San diego pull station alarm

Hi,
I’ve been feeding a feral cat for about a year and he recently did not come by for four days. When he finally showed up, I noticed his right eye was injured. First two pics are from Saturday while the last two are from today.
I’ve caught him in a gravity trap before but he escaped and won’t go near it anymore. I decided to order a drop trap and transfer cage from Tomahawk but just found out my order won’t ship for 2-3 weeks due to production lead times. Right now I’m feeding him near a crate with a string tied to the door and although he’ll eat near it, he won’t put any part of his body inside.
I want to take him to the vet asap and am worried he won’t survive long enough for the drop trap to arrive so I’m hoping someone in the San Diego or neighboring areas has a drop trap and transfer cage I could borrow. I’d be more than happy to put down a deposit equal to the cost of a new drop trap and transfer cage if someone is comfortable lending theirs out.
I posted this in Feral_Cats a few hours ago and got some helpful responses, one of which said to try posting to this sub as well. I'm going to reach out to a few more local rescues right now and hope one has a drop trap and transfer cage I can rent but wanted to post here just in case those don't pan out.
Sorry for the long post but thank you for taking the time to read all of this.

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What is happening with Goodwill? About 6 months ago, on a Thursday evening, left the So Cal Atwater store feeling bullied, humiliated, and ganged up on by employees. It was the worst experience in that it has left me traumatized and still reliving it… Had been a customer of this store for years spending thousands of dollars and mostly for charity. Some of the other managers and employees working there can attest, I pretty sure.
That evening, I had been waiting for a cashier to show up to help for about 15-20 minutes, when a new checkout clerk showed up whom I had never seen in that store before, started to ring up the items of the person behind me because his items were placed by her register. When I pointed out to her that it was my turn, she simply ignored me and rolled her eyes. When she started ringing my things, she looked up at me and said “what are you staring at?” She was agitated but not loud. I thought I had misheard and asked her to repeat, and again she said the same thing. That’s when I paused and asked her louder if she had a problem with me.
The manager on duty, who was helping the other cashier for at least 30 minutes with a customer with 5 gigantic bags of clothes to exchange, and while already frustrated, without knowledge of the situation jumped out of her station, and in a loud tone told me to not talk to the cashier in that tone. I told her what had happened, and she had a stone cold look and did not care at all.
Next thing I know, a very aggressive security woman comes over and tells me to “step outside” so she can match my energy implying she will get physical, very eager to show her power in front of everyone without a care about the incident itself. Then the customer exchanging what seemed her and her children’s entire closet, pulls out her camera to film it all as if it’s entertainment while the security guard asks her to film it and pass it along to her for TikTok and is laughing. This happened as I was walking out. That’s when I got upset with the security guard and said if she does that, I will bring a lawsuit and shortly after went back to take pictures of the people involved. Unfortunately, did not catch a pic of the very aggressive and loud security guard. Her picture in an animated pose would be very. These employees were the WORST! Bored and hateful. They have no business dealing with customers. I couldn’t sleep for a week after that I was so shaken up. With my heart racing, after a couple of weeks, on a Saturday, went back to that store knowing that the Saturday staff knows me and treats me with respect. Was wondering if I can somehow get the name of the security guard and file a complaint with Goodwill. Entering, passed the hallway security guard (a different one) and once in the store was greeted by the cashier on duty who knew me as a customer, and I decided to proceed with the shopping and let things go. About 15 to 20 minutes later 2 store employees and a security guard approach me with a piece of paper in hand telling me it’s a traspass warning due to an incident that happened a few weeks ago (referring to part 1 of this story)and that I am banned from that particular store and if I have questions to contact either the head of security or store management. The cashier who approached me with the trespass note said that he knew I was one of the long time and best customers and apologized profusely but said the ban was mandated by the security and that there was nothing he could do. So humiliated and upset and with no former experience in being banned from anywhere, I left contemplating my next steps. I was so angry that I was entertaining the idea of calling an attorney, but decided that instead I would escalate to the people mentioned by the cashier. After going in circles for a few weeks and leaving messages for the retail customer relations representative and receiving no call back, I somehow had the luck of my call being picked up by a HR person who gave me the work cell phone number for the person (Jose Garces) I had left messages for without a response. After leaving a message on his cell and saying I won’t give up, he finally calls me back and gives me the cell phone number for their head of security once I share the story. After leaving multiple messages for the head of security named Joe Suarez, and never getting a call back, called from a blocked number and he picked up. Needless to say, once he finds out who I am, he is very rude on the phone followed by an email from Jose confirming that the ban remains and threatening that if I speak to the employees about this matter, the ban will get extended from a year. A month and after some research, I located the email information of their president and CEO. Sent an email to several of them about this horrible experience, and FINALLY, the director of their customer relations called me back and I felt relieved. I believed I can finally talk to someone about this farce of a situation, the horrible injustice and humiliation, and she will set things straight. Her name is Shavone Turner. Boy, was I wrong. She gave me the run around for 5 more months to only do NOTHING. She kept citing vague and illogical excuses why I need to call back. Yesterday she told me to call back in August which would mark 10 months since the incident and 4 procrastinations and requests for my callback. Does she really underestimate people’s intelligence to that degree thinking she can fool them in thinking she is taking action? Shame on Goodwill SoCal. The so called points of contact for escalation related to a bad experience in a retail store or with a power hungry security guard were useless to say the least. I feel they are not there to help anyone, so not sure why they are even identified as points of contact. Donations including mine are wasted on their salaries? Joe Suarez should be fired. People shouldn’t get away with this kind of behavior. People who have their jobs because of others good will… There are many truly hard working and qualifying professionals that could be filling these high paying positions who would actually do their jobs instead of posturing.

