Tom Stiteler and I have been corresponding a bit on Facebook; Tom is a happy OMG customer who has shared some of his recent successes with me.
Most recently… Happier than ever I hope!
I posted a Gruul Ramp deck including — you guessed it — Molten Primordial on Star City Games last Flores Friday. I am very happy to report the big Ramp deck with, you know, Molten Primordial helped Tom unlock not one but two Win-a-Box achievements!
You know, Molten Primordial
It would be gauche to post my deck list here so soon after sending it up on Premium, so I will refer you there. I am super happy with Molten Primordial and squad, but have to admit I am intrigued by Tom’s black splash and will test that this week.
This one was actually from late last year, but I was always meaning to put it up (and this week’s “theme” gives me a good window).
I loved Collin’s Top 8 deck, which I talked about in The New Hotness. I had no idea at the time that I — or rather The Official Miser’s Guide — had any positive impact on the ascendant GP Top 8 competitor.
Wanna knock down a GP Top 8?
I didn’t say it! (though I’m sure you know I would)
Earlier this week my new Twitter biographer @MrsSharkLady thought it odd that I would buy a years-old Taylor Swift album I was already listening to on Internet radio. I didn’t think it weird at all; no more weird than supporting a comic book I like to read or contributing to the Veronica Mars Movie Project on Kickstarter.
Is it so odd for someone who enjoys a piece of media to support the people who created it?
I was hanging out with Josh Ravitz and Thea Steele when I got this message from Ryan Hiller; in a world where so many fans just steal music, tv downloads, etc. his email was truly heartwarming. Suggesting the donations was Josh’s idea.
If you are in Camillus, NY and want to visit the LGS of an obviously honest man, check out Ryan’s store, Legacy Gaming Company.
A jealous envious conversation with my editor had me thinking it would be fun to copy and paste some funny, heartwarming, or otherwise emotionally interesting Facebook chats. This is the first of four.
50? I wish! At the time of this writing, Ke$ha by my friend Patrick Chapin has garnered 116 Likes on Star City Games.
One of the most compelling voices in the Magic community, Patrick Chapin “The Innovator” is a member of the Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame and the author of Next Level Magic.
Warning:
This article contains profanity, including gay and racial slurs.
“Don’t be a faggot.”
When we communicate, it is not just some trivial exercise. It is not about repeating words in familiar patterns, like a machine.
Real communication is about conveying meaning.
I generally don’t use the word “nigga” (or its various analogues)—not because it is taboo, but because it tends to obscure meaning, rather than convey it.
I spent a number of years in prison. During my time there, I dwelt in an awful lot of circles that used the term very freely. In public settings, it would have been inappropriate to use this language. However, it is a term that has taken on many ironic reversals and additional meanings over the past thirty years, and when it was just me and people I knew, it was generally acceptable for Caucasians, such as myself, to use the term and be referred to by this term.
However, just because the group had accepted this language doesn’t mean it promoted healthy thought patterns. If I can say it another way, a way that is clearer and contains more real meaning, why would I cling to a word that can cause misunderstanding and confusion?
“Don’t be a faggot.”
We can go on about how that word doesn’t mean what it used to, so people shouldn’t be offended by it, but in the real world, that hurts people, particularly ourselves. It influences how we think, and not necessarily for the better.
Words mean things.
Many boys grow up in environments where they are pushed around or otherwise made to feel inferior. Sometimes they are bullied. Often, fathers, brothers, or other older boys will assert themselves as “the dominant males” over the younger ones.
These older males provide the models that the younger ones use to formulate their worldviews and their strategies for interacting in life. If a boy’s role models use bullying and abusive behavior to try to control the people around them, this provides a blueprint for the boy to follow, often long before they are even aware of it.
The Magic community contains quite a few adolescent boys. A common phenomenon in adolescent boy cultures is the use of rape slang, which reveals a lot about the nature of rape.
Rape is about power.
Some men treat or see other people, usually women, as objects rather than as human beings: trophies to be fought over and won; dogs to be commanded and punished for misbehaving. At its core, rape is about power over an individual, making someone submit to one’s will and transforming that person into an object or an obedient animal.
Part of it is an attempt to release anger and frustration, but the release is only temporary. Because of this, the rape mentality generally leads to repeated behavior.
What does this have to do with using the word “rape” as slang for “won by a large margin?”
