This on top of learning there’s going to be a Project Hail Mary movie today. My cup runneth over.

And that’s the story of how we kind of sort of basically scored my husband a birthday banjo off the Cornbread mafia. /🧵

Anyway, Jim brought the banjo with him on Saturday and it was definitely, probably worth getting mixed up with the Mt. Sterling Scarface just to see Dave’s face when he opened the box and saw the banjo. Even if the box was labeled “ABANEZ” because whatever Scott is, he is *really* not a music guy.

When Jim went back to buy, Scott and a woman were throwing stuff into boxes and said they were liquidating the store. Unsure if this was banjo-related and Jim really did give off cop vibes (very unlikely). Either way Scott still made Jim pay full price for the banjo. So much for liquidation prices.

I told Jim not to go back and put himself at risk, that I’d find a banjo elsewhere, but he said he’d be fine because he doesn’t give off “cop” vibes. Which, way to tempt fate, Jimmy.

I texted Jim and asked what was going on and he texted back, “My dude had muscle on the door and a room full of guitars covered in dust. Not sure what kind of business he's running, but it ain't a music shop. The banjo, fwiw, seems legit.”

He did some googling when he got home and come to find out, the ATF raided the pawn shop in 2019 because it was BASICALLY A FRONT FOR DRUGS AND STOLEN GUNS. The guy we both talked to was the same guy from the article. www.wkyt.com/content/news...

Jim, for some reason, actually went inside and checked out the banjo while the muscle guy watched him. And when I say this guy was neckless, I mean he literally could not turn his neck. Jim said Muscle Guy had to turn his whole torso like Michael Keaton’s Batman to track Jim from the door.

Anyway, he drove over the next day and made for the pawn shop’s well-lit front entrance. But then the seller scurried out to intercept and instead hustled him around to the back door. Which was guarded by a huge no-neck guy in a sweatshirt & gold chains like the frigging Russian mafia.

This is real friendship, y’all. Sure, a “friend” will buy you a beer, but will they fetch a sketchy banjo for you? My friend Jim will.

Dave’s a drummer, has all kinds of instruments. Legit got a balalaika on Marketplace last month. But he has always burned for a banjo yet remained unfulfilled.

So I found a nice Ibanez online. It was at a pawn shop in Mt. Sterling, but our friend Jim lives there & said he’d buy it if I Venmoed him.

The government can also ensure land-grant universities can take way more nursing students, bc that bottleneck is one of the biggest problems. Nurses with advanced degrees can't make near as much teaching in nursing school as they can at a hospital. That has to change too. More seats, more teachers.

Well, he's nothing if not consistently awful.

And to those who want to vote for 3rd parties, two things: What are you doing to ensure solid candidates win the primaries so you can vote for someone you like? And what are you doing to advocate for ranked choice voting, because this won't get better while we mostly have first past the post voting.

Ugh, that's awful. My son used to have ARFID (still pretty picky at 21, tbh), and it was hell on earth to try and switch up his diet before he had gone through a lot of food therapy. I hope your son's able to access his comfort foods at a reasonable price.

Whether it's right or not, this is going to be the last straw for a lot of leftists. If the Dems don't grow a spine, a lot of people will vote for third parties or sit out. The Dems are an object lesson in why fascism only happens with a weak, feckless opposition party.