To live in the Undead Burg is a daily test of one’s wit and their will. The brutish and dull fall to the cunning, and the weak intellectual tears their own mind asunder. For those who escape the Asylum, it is sometimes enough to make one consider voyaging back to their cell.
After all, only a few are Chosen.
In the lower levels of the Undead Burg, a cloak of rat skin fluttered behind a walking corpse as they hurriedly turned the corner of a short length of stone stairs, slamming the shield of a hollow soldier against the ground just as the claws and fangs of the first hound rose to meet it. In truth he lacked the strength to properly defend himself with the thing, to raise it with only one arm and withstand a blow with the same, but it didn’t matter here. The lower corner of the shield lay braced against the bottommost of a length of stone steps. This, with his shoulder pressed against the shield’s top, made progress against him nearly impossible for a foe so light as this.
If idiocy was to lose one’s common sense, then it couldn’t account for the stupidity of an undead hound. The corpse raised a spear over the shield and swung it downward in a pathetic arc, the wood slapping against the metal with hardly a noise to report. Seeing the motion, the dog leapt sideways out of some horribly trained reflex, and in this manner crashed into large pile of eternally burning corpses. It yelped as the heat caught it, spasmed as it searched for purchase amidst the mass of charred bones and melted flesh, and promptly died. The commotion brought with it the sound of distant footsteps, and soon another beast had run headlong into the shield. This one took two similar “attacks” of the spear to repeat its fellow’s mistake, and the one after it four.
To think he had once been terrified of these things, and discovered his tactic in panic.
Beside the steps was a well, and (after a moment to ensure no further dogs were coming), it was this against which the corpse laid his heavy shield. The next test between him and his goal would require agility, something ill-afforded with such heavy hardware. For this, he turned his attention to the well’s crank, and set thereafter to turning it. From the depths was raised a target shield tied in place of a bucket, and upon it a collection of bones, a severed hand, a ring, and a candlestick. The corpse laid the miscellaneous treasures aside, untying the shield and equipping it to his left arm.
The first two thieves were marked by buckets… or rather, the buckets were set in place to tell the thieves which doors were to be hid behind. As travelers came and went, the buckets would roll down the hill as they were knocked aside or blown by the wind or carried around by the dogs, and thus the thieves’ stations would move. When it was determined one had rolled too far down the decline of the alleyway, an annoyed thief would inevitably carry it to a more desired station, pretend it had always been there, and hide themselves behind the newly marked door. It was possible some band of thieves set this tradition in place long ago and retained the habit after they’d eventually gone hollow, but proving this thought today would be nearly beyond impossible. The reasoning didn’t matter to the corpse, of course, but the effect he used to his advantage.
The tops of the doors he adorned with knives from the Lady of Moss- blades up, such that the forceful opening of the door would spin the knives just right to sink their poisonous bile into the victims below. What additional wastes and acids the corpse had applied need not be mentioned by name, only that they shared their patron creature with the leather cloak on his back. With his work done, he now walked the side of the alley as any clueless traveler would have, and awaited the springing of the trap.
As always, the third and lowermost thief signaled the attack by kicking open their door. The two now behind the corpse followed, and shortly thereafter issued their raspy exhales of pain amidst the clatter of falling steel. The corpse charged. The leader hurriedly reached for their throwing knives but was swiftly force-fed the edge of the corpse’s shield, thusly to be brought to the ground. Here was the corpse’s blade drawn, its cracked and jagged tip turned down towards its latest prey.
When skinning rats, it is important that one carries a sharp blade. This both to pierce the thick hide, and to avoid unnecessary damage to the intestines, stomach, and other usable bits lying beneath. Replacing the rat with a hollow, the corpse preferred the tip of a broken straight sword to the edge of his usual dagger. The motions made indeed bore some crude similarity to his work when harvesting leather, but the abandon of care became only more evident with each forceful cut and flailingly resisted gouge. In the end, what remained could hardly be discerned from a spot of muck on the road, a hollow-faced madman above it.
Further down, beyond a second set of stone steps, was another favorite spot of ambush for the thieves. The mutts at the end of the alley had long since devoured whatever scraps had been used to position them, and so readily charged forth at the beckoning call of the corpse. They found at his feet the now separated legs of the corpse’s most recent kill, adorned in many fresh gouges and oozing with a pungent liquid. The source of this meal mattered not to them, and so they eagerly set to work engorging themselves on the new flesh. So single-minded were they, intent on ridding themselves of the insatiable undead hunger that plagued them, that neither one slowed as a white foam began to pour from their mouths. Their stomachs first bulged, then split apart and spilt what little they had for content as the acid worked its way through. Their legs gave way from beneath them, first the hind, then the front, and yet still they desperately swallowed more of the decaying flesh and embedded stomach-skin pouches that rapidly digested them in return. When at last the pair had at last lost such strength as to no longer reach the meals inches away from their first gasping, then whining maws, the corpse delivered their mercy. A swift kick, and what little remained of their necks gave freedom to their lifeless skulls. The thieves, meanwhile, bore no challenge the corpse had not already faced. Knives over the first few doors, the greeting of jaw and shield, the pillaging of another victim. Nothing unusual, and nothing of note.
With the capra demon gone, some “chosen” adventurer having long since vanquished it from realm, little now stood between the corpse and… her… save only one thing. The corpse took the last flight of stairs three at a time, ricocheting off the wall on the outside of its only turn and bounding towards his target.
There she was, out in the open as always. The corpse sprinted down the stairs and, after passing a blind corner, set his left foot forward and crouched to halt his considerable momentum. The ambusher behind him was easily parried as he brought his shield up and behind him, cracking something in their forearm or perhaps their wrist. Not bothering to waste time, the corpse’s broken blade was brought upwards through the ambusher’s jaw until it snapped the bit bone between their eyes. This done, the corpse wrenched his weapon up and sideways with a hollow “pop” as the neck gave leave of its skull. The body collapsed to the side, its head twisting unnaturally upwards and backwards as it freed itself of the blade. The corpse, unbothered, bore no interest in holding either aloft. Now he turned, inspected the last of the thieves, and after a moment returned his blade to its holder.
“You are Patient.”
This first time he’d uttered the phrase, the last word was merely an attribute. ‘Twas a description of the one hollow that could be shot with any arrow, afflicted with any pain, and would yet remain loyally in her position. To be fair, it wasn’t for great gift a choice, as the position of “live bait” was reserved only for whichever of the thieves had been deemed least desirable by the rest. What caused this, and whatever penalties lay for abandoning of the post, were matters the corpse could only assume. The important part was that it was her, the thief who had become “Patient” by name. At their first encounter the corpse had considered dispatching her like the rest, but had hesitated in piercing her skin. He still bore the scar about his neck that she had given him for his idleness, and she still wore the rat skin “grieves” he’d forcefully tied to her for a marker. As time passed, the two gradually traded more scars and more black fur hide between them- the corpse receiving the former, Patient gaining the latter. He had stripped her and tied a pelt about her chest which lay now beneath her leather armor, he’d fashioned a double-thick leather stock to protect her neck, and though he tied gloves to her at a point she’d taken great effort in cutting them off. All this he had done across many visits, through much pain, and at expense of his best materials. Todays gift had by far been the hardest to craft- a thrice layered leather helm affixed on one side with a jawbone to replace what he’d broken so long ago.
His approach was slow, and well-rehearsed. At about ten paces, Patient’s patience finally broke as she ran for him. Today she chose to hesitate upon reaching him, though he'd learned this was by chance of random choice than any form of compassion. The corpse waited for the attack, not daring to kick another outcast as he had once been in life. She tried first her more viscous pattern, a pair of vigorous strikes that slid across the corpse’s target shield rather than bouncing away. She completed the maneuver and immediately prepared for a more powerful, slamming attack, granting the corpse the opportunity he had been seeking.
As she brought her blade down, the corpse deftly batted her strong hand away and gripped her shield with his open hand. Having no further need for his own shield, he cast it now away and spun the patient thief ‘round. She made as if to leap upward and over the corpse, but the maneuver was one he’d long since learned to counter. He stepped back, spinning himself so as to bring her sideways and around and down into a prone position with his right elbow along her back and his left hand pinning her knife arm down.
His next task, before gifts could be given, was to ensure he received no further scars in return. Placing his knee at her back to free one of his hands, he drew from beneath his cloak a coil of red twine fashioned from the same rats he’d skinned for his gift… some of the same, at least. With great effort, the twine was managed around the thief until she could no longer terribly well resist, and her hood was pulled back from her head.
Seeing the sunken red skin, the glowing eyes, the bare teeth, it reminded the corpse of life in the Pit of Outcasts. It was there he’d met the kindest of the living, the most desperate of the poor, and occasionally even a soul or two willing to speak or come close to him. ‘Twas a place for the diseased, the undead, and those criminals deemed too vile to disgrace the hangman’s noose with their neck. It was there he’d learned to knit and to sew, skills gifted to him from an undead woman not terribly discernable from the one before him now. The main difference, at least for now, was the slack jaw broken in uncountable pieces during their first encounter.
Casting the memories aside, the corpse set to his work. The leather about the thief’s neck stilled her head a little, but precisely cutting the skin beneath her jaw to remove the old bone was still a difficult task. The end result was unsightly, and it involved more than a few excessive cuts from the patient’s constant struggling, but it was enough to work with. Removing the old bone took a great deal of time thanks to the many fragments hidden in odd bits and pockets of flesh, but sliding the new one into place and wrapping it in the old muscle proved as easily said as done. The most tiring part was retying the cuts back closed, as the thief regained and continually demonstrated a greater ability to bite and snap as the corpse made more and more progress. The last of these gaps closed, the corpse finally wrapped the rest of the leather helmet about the thief’s skull and tied the loose end to the other side of her new jaw with more twine. It wasn’t his best work, but it was the best he’d done on something still kicking around.
Patient’s hood was returned to its proper position, and the corpse took hold of a length of twine connected to a slipknot in the middle of her back. Midway up the last stretch of stairs he’d come down, the twine was pulled and the knot it held gave way, restoring the thief her freedom. Knowing better than to stick around, the corpse fled to the top of the stairs, standing on the bridge overlooking her station just beyond where she would pursue. He watched as she freed herself of the last of the twine, as she looked to him, and as she eventually returned to her post. He said then the same thing he always said to her, though still he knew not if she recognized it.
“I am Aldin Paltry, the Leper of Hangknell. I will return again.”
He watched a moment more, but was paid not a glance in return. Back through the alley he went, bound for the dragon’s bridge.