When someone uses the expression, “He got raped,” they are generally just repeating something they’ve heard someone else say. After all, if you or a loved one has been raped, the expression is a lot less funny.
“He got raped.”
I used to do commentary for the Top 8 of Pro Tours sometimes, way back about ten years ago. Back then, there was a rotating cast that included Chris Pikula, Brian Weissman, Brian Hacker, Brian Kibler, Randy Buehler, Michael Flores, Matt Place, myself, and more.
During the Top 8 of a Pro Tour, I was in the booth, in a role not unlike the one I adopt from time to time for SCG Opens. Between rounds, a WotC employee pulled me aside and asked me to watch my language. I was taken aback. What had I said? I wasn’t swearing.
“It’s not cool to describe one player as raping the other.”
I hadn’t even been thinking and obviously didn’t mean anything by it, but here I was, a dumb kid who didn’t know anything about anything, and I was using rape slang in the official WotC commentary.
Now here is the part that makes me look back and cringe.
My response was to try to explain to this person—who was only representing the interests of a company that sells games to people of all ages—that “rape” doesn’t always mean forcing someone to have sex. It is also “slang” for beating someone badly.
It’s amazing how much you know when you are 18.
“Words mean things. If that is how you talk when you are with your kid friends, that is your business, but if you want to interact with the adults, you are going to have to face the reality that words mean things. You aren’t talking to hear yourself speak. Whenever you talk, whoever can hear you is your audience. Remember what it is you are doing.”
I felt like an idiot. Despite knowing everything (I was 18, so kind of a given), I realized that just as chronic swearing is a symptom of a shortage of intelligence, so too is the inability to adjust one’s language to the situation at hand. Looking back, I didn’t even consider at the time just how inappropriate that kind of language was in an official capacity, let alone in any kind of public forum.
However, it is not just being mindful of the language we use in public. The language we use behind closed doors influences our thought process.
“Don’t be a faggot.”
The expression is said to have nothing to do with sexuality, a way of saying, “That’s not cool.”
At its core, this expression means “Homosexuality is so not cool, the most powerful way I can condemn your action is by suggesting that it is as bad as being homosexual.” That may not be one’s conscious thought process, but that is what they are saying.
The use of “faggot” as a derogatory term stems from hateful origins towards both women and homosexual men. Eventually this led to its popularity as a term boys say to each other in an attempt to assert their own masculinity by challenging the masculinity of other boys (following the example of those around them). In this context, “faggot” is not a permanent identity, such as one’s ethnicity or name. Rather, it is fluid, an identity that one seeks to avoid, such as being “it” in a game of tag. Many boys play this game of tag for years, back and forth with other boys.
“You are a fag!”
“No, you are!”
That’s adorable, but words mean things. If that is how you talk when you are with your kid friends, that is your business, but if you want to interact with the adults, you are going to have to face the reality that words mean things. You aren’t talking to hear yourself speak. Whenever you talk, whoever can hear you is your audience. Remember what it is you are doing.
When we are at a Magic tournament, we are confronted with a whole lot of people, many of whom we don’t know all that well. It can be very tempting to try to assert our masculinity by challenging the masculinity of others.
Want to know a secret?
If you are actually secure in your masculinity, you have no need for such petty tools.
What’s more, use of this language speaks volumes about a person, and the people around them pick up on the message between the lines.
Do you think Brian Kibler uses those words? What about Luis Scott-Vargas?
The words we use shape who we are. They influence our thought patterns and steer how we approach things.
The reasons to avoid such language in public settings, such as a Magic tournament or Facebook, are obvious. After all, when you are talking, everyone who can hear you is your audience. We did not come to this game accidentally. We are intelligent. We have more effective ways of communicating.
However, reconsidering hateful speech publically is only part of the equation. It’s not about the word itself; it is about the thought process. This thought process is toxic, and if you indulge in it in private, it will influence you in public.
You know why rape and hate slang continues? The same reason all slang does — because of people repeating it. From experience, I can tell you, it is relatively easy to clean up a circle’s language. If you resolve that something isn’t cool, it doesn’t take long for it to impact the circles you run in. That circle reflects who you are but also leaves impressions on you. If you do not impress on it, it will impress on you.
I am blessed with a number of close gay friends who have greatly enriched my life. Each of my experiences leads me to believe that potentially shutting out a percentage of people from my life by using hateful language is a huge mistake.
