GoneTrending

Millions of individuals are affected by suicide, i.e. suicide claims more than 47,000 lives each year. It is the tenth leading cause of death. On average, 130 people die by suicide each day, and many more attempt it. It is estimated 1.3 million survive each year — including people like me. I am one in a million. I have survived suicide. Twice. And while I am #blessed with an amazing network of friends, family members, and peers, even I have received some cringeworthy advice. I’ve heard things which would make you recoil in shock and cause your head to spin. Why? Because suicide is complicated matter and it’s hard to know what to say. Finding the right words can be tough.

Of course, when someone you care about is hurting, it’s natural to want to help. Offering wisdom and advice is usually done empathetically, and with good intentions in mind. However, some words aren’t the best — especially if you don’t understand suicidal ideations and thoughts.

“Discovering that someone you know and care about wants to end their life is an unusual and uncomfortable situation,” a paper from Child and Adolescent Behavioral Health explains. “Whether this news comes as a shock or is something the person has said before, it is a pivotal moment in your relationship. What you say next can make a big difference.” It can change and even save their life. For that reason, you want to move forward thoughtfully and intentionally. The topic shouldn’t be avoided, but it should be handled with care.

“If you think that someone may be feeling suicidal, [you can and should] encourage them to talk about how they are feeling,” an article by Rethink Mental Illness explains. “You may feel uncomfortable talking about suicidal feelings. You may not know what to say.” But a little empathy goes a long way. Plus, in most cases, saying something is better than saying nothing. Asking them how they are doing may seem like the smallest thing, but it can mean everything to someone else.

Here are eight things you shouldn’t say to someone who’s suicidal — and what you can say instead.

What’s wrong with you?

Many of us are shocked to discover our loved ones have contemplated (or are contemplating) suicide. It’s a hard pill to swallow. The very mention of suicide is scary — and it hurts. But while, instinctually, you may want to ask “why” or say something like “what’s wrong with you” you should avoid using accusatory language and/or speaking in a judgemental tone.

What to say instead: That must be scary. I’m sorry you’ve been feeling so alone.

It’s not that bad.

Many suicidal individuals live good lives. Happy lives. They have great jobs, and loving families. But suicide does not discriminate. Stressors and mental illness knows no bounds, and when someone is feeling hopeless and helpless hearing their struggles aren’t “that bad” invalidates their experience and minimizes their pain.

What to say instead: That sounds awful. Would you like to tell me more about it?

But you have so much to live for.

Much like “it’s not that bad,” saying “but you have so much to live for” is dismissive. It also shows a profound lack of understanding — about mental illness and suicide —as the suicidal person may be experiencing pain which is so great that it overshadows all other aspects of their life.

What to say instead: You mean so much to me.

Be grateful for what you have.

Practicing gratitude is great. After all, doing so can help put life in perspective. But while gratitude can lift your mood, it can also make you feel worse — especially when “what you have” isn’t enough to “snap” you out of a depression or escape suicidal thoughts.

What to say instead: I’m sorry you’re struggling so much. Can I sit with you?

Cheer up, or man up.

Saying things like “man up,” “suck it up” and/or “cheer up” aren’t just dismissive, they are disrespectful and show a complete lack of understanding of how things like mental illness and suicidal thoughts work.

What to say instead: It must be so hard to feel so alone. What can I do to help?

You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?

While you may not mean it this way, referring to one’s suicidal thoughts as stupid implies they are stupid, reinforcing negative self-talk and further diminishing their self-esteem. It also perpetuates the notion that the suicidal individual is incompetent, leaving them feeling like they have failed one more time.

What to Say Instead: I’m worried about you. Do you want to talk about your feelings?

It will get better.

This sentiment may seem harmless — after all, you are encouraging the suicidal individual and instilling hope — but saying “it will get better” can be problematic because you don’t know how and/or if their situation will change. And if things don’t get better? This can make the suicidal person feel even more helpless, hopeless, and alone.

What to say instead: I’m here for you. You don’t have to go through this alone.

Stay strong.

Suicide affects millions, regadless of race, religion, socioeconomic status, gender, or creed. It also affects “strong” individuals, i.e. experiencing suicidal thoughts does not make one weak or mean they are not “fighting.” But saying “stay strong” implies the individual is not doing enough. It implies there is a defect of character or that the suicidal thoughts are somehow their fault.