“What do you mean it’s wrong?” said Tamara, becoming frustrated with Samuel.
“I'm trying to tell you that plants do not eat earth. They just absorb nutrients from it,” Samuel replied, equally annoyed as this was the fourth time he had explained it. “Look, just take my word for it, OK,” he added.
“Fine, but you will have to explain it again,” Tamara retorted.
Samuel and Tamara were partners in a scientific study of their forest home. It was genuinely idyllic in every sense of the word; the trees stretched high into the sky, and everyone was covered in succulent leaves, a deep and gorgeous shade of green. Around their trunks were rings of flowers gathered from every continent, and a thick carpet of grass lay on the ground.
The two sat underneath a chestnut tree, writing up their findings for the day. It had focused mainly on tree sizes and growth rates, and they had continued this study for, on and off, almost a year.
Samuel turned to look at his assistant and found that she was just as remarkable as the day they had first met: golden locks, like living sunlight, tied neatly in a bun. Her eyes were an emerald green, and all in all, she was gorgeous. However, it was when you came to her waist that things became truly incredible because rather than a pair of legs, there was a long and wide snake’s tail.
It was huge, at least seven metres long and as wide as her torso. The scales were the same beautiful colour as her hair and reflected the sunlight in such a way that she appeared to glow. She was wearing an ultramarine tunic with a black diamond in the centre. She was like this not because of a plague, a curse or some mutation; Tamara was a Lamia; it was how she was born.
Samuel, on the other hand, looked far less impressive. He was around five foot ten, with dull brown hair and equally dull eyes. His stomach stuck out from the rest of him. No amount of exercise was able to get rid of it.
He was by every description a ‘dull as dishwater’ human. His clothes, however, were slightly more interesting. He wore a navy blue tunic with a thick leather belt wrapped around his waist. On his feet was a pair of excellent leather boots, able to withstand whatever the world threw at them and on his forearms and shins, he wore something Tamara had never seen or even heard of before: a pair of vambraces and greaves, Samuel called it armour.
Three strips of rugged leather layered on top of one another made up each piece, and between each layer was a collection of tiny metal beads. When Tamara asked what they were for, Samuel said they were for protection.
All of this would have been inconceivable to Samuel two years ago, but he had become used to it in time. Samuel was not born into this world; he had arrived. How? He did not know, but he remembered it all vividly; his senses had been overloaded, and at first, he believed he had died.
“What’s wrong?” Tamara asked Samuel, who had been silent for over a minute.
Samuel snapped out of his daydream and said: “nothing, just thinking about that day again.”
Tamara nodded and said nothing else; she knew exactly what was wrong.
Samuel went straight back to writing. When Samuel first showed up, there had been no paper or pens, but what was even stranger than the lack of these apparent necessities was that Samuel had had to invent both of these items.
Tamara and those like her did not possess a written language; they relied entirely on their memories, and until Samuel had shown up, Tamara had not even conceived of the notion, but she had picked it up astonishingly quickly.
“It still sounds like eating to me,” said Tamara, bringing the conversation back to the original topic.
“Well, it isn’t; eating requires a mouth and stomach,” Samuel replied.
“Says who?” Tamara asked defiantly.
“Says me,” Samuel answered.
Samuel jotted down the last of his notes and left the pages to dry in the sun. Samuel then turned to his right and looked at a large book, the size of a chair’s seat, bound in yellow leather and knotted by animal tendons. He picked it up and began to leaf through the pages.
His eyes glanced over paragraphs about oak trees and orchid flowers until he finally reached the section he sought; the page was titled Silver Birch (Betula Pendula).
“Have you finished the drawing on Silver Birch yet?” Samuel asked without looking.
Tamara was currently focused on a drawing of sunflowers, but she understood his request and, without looking up or saying a word, handed him the picture he wanted.
Samuel took the drawing and took several moments admiring it. Like all her work, the picture was astounding; not only did it look like an actual Silver Birch, but it also seemed to be alive, as though it would start blowing in the breeze.
Samuel punched four holes along the sheet's left side, undid the tendon strings and then attached the drawing behind the title page. He added eight more pages to his book, four of text and four illustrations.
Their work was now done; there was no more writing or drawing today, and he placed their work into a knapsack Tamara had brought with her. Samuel turned to his partner and asked: “so what do you want to do now?”
Tamara looked up through the canopy and could make out the silhouettes of several birds and finally said: “I’d quite like to fly.”
Samuel smiled, chuckled and said, “Yes, so would I, but that would require every member of the village working together for decades.”
Tamara looked Samuel in the eye and said: “are you making fun of me?”
Samuel did not reply; he just looked Tamara dead in the eye. She observed every minute twitch on Samuel's face and concluded he was not.
“How could a person fly?” She asked, suddenly intrigued.
“I don’t know, I’m not an engineer,” Samuel answered, “So apart from flying, what else do you want to do?”
Tamara let out a sigh and said: “I guess we will just have to walk.”
These were the moments Samuel lived for, just a quiet afternoon with his best friend enjoying a stroll; he was utterly content.
“You seem chipper,” Tamara said, noticing the growing smile on Samuel’s face.
“That’s because I feel chipper” he replied
They passed through the trees, heading towards their favourite spot, a beach by the side of a lake so large you could not see the other side.
“So, how is everyone?” Samuel said, trying to spark a conversation.
“You mean every single one because that could take a while?” Tamara replied.
“Let’s start with your mother” he clarified.
Tamara’s mother, Pancha, was more or less just a larger version of her daughter, just as brash and headstrong.
“She’s fine; she has finally stopped asking me what happened every time I come to meet you,” she said.
“Really, and it only took her two and a half years,” said Samuel with a smirk.
Yes, that first year here, had been a real trial. Samuel had never felt so scared, isolated and persecuted in his life. When he thought about it, he could still feel the fear and the hopelessness.
A gust of air slammed into Samuel’s face, bringing him back to the present, and what a wonderful time it was. The water was crystal clear, the beach was covered in sparkling white sand, and the distinct aroma of water wafted through the air. Samuel breathed it all in as Tamara spread herself over the beach.
The cooling breeze that Samuel found so enjoyable, Tamara found far less agreeable. Tamara was ectothermic or cold-blooded. She could not maintain her body temperature; she needed to absorb it from her environment, and the wind was slowly draining her.
“Comfortable down there?” Samuel asked.
Tamara turned her head, looked up at him and said: “Actually, yes, not as good as my bed, but still fine.”
Samuel left Tamara to her thermoregulation and strolled down to the water’s edge, “stay where I can see you!” Tamara called.
“Yes, MOM,” Samuel answered sarcastically, though he knew it was more for Tamara’s sake than his; she had a problem with open spaces.
Samuel closed his eyes, stretched his arms above his head, feeling his muscles strain against the tension, and yawned. Small tears formed in his eyes and wiped them away. He had only been up for a few hours but was ready for bed.
“Too much thinking, that was the problem,” Samuel mumbled to himself.
The sunlight sparkled on the water’s surface. It seemed as though millions of diamonds were suddenly brought into existence, danced for a few moments, and then vanished as quickly as they came. It was beautiful, just like everything else here.
He climbed up a rock that jutted from that sand and sat down, his legs dangling over the edge. As he kicked his legs, a ray of sun caught his greaves, and although the leather was rather dull, it still dazzled him.
Samuel heard a sound reminiscent of sandpaper brushing against wood, and he knew at once what it was. He waited four more seconds and said, without moving an inch, “Don’t even think about it!”
“How did you know?” Tamara asked, feeling simultaneously impressed, confused and disappointed.
Samuel looked her in the eye and replied: “who do you think you’re dealing with?”
Tamara had not clambered up the rock like Samuel; she had simply raised herself on her tail so she stood over two metres high.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
Tamara smiled and answered, “yes, thanks for asking.”
Tamara moved behind Samuel and then began to coil around the boulder, and if he had not experienced it all before, it would have been unnerving. Tamara was only twelve and a half, yet she was already far stronger than him. Samuel was sure if Tamara really wanted to, she could crush a bison to death. After the graceful dance around the stone, she sat down beside Samuel.
The pair was silent for a few minutes, except for a quick coughing fit by Samuel; they took in the unnatural beauty of their surroundings.
“Hey, I have a question,” said Tamara, coming back to her senses.
“What is it?” Samuel replied.
“You still haven’t told me why we are studying the forest?” She asked.
In an instant, Samuel became deeply confused. To him, it seemed all too obvious why they were doing it.
“There is no practical reason for doing it. We do it so that we know,” Samuel answered.
Tamara became silent. Samuel realised that she was deep in thought and decided to give her all the time she needed until she finally said: “Is this one of those human things?”
Samuel, upon hearing this, gave a small chuckle and answered: “yes, if you like.”
Suddenly, something caught Samuel’s eye. It was a crab, no bigger than a golf ball. Its back was powder blue, and it held its arms upright, its claws pointing down. The tiny creature would walk forward, scoop some sand into its mouth, and then leave a small pellet behind.
“Look at that!” said Samuel, nudging Tamara’s shoulder and pointing at the tiny crustacean. Tamara turned her head and looked directly at where he was pointing; she strained her eyes at what she thought was a pebble; she was about to climb down and collect it when it suddenly moved, and she squealed.
Tamara dragged the bottom end of her tail up from the beach and timidly said, “What’s that?”
Samuel remembered that tone of voice all too well, and it brought with it some unpleasant memories, but he pushed them to the back of his mind and said: “it’s a crab.”
