Day 119: Game Of Butts: The Pounds Of Winter

If memory serves from my time compiling my tingler spreadsheet, this is the only pop culture tingler based off a show I've actually seen! It even came out before the last season! (I don't feel like talking about that. It's already been talked about plenty.)

So, I can finally appreciate the experience of seeing a fun Tingleverse twist on a setting I'm familiar with! Dragons are connected to the t-rex species, and of course the force of love has a much stronger presence in the tingler than the fantasy property it parodies. All in all, a fun read that doesn't require deep knowledge of the show/books, and I laughed out loud at the pun at the end.

Day 118: Billionaire Elons Mugg Takes The Handsome Planet Mars In His Butt

Like the bitcoin story, this is another one from a time when the subject didn't have quite as much of a controversial reputation. I don't think that nowadays Dr. Tingle would give Elons Mugg a story with a nice ending where he ends up with the planet of his dreams.

Still, for what it is, and when it came out, this was a fun little sci-fi adventure. Taking a decade to terraform the planet's nether region is quite possibly the most high-effort, intense form of cock worship the human mind has ever conceived of. If only Mugg's real-life counterpart actually channeled his massive resources into even one idea that truly innovative!

In the end, if children bother you for sensory reasons and that's why you don't want them to be in the same public spaces as you, there are disabled adults who can and would cause the same sensory issues for you. Adults who are loud, who vocally stim, who have poor boundaries, poor hygiene, who cry in public, etc etc etc. And they're already socially ostracized for all of this.

So actually yeah, it's the bare minimum you can do for the group with the least human rights on the planet to figure out how to accept children as part of your public community without hating them for it, even if you are child-free yourself.

Day 117: Pounded In The Butt By The Fact That It Took Less Time For This Book To Be Written And Published Than The Entire Length Of Tony Scarymoochy’s Term As White House Communications Director

The news headlines sure were flying by fast in 2016 and 2017, but Dr. Tingle was even faster! Not only that, he's really hitting his stride with these political tinglers!

At first I was enjoying the political tinglers just as a trip through recent history, but now I'm really getting into them as stories; both yesterday and today I found myself really entertained by the look into the viewpoint of the main character. The title of this one made it clear that this one would be a meta tingler, but even at the beginning while the fourth wall was still up, I was enjoying the little trip into the mind of an asshole with a deliberate lack of self reflection over any of his negative traits, whose downfall the reader already knows is ahead. Even so far past the very small window of time this tingler is about, it was a really fun read!

It put a huge smile on my face when the erotic encounter ended with both the protagonist and the living concept sucking themselves off; a cheeky acknowledgment that while he spends a lot of this story poking fun at someone for being self-important, Dr. Tingle is also being self-congratulatory with the boast that is this book's title and in-story statement on the importance of fiction. Of course, it's a lot more charming when it comes from someone who is giving the world such fun art and really deserves the praise he gives himself!

Day 116: Domald Tromp Jr. Slammed In The Butt By His Secret Russian Meetings And The Grossly Incompetent Cover Up Shortly Thereafter

I appreciate the fantastical spin on the protagonist of this story. As this layer of the Tingleverse has an inhuman void crab Tromp, Tromp Jr. is half void crab, half human. He has the opportunity to choose humanity rather than his father's path of the void, but time and time again he finds it easier to go along with the selfish nature his father encourages.

Tromp Jr. is a complicated character here; to some degree it bothers him to give in to the ways of the void, but that hint of a conscience doesn't make its way to his actions. This makes him more interesting and sympathetic than most of Dr. Tingle's unlikable protagonists, but in the end his downfall still feels very deserved.

Day 115: There's A Bitcoin In My Butt And He Is Handsome

This tingler is an interesting look back at 2017, when cryptocurrency wasn't as hated as it is now, it was more of a niche phenomenon. Honestly, even though I have a very poor view of cryptocurrency personally (and the title of Dr. Tingle's later NFT-related title would suggest he feels the same now) I'm happy not to be getting fully into the negatives of it just yet, not while I'm still in the middle of the peak Tromp Tingler era and revisiting difficult feelings of the past in that way.

