#Oh So Eclectic stamp set

[selachiixiv]

Quarry

Once, the bulk of his investigating involved the Lambs and other troubles of the Shroud, since he had little faith in the Wailers and the Adders to get the job done. That would be foolish of him, after all. As former military himself, he is well aware that all formalised authoritarian organisations are bullshit and not to be trusted, plus he's watched how they treat most of what they deem outsiders for years now - he had only escaped it himself because a decorated former Flames lieutenant who had served at Cartenau was clearly "not like those other ones".

He'd spat in the face of someone for that once.

And it's not that he doesn't still do that. Oh, it makes Romscha and Audrinne fuss when he hobbles home covered in mud, all because he got his violence out a bit for a cultist. Sometimes the kids too, if they're home.

But it's now that his investigating also means prowling through antiquities shops, searching out things Romscha would like, at least within the Shroud itself since he is rarely fond of leaving. He usually comes with a list of things his boyfriend is looking for, along with a mental list of things he knows will be well-received. The list usually consists of pieces he needs to complete collections - everything else is as eclectic as Romscha's own complete collection.

So here he is, seeking his quarry - some saucers for a set that has not been made in so long that Viera have lived and died in the time since, which will make them expensive but worth it. Otherwise, it is up to whatever catches his attention.

He finds the saucers in a little antiques stall, along with a startlingly underpriced stamp collection in a very nice album, a handful of little brass cats, and a cast iron wok that, which absolutely in need of some good TLC, is in fairly salvageable condition; finding someone who can help with the restoration is sure to be easy enough.

Mercifully, the day's haul fits into the magitek armour with him, unlike when he finds actual furniture that Romscha will enjoy. Despite intending on not hustling home too fast - it is autumn in the Shroud, and it's nice out - the rain that starts pouring down on him halfway drives him to hurry much faster.

[basicjetsetter]

Part I

♡ Pairing: Peter Parker x Black!FemaleReader

▹ Warnings: Mild Language, Triggering Content

▹ Words: 4.6k

▹ A/N: Buckle in. This is going to be a long ride.

“No way!” Your friend Manda squeals. “Those were the exact words?!”

You smoosh a frantic hand over Manda’s mouth and shush her, then slightly pop up from your seat to scope out the packed bus, making sure none of your schoolmates heard her outburst. To your relief, only a few close students glance over with little interest and barely anyone in a wider radius catches Manda’s words over the buzzing clammer of other conversations. Blowing out a satisfied exhale, you turn back to your friend, removing your hand from her mouth with a teasingly reproachful frown. 

“Tell the whole world, why don’t you?” 

She giggles, “My bad. But can you blame me? This is huge!”

Thrilled warmth floods into your cheeks from her enthusiasm. She’s right. This is huge, and you might have secretly sought this exact reaction because only Manda’s trademark, earsplitting squeal stamps news with the seal of authenticity. It’s real. You heard your Destined Words.

The same jitters from when you woke up this morning skitter up and down your spine, sharpening your senses to the max, making it easier to recall the words that floated into your subconscious—words from a bodiless voice. Your Soulmate.

I’ve got you.

Your mind handles the precious words like a porcelain tea set, carefully deciphering the voice pitch and attempting to match it to a face, knowing its efforts lie in vain because the words’ owner only becomes apparent when they speak them to you.

Some inner part of you distinctly translates the words into a comforting assurance, an assurance one might receive after coming home from a long day’s work and walking into the soft embrace of a lover. It weaves itself around your mind like a consoling safety net, painting an image of a lover better than you’ve ever imagined and everything you’ve ever hoped for.

You couldn’t have hand-picked a better day than today, Midtown High’s field trip to the MoMA, to gush over the words with Manda while admiring spectacular, thought-provoking art pieces. One of the perks of going to Midtown High is their fantastic field trips. You circled this Friday on your calendar at the start of the semester because while you loved being in a school centered around technological sciences, you were excited to study artists’ colorful, eclectic expressions and how their cultural personalities materialize in the stroke of a paintbrush.

“You’re so lucky,” Manda says, trying to pull off a pout. Her vibrant smile triumphs. “Only three days after you turn eighteen, and you hear your Destined Words. I’ve got four more months before I file a complaint.”

You sympathetically rub her shoulder, her oversized, long-sleeved denim jacket rough to the touch. “It’ll come. Just don’t wait for it.”

“Oh, I know it’s coming. I just want it to be something as cute as yours, you know.” She shudders, “My cousin Alonzo said his Destined Words were ‘Sure, whatever.’ Can you imagine that? Finally being mature enough for your Soulmate and that’s the first thing they say to you? I mean, sure, he and Tanya are super cute together, but ugh. Those words?”

You snicker, “Let me guess. You’re expecting a grand gesture?”

Manda nods with a dead serious face, though she could never truly pull it off with her full lips and Cabbage Patch Doll cheeks. She’d have a better chance at getting away with murder than intimidating someone with her cute little frown. “If I don’t hear the words ‘Where have you been all my life, you breathtaking, drop-dead gorgeous goddess,’ then I’m demanding a full refund.”

You blankly stare at each other for a beat before you crack, both of you laughing until your sides ache and you’re gasping for air, not caring for the teachers' hushes from the front of the bus.

“I just can’t believe I finally hear the words, you know,” you say as the laughs fade. “It’s like a fairytale come true.” You lean your head against the cool glass window, watching the placid cerulean waves come into view as the bus drives onto a bridge. “I wonder what they’re like, if I know them. If they’re nice. My mom says she already had a mega crush on my dad, so when he said the words, it already felt like they were together.”

Manda sighs dreamily. “I bet they’re cute. And super smart. Those words seem kind of thoughtful, too, so that’s a bonus. And, hey, don’t worry so much.” She gently knocks her shoulder against yours. “They’re going to love you.”

You weren’t scared that they wouldn’t love you. Everyone who finds their Soulmate never doubts that that is their person. What pins a tiny knot of anxiety to the pit of your stomach is how it will happen.

As a young girl, you spent countless nights dreaming of the sequential events leading up to the day you finally met your Soulmate, orchestrating the moment like a scene from all the rom-coms you binged. Your person accidentally bumps into you either in a hallway or on the bus or in the lunch-line, gazes deep into your dazed eyes, then declares their love for you with some cliché phrase before scooping you into their arms and planting a kiss on your expectant lips.

I’ve got you.

The sweet words drifting in your head do their best to ease away the anxiety. You have nothing to worry about. The meeting will play out the way you fantasized, if not better. All because of those words.

“We’re all gonna die!” Ned Leeds shouts from the middle of the bus.

All heads snap to the right windows. In an instant, densely packed bodies swarm from the left side to the right, sandwiching together to search for what Ned was staring at, some opening the windows and craning their necks for a better look. You grunt as someone digs their elbow in your ribcage to see more, and you tensely shove them against the back of the seats in front of you before peering out of your window.

It’s a sight no eyes could miss. A large, metal donut levitates in the clear sky, an obstruction not there mere seconds ago. You gasp in wonder, but not fear. Surely, the Avengers, Earth’s mightiest heroes, will have this taken care of before the sun sets.

The bus driver, an old man with a smile as sly as a fox and pearly white hair, casually calls out, “What’s the matter with you kids?! You’ve never seen a spaceship before?”

“He’s got a point,” you shrug as Manda gapes at the driver with incredulous eyes, then rounds on you as you calmly sit back down. “We always get so worked up over these aliens, and nothing ever really happens. The Avengers got it handled.”

“You sure? Because that looks a little menacing.” Manda worries at her lower lip, anxiously sneaking peeks out the window. Many students stay plastered to the scene.

“Positive.”

✦ ✧✦ ✧

The appearance of the metal donut effectively sullies your experience of the MoMA. None of the tour guides thoroughly explain the paintings' and sculptures' meanings or historical relevance. Instead, they string together incoherent sentences about person, place, and time as they gape at the video feeds live-streamed to their phones. Even Manda stays glued to her screen, chewing on her lower lip so hard you're surprised she hasn't punctured it.

Fifteen minutes into the tour, aggravation chafes into you like sandpaper, rubbing your skin raw. You waited months for this trip. Months! You'd be damned if a few pesky aliens took this special day away from you. You weren’t afraid. You had no reason to be.

Fed up, you take matters into your own hands and stealthily break away from the group, tip-toeing back to an intriguing wall of paintings and observe it by yourself. 

One painting catches your eye early, drawing you to the middle of the wall to study it further. Its tag reads The Lovers, René Magritte, Paris, 1928, Surrealism, Oil Painting. There are two people, a man and a woman, painted with white cloths shrouding their faces as they share a seemingly intimate kiss. You lean in closer, noting the almost murky atmosphere and how it lends to the mystery of the kiss. What did Magritte want you to think when you analyzed this piece? What questions did she want you to ask? 

You derive two: Is love mysterious and complicated as the atmosphere suggests, or is it intuitive and straightforward as the veiled lovers suggest? And, would the love still be the same once they lift the veils?

Beep. Beep. Beep. All the phones in hearing range chime out three urgent trills, nearly ejecting your soul out of your body. Clearing your head with a shake, you pull your phone out of your back pocket. You don't even have to unlock it. The news alert flashes up like a hazard light. Tony Stark Missing.

You blink. What the hell is going on?

"Are you seeing this?" Manda whispers, sidling up to your side.

You nod, at a loss for words. Iron Man is missing? How? What happened? Did it have something to do with the metal donut? 

You blink harder and take another long look at the notification, hoping it was a typo or missing a few words, words like Tony Stark Missing Iron Man Suit. Hell, even Tony Stark Missing Cheeseburgers. Anything but what's on your screen.

Somewhere in the background, Mrs. Kramer, your Art teacher, roll-calls the students to the front entrance. "Okay, guys, time to cut the field trip short."

Your shoulders sag. This can't be happening. Is it really that serious?

"Peter? Peter?" Mr. Dell calls out, clenching onto a clipboard with shaking hands. "Has anybody seen Parker? Peter Parker?" he inquired, looking over the students' heads. A bead of sweat gathers on his forehead, even though there is virtually no heat in the building, and it's a breezy, 72-degree late-spring afternoon in New York City. "Where does this kid always sneak off to?"

Ned stuttered out, "He, uhm, Pe-Peter left early, sir. Family emergency."

"An emergency? Was it so important he couldn't at least notify the supervisors?" Ned bobbed his head up and down, keeping his eyes stapled to the floor in a manner that hinted at no further comment. Mr. Dell huffs, "Alright. But he's getting detention, and I have half a mind to put you in there with him, Leeds."

Ned's face screws up in a chastised grimace. "Sorry, sir. Won’t happen again."

Your eyes linger on Ned as he pulls out his phone and rapidly taps at the screen, probably sending a strongly worded text to his best friend, rebuking Peter for roping him into his antics and nearly earning him a week's detention. You don't know much about their friendship, but they appear tied to the hip at school. 

Ned's a nice guy. Reliant to a tee. You had the pleasure of partnering with him on an art project in Kramer's class a few weeks back, spending a considerable amount of time joking while diligently rendering an interpretation of Van Gogh's A Starry Night on a five-by-five foot canvass. During that time, he often complimented your paint-smeared overalls and your hair's ever-changing up-dos. He seemed like such a great friend to have.

Peter, on the other hand, is a tough nut to crack.

You only ever shared one class with Peter Parker. Spanish last semester. You remember him being too antsy for your liking, always checking his watch impatiently, answering questions too fast, bouncing his leg up and down, acting like he had someplace better to be and better things to do. His impatience never made sense to you until you heard some girls in the locker-room whispering about his Stark internship and how lucky he was to be working for the Tony Stark. 

When the internship suddenly halted, and Peter landed himself in the longest detention sentence you'd ever heard of, you started to take more notice of him only because he was around more often. He was sort of cute in a boy-next-door kind of way with his science pun tee-shirts and smooth, tousled brown hair. For a brief time, you fleetingly considered asking him to Homecoming, but the futility of such a question wasn't lost on you. He noticeably crushed on Liz Toomes, and you were confident Peter's pining for her meant destiny twined their paths.

But Liz is gone now, and there's a growing 90 percent chance Peter's set his sights on MJ. Brooding quirky girl ending up with boy-next-door, now that match made perfect sense, just like a rom-com, or even better, an 80's teen romance.

Manda tugs on your arm, her hands forming a shackle around your wrist. "Come on. They're getting back on the bus without us."

Sure enough, you two were nearly the last ones in the entrance, the remaining students filing out of the door. You rush after them and reach the bus doors right before they shut, huffing in unison. Manda doubles over and grasps her knees, heaving.

"Here," you gasp. "We're here."

Your driver tuts, swinging the doors back open. "Good thing you two made it in time. This bus waits for no one, not even me. Come on," he says, waving you inside. "Let's get this show on the road."

You trudge back to your designated seats, collapsing against the plastic covering as the adrenaline subsides, replaced with the forgotten dread of the trip's abrupt end. You lean over and peer out the left side windows when the bus rolls over the bridge again, surprise rattling ominously over your bones as you find the metal donut gone from the sky.

Where did it go? Did the Avengers get rid of it?

Your hand still clamps your phone. An annoying, slight tremble in your hands trips up your fingers as they try to type in your passcode, but you succeed on the fourth try. You scroll through your social media, hoping beyond hope that someone captured the Avengers' victory or something close to a victory, something that proves the news headline wrong. Stark's probably lying low, too beat down to show his face to the press.

The far-fetched lie makes you internally flinch. You don't know much about the guy, but you're more than a thousand percent sure Stark wouldn't hide from the press if he won anything.