Samuel was certain he had seen this type of crab before but could not put a name to the image. Samuel was sure he had read about them, watched a documentary, or attended a lecture, but he could not remember. Ultimately, he decided to drop it for now and see if the answer would come to him.
Tamara kept staring at it as though she believed it would pounce if she took her eyes off it for one second.
“Is it dangerous?” she asked, her voice hushed to ensure the creature did not notice her.
Samuel sighed and answered: “it’s a crab, Tamara, unless you happen to be a nematode then…”
Samuel paused mid-sentence as his brain finally connected the dots and asked, “Wait, you have never seen a crab before?”
This perplexed Samuel for a moment until he remembered that Tamara did not have a television, a car, and she could not fly a plane, so it was not unexpected that she would not know what a crab was.
Tamara shook her head in response to his question, and Samuel added: “you know what a woodlouse is, right?”
Tamara nodded and said, “I like woodlice.”
“Well, a crab is just a type of woodlouse that lives near water,” Samuel concluded.
However, he could tell from her face that she was unconvinced, so he got off the rock, walked over to the tiny creature, wary of its pincers, and picked it up by its backside.
“What are you doing?” Tamara called in alarm.
Samuel held the animal, its legs flailing wildly in an attempt to escape, and said, “showing you there is nothing to be worried about.”
Taking care not to crush it, Samuel clambered back up the rock and presented the animal to her. Tamara stared at it for some as the crab bobbed its eye up and down and tried in vain to find a part of Samuel it could nip.
“It’s actually kind of… cute,” Tamara said after two minutes of silence.
She relaxed her tail and let it rest on the beach once more. “Can it hold it?” She asked Samuel, fear being replaced by interest.
“Of course, you can. Just make sure you hold it by its back and be careful of the pincers; if they get you, it will hurt.”
Samuel handed the crab over to her and watched as Tamara began to inspect the animal from every angle. The crab had a white underbelly and purple joints.
“You think you could draw it from memory?” Samuel asked.
“Hmm?” Tamara replied. Samuel let out a sigh and repeated. After three more attempts, Tamara finally took notice and said, “Yes.”
Five minutes later, Samuel said, “we should probably put him back now.”
Tamara moaned about it, but Samuel said: “he has his own life, Tamara; you can’t keep him!”
She conceded, grumbling under her breath, and gently placed the animal back on the sand. As the crab dashed away, the two noticed that while they had been fixated on that single crab, thousands more had emerged on the beach.
Upon seeing the swarm of animals make their way across the beach, Tamara let out a squeal and once again pulled her tail up off the beach. The army of crabs marched along the shore. The collective walking produced a sound loud enough to hear from fifty metres away, and at last, Samuel remembered what they were and said, with no small amount of satisfaction in his voice, “they’re soldier crabs.”
“What are they going to do?” Tamara asked, concerned by the sudden appearance of so many creatures.
Samuel kept staring at the gathering, but he heard her question and replied, “They’re just feeding,” and added quickly, “But we are far too big for them.”
“That's odd,” Samuel said under his breath.
“I know there are so many of them,” Tamara said, deeply unnerved by the sheer vastness of the swarm.
“No,” Samuel said, “There should be this many of them; it’s where they are that is strange.”
Tamara momentarily took her eyes off the army and asked, “So where should they be.” There was a slight flicker of fear in her voice at the prospect of being invaded; rats and mice where bad enough. They did not need another pest.
“By the sea, not a freshwater lake,” he answered.
“The Sea?” Tamara almost yelled. Samuel was a little surprised by this enthusiasm and turned to face her.
“Yes,” he said.
“Have you ever been to the sea,” she asked.
“Yes, many times,” Samuel said, uncertain where this was going.
“I bet it’s wonderful,” Tamara added with a smile.
Samuel was silent as his brain connected a few dots and asked: “how can you know about the sea if you don’t know about crabs?”
She smiled; Tamara enjoyed it when she knew something that he did not, “there is a story that my mom told me that before we came to this forest, we were a different people that lived by the sea.” Tamara paused for a breath.
“But then humans came and drove us from the water, and we fled inland. Our people split into two. One half went to the mountains, and the other settled in the forest.”
Tamara finished and waited for his reply. Samuel, however, just kept looking at her. Tamara was concerned that she had upset him; he did not like it when humans were labelled as the enemy, yet his face and posture were not those of one who was sad or angry.
“You people blame us for everything, don’t you?” Samuel said with a chuckle.
“If there is a fire, it’s a human’s fault. If there is an earthquake, it’s a human’s fault. If a little Boreray boy drinks all their apple juice in one gulp, it’s a human’s fault.”
“So, getting back on topic, where did these “Soldier crabs” come from anyway? We have visited this lake for over two years and never seen even a glimpse?” Tamara asked. Samuel looked back to the slowly advancing army, and several ideas flashed through his head.
“Maybe they have been dormant up until now; perhaps they make a large circle around the lake shore, and it’s simply luck that we were here on the day they passed by, or maybe the migrated here from somewhere else.”
They watched the crabs' ceaseless march until Tamara said, “These things are still giving me the creeps. Can we go now?” Samuel could not argue that there was something eerie about all of these animals appearing, seemingly, from nowhere; however, there was still one thing he had to be certain of.
“You think you could draw one from memory?” he asked.
Tamara’s face contorted in a scowl. Samuel, for all his good points, could become far too focused on his research, which often caused him to become ignorant of other people.
Yet she knew sitting here yelling at him would accomplish nothing, so she told him the truth: “Yes, can we go now!” Samuel nodded and then slid off the rock. Tamara copied him, and they both slinked back to the cover of the trees.
Now that she was beneath the canopy, Tamara let out an enormous sigh of relief as the anxiety slowly left, and the close air warmed her body. On the other hand, Samuel began to chafe at the stagnant air while his head began to bead with sweat, but it was nothing he had not experienced before, so he gritted his teeth and bared with it.
With their plans now ruined, Tamara and Samuel wandered aimlessly through the woods, chatting about what they could do to fill the rest of the day. Several ideas arose, including visiting a nearby waterfall and a set of monument stones, but none truly appealed to them.
In the end, Tamara said, “how about we just call it a day?”
Samuel was happy about this. Tamara was his only form of human contact, yet he could not deny the pointlessness of wandering around the woods, so he said, “Ok, but let’s take the long way.”
Samuel heard a sound above him and saw a red squirrel scampering through the trees.
“Is it difficult?” Tamara asked.
Samuel looked at Tamara and replied, “Well, it can give me a crick in my neck sometimes.”
Tamara let out a short laugh and clarified, “No, I mean, is it difficult being so inquisitive? It looks exhausting.”
He was not entirely sure what she meant by that. To Samuel, Tamara was every bit as curious as him, so he stated: “you tell me, you went out looking for me just because you wanted to know.”
“True,” answered Tamara, “and everyone has always said that I am always asking questions, but you’re like a boar that just ate sugar beat.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Samuel said, shaking his head. “But I do know that people always told me, when I was a boy, that humans are, by their nature, infinitely curious, but personally, I think that it’s just how I was born.” there was a pause, and he quickly added, “just like you.”
Tamara’s fingers started to numb as she brushed them against the bark of passing trees. She took a good look at the trees around her. Tamara had lived her entire life sheltered by these trees. This place was her home, her family’s home and her friend’s home, and she loved it, a perfect example of the innate beauty of nature.
Samuel, however, was of a different opinion this forest disturbed him, though this feeling had diminished with time. The trees all grew in perfect symmetry, four and a half strides form each other.
From Tamara’s perspective, there was nothing strange about this, yet Samuel often said that this should not be possible, that the wood should be a mess and that the trees should grow in an unorganised fashion. Yet to Tamara, the idea of messy forests was just as impossible as a structured one was to him.
Noon came and went, and Samuel’s stomach began to rumble. His breakfast was becoming a distant memory; he thought he might be able to bear it for another hour or so, but as they travelled closer to the village, Tamara started to become irritated by Samuel’s constant growling.
“We need to find you something to eat before that sound drives me nuts!” Tamara stated bluntly.
“That’s all well and good, my dear, so long as you can materialise food out of the aether,” answered Samuel, with just a hint of condescension in his voice.
Tamara did not know what the aether was, but it did not matter. “No, but I do know a nearby tree with some great fruit in it,” she replied.
Samuel found this strange for two reasons. Firstly, he found it very difficult to believe there was a source of food in this forest that either he had not found, or Tamara had not told him about yet.
Secondly that, Tamara would know much about something she could not eat. Tamara was strictly carnivorous; she ate nothing but meat.
He wanted answers fast and asked: “So why haven’t you told me about this before?”
“Because I can’t stand the smell, that’s why, and I didn’t want you stinking up the place,” she explained.
“If it smells disgusting, what makes you think I will eat it?” he asked.
“Because the Boreray can’t get enough of it, some of them say that they taste like all the best parts of every fruit and vegetable we grow, which is a shame because they smell like all the worst,” she added.
He asked no more questions. He was too busy thinking; this fruit sounded so familiar, but he could not remember. The need to survive day in day out had pushed most of his standard learning, from school and university to the back of his mind, not forgotten mind you just buried.
I'm back with Tamara and Samuel latest adventure. If you like what you've read so far and want to know where it's going you can find the complete story by following the links below.
e-book(US/UK/CA/AU/DE)
Physical(US/UK/CA/DE)
If you do decide to read ahead please leave a review or rating, every single one helps immensely, and helps me keep doing what I'm doing.
Also the e-book will be at a reduced price until the last chapter it published on reddit.

