Tambit

I don't trust you, foreigner.: How to troll pro magic players/how to spot them

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:49:31 -0400

I don't trust you, foreigner.: How to troll pro magic players/how to spot them:

If you play mtg competitively, you’re going to inevitably go up against magic players that are either highly skilled, or have enough experience to have made their way into some pro qualifiers/pro tournaments.
In this short article, I’m going to tell you how to spot those players, and then I’m…

Photo

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 00:38:11 -0400

I’m into those “closet pretty girls”. You know, the ones that look adorable but...

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 14:25:10 -0500

I’m into those “closet pretty girls”. You know, the ones that look adorable but they could model for American Apparel. The ones with daddy issues and boyfriends that I hate.

I have never

Mon, 24 Dec 2012 00:01:19 -0500

gohelengo:

been kissed under a mistletoe

OR

had a New Years kiss (even when I had a boyfriend, isn’t that some shit?)

It might be a little cliche, but it would be nice to experience one of those at some point. Maybe it just isn’t meant to happen for some people.

pitchfork: Listen to the first track from former Girls frontman...

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:07:00 -0400

pitchfork:

Listen to the first track from former Girls frontman Christopher Owens’ forthcoming solo album, Lysandre.

Photo

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:39:43 -0400

elizabethina: That’s why they call it dreaming instead of thinking.

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 04:14:33 -0400

elizabethina:

That’s why they call it dreaming instead of thinking.

…And for a damned good reason.

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 04:08:01 -0400

…And for a damned good reason.

Just come over and cuddle.

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 04:45:00 -0400

Just come over and cuddle.

Here I am. Bored with everything that isn’t her. Wanting more than anything to watch her fingers...

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 13:11:48 -0400

Here I am. Bored with everything that isn’t her. Wanting more than anything to watch her fingers slide the length of a keyboard and hear her sing.

boniverotica: Bon Iver has strong opinions about the seasoning...

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 16:07:56 -0400

boniverotica:

Bon Iver has strong opinions about the seasoning of a cast-iron pan. He thinks it should be seasoned with flaxseed oil, which develops a hard, shiny surface. It takes an entire day, and as he says, it should, because relationships take work.

On this rainy day Bon Iver rubs down the pan with oil and places it in the oven to bake for the first of six two-hour sessions, and during each session he keeps me entertained.

1. Until the timer goes off, Bon Iver massages my scalp and shoulders with a lotion he made, scented with spring herbs and wildflowers.

2. For the second two-hour session, Bon Iver helps me with my dyeing project. By the end, our winter flannel sheets are a stunning ruby red.

3. The third time the pan goes in the oven, its surface is beginning to develop, gleaming and as black as a cowbird. We lie around reading naughty poems until we can’t contain ourselves any longer, and our clothes and the book fall to the floor.

4. He walks naked to the kitchen to oil the pan a fourth time, and as it bakes we complete a puzzle.

5. The rain hurtles against the windows, and the kitchen is unbearably hot. We pretend it is a sauna, lie on the center of the floor and laugh at its unpleasantness as we gulp icy sparkling wine from the decadent crystal flutes my grandmother gave me, which we never use.

6. The last time the cast-iron pan enters the oven, we are drowsy from the drinks. We escape the kitchen-sauna and walk out into the night, where the rain has stopped, leaving a violently wet world which drips noisily. He takes me by the waist and pulls me close, breathing into my hair, which is grungy and matted from our adventures, but which smells of his spring herbs and wildflowers. And he tells me that he loves me, and thanks me for my patience, and thanks me for understanding that he needs to do things the best way he knows, even if they are arduous, and he looks into my eyes and promises me that he will apply this rigor to us; to work hard to make our life together as resilient and reliable as that old cast-iron pan.

The stars are out tonight, anyway. And I wish you were here. We’d make up numbers just to...

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 05:07:38 -0400

The stars are out tonight, anyway. And I wish you were here. We’d make up numbers just to count them all.

boniverotica: Bon Iver is sitting underneath the oak tree with...