A sinking horror clogs your chest as you obsessively watch clip after clip, onlookers recording some unconscious guy in a red cape being invisibly bound and trailing after the commanding hand of an elongated, greyish-blue alien. Spider-Man tries to get the red-caped guy back, swinging through the city and dodging billboards, his webs clinging to the departing ship's underside, Iron Man flying into the sky after them.

It’s bad. Oh, sweet heavens, it’s bad.

Maybe it’s not that much of a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, it’s probably nothing. The end of the videos suggested the Avengers gained the upper hand on the fight, so maybe, just maybe, the alien was fleeing—fleeing… with a captive. Hurtling off into God knows where with Iron Man and Spider-Man onboard.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. 

Your back flattens to your seat and your unseeing eyes meld to your phone, the thunderous beats of your heart stifling the rest of the world into silence. The air is thinning. 

Your ears are buzzing. 

A vice clenches your chest.

It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. 

The dubious mantra and vague words of your Soulmate blend into an all-consuming cacophony of words, gelling together in a chant of solace. 

It’s fine. I’ve got you. It’s fine. I’ve got you. It’s fine.

By the time the bus drops off the students at Midtown and you and Manda quietly walk in the direction of home, the mixture of affirmations fans away the panic settling around your chest, bringing back a semblance of your earlier confidence, or rather, what was left of it, which wasn't much.

Outside the apartment complex, an overwhelming amount of residents’ windows glow, most of them probably stuck to their couch, replaying the recent events on any major news network and speculating the whereabouts of our mightiest heroes.

It takes a while to dawn on you that you and Manda are the only ones standing outside. On the entire block.

Nothing stirs. Even the bodega on the corner appears closed for the day.

It's five o'clock on a Friday afternoon and there’s plenty of light left.

Emptiness pours out of every alley like ink spilling from a broken bottle, blotting the whole surface of the street with the absence of human activity. A tree's rustling leaves are so startling your breath locks up and you jump. Manda doesn't say anything, recovering from the sudden noise herself.

Leaving the deserted streets behind, you and Manda glumly walk up the steps of your apartment complex and up to your residence on the third floor. The apartment is eerily silent as you toss your keys on the kitchen counter and lock the door behind Manda.

"When are your folks getting back from their honeymoon again?" asks Manda, shrugging out of her jacket and toeing off her sneakers, leaving them propped against the wall by the door.

Habit controls your body as you open the fridge, grab two Sprites, set them down on the counter, then reach for the half-finished bucket of Red Vines from the top cabinet shelf. "Sunday morning, I think. They only have the weekend off. Want some pizza? I can call up Joe's."

"Please and thank you," she says, plopping down on the couch. The old thing croaks, its springs wheezing under the unwelcomed weight.

The maroon monstrosity is a family heirloom, dating back to your grandparents' time. Mom loves it, claiming it adds the right amount of character to the drab living space, knowing fully well that anyone with fashion sense would never describe any space she inhabits as drab. Dad is adamant that it's one spill away from handing in its resignation.

Picking up your house phone, you confirm, "Extra-large cheese and olives?"

You don't know why you ask. Ever since the inception of your infamous best friend "crash-overs," cheese and olive pizza starred as the staple meal: that, and a bucket of Red Vines your dad occasionally steals from. Maybe you asked for normalcy or maybe to confirm Manda's plan to stay for the rest of the night. What you do know is you don’t want to be alone.

She hums a distracted yes, turning on the TV and upping the volume to listen to Channel 10's news reporter recount the fight between Iron Man and the alien.

Though already burned in your memory, the images douse your body in bone-chilling fear.

You turn your back and dial in the order, not at all surprised that Joe's is still up and running. Once the employee confirms your order and promises a speedy delivery, you grab the drinks and candy and place them on the coffee table, ignoring the TV.

"C-can you turn it to something else?" you quickly pipe up as you sit next to Manda, unsuccessfully hiding the tremor in your words. "I don't think I can stomach the news right now."

"Yeah, sure." Slow and reluctant, Manda switches the input and goes into Netflix. "Anything you wanna watch?"

"Teen Wolf."

Manda groans, "Again? We've seen that a million times."

"Oh, come on," you groan back, playfulness strained in your words. "It's a classic. You can't say no to a classic."

She gives you a dour frown, one that still couldn't land an inch of seriousness on her amber-colored cherub cheeks, until she relents from the weight of your puppy dog eyes.

"Fine, but only because of Michael J. Fox. Next time, I'm picking."

Neither of you really pay attention to the movie or touch the pizza when it arrives. In fact, for most of the night, Manda scrolls through her social media, watching what you can only assume are today’s events. Sometimes she’d put the phone down when you politely asked, but it unfailingly ended up right back in her hands, so after a while, you stop asking. When the movie’s end credits roll around, and you dress into your pajamas, put away the remaining slices of pizza, and call it a night, both of you climb into your bed. She is still scrolling.

You try and force yourself into REM sleep, keeping your eyes shut until you hear Manda’s heavy breathing beside you. The clock on your nightstand reads 9:53 p.m.

Yawning, you curl up into a tight ball on your side of the bed and wish your mom and dad were here to help you get out of your head. Manda can’t do it when she’s so caught up in hers, and you don’t think you’d be able to tell her how scared you are. It’d only scare her more.

Tony Stark is missing. Manda would have screeched her head off by now if anything changed.

I’ve got you.

Yeah, but Tony Stark, the freaking Iron Man, is missing.

I’ve got you.

You can’t possibly understand how bad this is.

I’ve got you.

You audibly huff against the reassuring words, but they eventually do the trick in temporarily pushing the worry away, allowing you to fitfully slip into dreamless oblivion.

Seven hours later, you wake to a text from your mom. The sunlight is so bright in your room you lower your phone’s brightness all the way down, squinting at the small letters.

-Coming home early bbygrl. Dad says hi and he misses you lots hunny bun. xx

A titanic-sized weight lifts off of your shoulders—something you hadn’t even known was there until you re-read your mom’s text and verify the timestamp.

They’re on their way home, where it’s safe and you can all keep an eye on each other. Niagara Falls is just a six and a half-hour drive from here and Mom texted two hours ago, so they’ve got a couple hundred miles left. You don’t care about the distance. As long as they’re coming home, you’re fine. You can wait.

The morning’s activities in your residence pass into a weird déjà vu of last night. Manda is awake before you, sitting on the couch with a bowl of cereal in her lap and the TV turned on to Channel 10, the volume slightly lower from last night. A bit peeved, you ask her to switch it to some cartoons while you pour yourself a bowl of Frosted Flakes.

She goes back to scrolling on her phone, sparingly taking bites of her soon-turned soggy cereal. You perch on the arm of the couch, far away from Manda's screen, and munch on your cereal in silence. This whole situation sucks enough without Manda’s constant doom-scrolling, but her utter silence is wearing your nerves thin.

Three full episodes of SpongeBob play on before you heave tempered sigh and set your finished bowl of cereal on the table and face Manda.

“Do you have to do that?”

She doesn’t even spare you a glance. “Do what?”

Unbidden anger flows through you like magma spewing from a freshly erupted volcano, flaming into your veins and flaring your heart rate as you yank her phone away and toss it behind the couch.

Manda stares at you like you’ve lost your mind. She may be partially right.

“Why the hell did you do that?”

You scoff, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I like talking to my friend once in a while. Maybe it’s mentally damaging to watch the same thing over and over and over again, and I was just trying to save you from brain rot.” You stand up and cross your arms over your chest, letting the rage propel your words. “Seriously Manda, give it a damn rest.”

“Why?” Manda crosses her arms too, glowering up at you, close to achieving a convincing frown. “Because you’re ‘positive’ nothing’s going to happen, right? It’s just aliens. No prob.”

You hold your tongue, waiting for her to air out all her frustrations because she’s right. She’s right to throw your words back at you. Yesterday morning you were totally sure of the Avengers, and not much has changed. You still firmly believe they’ll win whatever this fight is with the aliens, but you know scrolling through your phone for updates won’t do anything but boost your anxiety, like it’s doing to Manda.

When you think the coast is clear to speak, you lowly say, “I get it.”

“You get it? You get it? No, mama, you don’t get it. Because, see, if you got it, my phone wouldn’t be collecting dust behind your couch!”

“You needed a break, Amanda!” You shout back at her. “That phone’s never left your hand since you got here.”

She snaps her fingers as if she reached an epiphany. “Attention. That’s what it is. I haven’t given you enough attention today and you’re feeling left out of the spotlight. Newsflash, hon, the world doesn’t revolve around you. Other things are happening besides you hearing your Destined Words.”

“Wh-what?” you balk. “That… no, that’s not what this is about.” You’re not even sure where she even came up with the conclusion that you needed something as stupid as attention right now. Did she think you were that self-centered?

She cocks her eyebrow challengingly, “Alright, then tell me what it is. I’m all ears.”

“Me hearing my freaking soulmate has nothing to do with this! Nothing! And I’m not some attention-starved lunatic. Christ, Manda,” you roll your eyes, letting your hands fall with a slap against your sides. “It’s about you watching the news all day like… like this is the end of the world or something. We’ve gone through this. New York has gone through this. Alien attacks are nothing new, and I’m tired so sick and tired of you…”

You slow down, raising a soft hand to your chest—strange, tugging sensations sprout somewhere deep, deep down within you. So deep you're not sure it's actually there.

“Sick and tired of me what? What?” Manda pressed, the almost-frown lessening as your head tilts. “What’s wrong?”

You gradually shake your head. There’s no conceivable way to articulate what’s happening to you because it’s unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. You feel… tingly, like every single hair follicle on your arms and legs rise, standing on high alert.

“Something’s not right.”

The tugging intensifies dully. You gasp against it, desperately clawing at the front of your shirt with the pads of your fingers, seeking to protect something tangibly nonexistent. It’s like someone’s fingers pinch a taut guitar string inside your chest, pulling on it with increasing pressure, pulling it further and further until it can’t move an inch, holding it the apex in a deathly promise that, with one final tug, the string will give.

I’ve got you.

Everything happens within a second.

You whimper out an anguished yelp as the string abruptly snaps.

Manda leaps to her feet and grasps your shoulders, begging to help.

Then, right before your eyes, Manda’s body begins to dissolve.

“M-Manda...? Amanda, wait! NO!”

She falls away into a pile of ash on your floor.

You drop to your knees, screaming.

And so does the rest of the world.

...

Part II

[thedollarcrate]

50 Best Albums (That I Own on Vinyl) of the Decade

It’s hard to comprehend how much transpires over the course of a decade or wrap your head around how long (or short) of time that really is.

But what better way to try than to make a list!

Now, I know “Best of” lists like this one are inherently subjective – and probably say more about their maker’s preferences than actually reflecting the best music released in a particular time period. And, I’ll be the first to admit that the list below is incredibly limited, and that I need to widen my exposure to more artists and genres.

But hey, this is all in fun.

So feel free to debate, pick apart or share your own favorite albums from the past decade. But before you dive in, just a few quick points for context:

-I only ranked albums I actually own on vinyl released between 2010 and 2019, which limited my choices to about 170 records.

-I only ranked new music released this past decade, so no reissues or older material released for the first time (sorry Prince’s Piano & A Microphone and Originals).

-I first started buying vinyl around ’09-’10 and started off purchasing mostly new releases before my habits shifted and I started looking for older records. This shows in the list below – nearly a quarter of the albums below were released in 2010 and almost 70% from the first half of the decade.

And we’re off…

50. Centipede Hz, Animal Collective (2012)

Let’s be honest, it was impossible for Animal Collective to top a universally acclaimed and era-defining album – and it was unfair to expect them to. But maybe the continuous onslaught of bizarre and eclectic music found on Centipede Hz was just what we needed after all.

49. Singles, Future Islands (2014)

So much more than Sam Herring’s pelvis busting dance moves and “Seasons (Waiting On You),” every track on Singlesbursts with life and heart pumping  energy. To quote Letterman: I’ll take all of that you got.

48. Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph, Frog Eyes (2010)

I don’t think I’ll ever understand Carey Mercer’s lyrics, but I’m certain I’ll never tire of getting lost in his hidden words and knotty melodies.

47. Leaving Atlanta, Gentleman Jesse (2012)

Thirty seven minutes of Pure Power Pop Perfection (note the capital “Ps”).

46. Burst Apart, The Antlers (2011)

If there’s another album with a song titled “Putting the Dog to Sleep” that is as haunting and beautiful as this one, I don’t want to know about it.

45. Carrion Crawler/The Dream, Thee Oh Sees (2011)

With John Dwyer churning out record after record in the ‘10s, it should come as no surprise that at least one landed on this list (and they’re all great). Garage rock. Surf rock. Post-punk rock. Psych rock. Noise rock. Rock rock. I don’t care what you call it, Thee Oh Sees put the pedal to the metal on Carrion Crawler/The Dream, taking you for a wild ride that never lets up.

44. 1989, Taylor Swift (2014)

Irresistibly catchy, everyone needs to satisfy their pop sweet tooth every now and then. 1989 is so sugary, it might just give you a cavity or two.

43. City Music, Kevin Morby (2017)

The city. The countryside. A beach. Aboard a train. At the pearly gates. It doesn’t matter where you listen to City Music because Kevin Morby’s jams will immediately transport you to your own laid back, happy place.

42. Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten (2019)

You’ll regret it if you keep waiting to listen this powerhouse – and powerful – synth-soaked record.

41. You Want It Darker, Leonard Cohen (2016)

It doesn’t get much darker, bleaker or sparse than this, but I wouldn’t want it any other way from the masterful Leonard Cohen.

40. American Dream, LCD Soundsystem (2017)

Retirement never sounded so good.