What to say instead: There is hope. Let me help you.

James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad was so into killing off its epic cast that a good chunk of them didn’t even make it to the opening credits. (That said, more could come back from the dead than once assumed.) But the Troma alum has played far, far, far nicer with the Guardians of the Galaxy, his wing of the MCU. But perhaps not all of them are safe after all. Fans recently dug up a quote from last year, in which Gunn revealed that someone dies in the still-in-the-works Vol. 3. And now fans are debating who eats it.

In April of 2020, Gunn did a Q&A session on Instagram Live. Someone asked him, point blank, “Will someone die in gogt 3?” Gunn responded with a tantalizing “Yes.” He also more recently (and even more vaguely) teased a Guardians passing. Could it be one of the central quintet (one of whom has already technically died, only to come back as a baby)? Could it be a prime supporting character, one of whom perished in Vol. 2? Who knows!

But social media is social media, and soon people on Twitter started floating their own answers. Some said Chris Pratt’s Star-Lord.

A lot of people were very sure it’s Drax. That’s not too far-fetched: Dave Bautista has said he may not play the sweet muscle-bound dimwit after Vol. 3.

Others were worried it could be Rocket.

Or Nebula.

Or all of them.

Some pointed out that it’s not the first time the series has killed off a beloved character. People are surely still missing Michael Rooker’s Yondu.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3. is still in the pre-production phase, so please be patient.

It’s been well over two years since Baby Keem dropped a full-length project, namely Die For My B*tch, which was responsible for his breakout hit song, “Orange Soda.” Now, Keem is just days away from releasing The Melodic Blue, his major-label debut, and ahead of its release, the rapper unveiled its official tracklist.

The Melodic Blue is locked in at 16 tracks, with guest appearances from Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scott, and Don Toliver. Kendrick and Travis were previously heard on the album’s respective singles, “Family Ties” and “Durag Activity.” This makes Don Toliver, who appears on “Cocoa,” the lone collaboration that fans have yet to hear.

During an interview with i-D earlier this year, Keem said Die For My B*tch gave him “a chance to play with my sounds and open up the lane to grow in confidence.” We’ll see if that’s so.

You can take a second look at the artwork above and view the album’s tracklist below.

1. “Trademark USA”
2. “Pink Panties”
3. “Scapegoats”
4. “Range Brothers”
5. “Issues”
6. “Gorgeous”
7. “South Africa”
8. “Lost Souls”
9. “Cocoa” w/ Don Toliver
10. “Family Ties” w/ Kendrick Lamar
11. “Scars”
12. “Durag Activity” w/ Travis Scott
13. “Booman”
14. “First Order Of Business”
15. “Vent”
16. “16”

The Melodic Blue is out 9/10 via PgLang/Columbia.

The battle between Scarlett Johansson and Disney, who oversaw her many Marvel movies, is still ongoing. And it hasn’t been pretty: In late August, Disney accused her of “gamesmanship”; she in turn accused them of sexism. But it all could have been avoided had the super-company paid up. A new report by The Wall Street Journal (as picked up by IGN) claims that after she learned they meant to make Black Widow available on Disney+ PVOD, in addition to theaters, she made them an offer they apparently refused.

The new report has it that Johansson wanted $100 million for the movie, which was her long-running character’s first solo outing. That number was, the Journal says, “based on what the star would receive in a hypothetical global box-office take of $1.2 billion” ¬— i.e., about what a lot of Marvel films tend to make. This would have been on top of the $20 million she was given up-front.

That, mind you, was her team’s “starting bid.” Disney, however, never counter-offered. And in late July, Johansson made the extraordinary and possibly game-changing decision to sue one of the largest companies in the world.

Johansson’s lawsuit takes Disney to task for putting Black Widow on their family-friendly streamer, albeit for a steep fee. When released, the movie, despite a record opening for the pandemic era, wound up underperforming, grossing $182.7 million domestically and $372 million worldwide — well below most MCU titles.