Greetings everyone. A small heads up about a new feature that I implemented. In the past, you needed to scan with your radio for getting a weather forecast, These were rare and offered a very poor readability.
Now we have the possibility to activate the Radio and check the weather directly. It will post the weather at the nearest "weather station" (which is just the radio tower). With current weather and the weather up to 3 days ahead. It is (when weather data isn't changed) quite accurate and offer you a possibility to plan ahead.
You can see screenshots here.
Also: smart watches now offer the possibility to show you current wind direction, wind speed and felt temperature
Info here.

The unimmunized child in the latest case may have recently exposed others at:
Children's Primary Care Medical Group, 844 Jackman St., El Cajon on May 12, from 9:10 a.m. to noon
Rady Children's Emergency Department, 3020 Children's Way, 1st Floor, on May 13, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

I just got my soft orders yesterday, so I obviously don’t have a sponsor yet. I called the ship’s quarterdeck this morning, who said they would pass my information to my gaining department, but I haven’t heard anything back yet.
In the meantime, I am hoping to be able to go ahead and start looking for apartments and stuff since I’m supposed to be there in August. With that in mind, I’m hoping to get some advice about what areas of town to avoid living in. Side note, how long does it take to get through the gate, parked, and onboard? I’d like to live less than 20 minutes (20 minutes with no traffic, I have no idea what that would turn into with traffic), but 30ish minutes away as a max. The one thing I hear everyone say about Norfolk is that traffic absolutely sucks, but at the same time, I’m coming from San Diego, so how do the two compare?