39. Capacity, Big Thief (2017)

Quietly captivating, mesmerizing and elegant, Big Thief knock you out without you even realizing it.

38. St. Vincent, St. Vincent (2014)

Annie Clark’s shapeshifting album won’t only shred your face off, it somehow makes you feel smarter, too.

37. Before Today, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti (2010)

So, so weird and so, so good.

36. Expo 86, Wolf Parade (2010)

Like #50, Wolf Parade might always live in the shadow and expectations of a towering classic, yet somehow Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner still continually craft eccentric and bombastic rock albums. Expo 86 is no exception, and it is an underrated classic in its own right.

35. Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves (2018)

Like a sunset or sunrise, Golden Hour radiates beauty and warmth with each of its glowing tracks.

34. Yuck, Yuck (2011)

Despite their name and its hideous album cover, there’s nothing gross about Yuck’s infectious indie rock.

33. Play It Strange, The Fresh & Onlys (2010)

I once saw The Fresh & Onlys play at a tiny club in D.C. It might’ve been the loudest show I’ve ever been to – my ears rang for days. This record is just as rollicking, hazy and good as that show was loud.

32. Natalie Prass, Natalie Prass (2015)

There’s a reason “Welcome to 1979” is stamped in tiny letters on this vinyl’s inner ring – it’s silky smooth, filled with impeccable soft ballads and finely tuned jams – and just a tinge of funk.

31. I Am Easy To Find, The National (2019)

Few bands matched the consistent output of quality albums in the ‘10s as The National. They had one heck of a run, and I Am Easy To Find was a fascinating way to end it – a 21st rock album that felt more complex and expansive than anything they’d done before.

30. Melodrama, Lorde (2018)

Everything a pop record should be and then some – bold, breathtaking and exuberant.

29. Just Enough Hip To Be Woman, Broncho (2014)

If you can’t tell from its playful title, this pop rock album wants nothing more than to have fun – and it succeeds on every level.

28. Avi Buffalo, Avi Buffalo (2010)

Sometimes all you want is a light, sunny and meandering album to wash over you and get lost in, and this one will do the trick every time.

27. Hippies, Harlem (2010)

Imagine a band practicing inside a garage inside a garage inside another garage and you’ve got Harlem. This is garage rock to the max – and at its rambunctious best.

26. Puberty 2, Mitski (2016)

It’s hard to describe Puberty 2. Sure, it might sound like simple dreamy indie rock, but it ebbs and flows in unexpected ways that leaves you guessing where it’s heading next.

25. mbv, My Bloody Valentine (2013)

Picking up right where they left off – even if it was more than a decade later – My Bloody Valentine reminded everyone why they are the masters of reverb soaked shoegaze.

24. A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead (2016)

Even after all these years and albums, Radiohead still found a way to reinvent themselves and push the boundaries of rock music – and our expectations of them. With gorgeous arrangements and slow-burning, tension filled tracks, AMSP proves that even Radiohead can still take risks – and proves rock bands can make quiet, intimate songs sound epic. Oh yeah, and it has “True Love Waits.”

23. Art Angels, Grimes (2015)

Grimes gave us the future of pop music before most could even envision it. This laid the groundwork for all the challenging and intricate – and danceable – pop music that would follow. And it still sounds ahead of its time.

22. Meet Me At The Muster Station, PS I Love You (2010)

The first sounds out of Paul Saulnier’s mouth on Meet Me At The Munster Station aren’t words at all but two short, ecstatic yelps. And this same boundless energy and passion bleeds through on every fuzzy, raucous second of every track. Did I mention there’s a song called “Butterflies & Boners”?

21. More Than Any Other Day, Ought (2014)

You really ought to listen to Ought if you aren’t already. Tim Darcy and co. sound a bit uneasy, paranoid and self-aware, but they make the most minute challenges sound so exhilarating and life-altering – even the struggle deciding between two percent and whole milk at the grocery store.

20. Lemonade, Beyoncé (2017)

All hail Queen Bey.

19. Twin-Hand Movement, Lower Dens (2010)

This album sounds like 2 am on a dark, rainy Saturday night – in the best way imaginable.

18. Tomboy, Panda Bear (2011)

You can always count on Panda Bear to make hypnotic, loopy electronic music sound so breezy and effortless.

17. Modern Vampires Of The City, Vampire Weekend (2013)

I don’t know why, but I want to dislike Vampire Weekend so much. But that’s impossible when their music is so damn good and every note sounds so neat and perfect.

16. Past Life Martyred Saints, EMA (2011)

Just do yourself and listen to this album please.

15. The Archandroid, Janelle Monáe (2010)

Blending too many genres to count, this is what I imagine music sounds like in space.

14. Carrie & Lowell, Sufjan Stevens (2015)

I’ll let you know how I feel about this one after I stop crying.

13. The Suburbs, Arcade Fire (2010)

It’s everything you either love or hate about Arcade Fire. Grand, sincere and sweeping rock that swings for the fences with every guitar chord, drumbeat and horn blast. I love it.

12. Silence Yourself, Savages (2013)

Savages grab you by the throat and never let go – this is one intense album.

11. Helplessness Blues, Fleet Foxes (2011)

This might be the epitome of ‘10s indie rock – and for good reason. Introspective, sensitive and searching for some greater meaning, Robin Pecknold holds nothing back and lays it all out on Helplessness Blues.

10. Kaputt, Destroyer (2011)

Dan Bejar is an enigma and seemingly reluctant rock star. I saw him perform an acoustic set where he spent a majority of the time playing with his back towards the audience (although in fairness, it was at a free outdoor show on a college campus with people mostly chatting obnoxiously over him), and yet it’s as if his creativity requires him to constantly release new albums and show them off. Kaputt is as equally strange and mysterious – and just as creative – as its maker.

9. Black Star, David Bowie (2016)

Take away the heartbreaking circumstances surrounding this album’s release and it would still be in the top tier of David Bowie’s extensive catalogue. Experimenting until the very end, Bowie morphed into something entirely new one last time. Part jazz, part rock and part I’m not sure what you would call it, the results were once again out of this world. He couldn’t give it all away, but we’re sure thankful for what he could.

8. Bon Iver, Bon Iver (2011)

Shedding the cabin in the woods vibe, Justin Vernon took a giant leap forward with Bon Iver and made ‘80s soft rock popular.

7. Celebration Rock, Japandroids (2012)

Perhaps the most aptly named album on this list, no other album exudes the joy of making music and rocking out with your buddy than this one. It’s hard to believe all that noise and energy comes from just two people.

6. Burn Your Fire For No Witness, Angel Olsen (2014)

Angel Olsen’s hypnotic and seductive vocals, lyrics and guitar suck you in immediately, mesmerizing you from the first gentle strums to the peaks and valleys of “Lights Out” and “Stars” all the way to the closer’s pulsing drumbeats and majestic piano.

5. Black Messiah, D'Angelo And The Vanguard (2015)

Oozing with cool, sexy and confident R&B funk, D’Angelo returned after 14 years with an instant soul masterpiece.

4. The Monitor, Titus Andronicus (2010)

It says a lot when a band can a.) make an hour plus punk rock record b.) loosely base it on the Civil War c.) quote Abraham Lincoln d.) close it out with a 14 minute track inspired by a famous naval battle and e.) still make you want to listen to it over and over and over again.

3. Lost In The Dream, The War On Drugs (2014)

The rare album that can feel vast and ambitious and yet deeply private and personal all at once. You really will get lost in these soaring songs.

2. Halcyon Digest, Deerhunter (2010)

At times perfectly melodic and structured and at others feeling on the brink of falling apart, Halcyon Digest is a paradox – sounding peaceful, bright and idyllic while also peering over the edge into something darker. This is a remarkable record from a remarkable band. If not for the abrupt end to the darkly beautiful closer “He Would Have Laughed,” Halcyon Digest sounds like it could go on forever.

1. Let England Shake, PJ Harvey (2011)

A stunning, thought-provoking, and moving – not to mention endlessly listenable – transcendent piece of art about life and the Great War. PJ Harvey doesn’t hold back on the brutality and absurdity of armed conflict, and the album’s devastating closing track – “The Colour of the Earth” – will linger in your mind long after the record stops spinning. As powerful today as it was eight years ago, this album will remain timely and important for years – and decades – to come.

[primrooks]

Wands of a Feather: An Elena of Avalor/Sofia the First Crossover

Mateo attends the second Conjurer's Conference on Turtlejade Isle, and encounters a different side of magic that he's never had to face in Avalor. What was to be a fun and educational weekend turns into a social obstacle course, and things only get more complicated when he runs into Cedric, the Enchancian Royal Sorcerer who also isn't keen about Mateo's appearance. *Just to start off, this takes place a month after "Realm of the Jaquins" and a month and a half after "Forever Royal!" AO3 link here!  Chapter 1: Turtlejade Isle The late morning sun was still lazily climbing upwards when the passenger liner drifted close to the docks at Turtlejade Isle, along the western coastline of the archipelago resort. From the bow of the ship Mateo could see the resort town built into the lovely summer-green hillside, leading up to a stately-looking villa of blue and white brick. He had read that it was once a summer castle to some past Zumarian queen, long used as a tourist trap before Zumaria granted permission for it to host the second annual Conjurers’ Conference. His chest swelled in excitement, especially as the first mate and other crew members of El Loto called for passengers to gather their belongings and wait with their tickets ready. It had been a week since anyone on the ship had stepped onto dry land, and sea legs or no, Mateo couldn’t wait to get a running start. Solid ground meant the first meal in a week that wasn’t bacon, beans and briny rice. Even though his mother and Elena had insisted he leverage his position as Royal Wizard for a more luxurious ride, Mateo didn’t feel the need to sink his money into extra amenities. Besides, he wanted more of his spending to go into new books, journals, potion ingredients, souvenirs.. and potentially an extra suitcase. The conference wasn’t a vacation, not really; it was a chance for him to meet other mages and study magic from foreign lands, something he’d dreamt about for so long in all those years of secret studying. Merlin was said to be a returning guest this year, and Mateo would drift to sleep in his cabin while running through all the questions he’d ask the legendary wizard. Even now, he could barely hold down his smile when he stepped back onto the deck after retrieving his luggage, looking hungrily at the new horizons that hillside estate promised. “Hold.”