One reason negotiations may have gone nowhere, the report claims, may have been mere disorganization:

The report notes that one of the reasons contract negotiations fell apart was because of uncertainty over who should lead the discussion. Disney CEO Bob Chapek was reportedly focused on pandemic-related company matters and passed the deal-making power to others in the organization, but Bob Iger and Alan Horn also reportedly stayed out of the dispute.

Disney has maintained throughout that they honored Johansson’s contract. If the lawsuit is successful, it could send shockwaves throughout an industry already grappling with a very difficult era. But it could also mean greater autonomy for actors.

(Via WSJ and IGN)

You’re six weeks pregnant. That means six weeks ago an egg and a sperm met, did the happy dance together, and got the baby ball rolling in your uterus, right?

Wrong.

Pregnancy weeks are measured in a strange way, but it appears to be the most consistent method of measurement considering the varied reality of menstruation. (A 28-day cycle between periods is common, but many women have longer or shorter cycles, and some have totally irregular ones.)

A Twitter thread from NBC News’s Ginger Gibson explains that pregnancy is measured from the first day of a woman’s last period, which is generally approximately two weeks before an egg would ever get a chance to meet a sperm.

So technically speaking, in the first couple of weeks of pregnancy, there is no actual pregnancy. Weird, right? But that’s how the “XX weeks pregnant” calculation works.

Three weeks is generally the earliest that the actual pregnancy (meaning a fertilized egg being implanted in the uterus) would exist, pregnancy is measured retroactively to the first day of the last period.

And at three weeks, you wouldn’t know you were pregnant. Neither would an at-home pregnancy test.

At four weeks, you might notice your period is late. Then again, you might not, because some people bleed even when they’re pregnant. Also, periods can be few days late or irregular for a whole host of reasons.

At this point, a pregnancy test might tell you you’re pregnant.

That gives someone a two week window from when they may realize they’re pregnant to when they could no longer get a… https://t.co/EzM3KVSJ8Z

— Ginger Gibson (@GingerGibson)
1631046788.0

However, a 2018 study found that the average woman in the U.S. detects pregnancy at 5.5 weeks, and many don’t know they’re pregnant until after six weeks. Texas’s abortion ban would maybe give people two weeks after finding out they’re pregnant to make a decision, but likely much less time.

So Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s assertion that the law “provides at least 6 weeks for a person to be able to get an abortion” (in response to a question asking why he would force a victim of rape or incest to carry a pregnancy that stems from sexual assault) is categorically false. You can’t make a decision about something you don’t even know exists, and it’s virtually impossible for the average person to know they are pregnant until they are already at least four weeks along.

What’s stunning is that this is just *one* *very basic* misunderstanding of how pregnancy works among a host of others that have been shared by people who are hot on legislating pregnancy. If someone misunderstands the basics this badly, what business do they have making laws about it?

While flying may not be the most out of the world activity for many, for Travis Barker’s it’s quite the feat. Last month, the drummer took his first flight in almost thirteen years after vowing to never fly again after surviving a tragic plane crash in 2008. The incident killed both pilots, his personal assistant Chris Baker, and security guard Che Still. It also left Barker with third-degree burns on 65 percent of his body, which required him to spend 11 weeks in the hospital. But some 13 years later he finally got back in an airplane, and he has his girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian to thank for it.

In a recent profile with Nylon, Barker talked about joining Kris Jenner, Cory Gamble, and Kourtney on vacation in Cabo, Mexico, which required getting on a plane. “I made a deal with her that she had just said to me, ‘I would love to do so much traveling with you. I want to go to Italy with you. I want to go to Cabo with you. I want to go to Paris with you. I want to go to Bora Bora with you,” he told the publication. “And I said, ‘Well, when the day comes you want to fly, I’m telling you I’ll do it with you. I would do anything with you. And just give me 24 hours’ notice.’ And that’s what she did.”

He then admitted that Kourtney gave him the courage to overcome his fears. “It’s still something very new to me, but having something that gives me the strength and hope to be able to overcome things that were so traumatic in my life, it just says a ton,” Barker said. “She’s definitely that for me. I’m invincible when I’m with her. It’s like I never dreamed, I never even considered flying again.”

You can read Barker’s full profile with Nylon here.