Hey everyone this is my first Reddit post ever so just bear with me, but I need some advice. By tomorrow I need to decide between University of Washington and University of San Diego.
I’m going to school for engineering, and I’m from Washington. I like UW because it has all the programs I’m interested in and has a good engineering program. However, I am worried that it’s maybe too big with 30,000 undergrads and 50,000 more for graduate school and doctorates. I’m worried that I won’t be able to participate in stuff like club baseball or other extracurriculars at such a big school.
On the other hand is USD, where I know I’d have fun, but they don’t have civil engineering (which I might be interested in) and also just not as good engineering programs. Part of me wants to leave home/Washington, but I’m worried I’m throwing away a great opportunity if I don’t go to UW.
Money is not an issue in this decision, so lmk if you have any advice for me. It will be greatly appreciated.

Prev/On the Design of Human Ships/
"Just wait, how lon…" Zantol started to say as a firm click was heard as Pir-4 pressed the button. In the following moment the entire ship shuddered as all power was lost. Moments later a deep drone could be felt.
"That shouldn't have taken so long to start," Dave remarked as all the screens and consoles lit back up, as the drone to fade away. Looking around dozens of new indicator lights and alarms were screaming across the cockpit, "Well that might be it, uhh…" Dave looked to Zanthol who was shocked at what just happened, and Pir-4 now floating stilly above the radio consul, "Zanthol please tell me that this is normal and that Pir is alright"
Zanthol taking moments to understand what happened, what all the new lights are for, and moments wonder what just happened.
“Wha…, what was that."
"Well, uh, that, was the distress call," Pausing for a moment to point at Pir-4 and to mute the alarms, "will he be ok?"
"Probably, but it is impossible to know without looking in his head"
"Why aren't you concerned? I mean, he could have just died."
"Why would I, it's just a machine, and all the data can be recovered."
Taking a deep breath, Dave considered the words that he just heard, "Zanthol? How do you classify a being as sentient?"
"We have a system, how do you classify things as sentient? If I know what you would use, then it would be easier for me to explain."
"I don't necessarily see why this is important, but the way that we had done this is though test, like the Turing test, have a judge have a conversation with a known sentient being and the one being tested. Another is to test the being's creativity, or even just comparing how close to the human brain the being's brain is."
"Those are all good way to determine if a being is sentient, but the reason that Pir was created was to get one step closer to win a galactic history changing prize, and I shouldn't tell you this, but humanity will find out regardless. This prize is from an automated system from nearly a million years ago, it was to autonomously scout and lightly terraform planets for life as it knows, and through, probably a problem with the replication program, it became sapient and though many more years it came to where it is now. Just barely sentient, enough for it to want to be a part of the community, and so the machine tried, until it came to the conclusion that it wasn't sentient enough to fit in," Sighing Zanthol took a deep breath and pointed to Pir-4, "It stopped sharing the planets it has visited, demanding that we make it fully sentient, to the point of the average sentient being, like you and me. To do so it made a prize, bring it a artificial being of synthetic mind that it deems as sentient. it has been almost 43,323 years by your calendar since the start of the competition."
"So you don't consider Pir a sentient being because a machine doesn't. That doesn't make sense, just because it doesn't shouldn't mean that you don't. Humanity has had less time free to think of what makes you, you. Because I think and therefore I am, should suffice for treating other being as sentient…"
Dave was cut off by the radio cracking back to life, "YOU, we do░▓░k▒w what yo░▒id bu░ we will have your he▒▓!" Just as abruptly it started it cut back out.
"They sound mad, as much as I would like to continue to argue, there are more concerning matters at the moment," Dave said as he took hold of the control sticks, with a lurch the ship once again started to move, "Since I don't like the silence I'll explain some things to you, this left stick moves the ship in x,y,z movement, or front, back, up, down, left, and right. The right stick adjusts the rotation," Dave gives both of the sticks a wiggle, causing the whole ship to shudder.
Zanthol, pulled Pir-4's helmet off, he started to check what happened to Pir-4. Looking to Dave again he sees him reach out slips on large gloves over his atmo-suit's gloves, once these are properly around his already gloved hands they constrict around them to now sit tightly around his hands. Then with a simple his the compartment filled with a thin fog, curiously Zanthol asked, "Is something wrong, and what's with the fog?"
"Take a look out the view screen, were getting close to your ship, but its getting hard to tell the distance without looking at the readout. So to get around that this ship uses a suite of holograms that are constructed by little low power lasers, and theses holograms use the cameras and computers to make a three dimensional representation of the environment."
"So why the haze?"
"It's so the lasers can be seen." as Dave talked, holograms of Zanthol's ship the Prospector's Pick, Helum station, and the various pirate vessels, leaving all that can't be seen by the cameras are blank. Reaching out with his gloved hands Dave grabbed the holograms of the Prospector's Pick and Zanthol's ship, strangely his hands didn't just pass through the holograms. Already anticipating the coming question Dave said, "The gloves that I just put on have a pneumatic force feed back system, strong enough to resist my movements, but not so much it can hurt me. If I move my hand though any of them it will respond as if it were an object floating in space that I just smacked. The system will interpret how the I move the holograms and do its best to replicate it in real life," Dave said, as he pushed the Prospector's Pick closer to Zanthol's ship. Zanthol could feel the ship accelerate toward his ship, "So, this makes it more intuitive for a human to operate this ship."
"Ok, so what are you doing now, are you going to get us out of here?"
"Well you said that, one all of Pir's spare parts are on your ship and that you have very classified things on it. Wouldn't it be a good idea to get it all before running?"
*Beep*
Looking at the consul a gauge was flashing.
"What's that?"
"That would be a temperate gauge, and uh it says that the hull is heating up. That shouldn't be happening,"
Thinking back Zanthol remembered how the pirates breached the air-lock realized what was causing the heating, "Dave, I think it maybe the pirates, to cut open the station like that," he points at the air-lock, "to cut through it as quickly as they did, they would have to have a weapons grade laser. We probably have only a minute before it starts cutting through the hull if you can keep them from focusing on the same spot."
"Ok, that shouldn't be too hard to mitigate," with a simple twist of the wrist Dave put the ship into a gentle spin, "That should do for now. Where is a good spot for a tow cable to be put on your ship?"
"I can already feel the rising temperature rising, and it's only getting faster. If you can't do anything about it then we're probably dead."
The gauge, now entering the red, "I hear you, and I'll handle this," Dave replied turning his ship to face the pirates, "Do you know why Tungsten Carbide is such a good marital for machine tools?"
Starting to send the ship into the pirates, "It's because it harder then almost all other mettles, and do you know where the largest single piece of Tungsten Carbide is? Well, its on this ship, initially meant to skewer asteroids, but we'll see how good it is at skewering ships, and it better be, or else," sighing, Dave continued, "We're probably dead."
"That sounds insane, but probably the only thing that we can do, and even then, there are still three other in the fleet."
Suddenly, static filed the coms gradually coming clearer until a human voice could be heard, "Prospector's Pick, hold tight, help is on the way, this is the Barnard's star Battle group B3, ETA 3 minutes. just hold tight, help is on the way."
By this moment Dave's ship was careening toward the pirates, the temperature sky rocketing. The ship struggling to cool it self with the radiators turning a dull red with the heat their absorbing, struggling to dissipate the building heat.
With a, shearing, screeching, screaming, sound the spike tore into the pirate ship.
"Woooooooooooooowoh!! HELL YEAH! That will never get old no mater what the target is." Dave said with a brimming smile. "Now its getting hot in here, so I'll also show you how we cool our ships in emergencies." pressing a combination of buttons on the the consul, a hiss of cool air filled the cockpit. The hologram also showed the radiators unlatch and start floating away from the ship.
"Dave why are you jettisoning the radiators, they're needed to cool the ship."
"Yes, but that's part of the design that someone else made, and was much smarter then I am. Its going to be replaced with spares."
One of the rows of boxes moved to the place that the radiators once were, and proceeded to unfold and turn into new radiators, with this the temperature gauge visibly and quickly dropped back down to it's regular position, and the new radiators already starting to show their thermal saturation. Then the screens flashed a notification…
Incoming warp detected.
~
This started to become more disconnected and scattered toward the end, but I was just having a hard time finding a way to connect it all. I also wanted to make each chapter a bit longer, so that's why this took so long, and in all fairness I don't think I'll be writing them to be so long its just not what I'm good with.
It has almost been half a year since I randomly thought of the idea for this at a new years party, anyways here's a fun fact, I am horrible at coming up with names, so to mitigate this I have turned to use the Periotic table and names of chemicals (and/or overly common names). The most obvious of them are Dave's last name Coper most clearly a slight mis spelling of Copper, Helum Station is just a variation of Helium, (spoiler regarding Pir-4)and Pir is a mis spelled abbreviation of Periotic and 4 corresponds to Beryllium the main component in his computers and meant to reference how hard for the researchers to make a body compatible with a inorganic brain, and to my knowledge Beryllium is wildly deadly and destructive to carbon based organic chemistry.