Mateo had barely stepped off the gangplank with his boarding group when a man in a black-and-white soldier’s uniform signaled him to stop. “Is something the matter?” Mateo asked, impatience straining his voice. The guard simply directed him to a customs office, as others in similar uniforms were doing to the other passengers. Mateo’s brow unfurrowed instantly. “Oh, oh, yes! Thank you!” He nodded at the guard before rushing off to the office lobby, where thankfully a new line opened up just as he stepped in. The tall, bespectacled arrivals clerk asked for Mateo’s travel papers, which included a signed visa and verification of his title under Elena’s name and royal seal. The clerk shuffled through his papers, shooting occasional glances at Mateo before stamping them and handing them back. “Conference attendees must head to the designated checkpoint in town; red and purple tent by the Rosegrove Inn,” she said drily. Not wanting to hold up the new line, Mateo muttered thanks before sidestepping around tourists to reach what looked like the town’s central plaza. He asked a middle-aged flower seller for directions and hurried up along a northern street branching out of the market square. Next to a green-roofed inn was the telltale tent, big enough to hold three at a time, and stationed in the middle of a horseshoe-shaped cul-de-sac. Circling the perimeter in front of the tent was a sizable queue of mages in hats and robes of all cuts and sizes, the sight of which gave him pause. There had to be at least 20 people ahead of him, and- “Gyurrrurggh…” According to his stomach, lunch was suddenly a priority. Mateo bit down a groan and rifled through his satchel after taking his place in line. The only edible thing he had in hand was half a biscuit saved about three dinners ago, and before he pulled that out he’d mistaken it for a paperweight. He replaced it in defeat, and his eyes (and nose) happened upon the various food stalls set up around the tent. Before he could distract himself further, an impatient voice from the head of the line shouted, “Next! Come along, let’s keep the line moving!” Another man in soldier’s garb and a sorceress with grey-streaked brown hair were directing the conference attendees, checking their papers before leading them into the tent, where two other wizards stood waiting for whoever was next. The tent flaps closed before Mateo could see just what they were doing inside. This felt rather extraneous; if the rest of the visiting attendees had crossed through the arrivals office, all they really should have to do was make sure their registration was valid. Why the secrecy and extra muscle? “Whoops, watch your head, sonny!” A sudden gust of wind ruffled his hair, and Mateo looked up to where the draft (and the voice) had come from. Perched atop a flying broom was an older woman in Enchancian witch’s garb, a tacky patchwork dress topped with an equally colorful pointed hat. A shrill whistle pierced from the front of the line, and everyone turned to see the brunette sorceress blowing a thin silver whistle hanging from her neck. “No flying below roof-level!” she cried. Unfazed, the witch coyly drifted down like a feather upon a light breeze, smirking even as a guardsman approached her with a stoic warning. “They really do fly on brooms,” Mateo uttered to himself in awe. Suddenly, quiet giggles rippled around him, sending a sharp chill up his neck. When he glanced up, everyone in line was pointedly looking elsewhere, though a few of them were daintily covering their mouths with their hands. The chill blossomed into heat under his cheeks, and he planted his sight to the ground, praying that the line would move faster already. It didn’t help that his stomach was still complaining with all its squelching, and the mix of spicy, sweet and savory aromas from all of the bakeries and vendors around the inn was almost mocking, with the hawkers calling all passerby to sample foods that Mateo had never heard of but sounded exquisite. The line ahead was moving at a snail’s pace, and the more his stomach growled, the longer the seconds dragged on. He tapped the sorcerer ahead of him on the shoulder, and at the briefest of head-turns pleaded, “Pardon me, but could you watch over my things? It’ll be just a minute, thanks!” He didn’t even stay for the other man to respond as he set down his suitcase and dashed to find the food stall with the shortest line. The area around the inn was fairly crowded, with onlookers gawking at either storefronts or the eclectic gathering of wizards, but their attention seemed evenly split amongst the street vendors. Mateo found one that was selling corn grilled to a crispy brown and gold, gleaming with a buttery glaze. He figured it would hold him until lunch, maybe at an inn or a local restaurant. He ought to treat himself for his first solo journey overseas. Cheap as the ear was, it tasted as good as it looked, warming Mateo’s belly like frost over fire. He took another bite as he left the stall, wondering lazily if the line had moved. His suitcase was there, until it wasn’t. Mateo blinked, but it wasn’t a trick of the light. There just.. wasn’t a bag where there should have been. And there absolutely should have been, if he wanted to have something to wear for the next three days. He frantically scoped through the line and the rest of the street, trying to spot anyone holding a brown leather suitcase or hiding it in their person. People’s faces blurred as his eyes scanned their hands like a starved hawk. That bag’s too big- That one.. no, the bag didn’t have a blue ribbon- No- No- NO- -WAIT. He’d nearly missed him: blending seamlessly into the crowd was a blonde man in a navy cloak, stepping up to the front porch of the Rosegrove Inn. His face was as neutral as could be, holding a suitcase inscribed with a sloth emblem as if it was his own. Without a second to spare, Mateo replaced his snack with his tamborita with ingrained precision. He was ready to clap his drum wand, the right spell ready at his tongue- “Retracia!” A beam of sparkling purple energy shot the thief from Mateo’s left, and the man stood frozen at the inn door, dazed as if he’d hit his head. The spell had taken Mateo by surprise as well, and he watched with mouth slightly agape as the thief started to take steps backwards. He walked in a perfect recreation of him sneaking over to the Rosegrove, only in reverse. When he approached the spot where Mateo had stood in line, the man gently placed the suitcase down, and only then did his dazed look wear off. “What the-?” Mateo wondered out loud, running up with his tamborita still in hand. A guardsman had already beaten him to the spot, dragging the thief away after exchanging some words with the sorcerer that Mateo had asked to watch his stuff. He must’ve been the one who shot the retracing spell, and only now did Mateo get a good look at his face. This other sorcerer looked to be at least twenty years older than himself, maybe older judging by his greyed bangs, the frown lines drawn from his long, beak-like nose and the bags under his eyes. And beneath his billowing, bell-sleeved aubergine robes, Mateo could tell that he was rather gangly as well. With the precision required for that kind of spell to work, he wondered if this man might be a high-ranking practitioner. Maybe he was in service to a duke or a king? “Ah, there you are,” the sorcerer spoke with a slightly reedy voice. “Your luggage, safe and sound,” he added with a theatrical wave of his gloved hand. Mateo gave a small smile, relieved that the man didn’t look too inconvenienced. “Thank you so much.” He bent down to make sure nothing was out of place. Thankfully, all of his clothes, toiletries and books were accounted for. “Hm. Is that your wand?” Mateo looked up to see the sorcerer peering curiously down at his tamborita. “Y-yes.” He cleared his throat and stood to his full height. “It’s a drum wand traditionally used by the wizards in Avalor, called a tamborita,” Mateo explained, showing off just a little by twirling the tamborita in his hand. The man’s eyebrows shot up. “A wizard from Avalor? Why, I haven’t heard such a thing in decades,” the man remarked. “Well, you happen to be looking at the first Royal Wizard of Avalor in over forty years. Mateo de Alva, court wizard in service to Her Highness Crown Princess Elena of Avalor,” said Mateo with a waist-low bow. He could hardly tamper the giddiness fluttering in his stomach. He’d been practicing his formal introduction for days in front of the mirror in his cabin, and here he was, an ocean away from Avalor but representing his home and title with the grace of a true professional. The sorcerer stood wide-eyed and speechless. Wow, Mateo didn’t think his introduction would be that good. “Mateo? As in, the Mateo who helped Princess Sofia free Princess Elena from the Amulet?” he asked in disbelief. “Uh, well, yes,” Mateo answered. “But... But you’re so young! I mean, beg your pardon, the princess did tell me that you were the last Royal Wizard’s grandson, but I didn’t think that you’d still be a teenager!” The man was looking at him like he was a two-headed jaquin, and Mateo could feel the other mages in line looking over at their direction. He could feel heat creeping up his spine again. He cleared his throat once more, and recalled the way Elena would stand and address nobles at her court. He couldn’t be flustered, especially when he was alone and out in the open like this. “So you know Princess Sofia? And the Amulet?” Mateo added in a lower voice. “I make it my business to know about what magical items go through the halls of the palace, for I am Cedric the Sensational, - also referred to as Cedric the Great - Royal Sorcerer to His Majesty King Roland II of Enchancia,” the man declared with great aplomb. The Enchancian royal sorcerer? Well, now it made more sense how Sofia would know him, but why did Cedric’s name still ring such a concerning bell? “Er, well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sir Cedric. And thank you again for stopping that thief,” said Mateo. Cedric smiled proudly, oblivious to Mateo’s hesitant tone. “Not at all, my boy. You entrusted me to look after your place in line, after all.” “Speakin’ of which, would you two kindly move along now?! You’ve been holdin’ us up fer almost a minute!” shouted a red-cheeked sorceress behind Mateo, and both he and Cedric realized to their chagrin that a four-foot long gap had grown between Cedric and the end of the line. “Sorry, very sorry!” shouted Cedric. He was next to enter the tent, which turned out to be a luggage checkpoint, where one wizard magically combed through bags for any suspicious items or contraband. When it was Mateo’s turn in the tent, the second wizard waved his wand over his body, checking for any invisible charms. With one last flick of the wrist, he imprinted an instantly-fading oval stamp on Mateo’s left hand. “That’s just to show that you passed check-in,” the wizard droned. “It looks faded, but it’ll stay on for the rest of your visit here.” Mateo was swiftly directed to his own lodgings, a villa called the High Tide that came highly recommended from Naomi. It was only about a fifteen-minute walk from the conference site, reasonably priced, and featured one gorgeous view of the beach. The furnishings in his room were simple enough, with blue and yellow cushions to give the space some color, and a small bulb-shaped paraffin lamp at the reading desk stuck out as the room’s most charming feature, at least to a night owl like Mateo. I should get started on some letters after lunch, he thought. First was obviously to his mother, then Elena, and then Olivia. He recalled how excited his apprentice was when he told her that he’d be attending the Conjurer’s Conference this year, how she couldn’t believe he’d get to spend a whole weekend surrounded by nothing but magic. She was a bit upset that this meant no magic lessons for about two weeks, but he promised that he’d make it up to her. They could go over new tomes that Mateo found at the conference, see what made certain magical items tick, maybe test out a magic broom for themselves. Olivia’s unbridled joy at that suggestion was simply infectious, and it suddenly struck him how a week had already passed since he’d last seen her. Mateo stood by the window looking out to the beach, the sea a glittering, serene surface under the noon sun. This was the same view he left back in Avalor, where so much could’ve happened while he was traveling. Elena had promised him that she’d protect the kingdom and would send for him the moment he was needed, but that she wanted him to have fun and explore his passion for magic. He’d told her that he would, but he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t worry. Even after almost getting his suitcase swiped from under his nose, Mateo was more worried about what he’d left behind than himself. As soon as the thought struck him, he peered out the window again, the radiant vista pulling him from the dark clouds his head had stumbled into. He stretched his arms, realizing how eager his legs felt to be walking on cobblestones and grass rather than wood planks. Now was as good a time as any to report back to his family and friends, to tell them how excited he was, rather than mull over it in a corner. Besides, his weekend was only going to get busier from now on, and he’d spent the better part of his boat ride carefully plotting out his itinerary. He planned to arrive at the conference tomorrow morning around 9 AM, attend a few showcases before lunch, and spend the rest of the day exploring stalls and bargain carts. More than likely, he was the only Avaloran mage in attendance (he doubted that any malvagos would’ve cleared the checkpoints), so there might be more like that Cedric guy who’d inquire about his origins and techniques. Mateo felt ready. He knew he was ready. He was there to make his country, his family and his princess proud. 

[diannescards]

Happy Birthday Anne Marie!

Happy Birthday Anne Marie!

Yesterday was goddaughter Anne Marie’s birthday. Since she is a creative person, I like to make something special for her cards. This time I made one that I sort of CASED (Copy and Share) from Ronda Wade, well the pop up part at least. I used the Oh So Eclectic stamp set, the Happy Birthday Gorgeous stamp set and some of the Floral Romance Designer Paper.

The Pop-Up part is on the inside!

Design…

[dr-astormylasthurrah]

questions and answers...

done over discord, collected here for archives!

(also, a reminder that the askbox is always open~)

“Does anyone like to collect or hoard things?”

CHIYO: I really, really like collecting headbands!! I’ve got a frankly embarrassing collection at home, from Hello Kitty styled ones to more “mature” looking ones. My grandma gave me a lot of my collection, so they’re really important to me! AMAL: I don’t really have time to collect things. Collecting postage stamps would be a nice hobby if it didn’t get so expensive with limited runs or whatever. TATSUMARU: ... Why would... why would I want to spend money on things I don’t need or want? SENTAROU: I collect interesting yarn. But you didn’t hear that from me and if you ever tell anyone I’m legally obligated to kill you. IRIS: Um... hair clips? I have a few sets depending on what I feel like doing! And I buy more every year for my birthday. It... might be a problem. ASTER: Bold of you to assume I know anything about myself, let alone what I have at home. Bold of you to assume I know where my home is, too. I hope past me collected rocks. Not gemstones or anything, just funky rocks. CLAUDE: If it exists in collectible form, I have a few. Don’t even ask me to pick a specific thing, ahaha. My room’s a mess. Wait, Kinder egg toys! Those are fun. HIRONO: I don’t really collect things, but I do keep a lot of physical photographs of places I’ve been to and people I like. Photography reminds me of Megumi, so I like doing it! ALEXEI: Feathers. Call me predictable, but I prefer “dedicated” or “has a very clear idea of what I want in life”. RIRIKA: I collect anime girl PNGs. Never, ever play gacha idol games. Don’t make my mistakes. TSUKINO: I have a TON of plane tickets!! Well, most of them aren’t mine, and sometimes I just beg them off people at airports and they look at me weird. It’s so neat knowing that these little papers can take you anywhere and that they’re from so many cool places, too! BRENDAN: I hoard anything I can fit in my toolbelt and save for later. So like, odds and ends. I, uh... may have a problem with never throwing things away. TIANA: A lot of my jewelry is from lot sales conducted by my aunt. I suppose most of the reason I have so much of it is to feel closer to my family, though I make some of it myself, too. RYOUJI: I collect... what do I collect, actually? I collect dust from sitting in one place for so long. Haha. I’m kidding, I’m always on my feet, please god send help I just want to sleep. TRISTAN: I don’t see the point in keeping so much stuff. Not to sound like a cleaning show host, but collecting things is such a waste of time, space, and money. No offense. KANEMORI: I don’t usually care about things but I got one of those little, what are they called, aquabead bracelets? From a sponsor? And suddenly my house is full of cheap bracelets. Especially those thin vinyl ones, those are the best. Why has my life come to this though.

“Do they dress for looks or comfort? What’s their fashion angle?”