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Joe Biden is coming up on nine months since taking office, and he’s still cleaning up whatever Trump effluvia that’s still lurking around. On Wednesday he found some more dirt that needed scrubbing: As per CNN, the president’s administration has asked 11 officials appointed by Trump to a military advisory board to resign or be dismissed. And the news couldn’t help but inspire people on social media to summon one of Trump’s signature catchphrases — one American voters already told him nearly a year ago.

Among the Trump appointees who will soon vacate their positions are former senior council Kellyanne Conway, former press secretary (and ex-Dancing with the Stars competitor) Sean Spicer, and former national security advisor H.R. McMaster. They currently serve on advisory boards for, respectively, the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy, and West Point.

But not for much longer, they won’t. Some of them made a stink about it, tweeting that they would stand their ground, i.e., wait until the Biden administration gave them the boot. One of them was Conway, who made public a letter she sent to Biden himself, demanding he resign, not her.

But Conway’s symbolic stubbornness was not admired by many on Twitter, who instead treated her and the other Trump appointees to their appointer’s most famous line: “You’re fired.”

Others went with a good old fashioned “Bye Felicia.”

Some reasoned that not having Conway or Spicer on military advisory boards was no big loss.

Others weren’t surprised that some of them were reluctant to quit.

Some, however, were a bit surprised that a Trumpist like Conway would complain about “presidential norms” being torched.

Current White House press secretary Jen Psaki addressed the manner with her usual deadpan, telling reporters, “I will let others evaluate whether they think Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer and others were qualified, or not political, to serve on these boards, but the President’s qualification requirements are not your party registration, they are whether you’re qualified to serve and whether you’re aligned with the values of this administration.”

(Via CNN)

You might have heard it said before but it bears repeating: Xbox Game Pass is, hands down, one of the absolute best deals for gamers. I don’t say this as anyone trying to sell you anything or as someone who has “sworn loyalty” to one console over another because, frankly, I find the very idea laughable when just about every console has qualities that set it apart from the rest. No, I say this as someone who loves games and wants you to find the ones you love, too. And one of the greatest ways to discover new games right now just so happens to be Game Pass.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Game Pass, just think of it like Netflix for your Xbox. For $14.99 a month, you gain access to over a hundred different titles — both new and old — that you can play whenever you’d like. Of course, games come go every so often, but for the most part, a lot of these games are staples of this big library you can freely choose from. While you might already know Game Pass comes the ability to play all of the Halo, Dishonored, Yakuza, Mass Effect, Gears of War, Destiny, Battlefield, Dead Space, DOOM, Dragon Age, and a good chunk of the Final Fantasy series (and if you didn’t, yes, those are all included), there are also a lot of hidden gems listed on the service. Here are ten you might want to try if you’re feeling a bit burnt out and are looking for something new.

1. Viva Piñata

If you enjoy simulation games and haven’t played Viva Piñata yet, you’re missing out. In Viva Piñata​, you take on the role of a gardener intent on restoring your own slice of paradise to its former glory, and while that all might sound a little Stardew Valley, rest assured the way you go about it is entirely unique. To expand and reinvigorate your tiny sanctuary, you need to attract animal piñatas by planting flowers and terraforming your plot of land to meet their needs. While you start out attracting “whirlms”(worms) and other cutely named insects and woodland animals​, you eventually attract larger animals that might feed on your smaller critters or have seemingly outlandish requirements you must slowly work your way up to. Overall, the game is a vibrant time sink folks of any age can appreciate, with adorable animal appearances and nonstop challenges keeping you going even when you start hitting 40+ hours of playtime.

2. A Way Out

While online multiplayer-only continues to soar in popularity, finding a great couch co-op game has gotten increasingly more difficult. Luckily for those of us in need of a great game you can play on the same tv as the person sitting next to you, a new game developer — Hazelight Studios — has taken an interest in creating titles specifically made for local multiplayer. A Way Out is Hazelight’s second game, following 2013’s Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons and just ahead of 2020’s surprise hit It Takes Two. A Way Out follows a pair of inmates who decide to escape their sentence through a good ol’ fashioned prison break out. The action-adventure game is intense, tells a compelling story, and is filled with puzzles that demand cooperation and strategizing to get through. If you’re looking for a great game to play with a friend, family member, or even your partner next date night, you can’t go wrong with it.