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 05:06:14 -0400

boniverotica:

Bon Iver is sitting underneath the oak tree with his easel and watercolors. He is wearing a smock of raw linen and a jaunty boater he found in a box in the attic. I watch him from the rocker on the porch, studying him intently, trying to discern the subject of his brushstrokes. Eventually I grow impatient and sneak up behind him to take a peek. I recognize myself on the canvas, only something is different. Not a single hair is out of place, my skin glows like a dewy peach picked at the height of the season, the dress I wear is a deep emerald chiffon and clearly finer than any I own or could ever afford, and all the worry lines are gone from my face. I am seeing myself through Bon Iver’s eyes, and I am perfect.

I’m sitting in my car, playing my shitty guitar and thinking about you. I’m smiling at...

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 14:10:49 -0400

I’m sitting in my car, playing my shitty guitar and thinking about you. I’m smiling at things I’ve never smiled at and laughing way too hard at every joke.

dnlfn: This is the only contribution to Shark Week I shall...

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:44:31 -0400

dnlfn:

This is the only contribution to Shark Week I shall make, as I am a fan of the whales and do protest their being skipped at the “animals deserving weeks” meeting.

This and other awesome animal illustrations (most wearing clothes) are done by Ryan Berkley and prints are sold over at his Etsy shop. Good on you, Ryan.

Said of the Great White:

Once a popular jazz pianist, this shark has most recently become a song and dance showman. His voice has been described as “a cross between Louis Armstrong and Kenny Rogers”. Unfortunately his fierce temper has limited his gigs to biker bars and convict picnics.

Said of the Hammerhead:

This hammerhead brings a specially designed chair to movies and parades that allows him to sit sideways. He gets a great view with one eye but the people directly behind him tend to get a little creeped out.

“Don’t swim in the ocean!”

fuckyeahbass: MusicMan Stingray, Limited Edition Sequoia Gold

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:31:28 -0400

fuckyeahbass:

MusicMan Stingray, Limited Edition Sequoia Gold

boniverotica: Bon Iver has prepared a dinner with ingredients...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:57:32 -0400

boniverotica:

Bon Iver has prepared a dinner with ingredients from our farm and invited all of our friends. I hang Mexican lanterns from the old sugar hawthorn and gather a miscellany of chairs and benches, supplementing with hay bales that smell fresh.

Our guests arrive and we serve them a tart tea drink and Bon Iver’s cherry bourbon. The children amuse themselves with a pile of instruments Bon Iver has left on a horse blanket, using them primarily to swat noisily at the dog. We give a tour of the farm, showing our guests the single late-summer calf, whose leg will never heal but whose sweet character saved him. Our hors d’oeuvres consist of raspberries we invite them to pick.

When we sit, Bon Iver gives a speech. He embarrasses me, thanking me in front of everyone for ‘helping him learn what a heartbeat should feel like’. I blush and drink too much boysenberry wine.

Then he explains the meal: a pig we’d come to know and who died nobly, served ‘nose to tail’: maple cured ham and smoked pork belly, jellied feet, thick fried head cheese and crispy ears. The flavors are rich and odd and wonderful, and we stuff ourselves with the pig and with okra, salad, eggplant and heavy brown bread.

I bring out my warm peaches and pound cake along with the stars, and Bon Iver plays his guitar and sings, and everyone is silent, in awe of him as I always am, because his talent, singly, is to create experiences that germinate and grow an exclusive and startling joy.

fuckyeahbass: Custom telecaster bass in butterscotch

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:52:40 -0400

fuckyeahbass:

Custom telecaster bass in butterscotch

fuckyeahbass: Rickenbacker in Fireglo

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:52:33 -0400

fuckyeahbass:

Rickenbacker in Fireglo

boniverotica: Bon Iver and I are babysitting, and though we...

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 21:25:25 -0400

boniverotica:

Bon Iver and I are babysitting, and though we don’t say it, we are pretending to be parents, feeling it out, enjoying each other’s solutions and quirks. I smile as he lifts little Mary over the fence by her arms, fat legs kicking, and gives her an extra swing for a thrill. He catches me smelling her damp hair, soft and salty and as sweet as lilacs.