CHIYO: I’d say looks are... most of it? I mean, of course I want to be comfortable, but ultimately I don’t think I’m ever going to stop worrying about passing. It does help that I genuinely like skirts and dresses and stuff, although I’m still kinda insecure about showing too much skin. I like the aesthetic of Howl’s Moving Castle, so I think that’s the kind of fashion I’d like to wear - something simple and crisp. AMAL: For me, fashion is definitely comfort over appearance. I haven’t really thought about what I wear in a while. Bates says I look like a wannabe TA who’s currently sucking up to the professor and I am ACTIVELY CHOOSING to view that as a compliment. Fuck you, Bates. TATSUMARU: In all honesty, what I wear every day is only a slight modification of what I wear onstage. I haven’t even thought about what I would wear if not this. Although this cloak is nice. SENTAROU: Are you kidding? Comfort all the way, but because of my stupid job I have to look at least somewhat professional. Hence, the tuxedo jacket. This is my life hack or whatever, I just toss it on if I need to look fancy. If I had my way, I’d be wearing T-shirts and jackets all the time. I’m not interested in looking nice for other people’s enjoyment, thank you very much. IRIS: As much as I’d love to dress up, I don’t leave my house very often, so there’s really no point in wearing anything fancy. I guess off the shoulder tops would be cute? I don’t really know. Oh, but if societal standards weren’t a thing, I’d love to have a pair of those kiddie butterfly wings! ASTER: ... I mean assuming what I’m wearing right now is close to my normal clothes, I guess this is looking a lot like function over form. But given the option, I think I’d wear more patterns. Like, yeah, I like simple clothing items, but I also want to wear some kind of personality, y’know? I’d keep this jacket, for example. But I want patterns on my pants. CLAUDE: It’s a mix of both for me! Just, y’know, my idea of “comfort” doesn’t exactly match with other people’s. I try to go for an approachable but fashionable vibe! Thin, large sweater tops, scarves, I’d basically be the poster child of every men’s fashion catalogue if I could be, ahaha. HIRONO: Definitely comfort. I’m used to being overlooked, so I may as well be comfortable. Though I’m told if I dress in a suit and fold my arms, my glare is impressive enough to melt holes in steel. I guess that’s kind of cool, but I’d still rather have people to talk to, y’know. ALEXEI: Comfort. Yes, this includes the cape. The cape is comfort. I am comfortable being dramatic and unknowable to man. Fuck off if you have a problem. RIRIKA: Looks, of course. It’s a little hard for me not to be detail oriented, considering my talent and everything, and besides, dressing nicely makes me feel more confident. I like layering things and using repetitive colors or patterns to tie outfits together. Sometimes I’ll focus all of my energy into an outfit in order to kill God or something. I don’t know. TSUKINO: I don’t know what this is! I wish I could be more punkish when I’m flying with like spikes and everything but noooo apparently that’s a “safety hazard” and “a distraction to the instructor”. Well, joke’s on you, safety instructor, but my normal flight clothes have studs on them ANYWAY. I’m gonna fight the establishment in every way, bitch! BRENDAN: It’s comfort. It’s absolutely just for comfort. I’ve had this jacket since I was 12, 13...? I bought it two sizes too big and it’s so worn out now that I’ve had to sew patches into it, but I hate throwing anything away so I just keep it. So I guess my fashion sense is just... “shabby”. I don’t mind, though! I think it gives me character. TIANA: Looks are MUCH more important than comfort when it comes to clothes. A good outfit can make or break someone’s perception of you. Though I don’t like to wear full business attire every day and I can’t imagine doing so at this time, I think it’s wise to at least have a decent collared shirt at all times. As for my shorts and socks... I think I just have a look going on here. Besides, gyaru fashion is quite cute. So roll with it. RYOUJI: Uh... At this point, imma keep it real with you, my fashion sense is a game of “how androgynous can I go without my parents suspecting anything”. I’m kind of dying in this, considering the heat of wearing two layers and a binder, but I also don’t care anymore. I guess I’m okay wearing T-shirts and stuff if I don’t have anywhere to be, but I’d like to at least LOOK competent, you know? TRISTAN: I’m wearing socks and sandals as we speak. So take a guess. I look exactly like a stereotypical gamer because it’s true. KANEMORI: Weird as this is to say, I favor both. I’m never far from a spotlight, between me and my parents and everything, so I have to look at least kind of presentable at all times. Which sucks, but it’s what I grew up with, so I guess that’s just how my life is. I’m used to just wearing T-shirts and stuff. If I had to wear a tie I guess I’d just choke or something.

For Hirono: What's your favorite genre of music?

EKYOU: Uh... anything, I guess? I have what’s described as “eclectic” taste. But I promise I’ll listen to anything people show me, and I’ll do my best to like it!

Uhmm for Iris: How would your ideal romantic date be?

SUMITAMA: E-eh?? This is super cheesy, but... I like the idea of a traditional date! A fancy dinner with candles and everything. SUMITAMA: Oh, but outside of that, I’d really enjoy a date where I can do things I love with someone I love! Walking around a botanical garden, or having a library day... As long as it’s free. I need to save money for textbooks. College courses are evil, don’t do them.

for ryouji: do you keep your room as clean as you keep the kitchen?

ATSUI: HAHAHAHAHA no I wish. ATSUI: The kitchen thing isn’t so much my rules as my parents’ rules, but it’s good to follow - if your kitchen is a mess you’re going to knock something over and regret everything. This may or may not be from personal experience. ATSUI: But my room?? That’s my HOME. That’s my PRIVATE AREA. I’m going to trip over everything in it and no one can say shit. ATSUI: I should probably start picking up all the laundry though.

Alexei, what is the most beautiful bird you have ever seen and why do you think is the most beautiful?

BAZHANOV: Pigeons are underrated. They have iridescent feathers and yet we as humans still consider them nuisances. It’s a shame. BAZHANOV: I would say something real deep about the nature of humanity to ignore beauty but I’m pretty sure that people hate them because they shit everywhere. Which is fair enough, I suppose.

For Chiyo: This is going to sound really dumb, but do you like to read? If so, what sorts of things do you like to read (genre-wise)?

CHIYO: I like kids books a lot more than young adult stuff. You know how young adult novels these days are always either “gritty sci-fi suspense” or “vaguely Eurocentric fantasy” or “heartwarming realistic fiction”? Kids stories are a lot more creative. And with a lot less pointless death. CHIYO: As for what kind of stories, I think fantasy/sci-fi is nice! Especially books that lean on fairytale elements and mythology, it’s like a history lesson and story at once! CHIYO: But, uh, I don’t understand that series with the talking cats. I tried to read it a few times but I think that’s just something you have to get into as a child.

(This is going off Western genres I don’t actually know shit abt Japanese novels)

Tsukino, do you have a celebrity crush?

CHISAKI: THE LEAD SINGER OF R3BELS OBVIOUSLY.

Does Alexei just have the one mask or does he have multiple for different outfits/occasions

BAZHANOV: Just the one. It’s surprisingly hard to track down decent and inexpensive masks for dramatic occasions. I wish I had more, but it’s also not as if I have the money to procure them. BAZHANOV: ... Unrelated, how feasible is it to break into a bank?

hirono, how did you start ōendan?

EKYOU: After... well, after some family things happened, my oldest brother Rousei thought that I needed something to do. He said ōendan would be good because I’m good at cheering for people, and he said it’s what he did in high school, too. So... I guess I gave it a shot? I’m glad I can encourage people to do their best!! But it’s just not something I’m super into for the sake of myself. But I’m at HPA now, so I shouldn’t be ungrateful, it’s just.... Yeah. EKYOU: Plus, I haven’t had time to pursue photography... It’s kind of driving me up the wall.

If tsukino could do anything other than her talent hat would she do?

CHISAKI: It would be my GOD GIVEN RIGHT as an individual to join some kind of band and go break some hearts and make like ten million dollars! But I’m kinda tone deaf! ... Not like that matters for the kind of music I’m into but hey!!

[thedaveandkimmershow]

Things are picking up.

On the movie front, last Tuesday night we revisited "The Last Holiday" with Queen Latifa and LL Cool J. It's not specifically a Christmas movie but between the title and all the snow...

It always feels like one.

Thursday night we began our first step in a stroll through the Christmas episodes of "Call the Midwife" that will eventually culminate in strolling through the Christmas episodes of BBC's "Ghosts".

By Friday night, though, we’d only indulged the second Christmas episode from "Call the Midwife" which brings us to 2013. So yeah. There are still plenty of Christmas episodes from that series to watch.

Saturday night, last night, was a big one for reasons I'll get to presently. 

We started with the classic of classics, "A Christmas Story", stayed in that groove with "Elf", and, just after midnight, "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown" from our own DVD collection. The most classic of classics.

So why were we up so late?

Interestingly, the stars aligned so that we got a jump start on Christmas cards and wrapping Christmas presents.

Now, I've been picking at our Christmas letter for a few weeks. A coupla days ago, Friday, it was done and printed (with a couple variations for different sections of our friend- and family-sphere). I already had the return address labels from last year, the "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" seal for the envelopes, and the Peanuts stamps I bought at the post office a couple weeks ago after looking through their binder of stamps.

Oh, and the cards, of course. Ones we collected over the years.

Collected?

Well, I’m talking about the cards that remain after any given year. Because the next year we'd start with a new set of Christmas cards. So we've been collecting the remainders for quite some time now.

This year, then, we're drawing from an eclectic and wonderful collection of Christmas card designs.

Now, the final step in the process of getting each card ready for mailing is a quick handwritten note in each one. I don't know what to tell you. I think I picked this habit up from my parents. And then sized up the effort over the years.

At its heart, though, the process of putting a card together and writing a note is, for each one, that I’m taking a few minutes to think about each friend, each family, each person, before sending our finest holiday wishes their way.  😊

And then Kimmer.

Kimmer's actually been super motivated to start wrapping presents for each other, our family, and friends for a couple weeks now.

Why?

Because all of it usually falls to the last minute on all counts. With our own gifts to each other often wrapped between midnight and 2AM Christmas morning. If not later.

Call it an involuntary Christmas tradition that bleeds late into the following morning after a full Christmas Eve day and night.

So.

Kimmer’s trying something new. And, as a result, maybe we’ll make it to bed earlier the night before Christmas so all those sugarplums can do their thing.

By the way, we didn't start last night with cards, presents, and classic Christmas movies and television. We actually began with cards, presents, and that Christmas album, "December", by Kenny Logins. It's a special album to us because it once belonged to our friend, Scott, who's been gone for a decade or so now. He's still heavy on our minds and hearts whenever we indulge this music at this time of year. And we do. We do indulge it a lot this time of year. Remembering our dear, dear friend with whom we began our professional careers in our twenties. Who was there at the start of our family tales.

Last thing I wanna mention. I'm nearly done with my Christmas shopping. Of course I'm only collecting presents for Kimmer while she's collecting presents for me and, well, everyone else.

More than anyone in our family, she’s Santa Claus. Straight up.

I just wanted to say, you know, I’m nearly done with my Christmas shopping.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Should I Even Be Making Wine at All Right Now?

Willamette Valley | Photo by George Rose/Getty Images

An independent winemaker considers her options in the face of the coronavirus pandemic

Brianne Day is an American winemaker working in the Willamette Valley, just south of Portland, Oregon. There, she owns and operates Day Wines, an eclectic indie label of lauded wines sourced from throughout the state of Oregon, as well as Day Camp Winery, a tasting room and winemaking facility home annually to around 10 other independent winemakers.

Day Wines launched in 2012, and soon after scored a scene-making invite to RAW London, the influential international wine fair. She now makes 6,000 cases annually, with standouts including a benchmark Oregon petillant natural, “Mamacita,” as well as a five grape Willamette Valley white blend, Vin de Days, modeled on the white wines of Alsace.

But since the spread of COVID-19 forced restaurants and wine bars to close and bottle shops to pivot their business models, independent winemakers like Day have been faced with a range of uncertainties covering every step of the winemaking process. The timescale of wine involves making plans in March, such as purchasing contracts with vineyards and taking sales trips, that will impact decisions in September, from how many wines to bottle to how much help to hire. Now, Day must ask herself some big questions: How can I support my staff and the farmers I depend on for grapes? How much wine should I make this year? Should I even be making wine at all?

This ought to be a joyous time for Day — following a 2019 in which she broke personal sales records, in early 2020 Day received her first James Beard Award semi-finalist nomination, in the Outstanding Wine, Beer or Spirits Producer category. Instead it’s a different moment entirely. I spoke to Day from her home in Portland, Oregon. — Jordan Michelman

The last few weeks have been awful. Business has ground to a complete halt. This time of year, distribution sales are the bulk of my income. I was fortunate that February was the best month of sales I’ve ever had, but the majority of that is for invoices that are still outstanding. Distributors in the wine industry pay on 30 to 60 day terms, and I don’t anticipate I’m going to receive that money soon, if ever. So many of the distribution companies I work with are small, family run operations, and I don’t know how they’re going to survive without restaurants or retail shops operating normally.

Wine retail is able to do some business right now, curbside pick-up and things, but restaurants really make up the bulk of my customers. I’ve gotten emails from distributors and they aren’t feeling very optimistic right now. If the majority of restaurants reopen in two or three weeks, we might pull out of this but if it drags on for months there are many, many small makers like my winery that aren’t going to make it.

So far I’ve had to lay off two of my three employees, because wine tasting rooms have had to close just like bars. There’s no point in having tasting room staff there. I’ve taken on all online sales and all of our customer service, in addition to managing the winemaking. I’ve been completely over my head. You might hear some people say things like “Oh, I’ve got all this time off now,” and it’s like — I don’t.

My son Viggo is two and a half, and he’s with me 100 percent of the time right now. I’m trying to keep my son at home while I do the bookkeeping and run the entire business. I have managed to keep my assistant winemaker for now, and we’re preparing to make wine in April — I have wine in tanks and a date scheduled with the bottling truck, but I have no idea how we can manage operating the bottling truck while maintaining a six-foot distance.

When you’re bottling wine you are typically right next to each other, working in the same area. Small wineries like mine that either can’t afford to pay for their own bottling equipment or don’t want to deal with really fussy machinery, can hire a bottling service to bring a whole bottling operation directly to their sites — this sanitized, perfectly functioning operation shows up with all the equipment you need to bottle wine, and then all you have to do is hook up a hose from your tanks into the truck. You load up your bottles, corks, and labels and get to work.

We’re having to make all these decisions now, and they could end up being the wrong decisions. I just don’t know.

The bottling company supplies just one staffer to manage the truck, and I usually hire a crew of around six more people to run the operation: to dump glass, to put bottles that are finished into cases, to send those boxes down a conveyor to waiting workers who build and wrap pallets, before handing them off to a forklift driver to stack. The operator of the truck is inside keeping an eye on things, making sure all the labels are going ons straight, and then I’ll typically bounce into the truck every 20 minutes or so to check in with him, making sure he’s got enough corks and labels and that the bottles look consistent. The truck is really loud — in order to keep over six-plus feet away from somebody I’m going to have to really shout.

People are on top of each other the whole time throughout this process; I don’t know how to have someone labeling and stamping boxes and then not have someone come up next to them to grab the boxes. It’s going to end up slowing the whole thing down considerably in order to be sensitive to the six-foot rule. We’re going to need to have a plan.

It’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen next harvest. I had a conversation with one of my grape growers earlier this week, because they of course are seeing all this too. The growers want to know if they should farm their entire vineyard, because farming costs are calculated per acre, and every acre costs money. If they aren’t going to be able to sell the grapes they won’t be able to farm their own vineyards. We’re trying right now to predict how soon this will be over when it comes to grapes in the fall — will there be demand for wine, or is that just stupid of us?