3. Spiritfarer

A recent indie darling, Spiritfarer is a management-simulation-meets-sandbox-action game that will most likely make you tear up a lot. The game follows a woman named Stella after she takes over for the Greek god Charon as the ferrymaster of the undead. With the help of her pet cat, Daffodil, Stella begins her work of guiding the souls of the recently departed to the Everdoor, thus granting them safe passage to the afterlife. As you progress through the game, you can craft and slowly expand your ship, enabling you to pick up different passengers who will regale you with their colorful and oftentimes incredibly heart-warming stories. As the whole game is centered around death and those we leave behind, it can at times be a tough one to play — especially when the time comes to lead your favorite characters through the door to the “other side.” However, despite how grim that might seem, Spiritfarer emanates a tender warmth that makes it so worth playing.

4. Katana Zero

If you’ve ever longed to play a game that feels just like a Tarantino film (or find yourself wanting to now that I’ve mentioned it), Katana Zero is a must-play. The neo-noir and hyper-violent action-platformer follows a katana-wielding assassin named Subject Zero who, to put it lightly, is not completely sound of mind. Zero is given bounties by their psychiatrist, who also supplies them with a drug called “chronos” that enables them to slow down time and is implied to be keeping them alive. As your progress through the story, things slowly become more and more unhinged, until time loops, unreliable narration, and madness take over. When it comes to gameplay, Katana Zero is all about stealth and strategy, as merely one hit will kill the assassin you play as. Therefore, to survive you must scope out an entire 2D area before making any bold moves, and always stay conscious of your next move. Katana Zero a challenging game that oozes style, and is a must-play for folks who like that Hotline Miami feel.

5. Psychonauts (and 2)

When you think of classic, late 90’s and early 2000s platformers, your mind probably goes to Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Banjo-Kazooie, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, and quite a few other furry friends. However, one of the most overlooked platformers is none other than Double Fine’s Psychonauts, and it’s a real shame because the game packs a whole lot of fun and charm. Psychonauts follows a young boy named Raz who, after discovering he has unique psychic abilities, runs away from his life in the circus to sneak into a gifted summer camp where attendants will be trained to become “Psychonauts,” or spies with psychic abilities — and that’s only where the story begins. Now, back when the game was released back in 2005, it was widely regarded as a commercial failure despite good reviews and attracting a cult following. However, the empathetic game recently got a second chance at life when Psychonauts 2 was released earlier this year, and, luckily for us, both games are available on Xbox Game Pass right now.

6. Darkest Dungeon

If you like grueling strategy games, horror, and art that looks like it was done by comic legend Mike Mignola, Darkest Dungeon is calling your name, and most likely in some horrific manner. Darkest Dungeon is a gothic roguelike turn-based RPG that delves into the psychological effects of seeing unimaginable horrors. In the game, you must manage a party of character who can — and most likely will — permanently die if you’re not careful with them. From ensuring your team has food and supplies, to managing their stress level, vices, and fears, there is a lot of elements at play here and a lot of attention to detail is demanded from the player if you wish to successfully dungeon crawl with your party and cleanse the estate you inherited at the start of the game of all the evil that roams around it. Whether you’re more of a vampire horror person or are deeply into Lovecraftian horrors, the game has a bit of terror for every fan of fright.

7. River City Girls

Sometimes, games don’t need twists and turns and darkness to be a whole lot of fun. Sometimes, you just need to run around as high school girls kicking ass. Sometimes, you just need River City Girls. River City Girls is a beat ’em up, brawler (think Streets of Rage) that follows two high school girls — Misako and Kyoko — as they undertake a quest to rescue their kidnapped boyfriends. It’s a straight-forward premise with pretty straight-forward controls, but it doesn’t stop the game from being incredibly exciting, with a colorful, Japanese-inspired look and a killer soundtrack that keeps your adrenaline pumping. On top of all that, it’s another one of the games on this list that has local co-op, meaning you and a friend can search for your missing loves and pummel some dudes together.

