes. absolutely

Elijah: 100 percent.

Sean: dont tell rosie

Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"

Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.

And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.

what’s funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like ‘oh i can’t not fuck that.’

Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.

The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; they’re resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seems… demographically balanced? There certainly isn’t a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; there’s no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.

What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.

Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you don’t climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your father’s lover’s lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)

Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husband’s. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. It’s expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So she’s just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, they’re all hers. Yes, that’s fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? That’s really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her house… er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, that’s correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..

In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.

When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.

Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, they’re all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Sam’s kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.

No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.

are you kidding? Gandalf would WEAPONIZE his knowledge of Hobbit genealogy against outsiders

Since “pledge” kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesn’t tell anyone that the formation of Thorin’s Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Took’s Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his “bachelor” status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldn’t reasonably be denied by anybody.)

In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. It’s free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)

Gandalf never explained.

* see the post about the Old Took’s “enchanted diamond cufflinks” that obeyed the wearer’s commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire

@elodieunderglass wouldn't that make pippin both denethor's pledge-son-in-law, and (as pledge-brother to the king) probably outrank him?

Only through Boromir while Boromir was alive! Pippin’s familial claim through Boromir technically dissolved on Boromir’s death, as Denethor hadn’t been privy to it, and those bonds rarely stretch to a stranger when the person in the middle has died before introducing them; although Pippin, who was well-brought-up, perfectly and politely rectified the problem at once by simply swearing himself as Denethor’s pledge-son. but through his blood-cousinship to Frodo, who was older than Boromir, his status as the Took double-primarc (don’t ask) and the proximity-enhanced status-doubling effects of having a five-way cousin in Merry, Pippin was demonstrably higher status as a pledge-sibling and was also his own father-in-law and approved of himself. As such, he would have significantly raised Boromir’s social status and marital prospects in the Shire.

Inheritance follows parent-child pledge as the primary consideration, with matrilineal descent as the secondary. Pippin would have been bewildered to gradually understand that Denethor held his two sons in such odd and different standing :-/ hobbits don’t recognise kingship so it would’ve been very upsetting and disappointing to Pippin to understand how Denethor stood in position of sworn-father to a whole city of people without even being slightly fair to his younger hearth-son. Aragorn is demonstrably much better dad-material and therefore had Pippin’s vote. Pippin, by virtue of being an excellent father-in-law to a spectacularly promising young son-in-law, also considered himself a better candidate for king of Gondor than Denethor, by outranking him in Dad Competence - but was too busy by the time he realized this to point this out .

Ironically, the events in which Pippin realized this made Faramir his own hearth-son - so Pippin won in the end and took a great interest in ceremonially approving of Eowyn. Gandalf never explained

Danmei with official Eng licences

By publishers:

Other lists:

HERE’S THE THING THOUGH

I used to work for a call center and I was doing a political survey and I called this number that was randomly generated for me and the way our system worked was voice-activated so when the other person said hello you’d get connected to them, so I just launch right into my “Harvard University and NPR blah blah blah” thing and then there’s this long pause and I think the person’s hung up even though I didn’t hear a click

And then I hear “you shouldn’t be able to call this number.”

So I apologize and go into the preset spiel about because we aren’t selling anything, etc. etc. and the answer I get is

“No, I know that. What I mean is that it should be impossible for you to call this number, and I need to know how you got it.”

I explain that it’s randomly generated and I’m very sorry for bothering him, and go to hang up. And before I can click terminate, I hear:

“Ma’am, this is a matter of national security.”

I accidentally called the director of the FBI.

My job got investigated because a computer randomly spit out a number to the Pentagon.

This is my new favourite story.

When I was in college I got a job working for a company that manages major air-travel data. It was a temp gig working their out of date system while they moved over to a new one, since my knowing MS Dos apparently made me qualified.

There was no MS Dos involved. Instead, there was a proprietary type-based OS and an actually-uses-transistors refrigerator-sized computer with switches I had to trip at certain times during the night as I watched the data flow from six pm to six AM on Fridays and weekends. If things got stuck, I reset the server. 

The company handled everything from low-end data (hotel and car reservations) to flight plans and tower information. I was weighed every time I came in to make sure it was me. Areas of the building had retina scanners on doors. 

During training. they took us through all the procedures. Including the procedures for the red phone. There was, literally, a red phone on the shelf above my desk. “This is a holdover from the cold war.” They said. “It isn’t going to come up, but here’s the deal. In case of nuclear war or other nation-wide disaster, the phone will ring. Pick up the phone, state your name and station, and await instructions. Do whatever you are told.”

So my third night there, it’s around 2am and there’s a ringing sound. 

I look up, slowly. The Red phone is ringing.

So I reach out, I pick up the phone. I give my name and station number. And I hear every station head in the building do the exact same. One after another, voices giving names and numbers. Then silence for the space of two breaths. Silence broken by…

“Uh… Is Shantavia there?”

It turns out that every toll free, 1-900 or priority number has a corresponding local number that it routs to at its actual destination. Some poor teenage girl was trying to dial a friend of hers, mixed up the numbers, and got the atomic attack alert line for a major air-travel corporation’s command center in the mid-west United States.

There’s another pause, and the guys over in the main data room are cracking up. The overnight site head is saying “I think you have the wrong number, ma’am.” and I’m standing there having faced the specter of nuclear annihilation before I was old enough to legally drink.

The red phone never rang again while I was there, so the people doing my training were only slightly wrong in their estimation of how often the doomsday phone would ring. 

Every time I try to find this story, I end up having to search google with a variety of terms that I’m sure have gotten me flagged by some watchlist, so I’m reblogging it again where I swear I’ve reblogged it before.

But none of these stories even come close to the best one of them all; a wrong number is how the NORAD Santa Tracker got started.

Seriously, this is legit.

In December 1955, Sears decided to run a Santa hotline.  Here’s the ad they posted.

Only problem is, they misprinted the number.  And the number they printed?  It went straight through to fucking NORAD.  This was in the middle of the Cold War, when early warning radar was the only thing keeping nuclear annihilation at bay.  NORAD was the front line.

And it wasn’t just any number at NORAD.  Oh no no no.

And then, it got better.

For real.

So yeah.  I think that might be the best wrong number of all time.

Source:  http://www.npr.org/2014/12/19/371647099/norads-santa-tracker-began-with-a-typo-and-a-good-sport

No okay THAT is adorable and I’m queueing this for next December.