Instead of the glass and steel skyscrapers of New York City, Park Avenue at Arches National Park in Utah leads you by natural towers of stone, glowing in the desert light. With great names like Courthouse Towers, Three Gossips, the Organ and the Tower of Babel, these dramatic rock formations line the 1-mile trail near the park’s entrance. Photo by Robert Caton (www.sharetheexperience.org).
I have been interested in hockey for dozens of days, now, so I like to think of myself as something of an expert on the subject. As a gesture of goodwill, I would like to share with all of you what I have learned, through a rigorously academic system of “Tumblr,” “not watching any games for longer than 15 minutes,” and “guesswork.” You’re welcome / I’m sorry.
TEAMS:
Toronto Maple Leafs People love them. They’re also all, on average, 4 years old. Everyone on the Leafs is a toddler whose name starts with M. Odds are good if they’re a leaf, their name is like…. Matt, or Mop, or Mirtch or something. One guy who isn’t a Mork has a cute cat. Everyone was surprised and delighted by them getting into the playoffs given their status as a team of (especially gifted) preschoolers.
Washington Capitals A large, loving family headed by a strong married couple (Backy and Ovi). Backy might be a serial killer and we love him despite/because of it. Ovi is ten extremely strong and enthusiastic dogs in an incredibly ugly pair of distressed jean. They have 20 children who don’t know their left from right and need lots of love and attention. For some reason I thought the Caps were like, Unable To Lose, which is untrue, and I am forced to presume that impression was one that Backy implanted into my brain though sheer force of telepathic will.
Dallas Stars Somewhere, Jamie Benn is punishing himself for not making the playoffs by growing new, even more upsetting facial hair and doing a lot of fraught “you’re not good enough” push-ups. His common law husband Segs is also there, probably without a shirt on. The ghost of Jordie Benn haunts them all. No other players, to my recollection.
San Jose Sharks I thought I hated them based on a vague memory of them beating the Red Wings in some game many years ago, but it turns out they all collectively adopted a random black cat and live together as many cat dads or something, so the shun has been lifted. As far as I can tell they are the only team in the Western Conference besides the Stars.
Anaheim Ducks Fake; you’re thinking of the film The Mighty Ducks.
Pittsburgh Penguins Are they the team it’s supposed to feel a little tacky to love, but you do anyway? I get that impression. Sorry. Everyone is a mouthy French Canadian or a misunderstood Russian. Actually, you know what, I don’t think that’s particularly specific to the Pens. Sidney Crosby is a robot designed to divide mankind along party lines and either save or ruin hockey. Geno escaped Russia by stowing away in an small steamer trunk during an arduous transcontinental plane-trains-automobiles style journey to play hockey with / marry him.
Boston Bruins We don’t like them? I think we don’t like them. I’m not sure.
Chicago Blackhawks Nope.
Detroit Red Wings The only hockey team I have ever seen in person with my own two eyes and can therefore vouch for actually existing in this planetary realm. Just can’t stop throwing octopuses on the ice.
Montreal Canadiens Habs is short for “Les Habitants,” apparently. That’s all I got, and I had to look it up at least three times before it stuck. Oh, Carey Price is there, maybe?
MISCELLANY:
Fights 90% of the time they are an elaborate ruse to get to hug new friends that you don’t get to see and hug as regularly as your own team. The other 10% is because someone looked at your goalie the wrong way.
Penalties Takes place in something called the “sin bin” and if you tell me that’s not because they’re all giving and receiving secret, chilly HJs while they’re in there I will face God and walk backwards into hell.
Playoffs You clinch a spot in the playoffs by winning a certain amount of games, scoring a certain amount of points, or by answering three riddles, each increasingly arcane and difficult. At least two of the games you’ve won must be played during an eclipse, with a final score that is divisible by 3, and it doesn’t count if more than one but less than ten birds fly over the arena during regular play.
Gary Bettman Basically the Devil except dumber. Like the Devil’s shitty cousin Steve, who everyone is tired of hearing mouth off at barbecues. Shut up, Steve. Looks like an old, nefarious gnome statuette who was cursed with human life.
The NHL vs The Olympics Will lead to Ovi attempting to clone himself so he can play in every game for every nation just out of spite, and frankly he might achieve it.
Yoooooo, omg that’s a good point my friend. Never considered that possibility.
Mind officially blown.
yo I guess that’s at least partly why he chose shitty to come out to
What if this is like, a thing at Samwell.
Lots of a people know who Larissa is, she’s got lots of angsty art major friends.
But what if there are just as many people who don’t know Lardo? They hear the nickname, they hear stories, but they’ve never laid eyes on her, so they don’t know that Lardo=Larissa.
So, when people hear rumors about Shitty and his big ol’ crush on the hockey team’s manager, and they think the manager is a dude, they assume he’s gay.
Which is why so many people come out to Shitty before the comic starts and Bitty comes to Samwell
youre right, bitty can’t have been the only one who thought the nickname lardo + hockey manager + great at beer pong = guy
Tony Tangredi is a good Catholic kid living away from his family for the first time in his life and he probably went to mass on Easter Sunday, which explains the suit.
I was at Adeevka where the Ukrainians are trying to take a strategically-located overpass from the Separs (I was there as a peaceful tourist who never even touched a firearm, of course) and the positions there are about 400 or so meters away from each other, so if you scream loud enough the fucks on the other side can actually hear you.