encinitas (and San Diego in general) is so desperate for more affordable housing — this just bums me out to see. owned by Greystar, the same company that owns One Paseo and rents 2 beds for 4.7-5.3k.
We need more housing that regular people can afford. Not more “luxury boutique” housing. Just ridiculous

Hi, everyone!
First post in this chat. In my pre-pandemonium life, I used to ask people on Twitter to pick a place for me to go for NYE then would go. The panorama halted my life (I'm talking being unhoused, carless, etc.) and after nearly 3yrs, I'm finally ready to take a trip post-pandoodoo. I have EARNED this moment!
So here's where you all come in! I want to travel for my 39th bday next month (June) and am looking for a trip that's $1,000 max for the flight/cahotel for 3-4 nights.
Where should I go, Reddit fam?
Initial ideas:

• Chicago (never visited in the summer but I love the vibes)
• Charlotte, NC
• A cruise (never taken one but needs to be friendly for single Black women)
• LA or San Diego (not a high priority)

Extra info:

• I live in TX so anywhere nearby is off-limits (i.e. NOLA because that's common)
• I have a passport so can travel out of the country
• LGBTQ+ friendly is a MUST (I can be around any crowd, just don't want the toxicity or overly religious crowd)
• Places I've already visited pre-panda panda: NYC, Miami, Cuba, Panama, & lived in Colorado
• Looking for places to explore history and culture but also a good time at night like lounges, house parties, anything for us elder millennials
• Totally open to meeting people!

TL;DR - I'm a solo Black female traveler turning 39 in June and am looking for suggestions to travel under $1000 for 3-4 nights.

It’s crazy how brilliant this album is. It somehow still feels underrated and has an arguement for being possibly thee best album - not just in grunge but possibly in the history of rock, or honestly all of music in general! The fact that it’s a tribute to Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood (vocalist and amazing piano player) - with a few former members and all of future Pearl Jam since Matt Cameron eventually became the full-time drummer - just makes it an album formed completely from the heart and full of soul. This band was literally the polar opposite of a cash grab opportunist band. Apparently the band just wanted to make music in a stress free manner with little expectations, and boy did they surpass any that may have been placed upon them. Saying that even feels like a heavy understatement!
The fact that the project’s lead vocalist was a very close friend of Wood’s in Chris Cornell - who also died tragically - makes it even more touching. Side note, but Jerry Cantrell if AiC was supposedly very close to Wood and obviously Cornell as well. Wood permanently left his mark on the Seattle scene a year and a half before before it even became mainstream, and if you listen closely you can tell every bands’ sound - musically and lyrically - got quite darker following his untimely passing. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
When he heard the tragic news, Cornell initially wrote two songs in the heavenly (no pun intended) Say Hello 2 Heaven - cleverly released as a single - and the unbelievably EPIC Reach Down. The former is a beautiful, bluesy song which passionately shows Cornell’s full vocal range and beautiful lyricism. Reach Down is simply put, one of the greatest and most epic songs in existence. Eleven minutes long with a guitar riff that is bone-crushing and very likely the best solo I’ve ever heard, especially when you consider McCready’s headphones flew off about halfway through the recording it - forcing him to sort of “wing it” (lol) without having a backing track to hear. Not one second of the song fails to capture one’s attention - which is nothing less than astounding considering the length of it. Cornell could’ve stopped there and had an epic dual single or even an EP considering he already had be nearly 20 mins (17 minutes and 37 seconds to be exact) material! This easily could’ve been all that was written… but then fate intervened in the best way possible!
Former Mother Love Bone rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament - primary songwriters for MLB and earlier in Green River (another legendary grunge band) - wanted to collaborate with Cornell to put themselves in position to write and play music before the time off caused them to get rusty with playing or songwriting. With this in mind, Cornell wisely enlisted the other soon-to-be Temple of the Dog musicians (Gossard, Ament, Mike McCready and Matt Cameron) and a masterpiece was about to be born!
The album’s lead single, Hunger Strike, is a brilliant piece that features a fresh and truly immaculate young voice from San Diego in the incredibly charismatic Eddie Vedder, who was actually auditioning for Gossard and Ament’s new band that you may have heard of (Pearl Jam). The story goes that Cornell - hard to believe - was having trouble hitting the lows as he wanted them to sound and Vedder simply took the mic and naturally delivered the vocals exactly as Cornell had wanted them to sound! I think it’s safe to say Vedder passed his audition with flying colors due to his incredible power, elegance and charisma (and quickly developing song-writing). The song’s drop D tuning and the darker sounding post-chorus riff give it a very proper grunge edge. Say Hello To Heaven and Hunger Strike quickly became staples of ‘90s radio stations worldwide.
Digging deeper, Pushin’ Forward Back (the third single) and Your Savior combines Mother Love Bone’s street rock approach with Pearl Jam’s more serious hard rock sound. The former features a powerful rhythm guitar riff, soaring lead riffs, Cornell’s finest vocals and the best backup vocals you could ask for from Vedder. Skipping ahead to track eight, Your Savior provides some extremely impressive (and aggressive) drumming, guitar tracks and again Vedder’s unmistakably brilliant sounding backup vocals that could not complement Cornell’s lead vocals any better! This is definitely a favorite among favorites for myself, and perfectly follows the track Wooden Jesus in my humble opinion.
Call Me a Dog and Times of Trouble are, without doubt, two of the most beautiful ballads I’ve ever heard. The former slowly builds up momentum with lovely piano playing and a quieter guitar that seemingly gets louder as the song goes on until it reaches a crescendo, as the bridge hears Cornell belting out some seriously high lead vocals and then McCready blazing through with another divine solo! Times of Trouble is a very interesting piece of music to say the least. It was actually also used for Vedder’s auditioning as well as this albums in the absolutely alluring Pearl Jam song Footsteps, which had a more stripped down approach. Times of Trouble on the other hand features the music’s absolute full potential being unlocked with a more solid production, a more eventful buildup that includes gorgeous sounding piano and even a harmonica solo for good measure. This is blues rock at its absolute finest!
Wooden Jesus continues the beautiful ballad sound, with probably my favorite bassline of the album and adding another layer to the music with a what I believe is a very prominent and majestic-sounding banjo (if not it’s an acoustic) during the second verse and Cornell just absolutely owns it vocally on this track McCready’s criminally underrated guitar solo ties it all together perfectly. Four Walled World - along with Times of Trouble - captures Chris Cornell’s bluesiest sound I’ve ever heard on record, and the extended outro allows him to get some serious wails out along with another epic McCready solo. Four Walled World is a very strong track and gives me vibes of Pearl Jam’s soon-to-heard songwriting. In particular Four Walled World sounds sort of like precursor to Pearl Jam’s Deep. I’m not sure why exactly but they remind me of each other. Both have very bluesy riffs although Deep is definitely a harder edged track (love the phaser effect on it). But listening to it now it is more bluesy than I remembered for being one of the heavier Ten tracks. The main riffs are what sound similar to me.
All Night Thing is among the best album closers I’ve ever heard, settling the album and night with a beautiful ballad that feels a bit influenced by The Doors due to the use of an organ for the main melody (courtesy of the great Rick Parasher). I love that they went this route for the closing song. It makes me want to restart the album when it finishes so amazingly like that! This album has shades of Led Zeppelin all over it and I mean that in the best way possible. Heck even Chris Cornell and Robert Plant have very similar vocals imo and virtually identical vocal range at four octaves (although I’ve heard five for both as well) with the ability to croon or wail with the best - well they are the best lol.
The album is perfect from start to finish. Everyone served their purpose immaculately. Every single note, chord, lyric / vocal on this album feels perfectly placed. From the opening tracks that Cornell penned as soon as he heard the tragic news to the full on blues rock of the middle to the end of the album. I love the Mother Love Bone flavor to many of the tracks - particularly Pushin’ Forward Back and Your Savior imo. All Night Thing is among the best album closers ever in regards to softer gentler closers, which also includes Mother Loce Bone’s Chloe DanceCrown of Thorns (Shine EP and Apple - but without Chloe Dancer for the latter for whatever silly reason as both together created the “Stairway to Heaven of gen X”). Also including a piano - again courtesy of Rick Parasher - in a few songs was absolutely poetic being that it was Wood’s instrument of choice. I just wish he could’ve been the one playing piano on a Mother Love Bone and Soundgarden collaboration where they still somehow find Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready. If this album shows us anything, it is that tragedy can often sparks a passionate flame that otherwise cannot be equaled. Mind Riot by Soundgarden is further proof in this particular case.
Also my other picks for best softer album closers - so excluding all harder songs, or this will go on forever lol - plus closing with a gentler song I’ve always preferred as it feels like the albums way of saying “goodnight” which the first of these songs I’m going to list literally does! Jane’s Addiction’s Classic Girl (Ritual de lo Habitual), Pearl Jam’s Release (Ten), Pearl Jam’s Indifference (Vs), Alice In Chains’ Over Now (Tripod), Nirvana’s Something in the Way (Nevermind), Led Zeppelin’s Tea for One (Presence), Aerosmith’s You See Me Crying (Toys In The Attic) Aerosmith’s Home Tonight (Rocks).
Thank you to those who took the time to read my review of my favorite album of all-time! Rest in Peace to the great musicians / producers and human that were Andrew “Andy” Wood, Chris Cornell and Rick Parasher (producer for Temple of the Dog’s eponymous album and Pearl Jam’s Ten). You will all live on forever through your incredible music and be forever loved! Thank you from the bottom of my heart ❤️