I won’t make as many wines as I normally do this year. I just talked with my distributor in New York and they’re still doing retail sales, but so much of what’s selling right now is in the under-$25-per-bottle price range. That part of the sales market will probably rebound the quickest. By-the-glass pours and low-priced bottles are going to be so important, so maybe those should be the only wines I make. Or maybe, I should make a lot less wine overall, and focus on those that fall into a pricier bracket so I don’t miss a vintage altogether. Looking at the inventory we’ve got now, it could last a while, but I hate to miss a vintage, and I don’t want to pull out the rug from my growers either. But it’s so hard. We’re having to make all these decisions now, and they could end up being the wrong decisions. I just don’t know.

It feels like the years I’ve spent building a sales market for my wines has all come undone. We’re being set back five years which is devastating for a small company like mine. I’ve lost sales trips. I’m supposed to be in the Carolinas right now, and my direct sales manager is supposed to be in Ohio right now — all canceled. This week was supposed to be the announcement for the next round of the James Beard Awards, and that’s been postponed. Believe me, I did not have high hopes for getting shortlisted, but I felt like, “Wow, finally maybe I can stop hustling so hard because of what this will mean for my reputation.” I was keeping my fingers crossed as hard as I possibly could, but obviously it’s all not happening right now. We’ve had local events canceled here in Portland, too. Nobody is scheduling anything. There are no wine promotions.

I wish the government would just pull the trigger and make everyone stay put for two weeks. The sooner we can get everyone on board with being in quarantine, the sooner we can go back to normal life. But this dragging our feet, half-ass quarantine with no enforcement isn’t going to do anything. It’ll just drag on and on and on, which means the longer it drags on, the longer restaurants are out of business and venues like our tasting room are closed.

The wine industry has been mostly quiet so far, but the restaurant industry has been vocal, which I appreciate. In the wine industry we can put things on hold — we can put things in barrels, wine can sit in a tank, we can wait. We aren’t hurt by this immediately like the restaurants, so my primary worry is for the health of my loved ones. My sister works in emergency medicine and I worry about her constantly. I feel like we need to buckle down and close everything for two weeks and put the health of our healthcare workers and our sick relatives ahead of everyone else. The health of my family and everybody else’s families is more important to me than how we’re going to make businesses work. We’ll make them work somehow — I can’t see how right now, but I know something will work out. Although I do have to say: I don’t know what the point is of [stimulus package] loans nobody will be able to pay back. Why aren’t those grants? Why are they lending when they need to be granting us money? I think it’s fucking bullshit.

I’ve been a mortgage broker, I’ve been a locksmith, I’ve been a restaurant server and a wine director, and I know I will be able to take care of myself and my son whatever happens. It might not be in such a dreamy way as it has been for the last few years: owning my own winery and making wine. Maybe that part of my life will come to a close. I’ve had a blessed existence the last couple of years and if that’s not how it is forever, it sucks, but we’ll move on. But I won’t be okay if something happens to my sister. If wine goes out of business in America tomorrow, or goes back to the Stone Age and we’re all stuck drinking Gallo [the largest commercial winery in California] again, it’s not the end of the world. It will suck, but it’s not the end of the world.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Ji0qyH https://ift.tt/2QQx9Q0

Willamette Valley | Photo by George Rose/Getty Images

An independent winemaker considers her options in the face of the coronavirus pandemic

Brianne Day is an American winemaker working in the Willamette Valley, just south of Portland, Oregon. There, she owns and operates Day Wines, an eclectic indie label of lauded wines sourced from throughout the state of Oregon, as well as Day Camp Winery, a tasting room and winemaking facility home annually to around 10 other independent winemakers.

Day Wines launched in 2012, and soon after scored a scene-making invite to RAW London, the influential international wine fair. She now makes 6,000 cases annually, with standouts including a benchmark Oregon petillant natural, “Mamacita,” as well as a five grape Willamette Valley white blend, Vin de Days, modeled on the white wines of Alsace.

But since the spread of COVID-19 forced restaurants and wine bars to close and bottle shops to pivot their business models, independent winemakers like Day have been faced with a range of uncertainties covering every step of the winemaking process. The timescale of wine involves making plans in March, such as purchasing contracts with vineyards and taking sales trips, that will impact decisions in September, from how many wines to bottle to how much help to hire. Now, Day must ask herself some big questions: How can I support my staff and the farmers I depend on for grapes? How much wine should I make this year? Should I even be making wine at all?

This ought to be a joyous time for Day — following a 2019 in which she broke personal sales records, in early 2020 Day received her first James Beard Award semi-finalist nomination, in the Outstanding Wine, Beer or Spirits Producer category. Instead it’s a different moment entirely. I spoke to Day from her home in Portland, Oregon. — Jordan Michelman

The last few weeks have been awful. Business has ground to a complete halt. This time of year, distribution sales are the bulk of my income. I was fortunate that February was the best month of sales I’ve ever had, but the majority of that is for invoices that are still outstanding. Distributors in the wine industry pay on 30 to 60 day terms, and I don’t anticipate I’m going to receive that money soon, if ever. So many of the distribution companies I work with are small, family run operations, and I don’t know how they’re going to survive without restaurants or retail shops operating normally.

Wine retail is able to do some business right now, curbside pick-up and things, but restaurants really make up the bulk of my customers. I’ve gotten emails from distributors and they aren’t feeling very optimistic right now. If the majority of restaurants reopen in two or three weeks, we might pull out of this but if it drags on for months there are many, many small makers like my winery that aren’t going to make it.

So far I’ve had to lay off two of my three employees, because wine tasting rooms have had to close just like bars. There’s no point in having tasting room staff there. I’ve taken on all online sales and all of our customer service, in addition to managing the winemaking. I’ve been completely over my head. You might hear some people say things like “Oh, I’ve got all this time off now,” and it’s like — I don’t.

My son Viggo is two and a half, and he’s with me 100 percent of the time right now. I’m trying to keep my son at home while I do the bookkeeping and run the entire business. I have managed to keep my assistant winemaker for now, and we’re preparing to make wine in April — I have wine in tanks and a date scheduled with the bottling truck, but I have no idea how we can manage operating the bottling truck while maintaining a six-foot distance.

When you’re bottling wine you are typically right next to each other, working in the same area. Small wineries like mine that either can’t afford to pay for their own bottling equipment or don’t want to deal with really fussy machinery, can hire a bottling service to bring a whole bottling operation directly to their sites — this sanitized, perfectly functioning operation shows up with all the equipment you need to bottle wine, and then all you have to do is hook up a hose from your tanks into the truck. You load up your bottles, corks, and labels and get to work.

We’re having to make all these decisions now, and they could end up being the wrong decisions. I just don’t know.

The bottling company supplies just one staffer to manage the truck, and I usually hire a crew of around six more people to run the operation: to dump glass, to put bottles that are finished into cases, to send those boxes down a conveyor to waiting workers who build and wrap pallets, before handing them off to a forklift driver to stack. The operator of the truck is inside keeping an eye on things, making sure all the labels are going ons straight, and then I’ll typically bounce into the truck every 20 minutes or so to check in with him, making sure he’s got enough corks and labels and that the bottles look consistent. The truck is really loud — in order to keep over six-plus feet away from somebody I’m going to have to really shout.

People are on top of each other the whole time throughout this process; I don’t know how to have someone labeling and stamping boxes and then not have someone come up next to them to grab the boxes. It’s going to end up slowing the whole thing down considerably in order to be sensitive to the six-foot rule. We’re going to need to have a plan.

It’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen next harvest. I had a conversation with one of my grape growers earlier this week, because they of course are seeing all this too. The growers want to know if they should farm their entire vineyard, because farming costs are calculated per acre, and every acre costs money. If they aren’t going to be able to sell the grapes they won’t be able to farm their own vineyards. We’re trying right now to predict how soon this will be over when it comes to grapes in the fall — will there be demand for wine, or is that just stupid of us?

I won’t make as many wines as I normally do this year. I just talked with my distributor in New York and they’re still doing retail sales, but so much of what’s selling right now is in the under-$25-per-bottle price range. That part of the sales market will probably rebound the quickest. By-the-glass pours and low-priced bottles are going to be so important, so maybe those should be the only wines I make. Or maybe, I should make a lot less wine overall, and focus on those that fall into a pricier bracket so I don’t miss a vintage altogether. Looking at the inventory we’ve got now, it could last a while, but I hate to miss a vintage, and I don’t want to pull out the rug from my growers either. But it’s so hard. We’re having to make all these decisions now, and they could end up being the wrong decisions. I just don’t know.

It feels like the years I’ve spent building a sales market for my wines has all come undone. We’re being set back five years which is devastating for a small company like mine. I’ve lost sales trips. I’m supposed to be in the Carolinas right now, and my direct sales manager is supposed to be in Ohio right now — all canceled. This week was supposed to be the announcement for the next round of the James Beard Awards, and that’s been postponed. Believe me, I did not have high hopes for getting shortlisted, but I felt like, “Wow, finally maybe I can stop hustling so hard because of what this will mean for my reputation.” I was keeping my fingers crossed as hard as I possibly could, but obviously it’s all not happening right now. We’ve had local events canceled here in Portland, too. Nobody is scheduling anything. There are no wine promotions.

I wish the government would just pull the trigger and make everyone stay put for two weeks. The sooner we can get everyone on board with being in quarantine, the sooner we can go back to normal life. But this dragging our feet, half-ass quarantine with no enforcement isn’t going to do anything. It’ll just drag on and on and on, which means the longer it drags on, the longer restaurants are out of business and venues like our tasting room are closed.

The wine industry has been mostly quiet so far, but the restaurant industry has been vocal, which I appreciate. In the wine industry we can put things on hold — we can put things in barrels, wine can sit in a tank, we can wait. We aren’t hurt by this immediately like the restaurants, so my primary worry is for the health of my loved ones. My sister works in emergency medicine and I worry about her constantly. I feel like we need to buckle down and close everything for two weeks and put the health of our healthcare workers and our sick relatives ahead of everyone else. The health of my family and everybody else’s families is more important to me than how we’re going to make businesses work. We’ll make them work somehow — I can’t see how right now, but I know something will work out. Although I do have to say: I don’t know what the point is of [stimulus package] loans nobody will be able to pay back. Why aren’t those grants? Why are they lending when they need to be granting us money? I think it’s fucking bullshit.

I’ve been a mortgage broker, I’ve been a locksmith, I’ve been a restaurant server and a wine director, and I know I will be able to take care of myself and my son whatever happens. It might not be in such a dreamy way as it has been for the last few years: owning my own winery and making wine. Maybe that part of my life will come to a close. I’ve had a blessed existence the last couple of years and if that’s not how it is forever, it sucks, but we’ll move on. But I won’t be okay if something happens to my sister. If wine goes out of business in America tomorrow, or goes back to the Stone Age and we’re all stuck drinking Gallo [the largest commercial winery in California] again, it’s not the end of the world. It will suck, but it’s not the end of the world.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2Ji0qyH via Blogger https://ift.tt/33SqN8b

[alchemine]

even more time-travel fic

In which Jo comes up with a plan of sorts. 

previously on:  part 1 | part 2  | part 3 | part 4

They hadn’t gone far along the road before Jo pulled him off the pavement, up a shallow set of steps, and into the vestibule of a building, its marble floor cracked with age and fouled with wet, muddy footprints. A row of cloudy glass globes hung on chains from the ceiling overhead, casting a muted yellow light down on them both.

“What’s this?”

“Sshhh. It’s a library. We need someplace to talk where no one will see us, or tomorrow it’ll be everywhere and I’ll have half a dozen frustrated Catholic schoolgirls asking me if my older boyfriend’s got a friend for them.” Jo pointed to a set of double doors with diamond-paned windows. “If you go through there and past the reference library, you’ll come to another door with a flight of stairs behind it. Go right down them, and at the far end of the corridor, there’s a little room the library staff hire out for meetings and things. Wait for me there.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Gather up some books for the look of it,” Jo said. “You’re not very stealthy, are you? I see why you’re a researcher and not part of the Security Service. Go on.” She gave Danny a little push, and he went obediently, marvelling at the fact that his first instinct was to do as Jo had told him, even when she wasn’t exactly Jo.

On the other side of the doors, he was greeted by a comforting billow of the familiar old-book smell of paper and ink that had been the same for as long as he could remember, and no doubt would have been much the same if he’d been thrown back to the library at Alexandria. He imagined trying to ask some Ptolemaic scribe if there were any papyri that told you how to reverse accidental time travel, and grimaced to himself. All things considered, he could have done much worse than the Eighties, where at least he spoke the language and understood more or less how to behave.

No one so much as glanced at him as he walked through the library’s vaulted entrance hall, passed the reference library with its rows of long tables, and opened the stairwell door, which was just where Jo had said it would be. The stairs had rough metal plates on the treads to stop people slipping, and his steps echoed hollowly through the white-painted stairwell and into the long corridor that lay below. Glass-fronted display cases lined both its walls, full of signed first editions and carved bookplate stamps and antique reading specs that at another time he would have liked to examine more closely. Instead, he kept going all the way to the end, mindful of the need to get out of sight. 

He opened the door to the meeting room cautiously at first, but found it dark and deserted, and after he’d located a light switch, empty except for a round table and a few low-backed, leather-padded chairs. He sat down in one of them to wait for Jo, and almost at once was swamped with a wave of fatigue: he’d barely stopped moving ever since he woke this morning, and between the hours of walking, the cold rain, and the shock and fear of the whole situation, he was utterly knackered.

As he was wondering whether he ought just to put his head down on the table for a moment, the door opened halfway and Jo slid through the gap, a small pile of books clutched in her arms. Setting them down on the table, she dropped into the chair opposite his and regarded him, forehead creased with concern.