Up to this point, I’d observed a guy dropping his phone like it was going to bite him when I told him the Bruno Mars song he was playing was gay, and could reliably make people leave the room by asking them “would you rather sit on a chocolate cake and suck a dick, or eat a chocolate cake while getting fucked in the ass”, so it’s at this point in the trenches that a flash of inspiration hits me.
In my best Russian (which was utterly broken but “proper” Russian grammar is barbaric caveman-speak anyway) I scream out “next guy that shoots is gay”. And I swear to whatever god exists that two solid minutes of silence followed. It was some guns-fall-silent Christmas miracle shit
‘Okay, so, today at work I asked a question that made my boss recoil, but apparently, once asked, he has to tell me the full story or ‘bad things will happen’. Which, as it would, immediately piqued my interest.
I did the mash up last night, so I know that I left potatoes in the bin. I was last one out, and first one in this morning, and the potatoes are gone from that bin. Bit of a ‘huh?’ moment.
And my boss … he starts telling me about how they always used to put out roses outside the restaurant when they opened.
“What? Isn’t that expensive?”
“I mean, yeah, but it’s just what you do when you open a restaurant”
What the fuck kind of answer …?
Anyways, the roses always used to disappear, so they had to replace them everyday, (This skinflint spending that much cash?!). One outside the front door, in that little metal thing that I had forgotten exists. It’s above to the right of the front door, a small circle made by 8 vertical bands of metal, each in an ) shape. So, like, the cross-section is a )(. Apparently that’s a flower holder.
And then outside of the back door, apparently the old wooden post there never held up anything, it was just a post with a vase on it. That he drove into the asphalt there.
In the alleyway.
“What? Why would you do something so pointless?”
“Anyways,”, he brushed me off, “like I was saying, we used to put out the roses every night [[emphasis mine]] and they would always be gone by morning. City kids, right?”
“Why did you keep doing this?!”
“We had really good luck opening, I didn’t want to screw it up”
At this point I feel I should stress that my boss is a straight-laced no nonsense, no superstition, don’t-do-needless-things, pennypincher without an ounce of spirituality in him. But throughout all of this he’s defending putting out roses at nighttime, like it’s the most obvious thing n the world.
Just when I think he’s playing the longest, weirdest joke on me, he brings out the iPad, and he starts showing me security footage. It’s indistinct, it’s too dark, he’s trying to point out that the rose never changes from the beginning of the night to the end, but when it gets bright again, the flower is just gone, while the stem remains.
It’s about this point that I realize: This is a faerie sacrifice. This is how you sacrifice things to goblins and faeries.
These are rose faeries. Now you might not know, even if you live here, but Newfoundland has a tradition of rose faeries. We basically took all the stuff british colonists knew about faeries and said, ‘yeah, well, it’s all about wild roses now’. Hike up to Signal Hill from behind the geo centre and you’ll pass a faerie ring of rose bushes that someone planted because of that. (It’s not obvious at first). Later in Newfoundland history, we star replacing all of the rose faerie tales with tales about Mother Mary, (As in, Christianity), whose flower is the rose. Ask around the old folk, they’ll tell you tales about people getting sick or getting well really suddenly, followed by a strong smell of rose. About people working on church roofs, falling down into rose bushes, and not getting hurt. About statues of Mother Mary crying rose oil, indicating that an infant will be left in front of the statue soon. Those are all stories that are actually about rose faeries, but they changed the topic. I guess they still pay respect to them, they just think they’re paying respect to god with rose petals and rosehip tea.
“But what’s this got to do with potatoes?”
Well, he said, he kept this up for about 5 or 6 months, and then the winter started. And back then, the florists in town didn’t stock as much in green houses, there wasn’t enough call for it. So he wasn’t able to get roses.
The restaurant had really bad luck for a while, but then one day, all of the potatoes in the restaurant went missing. Of all the things, not the tenderloin steak, not the fresh salmon, not the halibut, not the cherries, not the fresh baked bread, the potatoes.
And the luck came back.
And he hasn’t questioned it since.
“So, about how many potatoes go missing every week?”
“About 25lbs in little bits”
We turned rose faeries into gluttonous potato faeries.
How does that even happen?!
Was a faerie just screaming “Where are the GODDAMN ROSES?!” while breaking into the restaurant?!
And what the hell happened when it found the potatoes?!
Like, *monocle pop*, “What the fucking WOT?!:, while holding up a potato and looking at it in reverence?
What do they even DO with potatoes?
I mean, the obvious guess is ‘eat them’, but like, did they eat roses?
Are there faeries somewhere swimming in potato water, blessing our restaurant for the earthy smells we have bestowed upon them?!
Just … potato faeries. We have fucking potato faeries in the restaurant where I work.
Potato.
Faeries.
(wondering idly how many people have tagged @seananmcguire on this one.)
the neat thing about potatoes is they’ll sprout green shoots just lying around on the counter. pretty sure if you were a fairy deprived of flowers due to winter, those pale, leggy potato sprouts would be fascinating.
all the reviews for atomic blonde are like “its an empty aesthetic film where charlize theron just dresses up in nice clothes, kicks the shit out of dudes, and has random sex scenes with women” as if that wasn’t my dream action movie
Aren’t “typical” action movies just a bunch of macho guys in cool clothes/cars kicking the shit out of dudes and having random sex scenes with women?
just moving along like everyone else 