We all have our own path to walk.
There is room for an awful lot of people to live lives that are not identical to our own. What is right for someone else is not necessarily right for us, and what is right for us is not necessarily right for them. Why not give them the benefit of the doubt, especially if they are not hurting someone else?
No matter how tempting to try, we can’t make everyone else do what we want. What we can do is decide who we are, right now. It might not be the same as who we were yesterday, and that is okay.
When we see someone making fun of someone else at a Magic tournament for being different, we have lots of options. Are we someone who joins in, attempting to assert our masculinity? Are we someone who just tries to fit in with the crowd? Are we someone willing to stand up for someone who is outnumbered? Are we someone who is just afraid to say something, fearing becoming the next target? Are we someone who believes it is wrong to treat someone badly because of their race, sexuality, or gender?
Obviously none of this is to say that censorship is the answer. Words mean things, and if a given word is what you really want to say, more power to you. Rather, I’m trying to dispel the naïve notion that just because you might not be offended by a word, it doesn’t mean it’s not harmful and needless. Look, I am always touched when a straight, white American male is not offended by something, but maybe we are forgetting what it is we are doing.
There is a real temptation to defend slurs by arguing that the burden is on the other person to not be offended. After all, can’t anyone just say they are offended by anything? The thing is, asking someone if they are offended by something isn’t particularly fruitful. You don’t think it just puts all the pressure on them and risk being hated more? Likewise, a single person saying they are offended by something doesn’t make it offensive. It is a piece of evidence that helps build a case, but declaring something offensive does mean other people are offended by it.
Using slurs is harmful, not just because of the possibility of offending someone. It is harmful because of the implications. It makes people uncomfortable; it’s disrespectful; it’s bullying; and sadly, it leads to influencing the victims to go out and find victims of their own.
Words mean things.
Whenever people do something differently, someone is going to lash out against them. Maybe they’ll laugh at them, ridicule them, or hate them. People are scared of change, and they fear what is different from them.
Recently, I heard a young man, who considers racism obviously stupid, verbally attack a transgender individual he had never met.
“Faggot.”
What had this individual done to earn scathing slurs in front of countless people?
They had succeeded at something the boy wished he could succeed at.
Here we have a boy who considers himself a moral authority, who realizes the foolishness of racism; and yet when confronted with someone different from him, he didn’t even realize what he was doing.
Just as any woman who Top 8s a major event is greeted by some percentage of boys who hurl degrading remarks about her gender, someone transgender and successful is greeted with hateful slurs. Why?
It’s hard enough to live a transgender life. What do we gain by making their life harder, more painful? You don’t have to agree with all of someone’s choices or even understand them. However, if they aren’t hurting someone else, why attack them? Why be cruel?
In my experience, an awful lot of young men playing Magic have had some experience with racism. They’ve come to realize that it is not useful and not who they are; not as many Magic players have interacted with transgender individuals, so perhaps looking to broaden our perspective is worthwhile.
Imagine what it is like, everyone telling you that you are wrong about who and what you are. It can be a pretty tough spot to be. Imagine a bunch of people telling you what you should or should not be, say, or feel, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s going on inside of you.
Being transgender can be like that.
You may disagree with the actions someone is taking, and it may not be something that meshes with your worldview, but are they are hurting anybody? There is no question the life they are living is potentially fraught with hardships and pain, and you are certainly not obligated to do anyone any favors. However, do you really need to torment them and make their life harder? What does that accomplish?
Maybe they will eventually evolve their views. Maybe you will eventually evolve yours. Still, if neither of you changes your views, so what? No one needs to be hurt.
Picking on people in a position of weakness (such as being different from everyone else and having to deal with a world that is not built for them) is an act of cowardice. Whether using slurs because of anger or hate or using them out of ignorance of the implications of slang that carries with it pain and negativity, you have the choice to decide for yourself if that is who you are, or if you are better than that.
You also have the choice to act when you see someone else repeating this noise, without even thinking. I know I am so thankful for that individual who talked some sense into me all those years ago. People may push back, as confronting the truth can be scary, but they may thank you someday.
The signals you send to the world dictate what the world brings you. Make a statement to the world that you are full of kindness, courage, or love, and the world will bring you experiences to match. Make a statement that you are a coward, insecure, or full of hate, and the world will bring you experiences to match.
You want to win more at Magic?
You want to succeed more at anything you do in life?