“Are you all right? I mean, I only met you this morning, but you didn’t have those massive black circles under your eyes then.”

“It’s all just a bit–well–”

“Yes,” Jo said, “I can imagine it is.” She pushed back the sleeve of her blazer and looked at her watch. “The library closes in an hour, and I’ll be expected home not long after that, so perhaps you ought to tell me a bit more about how you got here. You didn’t really just wake up in the past this morning, did you?”

“More or less,” Danny said. “I know, you’d expect it to be more dramatic–like I’d fallen through some sort of glowing portal or bumped into an old magician who put a curse on me–but it wasn’t. I came in late from work last night and Scott wasn’t home–”

“Who’s Scott?”

“I forgot, you won’t have met him yet either. He’s my brother. We live together–well, I kind of live with him. Anyway, he wasn’t there, and I thought I’d just have a sandwich and then go to bed, but I sat down to watch a bit of the news first. I still had my coat on because it’s brass monkeys in Scott’s flat until the heating’s been going for at least an hour, and…I think I must just have nodded off there.”

“And?”

Danny chewed his lip, remembering it. “Then next thing I knew, it was morning, and the flat was the same–I mean the windows and doors and fixtures were all in the right places–but everything in it was different. All of Scott’s furniture was gone; even the sofa I was sitting on had changed. I was still half asleep, and I thought, This is a dream, and if I go outside I’ll wake up, so I went stumbling downstairs and out the front door. It was pissing down outside, just the way it is now, and that woke me all the way up in a flash, and I saw things weren’t just wrong in the flat, they were wrong everywhere.”

Jo let out a long breath. “Then what?”

“Then,” Danny said, “it was a lot like one of those films where some poor idiot finds himself in the past and goes crashing around trying to work out what’s happened, right down to the bit where I saw a newspaper full of headlines about the miners’ strike and hostages in Beirut. I pinched myself nearly black and blue, trying to snap out of it, but I was still here. That’s when I started thinking about who I could go to and decided to look for you.”

“Christ.”

“I said that a few times as well.”

“I’m sure.” Jo frowned and nibbled at a fingernail. “Had you seen me the night before?”

“Yeah, of course. I see you every day and night during the week unless one of us is travelling. Sometimes at the weekends too. We practically live in each other’s pockets, Jo, especially since–” He broke off, remembering that he didn’t want to burden her with the troubles she’d had the previous year.

“Since what?”

“Erm, since things got busy at work,” Danny said, hoping she wouldn’t press for any more details. He shuffled her stack of books around, looking at the titles, which were so eclectic she must just have taken one from the end of every shelf she passed: Viking Age Burials in Northern England, Field Guide to the Butterflies of Europe, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. “So, what do you make of it all?”

“Well,” Jo said, clearly thinking furiously as she spoke, “there’s always a possibility that it might just work in reverse, isn’t there? I mean, if you fell asleep in 2008 and woke up in 1985, then you might fall asleep in 1985 and wake up again in 2008. It would make sense.”

“Does any of this make sense?”

“Not really,” Jo said, “but you may as well try the simplest solution first. If you go to sleep tonight and you’re still here when you wake up tomorrow, then you’ll know that falling asleep’s not the thing that made you slip back in time. And if you are back where you belong, then your problem will be solved, and you can go and ask Future Me what the hell she was thinking, keeping this from you for years and years.” She paused. “Speaking of sleeping, I don’t suppose you’ve got a place to do that, have you?”

Danny shook his head. “I can’t go back to Scott’s flat–well, what’s going to be Scott’s flat eventually. I didn’t bump into the person who lives there, thank God, but someone obviously does, and they’re not going to be pleased if a stranger turns up asking for help, any more than you were at first.”

“No room at the inn.”

“Exactly.”

“Well…” Jo looked uncomfortable and a little embarrassed. “I’d take you home with me if I could, but my parents would go spare, so that’s right out. But you can’t sleep in a doorway or under a tree in the park in this weather, either. Aren’t there hostels for people with no other place to go?”

“Yes,” Danny said, thinking back to the report he had written for her in the future, “but you can’t just turn up there unannounced either, you’ve got to be referred. No Room at the Inn, Part Two.”

Jo played with the band on her watch, unbuckling it and buckling it again, and then turned it over and looked at the face. “We’ll have to leave soon, they’ll be closing. Or–hang on a minute.”

“What?”

“Suppose you just stay here for tonight? In this room, I mean. If you lock the door, the library staff might try the knob to check it without actually looking inside, if they come down here at all. It is a bit out of the way.”

“What if they do open the door and I get caught?”

“Tell them you came in to read and fell asleep.” Jo nodded at the books spread out between them, in the circle of light from the hanging lamp. “I’m sure you wouldn’t be the first person to have done that, and the worst they can do is tell you to leave, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Oh, come on, Danny. Are you always such a rule follower?”

“Most of the time,” he said truthfully. “It annoys you in the future too.”

She laughed. “Well, you’ll have to get over it for one night. If you’re still here in the morning, just wait until the library’s been open for a bit and walk out like an ordinary patron, and then come and find me. I’ve got some money saved from birthdays and things–I can’t get at it just now, but I can tomorrow. It’s not much, but it should be enough for you to find a cheap room somewhere until we can work this out.”

“Oh God, Jo, I can’t take your money.”

“You’ve got twenty-three years to pay me back,” Jo pointed out. “And you’ve asked me for help, so now you’ve got to let me help. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be lucky and it won’t come to that, anyway.”

Danny flailed about desperately for any other course of action that might work, but came up with nothing. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised really; this was exactly the sort of thing he ought to have expected from Jo, who was a firm believer in ends justifying means in their shared future as well. At last he gave in and accepted it, as he usually did.

“All right, we’ll try it.”

“Good,” Jo said, smiling. She pushed back her chair and picked up her bag. “Don’t be offended, but I hope I won’t see you again for another fifteen years, give or take a few.”

“Don’t be offended, but I hope the same thing,” Danny said. “December 1998. Be ready for it.”

“I’ll put it in the diary,” Jo said, giving  him another dizzying rush of déjà vu. She rooted around in her bag, pulled out a scrap of paper, and scribbled something on it. “Address and phone number. Come round in the morning if you’re still here. Both my parents are gone by nine.”

“Thanks,” Danny said, taking the paper and deciding not to mention that he’d already got this information on his own; he didn’t want to start her thinking he might be a stalker again. “Haven’t you got to go to school, though?”

“There you go following the rules again,” Jo said. “I’ll be there. Now lock the door behind me and try to get some sleep.”

“Okay. Thanks again.” He would have liked to hug her, but put out his hand instead, and she gave it the firm shake he’d seen her future self administer a thousand times to diplomats and constituents and other politicians, both friend and enemy. As soon as she’d let go, she slipped back through the door into the corridor, and Danny turned the lock and tried various ways of arranging the chairs into a bed before realising that he was too tall and would have to spend the night half sitting up. Oh well, at least he was under a roof.

He switched off the lights in the room, and in the dark, he flipped open his mobile and browsed through a few photos: Scott giving a two-fingered salute to the camera, Kirsty pouting prettily behind her desk, a few snaps he’d taken of scenery on a trip up north, and the various views of Future Jo with expressions ranging from coolly amused to forcing a smile through distress. 

It was comforting to see these scenes from his real life, but he only allowed himself a minute or two to enjoy them before switching the phone off to save the battery. Settling down in one chair, he put his feet up on another, spread his coat over himself as a makeshift blanket, and waited for the previous night’s accident to repeat itself in reverse.

[shannsleeve]

Fantastic Reasons & Where to Find Them

Thank you again to everyone who has paid this fic some attention! I hope you enjoy the following chapters and if you’d like to be tagged on updates, please reply to this fic! 

@teacup-occamy, thank you again for your support and awesome tags <3

Tagging: @sowerewolfglitter, @dorkwolf-nightmare

Note: Fic is canon compliant and follows the plot of the film.

CHAPTER 5

Feather had to admit the young wizard was right; their joint efforts were more than enough to efficiently and quietly Obliviate the crowd. They separated, the wizard to the right and Feather to the left, and circled the crowd, casting their Memory charms until they met again at their starting point. Both the wizard and witch breathed a sigh of relief as the crowd dispersed without looking at them.

“At last.” Feather smiled up at him. “Thank you. You saved my life twice today.”

He smiled in return, his cheeks turning a bright shade of red. “Well I wouldn’t say—um, you’re very welcome.”

“Not many people would do what you’ve done,” Feather said. “Actually, most of them run away screaming.” She turned away from him to cast a silent Reparo on her torn pocket and watched as the wool knit itself back together. “I’m in your debt.” She looked back to the wizard’s face and stuck out her right hand. “I’m Feather. Feather Firestone.”

He took her hand and shook it gently. “Newt Scamander.”

“Newt?”

“Short for Newton,” he said, forcefully rubbing his nose. It was clear he wasn’t too fond of his given name.

“It’s lovely. My parents also enjoyed eclectic names.” Feather chuckled. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to assure people that ‘Yes, I’m Feather, like the ones on the end of a Hippogriff’s wing.’”

Newt’s ears perked up like a cat’s at the mention of Hippogriffs. “My mother used to raise them…so I think that’s a fine way to remember your name.”

Feather felt her cheeks grow warm for the second time that day. “Um…would you like to take a walk? Looks like we might be docking soon.”

Rather than answer her question, Newt looked out over the railing of the ship. Indeed, the city of New York was growing closer by the second, emerging like a great giant from the morning fog. He shook his head as if to clear it. “Sorry. I’ve got to run. Left my case…”

“Oh! Do you need he—“ Feather asked, taking a step forward.

“Sorry!” Newt turned on his heel and sprinted to the other end of the ship, the tails of his coat flapping behind him like wings.

Feather had half a mind to follow him but refrained. It wouldn’t do well to scare a new acquaintance. She felt a familiar ache in her heart as she recalled Newt’s face. “He looks too much like him anyway.”

A piercing whistle cut through the air. Several passengers jumped at the sound while others rushed to the ship’s starboard railing. The ship had made its way through the harbor and was passing the Statute of Liberty. Feather stared up at the glorious green lady in awe. Even though this was her second time making the lady’s acquaintance, she found her all the more stunning. As the ship sailed on and Lady Liberty faded from view, the passengers rushed to gather their belongings. The more experienced travelers made their way to the gangways while others struggled to weave their way through the maze of bodies and baggage.

Feather weaved her way through the crowd with little issue, all the while looking for Newt’s blue coat and rumpled copper hair, eventually finding herself at the entrance to one of the gangways. She didn’t spot him and, as the boat slowly docked, she reluctantly gave up her search. Reaching into her left pocket (the one that hadn’t been torn), she pulled out a battered grey suitcase the size of her palm. With a flick of her right hand, her wand emerged from its place in her coat sleeve. She pointed it at the case. “Engorgio.”

The case grew to its original size just as the gangplank in front of her was pulled down onto the dock. For the final time the captain’s voice rang out above the passengers, “PLEASE DISEMBARK!”

 CHAPTER 6

Wizarding Customs was a bustling, overwhelming hodgepodge of people and baggage. There was hardly enough room stand up right, let alone breathe. Several Wizarding Officials in austere black trench coats darted around, struggling to guide the sluggish sea of people into five, orderly lines. Feather found herself at the center and was shoved towards the line for foreign travelers. She rolled her eyes, realizing that this line was the longest and the slowest. She glanced down at her left wrist to a silver watch with a thin band. 12:30PM. She wanted to get to the Goldsteins’ apartment as soon as possible. Angry rumbles from her stomach and soreness in the soles of her feet did nothing to help the situation.

“Come on…” she groaned, rocking back and forth on her heels. “Move faster!” At her plea, the line shifted forward a few steps. She eagerly hopped forward, her suitcase swinging dangerously back and forth in her hand.

CLANG!

 Feather jumped as her case made contact with something metallic behind her.

“Hey! That’s not very nice!”

Feather spun around and came face to face with a young witch holding a large, copper birdcage. Inside the cage, curled up in a tight ball, was a small, fluffy creature. It shivered as the girl holding the cage lifted it up to Feather’s eye level.

“It’s not nice to hit people!” The little witch was swaddled in large purple robes, a knit lilac scarf, and an even larger wool hat. Only her eyes and round, chubby cheeks were visible over the cage. She glared so fiercely that Feather knew she’d be dead if looks could kill.

“O-Oh…” Feather stammered. “I-I’m sorry.” She cocked her head toward the cage. “Is your…friend all right?”

“This is Sir Harry the Portly and he’s s a Kneazle!” The little witch stood on her tiptoes, thrusting the case further into Feather’s face. “I’m sure once you apologize to his highness then he’ll be all right!”

At her words, the Kneazle lifted its head and blinked sleepily. He was quite portly, as his name stated. Feather could hardly see his stubby legs beneath his girth. His fur was a rusty orange color dotted with a bit of grey. His eyes were a bright golden yellow and were set in a face that looked as though it’d been smacked repeatedly with Hogwarts, A History.

“Oh hello there, little baby!” Feather cooed, putting a hand against the cage. “Hedoooo!”

“AHEM!”

“Oh right, of course.” Feather cleared her throat and bowed her head, taking great care to catch Sir Harry’s eye. “My deepest apologies, your highness. I didn’t see you behind me.”

“And?”

“And I will be more careful with my case in the future.” Feather lifted her head and patted the cage gently.

Sir Harry considered her for a moment, taking the time to slowly look her over. Then he opened his mouth in a gargantuan yawned and tucked his head beneath his tail.

“Well done!” The little witch hugged the cage closer to her chest. “Also, I think you should move up.”