I don't think this would count as malicious compliance, but I think I'd be doing my company a favor with it, and somewhat stick it to my bosses who likely would take issue with it. I generally like my job and my bosses. This is moreso a result of my district manager; let's call him John. That's not to say I wasn't, at fault. I did in fact fuck things up royally, with no one to blame on certain aspects but myself. A while ago, I wanted to become a key carrier for my store, I thought it'd be nice to earn 25 more cents for every hour at my store, and be a bit more capable. For context, the company uses an online training system we're expected to do at work when we have no customers, or, if it wasn't a station that dealt with customers, just straight up nothing to do. Becoming a key carrier was something you had to go out of your way to find on the training site, and do. Finding and doing it wasn't hard. In fact, I got it done within an hour. I told my general manager; let's call him Matt, the next day that I was looking to be a key carrier, and had already done the online part. I could tell by his look that he was impressed with my taking initiative, but not much came from it. About a month later, Matt finally got me started doing actual in-person training with other key carriers, and seeing as how I could only close on Fridays and Saturdays, it would've been a slow process. At least it should've been. Given how Matt had been cutting back on people's hours, with everyone saying that John was pressuring him to do so, I have reason to believe that John is responsible for how long it took me to actually get started with in-person training. However, I only got 2 weeks until I had to close the store on my own. That was 4 nights' worth of learning, and safe to say: I WAS NOT READY. I couldn't remember where I was supposed to look to see how much I was supposed to take out of each register or how much variance there was. Not helping was how the other 2 people up front were a little new, the guy in the back was a bit lazy, and the 2 of the 4 computers we had to ring people up were crapping out for some reason. Things weren't going smoothly, and I was losing patience as the night went on. Once we closed for the night, I sent 2 of my coworkers home for the night, as we weren't allowed to count registers or safe without at least one other person in the store. The registers ended up being incredibly short for the next day, but confusingly to my general manager in training, let's call him Elliott, the deposit that was accurate. He ended up having to scrub through security footage to be sure that I didn't steal any money, which I didn't. The most damning thing I did was forget to ask about actually getting the physical key. This is one area where I am objectively at fault. No denying it. So when the other guy and I left for the night, we locked the front door, put in the alarm code, and made a mad dash for the back door. It was about an hour and a half after we were supposed to have left, and we were very tired, so we didn't bother to make sure the door closed all the way, and just went home. It was just left open, and I am INCREDIBLY lucky that no one snuck in. I showed up the next day and asked just how horribly I fucked up. Elliott calmly said that it was by a lot, but understood that I wasn't entirely at fault. We quickly made a few schedule changes so that a key carrier would be watching over me, ensuring that I actually knew what I was doing. A while later, I would be closing with someone who was previously a key carrier for another company; let's call him Greg, and he is a pretty solid guy. I asked Greg why he wasn't a key carrier for our company, to which he said: "The amount of added duties weren't worth the 25 cent raise. You're pretty much a manager, with all of the overrides you'd get access to, and things you'd be responsible for signing off on, but you aren't called a manager, or payed like one." After seeing me close a few times, he noted how, at least compared to his previous company, the closing process had way more room for error. I don't know just how much better the closing procedures are at Greg's previous company, but I found it noteworthy. What Matt and John might take issue with is my plan to head straight to my store and ensure that any new key carriers were capable whenever someone was being trained to become a key carrier. I fully intend to do so for every night they close without another key carrier scheduled until they can confidently do so with me just watching them. I imagine my John and Matt will be taking issue with the fact that I'll be off the clock when helping with closing procedures. My response to that would be: having a key carrier come in for an hour at most for a few nights would be less expensive to the company than the two people already be there for 2 hours longer than they're supposed to be, combined with someone coming in early the next morning to fix whatever mistakes were made, and maybe scrub through footage, for the same amount of nights. Again, I don't think this counts as malicious compliance, but I'd be sticking it to an incompetent boss and saving the company a bit.
Edit: I changed some lines to be a bit more accurate and did a bit of formatting, so it's not one massive paragraph. Sorry.