Be strong. Be open-minded. Be courageous. Be a force for positivity. Be the greatest version of yourself you can envision.
What heretofore untapped outrageous force of nature could knock the cobwebs off of BigHeadJoe Panuska, prompting the return of legendary podcast duo Yo! MTG Taps!?
The Official Miser’s Guide of course!
The Official Miser’s Guide (aka #TheOMG) is a labor of love that represents my every spare minute for over a year of my life. It is late nights hunched over a laptop keyboard, cross-state commutes tapping at the iPad screen, and hours upon hours crammed physically into a closed-in closet recording audio eps. The Official Miser’s Guide details most of what I know about Magic, and tons of new things I learned about myself (and lots of other kinds of people, actually) over the course of writing it. It includes everything from basic Magic concepts like card economy, to visualizing the end game (of a duel or where you want to go in life, it makes no difference), to the how-tos of selling your opponent on your version of reality.
You can read The Official Miser’s Guide in e-book form, or you can listen to it while you do something else, like play MTGO, run on the eliptical, or pretend to pay attention in class / at work.
Thanks to everyone who has participated in Desperate Ravings so far.
We’ve given away $150 in prizes, but still have more to go! Remember, you have until June 12, 2012 to get all seven Desperate Ravings assignments done in order to qualify for…
One $50 gift certificate from GatheringMagic
One $50 gift certificate from LegitMTG
One $50 gift certificate from ManaDeprived…
… or a one-hour coaching call from YT!
Well, what are we waiting for? Here goes the last Desperate Ravings assignment, from Neal Stephenson’s The Confusion:
The day then dissolved into a long sickening panic, a slow and stretched-out dying. Jack rowed, and was whipped, and other times he whipped other men who were rowing. He stood above men he loved and saw only livestock, and whipped skin off their backs to make them row infinitesimally harder, and later they did the same to him. The raïs himself rowed, and was whipped by his own slaves. Whips wore out and broke. The galleot became an open tray of blood, skin, and hair, a single living body cut open by some pitiless anatomist: the benches ribs, the oars digits, the men gristle, the drum a beating heart, the whips raw dissected nerves that spun and whorled and crackled through the viscera of the hull. This was the first hour of their day, and the last; it quickly became too terrible to imagine, and remained thus without letting up, forever, even though it was only a day—just as a short nightmare can seemingly encompass a century. It passed out of time, in other words, and so there was nothing to tell of it, as it was not a story.
They did not begin to be human again until the sun went down, and then they had no idea where they were. There were not as many men in the galleot as there had been when the sun had come up and they had dipped dry oars into the whitecaps as the bugle played. No one was really sure why. Jack had a vague recollection of seeing bloody bodies going over the gunwales, pushed by many hands, and of an attempt that had been made to throw him overboard, which had come to naught when he had begun thrashing around. Jack assumed that Mr. Foot could not have survived the day, until later he heard ragged breathing from a dark corner of the quarterdeck, and found him huddled under some canvas. The rest of the Cabal had all survived. Or at least they were all present. The meaning of survival was not entirely clear on a day like this. Certainly they would never be the same. Jack’s similitude about trapped beasts gnawing their legs off had been intended as a sort of jest, to make Dappa feel less guilty, but today it had come true; even if Moseh, Jeronimo, and the others were still breathing, and still aboard, important pieces of them had been chewed off and left behind. That night, it did not occur to Jack that, for some of them at least, this might amount to an improvement.
You Know What to Do:
Copy the above selection from The Confusion by hand and in triplicate, and
How much damage do you have to do with — and to — a whip to wear it out in one day, let alone one hour?
These two paragraphs from Stephenson are basically my favorite two paragraphs in all writing, in terms of writing. Stephenson does everything well that you can do well. He blends love and violence and authority, queering the relationship between master and slave while laying everyone out.
He stood above men he loved and saw only livestock.
… Then he whipped the bejeezus out of his friends; had the bejeezus whipped out of him.
This passage is a great “lists” passage, too. I am of the belief that list-writing is the best kind of writing. Yesterday’s from Gravity’s Rainbow was also superb list-writing… But surely when you read over the two passages you could see how different they were. Pynchon made you go fast with his run-on sentence. Pynchon’s passage was a relentless rush of snowballing madness… Stephenson’s here is slow, rolls out and develops at the pace of ice or glass, forces you to live through, maybe relish, each syllable of violence and triumph.