Feather looked back to where, previously, the line had seemed to stretch on into infinity. Now, a massive chasm opened between Feather and the desk of a Customs Wizard.

“Merlin’s bloody—“ She stopped herself before finishing the sentence, the little witch’s laughter ringing in her ears. With a stiff smile, Feather turned and bolted to the desk.

-

“Identification card, please.”

Feather handed the Customs Wizard a compact leather wallet.

“Just tap the right pocket when you open it.”

The wizard raised an eyebrow. He looked to be in his late 40’s to early 50’s and absolutely finished with this job. A much younger version of himself would have made a scalding comment on Feather’s impertinence. His current self couldn’t be bothered; so he flipped open the wallet and did as she said. A Ministry Standard Identification Packet immediately unwound itself from the pocket. A tiny, black and white likeness of the witch blinked back at the official as he read through each item to confirm her identity.

“Feather Rose Lavender Firestone?”

She nodded. “Yes, that’s me.”

“Date of birth, June 1903.”

“June 19th, yes.”

“British?”

“Obviously.”

“Length of your stay?”

“About three to four weeks.”

“Occupation?”

She bit her lip as a shiver ran up her spine for the umpteenth time. This was the question she was loathe to answer. “I was an apprentice in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement’s Wizengamot Trial Division…but…”

 “But?”

“I-I’m on a break,” she said. “V-Vacation of sorts.”

The official’s eyebrow rose again but he made no further comment. “Wand permit?”

“Left pocket.” She reached over and tapped it for him. She pulled her hand away hastily when she realized what she’d done. “E-Excuse me.”

The official merely shrugged and looked over the small white square in the wallet’s left pocket. After confirming that she was indeed carrying an Ollivander made, larch wood, 10 ½ inch, unicorn hair core wand, he stamped the MACUSA seal and date onto her permit. “Anything edible or live in that case of yours?”

She glanced down at the case, fully aware that he was casting a Detection Charm on it to confirm her answer. “No, sir.”

Satisfied with the result of the spell, he gestured for her to walk past him. “Welcome to New York.”

Feather nodded her thanks, took her wallet, and quickly strode off toward the heart of the city.

[alexteltevskiy]

Vintage russki camera review - Zenit-B w/ Industar 50-2 f/3.5

Intro

I have a modestly sized family and most about every in it is/has been crazy about photography at some point in their lives. My father, in particular, has been in the cozy company of cameras since, like, forever. I've got a picture of him somewhere: a cheerful little lad, no older than a year, crawling around right next to my grandpa's trusty little rangefinder...

What does this have to do with anything? Well, today I'll be reviewing one of my dad's many old cameras - his trusty Zenit-B with an Industar 50-2 50mm f/3.5. He used this one as his 35mm camera of choice after his FED rangefinder, having abandoned it much later after moving on to Japanese SLRs. I actually accidentally bumped into this camera about a year ago in my older brother's attic. Turns out, my dad gave the camera as a present to my bro, who used it for a bit but ultimately forgot about its existence, having moved on to more modern snappers.

Imagine my surprise when I unearth the leather-case-clad tank-of-a-camera with a big bold Made in USSR stamped onto it. The thing was lightly used, lens had no malices typical of a subterranean attic-dweller (haze, fungus), nothing was seriously loose or wrong... until I popped it open to check shutter operation...

Design & build quality

The thing is built like a tank. Mass produced from 1968 to 1973. Rugged and over-engineered, and that is even before I tore it down to get inside and fix it. Inside it looked like it was built to withstand a nuclear blast. A Tchaikovsky Overture of heavy duty gearing, solid steel parts, heavy gauge springs, all tightly wedged against each other with thick flat head screws.

All the more baffling why, oh WHY did they bother to use simple glue to keep together the rubber-coated cloth shutter??? The most important piece of the puzzle, the cornerstone, the heart of the system... why was it made to be so weak? And it's not like there was a large amount of redundancy built into the mechanism - a little bit of glue going undone and the whole curtain self-destructs. Just don't get it.

Anyway, I had to hunt down a spare body with a functioning shutter on eBay to kindly act as a donor. As soon as the box touched down on my front porch the organ transplant was underway and not long afterwards my neighbors probably heard me go on a creepy "it's alive" howl. Frankenzenit was ready for action.

Apart from the shutter glue drama, the camera is a brick, chiseled out of the Terminator's spare parts. And there's just something about that Soviet design aesthetic that gets me every time. Like an old friend you'd sometimes like to forget, but can't. An eclectic mix of extreme cases of forms following function and the necessity for every single object in the country to be fixable with a skeleton toolset of dull screwdriver and hammer. Heck, most of the time even just the hammer was necessary.

Tech specs

Under the covers it was all business and no frills. Barebones feature set, all manual, nothing extra. Shutter goes from 1/30 to 1/500 (the accuracy of which I can't attest to after seeing the mechanism up close and personal), has Bulb. Shutter knob has twist-proof mechanism, reminded me of something you'd find on a T-34 instead of a camera but it has a charm to it, adding an extra step to process.

Winder/shutter button combo with a built-in hand-resetable frame counter and provisions for a standard cable release. A rewind button and rewind/ISO memory wheel. Oh, and a self-timer. Mirror slap is not too obnoxious but don't expect to pull a ninja with this camera - loud and clunky. Next to zero foam in the body, the only seals are made of felt that are still going strong after 45+ years.

The lens is a copy of a Zeiss design, M42 mount, opens up to 3.5 and stops down to 16. Filter thread is, wait for it, 35mm in diameter. Good luck finding a pinch lens cap for it. More details on image quality further down the review.

In use

Armed with a meter and a trusty roll of Ilford HP5+ @400 (I ran out of Tri-X at that moment), headed out Downtown with Kris from 43 Stories to see the sights and sounds of the Big City. From the sun-soaked vantage point of a 12-floor parking garage all the way down to chilly pale breeze of the distant skyline from the shores of Navy Pier, the 7-mile 6-hour walk took us all the way from Printer's Row, through the Loop on the L and onto River North, crossing the Magnificent Mile and into Streeterville. Crash at Navy Pier then back home.

Right from the beginning you get a sense that this will be a no-nonesense camera. Everything is roughly where you expect it. The gears are less ergonomic than its peers and the levers dig a little deeper into your skin, but the classic layout was a breather from some of the other cameras I've tested lately. Compact, easy to hold and grip, even with gloves. Aggressive knurling on the controls made fine manipulation easy. Everything clicks solidly.

In addition to the Victorian-Era steely thunderclap of a shutter, the camera has further handicaps that keep it back from being a street-smart photoninja. The shutter speed can't be set blindly, as there are no indicators of what speed you're on anywhere else but the knob. And to change speeds, you have to raise the knob, rotate it and plop it back into the correct setting. There are no physical clicks or stops when you rotate it, so unless you have super-dexterous fingers and a built-in angle meter accurate to the degree, you have to take the camera off of your eyes to readjust exposure.

Same goes for aperture, but this time it's even worse - camera needs to be focused wide open as the finder is too dim. And after you focus you'll most likely have to stop down the aperture. This cannot be done without peeling away from the camera and looking down at the aperture ring. It's clickless, so unless you have a sixth sense for degrees, you will need to look down. Forget quick turnaround time on the streets - this camera is a methodical shooter that requires planning ahead and patience, both from you and any animate object in front of you.

The viewfinder is pretty dim and features a regular ground glass - no fresnel circles in the center or any other focusing aids. With a f/3.5 lens it may not make that much of a difference, but any other lens with a larger aperture may require you to hunt quite a bit to nail that f/2 or f/1.4. Another minor (major, actually) annoyance is that the ring around the viewfinder is, just like most else on this camera, made of metal. Yours Truly Four-Eyes over here needs to first focus with glasses on, making sure not to have direct contact with the metal ring, then slide the glasses over to zoom the eye closer in to compose. The viewfinder optics are recessed deep into the body and it's impossible to see the entire viewfinder area coverage with glasses on. Haven't been able to dig up specs on viewfinder coverage but I have a hunch it's around the 80%-90% mark - I always saw extra features on the negs that I thought were long gone from the frame.

One final note about the viewfinder is that in the camera that I have, the viewfinder is misaligned horizontally, with a couple degrees of rotation to the right. Plain English: when the horizon is straight in my viewfinder, it's actually crooked in the actual photo. I haven't tested this with a bubble level yet, but people call me "human horizon" for a reason - I'm usually very, very careful with that. You hear horror stories about little irking details like this all the time with Soviet cameras, guess they've got some validity behind them, eh? Looking inside, I found no way of adjust the mirror or the ground glass. After peaking into the donor body, that one was misaligned as well, this time leaning to the opposite side.

The winder on this camera is an absolute beast. Quite literally. Be very, very gentle with it. Treat it real slow, nice and easy. The winder sprocket cams inside the body are born from a crude metal cast with razor-sharp edges on the teeth. I consider the Ilford HP5+ film base to be on the pretty durable side, yet even it has had ripped sprockets along most of the length. The winding lever has virtually zero feedback compared to modern cameras and Hulk-like leverage. The only way I was informed that I'd gotten to the end of the roll is when I heard a loud rip of the film from it's canister. Removing it required a dark changing bag. Apart from that expect to get 37-38 shots per 36 exposure roll. Film spacing is pretty consistent and film gate is at a slight angle but at least with no major light leaks (pressure plate still good after all these years).

Image quality

So what do the images look like? They're pretty good, actually. I was expecting it perform a lot worse, but it is a knock-off of a Zeiss design, so that probably helps. First, the numbers. 3.5 is predictably soft, with decent center, medium vignetting and mildly mushy corners. Modern pixel peepers would consider this atrocious, but that's not what film aficionados are after, and to my eye it actually appears pleasantly vintage looking. I found the lens sharpest in the center by f/5.6, with f/8 improving the corners but starting to lose a bit in the center. F/11 exhibits a uniform image from center to corner, that's as in "uniformly soft", and f/16 starts looking like somebody took the photo and printed it on a rug made of low-denier fabrics.

Bokeh is minimal and can get quite busy unless you get REAL close to something. Wide open the bokeh is also quite swirly (couldn't find a more technical term), reminiscent of many vintage lens, where it looks like time and space itself are being bent around your subject matter. A look I actually quite like and one that is currently being revived thanks to Lomography's efforts with lens based on ancient optical formulas.

Flaring can be an issue, but the way the lens handles it is by dissipating the flare across the entire field of view, unlike some other lens where the flare affects the image only partially. I would assume this is because minimal, if any coating was used on the elements. I actually prefer this.

I was also quite surprised by the copious amounts of barrel distortion I noticed when photographing objects close up. I mean, come on - it's a 50, not even a 35! At infinity though, distortion is gone and buildings don't look like they're binging on burgers.

Conclusion

So, what do I think about a camera that has more misalignments than a knocked over vase that was superglued back together? The camera has a lot of sides the modern snapper would find archaic, impractical and irritating. It's a menace to film rolls and close ups of straight brick walls. It's an exercise in patience and meticulousness. And it's a lottery of settings and angles plagued by inconsistency and vagueness. But despite all this it still works, and works solidly. I am still surprised by the engineered heart failure on these cameras, but at a dime a dozen, there's no reason one should stay away from these exotic relics from a bygone world order.

PS: Did I mention that it's a conversation starter? "Hello sir! May I make a portrait of you?" "What kind of camera is that?" "It's almost 50 years old, shoots black and white film and was made in the USSR!" (eyes bulging in surprise) "No way! Sure man, take as many as you like!"

Sample pics

[diannescards]

Happy Birthday Gorgeous Meets Oh So Eclectic!

Happy Birthday Gorgeous Meets Oh So Eclectic!

I’m baaaaack! I know it has been a few weeks since I showed you a card for one of the men in your life. But, I’m back! This week the card will feature some of the Floral Romance Designer Series Paper and stamps from Happy Birthday Gorgeous and Oh So Eclectic stamp sets.

Design Notes for Happy Birthday Gorgeous Card:

Are you surprised that I would use paper from a package called “Floral…

[diannescards]

Oh Joy Fold for Global Design Project

Oh Joy Fold for Global Design Project

Joy Fold. I’ve done a little research and I can’t find out why this particular fold is called Joy Fold. Nonetheless, I like it and hope you will as well. Later on in the post, I’ve provided a link to a photo tutorial for this great fold.

  I love this color combination! These are the challenge colors over at Global Design Projectthis week. Here’s the banner and link so that you can go check out…

[diannescards]

Thinking of You with Oh So Eclectic

Thinking of You with Oh So Eclectic

This week’s Global Design Projectchallenge inspiration project is so beautiful. The challenge is to CASE the Designer. That means to copy bits or pieces, colors perhaps or design sketch, maybe stamp set, whatever. I thought a lot about what I wanted to do for this challenge. While I changed a few things, I changed it to a square but generally, I kept the idea of a sentiment surrounded by flowers.…

[diannescards]

Congratulations With Oh So Eclectic

Congratulations With Oh So Eclectic

A high school friend of mine recently receive an impressive promotion. Yes, some of my classmates are still working! I wanted to send her a congratulations card and also wanted to try out a new technique I saw called Middle. You’ll figure out the reason for that name pretty quickly! Since I love the Oh So Eclectic stamp set, I decided to use that. So, do you see why the technique is called…

[diannescards]

Naturally Eclectic Thank You

Naturally Eclectic Thank You

I recently needed some thank you cards. Actually, I needed them quickly. I thought some designer paper would be a solution. I went to one of my new favorites, Naturally Eclectic Designer Series Paper. Nice patterns already made, color choices, already made. No brainer. Design Notes for Naturally Eclectic Thank You Card: I love working with designer series paper. I often start with that when I am…