Besides, this tingler still does gently poke fun at its crypto enthusiast protagonist. Well, more accurately, he's a conspiracy minded apocalypse prepper just newly getting into the world of cryptocurrency, and I love that! A bit of exploration into one type of person who takes an interest in decentralized currency, and a commmentary on how poorly-considered these financial decisions often are. There's a definite irony when his apocalyptic fixations have him setting up a bunker with food stores to last for years, but his new financial interest is so inherently unstable in value!

Day 114: T-Rex Anal Workout

Like the title, this tingler is both one of the simpler ones, and very enjoyable for what it is! Who doesn't love a story of a gym bro getting his ass pounded?

OK, probably a lot of people, but I'm not one of them. It's a classic gay porn scenario for a good reason! Lifting and bottoming are basically the same thing. Testing the capacity of one's body, the pleasant stretch and strain of muscles, the endorphin rush after getting in enough reps... what could be better than combining them?

Day 113: Pounded In The Butt By The Sentient Manifestation Of My Own Ignorant Climate Change Denial

Happy Earth Day!

We have another tingler with an unlikable protagonist, as is clear from the title. I have to admit, even though this is a story about him realizing why he is wrong, it's cathartic to see the climate change denier protagonist get hit by a car before he has his change of heart. That's one way to get the attention of someone who normally refuses to hear others' perspectives!

If not for the Tromp references at the beginning, this could have been a tingler from any time in the past decade. So little has changed... I dearly wish this felt as dated as the other political tinglers of this time period. At least we can still enjoy this fantasy of a climate change denier reconsidering his perspective.

Day 112: Sunday Pounds Me In The Butt

Thinking about it now, I guess it was inevitable that with so many meta-aware characters, at least one layer of the Tingleverse would have a religion centered around the author. With this premise, this tingler is a commentary on those who dedicate this day to religious devotion, rather than its relation to the work week. The message of this tingler is one that I'm sure all readers of Dr. Tingle's works can agree with: an outlook focused on proving love in the world is much more productive than concerning oneself with trying to enforce a religion's granular rules.

In this top layer of the Tingleverse we have no way of speaking to our deities and finding out what their wishes truly are, but even the personification of Sunday in this tingler easily found himself fixating on things his deity didn't care very much about, before the author was able to give him guidance. Even for those of us who aren't religious, this tingler is a nice way to finish off the weekend, a reminder to center ourselves and remember our purpose going forward.

Day 111: Saturday Pounds Me In The Butt

The thing I appreciate most about this tingler is that Saturday is working a regular job in addition to carrying out his role as a day of the week. It's a nice subtle acknowledgment that while people on a normal weekday schedule, like the protagonist, enjoy Saturday as a day they can go off on fun excursions, there are always people working to make a lot of those fun weekend activities possible.

To people on the monday-friday work week, Saturday is the day where it seems like you can do anything, you have all the time in the world. That's the feeling this tingler captures. The protagonist and Saturday, his rafting instructor, end up on an unplanned path, and the nature of that free weekend day lets them enjoy diverting from their course as an extra fun adventure in their day.

Day 110: Friday Pounds Me In The Butt

Hell yes, work-life balance! We love to see it! While the last few tinglers were about the importance of embracing the mundane mid-week days, this one reminds us that focusing solely on working hard eventually comes to a person's detriment.

The protagonist of this one is a burned-out college student who has studied to the point where he just isn't absorbing information anymore. I've been there. Thankfully, he has a friend who recognizes his need to step away from the library for a few hours, and even knows where a certain sentient day of the week throws great parties!

It's refreshing to see going out and doing something fun at the end of a week depicted as something essential to being a human, rather than something frivolous that we do when life responsibilities aren't keeping us "on task". Not only is Friday the most well-liked day of the week, this tingler shows that he's also important to keeping the cycle going.

Day 109: Thursday Pounds Me In The Butt

These middle of the week tinglers all celebrate the mundane in their own ways. This time it's feeling overshadowed by another person. Thursday feels that he lives in the shadow of the common favorite of the work week, Friday. That puts him in a good position to understand the feelings of the protagonist, a racecar driver with a tendency to come in second place. They are mired in the feelings of being "almost there": just short of the end of the working week, just short of winning the grand prize.