I have copied this passage more than any other in my own practice, pre-Desperate Ravings. Maybe someday I will be able to write nearly as well as Neal.
I would like to thank GatheringMagic, LegitMTG, ManaDeprived, and all of the Desperate Ravings participants for humoring me all week. I’d think it just dandy if you gave them a visit:
Welcome my friends to the penultimate episode of Desperate Ravings.
I hope you have enjoyed the story so far, and invite you to finish out today’s and tomorrow’s assignments.
By this point most of you know what is what, but for those of you who are just joining us, you can check out any ep marked Depserate Ravings, or read the explanations from Episode 1 or Episode 5 to get your bearings.
Now that we are past the point of daily $10 bribes, I feel confident in revealing the two hand-copying exercises I love the most. Longtime readers of my greater Magic writing have probably encountered both already.
The first one of these two is from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.
Josh Ravitz and I, working together at the time, heard of the 1973 novel, unanimously elected to the Pulitzer Prize by the three-person novel-selecting committee… with the award later overturned by the other eleven members of the Pulitzer illuminati. No award was given out that year.
Gravity’s Rainbow did earn the 1974 National Book Award… But Pynchon chose to neither acknowledge nor accept it. He has been depicted as a secretive recluse, you know, like on The Simpsons.
I would guess none of my readers actually visit seemoretube
In the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell, Susanna Clarke paints this wonderful idea, when one of the titular wizards distills the idea of madness itself into a vial, so that he can take a few drops when he wants to do magic, to touch madness itself. As a writer this is an incredibly attractive idea for me. I hope that exploring this passage from Gravity’s Rainbow will give you the chance to touch on the same scary and exciting experience, even for a moment:
With a clattering of chairs, upended shell cases, benches, and ottomans, Pirate’s mob gather at the shores of the great refectory table, a southern island well across a tropic or two from chill Corydon Throsp’s mediaeval fantasies, crowded now over the swirling dark grain of its walnut uplands with banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed bananas molded into the shape of a British lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for French toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across the quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange to spell out the words C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre (attributed to a French observer during the Charge of the Light Brigade) which Pirate has appropriated as his motto … tall cruets of pale banana syrup to pour oozing over banana waffles, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which, this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead … banana croissants and banana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy Pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the Pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio transmitter …
Yes. That’s pretty much one run-on sentence. One wonderful run-on sentence. No. Josh and I never finished the book.
What to Do Next:
Copy down the above passage from Gravity’s Rainbow, by hand and in triplicate.
But for at least three lucky Desperate Ravings readers, Day Five was the most important one of all!
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from GatheringMagic: Eric Blanc
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from LegitMTG: Avery Garon
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from ManaDeprived: Devin Brown
Congratulations to Eric, Avery, and Devin on their $10 gift certificates from our generous sponsors!
And get to it every one — You have until June 12 to finish all seven Desperate Ravings assignments and qualify to win one of our four big prizes (three $50 gift certificates or a one-hour call from YT)… Plus the unprecedented long-term awesome sauce of Desperate Ravings – Flashback. Bring it!
LOVE
MIKE
Thanks for visiting our Desperate Ravings sponsors:
Here’s What I’ve Got: Desperate Ravings Assignment #5
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Here’s What It’ll Do for You:
Considered a masterwork of 20th Century imagist poetry, “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams — probably even more than Rachel Maddow’s Drift selection from yesterday is a great example of writing that engages your visual imagination.
Here’s What I Want You to Do Next:
Copy “The Red Wheelbarrow” by hand and in triplicate, like so:
In case you are just joining us, Desperate Ravings is a collaboration between myself and the good people at GatheringMagic, LegitMTG, and ManaDeprived. Aspiring writers (or just contest participants) are given passages each day of Desperate Ravings to copy and upload to the aforementioned Facebook group. For each of the first five days — today being the fifth and last — our sponsors select a single winner of a $10 gift certificate. For example, here are yesterday’s winners:
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from GatheringMagic: Marcus Bastian Hensing
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from LegitMTG: Jarrod Keith Williams
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from ManaDeprived: Bernhard Zander
The thinking is that anyone who drives himself — or herself — to do all seven assignments, consecutively, will have shown the shoulder-to-the-grindstone commitment necessary to become a consistent producer of content for one of the above sites.