As the world darkens, we build a nest on the porch, commissioning every blanket and pillow in the house. Mary, drowsy, clings to me with an intensity I find heartbreaking. Bon Iver clicks off the porch light, making available the wide world of nature to our eyes, and he begins to tell a story.

A fable of his own invention, and not one I’ve heard before.

‘Why does the grasshopper sparrow sing an insect’s song?’ he begins.

Mary curls up against my belly like a little worm. Her eyes are unfocused already, and her finger finds its way to her mouth.

When Sparrow was young, he didn’t have natural enemies. Sparrow was friends with bees and elk and lizards and eagles and all the fishes in the creek. He knew the names of every mouse, every vole and squirrel, and he even knew the habits of the old Fox, who slept most of the day on a sunny flat log.

At school, he and his friends learned to read and sing and play together in a big meadow filled with flowers.

Mary’s breath is hot on my arms, rhythmic and audible. Now the story is just for me.

Sparrow’s closest friend was Grasshopper. They played endless games indoors: puzzles and word games and guess-which-hand, but it was in the meadow that they were a spectacle. Wild, energetic sports. Grasshopper leaping high into the air and Sparrow swooping from great heights to gently take her in his beak and lift her up again, both of them laughing, tears streaming down their faces from their inconceivable velocity and untrammeled glee.

And all the while they would chatter on in a twin-language that was incomprehensible to anyone else, a true melange of bird and bug, a product of their unbreakable bond.

‘I love you,’ said Grasshopper, her voice nearly lost in the wind. And Sparrow tenderly dropped her onto a branch, hovered before her, and replied, ‘I love you, too.’

But some of the older animals were talking.

‘Sad,’ said the Bear.

‘I wonder when they’ll learn?’ sighed the Walking Stick.

Once, Sparrow overheard one of these conversations. ‘Learn what?’ he wondered briefly, but then he had forgotten, and he was loop-de-looping through the air again, his mind and heart utterly free.

One day, a new bird appeared in the meadow. Sparrow and Grasshopper were bouncing through the grass, giggling, because they had played a prank on the old Fox. The new bird sat on the limber branch of a pin cherry, silently observing the meadow. When Grasshopper took a break to laze on the long, bent tip of a timothy blade, Sparrow flew up to the new bird with a greeting.

‘Hello!’ he said, breathless. ‘What’s your name?’
The silent bird looked down her beak at Sparrow. ‘Jay,’ she said finally.

Sparrow was very excited, because he had never met a Jay. But before he could answer, Jay had left the pin cherry branch, which sprang skyward with the sudden loss of weight, and Sparrow was tossed like a flapjack into the air. He laughed as he tumbled toward earth and caught himself on an updraft before falling into the grass. As he came right-side up he saw Jay speeding through the air in the other direction, something wriggling clamped in his beak.

‘What an odd bird,’ said Sparrow to Grasshopper.

But Grasshopper wasn’t there.

Sparrow looked up to the sky, where Jay was now just a point vanishing into the endless blue.

All the other animals were silent now. The Walking Stick slunk beneath a tree and vanished. Every vole had found his hole. Even the bees were minding their own beeswax in the hive.

The old Fox opened an eye and sighed, raised himself up on sinewy legs, and hobbled over to where Sparrow stood, still unsure, staring into the vanishing point in the sky.

‘That’s just the way things are sometimes,’ said Fox. ‘That’s nature.’

Sparrow shuddered. His eyes felt as though they would fall out of his head. His entire being was taken over by an unnamed horror. He tried to speak, but the strangled sound that escaped from his mouth was half bird, half twin-language, and horrifically sad: a sound unlike anything anyone had heard before.

Fox regarded Sparrow piteously for a moment, and returned to his log.

And since that day, you can hear the Grasshopper Sparrow’s insectlike song, mournful and desperate, crying out for his little lost love.

Mary is snoring like a puppy, and I eyeball Bon Iver, who has now folded his arms with satisfaction and is sipping his cocktail, gazing off into the distance.

‘It’s a bit dark,’ I say finally.

‘Baby,’ says Bon Iver, yanking a juicy green stalk of grass from beside the porch and placing it between his teeth, ‘that’s just the way things are sometimes.’