8. Ikenfell

If you love old-school, pixelated RPGs, the combat of the Paper Mario series, and shows such as Steven Universe and Netflix’s She-Ra, you’ll most likely adore Ikenfell. The game follows an “ordinary” young girl named Maritte as she sets off on a quest to find her extraordinary sister after she goes missing from the magical university she attends named Ikenfell. However, as she begins to track down her sister, she awakens her own powers, finds herself surprised by what she learns about her sister’s life, and is thrust into a much bigger adventure. While the game is fun in itself, what makes Ikenfell truly shine, at least to me, is the lengths developer Happy Ray Games went to to make sure it’s fun for everyone. The game boasts an incredibly charming and diverse cast, touches on sensitive topics with kindness, implements trigger warnings to protect players, and has a ton of accessibility options in its start menu to help players of all abilities play. If you’re looking for a soft, kind, and pastel-colored game that feels like a warm hug, look no further.

9. Haven

Another multiplayer game, Haven is decidedly a bit more romantic than the other games on this list, making it a great date night choice. A third-person survival RPG, Haven follows two lovers, Yu and Kay, who escape an oppressive society called that forces its citizens into arranged unions regardless of their feelings. Upon escaping their former home, the pair head to an uninhabited lost planet called Source. Once they land on Source, Yu and Kay must gather materials for their ship — the Nest — and craft and collaborate in order to survive. The sci-fi game has been compared to the PlayStation classic Journey, albeit with a romantic twist and survival elements. If you’ve got someone to cuddle up against and play this with, it’s definitely worth trying.

10. Signs of the Sojourner

This indie game might be one of the more unusual ones on this list for those more aquatinted with AAA titles, but it’s incredibly smart, sentimental, and definitely worthy of your time. Signs of the Sojourner is a game concerned with how our language, customs, and way of thinking changes as we travel and interact with different people. The game is a deck-builder, meaning you interact with folks using cards you obtain through your travels. However, your deck can only have a certain number of cards, meaning some must be lost in order to pick up new ones. Each person you interact with has their own unique way of communicating — whether it be brutally direct or more cautious of emotions — as well as their own values. While you might be tempted to grab as many cards as you can to talk to the new folks you encounter, doing so results in you losing the cards you once had, meaning when you return home, you might find even your best friend feels like a stranger to you. It’s a game that examines the preservation and loss of culture, and reinforces the idea that there is no singular, correct culture, but rather hundreds simply trying to know one another.

Studies show that from the moment a child is born, people begin to praise them based on their gender. Young boys will be praised for being “strong” and young girls for having “soft features.”

The problem is that the more time we spend talking to a child about certain qualities, the more important they become. “When we comment on a girl’s cuteness more consistently than anything else about her, we suggest that her appearance means more than her other qualities,” Renee Engeln Ph.D. writes in Psychology Today.

Siera Bearchell, a former Miss Universe contestant, and mother of a baby daughter, Lily, has gone viral for sharing how people talk to her daughter based on whether she’s dressed in boy’s or girl’s clothes.

“Once I realized it, it blew my mind,” she starts her video. “I don’t care that people think she’s a boy sometimes. But what I care about is that I realized people talk to her differently when they think she’s a girl versus when they think she’s a boy.”

Bearchell says that from the moment they are born, women are judged based on their appearance, whereas men are judged on their actions and “what they do.”

In the end, Bearchell believes that we should be more conscious of how we talk to little girls “because they need to know they’re more than pretty.”

The vaccines have made a lot more people feel safe enough to go out and socialize. However, everyone is getting back out there at their own pace and with the Delta variant raging, many still feel like staying at home.

“Late Show” host Stephen Colbert says that after a year and a half of the pandemic, he’s “running out of excuses” to avoid certain social situations.

To help people blow off their friends and family members who want to hang out, Colbert, his bandleader John Batiste, and the Stay Human Band made a funny song listing all sorts of bizarre excuses.

Surely you can get out of anything if you claim to be possessed by a ghost, trapped in a dark well, or stuck in quicksand, right?

(The song may be funny, but the real highlight is Colbert’s stick-on soul patch.

Stephen Colbert’s “Excuses Song” feat. Jon Batiste & Stay Human

youtu.be

The video is fun but it also has a deeper message. If you’re still feeling uneasy about going out, you’re not alone. There are a lot of people out there who are slowly dipping their toes in the social waters to see if it feels right. While others are waiting for the Delta variant numbers to drop before making the scene.

Your health is your choice and if you don’t want to risk it, just tell them that your hands were turned into stumps by a witch. That should do the job.