Simultaneously, the thinking is that copying down some of the great passages selected by Desperate Ravings will help aspiring writers / contest participants to internalize that elusive turn of phrase that makes for engaging or entertaining writing.
… Plus there’s the, you know, prizes!
In addition to the 3×5 daily prizes from GatheringMagic, LegitMTG, and ManaDeprived, anyone who finishes all seven assignments by June 12, 2012 (ten days total to finish seven assignments) may qualify for…
One $50 gift certificate from GatheringMagic
One $50 gift certificate from LegitMTG
One $50 gift certificate from ManaDeprived, or
A one-hour coaching call from Yours Truly!
… Plus consideration for actual feature writing gigs at the sponsor sites (though we’ll shake all that out in the second phase, Desperate Ravings – Flashback).
So… If you’re late to the party, it’s okay!
Do today’s assignment and you might just get lucky on Day Five. You’ve still got until June 12 to get all of them in!
I was surprised at the lukewarm (and perhaps “lukewarm” is generous) reactions to yesterday’s selection from Thinking, Fast and Slow. It so happens that I am reading Thinking, Fast and Slow right now and I pretty actively try to highlight and add from stuff that I am reading at any time.
That was half, anyway. Some readers commented that they didn’t love Kahneman’s prose. I actually thought it was well written, but that wasn’t really why I picked it. Kahneman, in this segment, uses simple and very clear language. He describes a fairly complex sequence… but I think all of us got it, and more than that, believed it.
As for the content? It kind of reminded me of this old Matt Sperling comic.
Speaking of stuff I read recently, these are the first two paragraphs from Rachel Maddow’s excellent Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power:
Homework #4!
IN THE LITTLE TOWN WHERE I LIVE IN HAPSHIRE COUNTY, Massachusetts, we now have a “Public Safety Complex” around the corner from what used to be our hokey Andy Griffith-esque fire station. In the cascade of post-9/11 Homeland Security money in the first term of the George W. Bush administration, our town’s share of the loot bought us a new fire truck — one that turned out to be a few feet longer than the garage where the town kept our old fire truck. So then we got some more Homeland money to build something big enough to house the new truck. In homage to the origin of the funding, the local auto detailer airbrushed on the side of the new truck a patriotic tableau of a billowing flaglike barrier, a really big bald eagle, and the burning World Trade Center towers.
The American taxpayers’ investment in my town’s security didn’t stop at the new safety complex. I can see further fruit of those Homeland dollars just beyond my neighbor’s back fence. While most of us in town depend on well water, there are a few houses that for the past decade or so have been hooked up to a municipal water supply. And when I say “a few,” I mean few: I think there are seven houses on municipal water. Around the time we got our awesome giant new fire truck, we also got a serious security upgrade to that town water system. Its tiny pump house is about the size of two phone booths and accessible by a dirt driveway behind my neighbor’s back lot. Or at least it used to be. The entire half-acre parcel of land around that pump house is now ringed by an eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, and fronted with a motion-sensitive electronically controlled motorized gate. On our side of town we call it “Little Guantanamo.” Mostly it’s funny, but there is some neighborly consternation over how frowsy Little Guantanamo gets every summer. Even though it’s town-owned land, access to Little Guantanamo is apparently above the security clearance of the guy paid to mow and brush-hog. Right up to the fence, it’s my neighbor’s land and they keep everything trim and tidy. But inside that fence, the grass gets eye-high. It’s going feral in there.
I love Maddow’s diction, humor, combination of simple and unusual words, and sense of the bizarre. But what she does really well in this segment is to engage your visual imagination. You can see the fire truck sticking out of the too-small garage; the flames and towers detailed, the little pump station, couched and hidden behind too-tall “frowzy” grass.
Anyway… same stuff as the last three days!
Copy down the assignment, by hand and in triplicate
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from GatheringMagic: Tony Merriam
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from LegitMTG: Wil Rosario
The winner of a $10 gift certificate from ManaDeprived: Armando Lope
LOVE
MIKE
A Note on Homework and Prizes:
Just because you miss a day or caught on a little late doesn’t mean you can’t participate! I designed Desperate Ravings to give you 2-3 extra days to get all the homework in and potentially qualify for one of the four big prizes. Remember – We are giving away three $50 gift certificates next week to those who complete all seven assignments!
Desperate Ravings would not be possible without our generous sponsors.
