📖 Story Time: How the Frogs helped the Lion save the world.

1. One day a story will be told, around the holidays, about how God worked through good people to defeat evil on the Earth. There will be many books written & stories told. This is a short version one of them.

Good morning I want to tell you a story

Once upon a time I spent all week getting ridiculous messages from men calling me their "little friend," telling me they got publicly humiliated by their girlfriend in front of a girl they thought was me, telling me I was disrespectful...

...to a man named Aubrey Huff for responding to a tweet that literally said all old and fat people should just die, calling me "beautifull..."

yada yada yada men are trash. We know that.

But then

Then it seemed my fortune was about to change.

Enter mommyheather.

mommyheather seemed like the kind of woman you want around. She didn't want naked photos, she just wanted to talk.

Hey, it's a pandemic. We're all a little bored.

Early on, I thought I blew it. I was too enthusiastic about this covid vaccine....

Bootstrapped entrepreneurs always have the last laugh.

A son of Iranian immigrants turned a single LA retail store into a $1,000,000,000+ ecommerce giant.

All with $0.00 in funding

Here’s the story 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

1/ Richard Saghian was born in 1982.

His family was a minority group of Jewish-Iranians who fled during the revolution.

After moving to America, they got into women’s fashion retail.

In 2006, Richard followed in their footsteps…

2/ He started his own store. His idea was simple: affordable, unique clothes to wear to the club.

His goal was to open 100, but he stopped at 5.

Early on, he had the idea of opening up an internet store...

3/ The web dev he hired quickly talked him out of it, “where will you get traffic?” was a question Richard couldn’t answer.

After a few years, the retail stores were going nowhere…

4/ In 2013, Richard noticed several stores online selling the same clothes for over twice what he charged.

He created an Instagram account, took some of his best selling styles and started posting them every day.

At first, crickets.

But then, something magical happened…

I’m going to tell you a story. And hold tight, because this is an emotional one.

In 2013, Canongate republished three novels that had fallen out of print: William McIlvanney’s Glasgow-set Laidlaw trilogy, first published between 1977 and 1991.

It’s hard to overstate the influence these books had had on crime writing, but he was responsible for many of the tropes we now take for granted in that genre. @Beathhigh, @valmcdermid, @cbrookmyre, @MarkBillingham, @DameDeniseMina and others all cite him as a major inspiration.

In fact, @Beathhigh tells a lovely story about coming to one of Willie’s events in the 80s, and telling him he planned to write detective fiction like Laidlaw, but set in Edinburgh. He still has his book, inscribed “Good luck with the Edinburgh Laidlaw” and signed by Willie.

McIlvanney wasn’t just revered for his writing; he was also known for his humour, his graciousness, and his charm. I was lucky enough to work with him, and attest to the fact he was a proper old-school gentleman. I mean, just look at this photo. How could you not love him?

The brother came into his DM like a thief in the night
The brother said he needed some help
Things were tight and love was scarce
The brother said he was a Christian brother
The brother played the Jesus card
He told the brother to send his bank account details
The brother said

he would prefer that they meet
Silver and gold can come later
Can you please meet with me?
He told the Brother when and where
He sent the brother transport fare
They met and talked like brothers
The brother was quite smart
What he got when he was leaving
was ten times what he

would have gotten had they not met
The brother became a regular visitor
to his office
They would sit and talk about life and the gospel
The brother's situation was quite pathetic
No job, no money, nothing to show for his almost forty years of existence
He said he once had a job

and even bought a car
But when the wind and the waves came, he sold all he could to keep body and soul together
After about three months after meeting the brother
His younger sister came to the office to see him
She was a software engineer working with a blue-chip company abroad

Just as he was seeing his sister off
The brother arrived with a friend
The brother said he had a visitor from out of state and wanted to ensure that his visitor met his new friend in Christ
He knew what the brother wanted to do
Yet, he smiled and said hello and shook hands with

On #CaturdayEve , I was thinking about telling the heartwarming story of the eye-patched curmudgeon who sits around working with a silly sword on his wall and an even sillier cat on his hat.

I doubt anyone would believe it, though. What do you think? Should I try it?

I met the old guy back when he was much younger, over 25 years ago now.

I didn't know then that he was permanent. He was sort of a stray, that I made the mistake of letting in my house and feeding.

You know how that sort of thing goes, right?

I mean, my kid liked him and he showed every indication of wanting to stick around. Next thing I knew, it wasn't just him, but his three kids, too.

Kind of nice actually.

I'm still not certain how it happened, but two more kids showed up. They looked sort of like him and sort of like me. Definitely weird, but they were cute and I let them stay, too.

But then the cats started arriving.

The first time it happened, it seemed reasonable and temporary.

The man came in, soaked from the rain, hunched over and cradling something in his cupped palms.