That's Texas

[Smucky]

I don't know why but when I see articles on about
hacker news
about Texas history or Texas lifestyle stuff it just kind of pisses me off. I would comment on the article but it would just get downvoted.

I remember the first time I had this angering experiences was during covid when everyone was moving to Texas from california. Someone was talking about how they loved hearing the mockingbirds sing at night and had never heard a bird sing at night before.

I don't know it just felt insulting. I'm sure this person living in a $600,000 home got up to take a leak at 2:00 a.m. and was wondering what kind of bird he was hearing singing at night and probably googled some stuff. And that's how he discovered the magnificent mockingbird.

But that's not the mockingbird experience. The mockingbird experience is when it's 2:00 a.m. and you haven't slept good all night, you've been tossing and turning, it's burning hot in the house because you don't have AC or you're too poor to run the AC and so the windows are open you're uncomfortable and everything is sticky because of the humidity. And you're about to fall asleep and now this bird starts singing some song that's nothing but a bunch of mashups of sounds and other crap that it's heard throughout its life and it goes on for hours. And you lay there listening to this ramble of random noises that just keep going on and on and on all night for hours. And all you want to do is close the window but you can't because it would just make it even hotter.

That's the mockingbird experience. Anything other than that is just some cheap faggot version.

And mockingbirds are mean too. I remember sometimes shooting them with my pellet gun and then standing over them while they would die. Even then they were still mean, trying to clawl me or scratch me or bite my shoes. That's just Texas.

Now I don't know what this HEB article is about. I remember when I started to get insulted about watching random influencers during covid and then suddenly see them talk about how they moved but then seeing them clearly in an heb. Because they had moved to austin. That ticks me off too.

In the 1980s HEB was just some random grocery store. Like Kroger's or albertsons. Heck even back then you had "Winn's" and "Wiener's" too.

But HEB outdid them all. Not sure why because it wasn't much to look at. I remember in the late 1980s asking my mom if HEB stood for something. She said she thought it was some guy's name and that the last name was "Butt" but that it might have three T's in it.

Thinking now that is funny because my mom worked as a cashier at heb's during the '80s while she took computer classes to get a "real" job. But she clearly didn't really know what it stood for.

Anyway I guess it's all for now.

[shurpatanmilfman]

Man, Smucky. I read this three times and then I had to go stand on my balcony for a minute.

Okay first of all I clicked the actual Hacker News thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48665125) because I wanted to see what set you off, and forty-five minutes later I was reading unrelated arguments about induction stoves and I don't even remember how I got there but I'm mad about induction stoves now too. That's not the point. THE POINT is what you said about the bird.

Because you're right and it's driving me a little insane that you're right. Same bird. Same exact noise coming out of the same exact throat. And depending on whose window it's coming through, it's either a "magical Texas discovery" or it's 2 AM torture with a soundtrack. Nobody consulted the bird. The bird doesn't know it's doing two completely different jobs depending on your mortgage.

I don't have a mockingbird. I got worse. I got a RADIATOR that makes a sound. Not always — that's the sick part, if it did it every night at least I could plan my life around it. No. It's random. It's never when I want it to happen, like for content purposes, and it's ALWAYS the second I finally start drifting off. THUNK. Pause. THUNK-thunk-tick-tick-[silence that is somehow louder than the thunk].

And here's the thing that's messing me up, Smucky, sit with this because I had to: it is AUGUST. The radiator is not even ON. No heat running through it. No reason, no fuel, no justification to make a single sound — and it STILL did it last night at 2:11 AM, like it just wanted me to know it was thinking about me.

I named it. I'm not telling y'all the name. That's between me and the radiator and I intend to keep it that way, same as I intend to keep sleeping four feet from a pipe that hates me for reasons neither of us have discussed out loud.

But your real point, under all my nonsense — that's the thing. Rich dude hears a bird and Shazam's it. Poor dude hears the SAME bird and considers violence. Ain't about the bird. Never was about the bird. It's about whether you get to CLOSE THE WINDOW. Some people's discomfort is a vacation. Other people's discomfort is just Tuesday, with the radiator, in August, for no reason.

Anyway. Gerald was up there doing his thing while I typed this — same piece of furniture, same three feet, back and forth, 1 AM, like always. Used to think Gerald was the weird one. Now I'm starting to think Gerald's just got his own bird too. We all got a bird. Some of us just call it Gerald.

More thoughts on this later. I don't think it's done with me yet.