I've never heard of this really being something people hold against Thursday. Indeed, the protagonist and his weekday lover eventually realize that even though they bonded over their feelings around being in second place, it's something that looms larger in their heads than in the world around them. Others around them don't see them as anything second rate.

(Personally, I'm a big fan of Thursday now since my new job has a lot of four day workweeks. On a three-day weekend, Friday is actually the second-rate Saturday!)

Day 108: Wednesday Pounds Me In The Butt

Anyone could have guessed that the Wednesday tingler would dedicate a significant amount of attention to the Hump Day nickname; it's still fun to open the story and see how it plays out. Rather than making a straightforward double entendre from the commonly used term, the protagonist of this story is so sex-obsessed that he doesn't even register a non-sexual meaning until he's found himself at a Hump Day event that has disappointingly little to do with sex. Well played, Dr. Tingle.

Of course, as someone who was up until very recently not in sync with the conventional cultural ideas of the days of the week, it's refreshing to me that the protagonist of this tingler also had no immediate workweek associations with Hump Day. Still, as in the tingler, once you get to know Wednesday, it can be pretty great.

Day 107: Tuesday Pounds Me In The Butt

The Monday tingler already came up in my reading order, but I'm reading the rest of the day-of-the-week tinglers to celebrate a personal victory in my life. A new job, the first one I've ever had where I work on weekdays and rest on weekends. The first time in my adult life where my experience will line up with the larger cultural consciousness of what a Monday is, what a Saturday is, and yes, a Tuesday.

So, I can't understate how much I vibe with this tingler celebrating the average, the mundane, middle-of-the-road experience personified in Tuesday. The Tuesday-ness of Tuesday comes from being settled in a rhythm of a regular week, after all. A lot of people take them for granted, but a regular weekly routine is an amazing thing to have. Unusual life experiences can be fun for a time and give you a lot of interesting stories, but they can make you feel unsteady, like the protagonist feeling out of place at the party at the beginning of this tingler. There's a lot of comfort and contentment that can be taken from things, and people, that give a sense of normalcy.

Day 106: England's Ass Is Haunted By A Hung Parliament

What's better than seizing the opportunity for a good pun? Making an entire story of it!

I'll be honest here and show my ass as an ignorant American... after looking up some basic definitions I'm still not totally sure I understand the actual political significance of a hung parliament. However, I sure know what it means for the parliament's personification now! And on a more serious note, I understand and respect the emphasis on the importance of voting!

Day 105: Pounded In The Butt By Covfefe

Covfefe was sure a moment. I think of it as the political equivalent of those times you have as a kid in school, where the teacher makes some minor mis-speak or stumble that wouldn't be that funny under normal circumstances, but everyone is in uproarious laughter over the break in the fluctuating boredom and tension of their day. Everyone joining in the laughter feels united in that moment.

It's fitting that in this tingler, Covfefe is a creature of peace, despite Tromp's attempts to weaponize him- just like Tromp's counterpart on this timeline, setting out to make another tweet to spark political discourse and instead creating a moment where people could laugh together at a bit of nonsensical text.

That mammoth has to be Bumbleborn, also from Trans Wizard Harriet Porber! I believe the t-rex and the cave bear aren't in the Tingleverse. (I think the t-rex could be a reference to SUE at Chicago's field museum who uses they/them pronouns on social media.)

The smilodon and triceratops don't stand out to me as references. There are a couple sabertooth tingler characters though, and while there isn't an explicitly stated bi triceratops to my knowledge, who knows, one that appeared in gay/lesbian tinglers could be bi!

Five days left in @nerdykeppie's Proud to the Bone 2 campaign! I've signed up for a single pin (because I was weak to too many of the other campaigns), and I am torn over which one to get.

On the one hand, the triceratops pin looks hella rad and is probably my favorite of the designs.

On the other hand, imagine the incredible power of getting a trans pride parasaurolophus pin for the @drchucktingle Harriet Porber reference.