groucho

There was a senior dev at my first job that we called Lord Voldemort and he was the king of ungreppable variable names. Short, full of common characters, and none of them actually described what they were doing. I swear he only used characters that appeared in C++ keywords, so looking for fo would invariably tag every for statement in the file.

He also had hooks set up to notify when anyone was in his area of the code and you'd always get a two-hour phonecall where he'd slowly wear you down and browbeat you into backing out your changes. Every time I pulled a ticket in his codebase I'd internally shudder. He was friends and/or had dirt on the CTO so he just remained in that role and made everyone's life hell.

"It's my birthday! I'm a hundred!"

Being around for free drinks is pretty on brand for actual Jesus, too.

Geez this is a deep cut.

Stan all trying to plot a course to Ferenginar on the sly.

Neither too few nor too many.

I agree with you. Even if you never touch it, it's nice to know what the libraries you're calling are doing under the hood.

Imagine being a high-ranking NYT exec, watching a computer hellbrain churn for a few minutes and spit out a five letter word.

"See? We can help!"

"I UNDERSTAND that one time you saw YOUR MOTHER wearing CLOTHING. The HORROR of it. THE DRAPING FABRIC. THE DELICATE EMBROIDERY. The WAY it BUNCHED UP AROUND HER. I cannot begin to FATHOM how DISGUSTING it must have been for you. TO SEE YOUR MOTHER THERE in CLOTHING. This is not the kind of thing I like to imagine. The FOLDS and GUSSETS and BUTTON HOLES. Imagine your mother PUTTING HER CLOTHING ON, thrusting her STUBBY FINGERS through her BUTTON HOLES as she DRAPES HERSELF IN FABRIC. And when she was done she LOOKED IN A MIRROR....."

I had this whole theory built up about how the aliens were manifestations of the little girl's trauma and grief and everything was just happening within the town. All the stuff on the radio and TV was her using spooky kid mind powers unconsciously. That's why they were allergic to water: she has a weird thing about contaminated water glasses.

And then at the end he just hits the fucking alien with a baseball bat and the credits roll. What the actual hell.

Pretty much, yeah.

Getting stopped randomly in the street by people trying to find weed or the Greek Orthodox temple, that's what.