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

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

The time I won at craps.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I saw it.

“What’s the ‘Don’t Pass Line’?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But a plan is a plan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My last drain snake broke off in the drain.

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

I got you.

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

Step 1: Cook bacon.

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

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

Step 4: Store it in the refrigerator.

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

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

• Pancakes? Pancakes with a soupçon of bacon.

• Eggs? Obviously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bottom.

1. The risers on the stairs are not visible.

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

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

There’s nothing wrong with carpeted stairs.

Just do what I do, and fall behind on everything.

That was technically a Skrull who beat Hank Pym’s wife. A perfect replica of his personality, tendencies, and mental well-being, but still not technically Hank Pym himself. This failed to redeem him, I think.

At my first job, they hired me to do some really boring, repetitive stuff, but they weren’t too particular about how I did it. So I taught myself how to get real good at Excel and VBA and automated most of my work. They noticed and then they made that my job.

Ten years later, after several organizational shifts, most of my work was back to being boring, repetitive stuff. My workload was split evenly between running manual reports and maintaining old, bloated projects. But this time it was worse because my manager was hostile towards me and literally could not understand what it meant for me to write code in VBA. Like, no matter how many times I showed him what I could do, he still thought I was just clicking “record” and automating things that way. Ultimately, he just didn’t like me. My performance reviews weren’t getting better, and there was no more future in the role.

So I automated the reports and didn’t tell anyone. It bought me several hours per day to work on whatever I wanted, like my resumé. When I eventually left (for like a 60% pay raise), I sent all the automation to the other person on my team who ran those reports. I don’t know what she did with it.

Which one?

The Irredeemable Ant-Man is an interesting one - he’s a low level, lazy SHIELD worker who steals an Ant-Man suit and uses it for selfish things. But you probably meant Scott Lang. I’d say Scott is more of a regular hero.

My wife and I established movie nights with our kids when they were 5 and 2. Everyone takes turns picking a movie, and no one is allowed to complain.

This is how we’ve managed to break the pattern of our kids watching the same movies over and over and over. Since instituting movie night about a year ago, we’ve only seen Frozen once.

It also gives us the opportunity to expose the kids to our favorite movies.

The movie we’ve watched the most times is probably Disney’s Robin Hood (3 times). Second most is a tie between Matilda, Babe, and Across the Spider-verse (2 times each). So I’d say it’s going extremely well.

I don’t have enough skin.

The cops beat down the door . . .

I really thought it was going another direction, where they’d just, you know, get more skin.

As a resident of Floxus, I propose we make the creeping phlox our state flower.

(It smells like rotting skunk.)

Wrap the can in a wet paper towel. It’ll get cold much faster that way, possibly before you forget it’s in there.

Best Christmas gift I ever got my dad. He’s a huge Christmas Story fan. It came in a big crate filled with straw and everything, with “HIS END UP” and “FRAGILE” printed on the side. I think it’s a little smaller than the official one, but still pretty big.

He puts it in the front window of his house every year.

Maybe it’s not about poop. Maybe “liquid ass” is what was “poured into them jeans”?

Let’s have a little optimism on the internet for once.

To be fair, that’s kind of the point of the story. He’s a bit of a dick who needs to learn to do better.