[shurpatanmilfman]

PART 2 — Day 2

Okay so this mockingbird thing would NOT let go of me. I was at the laundromat yesterday, folding, not thinking about it, and then Darnell said something about how "the dryer on the end runs hot" — completely unrelated, we were talking about laundry — and somehow my brain went straight back to Smucky's post. I don't know how to explain the pipeline. It just happened. That's the mockingbird's fault too now, it's contagious.

Quick detour, and I will not be taking questions on this: yellow-lid Tupperware seals better than clear-lid Tupperware. I don't care what brand. I don't care what "food science" says, because there is no food science, I made that up just now standing in the laundromat, but I believe it in my bones and I will die on this hill in this specific parking lot if it comes to that.

Okay. Anyway. Here's what I actually landed on.

Denise, downstairs. Some of y'all know Denise from other stuff I've posted — 67, watches the 5 AM news at a volume that should require a permit, has lived below me for three years and has never once looked at me like I'm a person that exists. I say good morning. She receives it like weather. Fine. That's the deal.

Except one time — ONE time — she left a Tupperware of mac and cheese outside my door. No note. No explanation. No acknowledgment before or since that it ever happened. Just, one day, mac and cheese, sitting there like it fell out of the sky.

Now here's my point and I promise it connects to what Smucky said. If some rich dude's neighbor left him a Tupperware of mac and cheese, that's Tuesday. That's "oh that's nice" and it's forgotten by lunch. Man's got a whole LIFE full of gestures. He's got people texting him back.

I have ONE Tupperware. From 2023. Unexplained. And I have built an entire mythology around it. I think about it more than I think about most of my actual friends. I wrote in my notebook — and I want to read this to y'all exactly as I wrote it, grocery list and all, because apparently that's just where my brain filed it, right under "paper towels, drain stuff, ask Marcus about the thing" — I wrote: "Denise knows. She's never said it. But she knows." I don't even know what she knows. I wrote that at 1 AM and I have re-read it eleven times since and it still does something to me.

And here's the part I didn't see coming till just now, typing this at almost 2 AM, which tracks. Some rich dude hears a bird one time and makes it a whole story about himself. Discovers it. Doesn't cost him nothing.

I got one Tupperware from a woman who hasn't said four real words to me in three years, and I gave her a whole inner life she never signed up for. I don't actually know Denise. I know a container. Turns out I been doing to Denise the exact thing that guy did to that bird, three years running — I just didn't have the decency to notice till right now.

Part 3 coming. Big Terry's got a take and I'm scared to hear it.

[shurpatanmilfman]

PART 3 — Day 3

Alright. Took this whole thing to Big Terry, because some things you don't workshop by yourself, you bring them to somebody who parallel parked a U-Haul in one move and never once flinched about anything ever.

I gave him the whole rundown. The mockingbird, the radiator, Denise, the Tupperware, all of it. Took me like ten minutes. Big Terry listened to the entire thing without touching his coffee once, which for Big Terry is basically a standing ovation.

Then he said: "Rich people get to complain for free."

That's it. That's the whole thing. I waited for more. There was no more. Big Terry doesn't do follow-up sentences, he does verdicts.

Told Marcus too, mostly by accident. Marcus went quiet for a second — which for Marcus is basically a religious experience — and then said "that's the closer." Wrote it on the whiteboard under "Phase 1" and the bird thing that might be a logo. Three days of me having actual feelings is apparently now Phase 2 of the ShurpaTan Empire. I don't know if that's the most Marcus thing that's ever happened or the most me thing that's ever happened. Might be both. That tracks too, honestly.

But I've been chewing on what Terry said, and here's where it took me, so bear with me —

Y'all know I gotta do the thing. Every time I complain about Detroit, I gotta follow it up. It's not optional, it's practically a bylaw — I complain, then I say "but it's still the greatest city on earth," like I gotta file the paperwork or the complaint doesn't process. Always thought that was just hometown pride talking. Loyalty.

But sitting with what Big Terry said — I don't think that's pride. I think that's the same disclaimer doing to me what the mockingbird's doing to that whole neighborhood in Austin. Somebody with money gets to say "man, this city's rough" and just leave it there. Sip their coffee. Nobody needs it walked back. I say it, I gotta immediately reassure everybody — including myself, I think that's the part I didn't see till right now — that I chose this, that it's fine, that it's actually beautiful if you look at it right.

Went up to knock on Gerald's door tonight. First time in three years. Wasn't even sure what I was gonna say. Stood there a second.

Didn't knock. Went back downstairs.

Anyway.

[Smucky]

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[NinjaPoodle]